The Jewish Star

The Israeli and American flags were projected on the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, on Oct. 28, in solidarity with the Jews murdered in a Pittsburgh synagogue on Shabbos.

The JEWISH Chayei Sara • Nov. 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778 • Torah columns pages 26–27 • Luach page 26 • Vol 17, No 42

Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

STAR

Long Island’s #1 Jewish Newspaper

TheJewishStar.com

Serving our Orthodox communities

Chayei Sarah: Free land for dead Jews Parsha of the Week

Rabbi avi billeT Jewish Star columnist

two points have been raised in every verse up until now.

But the Torah takes three verses to describe the transaction, and the transfer of the land, the field, and the cave to Avraham’s ownership. It takes pains to identify this space, presumably to make clear that this was a big purchase, made by Avraham for his family as an eternal burial spot. This was a purchase and transfer of property for all time.

After the purchase has been See Chayei Sarah on page 26

Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

S

arah dies, and Avraham approaches the local Hittites and asks to speak to Ephron ben Tzochar, “that he should give me to me the Machpelah cave at the edge of his field, for its full price, [to be used as] a burial plot” (Bereishit 23:9).

Ephron responds, “I’ll give it you for free! In front of everyone! It’s yours! Bury your dead!”

(23:11) Avraham is appreciative, but declines: “I’m giving you the money. Take it from me. Then I will bury my dead.”

Ephron thinks it over. “A land of 400 silver shekels — between friends, not such a big deal, right? — then you can bury your dead” (23:15).

The next verse should say that Avraham paid the money and buried his dead. After all, those

Presidential condolence

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump paid respects Tuesday at a makeshift memorial outside the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. The president laid stones and the first lady left small flowers. They were accompanied by White House senior advisers Jerod Kushner and Ivanka Trump, seen speaking with the Tree of Life’s rabbi, Jeffrey Myers. During Shabbos prayer, 11 people were killed and six wounded.

November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

2

In Europe, shuls are protected like fortresses

By Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA Will security at American Jewish institutions mirror Europe, with its police protection, armed guards, panic rooms and sterile zones at synagogues?

It’s a possibility that is being debated more seriously than ever before following the Tree of Life Congregation shooting Saturday in Pittsburgh in which a gunman killed 11 people.

Rabbi Jack Moline, president of the Interfaith Alliance, told the Washington Post that posting armed guards outside synagogues in some places would be “prohibitive” to Jewish communal life.

But Gary Sikorski, director of security for the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, told the Detroit Jewish News that the idea, suggested

by President Donald Trump after the attack, is “not a bad one.”

European security professionals say that even if Sikorski’s approach prevails, it will take at least a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars before U.S. Jewry’s security infrastructure matches the European counterpart.

“The security doctrine you see in Europe is the result of decades of evolution,” said Ophir Revach, director of the European Jewish Congress’ Security and Crisis Center. “It was built on lessons from terrorist attacks in the 1960s and adjusted constantly. It’s pretty comprehensive.”

Even if a critical mass of U.S. Jewish communities decide tomorrow that they want to replicate the European model, Revach said, “Optimistically speaking, it will take at least a decade to achieve.”

When it comes to security, he said, “American Jewry is at the beginning of a long journey.”

In several European countries, synagogues are under constant protection of police or army troops. Most of them have volunteer guards, including armed ones. Many also have a security command room, where trained professionals or volunteers use elaborate video surveillance systems to monitor their premises, often while exchanging information with other Jewish institutions in real time.

These arrangements regularly prevent violence against congregants.

In 2015, a volunteer guard outside Copenhagen’s main synagogue was shot dead after engaging an armed Islamist who had intended to carry out a shooting attack inside the building, where dozens of people were celebrating a bat mitzvah.

French soldiers patrol in front of a synagogue outside Paris as part of France’s national security alert system, on Jan. 21, 2015.

Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Image

Dan Uzan’s intervention allowed police to shoot the assailant, who never made it inside the shul.

A year earlier, a dozen or so volunteer guards staved off dozens of rioters who had intended to storm the Synagogue de la Roquette in Paris as payback for Israel’s actions in Gaza.

As 200 worshippers waited inside, the defenders held their ground for 20 minutes amid a vicious street brawl with the attackers until police finally arrived at the scene.

“Dan Uzan’s death was tragic, but from a security point of view it was a system that did what it needed to do,” Revach said.

Had the Tree of Life synagogue been guarded, “this attack may have been prevented,” he said.

“Even armed perpetrators are deterred in a major way by guards.”

Some American synagogues, like Har Shalom, the largest Conservative synagogue in Potomac, Maryland, have an armed police presence during services and other events, The Washington Post reported. Community Security Service, a nonprofit, has trained volunteers at dozens of synagogues, mostly in the New York area. In Teaneck, New Jersey, a suburb with dozens of synagogues,

many have a police presence out front and CSStrained congregants on patrol.

Others have a closed-doors policy in which visitors must request entry through an intercom.

In recent years, more and more Jewish federations have hired full-time security directors for their facilities and to advise their donor agencies.

The Secure Community Network, the security arm of the Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, was formed in 2004.

Since then, the number of federations with fulltime security directors grew from two to 30, according to the Post.

Federal money is available for beefing up security at Jewish institutions. In fiscal year 2018, Congress appropriated $50 million for nonprofit security through something called the Urban Area Security Initiative; much of the money goes to Jewish institutions.

But many American synagogues, including Tree of Life, had been leaving their doors open on Shabbat — a scenario that became unthinkable years ago in Western Europe, where jihadists carried out deadly attacks in recent years on Jewish targets.

Joel Rubinfeld, president of the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism, remembered feeling “simultaneously envious and worried” when he was greeted recently to a major New York synagogue by a concierge in his 70s — and no one else.

Before 2015, even at-risk synagogues like the Grand Synagogue of Marseille, France, had lax security and at times open doors. But the attacks in Paris that year prompted all but the most distant synagogues of Western Europe to abandon the open-door policy they used to have.

European synagogues now employ a multilayered defensive doctrine of several threat circles in cooperation with law enforcement.

“It accounts for all kinds of scenarios, not just a shooting but also a car bomb, firebombs and snipers,” Revach said.

Each scenario requires building adjustments, sometimes just adding a security barrier and at other times replacing windows with bulletproof glass. Then there’s the need to set up international, national and regional situation rooms to help communities coordinate their activities.

“Just setting up the physical elements ... takes years,” Revach said.

If American Jewry quickly ups the security arrangements around its institutions, “there’s still the issue of awareness,” said Sammy Ghozlan, a retired police commissioner and the president of the National Bureau for Vigilance Against AntiSemitism in France.

“It’s not enough to build a security,” he said.

“You need a community that’s drilled at maintaining it even when nothing happens year after year, so that when the threat does appear, it is met. It needs to be hardwired into you.”

American Jewry is facing a “monumental challenge” if it seeks to adopt the European security model, Ghozlan said.

“It will take them at least 15 years,” he said, noting that American Jewry is “far larger and more far-flung” than its European counterpart, making the task more complicated than in France.

Ghozlan nonetheless believes that American Jews will rise to the challenge.

“We are witnessing a Europeanization of the situation in the United States for Jews,” he said.

“It takes time for a worldview to change, but I believe American Jews have the resources and resourcefulness to fix the security problems exposed in Pittsburgh.”

HIAS, vilified by Pittsburgh killer, won’t back down

By Ben Sales, JTA Before he shot dead 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue, Robert Bowers blamed one Jewish organization: HIAS, an immigrant aid group that has been helping refugees since the 1880s.

“HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people,” he wrote on social media. “I can’t sit by and watch my peo ple get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

In vilifying HIAS, Bowers targeted an organization that helped get the American Jewish community on its feet as it burgeoned more than a century ago. Its mission shifted as the number of Jewish migrants fell to a trickle, from helping its own to advocating for others. It’s also an organization that even amid opposition to refugee admissions from the White House has maintained broad support from a Jewish community that is otherwise increasingly fragmented.

“It’s not going to affect our mission one iota,” HIAS President and CEO Mark Hetfield told JTA on Saturday night, referring to the Pittsburgh attack. “If anything, it’s reinforced the need for the Jewish community to be a welcoming community.”

HIAS’ goal once was to welcome Jews to the United States.

Founded in 1881 as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the agency provided resources and education to the Jewish immigrants. It later took an active role in the movement to free Soviet Jewry.

As Jewish immigration evaporated in the 1990s, HIAS shifted to becoming a refugee resettlement agency for non-Jews. It is now one

Activist Michele Freed, center, and other young professionals protest with HIAS in front of the White House on March 1, 2017. Katie Jett Walls

of nine agencies tasked with resettling refugees in the United States.

Until 2015, the agency stayed mostly apolitical and focused on navigating the bureaucracy involved in bringing refugees to the country and finding them homes. But that year, the refugee crisis rose to the top of global consciousness, and Donald Trump launched a presidential campaign centered on reducing the flow of undocumented — and even legal — immigrants to the United States.

Soon after his inauguration, Trump signed the first in a series of executive orders barring refugees from the United States, as well

as the residents of a number of Muslim-majority countries. Thus HIAS, which was accustomed to working with the government, found itself on the front lines of opposition to the Trump administration.

It has since advocated for the admittance of refugees, mobilized Jewish communities and synagogues to its cause, and fought Trump’s travel bans in court.

“That’s the most troubling thing — refugees were really a bipartisan issue,” Hetfield told JTA in 2017. “Some people say HIAS is a liberal agency or progressive Jewish agency. We’re really not.

Our whole focus has been refugees, and refugees are not a partisan issue. It really became politicized over the past couple of years.”

HIAS may not have the backing of the White House, but its issue remains popular across the Jewish community. All four major movements opposed Trump’s travel ban last year. More than 400 congregations are part of its “Welcome Campaign.” Last week, HIAS organized a “refugee Shabbat” across synagogues focused on talking about helping refugees.

Hetfield says the group has faced opposition in the past. But he said he never expected anything as bad as the tragedy on Saturday.

“We’ve been aware that there are people out there that despise HIAS and our mission of welcoming refugees to this country, as hard as it is to understand,” he said. “Its going to make us more aggressive and focused in speaking out against hate — hate directed at refugees, hate directed against Jews.”

3

By Ben Sales, JTA The 11 victims of Saturday’s attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue included two brothers with intellectual disabilities, a married couple and a physician who assisted patients in the early days of the AIDS crisis. The youngest victim was 54 and the oldest was 97.

David Rosenthal, 54, Cecil Rosenthal, 59 The two brothers were very involved in the local Jewish community.

“Neither man had one ounce of hate in their hearts,” read a tweet by a synagogue member. “I grieve for these men. They will be missed.”

The brothers lived in a community home run

by ACHIEVA, which provides residential and employment services for adults with intellectual disabilities. They were roommates often were the first faces that congregants saw as they arrived for services.

“They loved life. They loved their community,” said Chris Schopf, vice president of Residential Supports at ACHIEVA. “They spent a lot of time at the Tree of Life, never missing a Saturday. If they were here, they would tell you that is where they were supposed to be.”

Bernice Simon, 84, and Sylvan Simon, 86 The Simons were married at the Tree of Life Congregation in 1956 in a candlelight ceremony, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported.

“They held hands and they always smiled and he would open the door for her, all those things that you want from another person,” neighbor Heather Graham told the newspaper.

“They were really generous and nice to everybody. It’s just horrific.”

Sylvan was a retired accountant. Bernice was a former nurse.

Daniel Stein, 71 Stein once served as president of the New Light Congregation, one of the three congregations that were housed in the synagogue building, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported. He recently became a grandfather for the first time, according to local reports.

“He was always willing to help anybody,” said his nephew, Steven Halle. “He was somebody that everybody liked, very dry sense of humor and recently had a grandson who loved him.”

His wife, Sharyn, is the vice chair of membership of the local chapter of Hadassah.

Jerry Rabinowitz, 66 Rabinowitz was a physician and was involved in the Reconstructionist congregation, Dor Hadash, that met in the building, at one time serving as its president.

“Jerry was one of the backbones of the congregation,” Laura Horowitz, a congregant, who wept when she read his name, told JTA. “He blows — he blew — the shofar on Yom Kippur.”

A former patient recalled that in the early days of the AIDS crisis, Rabinowitz was among a handful of doctors treating patients with dignity and respect.

“Basically before there was effective treatment for fighting HIV itself, he was known in the community for keeping us alive the longest,” Michael Kerr recalled on Facebook. “He often held our hands (without rubber gloves) and always always hugged us as we left his office.”

Richard Gottfried, 65 A popular local dentist, Gottfried was active in New Light Congregation. The Tribune-Review reported that Richard and his wife, Margaret Durachko, volunteered with the Catholic Charities Free Dental Clinic.

Gottfried’s nephew honored his uncle in a tweet.

“Today I lost an important person in my life,” Jacob Gottfried wrote. “My uncle was murdered doing what he loved, praying to G-D. I don’t want to live in a world where I must fear to live as a Jew. I thank everyone in BBYO for being so supportive and I hope this never happens again! #PittsburghStrong.”

Joyce Fienberg, 75 Fienberg was a native of Toronto, Canada, and lived in several American cities before settling in Pittsburgh, where her husband, Stephen, was professor emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University before his death in December 2016, Toronto City News reported. She retired in 2008 as a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center, which looks at learning in the classroom and in museums. Her daughter-in-law, Marney Fienberg, is co-president of Hadassah North Virginia.

Rose Mallinger, 97 Though many news reports circulated that Rose Mallinger was a Holocaust survivor, a family friend tweeted that she was not. Mallinger’s great-niece told her friend that her aunt was “the

most caring gentle loving woman.” The retired school secretary had children and three grandchildren. Her daughter, Andrea Wedner, 61, was among those wounded in the attack and is expected to recover, the Post-Gazette reported.

“She was a synagogue-goer, and not everybody is,” a former Tree of Life rabbi, Chuck Diamond, told The Washington Post about Mallinger. “She’s gone to the synagogue for a lifetime, no matter how many people are there.

I feel a part of me died in that building.”

Melvin Wax, 88 Wax, a retired accountant and a grandfather, was described by fellow congregants as a “pillar” of the congregation, The Associated Press reported. He was a leader of Or Chadash, or New Light Congregation, which moved into the Tree of Life building a year ago after his congregation, made up mostly older members, could no longer afford its own synagogue building. He reportedly was leading his congregation’s services at the time of the attack.

Myron Snider, chairman of the congregation’s cemetery committee, described his friend as generous and kind. Snider said he and Wax shared jokes at the end of each service.

Dennis Fishman, whose parents were friends with Wax, described him as empathetic and attentive. “He was a quiet man, not very assertive but always there, often smiling,” Fishman said. “He had a real light-up-the-room kind of smile, with an eye that let you know he was paying attention to what made you happy and made you sad.”

Irving Younger, 69 Younger was a father and grandfather who had recently undergone surgery, his neighbor told the Post-Gazette.

“He was a really nice guy,” Jonathan Voye told the newspaper.

The Tribune-Review reported that Younger once owned a small business and was a youth baseball coach.

Among the injured, Daniel Leger, 70, a retired nurse and local hospital chaplain, suffered critical injuries in his chest, his brother, Paul, told the Tribune-Review. Leger had two surgeries on Saturday and remains in critical condition, according to reports. Leger, who has a wife and two sons, was scheduled to lead a service Saturday morning at Tree of Life.

‘Our hearts are broken’: The Jewish world reacts

By Marcy Oster, JTA The shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue that left 11 people dead has been described as “horrific,” “heinous” and “devastating” by Jewish leaders, politicians and Israeli leaders.

“Our hearts are broken,” the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh posted on Facebook, saying it was making an exception and using social media on Shabbat.

“This is now real. This is my worst nightmare,” the federation’s president, Jeff Finkelstein, told CNN. Jerry Silverman, president and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, said: “The peace of Shabbat was shattered and lives tragically lost. All of us stand with our brothers and sisters there.”

The Jewish refugee aid agency HIAS, which was named by the suspected shooter in a series of posts on social media, said in a statement: “There are no words to express how devastated we are by the events in Pittsburgh this morning. … As we try to process this horrifying tragedy, we pray that the American Jewish community and the country can find healing.”

“There are simply no words of condemnation that can truly express our anguish and disgust at the perpetrator of this hate-fueled act or others like it,” said Agudath Israel of America. “Any platform or group, including those on social media, that serves to stir up and metastasize bigotry and anti-Semitic hatred needs to be called out and shut down for incitement of violence. Until all Americans confront the horror of anti-Semitism head on, our great democracy will not have achieved its promise.”

David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, tweeted: “No words are adequate. A demented, bigoted mind that would destroy lives in a house of worship should leave us all speechless, united and angry as hell.”

ADL National Director Jonathan Greenblatt said that “it is simply unconscionable for Jews to be targeted during worship on a Sabbath morning, and unthinkable that it would happen in the United States of America in this day and age. Unfortunately, this violent attack — the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in the United States since 2014 — occurs at time

when ADL has reported a historic increase in both anti-Semitic incidents and anti-Semitic online harassment.”

The Hillel Jewish University Center of Pittsburgh in a post on Facebook said it was in contact with staff, university officials and law enforcement to ensure the safety of students. The center said it was planning to open on Shabbat in order to support students and community members “when it is safe to do so.”

Parents responded with comments thanking the center for being available to help their children. One wrote: “So glad that you are there to support our children when we, as parents, are far away and cannot hug them and be with them.”

World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder said the attack was not just on the Jewish community but on America as a whole.

“We must condemn this attack at the highest levels and do everything in our power to stop such atrocities from happening again,” Lauder said in a statement.

B’nai B’rith International called it “a devastating day for Jews in this country and around the world.”

“But more than that, it’s another devastating day for tolerance and acceptance,” Charles Kaufman and Daniel Mariaschin, its president and CEO, respectively, said. “We are living in an unparalleled toxic atmosphere of hate that seems endless. While we welcome politicians’ thoughts and prayers when murderous rages of hate occur, that must be followed by action on many levels. Tolerance and mutual respect, plus sensible gun control — especially for automatic weapons — are needed now.”

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, DFla.,who was the target of a mail bombing campaign in recent days, said in a tweet: “Our houses of worship will never truly be safe until those in power challenge anti-Semitism and the rampant proliferation of guns. My heart goes out to Pittsburgh, its Jewish community, law enforcers and all those impacted by this tragedy on a holy day of worship.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition’s national chairman, Norm Coleman, said: “The level of hate in this country is out of control. Today we mourn the dead and stand in awe of the men and women who ran toward the gun fire to help See Broken on page 11

THE JEWISH STAR November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778

These are the victims of Pittsburgh shooting

November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

4

Jewish labels are meaningless to anti-Semites Jonathan S. tobin

Jewish News Syndicate

I

srael’s Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau didn’t intend to say anything that would wound American Jews in the wake of the mass slaughter at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life - Or L’Simcha Synagogue. In an interview with Israel’s Makor Rishon newspaper, he made it clear that his goal was to express solidarity with the victims and to state that violence against Jews was intolerable.

Despite that, Lau still managed to create a firestorm that will be cited as proof of a widening divide between Israel and the Diaspora.

When he refused to explicitly acknowledge that the 11 Jews slaughtered by shooter Robert Bowers died in a synagogue at a Shabbat service, he seemingly confirmed the worst stereotypes about the rabbinate’s contempt for non-Orthodox Jews, pouring salt into a wound that Jewish leaders should be doing everything to help heal.

But instead of doing further damage to Jewish unity, this incident ought to do the opposite.

What happened in Pittsburgh should impress upon both Israelis and American Jews that we are up against the same enemies, who are as uninterested in our denominational labels as they are in our politics. ow did it happen? Let’s call it a journalistic ambush.

Lau started out by saying the following: “I’ll say one simple thing: Any murder of a

H

Jew in any corner of the world because they are Jewish is unforgivable; it’s a crime that cannot, under any circumstances, be ignored.”

But things started to get tricky. The reporter commented, “In the ultra-Orthodox media, they refused to refer to the Tree of Life as a Conservative synagogue, but as a ‘Jewish center’ in the best case.”

Lau deflected the attempt to switch the topic to the dispute about pluralism: “They were killed because they were Jews.

Does it matter which synagogue or liturgical tradition they pray in? We are talking about Jews.

We don’t need to create issues at painful moments. I have a deep ideological disagreement with them about Judaism about its past and the consequences for the future for the Jewish people for generations. So what? Because of that they are not Jews? Jews were killed in a place that for the killer was a place of clear Jewish character. A place with Torah scrolls, Jews in tallits, there are prayer books, there are people who went there to be closer to G-d. Because of that, the killer specifically went there and not somewhere else. That is why there is pain and anger.” n context, it’s clear that the chief rabbi was not seeking to insult Conservative Jews. He was actually making it clear that he understood the victims were there because they were people of faith whose loyalty to Judaism made them a target.

Yet while the attacks that followed the inter-

view may be unfair, it’s also true that he did not explicitly say that Tree of Life was a synagogue, just like the places where his fellow Orthodox Jews pray in Israel.

That was enough to generate a storm of criticism that soon landed on the rabbi’s head. Prominent figures in the Conservative movement reacted angrily, and the press also unloaded on Lau for denying the legitimacy of the synagogue victimized by the rabidly antiSemitic shooter.

At that point, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu felt compelled to weigh in, tweeting, “Jews were killed in a synagogue. They were killed because they are Jews. The location was chosen because it is a synagogue. We must never forget that. We are one.”

It would have been far better for all concerned if Lau had been more specific in saying that Tree of Life was a synagogue.

Conservative and Reform Jews have a legitimate beef with the rabbinate and the Israeli government for their refusal to recognize their rabbis, in addition to the way Lau, in particular, helped torpedo a compromise plan for expanding the area for egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall.

But Lau’s a prisoner of politics and feared his haredi Orthodox critics would lambast him for recognizing the legitimacy of non-Orthodox movements. As it is, if they actually read what he said, they’ll probably be mad at him anyway for suggesting that it’s possible to get “closer to G-d” in a Conservative synagogue.

The victims were there because they were people of faith.

I

B

ut there’s a broader point to be made that ought to transcend our arguments about pluralism — one that infuriate members of the movements to which 90 percent of affiliated American Jews belong.

Robert Bowers didn’t care what kind of synagogue he was attacking. Motivated by age-old myths and hatreds, his purpose was to kill all Jews, not just some in one denomination. The same is true of those who launch missiles from Gaza at Israeli towns, or who seek to stab or shoot any Jew they can reach. The same can also be said about those who attack Jews in Europe, a place where a rising tide of anti-Semitism — espoused by both immigrants from the Middle East and left-wing elites who hate Israel — is a much greater problem than in the United States.

Americans and Israeli Jews have become increasingly indifferent towards one another’s concerns. But what Pittsburgh must do is remind us all that in spite of our very different circumstances, we share common enemies who are blithely unconcerned about our internal religious and political differences.

Seen in that light, our denominational labels are as meaningless as our endless backbiting about settlements, borders or what we think about Netanyahu and his policies.

As hard as it may be to do, Jews need to seize every opportunity to think less about those labels and more about the common past and destiny we share. When we do that, we see that what we call our synagogues isn’t as important as the idea that the Jewish people need to stick together, and that what we have in common is still greater than our differences.

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

Sorry to report this, but there is a right wing threat Jonathan weiSman

I

n August, when I was speaking at a synagogue in East Hampton about a rising tide of anti-Semitism and intolerance, a congregant stood to tell me that the number of right-wing anti-Semites in this country could fit in that sanctuary.

The problem, he assured me, was not the neo-Nazis, “alt-right” white nationalists and virulent anti-immigrant voices filling my social media feeds — but anti-Zionists on college campuses.

The massacre of Jews in Pittsburgh on Saturday came sadly as no surprise to me. I was one of dozens of Jewish journalists targeted by anti-Semites during the 2016 campaign, showered with the ugliest, most violent antiSemitic imagery imaginable, my face photoshopped on Holocaust victims, my path into Auschwitz accented by gates that read “Machen Amerika Great Again.”

I have spent the last two years trolling around the darker corners of 4Chan, 8Chan, Reddit and Gab. I have visited the Daily Stormer’s website so frequently I may be on an FBI watchlist. I know what’s out there.

And since the publication last spring of my book (((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump, I have traversed the country to warn of the dangers of rising nationalism, organized bigotry and anti-Semitic

hate. My message: Don’t kid yourself that the most violent forms of hate have been aimed at others — blacks, Muslims, Latino immigrants.

Don’t ever think that your government’s proIsrael policies reflect a tolerance of Jews. We are all in this together. n most places — synagogues, Jewish community centers and independent bookstores — that message seems to have been absorbed. But virtually everywhere I have gone, especially in Orthodox communities, there have been audience members, sometimes most of them, that have angrily rejected that message.

I have been called a selfhating Jew, deluded, paranoid.

President Donald Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, abrogated the Iran nuclear deal, done whatever Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked of him. His Orthodox son-in-law is one of his closest advisers. His beloved daughter is a convert. His grandchildren are Jewish.

No, I am told, the scattering of bigots on the fringes of his orbit are of no concern. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, targeting Israel is the threat, as are the voices on the left speaking out against Israeli policies and actions toward the Palestinians. Oh, and Louis Farrakhan.

My answer has never been to dismiss those concerns, but to put them into context. The gutter bigotry of Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, is no better than the hate spewed by right-wing racists like Richard Spencer and

I

David Duke. It should be condemned as forthrightly.

But Farrakhan, if he ever had power, peaked in 1995 with the Million Man March.

It has been downhill ever since. Louis Farrakhan, from his South Side of Chicago mosque, can’t muster 100,000 fascists to the streets of Budapest like Viktor Orbán can. He cannot pass a law through parliament declaring it illegal to suggest that Poles had anything to do with the Holocaust. He cannot win a plurality of seats in the Italian parliament. And he will not be runner-up in the next French election.

We have to consider where power is rising, and the Nationalist Right is a global movement, from Manila to Milan, from Warsaw to Washington — and frankly, in Jerusalem, too.

Trump disparages “globalists” — his presidential campaign’s final, closing ad inveighed against “global special interests” as the Jewish faces of Lloyd Blankfein, the Goldman Sachs chief; George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist; and Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve chair, crossed the screen. But the fact is, “globalist” sentiments — eras of international cooperation and blurred borders — have been essential to Jewish good fortunes. n the long history of our people, Jews do not tend to do well when nationalist sentiments rise, when borders are sharply drawn and identities are crisply defined.

Such times tend to leave us out — isolated,

I have been called a self-hating Jew.

I

excluded and eventually attacked.

When Robert Bowers interrupted Shabbat services in Pittsburgh on Saturday and gunned down 11 people, he was self-radicalized like many others on the far right, with propaganda that convinced him that the International Jew was the threat, orchestrating and financing the invasion of this country by brown-skinned marauders intent on diminishing the stature of the white race — his race, his identity.

The item of fake news that pushed him to homicide was the Tree of Life Congregation’s involvement in a Jewish organization, HIAS, that helps resettle refugees. A gesture of Jewish altruism — charity toward the displaced, many of them Muslims — was seen as yet another outrage in the Jewish-orchestrated “White Genocide.”

“HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people,” he wrote on Gab, the social network preferred by the “alt-right.” “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered.

Screw your optics. I’m going in.”

I’d like to go back and find the man who told me with such confidence that right-wing anti-Semitism is not a threat. I am quite confident he may have a reason why he was right and I was wrong.

I don’t mean to suggest here that antiSemitism is somehow the fault of the Semites.

But other communities in history have turned a blind eye to the threats gathering around them.

It is time we open our eyes.

Jonathan Weisman is the author of (((Semitism))): Being Jewish in the Age of Trump.

THE JEWISH STAR November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778

999328

5

4 recent shootings targeted American Jews

By Josefin Dolsten, JTA As news spread of the shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Jews — and Americans of all backgrounds — across the country reeled from the shock. With 11 confirmed casualties, it is the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in U.S. history.

JTA looked at other times U.S. Jewish institutions were targeted, and the attackers’ affiliations.

1999 LA Jewish Community Center Date: Aug. 10, 1999 Dead: 0 in JCC, 1 nearby Shooter’s affiliations: Neo-Nazi, white supremacist Buford O’Neal Furrow walked into the lobby of the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles and opened fire. He fired 70 shots that wounded five people, including three children. No one was killed at the JCC. Furrow then drove away and later fatally shot a Filipino-American mail worker, Joseph Illeto.

The gunman eventually walked into an FBI office and surrendered. Furrow was a white supremacist with ties to Aryan Nations, a neoNazi white supremacist group. Furrow, who said he hoped his attack would inspire others to target Jews, had considered attacking other Los Angeles Jewish organizations, including the Skirball Cultural Center and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. He was sentenced to life in prison.

2006 Seattle Jewish Federation Date: July 28, 2006 Dead: 1 Shooter’s motivation: Muslim who said he was angry at Israel Naveed Afzal Haq shot six women at the Seattle Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, killing one. He had entered by forcing a 14-year-old girl at gunpoint to buzz the building intercom. Once inside, he shot six people and called the police to tell them he had taken

he praised Adolf Hitler. He had been arrested in 1981 for attempted kidnapping and hostage taking at the Federal Reserve building. He died at the age of 89 before receiving a sentence.

2014 Overland Park JCC Date: April 13, 2014 Dead: 3 Shooter’s affiliations: Neo-Nazi, white supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. shot people in the parking lot of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City in Overland Park, Kansas, and fired shots into the JCC building. He then left in his car and went to a nearby Jewish retirement community, Village Shalom, where he also shot at people in a parking lot.

Miller, a neo-Nazi and a former Ku Klux Klan member, had intended to target Jews, but the three fatalities were non-Jews visiting the JCC or assisted-living facility. He was sentenced to death and is currently on death row.

hostages. Haq eventually surrendered to the police. He killed one woman, Pamela Waechter, and wounded five others. People who were inside the federation said Haq shouted about being a Muslim who was angry at Israel. However, some later suggested that mental illness was to blame. Haq was not a frequent worshipper at mosque and at one point had converted to Christianity. He received a life sentence.

2009 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Date: June 10, 2009 Dead: 1 Shooter’s affiliations: Neo-Nazi, white supremacist James Wenneker von Brunn entered the museum in Washington, D.C., and fatally shot security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns. Two other security guards shot back, wounding von Brunn before he was able to shoot anyone else. Wenneker was a white supremacist and Holocaust denier who had self-published a book in which

The disease of anti-Semitism infects everyone FiAMMA NireNSteiN

I

t was a gray and drizzly day in Pittsburgh, usually a beautiful place, green and fresh, when a synagogue was hit at 9:45 am on Saturday, yet another target of that inexhaustible strain that is homicidal anti-Semitism — one of history’s most flourishing plants.

As the gunman opened fire on Jews who were participating in Shabbat-morning services, he screamed, “All Jews must die.”

The anti-Semitic hydra has many heads, and they are showing up everywhere, all over the world. It’s awful to see TV images of police armed to the teeth, occupying a quiet neighborhood, but it is neither the first nor the last episode of this kind — whether it comes from the right or the left.

This war must be fought from the north to the south, from the east to the west and upside down, in advanced and Third World countries, in wealthy neighborhoods in the United States, in the Parisian banlieues, in heavily populated areas where immigrants reside in Brussels and London, and in bourgeois buildings where farright movements are based, or in the rooms of extreme left, which now paints Jews as mon-

with hate for Israel, which pulsates among white supremacists and the bourgeoisie alike. It passes from the history of Nazism to the Arab world, which spreads lies about Israel, echoed inside the United Nations.

Schoolbooks in the Arab world are full of defamation of the Jews. Nations like Iran and Syria, and terror organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the PLO and Islamic Jihad all have as their explicit aim the genocide of the Jews.

Neo-Nazis are just a part of contemporary anti-Semitism, and not the larger. During this time of urgency, attributing the fever to the “radicalization” of the Trump era is just an attempt to put make the game so small, so narrow compared to this hydra with so many heads.

sters with missiles.

“All Jews must die” is anti-Semitism’s universal slogan. It is found in the hundreds of thousands of posts on social media, it rips kippahs and Stars of David from the heads and necks of Jews on the street and beats them, it has been the driving force behind 1,986 anti-Semitic incidents in 2017 in the United States — a nearly 60 percent increase over the year before, according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League.

And it’s happening across the globe.

The gunman who committed the massacre at the synagogue in Pittsburgh couldn’t have used a better banner for the growth of hatred against Jews, who from the right infects the left with Nazi dogma, and from the left to the right

Great CD and Savings Rates!

1 Year CD*

2 50

% APY



100% liquid No monthly maintenance fee

Choose the account that’s right for you.

Grand Yield Savings®

6 Month CD*

2 15

%

1 60 



% APY

APY

for balances of $2,500 and up**

Visit any one of our branches, including the following convenient locations: 4519 13th Avenue, Boro Park, Brooklyn, NY, 718-436-5600

1617 Avenue M, Midwood, Brooklyn, NY, 718-375-2822

1575 50th Street, Boro Park, Brooklyn, NY, 718-436-4582

1321 Kings Highway, Brooklyn, NY, 718-382-7723

318 Albany Avenue, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, NY, 718-363-3291

1954 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, 718-677-8211

44 Lee Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, 718-486-7294

115 Cedarhurst Avenue, Cedarhurst, NY, 516-295-2698 or 516-295-2940

414 Flushing Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, 718-643-2192

Monsey Town Square, NY, 75 Route 59, 845-425-0189 (near Evergreen Kosher Market Center)

1401 Avenue J, Midwood, Brooklyn, NY, 718-252-6084

Annual Percentage Yields (APYs) disclosed are effective as of 10/16/18 and may be changed by the Bank at any time. *CDs require a $1,000 minimum balance to open and earn interest. Early withdrawal penalty may apply. CDs must be opened in person at an Apple Bank branch. ** For the Grand Yield Savings Account, interest earned on daily balances of $2,500 or more at these tiers: $2,500-$9,999: 1.60% APY, $10,000-$24,999: 1.60% APY, $25,000$49,999: 1.60% APY, $50,000 or more: 1.60% APY. There is no interest paid on balances between $1-$2,499. $100 minimum deposit required to open account. This account may be opened as a passbook or statement savings account. Offer may be withdrawn at any time without prior notice.

apple bk - JEWISH PRESS-CD-GRAND YIELD SAVINGS-EFF DATE 10-16-18.indd 1

Established 1863 · Member FDIC

www.applebank.com

10/10/2018 1:21:40 PM

1000468

November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

6

By Ron Kampeas, JTA PITTSBURGH — The day after the killings, a man who brings Jewish boys into the covenant and escorts the Jewish dead to their final resting place finally got to fulfill the mitzvah of shmira, keeping watch over the bodies.

The day after the killings, women gingerly entered a popular café and hugged the first responders taking a cappuccino break.

The day after the killings, congregants asked their rabbi whether it would be safe to let the kids out to play next Shabbat.

The day after the killings, Pittsburgh’s Jews opened umbrellas to drive off a rain as cold and cutting as steel. They filed into halls that have never been associated with Jewish worship, and they prayed because one of their houses of worship had been profaned by a killer swearing that he would kill every one of them.

The day after a gunman entered the Tree of Life Congregation complex in Squirrel Hill and killed 11 people belonging to the three congregations that it houses, there were persistent, nagging questions.

“Why us?”

The members of Congregation Dor Hadash, who lost Jeremy Rabinowitz, a beloved physician and former president of the Reconstructionist congregation, filed into East Liberty Presbyterian Church. On their way in, congregants thanked the staff for giving them a place to grieve. When the room they were assigned proved too small for the hundreds who had gathered, they thanked the staff again for moving them to a larger room.

On Sunday evening, most of the Dor Hadash congregants filed out and thanked the security before making their way to a vigil for the victims at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum, where they joined thousands of others and sought answers.

“So G-d, why us?” asked Jeffrey Myers, spiritual leader of the Tree of Life Or L’Simcha Congregation, who was last to speak.

“Why couldn’t he turn his car in a different direction?”

Myers asked the question every clergyman asks at each service: Why do congregants sit at the back of the sanctuary? The stage was packed with an interfaith array of Pittsburgh’s clergy.

The laughter faded as Myers explained the deadly consequences: Of the 12 worshippers in the sanctuary at the time of the shooting, the eight at the back were easy targets. Seven died, one was wounded. He was able to pull the four at the front to safety.

“Seven of my congregants were shot dead in my sanctuary,” he said, his voice thick with the guilt that haunts survivors.

Questions flew at a meeting earlier in the day bringing together local rabbis and Jewish community professionals and officials from law enforcement, as well as the state and the municipality.

Is this a trend? Jewish leaders asked, according to an official in the room. Was the gunman a lone wolf? Can we expect copycats?

What do we do when Jewish day schools open tomorrow? Will there be extra police? (For now, it appears yes: A police guard was set up across the street from the Jewish community center in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, blocks away from the shooting, the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history.)

Yisroel Rosenfeld, a Chabad rabbi who attended the briefing, said key questions were unanswered — they were too openended to answer in the short term.

His congregants wanted to know what to do next Shabbat, a time that the Orthodox tend to allow their kids to run free in the neighborhood. Was that safe now? Was it reasonable?

“That needs to continue,” Rosenfeld said of the free play the kids enjoy. “What do you do to make sure that fear doesn’t prevail?”

At the Presbyterian church where Dor Hadash congregants met, there were shared memories of Rabinowitz. Media were not permitted to enter, but laughter and sobs wafted from the room into the cavernous church where the Mellons, one of this country’s best known philanthropic families, are buried.

“I just hope we continue to be as welcoming,” a man said.

Rabbi Elisar Admon fretted throughout Saturday: Law enforcement would not let him into the synagogue to attend to the bodies.

Admon is a mohel — trained to circumcise Jewish boys, joining them to the ancient Jewish covenant Abraham forged with G-d. He is also the representative in Pittsburgh of ZAKA, the Israel-based Jewish burial society that specializes in attending to terrorist sites, preparing bodies for burial.

He was attending services blocks away from the synagogue when he heard the sirens and assumed the worst, he told JTA in an interview. A man ran in and confirmed the congregants’ fears, and the synagogue went into lockdown. Once the allclear was given, Admon ran to the site and tried to persuade law enforcement to allow him inside.

“We told them, we exist to help, we can help you and you can help us in our religious need” to bury the dead as quickly as possible.

Admon and a colleague stood in the chill until 9:30 pm, when authorities allowed them to enter — not to touch the bodies, but to map the carnage so they knew where to look for remains later.

“I’ve done this before,” in Israel, he said. “It always is hard.

But it was hard seeing people you know, people you see in the street and say ‘shalom shalom’ to.”

It bothered him that the bodies did not have shomrim, the volunteers who keep watch on the dead until they are buried, reading psalms.

He went home and a law enforcement official called him at 4:30 am, saying he should come over and help bring out the bodies.

“We had the ‘mini-funeral,’” Admon said, referring to the prayers he said. It was a measure of closure. He called on 11 volunteers to keep watch over the 11 bodies at the police morgue until the forensic coroner cleared them for burial.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It depends on when they are released.”

Another question.

How do you recover?

Sunday morning was silent at first along Murray Street in Squirrel Hill, a neighborhood packed with kosher eateries and favorite cafés. Laura Horowitz, a congregant at Dor Hadash, greeted friends at the 61C café as they walked. They checked on one another (“Where were you” when it happened?) and exchanged hugs. Two women hugged two policemen taking a coffee break.

A news conference naming the victims is taking place at the same time. Horowitz checked a friend’s phone and her face crumpled when she saw Rabinowitz’s name.

“The cliché is you come out stronger,” she said. “But I don’t know how you recover from the loss of place. That was where we were safe.”

“It starts with speech.”

On Sunday evening, Horowitz was in attendance at the memorial service, and there were stabs at answers from politicians and from Naftali Bennett, the Israeli minister of the Diaspora who flew in for the service.

The crowd appreciated the speakers, but their defiance seems wan adjacent to the grief.

The room recited Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd,” the one in which the supplicant “fears no evil.”

But evil persists, and no one knows quite what to make of it. Myers drew a line to the recent toxic political rhetoric.

“It starts with speech,” he said to a standing ovation.

“Words of hate are unwelcome in Pittsburgh!”

But minutes earlier, there was another moment, one of recognition. Wasiullah Mohamed, the executive director of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh, said to cheers that the city’s Muslims had, in less than 24 hours, raised $70,000 for the families of the dead and wounded. By Monday morning, more than $120,000 would be raised.

Then, like so many others throughout the day, Mohamed described what he felt when he heard the news.

“I couldn’t see the city anymore,” he said. “I could just see its dark corners.”

YOUNG ISRAEL OF WEST HEMPSTEAD IN V ITE S YO U TO A N

ISRAEL BONDS COMMUNITY EVENT

HONORING

GUEST SPEAKER

GILA & BOB MARGULIES CHARLIE HARARY TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2018 • 8:00PM YO U N G I S R A EL O F W E S T H EM P S T E A D 630 HEMPSTEAD AVENUE • WEST HEMPSTEAD, NY No couvert required to attend • An Israel Bond investment is encouraged. Bonds can be purchased with personal check or online at Israelbonds.com R S V P / I N V E S T M E N T I N F O R M AT I O N : Arnie Schweitzer, Registered Representative arnie.schweitzer@israelbonds.com · 516.726.2307

Light refreshments will be served

Development Corporation for Israel. This is not an offering, which can be made only by prospectus. Read the prospectus carefully before investing to fully evaluate the risks associated with investing in Israel bonds. Member FINRA. Photos: 123RF, iStock, Adobe Stock, James S. Galfund.

Invest in Israel bonds israelbonds.com

THE JEWISH STAR November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778

Pittsburgh looks to a future beyond darkness

7

Shooting shakes iconic Jewish neighborhood

By Ben Sales, JTA When a gunman entered The Tree of Life Congregation and killed 11 worshippers on Saturday, he also struck at the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community — the neighborhood of Squirrel Hill.

Squirrel Hill, in the eastern part of Pittsburgh, has been the center of the city’s Jewish life since the turn of the 20th century, when wealthy Jewish families began settling there.

While the Jewish communities of other cities have moved neighborhoods or migrated to the suburbs in the ensuing century-plus, Squirrel Hill and its environs have remained the home of Pittsburgh’s Jews.

Jeff Finkelstein, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, says the neighborhood’s sustained Jewish presence is a result of its proximity to local jobs and two universities nearby — Carnegie Mellon University and Chatham University. (The University of Pittsburgh isn’t far away, either.) Recently, he said, the area has also experienced an influx of Jewish millennials seeking urban life.

“It may be the last major urban-centered Jewish community outside of Manhattan in the country,” he said. “Over the years, this Jewish community has made serious investments into the Jewish institutions in Squirrel Hill.”

Today the neighborhood is home to about 30 percent of the Pittsburgh area’s 50,000 Jews, or about 15,000 people, according to a 2017 study of the Jewish community. It’s home to more than a dozen synagogues across denominations. Tree of Life, which recently merged with another congregation, Or L’Simcha, is one of two Conservative synagogues in the neighborhood. There are also multiple Orthodox and Reform synagogues in an area just over one square mile wide.

“It’s just really a special place with multigenerational family homes and a real nice sense of esprit de corps,” said Rabbi Aaron Bisno of Rodef Shalom, a Reform congregation. “It’s really col-

From left: Tammy Hepps and Kate and Simone Rothstein recite tehilim while nearby, as Shabbos ended, members of the Squirrel Hill community came together for a vigil in remembrance of those who were killed earlier in the day.

Getty Images

laborative and supportive and rather unique.”

Like many Jewish neighborhoods, Squirrel Hill boasts an array of Jewish day schools (four), kosher restaurants (three) and other Jewish community organizations, according to a 2016 article in Shady Ave., a local magazine. In addition to a Holocaust museum, it’s home to a sculpture of a Star of David made of 6 million soda can tabs — a project of Community Day School, a local Jewish school, that took five years to complete.

Squirrel Hill’s centrality to Pittsburgh Jewry also is reflected in the numbers. While it’s home to 30 percent of Pittsburgh Jews overall, nearly half of the area’s Jewish children are being raised there. The neighborhood ranks high as well in terms of synagogue membership, Jewish education and similar measures, according to the community study.

(It was also home to the children’s television icon Fred Rogers, the host of “Mister Rogers’

Neighborhood,” who was not Jewish.)

But what sets Squirrel Hill apart, Finkelstein says, is the cohesiveness of its Jewish community. He says its wide range of denominations and Jewish organizations make an effort to collaborate. At an all-night learning program this spring on the Jewish festival of Shavuot, 500 people from across the Jewish spectrum came to study together.

“There is a phrase in the Talmud that has always felt especially relevant to our community: Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh Bazeh. All of Israel is responsible for one another,” New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, who celebrated her bat mitzvah at Tree of Life, wrote in a column Saturday. “For us that is not a lovely theory but a lived reality.”

That communal unity, Finkelstein says, has been in evidence in the wake of the shooting.

In addition to a vigil Saturday night in Squir-

rel Hill, its Jewish organizations have mobilized.

The local JCC is acting as a base for the community and families of the victims, where rabbis from around the area have visited throughout the day. Jewish Family and Community Services of Pittsburgh is providing counseling, while the local Jewish federation is handling donations.

This is not the first time the community has experienced anti-Semitism recently. Last year, residents found stickers and business cards with white supremacist slogans around the neighborhood featuring swastikas and messages like “It’s not illegal to be white ... yet.”

But Finkelstein says Saturday’s events are the worst he’s ever experienced in his professional life.

“This is the one day I hoped would never happen,” he said. “It’s about these families — my heart goes out to them. Just watching their emotions has shaken my soul.”

Commack Hauppauge

Rockville Centre

Superior cancer care.

Right here on Long Island.

With three MSK locations across Long Island, you’re connected to over 130 years of innovation and thousands of people focused entirely on cancer. That means you have access to the most advanced treatment options and care teams that guide you every step of the way.

MSKCC.ORG/LONGISLAND

999642

November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

8

MORE SCIENCE. LESS FEAR.

Pittsburgh remembers the brothers Rosenthal Hirt said.

Services were also held on Tuesday for Jerry Rabinowitz, a 66-year-old family physician, and retiree Daniel Stein, 71, whose name was the first to be publicized as one of the perished.

Additional funerals were scheduled for Wednesday (Joyce Fienberg, 75, and Melvin Wax, 87), Thursday (Sylvan Simon, 88, and Bernice Simon, 84; and Richard Gottfried, 65), and Friday (Rose Mallinger, 97). Funeral arrangements had not been announced for Irving Younger, 69.

Caskets are carried out of Rodef Shalom Temple following the funeral of brothers Cecil and David Jeff Swensen/Getty Images Rosenthal in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.

Stand with Israel at Jewish National Fund’s

COMMUNITY CAMPAIGN KICK OFF FEATURING GUEST SPEAKER

Alan M. Dershowitz Ben Brafman

IN CONVERSATION WITH

Sunday, November 11, 2018 9:00 am Registration · 9:30 am Program ∙ 10:45 – 11:30 am Breakfast

RSVP by November 5 at jnf.org/fivetowns Congregation Beth Sholom 390 Broadway, Lawrence, NY 11559 EVENT CO-CHAIRS

Rebeka & Gabriel Boxer · Janine & Cal Nathan · Melodie & Marty Scharf RABBINICAL COMMITTEE

Rabbi Hershel Billet · Rabbi Aaron Feigenbaum · Rabbi Kenneth Hain Rabbi Bruce Ginsburg · Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum · Rabbi Barry Dov Schwartz · Rabbi Yehuda Septimus Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum · Rabbi Andrew Warmflash

RSVP required

No cost to attend

Dietary laws observed

jnf.org · 800.JNF.0099 999289

991507

More Information: Sharona Thall, Campaign Executive, Long Island, sthall@jnf.org, 516.678.6800 x115

THE JEWISH STAR November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778

By Ben Sales and Arielle Kaplan, JTA PITTSBURGH — Cecil Rosenthal would always ask after your sick mother or inquire about your marriage — or divorce. His brother, David, a jokester, loved the police and every year would buy the same sunglasses with mirrored lenses.

At a moving ceremony on Tuesday, relatives stood before a funeral home overflowing with more than 1,800 mourners to share fond memories of the brothers, who were the first to die in Saturday’s mass shooting at the Tree of Life Congregation here.

David, 54, and Cecil, 59, who were intellectually disabled, were greeting worshippers at the synagogue as they did most Saturday mornings when they were struck down by Robert Bowers, the alleged gunman. They were laid to rest following a funeral at Congregation Rodef Shalom in Shadyside.

“Our brothers, Cecil and David, were men, but as most people here in the audience know, we referred to them as ‘The Boys’,” said their middle sister, Diane Rosenthal, in her eulogy. “Maybe this is because they were innocent like boys, not hardened like men oftentimes become with age and experience.

We always thought of Cecil and David as two gentle giants.”

Diane’s husband, Michael Hirt, said David was a banterer who would begin every phone conversation by telling Hirt that the police were after him. David was a big police enthusiast, buying mirrored sunglasses — and a bottle of cologne — every year at a flea market, and walking around with a scanner radio.

“David loved anything related to the police,” Hirt said in his eulogy. “When his favorite toy, his scanner radio, broke recently, he was relentless in asking us to fix or replace it.”

David worked at a number of cleaning jobs, a passion that extended to his personal life. Hirt said if you were sitting in a living room and put your glass on the floor for one minute, David would have taken it to the kitchen, rinsed it and put it in the dishwasher.

He loved to help his mother clear the table.

He was also something of a flirt.

“David loved women,” Hirt said. “I’m sure most of the women here today were asked at one point or another by David, ‘Are you married?’ followed by, ‘Do you want to go to Hawaii?’ ” Cecil, Hirt said, was the “consummate politician” and a socialite. He was always asking after people. His sister and brother-in-law once tried to keep a funeral secret from him, only to see him walk in in the middle after finding his way there.

“Cecil knew everyone in town,” Hirt said.

“He knew everyone’s business. He knew if your mother was sick or your grandfather had died. How many times had Cecil stopped you on the street to talk about some pending marriage or pending divorce?”

“Those memories will remind us of how we should try to live our lives,” she said. “Embracing joy or love or happiness without making judgments or resenting people or hate.”

“I can guarantee that he is looking down upon us now asking ‘Are you proud of me?’,”

9

Israel lawmakers see Pittsburgh shooting as a time to talk pluralism Rav Aharon Friedman ‫שליט״א‬ Rosh Yeshiva

Rav Moshe Stav ‫שליט״א‬

48th

Rabbi Uri and Nava Orlian Congregation Shaaray Tefila, Lawrence NY Marbitzei Torah Award

Annual Dinner

Top: Rabbi David Lau, Israel’s chief Ashkenazic rabbi, on March 29. Right: Michael Oren speaks at a conference in the Israeli parliament earlier this year.

Miriam Alster/Flash90

American Friends of Yeshivat Kerem B'Yavneh cordially invites you to our 48th Annual Dinner

Monday, November 12th | ‫ה׳ כסלו תשע״ט‬ Lincoln Square Synagogue, 180 Amsterdam Avenue (at 68th Street) , New York, NY, 10023 Couvert: $300 Per Person | $500 per couple Reservations & Journal ads can be made at www.kby.org/go/dinner For questions and discount pricing for prospective parents contact at ny@kby.org 6:00 PM | Shiur from Rav Moshe Stav 6:30 PM | Buffet Dinner 7:45 PM | Program with video presentation and Divrei Bracha from the Rosh Yeshiva 8:45 PM | Dessert Michael Hochstein, President Rabbi Baruch Freedman, Director of American Friends of KBY

Host Committee:

Barry Gross ⋅ Dr Kalman Ausubel ⋅ Michael Mermelstein ⋅ Dovid Meisels ⋅ Dr Barry Finkelstein ⋅ Josh Wolff ⋅ Rabbi Ben Kelsen ⋅ Simcha Goldstein ⋅ Phil Gross ⋅ Rabbi Ira Wallach ⋅ Rabbi Simcha Willig ⋅ Rabbi Yaakov Trump ⋅ Yitz Novak ⋅ Charlie Wollman ⋅ Adam Rosenberg ⋅ Jeremy Teichman ⋅ Yoni Schechter ⋅ Manny Adler ⋅ Rabbi Eliyahu Prero ⋅ Benjamin Ramras ⋅ Dov Silverstein 1418 Avenue N | Brookyn, NY 11230 Tel: (718) 645-3130 | Fax: (718) 645-2757 Email: ny@kby.org | Web site: www.kby.org

Yeshivat Kerem B'Yavneh

1001222

November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

10

By Marcy Oster, JTA JERUSALEM —The deadly shooting at a Conservative synagogue in Pittsburgh has underlined tensions in Israel over the haredi Orthodox rabbinic establishment’s disenfranchisement of the Diaspora’s non-Orthodox Jewish streams.

Following Saturday’s rampage by a gunman that left 11 worshippers dead, an Israeli government minister and the country’s opposition leader both called on Israel to recognize the liberal streams of Judaism.

Others criticized Orthodox media in Israel for not calling the Tree of Life Congregation, the site of the attack, a synagogue in news reports, instead using the term “Jewish center.” Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, in a heartfelt statement, also referred only to “the murder of innocent Jews in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a tweet Monday appeared to join in the criticism of such omissions.

“Jews were killed in a synagogue. They were killed because they are Jews. The location was chosen because it is a synagogue. We must never forget that. We are one,” he tweeted.

In a tweet Sunday morning, Deputy Minister Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said: “The Conservative Jews of Pittsburgh were sufficiently Jewish to be killed because they were Jews but their movement is not recognized by the Jewish State. Israel must bolster these communities, already challenged by assimilation, by strengthening our ties with them.”

The American-born Oren, in a Hebrew tweet, added: “I call on Minister Bennett not to suffice with condolences, but to recognize liberal Jewish streams and unite the people.”

He was referring to the fact that Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who also serves as Diaspora minister, flew to Pittsburgh in order to visit the synagogue, meet with the local Jewish community and participate in the funerals of the victims.

Speaking Sunday night at a vigil in Pittsburgh, Bennett said, “We stand together, as Jews from all communities united, as well as members of all faiths. Together we stand.

Americans, Israelis. People who are together saying ‘no’ to hatred. The murderer’s bullet does not stop to ask: Are you Conservative or Reform, are you Orthodox? Are you right-wing or left-wing? It has one goal, and that is to kill innocent people. Innocent Jews.”

Israel’s haredi Orthodox Chief Rabbinate is largely in control of religious affairs in Israel, and does not recognize the Conservative and Reform movements, though they regard followers as Jews if they are Jewish under halachah. Non-Orthodox movements have long objected to their disenfranchisement in Israel,

and have called on the Israeli government to recognize their movements and clergy for issues like marriage, burial and conversion to Judaism.

Israel’s Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau was pulled into the debate Sunday by an interviewer for the Modern Orthodox Makor Rishon newspaper. The interviewer asked Lau about the haredi media’s refusal to name non-Orthodox synagogues, and Lau seemed at pains to distance himself from their policy.

Lau replied that he doesn’t speak for them.

“We are speaking about Jews and we need not take advantage to raise our painful differences,” the rabbi said. “I have an ideological dispute with them about Judaism, about the past and the future of the Jewish people throughout the generations.

“But,” he added, speaking rhetorically, “because of this they are not Jewish?”

Haaretz, the Washington Post and JTA later reported that Lau himself declined to refer to Tree of Life as a “synagogue,” although in the Makor Rishon interview he said, “They were killed because they were Jews. Does it matter in which beit knesset [synagogue] they pray in or what text they use?”

Yosef, Lau’s Sephardi counterpart, did not refer to the synagogue in his statement.

“I was shocked to hear about the murder of innocent Jews in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, simply because they were Jews, by an abhorrent murderer who was driven by anti-Semitic hatred,” he said. “My heart is with the bereaved families and with all of our Jewish brothers and sisters who live in the U.S.” Yosef also called for prayers for their wellbeing.

In an interview in The Washington Post, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union of Reform Judaism, was critical of Jews who would not refer to Tree of Life as a synagogue.

“This tragedy should bring all Jews together, not rip us further apart.”

He added, ”It’s unconscionable that any rabbi worth their name would question the Jewishness of those worshipping on Shabbat in a synagogue shattered by murder and the blood of Jews.”

The issue of Jewish religious pluralism in Israel has driven a wedge between Israel and the Diaspora. Earlier this month, those strains were a theme of the General Assembly, a meeting in Tel Aviv of leaders of North American Jewish federations. Among the recent flash points: Last year, in addition to scrapping a compromise that would have expanded nonOrthodox prayer at the Western Wall, the government moved to give the Chief Rabbinate more power over Jewish conversion. This year, Israeli police detained a Conservative rabbi for performing a non-Orthodox wedding.

See Pluralism on page 11

ASK ABOUT OUR BAT MITZVAH PACKAGES.

1001318

Continued from page 3 the victims and stop the perpetrator. In the days ahead, we all must come together to combat this epidemic of hate. From the left, the right, and all other corners of our political spectrum, we must come together to find a better path forward.”

Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said it was clear that congregants at the Tree of Life synagogue were targeted because they were Jews. She said her organization “condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the elevated anti-Semitic, hateful, and divisive rhetoric in our country that has emboldened anti-Semites, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and those who sympathize with these movements.”

In Israel, emergency and resilience teams left for Pittsburgh to provide psychological assistance and community rehabilitation.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a videotaped statement said that he was “heartbroken and appalled.”

“The entire people of Israel grieve with the families of the dead. We stand together with the Jewish community of Pittsburgh,” he said.

“We stand together with the American people in the face of this horrendous anti-Semitic brutality. And we all pray for the speedy recovery of the wounded.

President Reuven Rivlin said in a statement

Men and women are welcome.

Separate seating in the Main Shul

Pluralism…

Continued from page 10 Opposition leader Avi Gabbay, in an interview with Ynet, this week also called on the government “to embrace the Reform and Conservative movements and to pass the Western Wall plan” for an egalitarian prayer space.

Yair Lapid, leader of the opposition party Yesh Atid, echoed Gabbay and Oren in calling for recognition of the liberal streams of Judaism.

“If you are murdered because you are a Jew, then you are a Jew,” he said in a statement on Facebook. “The Conservative and Reform are our brothers. They are our family.”

Lapid also referred to Bennett’s condolence visit to Pittsburgh. “[T]he relationship with the majority of U.S. Jews cannot be based on condolences and grief,” Lapid said. “We cannot bring back the dead, but we have a duty to fix our relationship with the living.”

Gabbay, however, also touched a third rail of Israel-Diaspora relations when, reacting to the synagogue shooting, he called “upon the Jews of the United States to immigrate more and more to Israel because this is their home.”

Many Jews in the Diaspora bristle when Israeli leaders suggest that they would be safer or happier in Israel.

Oren responded to the call for immigration, tweeting in Hebrew: “Avi Gabbay said things that should not be said because he simply does not understand. Through his words he adds insult to injury. The call to U.S. Jewry, especially after last night, deeply hurts their feelings and reduces their desire for aliyah. Gabbay does not understand anything about Israel’s rela990909 tionship with the Diaspora.”

Kristallnacht 8 0

HaRav Yaakov Feitman Morah D’Asra Kehillas Bais Yehudah Tzvi

Alan Jay Gerber Judith Greenberger Event Co-Chairs

In tribute and memory of: Rabbi Binyomin Kamenetzky Andrew Parise Joseph Ash Cecilie Klein

T H

C O M M E M O R A T I V E

Wednesday, November 7, 2018 | 8:00pm Kehillas Bais Yehudah Tzvi 391 Oakland Avenue (Corner, West Broadway), Cedarhurst A TORAH PERSPECTIVE ON KRISTALLNACHT

Harav Yaakov Feitman, Morah D’Asra GUEST SPEAKER

Theodore Roosevelt IV

Commercial & Residential Licensed & Insured

855-I-KNOW-A-GUY www.iknowaguyinc.com 461 Central Ave Cedarhurst NY 11516 Lic #H04398900 • NYC Track #GC611686

11

Program will be followed by Maariv Kehillas Bais Yehudah Tzvi 391 Oakland Avenue, Cedarhurst NY 11516

999325

990909

Who will discuss the role of his grandfather Theodore Roosevelt Jr’s struggle with the America First Committee and its leader Charles Lindbergh

THE JEWISH STAR November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778

Broken…

11

that “We are thinking of our brothers and sisters, the whole house of Israel, in this time of trouble, as we say in the morning prayers. We are thinking of the families of those who were murdered and praying for the quick recovery of those who were injured. I am sure that the law enforcement agencies and the legal authorities in the U.S. will investigate this horrific event thoroughly and that justice will be served on the despicable murderer.”

Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who is also the Diaspora minister, left for Pittsburgh on Saturday night in Israel shortly after news of the shooting. He met with the local Jewish community and planned to participate in the funerals of those killed in the attack.

“When Jews are murdered in Pittsburgh, the people of Israel feel pain,” Bennett said.

“All Israel are responsible for one another.”

“Jewish blood is not free. I am going to offer strength to the community and its leaders, and to examine how we can offer assistance.”

Riding ‘fast’ train from Jerusalem to ‘Tel Aviv’

By Ben Sales, JTA JERUSALEM — As our train hurtled through the tunnel — my ears popping on the descent — and then burst into sunlight that was bathing fields and rocky hills, I finally let myself feel impressed.

Along with the entire population of central Israel, I’ve spent years anticipating the highspeed train from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which became (mostly) operational in September. When it’s fully online, the trip between cities is supposed to take 28 minutes.

That would be a game-changer. Four years living as a foreign correspondent in Tel Aviv meant that I would often find myself busing to Israel’s capital once or twice a week to cover all matters political and religious.

For someone without a car, this meant taking a bus to the nasty Tel Aviv bus station, rushing up the stairs, bounding into the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem bus, sitting in traffic in a cramped seat, then exiting into the much-less-nasty Jerusalem bus station.

The 38-mile trip took at least an hour-and-a-half. It sometimes felt like friends in Jerusalem might as well have lived in New York.

Now, at long last, there is high-speed rail to Israel’s capital — except it doesn’t leave from, or arrive in, Tel Aviv. Because the tracks to Tel Aviv are not yet electrified, the fast train runs only as far as Ben Gurion Airport, where commuters to and from Tel Aviv transfer to regular-speed rail. So for now, the trip takes around an hour — about the same average time as the intercity bus. In other words, there’s a fast train from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv — except it isn’t fast and doesn’t go to Tel Aviv.

Still, I wanted to take it. So on Sunday morning, the beginning of Israel’s workweek, I rushed to Tel Aviv’s Savidor Central Train Station and hopped onto a normal train to the airport. The high-speed Jerusalem line is right across the platform, but all passengers need to walk through a makeshift metal barricade, where a train attendant checked our tickets one by one.

Once I made it through that gauntlet, the Jerusalem train felt eerily comfortable for rush hour. I was one of the few people on the upper deck, which meant I had an entire quartet of seats to myself and free use of the accompanying table and outlets.

(In contrast, as I write this, I am sitting on a weekday local train weaving its way through the Negev Desert en route to Tel Aviv. My quartet of seats is filled by a soldier, a woman who ap-

First person

A view of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem fast train seen over the Haarazim valley just outside of Jerusalem, on Sept. 25.

Yossi Zamir/Flash90

To get to Jerusalem’s street level from the train, which is 260 feet below ground, it takes a few minutes of riding up three massive escalators and a couple of smaller ones.

Aharon Krohn/Flash90

pears to be his mother, and her backpack. He’s trying to go to sleep, but keeps waking up to complain about having left an electronic device at home. I don’t dare ask to use the table or outlets.)

The train may have been empty because a week earlier, it had spent more than an hour stuck in a tunnel between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. To rescue that train, the railway hauled in a diesel engine.

Skeptical passengers may have been unwilling to take the risk.

That’s not to mention the time it took to get the train running in the first place. Planning began in 2001, with a projected launch date of 2008 and a budget of about $1 billion. The train started

running last month, a decade late and nearly $900 million over budget. It still doesn’t go to Tel Aviv.

On Sunday, thankfully, the train ride was tranquil. While in transit in Israel, I’m usually on my phone or computer. This time, I let myself enjoy the view through bulletproof windows.

We left the Tel Aviv area, traversing the lush green pastoral fields that separate Israel’s two largest cities. Then we entered the first in a series of five tunnels, interspersed with bridges, that offered striking contrasts: The tunnels enveloped the train in pitch black, followed by a sudden rush of color as we soared across the panorama of Israel’s rocky hills. As we neared Jerusalem, I looked out smugly on the cars and buses crawling up the road to the capital. I could feel the train approaching 100 miles per hour, speeding us toward a 3,000-year-old city.

The Mishnah says, “All ascend to Jerusalem.” But when the train enters the city, it’s 260 feet below ground. To get from the Jerusalem train platform to the city takes another few minutes of escalators — 4 minutes and 20 seconds, to be exact. There are elevators on the other side, but that seemed less fun.

Like the train, the sparkling new station was oddly empty.

The cavernous corridors are built to hold droves of commuters.

Instead, on a weekday morning, they smelled of rubbery and plasticky newness, and felt sterile and lonely.

Maybe that’s because, as a recent study showed, only a handful of people actually commute between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The Taub Center for Social Policy Studies found that as of 2016, only 4 percent of Jerusalemites, and an even smaller number of Tel Aviv residents, traveled more than 24 miles outside their city for work.

And that could mean anywhere in Israel, not just the other big city.

After a final escalator ride, I found myself surrounded by Jerusalem stone and the din of automobiles, people and putative prophets. A wide circle cut out of stone above a courtyard in the train station opens up to the sky, as if to suggest infinite possibilities — or endless waiting for unanswered prayers.

From there it was on to haggling with cabbies, sitting in traffic and waiting in a security line — in other words, life as a foreign correspondent in Jerusalem.

Two days later I got one more chance to ride the train, again from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. I hoped to again look out the windows, compare my notes, try to notice things I’d missed before.

Instead, I sat down, pulled out my computer and got to work. I had a deadline to meet. I, unlike my train, would not be late.

WE PAY

TOP DOLLAR

FOR

REBATES STARTING AT

Modern Furniture • Modern Art Paintings • Bronzes • Silver • Chinese Art Old Costume Jewelry • Men’s & Women’s Watches

100

on qualifying purchases*

ASK FOR DETAILS

& any other kind of antiques

SEPTEMBER 22– DECEMBER 10, 2018

WE SPECIALIZE IN BUYING WHOLE ESTATES

ANS Antiques

516-441-2070

Vignette® Modern Roman Shades

Soho Blinds SHADES • BLINDS • CURTAINS • DR APES

581 Willow Avenue, Cedarhurst 516.341.7600 • www.sohoblinds.com

Visit us on www.ansantiques.com

ShOmeR ShAbbOS

985311

$

1001317

November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

12

13 THE JEWISH STAR November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778

RE-ELECT JUDGE ANDREW M. ENGEL DISTRICT COURT JUDGE District Court Judge 2007 – 2018 Lecturer for NYS Judicial Institute Presides over more than 1,000 DWI cases in Nassau County Trial and Appellate Attorney for over 25 years President, District Court Judges’ Association 2011-2012 Dean, Nassau Academy of Law 2010-2011 Member Jewish Lawyers Association Member Nassau County Bar Association Found “Well Qualified” (highest rating) by Nassau County Bar Association

INTEGRITY EXPERIENCE COMMITTMENT VOTE - November 6, 2018 6 a.m. – 9 p.m.

Paid by Hon. Andrew M. Engel Campaign Committee 2018

999155

        

November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

14

The JEWISH STAR

Wine & Dine

Viva Italia! Meatballs for chilly fall weather Kosher Kitchen

JonI SchockeTT

Jewish Star columnist

T

he minute the weather turned permanently colder, with no chance of more warm, short-sleeve days, my mother would make a huge pot of spaghetti sauce with what seemed like hundreds of meatballs. I would come home from school, my knees chilly between my knee socks and my dress — I hated walking home in the cold, in those days before school buses, when everyone walked to their neighborhood schools.

I would enter the house in a really bad mood, until I got a whiff of the wonderful sauce simmering on the stove. Suddenly, my irritation would vanish because I knew that we would be having one of my favorite dinners: spaghetti and meatballs..

My mother’s sauce would probably not win any gourmet cooking contests and would probably be snubbed by true Italians, but we loved it. My dad would get silly and teach us how to slurp long strands of spaghetti, then give a quarter to the one of us who slurped the loudest. I rarely won, but it was fun anyways.

My mother’s sauce cooked for hours. She cooked the meatballs directly in the sauce. They would get soft and delicious as they picked up the tomato-y sauce flavors. My mother never added any red pepper flakes or other “heat” to the sauce — she did not like spicy foods — but my dad would grab red pepper flakes and jarred hot peppers and mix both into his plate. I loved the gentle hint of garlic and the mushrooms and onions. I did pick out the green peppers, though. Maybe a precursor to my eventual allergy to them.

By the time my kids were old enough for me to make this for them, they already loved spicy foods. My daughter, at two, once demanded a bagel with mustard! But my kids always liked spicy foods, so I added lots of garlic and some red pepper flakes. Even my mom finally decided that she loved it that way!

So this week, when the temperature hit 30 degrees at night and I saw frost on my window, I decided to make a batch of spaghetti and meatballs. My kids called as if they had radar.

Had I made enough for them?

Fall is the perfect time for some pasta and sauce, and whether you make it with meatballs or keep it vegetarian, it is a perfect meal for those suddenly colder autumn nights when the kids are still playing soccer after school and come into the house needing a good, hot meal.

This meal is bound to make them smile, just as it did for me those cold days long ago.

All Day Sauce (Pareve) You don’t have to cook this all day (a few hours will do), but it helps the flavors come together and bloom into deliciousness.

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil 2 large onions, diced 2 to 3 Tbsp. finely minced garlic 1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes 1 to 2 tsp. Italian seasoning OR 1 tsp. each dried oregano and basil OPTIONAL: 2 green peppers, seeded, white pith removed, diced OPTIONAL: 10 oz. white mushrooms, cleaned and sliced Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste 4 large (28 oz.) cans crushed tomatoes 2 large (28 oz.) cans diced tomatoes 1 large (11 oz.) can tomato paste Heat a large soup pot and add the olive oil.

Add the onions and cook until light golden. Add

the garlic, red pepper flakes and Italian seasoning, and mix until fragrant. Add the peppers and cook until softened, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook until they reabsorb most of the liquid, about 7 to 10 minutes.

Add the canned tomato products, except the tomato paste and mix well. Cover and simmer, stirring often, for 20 minutes. Add the tomato paste and whisk to blend. When completely incorporated, bring to a simmer and add the meatballs, if using. Partially cover and simmer for several hours, skimming off any fat that rises to the top and then mixing well. Add salt, pepper, and adjust seasonings of red pepper flakes and Italian seasoning during the last half hour of cooking.

Makes several quarts. Freezes well.

My Mother’s Jewish Italian Meatballs (Meat) She called them Jewish Italian because they had no dairy, while her Italian neighbor made meatballs with milk-soaked bread and cheese!

The name stuck.

3 lbs. hamburger 3 eggs 2 to 3 large onions, finely chopped Several cloves garlic, finely minced (I use about 1 to 2 heaping Tbsp.)

1 tsp. oregano, to taste 1 cup, more or less, breadcrumbs Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste Mix all the ingredients together and let sit for 10 to 15 minutes in the refrigerator to firm up.

Form into meatballs about 1-1/2 inches in diameter. Drop into the tomato sauce, and every so often gently push down using a large spoon or ladle. When all the meatballs are added, partially cover and simmer, mixing gently after about 20 minutes and then frequently after that for several hours. Skim off any fat that rises to the top.

NOTE: If you like, you can make larger meatballs and roast them first before adding them to the sauce.

Vegetarian Meatballs (Pareve) 3 cups very small cauliflower florets 3 cups cooked brown rice 1 large onion, finely diced 1 Tbsp. finely minced garlic, more or less to taste 1-2 tsp. Italian spices or spices of your choice Herbs to taste, such as oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary 4 extra-large eggs 3/4 cup oat flour, chickpea flour, or unbleached white flour Salt and black pepper to taste Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the cauliflower. Cook until softened, but not mushy.

Drain well and place in a food processor. Add the cooked rice and process until smooth. Set aside.

Heat a skillet and add the olive oil. Add the

onion and cook until translucent. Add the garlic and cook until golden, 5 to 9 minutes.

When evenly browned, add the herbs you like and cook another 1 to 2 minutes. Add to the rice mixture and pulse to blend.

Add the eggs and blend.

Add the oats or chickpea flour or flour and pulse to blend.

Season with salt and pepper to taste. Let sit for 5 minutes to thicken. Scrape into a bowl and make balls about an inch in diameter.

Add olive oil to the skillet and cook the meatballs until evenly golden on all sides.

Serve with sauce and paste or as a “meatball” sub. Makes about 40 veggie balls.

Turkey Meatballs (Meat) These are great with tomato sauce, or with a teriyaki sauce and rice for an Asian dish.

1 lb. ground turkey, white and dark meat 1 generous Tbsp. finely minced garlic 1/2 tsp. sage 1 onion, finely minced 1/2 tsp. salt, to taste 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper, to taste 1 extra-large egg 1 large potato baked or boiled and cooled,

well-mashed 1/2 cup breadcrumbs Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl and let sit for 5 minutes to thicken.

Roll into balls an inch in diameter. Heat a large skillet and add the diced onion. Cook until translucent. Add the turkey balls and cook until golden on all sides. Serve with the onions and the pasta sauce. Makes about 30 turkey balls.

THE JEWISH STAR November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778

992339

15

November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

16

The JEWISH STAR

Wine & Dine

Learning of, and eating, exotic Torah animals

By Elizabeth Kratz, JNS It has always been important for Jews to write recipes and serve our grandmothers’ precious treats to our own children. Jewish foods are part of our mesorah, our historic oral tradition.

But how do we know what breeds are considered kosher, and how do we know the steps to slaughtering them? It’s not all written down in our holy books, as the laws of shechita, like the Talmud, are passed down by people. There must be an unbroken line from one shochet (ritual slaughterer) to the next, one generation to another. Otherwise, the mesorah is lost.

Rabbi Dr. Natan Slifkin, an Israel-based rabbi/zoologist and author, popularly known as “the Zoo Rabbi,” is the creator of the fouryear-old Biblical Museum of Natural History in Beit Shemesh that celebrates and displays animals mentioned in the Bible. (Slifkin is also well-known as a blogger focusing on rationalism and creation.

Some of his books have been banned by haredi communities.) The museum is now a part of Israel’s cultural landscape, part zoo, part natural history museum and part educational center. Slifkin is committed to showing that Judaism is a living religion, as vibrant today as it was in the days of Abraham and Sarah.

While it may not be one of his primary motivations, Slifkin’s high-priced “exotic animal dinners,” with three rotating menus (biblical, non-biblical and legends from the sea), have generated quite a bit of interest in his museum.

Curiosity abounds. Many people are interested, for a wide array of reasons, in keeping alive the mesorah for more exotic kosher animals. Some of these were eaten at the “Biblical Feast of Birds and Beasts” in Teaneck, on Oct. 21, by 70 enthusiastic diners who paid as much as $500 a plate. “Biblical food is a totally new aspect of Jewish identity,” said Slifkin.

Rabbi Daniel Senter, the rabbinic administrator for the KofK kosher supervisory agency, personally supervised the meal, which was prepared by W Kosher Catering, based in the Five Towns. He said that his role had involved sourcing exotic animals and noted that everything served at the meal, however unusual, had an unbroken history.

Those who came expecting to eat giraffe or locusts, however, would leave disappointed. But isn’t there an issue about where on the neck to shecht the giraffe? “That’s a myth,” Slifkin told the group. “Giraffe is kosher. We don’t eat them because they’re an endangered species.”

Max Schachter, 11, who came with his father and older brother, picked up a tiny bird in his hands, like many of the diners, and left just a pile of featherweight bones on his plate. Another diner confided that he had eaten the bones and found them delicious.

“These quails have lived better lives than any chicken you’ve ever eaten,” Slifkin told me. “Chickens are basically bred to be so large they can’t even support their own weight.”

Next up was the savory and delicate “dove” soup.

“Rabbi Slifkin said he would tell us a little more about the soup after we ate it,” said Elan Kornblum, a longtime kosher-restaurant magazine editor and creator of Great Kosher Restaurant Foodies, a Facebook page with more than 48,000 followers. “He then let us on to a secret that what we ate wasn’t exactly dove but pigeon, which he said was essentially the same bird and easier to get. It had the consistency of liver, but tasted a little like duck.

It was interesting.”

The main course included goat ragout with a fresh Rabbi Natan Slifkin, left, welcomes guests to his New Jersey biblical feast, with tagliatelle-style pasta with red sauce. This was the gamihosts Hayley and Jeff Mark. est meat of the night. Some at the table said they understood why it was served most often with stronglyThe foods served were not so much endangered as out of fashion, or economically unviable. So rarely, Slifkin explained, was veni- flavored jerk seasoning in Jamaican and other ethnic dishes. The son suitable for kosher shechita (they have to be captured, not shot), tomato sauce was somewhat effective, but did allow the distinctive that there was only one such supplier available. At one point, the flavor to come through.

The goat was served alongside a delicate venison, prepared and supplier decided not to sell his deer, though he relented after he was offered an extra $100 per animal. Some of the goats Slifkin was go- served like medium-rare steak. For many, it was the best bite of the ing to serve ended up coughing, and on inspection, were discovered night. “It was a very classy dinner, where everyone enjoyed learning about the animals, the biblical history and more about the museum, to have unclean lungs, so he had to find others.

He also said that he wanted to serve locusts, as he had at a prior which is trying to raise funds to open in a new, bigger location,” dinner in Beit Shemesh, but they’re not certified kosher according said Kornblum.

To continue raising funds for the museum — and to continue his to the Kof-K. Instead, he replaced them with molded “chocolate lomission of Biblical food education — Slifkin will host another dincusts” on the dessert plates.

After an appetizer of matzah with za’atar (biblical hyssop) and ner in March, in Los Angeles.

“The building has many limitations, especially with regard to focaccia studded with olives, Slifkin explained that matzah in the Bible was not the hard cracker American Jews are used to, but soft capacity,” said Slifkin of the museum, noting that during school and similar to pita. The hors d’oeuvres included a roasted slice of holidays, it often turns away customers due to space constraints. “In goose with a citrus glaze and a whole grilled quail, paired with a 2019, we are moving to a new, beautiful and vastly larger home. … subtle pomegranate sauce. Slifkin introduced the group to a live, We will display more and superior exhibits, and there will also be classrooms and opportunities for a variety of additional programs.” beautifully feathered quail, as he introduced the course.

Kreplach soup to latkes, Jewish and Japanese

By Josefin Dolsten, JTA Kristin Eriko Posner recalls feeling torn right before she finalized her conversion to Judaism.

Though she felt an affinity to the religion from a young age and was eager to embrace the faith of her now husband, she worried that converting would negate another important part of her identity.

“I got really scared that if I became Jewish, it would overshadow the Japanese parts of myself, and I felt a lot of guilt about that,” recalled the San Francisco-based home cook, whose mother was born in Japan and father is the descendant of immigrants from there.

But her rabbi encouraged her to continue to explore her Japanese roots and, in the end, becoming Jewish did just the opposite of what she had feared: The journey inspired Posner to create a lifestyle brand that serves as a resource for others who share her background.

“I feel like becoming Jewish has enriched my Japanese life,” Posner, 33, told JTA in a phone interview earlier this month.

Last year, she founded Nourish, a web-based community and lifestyle brand that celebrates Jewish and Japanese culture as well as fusions of other cultures. The site is home to a collection of recipes — all created by Posner — that meld Jewish and Japanese cuisines. Among the dishes, many of which are tied to Jewish holiday celebrations, are gyoza kreplach soup, mochi latkes and fish cakes that are inspired both by gefilte fish and a similar Japanese patty.

Nourish has other components as well, including an online newsletter and Facebook group. Posner is also planning to sell ritual and household items made by Israeli and Japanese artisans through the site.

Kristin Eriko Posner serves this gyoza kreplach soup for Sukkot.

Posner’s mother immigrated from Japan, and her father is a third-generation JapaneseAmerican. During her childhood in Los Angeles, Posner remembers growing up with Japanese culture and visiting the country every few summers. But as she grew older, she resented feeling different from her classmates and felt embarrassed by the traditional Japanese food her mom would pack in her lunch box.

“I would beg her to make me sandwiches like the other kids, and I was just really painfully uncomfortable in my own skin and turned away from my heritage for a while,” Posner said.

But after graduating from college and working for a few years in public relations, Posner felt she didn’t know enough about her Japanese background. So she spent two years teaching

English in Nichinan, a city in the south of Japan, before returning to California. While studying and later working in interior design, Posner met her now-husband, Bryan, a secular Jew. As she got to know him, she sought to learn more about Judaism, a religion she had felt connected to ever since attending Hanukkah parties at a neighbor’s house as a child.

“I was super curious about his family and their traditions, and I had to dig a little bit because they didn’t do some of them anymore,” she said.

As their relationship became serious, Posner realized that much of the responsibility of building a Jewish home would rest on her.

“I knew I would be the person who would really need to learn about his family’s heritage

and traditions, and kind of be the person who does them for our family and for our future children,” she said.

In 2015, she became a Jew by choice, and the couple married the following year.

Posner found that food served as one way for her to connect to both Jewish and Japanese traditions. She now incorporates Japanese influences into her observance of Jewish holidays, such as at a Passover Seder dinner last year when she served matzah ball soup with Japanese chicken meatballs, brisket with Japanese barbecue sauce and cherry blossom malabi.

The couple belong to Congregation Emanu-El, a Reform synagogue in San Francisco.

Though Posner says the community is “very welcoming,” she sometimes feels self-conscious as one of the few people of color.

“There’s definitely this slight insecurity about that and wanting to make sure that I do things correctly, or being afraid that I stand out and people are watching, so if I mess up it’s really obvious,” she said.

That feeling has motivated Posner to continue engaging in Jewish learning, including by becoming a bat mitzvah this spring. She calls the experience “awesome.”

Posner hopes that with Nourish she can provide a home for others who may share similar insecurities or feel pulled between cultures.

Though most of the recipes on the site fuse Jewish and Japanese culture, she has received messages from couples in which the partners are navigating various cultural backgrounds.

“I’m really just doing what I do best, which is Japanese and Jewish,” she said, “but if I can inspire other people, then that’s amazing.”

17

(

Free Parking

much

Over 150 Spaces!

Y DA R E V E S T C U NEW PROD

THE JEWISH STAR November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778

ng in all of i c i r p y a d y r Best eve ong Island!

L & s n e e u Q Brooklyn, Y!

More for Less

TM

Prices Good Sunday, November 4th through Friday, November 9th, 2018

Dagim Solid White Tuna in Water

5

3/$

6 oz

Bloom’s ABC, Aleph Bais, Chocolate Chip or Animal Cookies

1

$ 69 10 oz/12 oz Richfield Gardens Soup All Flavors

3

$ 49 32 oz Price Rite Cream Cheese

1

$ 29 8 oz Brick

Bodek Broccoli Florets or Cuts

4

$ 99 32 oz

Ground Beef

4

$ 19 LB

Blueberries Pint

5

2/$

Avenue A 4 lb Sugar or 5 lb Flour

Malt O Meal Cereals Assorted

1

1

$ 79 10.5 oz-14 oz

Dixie Paper Plates

Lieber’s Rice Cake or Corn Cake Thins

$ 89

48 Pack 8.5” 26 Pack 10”

Assorted

$ 49

79¢

Mehadrin Leben

Farms Creamery Whipped Cream Cheese

2

12 Pack

2.9 oz/3.1 oz

1

8

$ 99

$ 49 8 oz Cup

Dole Mango Chunks or Blueberries

Haddar Soft Pretzels Except Nuggets

1

$ 29 16 oz/12 oz

$ 99 6 oz

Sesame Chicken

Flounder Fillets

3

1099

$

LB

1295

$

Boneless Rib Eye Steak

Chicken Cutlets

$ 49 LB

$ 89 LB

8

Macintosh Apples

79¢

LB

LB

Untrimmed

3

California Pomegranates

4/$

5

Savings Plaza | 11 Lawrence Lane, Lawrence, NY | (516) 371-6200 | info@kolsavemarket.com | /kolsavemarket Hours: Sunday-Tuesday: 9am-7pm | Wednesday: 9am-10pm | Thursday: 9am-11pm | Friday: 8am-till 2 hours before Shabbos We reserve the right to limit quantities. No rain checks. Not responsible for typographical errors.

992361

Keilim Mikveh on Premises | Pre-Shabbos Buffet Every Thursday & Friday!

The trials of Spirit Air Who’s in the Kitchen

JudY JoSzeF

Jewish Star columnist

T

wo weeks ago, Jerry’s daughter Jordana (yes, we each have a daughter named Jordana) gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Adel Mattel Sara (Mattel was Jerry’s mom’s name). When the baby was named on Shabbat, it was a good thing that his dad paid careful attention, because the baby was almost named Udel instead of Adel.

This sort of thing runs in Jerry’s family. When one of his daughters was born, she was supposed to be named Elana. The rabbi kept pronouncing the name Ilona. It took Jerry over five minutes to convince the rabbi that Elana was indeed a name and that it meant “tree” in Hebrew. When it was time to name his other daughter, the rabbi looked to him for the name, and Jerry froze. He had forgotten which of the two names they had decided on. It was a good thing that his friend, who was also there to name a baby, remembered what had been chosen and saved the day.

As you might know from previous articles, each time a new grandchild is born in Israel, Jerry plans a trip. Latest Israel grandchild count is eight: six grandsons and two granddaughters. He also has a grandson in the U.S. as well, bringing the total to nine … with one more on the way! As that baby was due almost two weeks ago, by the time you read this, there will G-d willing be an even 10 ka”h.

Jerry’s daughter-in-law is next to deliver. Since Jordana had a girl, he decided to wait until his daughter-in-law gave birth. There was no bris to rush to; he could wait and make one visit.

As exciting as it is for everyone in Israel to have him, it’s even more fun for them to open all the goodies he brings. The Amazon ordering starts about a month in advance: they order, and

he shleps! Me? My job is to unbox, unwrap and pack as much as I can into each suitcase. Sometimes that proves difficult when things are large, bulky or fragile. Usually, one last box arrives just as I figure out how to get everything in without an inch of extra space.

Then there’s the shopping for the best flight.

You would think that with less than a week to purchase one, he wouldn’t get the best deal, but leave it to Jerry. True, he sometimes has two stopovers in Transylvania, Turkey, and a bunch of other places I wouldn’t want to step foot in, but to him it’s an adventure. I am at home, holding my breath, until he checks in that he’s made it onto the plane.

There is always a story with him. I think I finally got through to him that the security people who question him before a flight don’t care how old his grandchildren are and what he’s going to do with them in Israel — I try to explain that they are only listening to his responses to see if he’s nervous. They don’t care that his parents were in the Holocaust.

When he’s taking a direct flight, I can relax once I know he’s on the flight. When there is a stopover, I never know what might happen.

Last time he flew with his son Elliot, he got the deal of the century on Spirit Airlines, with only one stopover … which turned into stopovers. The first flight was delayed and arrived late. They got off the plane in Chicago and had to run for a flight to LA. When they got to the gate, the flight had left without waiting for connecting passengers. They were told that there were no more flights to L.A. and that they would have to wait till the next day.

Jerry said this was not acceptable. He needed to get to Los Angeles that day. The only way was to fly to Las Vegas and then take another flight to LA. With no other choice, they boarded the flight.

But when they got to the connecting flight in Las Vegas, they were not allowed to board.

Thoroughly annoyed at this point, Jerry demanded to know why. He explained that it was a

connecting flight and showed his boarding pass.

“Sir,” the steward said, “there is no proof that you were on the other flight. We have a list of everyone who has to connect to this flight, and unfortunately you and your son are not on that list.” Jerry tried in vain to explain that had he not been on that flight, he and his son would not have boarding passes, but it was as if he were in the twilight zone.

With only ten minutes to takeoff, Jerry pleaded with them to contact Chicago for confirmation that he had been on the flight from Chicago to Las Vegas and was scheduled to be on this one. With five minutes to spare, they were allowed to board.

They were also handed vouchers for $250 off their next flights on Spirit Air, but needless to say, those vouchers were left in the airsickness bags. They never wanted to see or hear about Spirit Air again.

They saved about $200 a ticket, but I think it took five times that amount in therapy to get over the ordeal. Let’s hope this coming flight will be smoother. But with Jerry, Elliot, extra suitcases and a stopover … you just know there’s going to be a great article by the time they get back!

And speaking of babies…

Greek Baby Kale Salad with Farro From For the Love of Cooking by Pam Nelson Farro 1/4 cup instant farro, cooked per instructions

Sea salt, to taste Red Wine Vinaigrette: 2 Tbsp. olive oil 1-1/2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar, less if you want it less tangy 1 tsp. Dijon mustard 2 tsp. shallots, finely diced 1 clove of garlic, minced Sea salt and freshly cracked pepper, to taste Salad: 2 cups baby kale 2 cups baby spinach 1/4 cucumber, peeled & diced Handful kalamata olives, halved Few grape tomatoes, halved 1/4 red bell pepper, diced 1 Tbsp. toasted pine nuts Feta cheese, to taste Instructions Cook the farro per instructions in salted boiling water. Drain and set aside to cool completely.

Make the red wine vinaigrette by combining the olive oil, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, shallot, garlic, sugar, sea salt, and freshly cracked pepper together in a bowl; whisk until well combined. Set aside.

Make the salad by combining the baby kale, baby spinach, cucumbers, kalamata olives, tomatoes, bell pepper, toasted pine nuts, and 1/4 cup (more or less to taste) cooled farro together in a large bowl. Drizzle with the whisked vinaigrette, to taste. Toss to coat evenly.

Place into serving bowls then top with feta crumbles and extra freshly cracked black pepper, to taste. Serve immediately and enjoy.

Celebrating 30 years of service to our community

Draperies • Valances Wood Blinds • Roman Shades Roller Shades • Zebra Shades Since 1988 Lenny Koegel • Daniel Simon

516-594-6010

DistinctiveWindowFashions.com 992047

November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

18

Save on Select operating SyStemS • Free meaSuring + inStallation • Hunter DouglaS liFetime guarantee

19 THE JEWISH STAR November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778

South Nassau Earns National Recognition (Again) for Nursing Excellence!

Once again, South Nassau’s team of nurses has received Magnet Recognition from the American Nurses Credentialing Center, the highest award possible for nursing care.

Magnet hospitals enjoy higher patient satisfaction scores, higher job satisfaction among nurses, lower staff turnover and better patient outcomes.

South Nassau is one of only 26 hospitals in New York State to be so honored.

Thank you to all our nurses!

997767

For more information call 877-SOUTH-NASSAU or visit southnassau.org

The JEWISH STAR

School News

Send news and hi-res photos to Schools@TheJewishStar.com • Deadline Monday Noon • Questions? Call Editor Ed at 718-908-5555

Shabbos at HANC Students at the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County Elementary School in West Hempstead participated in the Shabbat Project, learning about the halachot, customs and traditions of Shabbat. The week culminated in an evening Shabbat Fair where students and parents created gift boxes for Chai Lifeline, decorated Shabbat candles, made b’samim kits, and braided Havdalah candles.

Grandparents and special guests joined kindergarten through second graders for more Shabbat-themed fun and the festive week ended with a cholent cookoff and a zemirot competition that involved students from all grades.

As the students entered the building the morning after the cookoff, there was a true smell of Shabbat in the air.

••• HANC High School students also joined the worldwide Shabbos Project action.

Girls baked and braided challah from scratch, performing the mitzvah of hafrashat challah, separating a special portion of the dough amidst heartful tefillot.

They were inspired by the words of Rebbetzin Estee Soniker of Anshei Shalom of West Hempstead.

After view a touching video prepared by Chesed 24/7, the boys packed 300 “Shabbos in a Box” packages to be delivered to Jewish partients in hospitals around New York. The also enjoyed a tisch, complete with great food (including cholent in abundance) and live music.

Finally, many students were hosted by their rabbeim and morot for Shabbos. —By Courtney Isler

999374

November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

20

bat Shalom” in sign language. First grade students went on a scavenger hunt at Congregation Beth Sholom, learning about the items found in a Beit HaKinneset. In the upper grades students learned new zmerot and read a variety of Shabbat books in Hebrew and English. Fifth grade talmidim made cholent with their rebbe, Rabbi Elisha Weiss.

On Thursday, the PTA sponsored a Shabbat lunch that included shnitzel, kugel and cholent.

Rabbi Feigenbaum led an Oneg Shabbat, connecting the parsha to the bake. Students learned the chemical reaction of yeast which causes the challah to rise and wondered how Avrahom and Sarah were able to bake challah in the absence of yeast.

1001316

All of HAFTR’s divisions — from early childhood through high school — joined the community’s Shabbos Project on Oct. 25 with a giant challah bake. Students rolled up their sleeves, put on gloves, rolled out the dough and shaped their own challahs.

PTA co-presidents, Shanna Schein and Candice Feiler, orchestrated countless volunteers and coordinated the distribution of ingredients. Thursday evening, 250 families participated in the Lower School challah bake.

Throughout the week, teachers incorporated lessons in a variety of curricular areas that built up to the Shabbat Project. Kindergartners created a family birchon holder which they were eager to use on Shabbat.

They also learned how to say “Shab-

THE JEWISH STAR November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778

Shabbos Project brings challah bake to HAFTR

21

P’stinian schoolbooks still picture Israel end Commercial & Residential • Licensed & Insured

www.iknowaguyinc.com 461 Central Ave Cedarhurst NY 11516 Lic #H04398900 • NYC Track #GC611686

11

990877

855-I-KNOW-A-GUY

5 Towns Computer Services • Virus and Spyware • Consulting from Purchase to Setup Removal • Computer Repair and Tuneup

• PC, Mac and all Smartphone Training

We Make Housecalls

718-490-0192

5TownsComputerServices.com Expert Personal Care

990930

By Ariel Ben Solomon, JNS A new study found that the Palestinians still support terror and destroying Israel, and funnel misinformation to their children.

A four-year study by the Israel-based Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center found that in 364 Palestinian Authority schoolbooks for grades 1 through 12, children are still taught that peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not an option.

Col. (res.) Dr. Shaul Shay, former deputy head of the National Security Council of Israel, now director of research at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, told JNS that he was not surprised.

“One of the major problems with our relations with the Palestinians is that our expectation was that the Palestinians really wanted to put an end to the conflict, and not just go through a political process between the two parties,” he said. “Unfortunately, it didn’t happen, and I don’t see it happening in the near future.

“The Palestinian media and textbooks all push the same consistent message because there is an expectation that this is what the Palestinian street wants,” he explained.

One reference, in an eleventh-grade history book mentions the “1972 Munich operation,” where 11 Israeli Olympic athletes were murdered: “Those who carry out such actions are called ‘self-sacrificing ones’ and those among liberation struggle is liberating the Muslim holy place of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem from the Jews’ sway.”

The struggle is not limited to the West Bank and Gaza, but includes the entire area from the Jordanian River to the Mediterranean Sea, continued the report. “Israel’s very name is replaced

in the text in the vast majority of cases by ‘the Zionist Occupation’ or ‘the Zionist Entity,’ which should be extirpated from the Middle East” (History Studies, Grade 12).

Ido Zelkovitz, head of Middle East Studies at Yezreel Valley College, says that incitement in Palestinian media continues regardless of the U.S. administration’s decision to cut funding to UNWRA, the U.N. agency charged with Palestinian relief. He explained that Trump cannot dictate to Palestinians what their children study.

“If the Palestinians are going to change their state of mind, it must be their own decision, and I don’t see that happening in the short- or long-run,” he said. He dismissed the chance of financial pressure changing Palestinian attitudes, noting that they will simply turn elsewhere for funds. “It would take at least 40 years to change Palestinian attitudes, and to do this, the education curriculum must be altered.”

The European Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee will vote on whether to freeze more than 15 million euros ($17 million) in aid to pay for school textbooks for the Palestinian Authority unless it removes incitement against Israel.

Zelkovitz does think that Trump’s strategy of allying with Sunni Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt to pressure Palestinian leadership could produce results.

Pressed on the viability of the two-state solution and the talk of alternatives, he said, “I don’t deny that the Palestinians, if they could, would push for a one Palestinian state solution without Israel.”

Still, he thinks the Palestinians may eventually be able to create a narrative of peace because without it, “they will never achieve their main goal of establishing a Palestinian state.”

healthy teeth & Gums From A Knowledgeable, Caring Dentist With Exceptional Skills And A Gentle touch • Friendly Doctor & Staff who listen to your concerns and clearly explain your treatment options • For your convenience, same day treatment available • Efficient office with highest standards of cleanliness • Same day emergency appointments available • We see children starting at 2 years old

Call For Your Appointment Now!

516-203-4556

0% Financing Available

OPEN SUNDAYS Request Your Appointment Online

Alina Bergan D.D.S. 650 Central Ave., Suite F Cedarhurst, NY 11516 www.alinabergandds.com

New Patient Special!

ADUlt Cleaning,* Exam, and X-rays

Only

$

99

Reg. $200

*In absence of gum disease

ChIlD Cleaning,* Exam, X-rays and Fluoride

Only $

75

*Children up to 12 years old.

Reg. $150

One time Offer with coupon. Exp. 11/30/18.

956384

November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

22

23

The JEWISH

Parsha Chukas

• June 30, 2017

• Five Towns Candlelig

hting 8:11 pm,

Havdalah 9:20

• Luach page

19 • Vol 16, No

TheJewishStar.

24

The Newspap

er of our Orthodox

1000196

com

communities

5 Towns conferenc e with joy to sustai told: Deliver Torah n the next genera tion note remarks that nual Five Towns opened the fourth antive Conference Community Collaboraon Sunday.

“What is the Torah the kids need now?” he asked. “What necessarily work worked in 1972 won’t today.”

Rabbi Weinberg d’asrah of Congregaer, founding morah tion Aish Kodesh Woodmere and in mashpia at YU, the parents and reminded that Torah will educators in attendance not be received if it’s not

passed down according to the middah the time, emphasiz of ingredent needed ing that the primary in today’s chinuch simcha. is Twenty-six speakers, rebbetzins, educators including rabbis, , community ers and lecturers leadsue that challengeeach addressed a key isfamilies and schools frum communi in ties. The event, the Young Israel hosted at of Woodmere, was orgaSee 5 Towns hosts on page 15

STAR

Kessler

By Celia Weintrob Photos by Doni Kessler

While Torah is way for the mesorahforever true, the ideal to be conveyed children — and how an everlastin to our of Torah and g love Yiddishkeit is embedde their beings — d in changes “You’re still talking over time. about what for you in 1972 and insisting thatworked what should work that’s Moshe Weinberg for your kid,” Rabbi er, Shila”a, said in key-

Five Towns candles

6:46 pm, Havdalah

Rabbi Moshe Weinberger, of Kodesh in Woodmere Congregati , delivered keynote on Aish speech.

7:53 • Torah columns

pages 28–29

• Vol 16, No 34

TheJewishStar.

er of our Orthodox

The Newspap

com

communities

odmere as HALB There’s joy in Wo celebrates new home

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

Elul 5777 • 15, 2017 • 24

Photo by Doni

The JEWISH • Sept.

betzin Shani Taragin, Tanach coordinator and mashgicha ruchanit at Midreshet rah V’avodah, “Miriam: Meyaledet, ToMei-

nika, and Morah”; Rabbi Ephraim Congregation Polakoff, Bais Tefilah, “Teens and technology: What you know and what you

don’t”; Rabbi Jesse Horn of Yeshivat kotel, “Helping Hachildren balance and pleasure”; Esther Wein, “Howideology to rec-

Star

By The Jewish joined the Hebrew The Five TownsBeach on Sunday in Long at its new Academy of chanukat habayit Avenue in celebrating a on Church elementary school

Reuven Taragin, e.

Woodmer and director ofhumble beginnings that Yeshivat Hakotel founder Eytan Feiner of the Community a small “From in The Education Conferences, White Shul, “When years ago “Torah tips on had over 50Yitzchak 8 met on page HALB how to build celebrat and maintain ionRivkah: Torah’s a strong marriage”; HALB tion of martial love”; Michal first menSeeRabbi Horowitz, “Ahavas Yisrael: In theory of YI Lawrence- or in pracYaakov Trump director From left: Rabbi Shenker, executive Cedarhurst; MarvinWeitz; Dr. Herbert Pasternak; Mott Dr. Rabbi Aaron YILC; of Lance Hirt; and Theresa Press / HALB Board Chair The Jewish Star Fleksher of HALB.

Super Speci alS This

tice?”; Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum

d’asra, Young , mora Israel of Lawrencedarhurst, “Raising Cesuccessful children”; Rebbetzin Lisa Septimus, yoetzet hala-

cha of the Five Towns and of the Great Neck Synagogue , “Where do come from — addressing grown babies ters with children.” up mat-

et’ is The JEWISH YU prez: ‘Torat emSTAR value

Photos by Doni

919959

week on pages 8-9

e school’s topwscor e formal investitur

BALFOUR Vayera • Friday, November 3, 2017 • 14 Cheshvan 5778 • Luach page

21 • Torah columns pages 20–21 • Vol 16, No 41

TheJewishStar.com

Kessler

Cedarhurst remembers

“Torat Emet y,” the first is shiva Universit Truth.” in to an Star — we believe investiture speech

By The Jewish in of Yeshiva UniversiDelivering his at YU’s Wilf Campus The fifth president on Sunday Berman, said assembly of 2,000 on Heights, with many ty, Rabbi Dr. Ari values that personify Ye, Washingt in by livestream that of the “five more listening spoke of the Rabbi Berman the five central “Five Torot, or institution.” our of , teachings believe in Tor“We do not just Chayyim — Torat at Emet but also and values must that our truths he said. , live in the world,” teachings YU’s other central Adam,” “Torat he said, are “Torat Tziyyon, the Chesed,” and “Toraton.”

Torah of Redempti formal cereFollowing the community parmonies, the YU st” street fair tied at an “InvestFeAvenue.

Amon m Amsterda t” street fair 11 was a along at the “InvestFes See YU on page

F

I

• 1 Sivan,

photos by Ed

STAR h Isrchaaretelr it w in ll a o LIers g on Nefesh B’Nefesh’s 56th

IsraAID brings relief to U.S. disasters

• Vol 16,

By Ron Kampeas, JTA Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, page and 19 WASHINGTON — For 17 years, the then the wildfires inlah 9:15 • Luach pm, Havda northern California.

Israeli NGO IsraAID has been perform- ng 8:07 Polizer recalls that he was wrapping elighti Candl ing search and rescue,Towns purifying water, up a visit to IsraAID’s new American 5777 • Fivemedical assistance headquarters providing Tamuz, emergency in Palo Alto on Oct. 8 and 2017 • 20 and walking victims of trauma back to was on his way to a flight to s • July 14, Mexico to psychological health in dozens of disas- oversee operations after a devastating Parsha Pincha ter-hit countries. earthquake there when he got word of But no season has been busier than the wildfires. “I literally had to do a Uthis past summer and fall, its co-CEO Yo- turn,” he said this week in an interview tam Polizer said in an interview — and at the Israeli embassy in Washington. nowhere more than in the United States.

Polizer spoke with the exhilaration “The last few months have been un- of an executive whose team has come believable,” he said, listing a succession through a daunting challenge.

“We’re of disasters that occupied local staff and the people who stay past the ‘aid festiNiveen Rizkalla working with IsraAID in Santa Rosa, Calif., in volunteers since August: Hurricane Har- val’,” he said, grinning, describing the the wake of deadly wildfires there. vey in Texas, Hurricane Irma in Florida, See IsraAID on page 5

hStar.com TheJewis

No 25

aper of our

The Newsp

Orthodox

communities

im Join 201 ol 927183

in secmom Leah urst. ere (with of Woodm Girls in Cedarh on Feinberg photos School for Elishevah the Shulamith said. More now t at n-year-old there,” she The Jewish Star / Ed Weintrob trip” and out. Thirtee had been a studen l came from year-long home. sh’s magic “on a 30 as olim, to come ond photo) love for Eretz Yisroe Jonay Nefesh B’Nefe s left Israel of my rs who flew the promised land.to fulfill “Part Her parent h her family’s journe r was Long Islande ,” she said. for a aliyah to page 16. enough throug Al’s charte the smiling in” and making he’s waited long d to do this ne will follow ng NBN’s El to Israel s, it’s time, the first flight some of wante “all ng everyo said are friend , she’s going fully, boardi of boardi the move Here said on July 3, ns Hills (left) 1 and was excitement olim, for others page 16 sed land, through family , Sh- “Hope carpet ride ua of Kew Garde teaching on July While the olim on emerged the promi of the and her school from See. 201 carpet to Her love of Israel for many than Yehosh the holy land, — he retired palpable long time. ed visits to the dream wanted

SH

Yerushala yim 26, 2017

The Jewish Star

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

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

The JEWI mar • May

Sets

m

Corbyn boycotts B’four event

SH The JEWI

Arthur James Balfour

SEE PAGE 27

Parsha Bamid

• Etrog & Lulav

o LIsukkah.c

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

prst std Us postage paid garden City, ny 11530 permit no 301

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

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

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

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

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

hit. nt Chief the first plane rst Fire Departme Lawrence-Cedarhu the playing of saluting during victims.

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

YU

Island Jonathan S. Dealer on Long Largest Sukkah toBin

932193

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

Ben Cohen Viewpoint

Weintrob

At declaration’s centennial, a source of joy and derision

To Abbas and Hamas, it was ‘original sin’

• Print edition is welcomed into more than 12,000 households in Orthodox communities in Nassau, Queens, Brooklyn, the Upper West Side, and Riverdale

Star the loss,

By The Jewish to remember Cedarhurst pausedmiracles of 9/11, at the the on Sunday. the heroism, and commemoration Schachter village’s annual n, Rabbi Shay In his invocatio the Young Israel of Woodof the Master and (top right photo) pray that G-d, all the strength mere said, “we world, grant us Creator of the to stand firm together against of and the fortitude of extremism, of bigotry, all forms of terror, and of all evil that can be hatred, of racism, forms in our world.” who found in different obligation to those “We have a solemn on Sept. 11th to never injured Benjamin died or were ,” said Mayor but we also forget what happened . “We saw evil, Weinstock (bottom) America.” saw the best of n (middle), a 9/11 survivor Ari Schonbur Fate of 78,” re“Miracle and was waitand author of es that day. He called his experienc on the 78th floor when elevators ing to change

The Newspaper of our Orthodox communities

follo ‘InvestFest’ fair

To British, Palestine just another colony

5777 • Shavu

ot week •

Candlelighti

STAR

her repeat always community,Cedarhurst, she said.Hills said “we’ve ng 7:57 pm, g aliyah with now?” ns way, makin Havdalah rob ulamith in 8:58 Luach of Far Rockato the question, “Why of Kew Garde

By Ed Weint Newm•an time.” page r Danit TayriTheJ ewishStar For Chani • Vol n, the answe31 joinnow it’s finally .com she said. 16,ofNoWoodm 20 ere, and childre to go, but husband s. “We’re Jewish!” rg The Newsp magic July 3rd vah Feinbe aper of our was obviou B’Nefesh’s r-old Elishe Orthodox communities Thirteen-yeaolim on board Nefesh ing 201 other

rehab ups

shel zaha v

et $10M ER le Israel’s 3, e can’t forg St. John’s 5T ro 000 year-o ld capiHtae’l s 93, and w toasts 50 years unite d

g 70th weddin e ed on the Bonni EpisStar report Shoah survivors 93rd unity News ago and St. John’s Far , The Jewish ajn’s ts and years ula, the Herald Comm Last March Woodmere residen on of Jack Rybszt y Bessen, Hospital closed five Rockaway Penins in patients of

By Jeffre On the occasi anniversary ula t jump al on the Rybsztajn. his story continues.

When Peninsbecame the hospit enced a 35 percen and Jack to get tal million on July 12, desperate copal Hospimedical center experi birthday tajn was located. ing a $10.15complete Weintrob , Jack Rybszfew relatives were which services. ated obtain Rockaway

By Celia to help a war ended emergency ls last week celebr of Health g primary After the to Brussels, where cargo trains, during legal using its e creatin officia Department given on art St. John’s New York State that will also includ111-year-old hospifrom Stuttg daring voyages ed, then ultimately sister-in-law the two way Turnarrest street. The future grant from services renovations Through Brussels ered and couple and their across the center at 275 Rocka headed to left for emergency in a building right ls, the he was discov 14 ula.

They had in Brusse e ambulatory s on page journey. to their dismay had care space residence es an off-sit r sites on the penins eted the who See St. John’ tal also operatnce and simila finally compl sister Cyla, d. restauJack’s they arrive ate at a kosher that a pike in Lawre to meet tajns one day before wall stating the Rybsz e Palestine Brussels, a placard on the looking for anyon While in this was they saw address, wrote to rant, where with a Brooklyn been Rybsztajn s, who had survived. nMr. Jacob TAJN who of Yechiel Rybsztajn, ge contai RYBSZ packa a son plus named he is the afterwards, Brussels, man, saying nephew. Not long was received in . s’ Mr. Jacob and a pair of tefillinto the United States ” Rybsztajn years, ing a tallis rizing his travel which m for five were so nice, . So papers autho “we stayed in Belgiu Brussels Poland However, gentile people of went through in Shaydels, “The what we oned the recalled. into their a relief after ca.” He menti Rybsztajns 7 was such coming to Ameri med the h on page who welco See Shoa we stalled Isaac. a well-to-do couple randson, prst std paid Us postage ny garden City, 11530 301 permit no

his great-g his grandson, tajn holds he holds Jack Rybsz in inset below, father.

Years earlier, is Isaac’s Marc, who

Video art

is projected

onto the

walls of Jerus

alem’s Old City

during a

ceremony

marking

the 50th

anniversary

SEE PAGE

35

of Jerusalem’ s reunification

in the Six-D

ay War.

Hadas Parush/

Flash90

915635

facts The Jewish Star is the fastest-growing Jewish newspaper on LI and in prime Modern Orthodox communities in NYC.

ognize your bashert”; Rabbi Kenneth of Congregation Hain Beth Shalom, “When it’s A-OK to say yes.”

Photos

by Doni Kessler

Presenters at Sunday’s conferenc from left: Elisheva e, director of religious Kaminetsky, SKA kodesh, “Empoweri guidance, limudei ng choices”; Rabbi

York City!

just the

STAR

Teach our childre n well • 6 Tamuz, 5777

prst std Us postage paid garden City, ny 11530 permit no 301

including the Five Towns (Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Hewlett, Woodmere and Inwood) and Far Rockaway (West Lawrence), plus Atlantic Beach, Baldwin, Bellmore, East Meadow, Flushing, Forest Hills, Great Neck, Kew Gardens Hills, Kew Gardens, Little Neck, Lido Beach, Long Beach, Merrick, New Hyde Park, Oceanside, Plainview, Rockville Centre, Roslyn, Valley Stream, Westbury, West Hempstead, and more.

• Targeted circulaton in Brooklyn (Midwood, Marine Park, Downtown Civic Center), Upper West Side, and Riverdale.

• Dynamic website, social media engagement, eblasts and marketing campaigns.

The Jewish Star’s competitive edge: • Earliest distribution — published on Wednesday!

• Every ad is seen, no ad is “buried.”

• Quality reporting, local orientation.

• Campaign coordination with TheJewishStar.com, social media, digital and direct mail marketing, and secular media.

• In-house commercial printing and promotional novelties at excellent prices and with superior service.

• Unique direct mail program (less than as 13 cents a piece, printed and delivered)!

• ‘One-buy’ ad placement in Jewish media anywhere.

permit no

301

prst std Us postage paid garden City, ny 11530

F/T Newspaper reporTer waNTed

with bonus circulation in New

prst std Us postage paid garden City, ny 11530 permit no 301

Emunah of America will celebrate its 70th anniversary with great fun when it hosts an annual gala on Nov. 11 in a unique venue — the PlayStation Theater at 1515 Broadway in Times Square.

As well as generating vital funds for Emunah’s work with children and families at risk in Israel, the gala, one of New York’s premier Jewish fundraising events, honors the incredible accomplishments of the organization’s 2018 honorees: •Myrna Zisman, for her outstanding commitment to the Emunah cause. Together with her husband Leibel a”h, Myrna, an Emunah’s ambassador-at-large, established the Leibel a”h and Myrna Zisman Center for Torah and Art Study Scholarship.

•Rubin Margules, who will be the first recipient of Emunah’s Man of the Year award.

Rubin, together with his wife Cecelia, has played a fundamental role in establishing a program in the Holocaust Center, a music room in Torah Arts High School, and a new building for the Emunah Sderot Counseling Center.

•Lisa and Johnathan Schechter are deserving recipients of the Dor L’Dor Award, for their remarkable work on behalf of Emunah of America’s families. Their Emunah dedication is truly in their blood — Jonathan’s grandmother, Yetta Geisler, was a beloved past chapter president, with Lisa following in her footsteps as past president of the Gela Feldman Chapter in Englewood.

And now their children are continuing to follow along the path of Emunah service, volunteering and raising funds for the Bet Elazraki home.

•Samantha Bryk inspires the future of the next generation of volunteers and is a most deserving recipient of the Young Leadership Award. Samantha has participated for several years in the Emunah Kol Hanearim summer program and is currently a Young Leadership Board member. She created the first young leadership after-party and continues to devote her time to the children in Achuzat Sarah.

Emunah’s award-winning programs in Is-

!

9 7 7 5 in r e p a p s w e N …

Long Island’s #1 Jewish

to cover community events, civic meetings, school news, local personalities, and Jewish issues. Reporting and writing experience req.

respoNd To publisher @ TheJewishsTar.com

991113

Call Ed Weintrob • 516-622-7461 ext 291 • EWeintrob@TheJewishStar.com

1001321

Emunah of America marks its 70th year

rael rely heavily on the support from the community, whose members are invited to join in the Nov. 11 festivities and thereby help Emunah make a difference in the lives of so many in Jewish state.

For more information about the gala, visit www.emunahdinner.org or contact Alana at alana@emunah.org, 917-287-5847.

THE JEWISH STAR November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778

Emunah honorees (from left): Samantha Bryk, Lisa and Johnathan Schechter, Rubin Margules, and Myrna Zisman.

November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

24

In these pictures, Gazans gather on a beach at sunset and fishermen ply their trade. Many Gazans complain about the blockade and fishing limits.

Photos by Laura Kelly

Exclusive look at everyday life in Gaza By the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis In October, Laura Kelly spent several days in the Gaza Strip. She spoke to local NGOs, United Nations workers and Gazans about the issues they face in 2018. This comes after six months of clashes and riots along the border with Israel in which more than 200 have been killed and thousands injured.

Tell me about Gaza.

One of the most surreal moments happened when my fixer brought me to an office run by Hamas that issues permits for foreigners. I didn’t expect to have to talk to anyone, and in the end I didn’t, because the Hamas official behind the desk launched into a 45-minute lecture about the Palestinian struggle, pointing to a map behind him that showed Gaza, Israel and the West Bank, but marked as Palestine, with all the villages written in Arabic.

Hamas is everywhere, and outside nearly every U.N. and UNRWA building in Gaza City that I saw. My fixer was not Hamas, but he was approved by them.

I was happy to get out of Gaza before anything went down — more rockets fired to Israel, more retaliatory strikes in the Strip. I didn’t trust that I would be safe. I was at the full mercy of my fixer and driver.

Where I stayed in Gaza was the typical area for foreigners and foreign journalists, a strip along the beach with a handful of hotels that cost upwards of $100 a night. I was trying to save expenses on the trip and my fixer organized for me to stay in a half-finished hotel, across from the beach, for about half the price. The room was great, with a balcony overlooking the sea, and the staff welcomed me with balloons, fake roses and flower petals around the room. Each morning I received a tray of food with more bread and cheese than I could possibly eat. I tried to tell them to not send so much, especially because everyone kept talking about food insecurity in the Strip, but the staff said it was meant to be special and treat me well.

Were there many foreign faces?

I didn’t see that many foreigners except when I was interacting with international agencies, and

of course U.N. vehicles are everywhere. Nearly all of my interviews were in English — the Palestinians I spoke with in English headed medical clinics, UNRWA distribution centers, NGO umbrella groups and worked for international NGOs. All the staff of the hotel and most restaurant and café workers I interacted with didn’t speak English with me.

Everyone who depends on UNRWA, which is about 1.3 million people, are being affected by the U.S. aid cuts, although increasing donations from international donors have helped slightly stabilize the issue.

After five months of clashes with Israeli forces along the border, how is Gaza today?

My reporting focused on UNRWA facilities and the people working in them, and the NGOs. Of course the protests were at the front of everyone’s mind. But the answer was always the same: these are desperate people in a desperate situation; what do you expect?

To ask more follow-up questions would mean starting to talk about politics, and it didn’t seem anyone wanted to address that. They would

obfuscate and say they don’t know what the solution should be, but that there should be a dignified solution to the refugee crises. What it comes down to for them is the refugee crisis and the right of return.

For instance, I asked a doctor who runs an UNRWA health clinic what should be done about the refugees. She was born in Jerusalem, but her family came from Ramla — technically she is a refugee. I asked her what is the solution for the refugees. She said the answer is for “us to return to our lands,” so I asked what that means. What is “her land”?Could she expect to go back to her home? She acknowledged that it would be difficult to go directly back but that there should be some compensation and there should be freedom of movement.

She said that if we return, that the refugee problem will end. She said she hoped that would happen but didn’t discuss having any power in the political situation to make such a decision. “I can’t think of anything else,” she said. “I can’t think of any solutions. The only solution we believe in is in return.”

Was there violence?

I stayed most of the time in the

city center, where life seemed to work as any other place.

One shocking event was passing by a clinic run by Doctors Without Borders. I saw maybe 12 men on crutches and it was clear these were people who had been shot at the border. We went and talked to one of the public information officers from the organization and he said how much they had to scale up their operations with the Ministry of Health to deal with all these gunshot wounds.

Every week they receive hundreds of patients. Last week it was 200 injured. He said that of 5,300 gunshot wounds, they treated 2,200 of those, and with that treatment comes one or three surgeries each and then months of follow-up appointments, rehab and possibly lifelong crippling. He called it a phenomenon he had never seen. I asked him if he has a responsibility to tell the government not to send kids to be shot, but as an apolitical organization, their mission is to help. In my opinion, he looked frustrated.

I did another interview with the head of UNRWA operations in Gaza and he was critical of Israel for us-

Clockwise from left: A poster depicts a Hamas sniper; a mural of Ahlam Tamimi; a UNDP office building, and a Commonwealth Military Cemetery. People said they believed in returning to Palestine, but were unclear how that would happen. Photos by Laura Kelly

ing military force when they should use police force.

But why go to the border if you’ll be shot? OK, they are frustrated and vent it at the border, but are their frustrations with Israel? Yes, it’s due to the blockade. But if you ask why there is the blockade, there is no answer.

One man I asked this to said that Israel claims the blockade is for security, but since Israel has advanced technology that can secure its safety, what does a blockade achieve other than to torture Gazans?

How did the city look?

I was surprised that the people in the city weren’t that conservative. My hotel had a coffee shop attached, and in the morning I would see couples, young men and women, smoking shisha and drinking coffee. Most women cover their hair, but I also saw women wearing jeans and regular shirts, full dress and head covering, and some in niqab [face veil]. In the cafés and restaurants I visited, there were family areas and male-only areas, but the family areas seemed to have girls and guys mixed; they looked like students. That was surprising to me.

Did it feel incredibly poor?

When I entered I was not surprised by how it looked; I wasn’t overwhelmed by poverty compared to other cities like Amman or Ramallah or Erbil. There was a downtown area that reminded me of Ramallah: streets are dirty and people throw trash everywhere. But there are a lot of stores, coffee shops, schwarma and falafel places.

A new mall opened in 2017, it’s three floors with upscale clothing and shoe stores — I found it surprising, given what we hear about Gaza. There are hotels along the beach and rooms run upwards of $100, but almost everything runs on generator power. The hotel I stayed in was half-finished and I was able to get a room for about half the regular price. It wasn’t even typical for them to rent out a room, mostly using the hotels for weddings, parties or for foreign journalists or international NGO workers. Everything is available, but for everyone.

Everyone pays in shekels. I heard sometimes they use Jordanian dinars. Most food was from Egypt, Turkey and UAE. See Gaza on page 25

I didn’t speak any Arabic and my movement was only at the discretion of my fixer and driver. One time we drove through Shati refugee camp, quickly, which is near the UNRWA Beach Distribution Center.

I was told it would be better if I didn’t take photos.

I didn’t really hear how people felt about the marches. On one hand, they have to support it and its message of ending the siege and the right of return for refugees. But one woman said that she and her siblings were forbidden from going.

Even due to the tensions it doesn’t seem that it was that interesting?

Totally boring.

But everyone seems to realize that the media isn’t paying attention. Hamas said “If we have to send 1,000 or 2,000 to die for the world to notice, we will do that,” and that’s the way they have thought from the beginning. The lack of media attention to these protests, I think, represents how the world isn’t paying attention.

People are starting to realize that, after six months with hundreds of young men getting shot with nothing changing and the services they rely on taken away. One statistic I heard was that Gaza and the West Bank were only funded up to 29 or 30 percent through the Humanitarian Response Program run by the U.N., where typically funding is around 42 percent for any territory considered in critical need.

I think there are a few factors.

The US is one. Donor fatigue is another issue due to Syria, Yemen and the world. And on top of that, some mention political issues. With the US pulling out, some countries are joining them.

What about the Qatari fuel and PA cutting salaries?

In the list of grievances, the Israeli siege was always first, followed by lack of international aid and political pressure on Israel; then the animosity between Hamas and the PA. Many people complain about [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas. They won’t speak about changes on their side to end the siege.

But it’s not as bad as Puerto Rico after the hurricane?

It’s not. I think the Hamas guy said, “We don’t have it as bad as other places,” and he mentioned Syria, Yemen, all of Africa, Cambodia, Venezuela — it was a long list.

So how to explain that?

You look at it and it looks like they have everything, but it’s not for everyone. Cafés and shops are open but they are empty. People are losing money or have no money.

Buildings look beautiful but they are unfinished. They might be emp-

The UNRWA is facing a funding crises in Gaza. At right, a PFLP poster is seen through the window of a passing car.

Photos by Laura Kelly

25 THE JEWISH STAR November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778

Continued from page 24 How was the nightlife?

We went to a restaurant with a garden courtyard that had canopies covered by vines. A friend wanted to take me for shisha. There are beachfront restaurants where it’s really beautiful to sit and watch the sunset.

One Hamas guy told me to enjoy the nightclubs during my visit.

I met him on my second full day, when my fixer said he had to check in with Hamas at an office bureau that distributes foreign permits and sits right across from the UNRWA headquarters. At first he would go in himself and it would take two minutes, but when he came back out to the car he said I should come in. I thought I would be interrogated.

We went into an office that had two men with two desks. One didn’t look at me, but the other one spoke to me. He was a man in his early 40s, with strong features, goodlooking, graying hair but a bit pale and overweight. Behind him was a large poster showing the Dome of the Rock and Muslims praying in the snow. There was also a large map that showed Gaza, Israel and the West Bank, but marked as Palestine, with all the villages written in Arabic. He launched into a 30-minute lecture about the history of the Palestinian people and their struggle. At the end he said, “I hope you have a good trip and experience the things here and visit some nightclubs.” My fixer said this was a change for them, to be so nice.

Was there a lot of political propaganda on the streets?

I didn’t notice. I was told not to take photos of Hamas members or police. So I saw some graffiti with Arafat and Sheikh Yassin and other “martyrs.” There was graffiti of Ahed Tamimi, with her flowing hair.

I saw some kids wearing shirts with Hebrew writing, most likely bought cheaply from a secondhand shop. I thought it totally ironic. It was just another example of the complexity and interactions between the two sides.

One office I visited had a “visit Palestine” poster, which was created in the 1930’s by a Jewish graphic designer to encourage tourism and immigration to British Mandate Palestine. A faded and destroyed billboard in the city center showed a Hamas sniper wearing a helmet with a Star of David on it. There were some martyr posters. In the Hamas office, there was a poster of Yasser Murtaja, a Gazan journalist killed by Israeli sniper fire during the border protests.

It didn’t feel oppressive?

I did feel that I had no autonomy, but I think that was because

Although there was new construction, many buildings were unoccupied or unfinished. Bottom right: A new mall, with products for sale but few customers to buy them.

Photos by Laura Kelly

ty inside. In my hotel, when I came down in the morning, there was a guy sleeping on a pull-out mattress in front of the check-in desk.

The inconsistency with electricity is a big issue, but there is Wifi. Their cell service is Jawwal but it doesn’t seem to have any data plan. So you go to places that have a router. On my hotel’s third floor I seemed to have 3G from Israel.

What about electricity?

The shops will use the generator to keep the lights on. We went to a coffee shop and they had a giant generator out front. I asked for a latte and they tried so long to steam the milk but there wasn’t enough power to do it. One night my street had electricity for about eight hours or so, but when I woke up in the morning, it was off.

Was there sewage?

I went to the beach; it smelled, but when I asked if it was from hundreds of gallons of untreated sewage flowing into the sea, I was told it was from the fish market. The people I was with said I should try Gazan seafood, but I said I didn’t really want to eat fish that was swimming in sewage. They admitted this was a problem. I felt bad flushing the toilet because I didn’t know where it went. We drank bottled water all the time, but that’s [normal in] the region — Jordan, Egypt,

Iraq. I used water from the tap for showering and brushing my teeth.

You stayed around Gaza City?

I asked if we could drive to the middle or the south but was told it wasn’t a good idea to leave the city. I was there to report on health, so my fixer indicated Hamas would find it suspicious for me to go outside the city.

When you were leaving, who was there also?

NGO workers, mostly. There were two Italian women leaving who worked for an NGO, and one guy from Doctors Without Borders.

There were two people from an NGO dealing with food insecurity.

I saw a few more people from Doctors without Borders come through as well.

That sounds like a big footprint for the doctors.

They have expanded their resources exponentially, to treat the kids being shot, from three clinics with 70% burn patients, domestic injuries from generators or lighting fires in their homes. But now it’s 70% horrendous gunshot wounds.

They’ve added more clinics but are also dealing with a lack of space for needed therapies like rehabilitation.

What a waste. These people are going to be shot every week.

You visited some NGOs? The need is great and the funding is small. I met a man who deals with different NGOs. He said they have groups that deal with women’s issues, special needs. He said they have 70 NGOs in Gaza and 80 others in the West Bank.

I spoke to one who works with Israelis on Skype, a project where Gazans can speak with Israelis.

He has been able to get a following. They try to do these different events, raising the conversation about speaking with Israelis. Many seemed to support the one-state solution, but there was no recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

People think Gaza is a center of conflict.

It seemed so overblown and that was frustrating. The UNRWA details are interesting. What was impressed upon me the most, especially with the workers who were laid off and are striking for job security, was that they are fighting for permanency in a temporary institution. [The UNRWA] mandate was supposed to be temporary, but it shows how entrenched it is in society. You can’t just get rid of it through funding cuts or saying it shouldn’t be there, because they support so many people. Whether or not one agrees with the refugee agenda.

Thoughts on the future?

The only way is a political solution with the PA, and then to rebuild.

There’s a U.N. program that helps distribute micro-finance loans so people can start businesses or whatever they need money for. But since the funding cuts, since the rise in unemployment, the department has distributed fewer loans and has had to expend more energy investigating people applying for loans to make sure they can pay them back. People with degrees can’t get jobs. PA officials who were paid for years sit at home and their salaries are now being cut. UNRWA’s emergency appeal ran out of money in June. People at the age of 20 have nothing to do.

SHAbbAT STAR ‫כוכב של שבת‬ Chayei Sarah: Free land for dead Jews…

November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

26

Continued from page 1 made and the property transferred, clearly, so that everyone understands, only then does Avraham bury his wife. And when he buries her, the Torah again gives geographical markers to let us know where: “Near Mamre, which is Chevron, in the land of Canaan.” here are many attitudes ascribed to Ephron, mostly negative, in his pivot from “free” to exorbitant, in his wheelerdealer negotiations, in his offering much but giving little, in his greediness, or in his faux friendship.

But in light of the tragic events last Shabbos at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, I think there’s a much simpler lesson.

The Ephrons of the world are very happy to give away free land to dead Jews. It’s a small price to pay for a heinous goal. Ephron’s hesitation at selling land to Avraham was that he’d be giving Avraham a place to call his own, one that he and his descendants could point to and say, “We own it because we paid for it. It is ours.”

And that is why the Torah doesn’t just describe a small burial cave as the purchase, but

T

a field and a cave and all the trees around it, around the complete border of the property — all of it now belonging to Avraham. friend of mine, who is involved in education in New York City, shared this story from his Monday morning commute: “Just took the crosstown bus and a ‘nice older white gentleman’ sits next to me and is reading the paper. I tell him that I am getting off at the next stop and he nods. As I get up to pass him, he says, ‘That synagogue deserved to get shot up ... have a wonderful day’.”

An individual racist is not necessarily representative of an entire society. Most people were horrified and condemned the act of violence. Some used it to score political points. But the fact is that the shooter wasn’t just a crazed loon who wanted to kill people. He shouted, “All Jews must

A

die!” and he walked into a synagogue to carry out his evil actions. There is nothing more anti-Semitic than that, especially when attached to an active firearm.

And the fact that some random disgusting person would cowardly say that to my friend as he got off the bus, giving him no chance to respond, goes to show how evil at heart some seemingly normal people might be.

And as much as we enjoy life in the land of the free and the home of the brave, the fact is that Jew-hatred is all around us. The ADL’s count of incidents of anti-Semitic attacks rises every year. The anti-Israel movement on college campuses and beyond would not happen if Israel were not a Jewish country. It still makes no sense, but it happens because many people have an unexplainable “Jew” setting in their minds that makes them irrational about Jewish people, Jewish institutions, Jewish activities, and a

‘That synagogue deserved to get shot up. Have a wonderful day.’

Mourning her, mourning Sarah Orthodox Union

Rabbi DR. tzvi heRsh weinReb

G

rief is the most powerful and most painful of human emotions. Yet it is an emotion few human beings can avoid in their lifetime. We all face loss, and we all grieve.

Interestingly, the first death in the Bible is a murder. And the reaction of the murderer is one of denial and, ultimately, guilt. I speak, of course, of Cain’s slaying of Abel. We do not read of Cain’s grief, nor do we know at all of the reaction of Abel’s parents, Adam and Eve, to his death.

In this week’s Torah portion, for the first time, we learn in detail of the reaction of a surviving relative to the death of a loved one — Abraham, and his response to the death of his wife, Sarah.

Much has been written about the psychology of the emotion of grief. It is a complex emotion and is a very long, sometimes lifelong, process. t seems that there are at least two components to normal grief. There is an emotional component, consisting of feelings of great sadness and pervasive melancholy.

I

Hardest…

Continued from page 27 narratives themselves. Right after Avraham and Sarah are described as being old and ba’im bayamim, the Torah informs us that Avraham, aged 100, and Sarah, aged 90, are going to have a baby!

As old as they were chronologically, they were ready to start a new phase in life with the energy and enthusiasm of a young couple awaiting their first child. When the Torah tells us that Avraham was old and “ba bayamim,” he was busy making plans to marry off his son, Yitzchak.

There is also an intellectual component, as the mourner seeks to make some sense of his or her loss and to find purpose and meaning in the death of the loved one, to thus be able to move on in life.

So it is not surprising that when Abraham learned of Sarah’s death, and he apparently was not in the vicinity of where she died, he came rushing to make the arrangements for her burial.

We read that he “came to eulogize Sarah and to cry for her.” Note the two components of his response. Crying, expressing feelings of loss through sobs and tears, bechi, was one component.

The other component was much more cerebral and consisted of a thought-out and carefully composed eulogy. Abraham honored Sarah with his heart, his feelings, but also with his head, with his mind and intellect.

Both aspects of this dual response are necessary. Over the first, the emotional aspect, we have little control. Feelings burst forth even when we try to suppress them.

But the second aspect, the reasoned and verbally expressed eulogy, is one over which we have great control. We can plan intention-

ally what we will say and what we won’t say in a eulogy, a hesped. here is a beautiful eulogy in the homiletic writings of the great 18th century sage, Rabbi Yechezkel Landau, author of the authoritative halachic work, Nodah B’Yehuda. In that eulogy, Rabbi Landau speaks about his wife, Leeba, and compares her to the matriarch Sarah.

He notes that in our text, Abraham cries “for her,” the pronoun “her” being used instead of the proper name.

However, he “eulogizes Sarah.” No pronoun here, but her personal name — the name by which she was known to him and to all of her acquaintances.

Rabbi Landau insists that Abraham was setting an example for all eulogies to follow, for all time and eternity. A eulogy must be specific and speak in detail about the particular and unique qualities of the deceased. One should not just eulogize “her,” one must eulogize “Sarah.” Those listening to the eulogy must come away with a better sense of who the deceased was, with some details about what made the deceased special.

Too often at funerals, we hear clergymen make impersonal remarks about death and eternity, and they do not leave us with even an impression of the biographical details and significance of the life that was just lost.

Abraham set the tone for a proper eulogy.

He eulogized the Sarah that he knew. Not some abstract description which could fit any woman, but an exquisitely detailed portrait of the real Sarah, from the perspective of one who shared his life with her.

There is so much that careful students of Torah have learned from the lives of Abraham and Sarah. One lesson that I personally cherish is the lesson of Abraham’s eulogy for his life’s companion. The actual words of this eulogy are not recorded, but the message is clear. It was not an anonymous “her” that he mourned, but a real, flesh and blood, deeply beloved life-long spouse, Sarah.

T

Feelings burst forth even when we try to suppress them.

Avraham was at least 137 years old then — but was very much alive, very much involved in the doings of his family and his society.

Although the chronological aging process is automatic and beyond human control, humans can lower their psychological/emotional ages by keeping alert mentally, by continuing to learn, by keeping focused on new goals to accomplish.

Avraham and Sarah “came in days” — they dealt with each day actively and purposefully.

Life offers all of us hard challenges. These challenges are made even harder by those who try to impede our growth and our progress. But the hardest challenge is to maintain enthusiasm, to keep looking forward, to overcome obstacles … to grow old in years while remaining young in idealism.

Jewish state. f America is tolerant — and I believe that institutionally it is, that most people don’t care enough to hate Jews — then the Ephrons of the world need to be outshouted and overpowered by those who believe Jews are allowed to live and thrive.

It would be naïve to suggest that all ideological differences between Jews will disappear. Some will never go away. But the blame game for evil acts goes squarely on those who commit evil acts, or who dehumanize Jews.

Which is why those who blame this particular evil act on a mainstream American political party are absolutely in the wrong.

Ephron’s attitude is like that of the antiSemites who followed him in history, that “the only good Jew is a dead Jew.” Anyone who rejects that statement, as all good people should, must take a strong stand: anti-Semitism has no place in the modern world.

May G-d eradicate evil from the face of the earth, and may the Pittsburgh Jewish community feel the love from around the world, and with G-d’s help, find healing.

I

Luach

Fri Nov 2 / 24 Cheshvan Chayei Sara Candlelighting: 5:32 pm Havdalah: 6:30 pm

Thurs Nov 8 / 30 Cheshvan Rosh Chodesh Fri Nov 9 / 1 Kislev Rosh Chodesh Toldos Candlelighting: 4:24 pm Havdalah: 5:32 pm

Fri Nov 16 / 8 Kislev Vayeitzei Candlelighting: 4:18 pm Havdalah: 5:26 pm

Fri Nov 16 / 8 Kislev Vayeitzei Candlelighting: 4:18 pm Havdalah: 5:26 pm

Fri Nov 23 / 15 Kislev Vayishlach Candlelighting: 4:13 pm Havdalah: 5:22 pm

Fri Nov 30 / 22 Kislev Vayeishev Candlelighting: 4:10 pm Havdalah: 5:19 pm

Sun Dec 2 / 24 Kislev Chanukah begins tonight First candle

Fri Dec 7 / 29 Kislev Shabbos Chanukah / Miketz Candlelighting: 4:09 pm Havdalah: 5:18pm

Five Towns times from White Shul

Kosher bookworm

AlAn JAy geRbeR

Jewish Star columnist

T

he awesome massacre in Pittsburgh this past weekend casts a pall of irony and horror on the upcoming observance of the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht.

Of all the essays that I have read in response to this tragedy, the one I choose to bring to your attention is appropriately titled “In Solidarity with the Pittsburgh Jewish Community,” composed by one of our community’s leading Jewish spiritual leaders: Rabbi Zalman Wolowik of Cedarhurst. His words are heartfelt, simple in presentation but eloquent in both tone and content.

I trust that you will read this essay for its inspiring message and share it with all. ur hearts are shattered by the heinous and horrific attack on our brothers and sisters in Pittsburgh. We mourn the 11 holy souls who were so cruelly torn from our midst, and pray to G-d to provide strength and

O

comfort to their shocked and grieving families.

Their unfathomable pain is shared by the entire Jewish people and all people worldwide.

We further pray for the complete and speedy healing of the injured, of the survivors and of the entire Pittsburgh community.

No words can possibly describe this pure evil. Jews who gathered to pray and celebrate Shabbat were killed for no reason other than the fact that they were Jewish. Again: While praying! On Shabbat! The killer’s bullets we’re aimed at us all. “All Jews must die,” he yelled while opening fire.

What is the remedy to such senseless hatred? What can we possibly do to eradicate it?

The Lubavitcher Rebbe of righteous memory answered this a number of times, with clarity and conviction: Wanton love. Cold-blooded, fanatical, baseless, relentless hatred can be uprooted from its core only by saturating our world with pure, undiscriminating, uninhibited, unyielding love and acts of kindness.

Today more than ever, we need to spread

love and unity, positivity and light.

We must continue to walk to our synagogues proudly. And even as we grieve and mourn, we must increase exponentially our acts of goodness and kindness.

Some of the injured were law enforcement heroes who willingly chose to put their own lives in danger to help others.

We stand in awe of their courage and dedication. And we are grateful to live in a country that protects our right to live openly and proudly as Jews. We value immensely the friendship and outpouring of support from so many of our fellow Americans. o help illuminate this thick darkness and eradicate evil, please consider one or more of the suggestions below. Our brothers and sisters in Pittsburgh — and the entire world! — need our prayers and mitzvot (good deeds) now more than ever!

Here are some suggestions: Increase in unity. The attacker harbored senseless hatred toward the Jewish people. We must increase our love toward each and every

What is the remedy to such senseless hatred?

T

We are all Hashem’s children Torah

RAbbi dAvid eTengoff

Jewish Star columnist

O

ur parasha relates the deaths of one of history’s most spiritually dynamic couples, Sarah and Avraham: “And Sarah died in Kiriath Arba, which is Hebron, in the land of Canaan, and Avraham came to eulogize Sarah and to bewail her” (Bereishit 23:2), and later, “And Avraham expired and died in a good old age, old and satisfied, and he was gathered to his people” (25:8).

Shortly after the Torah narrates the story of Avraham’s passing, we encounter the following pasuk: “Now it came to pass after Avraham’s death, that G-d blessed his son [b’no] Yitzchak, and Yitzchak dwelt near Be’er Lachai Ro’i” (25:11).

Midrash Tanchuma, Parashat Lech Lecha IV, notes that prior to Avraham’s arrival on the historical scene, Hashem, and Hashem alone, bestowed blessings upon mankind. As proof, the Midrash cites the cases of Adam, Chava and Noach, where we find: “And G-d blessed them, and G-d said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…’” (1:28), and “And

G-d blessed Noach and his sons, and He said to them: ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth’” (9:1).

According to the Midrash, at the beginning of Parashat Lech Lecha, when Avraham responded to Hashem’s call, this changed: “Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you. And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, and [you shall] be a blessing [v’heyei bracha].”

At this juncture, our Midrash suggests that Avraham acquired the ability to bestow a bracha upon others. f that is the case, why did G-d, rather than Avraham, bless Yitzchak in our parasha — 13 chapters later? The Midrash suggests that when Yitzchak was born, Avraham very much wanted to bless him. Unfortunately, he saw with ruach hakodesh, prophetic insight, that both Esav and Yaakov were to come forth from him. As such, he refrained from blessing him.

Avraham declared: “Let the Master of the World come and bless he Whom He so desires.”

In sum, though Avraham had been given the gift to bless others, he did not bless Yitzchak, since he knew Yitzchak’s progeny would include both Esav and Yaakov, and he did not

I

want his bracha to rest upon Esav.

Avraham therefore declared: “Let the Master of the World come and bless he Whom He so desires.” According to this interpretation, the phrase “G-d blessed his son Yitzchak,” refers to Avraham as the father, and Yitzchak as his son.

In his commentary on the Torah, the Alshich interprets our pasuk, “Now it came to pass after Avraham’s death, that G-d blessed his son Yitzchak, and Yitzchak dwelt near Be’er Lachai Ro’i,” in a very different manner. Although he begins by agreeing with our Midrash that the Almighty gave Avraham the ability to bless others, he diverges by suggesting that, in order to avoid blessing Yishmael, Avraham withheld his blessings from his entire family. After Avraham’s passing, Hashem, therefore, directly imparted His bracha to Yitzchak.

Additionally, the Alshich asserts that the word “b’no” in the phrase, “G-d blessed his son [b’no] Yitzchak,” appears to be superfluous, since we certainly know by now that Yitzchak was Avraham’s son. Why, then, does the text add the word, “b’no?” He offers a fascinating

one of them. We are all one family! This is definitely the right time for each of us to reach out to someone we’ve disagreed with and grown apart from.

Show Jewish pride. Especially now — let’s affix mezuzahs on our doorposts, wear our kippahs proudly. We must show that we are proud of our Jewish identity!

Add a mitzvah in memory of the victims.

Whether wrapping tefillin, lighting Shabbat candles or another mitzvah, let’s each add one more act to our routine and dedicate it to the memory of those ruthlessly killed.

Come to synagogue. Even if we haven’t done so regularly, let’s attend synagogue together and show the world that our synagogues are filled with vibrancy, love and life. Let’s fill every synagogue to capacity!

Let us beseech G-d to send healing and comfort to the grieving families and pray that He quickly eradicate all evil and hatred and usher in the coming of Mashiach, speedily in our days.

Let us pray fervently for the complete and speedy recovery of the injured. In the merit of our collective mitzvot, may we each bring much comfort and peace at this extraordinarily challenging time. response to this question, a keen insight into our relationship with the Almighty: “But it may well be said that it is the normal way for one who buries his father to become profoundly saddened — for his father’s shadow has departed from upon him. Yet, when he is a tzaddik, he is not afraid, for he knows he remains a son to Hashem … [This, then, is the correct interpretation of the phrase] ‘G-d blessed his son Yitzchak,’ namely that after the death of Avraham, Hashem blessed Yitzchak His son, as if to say, ‘If Avraham has departed, [do not fear,] for you are a son to Me. [Moreover,] I am your Father who exists for all eternity.’

Therefore, [G-d] blessed him [Yitzchak] to strengthen his heart.”

Clearly, few of us possess the righteousness of Yitzchak Avinu. Yet we can all take comfort in knowing that Hashem has told us, “You are children of the L-rd, your G-d” (Devarim 14:1). No matter how many challenges and trials we may encounter in our lives, and no matter how dark the night may be, a new dawn of Hashem’s deliverance will surely burst forth.

As Yaakov Avinu taught us so long ago, in Bereishit 49:18, “For Your salvation, I hope, O L-rd!” May this time come soon and in our days.

Avraham had been given the gift to bless others.

Hard, harder, hardest: Thoughts for Chayei Sarah Angel for Shabbat

RAbbi mARc d. Angel

M

y wife and I recently had lunch with a longtime friend, Fortuna Calvo Roth.

Fortuna is an award-winning journalist with an amazing list of accomplishments. She was recently honored by the University of Missouri for her many years in journalism, and she chose to speak about the challenges of being a good journalist. She framed her talk as “hard, harder, and hardest.”

Hard: One has to work hard to find the facts, to distinguish between truth and falsehood. One has to write honestly, with unflinching commitment to getting things right.

Harder: While it is hard to research and write articles, it is harder to stand up to power.

There are those who would prefer to quash your article, or ask you to alter it so as to change its truthfulness and impact. Resisting

those pressures requires courage … and can be risky to one’s career.

Hardest: The hardest challenge is to wake up every morning with the same enthusiasm with which you began your profession … and still have a job! During the course of one’s career, one faces so many ups and downs, disappointments and disillusionments … and it is very difficult not to lose one’s sense of idealism and enthusiasm.

But if one can continue to feel renewed and energized by one’s work, one can push forward with optimism. s Fortuna reviewed her talk with us, it struck me that her observations were also true for rabbis! It is hard to pursue truth and to maintain communal harmony and spiritual growth. It is harder to stand up to power, to those who would undermine your work and threaten your position. It is hardest

A

to maintain the youthful idealism and enthusiasm with which one entered the rabbinate.

But then it occurred to me: Fortuna’s framework refers to almost everyone, regardless of occupation or profession. It is hard to live with integrity, to strive to clarify and maintain one’s values. It is harder to resist the powers that seek to curtail your own ideas and ideals, to force you into conformity with their viewpoints. It is hardest to work year after year without becoming “burnt out,” without losing the visionary gleam of your youthful expectations.

This is the hardest challenge in life: to grow older while still retaining youthful enthusiasm.

This week’s Torah portion offers insight on this issue.

“And Avraham was old, well stricken in years” (Bereishit 24:1). The Hebrew phrase for “well stricken in years” is “ba bayamim” which literally means that Avraham came in days.

They were ready for new challenges and new adventures.

When the Torah describes the elderliness of Avraham and Sarah, it uses similar wording: “And Avraham and Sarah were old, well stricken in years” (ba’im bayamim); literally, this means that Avraham and Sarah came in days. If the Torah informs us that Avraham is old (zaken) and that Avraham and Sarah are old (zekeinim), what is added by the words ba bayamim or ba’im bayamim? What do these words actually mean? How does one “come in days?” hen Avraham and Sarah are described as zaken/zekeinim, this refers to their chronological ages. They were indeed old in years. But when the Torah adds the words “ba bayamim/ba’im bayamim” it may be teaching us that Avraham and Sarah were living actively, making every day count. They were physiologically, emotionally and psychologically much younger than their chronological ages.

They did not live passive lives waiting for their days to pass. Rather, they “came in days,” i.e. they actively greeted each day, they were ready for new challenges and new adventures.

This interpretation is borne out by the Torah See Hardest on page 26

W

THE JEWISH STAR November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778

After Pittsburgh, filling the world with light

27

November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

28

Content: The Publisher endeavors to ensure that this newspaper’s content is within the bounds of normative halachah and hashkafah.

A reader who feels anything we publish may be inappropriate in this regard is urged to bring the item in question to the attention of the Publisher.

The JEWISH

Advertising is accepted at the sole discretion of the Publisher. The Publisher expects all advertising to conform to standards of content appropriate for distribution in an Orthodox community.

The newspaper of our Orthodox communities • Established 2002

Kashrut: The Jewish Star is not responsible for the kashrut of any product or establishment featured in its pages. If you have questions regarding any establishment or product, including its supervision, please consult your rabbi for guidance.

Submissions: All submissions become the property of The Jewish Star and may be edited and used by the Publisher, its licensees and affiliates, in print, on the web and/or in any media that now exists or will exist in the future in any form, including derivative works, throughout the world in perpetuity, without additional authorization or compensation. The individual or entity submitting material affirms that it holds the copyright or otherwise has the right to authorize its use in accordance with The Jewish Star’s terms for submissions.

STAR

TheJewishStar.com

Produced and printed on Long Island by The Jewish Star LLC 2 Endo Blvd, Garden City NY 11530 • 516-622-7461 Publisher & Editor: Ed Weintrob

EWeintrob@TheJewishStar.com 516-622-7461 ext 291 • cell 718-908-5555 Advertising Sales: Tovah Richler

516-622-7461 ext 306 • TRichler@TheJewishStar.com

Copy Editor: Rachel Langer

516-622-7461 ext 241 • RLanger@TheJewishStar.com

Editorial Designer: Stacey Simmons Photo Editor: Christina Daly

Send us your news!

General news: EWeintrob@TheJewishStar.com Calendar@TheJewishStar.com by noon Friday Schools@TheJewishStar.com by 5 pm Monday Shuls@TheJewishStar.com Send photos as high resolution JPEGs

Let’s do business!

Ads@TheJewishStar.com.

Distribution: Publisher@TheJewishStar.com.

Simcha Papers: Publisher@TheJewishStar.com

Editorial contributors: Rabbis Avi Billet, David Etengoff and Binny Freedman; Jeff Dunetz, Alan Gerber, Judy Joszef, and Joni Schockett.

Opinions: Views expressed by columnists and other writers do not necessarily reflect the position of the Publisher or of The Jewish Star LLC. Distribution: The Jewish Star is available free in kosher food establishments, stores, synagogues, and curb-side newsboxes on Long Island, in New York City and elsewhere.

To request free delivery to your location, write Publisher@TheJewishStar.com.

Subscriptions: To receive The Jewish Star by first class mail in the continental United States, send $150 for one year or $75 for six months, prepaid. Rate subject to change.

Employment opportunities: Visit TheJewishStar.com/jobs.html. Send inquiries to Publisher@TheJewishStar.com.

Copyright: All content in The Jewish Star is copyright and may not be republished or otherwise reproduced without written permission by The Jewish Star LLC; to do so without permission is both against the law and against halacha. To inquire about content reproduction write to the Publisher@TheJewishStar.com.

The Jewish Star subscribes to the JNS and JTA news services. They, or their contributors, own the copyrights on material attributed to them.

This newspaper contains words of Torah; please dispose of properly.

Robert Faurisson: Shoah denier and his legacy Viewpoint

BEN COHEN

Jewish News Service

H

e will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool,” opines one character about another in William Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. It is an observation that the bard would no doubt apply to others of a similarly slippery character, and certainly those who have built their reputations by purveying outrageous lies that masquerade as sacred truths.

French Holocaust-denier Robert Faurisson, who died this week at the age of 89, consistently regarded the truth as if it “were a fool.” Faurisson’s entire career was built upon two layers of

lies: firstly, that the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews was a hoax and a swindle, rather than a historical fact; secondly, that he was one of the courageous few willing to expose this wicked conspiracy engineered, of course, by “Zionists.”

As several of Faurisson’s obituaries observed, he failed spectacularly in his quest to turn Holocaust denial into a mainstream movement. Previously an unremarkable professor of literature at the University of Lyon, after 1990, when the French parliament voted to make the denial of the Holocaust illegal, Faurisson essentially became a criminal, losing his academic tenure and spending much of his time fighting (and not winning) court cases. His most recent defeat was last

April, when Faurisson lost a 40-year-old legal battle with the French newspaper Le Monde and was denounced by the Paris Court of Appeal as a “professional liar,” a “falsifier” and a “fabricator of history.”

This deserved reputation aside, Faurisson remains an important figure to understand in terms of the broader fight against anti-Semitism. In particular, we should look at the unique contribution of the Holocaust-denial movement to what the late Jewish historian Robert Wistrich called “the arsenal of millennial antiSemitism.” Holocaust denial, Wistrich argued, transformed the victims of the Holocaust and those who survived the slaughter “into superlatively cunning,

He failed to turn Holocaust denial into a mainstream movement.

fraudulent and despicable perpetrators” in keeping with pre-modern anti-Semitic tropes about deceitful, duplicitous Jews with horns charging interest on loans. istrich’s presentation of Holocaust denial as a mutation of anti-Semitism was, not surprisingly, very far from the deniers’ own depiction of their work. Faurisson grandiosely insisted that his claims were grounded on “scientific” proof that the gas chambers were a figment of the Zionist imagination, and that the vast majority of Jews had died because the Allied onslaught on Nazi Germany in the latter stages of the war had brought with it diseases like typhus.

For evidence, he pointed his readers to the “research” of crackpot deniers like Ernest Zundel, a German-Canadian publisher; Arthur Butz, an American engineering professor; and Richard See Faurisson on page 29

W

IAEA ignores continued Iran nuke development Politics to go

JEff DuNEtz

Jewish Star columnist

A

ccording to a paper published last week by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), documents recovered by Israeli intelligence from Iran’s hidden nuclear archive and revealed by Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu in April show that Iran conducted more tests at the Parchin nuclear site than previously understood.

Which means that Iran has already overcome some of the obstacles that experts thought they had not yet mastered. This new paper tells us that Iran was a lot closer to a nuclear weapon than we thought, and the work at Parchin may still be going on.

The report, authored by ISIS director David Albright, former Deputy Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Olli Heinonen and other top experts, said, “The additional evidence specifically mentions explosions and radioactivity at the Parchin site, and this information far more vividly establishes Iran’s nuclear weapons-related activities there.” archin is a crucial part of Iran’s nuclear program whose operations remained relatively secret despite the JCPOA nuclear deal and assurances made by the previous administration. The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, has long sought access to Parchin. In

P

October 2014 Iran admitted to using it to test exploding bridge wires as nuclear detonators, but they claimed the tests were not for weapons development.

However, the documents prove that Iran was testing weapon detonators at Parchin. They show labs and pressure rooms at the base, experiments on explosion chains, and further work on nuclear bomb components at the site.

“This report, in particular, for the first time publicly correlates photos from inside the main building, called Taleghan 1 by Iran, to satellite imagery, updates previous discussion of the purpose of the second major building at the site, called Taleghan 2, and touches upon the operation of the facilities, including confirmation that Iran was testing in Taleghan 1 a specialized, difficult to develop, neutron initiator to start the chain reaction in a nuclear explosion.”

This new information about Parchin shows that Iran conducted far higher explosive tests at the site than previously understood. But more importantly, the pictures indicate that even after the nuclear agreement, Iran may have maintained equipment for later use, and resumed activities related to nuclear weapons development under a new organization run by the Iranian military.

Even worse, the IAEA has been ignoring the documentation and data retrieved by Israeli spies that Netanyahu presented to the world

last April.

Per ISIS, that new material still needs vetting by the IAEA. The IAEA needs to visit Parchin, the nuclear archive, and the warehouse sites discovered by Israel. It needs to take additional samples for analysis. If Iran considers this allegation baseless, sampling is the best way to remove doubt. he images published by ISIS expose the Parchin site’s laboratory, where Iranian scientists developed and tested neutron initiators, which start the nuclear reaction inside the bomb, setting off an explosion. This work continued even after the JCPOA was finalized in October 2015.

A separate document shows that work continued under “Project 110,” which focused on developing nuclear warheads. However, to better hide the project, the work was divided into two parts — a secret part at Parchin, and a public program based at different universities.

The Obama administration promised lawmakers that IAEA inspectors would be able to inspect Parchin and resolve all possible military dimension issues before any final deal was inked. But instead, US negotiators allowed Iran to sign a secret side deal permitting them to self-inspect the facility rather than granting IAEA inspectors access.

In world politics, few secrets stay secret.

This particular deal was revealed by the AP. From them, we learned that Iranians would get

In world politics, few secrets stay secret.

T

to collect their own samples at Parchin, from mutually-agreed upon areas under photo and video surveillance, and the number of the samples would be limited.

An Iranian statement confirmed the AP report was correct: “Iranian experts took samples from specific locations in Parchin facilities this week without IAEA inspectors being present.”

ISIS head David Albright explained at a 2015 Hudson Institute panel discussion that Iran’s self-sampling, even under video surveillance, is inadequate. He insisted the IAEA needed eyes there. “Inspectors need to be on the ground to identify dusty nooks and corners where violators forgot to dust; the mutually agreed upon areas are by definition the ones that violators know have been sanitized.”

The hapless IAEA concluded at the end of 2015: “A range of activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device were conducted in Iran prior to the end of 2003 as a coordinated effort, and some activities took place after 2003. The Agency also assesses that these activities did not advance beyond feasibility and scientific studies, and the acquisition of certain relevant technical competencies and capabilities. The Agency has no credible indications of activities in Iran relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device after 2009.” ut according to the new ISIS report, they couldn’t have looked too hard. IAEA’s access at Parchin was limited to only one of the buildings, but even there some uranium See IAEA on page 30

B

We Need to Talk

evelyN GordoN

W

hen the Jewish Federations of North America assembled in Tel Aviv last week for their annual General Assembly, they did so under the title “We Need to Talk,” the “we” meaning Israel and the Diaspora. In that spirit, let’s talk about one crucial difference between the two communities: the role of the nonOrthodox Jewish movements.

In America, these movements are important to maintaining Jewish identity, something Israelis often fail to understand. But in Israel, they are unnecessary to maintaining Jewish identity — something American Jews frequently fail to understand.

A 2013 Pew Research poll found that by every possible measure of Jewish identity, American Jews who define themselves as being “of no religion” score significantly worse than those who define themselves as Reform or Conservative Jews. For instance, 67 percent of “Jews of no religion” raise their children “not Jewish,” compared to just 10 percent of Reform Jews and 7 percent of Conservative Jews. Only 13 percent give their children any formal or informal Jewish education (day school, Hebrew school, summer camp, etc.), compared to 77 percent of Conservative Jews and 48 percent of Reform Jews. The intermarriage rate for “Jews of no religion” is 79 percent, compared to 50 and 27 percent, respectively, among Reform and Conservative Jews.

Indeed, 54 percent of “Jews of no religion” say being Jewish is of little or no importance to them, compared to just 14 percent of Reform

Jews and 7 percent of Conservative Jews, while 55 percent feel little or no attachment to Israel, compared to 29 percent of Reform Jews and 12 percent of Conservative Jews. And only 10 percent care about being part of a Jewish community, compared to 25 and 40 percent, respectively, of Reform and Conservative Jews. ranted, the non-Orthodox movements haven’t done very well at transmitting Jewish identity to subsequent generations; Orthodoxy is the only one of the three major denominations where the percentage of 18- to 29-year-olds isn’t significantly lower than the percentage of people over 50. Nevertheless, these movements do vastly better than “Jews of no religion,” which, for most non-Orthodox Jews, is the most likely alternative. Not surprisingly, any Jewish identity is better than none.

Yet the picture is very different among secular Israeli Jews, the closest Israeli equivalent to “Jews of no religion.” The vast majority marry other Jews, if only because most of the people they know are Jewish. Almost all raise their children Jewish because that’s the norm in their society (fertility rates are also significantly higher). More than 80 percent consider their Jewish identity important. Most obviously care about Israel, since they live there. And because they live there, they belong to the world’s largest Jewish community, whether they want to or not.

Secular Israeli Jews also engage in more Jewish practice than American “Jews of no religion.”

For instance, 87 percent attend a Passover Seder — more than double the rate among “Jews of no religion” (42 percent), and even surpassing Reform and Conservative Jews (76 and 80

G

percent, respectively). A third of secular Israeli Jews keep kosher at home, putting them on a par with Conservative Jews (31 percent) and vastly ahead of both Reform Jews (7 percent) and Jews of no religion (11 percent). And 47 percent fast on Yom Kippur — more than double the rate among American “Jews of no religion” (22 percent), though below both Reform and Conservative Jews (56 and 76 percent, respectively). n short, by almost any measure of Jewish identity, secular Israeli Jews aren’t equivalent to “Jews of no religion”; they’re roughly on a par with Reform and Conservative Jews.

And on some issues, like intermarriage, they even significantly outperform those movements.

It turns out that just living in a Jewish state is sufficient to maintain a Jewish identity equal to or greater than those of non-Orthodox American Jews.

Nor is this surprising because in Israel, maintaining a Jewish identity is much easier. In Israel, you’re surrounded by other Jews; in America, you’re surrounded by non-Jews. In Israel, Shabbat and Jewish holidays are automatically days off from work and school, and celebrating the holidays doesn’t mean standing out from your friends and neighbors; in America, observing a holiday entails taking vacation from work, pulling your children out of school and being different from almost everyone around you. In Israel, all (non-Arab) public schools teach Bible and other basics of Judaism like holiday traditions; in America, children who don’t attend a Jewish day school or after-school Jewish-studies program may never open a Bible or learn anything about such traditions. In Israel, most supermarkets

Any Jewish identity is better than none.

I

Toxicity brews on the Gaza border view from Central Park

Tehilla r.

GoldberG

Intermountain Jewish News

I

’m so worried about the situation on the Gaza border, yet I rarely hear a peep about it in the news — even in the Israeli news cycle.

Is this just the new normal that Israel is planning to tolerate? A dangerously burning border with tens of thousands of rioters trying to break through it? How is this the accepted status quo?

It’s been over six months. Six months! Add to this dangerous mix the recent spike in terrorist activity: fatal knifings, execution style murders, and more. It’s frightening.

But what I’m most worried about regarding the burning Southern envelope of Israel are its long-term effects.

Famously, during the nuclear power plant meltdown in Chernobyl, Ukraine, radioactive

matter was released, with detrimental health ramifications for so many far into the future.

Thank G-d, when it comes to the burning border, we’re not talking about radioactive or nuclear material. Nonetheless, toxic fumes from thousands of burning tires, and smoke inhalation from fires rekindled daily, have got to be dangerous to the future health of the Gaza Envelope communities, not to mention the young IDF soldiers.

Does Israel really want a health crisis on its hands in a few years? Will so many be diagnosed with respiratory diseases that, G-d forbid, we’ll one day have a “Gaza Fires” generation?

These fires, and constant exposure to them, are serious and dangerous.

I don’t know what the answer is, and I certainly don’t want war, but there must be a stronger response Israel can make to mitigate the

Continued from page 28 Verrall, a British admirer of Adolf Hitler whose own scurrilous pamphlet asked on its cover page, “Did Six Million Really Die?” For Faurisson and his followers, the laughable cracks in this assertion of scientific respectability were of far less importance than the irresistible conclusion. As Faurisson explained in a 1980 radio interview, the “lie” of the Holocaust “opened the way to a gigantic political and financial fraud of which the principal beneficiaries are the State of Israel and International Zionism, and the principal victims the German and the entire Palestinian people.” This defining statement of

Holocaust denial’s purpose still prevails in much of the Arab and Muslim world, and is, of course, state doctrine in the Iran, whose leaders honored Faurisson at a ceremony in Tehran in 2012.

Demonizing Zionism and Israel was a key goal of Holocaust deniers from the very beginning — a point that should be borne in mind the next time you hear someone say that anti-Semitism might be bad, but anti-Zionism is noble. As Robert Wistrich noted, France was the “main intellectual laboratory” for Holocaust denial after 1945, and opposition to Zionism was a key ideological motive for its purveyors. As early as the 1950s, Maurice Bardeche, a professor at the Sor-

T

impact of these fires and protect its citizens and soldiers.

Israel ought to take a stronger stance. Little children are breathing this black air. This hardly protects Israel’s security.

Clearly, the culprit is, yet again, Hamas in Gaza. he terrorists are smart. It is no longer obvious bombs they are throwing. Now they are sending explosive balloons to trick kids and lure them to touch them, transforming an adorable plaything into a Molotov balloon.

The air itself has become one big bomb, inhaled rather than exploding. The air is too dangerous to breathe.

What is the next step? Breathing masks distributed to all Israeli citizens in Southern Israel?

What is the long-term solution to this new form of terrorism — environmental terrorism?

I stand in pain and in awe of Israel’s constant need to develop and success in implementing new technology that sabotages terrorists’ goals of hurting Israelis. But for some reason, with this newest threat, the silence is deafening.

We do not hear much about anything at all being done. Perhaps it is depletes energy to be so constantly vigilant and inventive just to stay alive.

I say this from a place of worry, not judgment. The silence has been concerning.

IDF soldiers courageously work in terrifying conditions, facing moving targets of terrorists while breathing black smoke and developing dangerous coughs, for over a half a year now.

This is untenable.

Israel’s quiet response to this mass threat encourages lone wolf terrorists to go on the attack, on murder rampages. They feel confident.

Something must be done. The situation only escalates.

Chernobyl was an accident. Not this time: the danger is intentional terror by Hamas.

It’s up to Israel to find a way to halt this building threat — for the safety of Israelis today, and for the long-term protection of their health in the future.

Copyright Intermountain Jewish News

bonne with Nazi sympathies, joined with other wartime collaborators, including members of the SS, in attacking Israel as the “illegitimate daughter of America” built on stolen Arab land with funds extorted through the “Holocaust myth.”

This line was continued by Bardeche’s successor, Paul Rassinier, who identified as a left-wing socialist, and then by Faurisson himself. ow that Faurisson is dead, who is left to continue his legacy?

There is, of course, the extreme right in America and Europe — fanatics who revere Hitler and national socialism. But we also have to remember that Faurisson — a neo-fascist who supported the terrorist OAS campaign in the 1960s against French withdrawal from Algeria — enjoyed an audience on the left as well. Even without embracing his Holocaust-denial thesis, his conclusions about Zionism and Israel chimed

with the far left’s portrayal of the Jewish state as an illegitimate colonial outpost. In France itself, there was an additional twist in this sorry tale, with some leftists seduced by Faurisson arguing that the Holocaust was fabricated to divert attention from the contemporary crimes of modern capitalism!

In the ideologically febrile environment we live in today, it’s easy to see how an idea that comes from one extreme can be adapted and refined by its opposite. Such promiscuity is, and has always been, the greatest danger posed by Holocaust-deniers. Their politically calculated support for Palestinians grants them access to an audience on the left that is already susceptible to outlandish anti-Semitic assertions, as long as these come in the form of attacks upon Israel.

For that reason, we should not assume that Faurisson’s ideas will be buried with him.

Little children are breathing this black air.

Robert Faurisson...

don’t even stock non-kosher food; in America, keeping kosher requires effort.

But because Israelis don’t need the non-Orthodox movements to maintain a Jewish identity, they often fail to understand why these movements are genuinely important for American Jews. And because American Jews do need those movements, they often fail to understand why many Israelis dismiss them as unimportant. his mutual misunderstanding goes a long way toward explaining controversies like the Western Wall deal, which would have given the non-Orthodox movements equal space and visibility at the site. The non-Orthodox movements believed that this deal would bolster their members’ Jewish identity by making them feel more welcome in Israel in general and at the Kotel in particular; thus they were understandably outraged when the government scrapped it. But the deal was irrelevant to secular Israelis’ Jewish identity, so they weren’t upset by the government’s decision to cancel it in exchange for ultra-Orthodox support on issues more important to most Israeli voters.

If Israelis understood the gaping void the non-Orthodox movements fill in America, they might have realized that the Western Wall deal was genuinely important. And if American Jews understood that no such void exists in Israel, they might have realized that Israelis’ indifference to the deal wasn’t a slap at American Jewry, but merely a reflection of the issue’s irrelevance to Israelis’ Jewish identity, which inevitably made it low priority for them.

This understanding probably wouldn’t resolve many Israel-Diaspora disputes, but it might at least make them less bitter. And that, in itself, would be a step forward.

Evelyn Gordon is a journalist and commentator living in Israel.

N

T

THE JEWISH STAR November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778

The role of non-Orthodox movements: Let’s talk

29

November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

30

The JEWISH STAR

CAlendar of Events

Send your events to Calendar@TheJewishStar.com • Deadline noon Monday • Compiled by Rachel Langer Wednesday November 14

YU Community Beit Midrash [weekly]: For men and women. Dr. Rona Novick, “Social Responsibility in Today’s World,” 10:30 to 11:30 am. Mrs. Shoshana Schachter, “Avraham: First Lonely Man of Faith,” 11:45 am to 12:45 pm. 215 Lexington Ave, Manhattan. $25. YU.edu/sternlearn.

Thursday November 15

Veteran’s Day Celebration: Join us as at a ceremony honoring our veterans, with catered lunch from Wing Wan Kosher Chinese Restaurant.

Musical history tour with the Vic Vincent Group.

12 pm. Friedberg JCC, 15 Neil Court, Oceanside. $28. Lisa 516-634-4169.

Saturday November 17

Standing with Pittsburgh Communities throughout Long Island and New York were holding memorial services, stepping up their commitment to Yiddishkeit and the performance of mitzvot, and planning acts of solidarity with the Pittsburgh Jewish community. In the Five Towns, events were planned for Wednesday and Thursday nights (see listings in Calendar).

Wednesday October 31

YU Community Beit Midrash [weekly]: Learning opportunities open to men and women.

Dr. Rona Novick, “Social Responsibility in Today’s World,” 10:30 to 11:30 am. Mrs. Shoshana Schachter, “Avraham: The First Lonely Man of Faith,” 11:45 am to 12:45 pm. 215 Lexington Ave, Manhattan. $25. YU.edu/sternlearn.

Special Class: Chabad of Roslyn discusses Gd’s response to suffering and the Jewish response to terror and hate at a class in memory of the Pittsburgh victims. 8 pm. 75 Powerhouse Rd, Roslyn Heights. 516-484-3500 Evening of Solidarity: Chabad of the Five Towns and Chabad of Hewlett invite the community to “Whispers Between Worlds: Jewish Beliefs about the Afterlife,” with former Pittsburgh resident Rabbi Shais Taub. 8:30 pm. 44 Everit Ave, Hewlett. 516-295-2478; 516-295-3433

Thursday November 1

Community Kinnus: Tehillim and reflection following the massacre in Pittsburgh. Speeches by Rabbis Eytan Feiner, Simcha Scholar, and Noach Oelbaum. 8:30 to 9:30 pm. 728 Empire Ave, Far Rockaway.

Saturday November 3

Motzei Shabbos inspiration: Yeshiva Tiferes Moshe invites the community to an evening with Charlie Harary. 8:30 pm. 274 Sycamore St, West Hempstead.

Celebration: Renewal Melava Malka honors 13 local kidney donors. Get swabbed to see if you’re a match. 8:30 pm. 390 Broadway, Lawrence.

Sunday November 4

Annual Brunch: Shalom Task Force brunch honors Shani Traube, Frady Kess, Rachel Hercman, Dr. Sarah Chana Silverman, and Rabbi Per-

IAEA...

Continued from page 28 particles were detected.

“It is also important to note that the IAEA did not find that Iran’s explanations for the use of the Taleghan 1 building match the IAEA’s findings on the ground. Again, Iran did not address all the questions the IAEA had raised about this site. Moreover, the 2015 IAEA assessment is at odds with information in the archives revealed by Prime Minister Netanyahu,

etz Steinberg. 9:30 am. 775 Branch Blvd, Cedarhurst. $75. RSVP shalomtaskforce.org/brunch.

Superstar Gala: Zionist Organization of America.

Reception 4:30 pm. 1535 Broadway, Manhattan.

212-481-1500; dinner@zoa.org. $750.

Tuesday November 6

OneIsrael Dinner: OneIsrael Fund hosts keynote speaker Caroline Glick and MC Ben Brafman. 6:30 pm. 10 Desbrosses Street, Manhattan. 516-239-9202 x 19. dinner@oneisraelfund.org.

Wednesday November 7

YU Community Beit Midrash [weekly]: Learning opportunities open to men and women.

Dr. Rona Novick, “Social Responsibility in Today’s World,” 10:30 to 11:30 am. Mrs. Shoshana Schachter, “Avraham: The First Lonely Man of Faith,” 11:45 am to 12:45 pm. 215 Lexington Ave, Manhattan. $25. YU.edu/sternlearn.

An Evening of Commemoration: Kehillas Bais Yehudah Tzvi hosts special guest speaker Theodore Roosevelt IV on the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Free admission. 7:30 pm. 395 Oakland Ave, Cedarhurst. 516-374-9293.

Madraigos Parenting Support: Dr. David H. Rosmarin and Rabbi Ephraim Eliyahu Shapiro discuss “Managing Anxiety in Parents and in Our Children.” 7:45 pm. 728 Empire Ave., Far Rockaway. Free admission. 516-371-3250 x112.

Behind the Stories: Rabbi Nachman Seltzer speaks at the Levi Yitzchak Family Center. 7 pm.

564 Central Ave, Cedarhurst. $15.

& Yotav Eliach, and more. 6 pm. 112 E 75th St, Manhattan. event@edwinblack.com.

Saturday November 10

80th Anniversary: Rabbi Shmuel Klein and Joe Bobker speak at Shaarai Tefilah to commemorate Kristallnacht. “1938: The Great Divide of Jewish History.” 8:45 pm. 25 Central Ave, Lawrence. Free admission.

Sunday November 11

Motzei Shabbos: Yeshiva Tiferes Moshe invites the community to an evening with Charlie Harary. 8:30 pm. 2 Dogwood Rd, Great Neck.

Sunday November 18

Chofetz Chaim dinner: Rabbinical Seminary of America hosts its 85th annual dinner and chag hasemicha at Terrace on the Park. 5 pm. 52 11 111th St, Flushing. $350. 718-268-4684.

Monday November 19

Chai Lifeline: Annual gala to support children and families fighting serious illness. Special performance by Shulem Lemmer. 6 pm. Grand Hyatt, 109 East 42nd St, Manhattan. 212-6996658.

Tuesday November 20

Jewish Migration: Michael Chaplan presents the story of 1.5 million East European Jews who were processed at Ellis Island. 2 pm. 159 Bayview Avenue, Great Neck. Free admission.

Our Israel Story: Emunah of America invites you to its 70-year anniversary dinner, honoring Myrna Zisman, Rubin Margules, Lisa & Jonathan Schechter, and Samantha Bryk. 5 pm. 1515 Broadway, Manhattan. 917-287-5846.

Opening Minds: Ohel honors the Kaylies at its 49th annual gala. 5 pm. 811 Seventh Avenue, Manhattan. ohelgala.org.

Tefillah BeShanah [weekly]: Rabbi Evan Hoffman of Cong. Anshe Sholom will speak at Young Israel of North Woodmere in a series exploring Jewish prayer. 8 pm. 634 Hungry Hollow Rd, North Woodmere. YINW.org/event/tb.

Monday November 12

Sunday December 2

Annual Dinner: Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh holds its 48th annual dinner at Lincoln Square Synagogue. 6 pm. 180 Amsterdam Ave, Manhattan. $500 per couple. KBY.org/go/dinner.

Tuesday November 13

Tuesday November 27

Scholar in Residence: Rabbi Akiva Grunblatt speaks at the Queens Jewish Center’s fourth annual yahrzeit lecture and breakfast in memory of Rav Joseph Grunblatt. 9 am. 66-05 108th St, Forest Hills. 718-459-8432. $35.

Tuesday December 11

IBM and the Holocaust: Join the Suzanna Cohen Legacy Foundation in observing the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Hear from Edwin Black, Malcolm Hoenlein, Rabbis Elie Abadie

Kosher Taste: Come sample Long Island’s best glatt kosher food, wine and beer at an auction to benefit the Jewish Community Relations Council of Long Island. 7 pm to 9 pm. 401 Roslyn Rd, Roslyn Heights. $50. 516-433-0433.

Narcan Training: Learn to recognize signs of overdose and reverse it at the Friedberg JCC. Free Naloxone kit for participants. 7 pm. 15 Neil Court, Oceanside. Free. 516-634-4010.

Tefillah BeShanah [weekly]: Rabbi Arye Ben David of Ayeka explores Jewish prayer, at YI North Woodmere. 8 pm. 634 Hungry Hollow Rd, North Woodmere. YINW.org/event/tb.

Tefillah BeShanah [weekly]: Rabbi Moshe Taragin of Yeshivat Har Etzion will speak at Young Israel of North Woodmere in a series exploring Jewish prayer. 8 pm. 634 Hungry Hollow Rd, North Woodmere. YINW.org/event/tb.

and potentially with the discoveries revealed by the Prime Minister to the UN General Assembly in September 2018 about equipment and material being present in a Tehran warehouse is related to Iran’s nuclear weapons effort. None of the IAEA safeguards and JCPOA-related reports reflects whether the IAEA has, at a minimum, asked for clarifications from Iran about any of these allegations in writing, which is a wellestablished IAEA practice when such concerns have emerged.

For example, the IAEA quickly sent a letter to Iran following allegations by the Iranian opposition group National Council of Resistance of Iran in August 2002 about a secret nuclear

site near Natanz, an allegation that turned out to be true.”

In September, at the United Nations General Assembly, Netanyahu called out the IAEA for its lack of action.

“I provided hard evidence of Iran’s plans to build nuclear weapons and its plans to deceive the international community,” he said. “Months have passed, the IAA has still not taken any actions. It has not posed a single question to Iran.

It has not demanded to inspect a single new site discovered in that secret archive.

“So given this inaction, I decided to reveal today something else that … has not been shared publicly before. Today I’m disclosing

for the first time that Iran has another secret facility in Tehran. A secret atomic warehouse for storing massive amounts of equipment and material for Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program.”

Folks, the IAEA is a joke, as is the JCPOA shoved down our throats by the Obama administration, and thankfully vacated by President Trump.

The part that’s not funny is that the lack of inspections, and the ignoring of new information, may lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths, not just in Israel but throughout the Sunni Muslim world, and in the United States, which Iran calls “the great Satan.”

Wednesday November 8

Tefillah BeShanah [weekly]: Dr. Jay Goldmintz of Koren Publishers will speak at Young Israel of North Woodmere in a series exploring Jewish prayer. 8 pm. 634 Hungry Hollow Rd, North Woodmere. YINW.org/event/tb.

Tuesday December 18

31

Women from the Five Towns and throughout Long Island participated in the international Shabbos Project’s giant challah bake last Wednesday night at The Sands Atlantic Beach. The Jewish Star photographer Sue Grieco was there .

Top from left: SKA student volunteers Michal Abadi, Rachee Ganchrow, Batya Altmark, Tzipari Eichier, Eleora Fine, Tsivia Deitsch and Abby Aaron goof around before the baking starts.

Hewlett’s Miriam Singer helps 9-year-old Reba get ready. And Vivienne Frank and Effie Mayerfeld chat before the bake starts.

Middle, clockwise: Irit Whitman, Joy Lieber, Henya Storch and Nechama Schechter offer refreshments and hospitality. 12-yearold Rina Handler of Cedarhurst washes her hands. Judy Rubin, emcee at the 2014 Challah Bake, hugs her granddaughters Allie, 4, and Rivkala Rosner, 8. Student volunteers Mindy Lowy, from TAG, and Risa Harris, from SKA. Bottom from left: Debbie Oliveri and Rebecca Sherman, and TAG student volunteers Devorah Stern, Shevy Hahn, and Shayna Mezei.

THE JEWISH STAR November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778

Time to bake challah

Your Stress-Free Auto Leasing Center

u o y e Ar yet ?

L A P a

Over 3000 cars in stock.

Same Day Delivery Don’t delay.

Call us today for your deal

718.975.9000 2750 Nostrand Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11210, www.PlazaAutoLeasing.com Lowest prices. Any make. Any model. Any time.

Open: Sunday 10am - 1pm | Monday - Thursday 9am - 7pm | Friday 9am - 1pm

DCA Lic#: 1312589 DMV#: 7084665

996656

November 2, 2018 • 24 Cheshvan, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

32