The Jewish Star

The JEWISH STAR

TheJewishStar.com

Vayetzei • Friday, November 24, 2017 • 6 Kislev 5778 • Luach page 17 • Torah columns pages 16–17 • Vol 16, No 44

The Newspaper of our Orthodox communities

Angel in Lido: ‘Spanish’ rav at beach shul

By Ed Weintrob As day school advocates ramp up their push to win more state funding, a panel on the tuition crisis agreed on motzei Shabbat that yeshiva parents need to empower those advocates — by voting.

At a forum on “Tackling the Tuition Crisis,” at the Young Israel of Woodmere, Lawrence Board of Education Vice President Asher Mansdorf scolded Five Towners for sitting home on election day.

“Because we did not go out to vote, we are considered of secondary importance to our elected officials,” Mansdorf said. “In this neighborhood, the Jewish vote has become an absolute afterthought. Everybody who runs in the Five Towns now knows that it is more important to get votes out of Long Beach and Elmont, because in this neighborhood nobody is going out to vote.”

Rabbi Marc D. Angel, rabbi emeritus of the 478-year-old Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in Manhattan, is now serving as interim rabbi of the Lido Beach Synagogue.

“There is a spirit in Lido Beach that cannot be matched,” Rabbi Angel said. “We have ideals and a grand religious vision. I pray that as we work together, we will strengthen and enlarge the congregation.”

The author of two Rabbi Marc Angel books on Rambam, he will give a class in Mishneh Torah on Shabbat afternoons before Minchah, in addition to delivering sermons and divrei Torah on See Angel in Lido on page 8

The Jewish Star / Ed Weintrob

To tackle tuition crisis, stop complaining and start voting At YIW on motzei Shabbat (from left): Lawrence Board of Education VP Asher Mansdorf, Teach NYS Executive Director Maury Litwack, and UJA Federation Director of Day School Initiatives Chavie Kahn.

I need people who are going to vote, I need people who are going to show up in Albany (and) meet with their legislators,” said Teach NYS Executive Director Maury Litwack. “We need people who are going

to know who their legislators are and hold them accountable.”

“People here need to understand that the reason they need to vote is that that’s See Tuition crisis on page 8

Brafman urges cash to boost Israel’s cancer fight The author is a prominent resident of Lawrence.

By Benjamin Brafman As a busy criminal defense attorney with a roster of high-profile clients, I am not known to shy away from a fight. It doesn’t hurt that I grew up in Brooklyn, the scrappy son of immigrants and Holocaust survivors.

But nothing could have prepared me for the fight of my life, when my wife, Lynda, was

diagnosed with breast cancer early on in our marriage. We had two young kids at home, and Lynda had to undergo a radical mastectomy and a year of chemotherapy before she was declared cancer-free and cleared for reconstructive surgery.

Ben Brafman

I credit her oncologist, Dr. Yashar Hirshaut, with saving Lynda’s life.

What I did not realize at the time was that Lynda’s lifesaving treatment was made possible by the yeoman’s work of scientists working long hours in unglamorous labs trying to understand the biological forces that drive cancer — and how to stop them.

So when G-d blessed me with professional success, I resolved to join the fight against

this scurrilous disease. I turned to Dr. Hirshaut for advice on where to direct my support. His answer surprised me: Israel.

Though a tiny state with a population of just over 8 million, Israel has made disproportionately large contributions to the fight against cancer. A breakthrough in the 1980s by an Israeli scientist, Eli Canaani, was critical to the development of Gleevec, a drug See Brafman on page 8

Aided Syrian women ‘love’ Israel, see ‘true face’

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ing for help from Israel. The effort developed into an expanded program in June 2016 as humanitarian needs continued to grow.

“Our goal is to provide security and create good neighborly relations for people on both sides of the border,” Lt. Col. E (full name withheld for security reasons), the commander of Operation Good Neighbor, told JNS. “We will continue to do so in the best and most efficient way possible.”

According to the IDF, the operation has provided medical treatment to more than

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By Adam Abrams, JNS Unprecedented footage broadcast on Israeli television Sunday showed Syrian women and children crossing into Israel for medical treatment with assistance from the IDF, in the latest spotlighting of the Jewish state’s humanitarian aid to its war-torn neighbor.

The scope of the IDF’s “Operation Good Neighbor” mission had been revealed for the first time in July. The operation was initiated several years ago as an ad-hoc measure to treat Syrians who came to the border ask-

4,000 Syrians, including hundreds of children. The military has transferred more than 119,000 gallons of heating and cooking fuel as well as 40 tons of flour, 225 tons of food, 12,000 packages of baby formula, 1,800 packages of diapers, 12 tons of shoes and 55 tons of cold weather clothing.

Additionally, the IDF is facilitating the construction of two clinics within Syria that will be run by local residents and NGOs to support some 80,000 Syrians living near IsSee Syrians on page 8

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By Ron Kampeas, JTA WASHINGTON — The opening last Friday of the $500-million Museum of the Bible at times seemed like a pro-Israel gala, featuring a rabbi, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, the Israeli minister of tourism, and the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador, celebrated the museum as a signifier of the Jewish claim to Jerusalem. The Bible nurtured Jews through 2,000 years of exile until they were able to “rebuild the original DC — David’s Capital,” he said.

Yariv Levin, the tourism minister, read a letter from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who sent “warm greetings from Jerusalem, the eternal and undivided capital of Israel.”

The museum was gifted to the National Mall by one of America’s leading evangelical families, the founders of the Hobby Lobby chain. It celebrates Jews and Judaism as the noble, beloved and even feared antecedents to Christianity, and argues that its best modern expression is in the state of Israel. And it makes the case that the Bible is not merely to be studied but to be believed.

Speaking at the dedication, Steven Green, president of Hobby Lobby and the museum’s chairman of the board, said museum-goers should come away realizing that the Bible “has had a positive impact on their lives in so many different ways and when they leave they will be inspired to open it.”

The deference to Judaism is evident in the museum logo, a B flat on its face resembling the tablets of the Ten Commandments, and the museum store, where Star of David pendants glitter next to crucifixes.

The museum also makes the Bible unmistakably American. One permanent exhibit is dedicated to the biblical underpinnings of the abolition of slavery and of the civil rights movement.

The U.S.-born Dermer picked up on the theme of his native land as a nation whose origins were

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in the Bible, saying that “those ideas inscribed in your founding documents and etched on your statues are not merely the values of America, they are the values of the Bible.”

Scholarship at the museum is pervasive, but employed a la Cecil B. DeMille: to prove the Bible is not just compelling but true.

A day at the museum — officials say a thorough tour would take 72 hours — may leave visitors smarter about the Bible’s origins, the stated agenda of the museum. But they may also suspect that the goal of this knowledge is not to encourage critique but belief. The approach is closer to seminary than religious studies department.

Designers of the museum, said Executive Director Tony Zeiss, had two overarching criteria: “Will this lift up the Bible, and will it lift up people?” The museum employs scholarship to make that case.

“We engaged leading scholars around the

country,” Green, the scion of the family that runs the Hobby Lobby chain, said. But scholarship alone wouldn’t sell it, so like most contemporary museums, there are plenty of experiential exhibits.

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Visitors are enveloped in water-lighting effects as they pass through the sea in the “Exodus from Egypt” gallery (above) and view a tower of 12 stones, each marked with the name of one of the tribes, as they cross the Jordon to enter the Promised Land (below).

Alan Karchmer/Museum of the Bible

“If you put a Bible under a glass case in a language I can’t read, it will only hold my attention for so long,” Green explained.

Judaism as parent suffuses just about every exhibit, including one that media and special guests walked through earlier this week: The Hebrew Bible. It’s an immersive 30-minute stroll through animations and special effects illustrated by supple, handsome animated Hebrews. (The Burning Bush, a riot of bright yellow light in a darkened room, was genuinely thrilling.) That’s more than twice as long as the 12-1/2-minute immersive New Testament experience.

On the fifth floor of this six-floor mammoth comprising much of a Washington block are artifacts contributed by Israel’s Antiquities Authority.

The exhibit is permanent, but the Israeli authority will rotate the items about 1,500 at a time.

The debt to Judaism is seen in the Jewishstyle food at Manna, the rooftop restaurant run by a couple who wrote “The New Jewish Table” cookbook. (Two kosher items per meal will be available at the restaurant.)

Judaism and its origins in Israel are evident as well in a temporary exhibit, through May, organized by Jerusalem’s Bible Lands Museum, which served as a consultant to the Washington museum.

The exhibit, which features finds from Khirbet Queiafa, a village dating to the time of King David, begins with a replica of the Tel Dan Stele.

The stone table appears to validate the historical accuracy of the battle of Jezreel, where Yoram, king of Israel, and Ahaziah, king of Judah, were killed, as recounted in 2 Kings 9.

The stele is important because it contains the oldest reference to King David, who lived two centuries or so earlier.

“We want to show how this exhibit relates to the time of David,” said MiYoung Im, the museum’s antiquities curator. “We can’t prove where David lived — we can show that he lived.”

THE JEWISH STAR November 24, 2017 • 6 Kislev 5778

Judaism stars in Hobby Lobby’s Bible museum

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5 amazing documents hidden during the Shoah

By Josefin Dolsten, JTA Last month, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research made an astonishing announcement: the discovery of 170,000 Jewish documents thought to have been destroyed during the Holocaust.

The papers, which date from the mid-18th century through World War II, survived destruction attempts by both the Nazis and the Soviets.

In 1941, as part of a program to loot Jewish museums and institutions, the Nazis raided YIVO, which is now based in New York but then was headquartered in Vilna. A group of Jewish slave laborers called the “Paper Brigade” smuggled some books, papers and artwork into the Vilna ghetto — risking their lives in the process. After World War II, a non-Jewish Lithuanian librarian, Antanas Ulpis, hid the collection in the basement of a church amid a campaign by the Soviet government to rid the country of religion.

In 1991, the Lithuanian government said it found 150,000 documents that Ulpis had kept in the church, but the new discovery appears to surpass that collection both in terms of size and the condition of the documents, said Jonathan Brent, YIVO’s executive director.

Together the two discoveries make up “the largest collection of material about Jewish life in Eastern Europe that exists in the world,” Brent told JTA. Brent said the documents shed new light on the lives of Eastern European Jews, whose history is often told as a series of persecutions.

“It was nothing but pogroms,” Brent recalled of being taught about Ashkenazi history as a child. “And what this opens up to is it was so much more than that, that indeed the Jews had a real civilization that flourished.”

This communal record books lists the regulations for being part of a Talmud study group in Lazdijai, Lithuanua.

Thos Robinson/Getty Images for YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

The Lithuanian government found the documents in 2016 and told YIVO about them earlier this year. Most of the material remains in Lithuania, but 10 items are being shown through January at YIVO, which is working with the Lithuanian government to archive and digitize the collection.

Here is a look at a handful of the documents displayed at YIVO and what they teach about Jewish life in Eastern Europe.

1. Communal record book, Lazdijai, Lithuania, 1836 The book, called a Pinkas, was written for a Talmud study association and used to record information about its members, such as births, deaths and business transactions. It is decorated with ornate illustrations and states that in order to be a part of the group, members must study a full page of Talmud together.

“What you see here in the way it’s decorated is the pride and the care that they felt about their life and their desire to memorialize it for generations,” Brent said.

2. Letter written by Sholem Aleichem from a health resort, Badenweiler, Germany, 1910 The famed Yiddish author had health problems and would spend time in health resorts far away from friends and family. In this note, Sholem Aleichem makes fun of Leon Neustadt, a leader in the Warsaw Jewish community, writing that a biblical verse referring to nonkosher animals forbidden to Jews actually refers to Neustadt.

3. Agreement between a water carrier union and the Ramayles Yeshiva, Vilna, 1857 In the document, the group of carriers

promises to donate a Torah scroll and raise money to purchase a Talmud set for the prominent yeshiva in exchange for using a room for religious services.

Water carriers, workers who ferried water to people’s homes, were “the lowest economic rung of society, and the fact they had a contract with the yeshiva was significant,” Brent said. “What this modest document shows us is that this community functioned in such a way that the very top of the community and the very bottom of the community communicated with each other and helped each other.”

4. 10 poems by Avrom Sutzkever, Vilna, 1943 The prominent Yiddish poet wrote these on top of old documents, creating a makeshift book for his poems in the Vilna ghetto, where paper was scarce. These are the earliestknown versions of the poems Sutzkever wrote in the Vilna ghetto, which he reproduced several times and knew by heart. He composed some of them while living in the woods as a partisan fighter. Writing the poems in the book helped give other ghetto residents greater access to them.

5. Autobiography of Bebe Epstein, Vilna, 1933-34 Epstein was 12 when she wrote this book and submitted it to YIVO for a youth autobiography contest. The fifth-grader writes about the day-to-day happenings of her childhood, such as dealing with a strict teacher: “At first, he was good to us. Later he got strict, and even stricter.” Epstein also detailed various illnesses she suffered from and complained about having too much homework. Epstein was later forced to live in the Vilna Ghetto and in concentration camps, but she survived the war and moved to the United States.

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By Ruth Ellen Gruber, JTA CASALE MONFERRATO, Italy — It’s always Chanukah in this picturesque town in northern Italy’s Piedmont region, where Jews have lived for more than 500 years, reaching a peak of 850 at about the time that Jews here were granted civil rights in 1848.

These days, only two Jewish families live in Casale, but the town still boasts one of Italy’s most ornate synagogues, a rococo gem that dates to the 16th century. The synagogue, part of a larger museum complex, is a major attraction for tourists, who are drawn to an opulent sanctuary with huge chandeliers, colorfully painted walls and lots of gilding; a former women’s section that’s been transformed into a Judaica and Jewish history museum; and the synagogue’s basement, formerly a matzah bakery and now home to the Museum of Lights.

Chanukah here is commemorated with a year-round exhibit featuring dozens of menorahs created by international contemporary artists. The collection has some 185 menorahs, according to Adriana Ottolenghi, whose husband, Giorgio, has been president of Casale’s Jewish community since the 1950s. There is no other museum in the world quite like it.

“We receive more every year, and each year at Chanukah there is a public ceremony, where we light menorahs and welcome the new pieces,” she said.

Only 30 to 40 can be displayed at a time in the vaulted underground chambers. The only time the collection was shown in its entirety was in Casale’s centuries-old castle as part of an event connected to the 2015 Milan Expo.

The Museum of Lights’ hanukkiyot come in an amazing variety of shapes, sizes, colors and media. Many resemble traditional menorahs: a straight line of candles or a candelabra with eight branches, with a ninth branch for the shamash candle used to kindle them. Some — but not all — of the menorahs can be lit and used on the holiday.

“Artists were given a completely free rein to create a functional object or a purely evocative one,” curator Maria Luisa Caffarelli wrote in the collection’s catalog.

Each menorah is what designer Elio Carmi, who co-founded the collection in the mid-1990s with the non-Jewish artist Antonio Recalcati and other artist friends, describes as an

One of the nearly 200 menorahs at the Museum of Lights in Casale Monferrato, Italy.

An inside view of the synagogue in Casale Monferrato, Italy, which dates to the 16th century.

“homage to the story of Chanukah” and its message of the triumph of light over darkness. They conceived the project as a way to highlight Jewish culture as a source of artistic inspiration, promote creativity based in Jewish tradition and underscore the vitality of Jews in contemporary society.

“The idea was born to show that Jews, though small in number, are determined,” said Carmi, who is the vice president of the Casale Jewish community, “and to use interpretations of the Chanukah menorah to demonstrate, symbolically, the continuity of the community.”

Each menorah in the museum is a personal interpretation of the Festival of Lights and its symbolism. The Italian artist Stefano Della Porta, for example, used ceramics and steel to create a menorah that appears to be made from giant burnt

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matches. American-born artist Robert Carroll created his menorah from olive wood, red Verona granite and brass. It has a sinuous, trunk-like base that supports eight branches that open out like a flower, each supporting a candle.

Carmi and his friends provided the first hanukkiyot for the project — Carmi’s was a silver-plated metal bar with small cups for the eight candles and the shamash — and then reached out to others for contributions. Other artists — Jews and non-Jews, mainly from Italy but also from other countries — soon began making their own menorahs and presenting them to the growing collection. All of the works are donated, most of them by the artists themselves.

“It was like a chain of artists,” Carmi said. “And wellknown artists began to be attracted.”

Among those is Arnaldo Pomodoro, one of Italy’s leading sculptors. His menorah, presented in 2013, is a horizontal metal girder that supports the nine candles and is decorated with abstract symbols.

“I tried to bring out a series of abstract, imaginary signs to create a story that would connect, on a general level, with the idea of thought, experience and memory; without, however, wanting to enter into the multi-faceted complexities of the symbology of the Jewish world,” Pomodoro describes in the catalog.

Ultimately, Carmi said, the Museum of Lights is about “Judaism, art and identity.”

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THE JEWISH STAR November 24, 2017 • 6 Kislev 5778

Old Italian shul celebrates Chanukah year-round

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Why is the far right on rise in penitent Austria?

By Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA VIENNA — In recent years, Austrian officials have consistently acknowledged their country’s support of Adolf Hitler, an Austria native, and his war of annihilation against Jews. In the early 2000s, the government dropped the claim that the country was mostly a victim of German Nazism, citing “the special responsibility imposed on Austria by its recent history.” Instead, teaching about the Holocaust has become mandatory, with visits to former death camps and teacher training in Israel.

The government has paid nearly $1 billion since 2005 in compensation to Holocaust victims, and since 2012, Holocaust memorial projects have popped up at an unprecedented rate.

They include the opening of a learning center at the Mauthausen former death camp, a monument for Vienna’s deported Jews and an international exposition, commissioned by the national railway firm, on its own role in the murder of some 65,000 Austrian Jews.

Yet in spite of this increased sensitivity, nationalism still has a firm grip on Austrian society: The far-right Freedom Party, which was founded in 1956 by a former Nazi SS officer, is on the rise. In last month’s national elections, the party garnered 26 percent of the vote with a platform that included denouncing “forced multiculturalism, globalization and mass immigration.”

As an ally of the center-right People’s Party, which won the most votes, the Freedom Party is poised to enter Austria’s government for the second time — it was part of the governing coalition in 2000.

Amid the ascendancy of far-right populism across Europe, its revival in Austria is seen as particularly alarming, as it suggests a failure by society to learn from its recent history. After all, if a country that does nearly everything “right” when it comes to Holocaust education can fail to inoculate itself to the kind of hatred that makes genocide possible, what hope is there for other countries in the region, such as Hungary and Poland, which face rising nationalism amid complicated reckonings with their own Holocaust legacies?

Experts on Austria say the rise of its xenophobic far right is connected to fears over Muslim immigration, as well as a perceived need to protect the nation’s sovereignty from an increasingly interventionist European Union. But it’s also connected to the Austrian government, which deflected its guilt for decades and failed to purge Nazi supporters from positions of influence.

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leader, who has called on Chancellor-elect Sebastian Kurz to prevent the Freedom Party from reaching power.

“It’s a facade,” Deutsch told JTA of Strache’s statements against anti-Semitism and racism.

“Despite this talk, they position themselves as the go-to address for people with Nazi sympathies.”

A case in point: On Nov. 9, when the outgoing chancellor, Christian Kern, spoke in parliament to commemorate the 79th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Freedom Party’s lawmakers were the only ones who demonstratively did not applaud.

“These subtle signs are how they signal and excite their supporters,” Segal said. “If the Freedom Party will be part of the government, it will A subway passenger walks by an artwork about the Holocaust at Vienna’s Herminnen- become difficult to commemorate the Holocaust gasse subway station.

Cnaan Liphshiz in the same dignified way that we have now in Austria.”

Unlike neighboring Germany, Austria did not have an orgaOn Oct. 19, a Vienna city official inaugurated a Holocaust menized, judicial denazification effort in the aftermath of World morial installation outside the Herminengasse subway station, War II — in fact, no one has been convicted of Nazi war crimes near an alley in which the Nazis imprisoned hundreds of Jews in Austria in more than 35 years. during the war. From there they were taken to be deported as “In Germany, and quite a few of the countries that were non-Jewish locals watched from their balconies. The inauguraunder Nazi occupation, many people involved in Nazism were tion ceremonies were held during election season; nearby hung convicted or at least not permitted to be civil servants, teachers, a giant poster of a smiling Strache bearing the slogan “Fairness.” police officers, etc.,” said Tina Walzer, a Vienna historian. “But To Efraim Zuroff, a hunter of Nazis and historian for the Sithis has never happened in Austria and we are witnessing the mon Wiesenthal Center who is based in Israel, the success of the results of this crucial difference.” far right in Austria reflects how Holocaust commemoration projMany in Austria feel powerless over the Freedom Party’s re- ects in urban areas hardly reach people who live in smaller towns cent successes. Its strong showing last month follows an even — the Freedom Party base. greater electoral feat in last year’s presidential elections in “Holocaust education, which only recently really began develwhich the party’s candidate, Norbert Hofer, won 49.7 percent in oping in Austria, happens there in pockets — in the big cities, in the first round of voting. Hofer lost in the second round to the the artists’ scene,” he said. “It has big visibility but isn’t penetratleft-leaning candidate Alexander Van der Bellen, 53 percent to ing the way it has in Germany, where the effort was much more 46 percent. robust.”

The close election indicates that far-right populism is a “tickZuroff said this has a lot to do with Austria’s failure to prosing political bomb,” warned Barbara Wesel, a senior Europe cor- ecute Nazis. respondent for Germany’s Deutsche Welle broadcaster.

To some activists against racism, the Freedom Party’s rise is The Jewish Community in Vienna considers the Freedom motivation to invest even greater efforts in Holocaust commemoParty a racist entity, according to Oskar Deutsch, the community ration.

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7 THE JEWISH STAR November 24, 2017 • 6 Kislev 5778

Come Play with Us!

Young Israel of North Bellmore founding members Shelly Wortzman, Elinor Wortzman and Laura Nierenberg, and Rabbi Chaim Bogopulsky.

YI of North Bellmore honors its founders Cultimating its 50th anniversary celebration, the Young Israel of North Bellmore held a brunch to honor its founding members.

The seven founding couples who helped launch an Orthodox shul in North Bellmore were were Susan and Ira Bromley, Rae and Charles Glickman, Gertrude and Edward Kalish, Elinor and Herbert Lifschitz, Vivian and Samuel Mannis, Laura and Dr. Harold Nie-

renberg, and Elinor and Sheldon Wortzman.

The brunch was attended by some of these founding members and their families, as well as current members and friends of the congregation.

The Young Israel of North Bellmore is an active congregation, led by Rabbi Chaim Bogopulsky, who is only the third spiritual leader to serve there.

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of the Rockaways and Five Towns. It provides emergency and ambulatory care to in southern Queens County and southwestern Nassau County, is a state designated Stroke Center, and a recipient of the Gold-Plus Get with the Guidelines-Stroke Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Association.

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Sheahan, manager of the St. John’s Blood Bank. “During times of distress, people like to feel as if they’ve done something to help. Donating blood not only helps, but saves lives.”

St. John’s is the only hospital located in the densely populated, culturally and economically diverse, and medically underserved areas

944285

St. John’s Episcopal Hospital partnered with the Community Blood Center to host its first blood drive since 2010.

The hospital, which hosted the blood drive in its BOCES Training Center in Far Rockaway, decided to sponsor one now due to the recent natural disasters across the country which caused an increase in the need for blood transfusions, as well as the yearly shortage of blood donations during the holiday season due to winter illnesses and people’s unusually busy schedules.

“When a person donates blood, they get the amazing benefit of knowing that they have saved the life of an infant, child, injured person, or cancer patient,” said Bridget

November 24, 2017 • 6 Kislev 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

8

Tuition crisis...

Angel in Lido...

Continued from page 1 going to enable them to save money by making [Maury] powerful,” Mansdorf said.

The panel, moderated by YIW Rabbi Hershel Billet, called for the community to mobilize around the crisis and work optimistically toward a solution.

“The last thing you should do is walk out of here and say this is a fruitless effort,” said Litwack. “You can’t say something is the number one problem in our community and expect a solution overnight.”

“Education is an expensive propostion,” said UJA Federation Director of Day School Initiatives Chavie Kahn. “We are here tonight because we have a problem: The business model is broken.”

She urged day schools to “emulate what other independent schools have done: build endowments,” with UJA Federation commited to assisting this effort with matching funds.

Several Five Towns area schools are participating in this effort, she added. Local schools are also involved in NYS Teach efforts, Litwack said.

“Tuition and fundraising is not enough,” Kahn said. “There is no one magic bullet.”

While some states have passed voucher programs to help parents pay their private school tutition, this won’t fly in blue states like New York and New Jersey, Litwack cau-

Continued from page 1 Friday nights and Shabbat mornings and afternoons.

Lido Beach is a residential community on the eastern side of the Long Beach barrier island. The Modern Orthodox shul hosts frequent shabbatons and daily minyanim.

Rabbi Angel, who was president of the Rabbinical Council of America from 1990 to 1992, founded the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals and is co-founder of the International Rabbinic Fellowship, an association of Modern Orthodox Rabbis.

The author or editor of 36 books, Rabbi Angel writes and lectures extensively.

Among his recent books are “Foundations of Sephardic Spirituality: The Inner Life of Jews of the Ottoman Empire,” “Maimonides, Spinoza and Us: Toward an Intel-

tioned. But obtaining fair reimbursement for the cost of the secular education component of day school tuition is even better, because that funding wont be income based, he said.

Litwack, whose orgaization is a project of the OU Advocacy Center, said that in recent years “we changed the argument. We made the argument to the state that this is” a matter of fairness.

“Until we started to talk to the legislators about the inequity, they never heard of that before,” he said. “They didn’t know about the basic inequity.”

Hundreds of day school parents and their communal leaders lobbied in Albany this year to make this point and “to show you’re a growing force,” Litwack said. “The impact when we are organized leads to incredible results.”

He marveled at having done “something we never had before — we had unity, achdus, with Schechter, yeshivish and Modern Orthodox schools all working together.”

In lobbying “like charter schools, like other advocacy groups,” Teach NYS has made inroads, he said, including winning funds for science, technology and math teachers.

The panelists agreed that there is no Constitutional barrier to funding Jewish schools when the funds are earmarked for secular education or operating costs such as security and transportation.

Syrians...

Continued from page 1 rael’s border in the Golan Heights region.

Another clinic is being constructed on an IDF outpost on the Israeli side of the border.

Assaf Orion, a senior research fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, explained that since the start of the Syrian Civil War, Israel has been “wise to avoid being drawn into the quagmire, its policy focusing on safeguarding well-defined red lines” on issues such as cross-border attacks and weapons transfers to terrorist organizations like Hezbollah. Yet when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime “attacked the Syrian populace, besieged its towns, starved them, and deprived them of water, electricity and medical services, Israel chose to reach out to communities across its borders,” he said.

“This humanitarian approach, being morally right on its own virtue, has other and real effects, both in changing perceptions of Israel among its closest neighbors in Syria, and by the fact that no attacks on Israel ever came from the areas held by these communities, unlike from regime-held sectors,” Orion, the former head of the Strategic Division in the IDF General Staff’s Planning Directorate, told JNS. Sunday’s media segment highlighting the IDF operation aired on Israel’s Hadashot News, and included interviews with Syrian women who expressed deep gratitude to Israel for its humanitarian assistance amid the ongoing Syrian Civil War. According to the Hadashot report, 21 Syrian mothers and 23 children crossed into Israel seeking medical treatment during the night that the segment was filmed.

“It has become commonplace” for Syrian civilians to seek medical treatment from Israel, a Syrian mother told the television network’s reporter. “Everyone wants to come here. Adults too, not just the children.”

“This must be very strange for them,” IDF officer Gil Giladi said on the broadcast.

A Syrian child’s artwork.

“They’re dealing with ‘the enemy.’”

Another Syrian mother stated, “Israel was thought of as the enemy…Now that you are helping us, most [Syrians in the Golan Heights] are with you. They love Israel. They see the true face…the reality.”

When the Hadashot reporter asked for clarification regarding who Syrians view as the enemy, a Syrian woman said, “All of them: Islamic State, Hezbollah, Bashar [Assad].

They’re all the same.”

The Syrians who were interviewed remained anonymous due to fears of reprisal for seek-ing out aid from the Jewish state.

“They execute people next to the mosque,” said a Syrian woman from a province controlled by the Islamic State terror group.

“I wish we could stay here for good,” said another.

Israel and Syria have no diplomatic relations. Although the countries maintain a fragile truce agreement established in 1974, they essentially remain in an ongoing state of war, with cross-border exchanges of fire becoming more frequent in recent years.

The latest revelation of Israeli medical aid for Syrian civilians came amid increased tension along Israel’s northern border with Syria.

Last Saturday, an IDF tank fired a “warn-ing shot” across the border in response to the Syrian military constructing an outpost in the demilitarized zone of the Golan Heights, in direct violation of the 1974 truce’s prohibition on heavy construction tools or military vehicles in that area.

Brafman...

lectually Vibrant Judaism,” “The Wisdom of Solomon and Us,” and a commentary on Pirkei Avot. He is the editor of Conversations, the journal of his institute.

“Rabbi Angel and his wife have been part of our kehillah for many years and we are all thrilled to have him serve as our interim rabbi,” said President Alex Berkovitch. He said that Rabbi Angel would assist in the selection of a permanent replacement for the shul’s former spiritual leader, Rabbi Shaul Rappeport.

The Lido Beach shul “is a unique institution in an amazing community that we have enjoyed for many years,” Rabbi Angel said. “The members are dedicated to tefillah and learning, the sanctuary is beautifully finished, and the social hall is perfect for kiddushim and simchas.”

bolster the fight against cancer while combating the problem of “brain drain” from Israeli research institutions. In the four decades since its establishment, ICRF has distributed more than $60 million through 2,300 research grants to scientists at 24 Israeli institutions — from post-doctoral fellows to Nobel Prize-winners.

To identify the most deserving recipients, several dozen esteemed scientists and

Continued from page 1 that has saved the lives of millions diagnosed with leukemia. Velcade, a drug used to treat bone marrow cancer, was based on the research of two Israeli professors, Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover, and their collaborator Irwin Rose, who went on to win the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2004.

Israeli scientists discovered the role that mutations in the p53 gene play in causing cancerous tumors, and how a minor mutation in the RAD51 gene increases the risk of breast cancer in women with the BRCA2 gene mutation. It was ICRFsupported scientists at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Hadassah Medical Center who contributed to the platform science that resulted in the development of Doxil, the first drug encapsulated in a microscopic fat bubble for direct delivery to a tumor site.

In case after case, significant advances in the science of cancer be- Israeli scientists have helped develop multiple life-savKelvin Ma/Bloomberg gan in Israel. And then there is this ing cancer drugs. important fact: Because of a lower salary structure and overhead costs, research doctors from throughout North America dollars go much further in Israel than in al- meet annually in New York for a rigorous two-day proposal review. The decisionmost any other developed nation.

So if you want your support to have maxi- making can be wrenching because life and mal impact, Dr. Hirshaut told me, invest in death hangs in the balance. That’s because every year, dozens of promising proposals Israel.

This, too, animates my support of Israeli go unfunded for one simple reason: We science. Despite a spirit-rending campaign in don’t have enough money.

Who knows whether one of those desome quarters to isolate the Israeli academic and research community, Israelis continue to serving, unfunded requests could have make remarkable advancements in technol- yielded clues to overcoming the early-detecogy, medicine, and science — advancements tion problem of lung or ovarian cancer, or the stubborn lethality of pancreatic cancer? that accrue to the benefit of all humankind.

The simple fact is this: Israel’s governWant to know what goes on at Israeli institutions of higher education? Learning. In- ment alone cannot meet the needs of scisight. Imagination. Discovery. Healing. The entific research in Israel. Without extra best way to improve Israel’s image around support from Diaspora Jews, Israel risks losing these scientists and humanity risks the globe? Support its life-saving science.

For me, the question wasn’t whether to losing critical, life-saving advancements invest in Israel, but where? So many Israeli in the fight against cancer.

At times of crisis, Israel is often among institutions are doing promising cancer research. How could I choose? Put me in a the first countries to step up, from the courtroom and I know my way around. A re- 2010 earthquake in Haiti to the recent earthquakes in Mexico. Israel even exsearch lab, not so much.

Dr. Hirshaut introduced me to the Israel tends a helping hand to Syrians, whose Cancer Research Fund (ICRF), which raises country is hostile to the Jewish state. We funds to support the most promising scientif- need to step up for Israel. There’s no betic and medical research at institutions across ter cause, and no better place to invest in the fight against cancer.

Israel.

I rest my case.

The idea for the fund came in 1975 from a This article was produced in partnership group of American and Canadian researchers, oncologists and supporters looking for ways to with the Israel Cancer Research Fund.

Uganda is now Chabad’s 100th permanent outpost

9 THE JEWISH STAR November 24, 2017 • 6 Kislev 5778

bis” there for the summer and Chabad.org to help mark Jewish holidays The landlocked East African throughout the year. country of Uganda has become The country has come a long the 100th country to welcome way since the 1970s when it was a permanent Chabad-Lubavitch under the thumb of dictator Idi presence.

Amin who, in 1976, famously alIn October, Rabbi Moishe lowed a plane that had taken off and Yocheved Raskin, along from Tel Aviv and was hijacked with their young son Menachby Palestinian terrorists to land em Mendel, moved to the counat Entebbe Airport. The episode try’s capital city of Kampala, culminated with the Israel’s miwhere they established Chabad raculous Operation Thunderbolt, of Uganda. The milestone when Israeli commandos surrepwas formally announcement titiously landed in Uganda and on Sunday evening at the anfreed 102 hostages. The operanual International Conference of Chabad Emissaries (Kinus The Raskins, Chabad emissaries tion’s commander, Yoni Netanyahu, the older brother of Israeli Hashluchim) in New Jersey. in Uganda.

Prime Minister Benjamin NetanOther countries where Chabad is establishing new permanent presences this yahu, was killed during the rescue.

In recent years, stability has been the rule in year include Montenegro, Nassau in the Bahamas, and the Caribbean island of Curaçao. These coun- Uganda, which has seen an influx of international tries followed the recent opening of Chabad Houses business. Today, some 400 Jews, mostly Israelis, live there year-round, joined by Jewish diplomats in Laos and the Pacific island of New Caledonia.

“The Rebbe tasked us with the mission of con- and NGO staffers from around the world.

“The time was right to establish a permanent necting Jews to their heritage wherever they may be,” said Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Chabad House there,” says Bentolila, who arrived Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm in the Congo in 1991.

The Raskins, both from Israel, traveled to Kamof the Chabad movement. “The number 100 is spiritually significant, and these young couples are pala for Purim and Passover, running holiday prowilling to go to the farthest reaches of the earth to grams there before making the decision that the country would become their permanent home. make this happen.”

The International Conference of Emissaries Chabad has had contact with the small but dynamic Jewish community in Uganda since at least brings together 5,600 rabbis and their guests from 1999, when Rabbi Shlomo Bentolila, who together around the world, from as far off as Stalin’s Jewwith his wife, Miriam, heads Chabad of Central ish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan, in Russia’s Africa in Kinshasa, Congo, first sent “Roving Rab- Far East, to Staten Island and now, Uganda.

Should the House of Representatives tax- ents deduct state and local taxes — this bill reform bill make it through the Senate, high-tax eliminates that deduction for individuals and suburban regions like Long Island would be on families, but lets corporations keep it. It adds the receiving end of bad news from the taxman. trillions to the deficit, which will lead to cuts to health care, education, Social Security The legislation would limit and other programs that hardworking or eliminate deductions for Americans depend on.” property taxes, mortgage interest, and state and local taxes, Far Rockaway Rep. Gregory Meeks disproportionately penalizing said that he voted against the measure Long Island. because it in addition to raising taxes on the middle class, it would also All 192 Democrats and 13 Reeliminate the student loan interest publicans opposed the measure. deduction and lifetime learning credit Long Island’s two Republican and the medical expense deduction, representatives — Peter King of “ransack” Medicaid and Medicare and Seaford, and Lee Zeldin of Shir“balloon the [nation’s] debt to the ley — voted no. The vote was tune of trillions of dollars.”

227 to 205.

The Long Island Association of ReBefore the vote, King, who Lee Zeldin altors is pushing for the elimination of has supported President Trump the property tax deduction. Many real on a number of fronts, said he estate brokers have added their names would not support tax reform to online petitions, according to induslegislation that eliminated detry officials. ductions for property taxes and state and local taxes, noting that Marsha Ander, a branch manthe deductions have been in ager for the Coach Realtors office in place since 1913.

Hewlett, said that the House bill could “While I strongly believe our be “detrimental to the Long Island tax code needs to be reformed housing market, especially in the Five and simplified, everything must Towns and surrounding areas.” be done to ensure property tax “It’s obvious that it will impact our and state income tax deductions market since it’s commonplace to see are preserved,” King said. starter homes with taxes thousands Peter King over the proposed cap,” she said.

“No one should be taxed “A tax system that favors renting over ownagain on money you have already been taxed on ing isn’t good for the economy and the future at the state level.”

South Shore Rep. Kathleen Rice “voted no of home ownership. At this time, the thought on the House Republican bill because it would of structural changes to our tax code has not raise taxes on many middle-class families in our impacted sales, rather lack of inventory in the district to pay for a huge tax cut for the wealthy Five Towns has slowed down out market conand big corporations,” said Coleman Lamb, her siderably.”

Reporting by Herald Community Newspapers communication director. “Half of our constitu-

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Honors at SKA

Mazel tov to the nearly 50 new members of the Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls Re’ut Chapter of the National Honor Society. These juniors and seniors were inducted on Nov. 1, with certificates presented by General Studies Principal Bluma Drebin and Re’ut Chapter Vice President Eliana Spiess.

HAFTR ‘MM’ learning Why do we look at our nails during Havdalah or use b’samim? These were among the questions HAFTR students and their chavrutot contemplated at the Fifth Grade Boys Melave Malkah Chavruta Learning program on motzei Shabbat. Pictured: Julian Isler and grandfather Reuven Mishiev.

GOTTA GETTA BAGEL

HANC hosts 100 early childhood educators

More than 100 early childhood educators from across Long Island gathered at the Hebrew

Academy of Nassau County Early Childhood Center, in West Hempstead, on Nov. 7 for a day of professional development coordinated by the Consortium of Jewish Day Schools.

A highlight was the workshop “How to Bring Conscious Discipline into Your Classrooms,” with Becky Udman, early childhood director of the Torah Day School in Dallas. Other presentors included Sharon Schwartz, who pre-

sented “Conflict Resolution and Classroom Behavior Techniques,” and Chavi Schmell, a reading specialist. Left photo from left: Rabbi Dr. Heshy Glass, chairman of the Consortium of Jewish Day Schools, and Rabbi Yaakov Sadigh, principal of HANC’s Samuel and Elizabeth Bass Golding Elementary School. In right photo, second from left: Trudy Rubinstein, director of HANC’s Early Childhood Center.

Schulamith thanks Smiles abound as eighth graders from the Shulamith School for Girls in Cedarhurst joined participants in the chaveirim group at the Marion and Aaron Gural Five Towns JCC for an annual preThanksgiving bash.

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is seeking Limudei Kodesh and Secular Studies substitute teachers for grades 1-8.

Email resume and cover letter to hweiselberg@halb.org

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November 24, 2017 • 6 Kislev 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

10

Autumn at CAHAL k’garten As temperatures fall, so do the autumn leaves that kindergartners in the HANC CAHAL class have been waiting so long to collect. In their science lessons, the children learned about the unique changes in plant life during this new season and how to identify all parts of a tree and their respective functions. Morah Melody Harris brought in pieces of cut tree trunks which the children examined; they determined the age of the tree by the number of rings inside. The most exciting part of the lesson was the leaves, whose beautiful colors come out when they stop making chlorophyll.

By Ron Kampeas, JTA WASHINGTON — Ilan Mengistu knows that his pitch to rescue his brother, Avera, should be a no-brainer to Jews — “pidyon shvuyim,” the redemption of the hostage, is among the greatest of commandments.

But Ilan also knows that the story he has to tell is not the straightforward narrative longed for by those who would do good: Avera was not a soldier, nor was he captured exactly. He crossed into the Gaza Strip of his own volition.

Ilan came to Los Angeles and Washington last week with his mother to raise awareness of the plight of his brother, who has been held captive, presumably by Hamas, since September 2014. Meeting with Jewish organizations and lawmakers, they are hoping for the kind of activist and diplomatic pressure that rescued the Mengistus from a repressive regime in Ethiopia and brought them to Israel on Operation Solomon in the early 1990s.

For that to happen, Ilan knows he must start at the beginning of a difficult tale: The birth 31 years ago in Ethiopia of a brother so beloved his mother named him after an Amharic word for “light.”

“They say a name shapes an identity,” Ilan said. Avera was ebullient and loving, his brother recalled. “He was the light in our house, we would feel him around the Shabbat table and on holidays.”

Light nourishes but also fades: Avera Mengistu, suffering from a mental disorder, managed to keep it under control as long as his older brother, Michael, was around. Avera, his five other brothers and three sisters idolized Michael, who Ilan says served in Israel’s esteemed Golani unit and imposed army-like discipline at home.

In 2012, Michael, deep into an ascetic journey, starved himself; he was hospitalized and died. That’s when Avera began to fade. He was institutionalized twice over the subsequent two years, but each time released within less than two weeks. And then, on Sept. 7, 2014, Avera left the family’s Ashkelon home and walked into the Gaza Strip.

He was imprisoned by Hamas, the terrorist organization controlling Gaza. Ilan had indications from Avera’s Hamas captors that his brother was alive, but since then, nothing.

The family heeded Israeli government pleas to keep quiet for 10 months: The less publicity, Israeli authorities told them,

A photo of Avera Mengistu on a shirt worn by a relative protesting in Israel, Aug. 17, 2015.

Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images

the likelier his release. After 10 months, despairing, the family asked to go public. They reached out to an array of human rights organizations and the International Red Cross. They received assurances, but not sustained exposure of Avera’s plight.

Ilan skates close to expressions of disappointment throughout the interview: with the Red Cross; with the Israeli government; with his brother’s caregivers, who kept releasing him back to the family; with the soldiers who witnessed his brother’s crossing into the Gaza Strip (it’s on video) and did not stop him; even with Avera. But then he backs away.

“The day the Shabak [Israel’s internal security service] came to me, I thought, ‘Gaza, really? Avera, you could have gone anywhere’,” Ilan said. “But when someone is undergoing a breakdown, their ability to think clearly is clouded. You can’t judge.”

What’s important, he said, is what happens next.

It dawned on the family that a driving factor in the Ethiopian aliyah was the American Jewish community, which in the 1970s

and ‘80s argued to a sometimes reluctant Israeli government that the community was indeed Jewish and in need of rescue from the repressive regime in power at the time.

Yonit Fenta, a relative and an activist helping the family, translated the conversation into Amharic for Agamesh Mengistu, the mother of Ilan and Avera. “Among American Jews, I can sense mercy,” said Agamesh Mengistu.

“We need the Jewish community and the American government if we’re going to release him,” Fenta said.

Ilan said they have been heartened by their reception here on a visit arranged by the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency for Israel. It included meetings at the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly last week in Los Angeles, and meetings in Washington and Los Angeles with congregational rabbis.

They have also spoken with StandWithUs and J Street about advocacy campaigns. The two groups are usually on opposite sides of the pro-Israel spectrum — an indication of the breadth of the cause’s appeal.

“Advocating for Mengistu’s return is an issue we hope will bring people and organizations from across a broad swath of the Jewish community together,” J Street spokeswoman Jessica Rosenblum told JTA. Jason Greenblatt, President Trump’s envoy to Middle East peace, met with the family and posted a photo on his Twitter page — an important signal from the Trump administration figure who is closest to the Palestinian Authority and has worked to ease economic strife in the Gaza Strip.

“Today I welcomed the family of Avera Mengistu to the White House,” Greenblatt wrote. “Avera has been held by Hamas in Gaza for over 1,000 days since he disappeared in September, 2014. It is outrageous that Hamas will not let him return home or communicate with his family.”

They also met with lawmakers, including Reps. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., Ted Deutch, D-Fla., and Ed Royce, R-Calif., the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as with staff from the office of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

“It’s not easy repeating this story again and again,” Ilan Mengistu said. “It requires emotional strength. We get love, and it gives us strength.”

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caust was the culmination of thousands of years of hatred targeting the Jews and discrimination — what we now anti-Semitism. call I am ashamed Portugal, is marredthat my own country, was deeply moved by this history, and I by the eloquent mony in the museum testiabout the history of Portuguese Jews, their predicament, and their success hStar.com around the world.

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By The Jewish Star Police on Friday according to reports. arrested a Far Rockaway The man they believe 71-year-old rabbi suffered hit-and-run driver is the a severe head injury who severely injured and was sidelined for huda Kelemer Rav Yeseveral months but recently cember as he last Derecrossed turned to work.

Hempstead Avenue to A police enter the Young spokeswoman on West Hempstead,Israel of Saturday said the arrest he is the spiritual where Rav was the Yehuda Kelemer result leader. of a 10-month Nassau Police said in a stateinvestigation ment that the 46-year-old suspect clined to provide details, but dewas apprehended Newsday in West Hemp- reported. stead. He was At the time charged with of the incident, ing the scene leav- police of an accident said tampering with and was struck that Rabbi Kelemer by a white Dodge He pleaded not physical evidence. pickup Ram District Court guilty in the First walked truck about 7:30 pm as he Saturday and in Hempstead on not in across the street midblock, was being held a crosswalk. He $20,100 bond was on thrown about or $10,100 cash 35 feet and driver left the bail, scene, police said.

UN chief: Respec legacy, treat Israt Jewish el fairly

By Rafael Medoff, JNS.org United Nations The United Nations Secretary General tónio Guterres has crowned “human rights visited the Museum Anher a defender,” while Jewish People in of the the Qatar-based Tel Aviv Al Jazeera, “This remarkably last Wednesday. a “Palestinian broadcaaster, hails her as rich mosaic Jewish legacy,” supermom.” But he said afterwards. is a mimi’s links to Manal Tais also an important “But it violence ing Jews of “drinking and tweets accusheritage of humanity,part of the collective Palestinian are prompting a showcase of highest summits its some of her backersblood” and its lowest depths.” consider their to reHere are his extended support. remarks: Tamimi, a 45-year-old One cannot escape mother a leader of the many communities, the fact that so Popular Resistanceof four, is where Jews ing Committee and thrived for Organizin the town of centuries, no longerlived near the Palestinian ist because of Nabi Saleh, excountless Authority-controll cution and genocide. waves of persecity of Ramallah. ed Nearly every … the past seven-and-a-half The Holocaust Friday for tragedy and an was an incomparable years, Tamimi and her colleagues incomparable have marched human history. crime in nearby Jewish to the community of The world has demand its expulsion.

Halamish to that the Holocaust a duty to remember Halamish is lage where July 34 21, a Palestinian the viltempt to eliminate was a systematic at• Vol 16, No terrorist See Blood libel the Jewish people, together with pages 28–29 revived on page some columns others.

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By The Jewish paused to remember of 9/11, at Cedarhurst and the miracles ation on Sunday. the heroism, r.com commemor Shay Schachter TheJewishSta Rabbi village’s annual Israel of WoodIn his invocation, and the Young photo) of the Master communities that G-d, (top right of our Orthodox the strength “we pray “Torat Emet 35 The Newspaper grant us all mere said, the first is against pages 34–35 • Vol 16, No the world, together • Torah columns shiva University,” Creator of to stand firm7:41 of to an bigotry, of in Truth.”

6:34 pm, Havdalah fortitude (Friday) be — we believe his investiture speech extremism, and the 5 Towns candles Star terror, of of all evil that can Campus in UniversiTishrei 5778 • Delivering YU’s Wilf all forms of of Yeshiva Sunday

By The Jewish many• Sept. 22, 2017 • 2 with racism, and in our world.” of 2,000 at Hashana Rosh said on The fifth president hatred, of forms Ye- assembly Washington Heights, to those who Dr. Ari Berman, in by livestream, obligation found in different ty, Rabbi “five values that personify to never a solemn more listening spoke of the Sept. 11th “We have that of the Benjamin central injured on Rabbi Berman or the five died or werehappened,” said Mayorbut we also “Five Torot, our institution.” evil, what saw of “We forget in Torteachings, (bottom). just believe Weinstock of America.”

“We do not Torat Chayyim — a 9/11 survivor also saw the best (middle), must of 78,” reat Emet but and values and Fate Ari Schonburn waitof “Miracle that our truths he said. day. He was when author that s world,” and live in the experience on the 78th floor central teachings, called his “Torat YU’s other elevators “Torat Adam,” ing to change hit. t Chief he said, are “Torat Tziyyon, the the first plane edarhurst Fire Departmen playing of JTA Chesed,” and .” and there are Lawrence-C saluting during the

By Ron Kampeas, cerethere are non-apologies victims.

Torah of Redemption There are apologies, the formal David Campell,names of local 9/11 We are never were.

Following community parthe are approaching: apolapologies that YU Taps, read and Yom Kippur monies, the ” street fair Rosh Hashanah its most apt expression, “InvestFest repentance and men. in the season of tied at an and Avenue. to apolfellow women on AmAmsterdam YU on page 11 special challenges ogizing to our street fair a along See presidency presents

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was at the “InvestFest” ceremony, YU president, the investiture for a selfie.

YU’s new Avenue afterwho happily posed sterdam celebrity sought-after

The Trump Donald just ogy trackers: but he doesn’t do them, he gets loves them when he them. And sometimes when he insists he got them didn’t. his To be fair to Trump, if not hostilambivalence, is ity, toward self-reproach certainly not unique, and It not among presidents. months — took Bill Clinton before Rosh until just days — to fulJerusalem’s Old Hashanah of 1998embarking at the Kotel in A shofar is blown ly apologize for about, his afon, and lying Lewinsky. issued few fair with Monica still blames President Trump has for many in Bush PAGES W. George asked on bad intel- apologies and 3, 12-15 •Challah’s no escape the Iraq War took the past year.

Images from Unetaneh Gal Gadot boycotts of “Won- ligence. Barack Obama Chip Somodevilla/Getty •How Jews Tokef Arab nations’ leadeventually Despite Kamaras, JNS around the prayer, the Israeli actress’swowed his time before Americans world break

By Jacob •Sukkot’s promises are a time for Woman” fastover in her role) despite his repeated apologizing to joyous fortunate der The High Holidays for (pictured insurance feast those Gadot health ofonearth’s ing role, and, who lost their bounty while giving Jews, Israelis, to introspection Amid the headlines a direct apology at the box office aficionados much that they wouldn’t. enough, inspiration. disputes, some prom- feminists and comic book at least, included the condiwas political Clinton’s apology,called her a liar, and thus met by MaiIn late June, Gadot Middle terrorism and laid out Reporter’s in the Israel and for having to be proud about. inent newsmakers something to smile about ranked first in The Hollywoodrankings on Lewinsky teshuvah, or genuine repentance, One must seek its us for gave the bases of tions scene few his Mishnah Torah:from G-d but diwhich a East on page 13 monides 900 years ago in 5777. Here are a positive Top Actors list, fellows not See 5777 recap or admire during directly, Maiwho made sins against one’s Beg forgiveness ways. forgiveness for high-profile individuals wounded party. imes in unexpected repeat your transgression rectly from the difference—somet resolve to not Anything less up to the victim. monides prescribed, can to make it Erev Yom Kippur you what do and • Friday, Sept.

Maimonidean 29, 2017 • 9 Tishrei great year for is not a real apology.

5778 • Luach 5777 wasn’t a page 22 • Torah In that regard, to a columns pages TheJewishSta 22–23 • Vol 16, year 5777 comes mo- apologies. Take a look: sorry, New York Times r.com No 36 As the Jewish the New if not some of the wants to believeon page 11 The failing, in Charlottesville close, JTA looks back at for much The very protest Newspaper See Sorry of our the most significance to a neo-Nazi President Trump twin weather the Orthodox to communities ments that had JTA turned violent, Harvey and below by date.

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By Josefin Dolsten, of Hurricanes it Jews, sorted See Moments on page a quiet year. others, found This was not of Donald catastrophes Jews, like so many eight months bomb Irma, take their eyes off the news. tumultuous first to a wave of to hard presidency, Trump’s community centers, against Jewish Sets threats

By Andrew With thanks to Tobin, JTA • Etrog & Lulav Hashem, we TEL AVIV — gratitude for on Long Island a fruitful 5777 express our Dealer British turned In the summer of 1947, whenSukkahBefore the eyes of the Rosh Hashana (last week’s away the SS Exodus the international media, Largest of Palestine, the ever!), and pray edition was our biggest from the shores ish troops violently forced Britworld was watching. that 5778 finds the ship’s passengers — most of them ing in our efforts us continuback to Europe. Holocaust survivors — onto one that merits to grow this newspaper as ships The resulting the tional community. support of our exceppublic opinion reports helped turn in movement and favor of the Zionist As careful as we against the pro-Arab lish, and despite are about what we pubBritish policy of limiting Jewish our upbeat view community we migration to Palestine. imof the serve, publishing per is a stressful a newspaBut much else 24/6 was happening the risk that someoneendeavor that carries the aftermath in of World War be hurt by something might inadvertently II, and attention soon shifted printed in the by something of the few journalists elsewhere. One paper, omitted from to stick with the the paper, or even in the process story was Jewish of assembling each week. correspondent Telegraphic Agency the paper Robert Gary, who a series of reports In these Aseret filed from displaced ish Star, and its Y’mei Teshuva, The Jewsons percamps in Germany. editor-publisher ly, asks mechilah, individualSeventy years who feels they forgiveness, from anyone after his death, later and decades With a pomagranate were wronged.

Gary is again Gross, first grader in hand, Shira mochel, granting And we are ing attention forgiveness, to to the “Exodus drawschool in Cedarhurst,at the Shulamith may have anyone who Jews,” albeit mostly wronged us in is holiday-ready. in some way.

230 of his photosIsrael. An album of G’mar Chasima Tova to all. —Ed Children posing Kedem Auction will be sold at the Weintrob House in Jerusalem om placed persons for a photo in hats that read on Oct. 31, and camp in Germany, “Exodus Star.c a September 1947. 1947” in a disages reveal the number of the imewish Robert Gary reality inside TheJ See Exodus flashback the unities on page 18 ox comm Orthod of our aper Newsp The

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Justice G’burg speaks at DC synagogue

Supreme Court Justice Ruth burg told Rosh Bader GinsnondenominationHashana worshippers at the al Sixth & I gogue in downtown Historic Washington that SynaJewish has helped being minority groups. her have empathy for other Ginsburg, 84, guided her work said that Jewish values have on the bench.

“The Jewish religion is an ethical religion.

That is, we are taught to do right, cy, do justice, not because there’sto love merany reward in gonna be heaven or punishment We live righteously in hell. because that’s should live and not anticipating how people the hereafter,” any award in Ginsburg said.

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by Jonathan Greenblatt, Most Jews look 16, No • Vol on the fragment JNS community that 20–21 hates Israel and of our with a mixture pages as anscudgel Zionism of against the people colum zlement. Despite disdain, irritation and puzwith whom Torah they claim to identify. between Americandata indicating that a split 21 • They aren’t “for page ening, the organizedJewry and Israel is deepwith and providingpeace.” They’re in league • Luach Jewish world cover for seriously and effectively i 5778 has yet to planet’s worst Jew-haters. The some of the Tishre Now, that fragment address the problem.

• 16 tion League has Anti-Defama2017 even published has decided Birthright, the takedown of them. er 6, attack a thorough largest educational toOctob , tion in the world, Palestinian “right They explicitly support Fridayorganizafor offering a of return,” which s • free rael to young trips to Isthey support is to say Jewish Sukko the adults from 26. It would be whose founding end of the Jewish state, a good time finally ages 18 to they refers to ous about a response. to get seriArabic for catastrophe. as a “nakba”— A street Mosaic They are, at The campaign the positions they of symbols of the 12 tribes of ancient espouse in writing,least in from the anti-Israel against Birthright comes Israel, in Jerusalem’s Old City. with the terror in line Djampa via WikiCommons organization Jewish organization Hamas for Peace (JVP). radical than the Voice Section and more This group may Palestinian Authority.

501 of the tax most misnamed be the single The JVP anti-Birthright code. While some organization in members might JVP the history of manifesto reads gious law, their be Jewish according to reli- like the kind of self-centered, Judaism exists labile poetry only to be used an adolescent might write.

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13 THE JEWISH STAR November 24, 2017 • 6 Kislev 5778

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November 24, 2017 • 6 Kislev 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

14

The JEWISH STAR

Wine & Dine

5 weird kosher foods, straight out of Kosherfest

Matzohgram is printing patterns on matzah.

Ed Weintrob

Oxigen water claims to aid in post-workout recovery.

An evaluation, by Josefin Dolsten, JTA SECAUCUS — More than 4,000 food industry professionals gathered here at the Meadowlands Exposition Center last week for the annual two-day Kosherfest.

The world’s largest kosher food show featured more than 325 vendors who showcased a broad array of products, from candy to wine.

Naturally, there were lots of samples.

Reporting can be a tough job, but somebody had to taste everything. Amid the offerings of many obvious treats (lox varieties and bagel flavors, for example), there were some surprises. These are the five most unexpected foods and beverages JTA sampled at this year’s Kosherfest.

uct, is matzah printed with Jewish-themed patterns, such as Stars of David and Passover greetings. The manufacturer, Independent Ink, uses colorful, edible ink that is kosher for Passover.

Customers placing large orders can also customize matzahs with any image they desire.

“It gives you the ability to be creative for your seder plate,” said NK Ranganathan, Independent Ink’s chief operating officer. “You can have a variety of designs, and it becomes very interesting for the kids.”

Customers can buy Matzohgram online beginning in December: It’s $10 for a box of mini-matzahs and $16 for the regular size.

Matzohgram, which was crowned by Kosherfest as the best Kosher for Passover prod-

If Oxigen’s claims about its water — that it improves both post-workout and or post-

Patterned matzah

Oxygen-infused water

Josefin Dolsten

Elegant Desserts sells sweet frozen dessert “pizzas.”

hangover recovery time and mental clarity — are true, then Gatorade may have some serious competition.

A bottle of the oxygen-infused beverage contains 1,000 parts per million of stabilized oxygen, compared to 5 to 40 parts per million in regular water, according to its manufacturer. Those in need of even more O’s can take an Oxigen shot, which contains 5,000 parts per million.

“When you drink the water, the oxygen gets into your bloodstream and goes to work immediately to aid in focus, recovery, endurance and stamina,” Max Lewis, director of sales for Formula Four Beverages, told JTA. The oxygen is not in gas form, meaning it won’t escape the bottle when it’s opened, Lewis added.

Oxigen bottles retail at stores nationwide

Josefin Dolsten

for $1.69 to $1.99, while the shots sell for $2.79 to $2.99.

Salted caramel frozen pizza

It’s a pizza, it’s a frozen dessert — it’s a Frizza!

The Salted Caramel Frizza from Elegant Desserts won the trade show’s award for best dessert. The dairy-free treat consists of a cookie bottom, salted caramel ice cream and caramel sauce.

“Everybody, when they come over, they go crazy about it because it’s entertaining, it’s fun, it’s different,” said Benjamin Weisz, president of Elegant Desserts based in Brooklyn.

At Kosherfest, the frizzas were cut into bite-sized squares, but they are meant to be served by the slice, like a pizza. Each pie conSee Kosherfest on page 15

What happens in Murphy’s W’mere stays in W’mere Judy Joszef who’s in the kitchen

T

he past week and half has been a whirlwind of furry fun. My daughter and son-in-law were in Europe for 10 days and I got to host their adorable dog Murphy.

As if that wasn’t enough of a treat in itself, I also got to babysit for my son, Jeremy, and his wife Darya’s pretty English cocker spaniel, Penny, for 8 hours while they took a Lamaze class. Remember those?

Murphy arrived on Thursday and felt right at home, as he’s been here many times.

His first spot is always at the back door, so he can run around and explore in the backyard. It’s all fenced in so there are no worries. He spent the night and then went to his other grandma, Deborah, for Shabbat and Sunday before returning to my house on Sunday night and staying for another week.

I was able to spend the entire Sunday watching Penny in her apartment. Penny has this uncanny ability to literally run right past me and get to the place that I was heading to before I did, without once having me seeing or hearing her.

I always think I am outsmarting her. I look back at her sleeping and then tiptoe ever so quietly to the next room and then look back again, and she still lying there and then within a second she’s in front of me in the room that I walked to. She is extremely graceful, quick and smart. Oh, and she’s one amazing kisser. Once she starts kissing me there is no

stopping her and I literally have to come up for air. But it’s nice to be loved.

When I got home, Murphy gave me that “I can smell that you were with another dog” look, but he gave me a warm welcome anyway. The rest of the week was filled with long walks, chasing squirrels, cats, birds, and falling leaves. He had a play date with Madison Kaufmann the Puppy, and Molly Grob, the much older dame.

The only problem I have with the dogs staying with me, is that I do not have the heart to leave them by themselves. I know they’re just dogs and dogs can stay by themselves and they probably sleep most of the time, but when I’m getting ready to walk, they just give that look with those eyes as if pleading, “please don’t leave me here.”

One day when I was running to take Jerry to the train, I was going to leave Murphy behind, as it would just be 10 minutes. As my husband and I walked to the door, I said, “It’s really not a big deal to leave him here,” as if trying to make myself feel better. Then I scooped him up put him in the car and said, “Murphy, did you think I was actually going to leave you all alone?”

Then there are the home cooked meals that I prepare especially for him, and the hour-long walks that Jerry takes him on (I’m good for half-hour walks), and romping in the backyard and first step of our swimming pool, which hadn’t been covered yet. Which led me to the reason that I decided to have him groomed before I drove him home. Between burying and unburying his bones, rolling around in the mud when it rained and scampering through all the piles of leaves, he was definitely in need of some spa treatment.

On the day that I was taking him home, I brought him to the groomer and when asked what type of services I wanted, I looked at her and said, “Do I look like a grandmother that wouldn’t get the best package for their granddog?” She laughed and told me he would get special treatment. And he certainly did. He looked very handsome when he was done. There were no telltale signs of all that happened while he was here — because whatever happens in with Woodmere, stays in Woodmere, right Murphy?

And having nothing to do with the dogs whatsoever, this recipe is for those of you that didn’t get around to buying a big turkey, are only having a few people over, or just that want to keep it simple. It’s really a delicious recipe from Ina Gartner.

Ina Garten’s Herb Roasted Turkey Breast

Ingredients: 1 whole bone-in turkey breast (5 to 7 pounds)

2 Tbsp. good olive oil 1 Tbsp. minced garlic (3 cloves) 2 tsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice 2 tsp. dry mustard 1 Tbsp. chopped fresh rosemary leaves 1 Tbsp. chopped fresh sage leaves 1 tsp. chopped fresh thyme leaves 1-1/2 tsp. kosher salt 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper 3/4 cup dry white wine Instructions: Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Place the turkey breast on a rack in a roasting pan, skin side up.

In a small bowl, combine the olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, mustard, rosemary, sage, thyme, salt, and pepper. Rub the mixture evenly all over the skin of the turkey breast.

(You can also loosen the skin and smear half of the paste underneath, directly on the meat.) Pour the wine into the bottom of the roasting pan.

Roast the turkey for 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 hours, until the skin is golden brown and an instantread meat thermometer registers 165 degrees when inserted into the thickest and meatiest area of the breast. Check the breast after an hour or so; if the skin is over browning, cover it loosely with aluminum foil. (Every oven is different so be sure to use your meat thermometer. I had to roast my turkey for about 2 hours. After 1-1/2 hours I tented my turkey and continued to roast another 30 minutes until the temperature read 165 degrees.)

When the turkey is done, remove from the oven, cover the pan with aluminum foil, and allow the turkey to rest at room temperature for 15 minutes. Slice and serve warm with the pan juices.

Wine & Dine

‘Spatchcock’ your turkey for quicker holiday prep Joni Schockett kosher kitchen

I

t is often difficult to take time to relax and enjoy a day with family and friends. Even when we have a big family dinner, I often hear friends complain that by the time they get to sit down, the meal is half over and soon after, everyone scatters to their separate corners — kids in the playroom, teens in another room … you know the drill.

There are some shortcuts to take when cooking a huge meal. First of all, Thanksgiving is a really easy big meal to make as the menu is kind of pre-ordained. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes or yams, cranberry sauce, and whatever other sides you like.

Make as many menu items as you can in advance and freeze. By last week, I already had two pecan pies, some veggie stock and homemade cranberry sauce.

My favorite Thanksgiving trick, however, is to spatchcock, or butterfly, the turkey.

When I suggested this method of cooking a few years ago, some people were horrified.

How could I possibly give up taking an iconic, perfectly roasted turkey, whole and golden, from the oven? Easy. I can cook two 12 to 14 pound turkeys in one oven in under two hours and then I have the oven available for everything else, so my day is actually far more relaxed. With a good pair of kitchen shears, you can butterfly the bird yourself, or have your butcher do it. Here’s another secret: This method provides lots more crispy skin and makes a remarkably juicy bird.

Thanksgiving is not about perfection, or even about the turkey. The best Thanksgiving dinners happen when everyone comes from near and far to be together. It is about family and friends and the special closeness we all feel when we sit down at a too-crowded table.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Herb Infused and Golden Glazed Butterflied Turkey (Meat) This makes a delicious, deeply golden turkey. Remember to baste several times during the last 40 minutes of roasting.

1 (12 to 15 pounds) turkey, butterflied 2 onions, diced

3 stalks celery, diced 2 to 3 carrots, diced 10 to 20 cloves of garlic, chopped 1 to 4 cups chicken or turkey stock or water 2 sticks softened trans-fat-free Pareve margarine such as Earth Balance, very soft 2 Tbsp. finely minced fresh parsley 1 Tbsp. dried thyme 1 Tbsp. dried rubbed sage 2 Tbsp. kosher salt 1 to 2 tsp. freshly cracked black pepper Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Place the chopped vegetables in the bottom of a deep roasting pan. Place a rack over the vegetables (I use a cookie cooling rack) Add 1-2 cups of the stock. (Add the rest as needed while the turkey is roasting.)

Place the turkey on the rack and arrange the legs in position. Let rest for 30 minutes to bring to room temperature.

Mix the herbs with the softened margarine and reserve about one-quarter of the mixture for gravy. Using gloved hands, gently loosen the skin from the bird, leaving it in place. Take about 1/3 cup of the herb butter and rub it under the skin onto the meat. Use about 1/3 cup to rub into the skin of the bird.

Place the turkey in the oven and roast for about 30 minutes. Reduce temperature to 325 and cover the turkey with a foil tent. Add more stock if needed. Roast the turkey until the temperature in the thickest part of the thigh registers 150 degrees.

Uncover the turkey and begin basting with the remaining herb margarine. Raise the heat to 425 and roast until the thigh reaches 165 degrees. Let rest 15 minutes before cutting.

Serves 6 to 10 with leftovers.

Citrus Herb Spatchcocked Turkey (Meat) This turkey uses all kinds of herbs and citrus fruits. This flavors the meat as well as the drippings in the pan.

1 onion 2 oranges, sliced 1 lemon sliced 1 lime sliced 1 stick Pareve, trans-fat free margarine, softened 6 to 8 sprigs fresh thyme 2 to 4 sprigs fresh rosemary 1 small sprig, fresh bay leaves (about 4-5 leaves, reserve the rest for another use) 1/2 bunch (small) fresh sage 2 stalks celery, cut into 1/2-inch pieces 2 carrots cut into 1/2-inch pieces 1 leek, white part only cut into 1/2-inch slices 6-8 cloves garlic, cut in half, more to taste 1 small bunch fresh parsley, 3-4 sprigs 1 (12 to 14 pounds) turkey, spatchcoked or butterflied. Your butcher can do this for you.

Rinse all the herbs and place on paper towels to absorb water.

Line a large, rimmed baking sheet with heavy foil and coat with olive oil. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Peel and roughly chop the onion. Grate about 1 tsp. of orange zest from the naval orange. Grate about 1/2 tsp. zest from the lemon and lime.

Mix the zests with the margarine. Loosen the skin and rub half under the skin and the rest over the entire turkey.

Place the rest of the fruits, herbs and vegetbles in the bottom of the prepared pan. Cover with a baking wire rack or broiler rack that fits properly and firmly. Place the turkey on the rack and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Place in the center of the oven with the legs facing the back of the oven. Roast, rotating pan once or twice, until an instant read thermometer registers 165 degrees in the thickest part of the thigh. Remove from the oven and let rest for 15-20 minutes. Remove to a platter and remove the wire rack from the pan.

Deglaze the pan gently with some chicken or turkey stock and a silicon spatula. Remove any sprigs of herbs and the slices of citrus and strain into a gravy boat. You can discard the solids. Alternatively, after removing the herbs

Kosherfest...

Continued from page 14 tains eight to 16 servings, depending on how it’s sliced.

Elegant Desserts, which sells frizzas online for $36.50 each, also sells the pies in flavors such as cookies and cream and strawberry.

Ready-made shakshuka

Craving shakshuka but short on time?

This sauce is perfect for any busy person who loves this Israeli breakfast food, which consists of eggs cooked with spices in tomato sauce. To make this version of the hearty dish, one only needs to open a jar, crack a few eggs and cook the delicious mess on the stovetop or in the oven.

“It makes it very quick,” said Tami Bezborodko, vice president of marketing for Iron Chef. “In seven minutes you can have a nice, hot breakfast.”

The sauce contains tomatoes and spices

and comes in mild and medium spicy varieties. A 24-ounce jar retails in stores nationwide for around $4.50.

Rabbi-approved BBQ sauce

Want a barbecue with a rabbinic seal of approval? Look no further. Rabbi Mendel Segal, who founded the Kansas City Kosher BBQ Festival, now offers three varieties of his RaBBi-Q sauce.

Since launching in 2015, Segal has expanded his line of sauces to include flavors that draw on both his Jewish and Southern roots — the pomegranate honey barbecue sauce, which Segal came up with when making brisket for Rosh Hashanah, is a favorite.

“It sells really well in the non-Jewish market, too, because nobody has a barbecue sauce that flavor yet,” he told JTA. “But Jews catch onto it right away.”

An 18-ounce jar of sauce retails at select kosher markets nationwide for $4.99.

Top: Just add eggs to this container of shakshuka sauce for a quick Israeli breakfast.

Josefin Dolsten Right: The Matzo Man anchors Streit’s expansive Pesach display.

Ed Weintrob

and citrus, you can pour into a blender and puree for a natural gravy. Season to taste as deisired. Serves 8-10.

Chili Pepper Butternut Squash with Maple Glaze (pareve)

Every year I try to add one new recipe to the Thanksgiving menu instead of an old favorite that feels too overused. This is the one I will make this year.

1/2 stick pareve, trans-fat-free margarine 1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice 1 Tbsp. sugar 1 tsp, apple cider or raspberry vinegar 2-3 ancho chili peppers, seeded and chopped (wear gloves!)

4-8 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped 4-6 sprigs thyme, cut into pieces 1/2 tsp. kosher salt 1/2 tsp. freshly cracked black pepper 2 large butternut squashes, peeled, cut in half lengthwise and sliced in half-inch thick slices and slices cut into 2-3 pieces Glaze: 1/2 cup pure maple syrup, grade B 2 Tbsp. dark brown sugar 1 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line two rimmed baking sheets with foil and set aside.

Melt the margarine and whisk in the orange juice, sugar and vinegar. Add the chili peppers, garlic, thyme, salt and pepper. Add the squash pieces. Toss to coat. Pour onto the two pans and place in the oven.

While the squash is roasting, heat the syrup, brown sugar and lemon juice until the sugar is dissolved. When the squash is barely fork tender, remove the pans and quickly brush the glaze over the squash pieces. Place back in the oven and roast until deep golden brown and cooked through. Drizzle any remaining glaze over the squash pieces. Serves 6 to 10.

THE JEWISH STAR November 24, 2017 • 6 Kislev 5778

The JEWISH STAR

15

November 24, 2017 • 6 Kislev 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

16

SHAbbAT STAR

‫כוכב של שבת‬

Read The Jewish Star’s archive of Torah columns at TheJewishStar.com/category/torahcolumns/browse.html

Exercising self-control: Speaking lashon hora is like firing a speeding bullet T Rabbi avi billet Parsha of the week

Y

aakov spends 20 years living in Lavan’s house. He has his rows with Lavan – more than a third of the parsha, Vayetzei, is dedicated to their dialogues. And it isn’t pretty. Accusations, threats, etc.

One would think Yaakov has every right to talk about Lavan, to let it out about how bad a guy Lavan is, to announce to the world that Lavan is the biggest cheat, to let everyone know they should never deal with Lavan, never work for Lavan, never have anything to do with Lavan.

But he doesn’t do that. He does speak to his wives about their collective relationship with Lavan before they leave, on account of the evil eye Lavan has been pointing in their direction. But this is not lashon hora; when there is an existential threat facing himself, his children, his family, he must talk about it. But at the end of the parsha, Yaakov and Lavan reach an agreement. We’ll build a pile of rocks — I’ll stay on my side, you stay on your side, and we will leave each other alone.

Translation: The threat is passed. So there is nothing to say.

Now he is out of Yaakov’s life. And when do we next find Yaakov talking about Lavan? At the beginning of next week’s parsha, Yaakov will send a message to Eisav — “im Lavan garti” — I’ve been living with Lavan.

Plain fact. Non-judgmental. No incriminating information about his experience.

Rashi even puts a positive spin on it, saying “and I kept the 613 mitzvos” — meaning, I remained steadfast with G-d in Lavan’s house. The part of “not learning from his wicked ways” is Rashi’s comment suggesting an implication from Yaakov’s words, but it does not mean that Yaakov said that. he Chofetz Chaim decried lashon hora because he saw people had no shame in speaking it. One of the Talmud’s examples of how you know if something is lashon hora is you have to turn around to see if someone you don’t want to be hearing is listening. That’s a telltale sign that the words are lashon hora.

The Gemara in Arachin 15b has a number of aphorisms about lashon hora, but they’re not just lip service:

T

And R. Johanan said in the name of R. Joseph b. Zimra: One who bears evil tales almost denies the foundation [of faith].

R. Johanan said in the name of R. Joseph b. Zimra: Anyone who bears evil tales will be visited by plagues.

Further said Resh Lakish: One who slanders makes his sin reach unto heaven.

R. Hisda said in the name of Mar ’Ukba: One who slanders deserves to be stoned with stones.

R. Hisda said in the name of Mar ’Ukba: Of him who slanders, the Holy One, blessed be He, said: He and I cannot live together in the world.

Further said R. Hisda in the name of Mar’Ukba: About one who slanders, the Holy One, blessed be He, said to the prince of Gehinnom: I shall be against him from above, you be against him from below, and we shall condemn him.

R. Hama b. Hanina said: What is the remedy for slanderers? If he be a scholar, let him engage in the Torah. But if he be an ignorant person, let him become humble.

Once it’s fired, you can regret it all you want but you can’t stop its trajectory.

he Talmud also compares lashon hora to an arrow, or nowadays a bullet, because once it’s fired, you can regret it all you want but you can’t stop its trajectory. The damage is impossible to be undone. The best a person can achieve MAYBE is to be granted forgiveness and MAYBE a chance to clarify or “take back” the comment before whom it was said.

So let’s make some ground rules. If one can learn, learn Torah and have it be an antidote to engaging in lashon hora. If a person is not so learned, practice a bit of humility.

We wouldn’t want people to speak about us, so let us not speak about others.

When my grandmother, a”h, was in her mid-70s she told me a story which she found to be instructive in how she viewed the gossip that some people live to discuss. One day she was in the company of some of her longtime girlfriends. One of them had a piece of juicy gossip. The others were begging her to tell them.

The woman with the gossip asked, “Can you all keep a secret?” They leaned in, “Yes, yes, of course.”

“Well so can I.” My grandmother was very impressed by this person.

We must learn from Yaakov avinu — when you are threatened, any lashon hora you engage in must be l’toeles, to achieve a goal which is for the betterment and wellbeing of your family or community. But if it is simply aimed at destroying and just bringing people down, it has no place in our community. We must eradicate the evils of lashon hora from among us.

The escape of Ya’acov defies the natural order Rabbi binny FReedman the heart of jerusalem

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here is war, and then there is madness.

In war, one often has to fight, but when madness sets in, sometimes one simply has to run.

Such was the question on a dark October afternoon in 1973, when the quiet beauty and desolation of the Suez Canal was ruptured by the roar of an entire army crossing the water, bent on bloodshed. They said it could not be breached; they were sure the Arabs would not dare attack, especially after their humiliating defeat in the Six Day War a mere six years earlier. Only someone forgot to tell the Arabs. Which is why there were fewer than 500 Israeli soldiers, who were not even remotely prepared for what came storming across the canal that afternoon.

On Oct. 6, 1973, 500 Israeli soldiers and only three Israeli tanks peered through the fog and smoke of the sudden artillery barrage, at a sight that must have been beyond terror: 70,000 Egyptian soldiers crossing the Suez Canal.

With so many enemy soldiers headed their way and without even enough bullets to slow them down, running would have been a reasonable option. Yet these brave men stood their ground, and all these years later, the

state of Israel is still here to tell the tale.

There is a story in this week’s parsha, Vayetze, which might help us understand what happened on that fateful day. fter 22 years, Ya’acov is getting ready to escape from the clutches of his cunning and wicked father-in-law, Lavan.

“And Lavan went to shear his sheep, and Rachel stole the terafim that were her father’s.”

(Bereishit Genesis 31:19) While Lavan is off shearing his sheep at dawn, and Ya’acov is saddling up the camp preparing to steal away in the darkness (31:1721), Rachel takes the time to steal her father’s … idols?

What interest does Rachel, the righteous wife of Ya’acov, have with the graven images of the father whose home and way of life she is clearly willing to leave behind (see verse 31:14)?

Rashi, clearly bothered by this question, quotes the suggestion (from the midrash) that she was trying to distance or separate her father from idolatry. However, the continuation of this story makes this suggestion even more tenuous. When Lavan finally catches up with Yaakov and his camp, and challenges Yaakov’s decision to flee with his Lavan’s children and grandchildren, Lavan is especially upset that Ya’acov stole the idols. Searching for his idols in Yaakov’s camp, he cannot find them — be-

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cause Rachel hid them beneath the camel’s cushion on which she was sitting!

Now, if Rachel had really taken these idolatrous images just so they would no longer be an influence in her father’s home, why didn’t she simply get ride of them?

Perhaps one way of understanding this strange story is to place it within the wider context of the mission and struggle of the emerging Jewish people. Ya’acov, like his father Yitzchak and grandfather Avraham, lived in a world steeped in pagan idolatry. The world was immersed in the power of nature, and the prevalent idea was that there were hidden forces in nature that determined one’s destiny, and those who were sensitive to these forces were able to intuit the future and even manipulate the people and events around them.

Judaism’s position has never been that these forces are not real. The issue Judaism has with astrology is not that it is not true, but rather, that we are not bound by it, or limited to its interpretation. The astrologist will assume that whatever the star pattern teaches has to be, so if the stars say that you are an angry person, or that you will die young, then that is what will have to happen. But the promise G-d gives Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya’acov on different occasions, is that “your offspring

the forces of nature have power over us only if we give it to them.

will be greater than the stars.”

We are not limited by the natural patterns of the constellations. As a people, we don’t fit into the normal trends of history, and just because the laws of nature would seem to dictate that the Jewish people should disappear, that does not mean we will. n the natural order of things, 70,000 soldiers should not even blink when running through a scant five hundred men. And this may be the meaning of Rachel’s decision to sit on top of the idols. All of these forces of nature have power over us only if we give it to them, but if they are just pillows to sit on, then they no longer control our lives; we do.

And we find this idea almost everywhere we look in Judaism. This is how David, at the time a simple shepherd boy, defeated Golaith when the entire army of Israel seemed helpless. If you see the man before you as a giant, then he is indeed a giant, and he will rule over you, one way or another. But if you see that he is just a fellow who needs a lesson in manners, then to you, that is all he will ever be.

In 1973, a small group of men, peering over the walls of the Bar-Lev line, saw something that would have — indeed should have — sent them running through the desert to escape with their lives. And the Egyptians, based on all the rules of military strategy, were counting on this. But they forgot to study their history; Jews don’t seem to be able to count too well.

A version of this column first appeared in 2011.

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Thanksgiving in the Jewish tradition Kosher BooKworm

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ith the Thanksgiving holiday now upon us I would like to bring to your attention a wonderful and most informative literary work entitled, “Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience” (Encounter Books, 2016) by Melanie Kirkpatrick, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Within this book we find the following piece of history that is of some interest: “In his lovely book, ‘The Thanksgiving Ceremony,’ published in 2003, Edward Bleier, a Jew and the son of immigrants from Eastern Europe, describes a ritual he composed for use around the Thanksgiving table. Bleier’s 20 minute ceremony acknowledges G-d but is nonsectarian. The ceremony is inspired by the Passover Seder which celebrates the Jews’ liberation from slavery in Egypt as told in the biblical book of Exodus. ‘The Thanksgiving Ceremony’ recounts the Pilgrim story, and includes brief readings from the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, a speech by Martin Luther King, and other notable American texts. It concludes with the singing of ‘America the Beautiful.’

“Bleier’s Thanksgiving ceremony reflects another aspect of Thanksgiving Day gratitude that has become part of the holiday: love of country. Since the Revolution, Thanksgiving has become a patriotic holiday, a time to give thanks for the blessings of lib-

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ticipated in Thanksgiving from the very beginning of the United States’ history.

“This holiday belongs to Jews as to all other Americans. It is altogether fitting that Jews join fellow Americans in observing a day of Thanksgiving to the Almighty for all the blessings He has bestowed upon this country. Jews, in particular, have much reason to thank G-d for the opportunities and freedoms granted to us in the United States.”

With these sentiments in mind, we should note that within our daily is found the recitation of Psalm 100, the Psalm of Thanksgiving.

In his classic commentary on this psalm, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, of blessed memory, teaches us the following:

“When one day in the new future that is to come, all things on earth will be in such an ideal state that there will be no more cause for prayers and offerings; even then, prayers of gratitude and thanksgiving-offerings will never cease. For it would be only under such conditions that these acts would attain their true significance.

“Therefore, this Psalm of Thanksgiving is put here as a finale, as it were, to the preceding psalms which sang of the advent of the new era on earth.”

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Please note of the following related articles that you will surely find of interest: •“Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims’ American Jewish Holiday,” by Ed Simon, at TabletMag. com [bit.ly/2j992dL].

•“The Untold Story of Jews and the First Thanksgiving,” by Marnie Winston-Macauley, at Aish.com [bit.ly/2zQcZ1l].

•“The True Meaning of Thanksgiving,” by Daniel Horowitz, at ConservativeReview.com [bit.ly/2zXjsFm].

Parsha Vayatze: ‘And Jacob left Be’er Sheva’ Rabbi david etengoff

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he name “Be’er Sheva” appears a total of nine times in Sefer Bereishit, and serves as the opening verse of our parasha, Vayatze: “And Jacob left Be’er Sheva and went to Haran” (28:10). The nine-fold repetition of Be’er Sheva suggests that it was an unusually important place during the time of the avot. Indeed, each of the patriarchs lived in Be’er Sheva at different points in their lives. Moreover, Be’er Sheva was clearly a place of extraordinary kedushah, since it is the context for the sole instance in Tanach of the term, “A-le Olam”: “And he (Abraham) planted an eishel [a grove or an inn] in Be’er Sheva, and he called there in the name of the L-rd, the G-d of the World (A-le Olam)” (21:33).

In his commentary on this verse, Rashi, based upon Talmud Bavli, Sotah 10a, suggests that the eishel in Be’er Sheva provided Abraham with the opportunity to publicize the existence of Hashem to all mankind: “By means of that eishel, the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, was called ‘G-d of the Entire World.’ After they [the wayfarers] would eat and drink, he would say to them, ‘Bless the One of whose [food] you have eaten. Do you think that you have eaten of my [food]? [You have eaten of the food] of the One Who spoke and the world came into being!”

Be’er Sheva, therefore, emerges as a precursor to Jerusalem and the Holy Temple, for it was from this hallowed ground that

the avot were able teach the world about the existence of “the One Who spoke and the world came into being.” My rebbe and mentor, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik zatzal (the Rav), expanded upon this idea and noted: “Be’er Sheva was rooted in a wellspring of kedushah. It was a fulcrum for offerings to G-d and a conduit for the Divine Presence.” As such, Be’er Sheva was the center of pre-Sinatic Torah and prophecy, and the nucleus of many of the beliefs and practices associated with Judaism until our present historical moment. ow that we are familiar with ancient Be’er Sheva’s unique spiritual standing, we are in a much better position to understand why the first pasuk of our parasha emphasizes that Jacob left Be’er Sheva, instead of simply stating, “and Jacob went to Haran,” as we find in an earlier verse: “And Jacob listened to his father and his mother, and he went to Padan Aram [i.e. Haran]” (28:7). According to the Rav: “And Jacob left Be’er Sheva, denotes that Jacob was severed somehow from Be’er Sheva … uprooted by forces beyond his control, compelled to leave a place he loved … a place to which he had become bonded.”

Moreover, and quite significantly, “Jacob and Be’er Sheva had merged into one symbiotic entity, and now Jacob had to leave … and wander.”

What was the nature of the symbiotic relationship that obtained between Jacob and Be’er Sheva? Rav Soloveitchik suggests that Be’er Sheva “was the first home of the covenantal community, the center of spiritual

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life for the adherents of Abraham’s teaching.

When Jacob left Be’er Sheva, he pulled away from this spiritual center. Perhaps he was frightened that if he left the home of his father and grandfather and the center of their teaching, he would also lose his role as leader and teacher of the covenantal community.”

Moreover, as much as Jacob needed Be’er Sheva, Be’er Sheva needed Jacob. As the Rav notes in a comment that echoes and explicates Midrash Rabbah, Bereishit (68:6): “When Jacob left, Be’er Sheva lost its glory.

Once Jacob had gone, Be’er Sheva resembled Mount Sinai when the shofar sounded and the sanctity of the mount dissipated.”

Hence, according to the Rav, Jacob’s departure from Be’er Sheva had a two-fold effect: it created fear and anxiety in his psyche as to whether or not he would continue to be the “leader and teacher of the covenantal community,” and it diminished Be’er Sheva’s spiritual import for evermore. Based upon Hashem’s endless beneficence, however, its kedushah was not lost for all time, and instead, “found its home in the place that Jacob encountered on his journey from Be’er Sheva: the holy city of Jerusalem.”

Armed with the Rav’s penetrating analysis, the phrase, “and Jacob left Be’er Sheva,” undeniably takes on new and powerful meaning, for Jacob did far more than physically leave Be’er Sheva. In reality, absent Jacob, Be’er Sheva was transformed into just one more place on the map of ancient Israel and ceased to be the spiritual center of the nascent Jewish people.

Jacob was compelled to leave a place he loved.

With Hashem’s help, may we be zocheh (merit) to witness the coming of Mashiach, and the transference of Be’er Sheva’s ancient kedushah to the rebuilt Beit Hamikdash in Jerusalem, soon and in our days. V’chane yihi ratzon.

Luach Fri Nov 24 • 6 Kislev Parsha Vayetzei Candlelighting: 4:13 pm

Havdalah: 5:21 pm

Fri Dec 1 • 13 Kislev Parsha Vayishlach Candlelighting: 4:10 pm

Havdalah: 5:19 pm

Fri Dec 8 • 20 Kislev Parsha Vayeshev Candlelighting: 4:09 pm

Havdalah: 5:18 pm

Tues Dec 12 • 24 Kislev Erev Chanukah

Fri Dec 15 • 27 Kislev

Parsha Miketz • Shabbos Mevarchim Candlelighting: 4:10 pm

Havdalah: 5:20 pm

Fri Dec 22 • 4 Teves Parsha Vayigash Candlelighting: 4:13 pm

Havdalah: 5:23 pm

Five Towns times from the White Shul

THE JEWISH STAR November 24, 2017 • 6 Kislev 5778

alan Jay geRbeR

erty as enshrined in the American system of government.”

These sentiments are further reflected in an essay by Rabbi Marc Angel of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals (he is rabbi emeritus of Congregation Shearith Israel — the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue — and was just appointed interim rabbi of the Lido Beach Jewish Center), entitled, “Thoughts for Thanksgiving,” in which he shares with us the following: “When President Washington called for a day of Thanksgiving, Jews observed this day with joy and pride. At Shearith Israel, the Rev. Gershom Mendes Seixas arranged a suitable service of prayer, and delivered an address in which he called upon Jews ‘to support that government which is founded upon the strictest principles of equal liberty and justice’.”

Further on, Rabbi Angel shares this personal sentiment: “It is sometimes heard in Orthodox Jewish circles that Thanksgiving Day is a ‘nonJewish holiday’ and should not be observed by religious Jews. This view is historically wrong and morally dubious. Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday for all residents of the United States, of all religions. Jews par-

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November 24, 2017 • 6 Kislev 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

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40 years ago, Sadat almost didn’t go to J’salem Jeff Dunetz politics to go

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n March 26, 1979, the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt was signed in Washington. But it almost never happened. President Jimmy Carter tried to scuttle the talks when Anwar Sadat said he would visit Jerusalem. But Sadat ignored the wishes of the American president (and the Arab world) and went anyway, arriving in the Israeli capital 40 years ago this week, on Nov. 19, 1977.

It’s not that Carter didn’t want peace, but he wanted it on his terms. The POTUS was pushing a “Geneva Peace Process” which included all of the Arab Nations, but Sadat felt that the process was all “show” and couldn’t see a way to form a united negotiating bloc with his Arab allies.

For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin wanted to avoid the Geneva conference at all costs. Carter’s Geneva conference

would be run by the U.S. and the USSR. Israel would be facing the terrorist PLO, along with her neighbors — including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon and Jordan, mostly Soviet satellites. Add to that the Carter administration’s anti-Israel orientation, and Begin knew the conference would be all of the participants vs. the Jewish State.

Begin wanted bilateral talks and he wanted them with Egypt, which had the strongest Arab military.

So, in late August 1977, Begin went to Romania and asked President Ceausescu for his help, as Ceausescu was close with Egypt’s Sadat. He also sent Moshe Dayan, his minister of foreign affairs, to Morocco to secretly meet with King Hassan and express Israel’s desire for peace talks with Egypt. Eventually that led to secret talks between Dayan and Egypt’s Deputy Prime Minister, Dr. Hassan Tuhami.

Sadat visited Romania shortly after Begin and Ceausescu told him that Begin wanted to make peace. And added, “Begin is a hard man to negotiate with, but once he agrees to something he will implement it to the last dot and comma. You can trust Begin.”

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adat took the initiative and on Nov. 9, 1977, he delivered a speech to the Egyptian parliament saying that Israel “will be stunned to hear me tell you that I am ready to go to the ends of the earth, and even to their home, to the Knesset itself, to argue with them, in order to prevent one Egyptian soldier from being wounded.”

That speech led Begin government to declare that, if Israel thought that Sadat would accept an invitation, Israel would invite him.

Walter Cronkite acted as the go-between. On Nov. 14, Cronkite interviewed Sadat, who confirmed he was willing to go anywhere at any time for a meeting; all he needed was an invitation. Cronkite then interviewed Begin who extended an invitation for the Egyptian leader to come to Jerusalem.

Five days later, Sadat landed in Jerusalem, made a speech to the Knesset and sat with Begin. As the two laid out their opening positions, their staffs began to set up how their bilateral talks would work.

As reported by the Forward, Yossi Alpher, a former senior adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former director of the Jaffee Cen-

ter for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, said that at first Carter was not pleased: “When Sadat announced he was going to Jerusalem, the Carter administration understood the move as yet another attempt, this time by an Arab leader, to scuttle its scheme to bring everyone together in Geneva. Carter wanted a comprehensive [international] process.” Not only did both Egypt and Israel reject Carter’s internationalization of the process, but Sadat wanted to ease away from the Egyptian-Russian alliance and build a stronger relationship with the U.S. “By Dec. 1, 1977, three weeks into the Sadat peace initiative, the Carter administration had offered only the faintest approval for the Egyptian president’s visit to Jerusalem, and had not yet abandoned its support for Geneva in favor of the bilateral Egyptian-Israeli process that Sadat, Begin and Dayan were actively proposing.” he two leaders wanted the peace negotiations to start right away. Sadat suggested to Begin that Israel place a secret representative in the American embassy in Cairo.

See Sadat on page 19

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Mugabe: Ultimate victory for an African tyrant Ben Cohen Viewpoint

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hich single individual made the following statements?

•“Gay people are worse than dogs and pigs. I keep pigs and the male pig knows the female one.”

•“I am still the Hitler of the time. This Hitler has only one objective: justice for his people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people and their rights over their resources.”

•“Only Gd, who appointed me, will remove me.”

•“White farmers are so hard-hearted, you would think they were Jews.”

Were it not for the reference to pig farming, one might guess that such statements had been uttered by a Muslim leader like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, or Iran’s “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But the man who spoke these words, the man who now finds himself under house arrest in the same country where he proclaimed himself a “Hit-

ler,” is the ailing 93-year-old grave crimes against humanity, dictator of Zimbabwe, Robert belongs in a prison cell.

Gabriel Mugabe. here is a chilling passage in the excellent biography Mugabe’s removal after 37 of Mugabe by the British years of savagely repressive rule journalist Martin Meredith, in is the consequence of a coup, which the dictator, during his rather than a democratic revofirst year in power, promised lution. Specifically, it’s a coup his party comrades, “We will against the looming succeskill those snakes among us, we sion of Mugabe’s second wife, will smash them completely.”

Grace—a vicious, deeply corrupt However, as Meredith writes, woman who is given to beatMugabe’s “first victims were ing and humiliating her house not whites, but the Ndebele servants when not on shopping and Kalanga peoples.” trips to Givenchy in Paris.

Thus was born the “GukuIf that is the case, it may well rahundi,” or “People’s Storm,” be that Mugabe’s successor, the recently sacked Vice President Robert Mugabe at the 12th Af- an ostensible campaign against rican Union Summit, Feb. 2, Emmerson Mnangagwa, will al- 2009, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. dissidents that escalated into genocidal mass murder in the low his former boss to live out U.S. Navy photo by Jesse B. Awalt northern territory of Matabelehis remaining months on Earth in out-of-sight luxury. That is not how it should land in 1983 and1984. These atrocities were an end for a man who committed genocide, took a early warning of where Mugabe was headed— leaf out of Stalin’s book by plunging his country but few people thought he would get as far as into a deliberate famine, and conducted cam- 2017 without ever relenting on his brutality.

If one is to judge Mugabe’s entire career, it’s paigns of ethnic cleansing against both Zimbabwe’s desperately poor black urban underclass tempting to conclude that he looked contemand the once-wealthy community of white farm- poraries like Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatchers. A man such as Robert Mugabe, guilty of er and Nelson Mandela in the eye, and outma-

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neuvered (and outlived) all of them. Even if by some miracle he is sentenced for his crimes, prison for him will be a gilded cage. But the likelihood is that he will see out his days without ever being held accountable.

In my view, the worst aspect of Mugabe’s ultimate victory against civilized values is the example it sets. In Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro has absorbed more from Mugabe than from his own tyrannical predecessor, Hugo Chavez, the conviction that brazen, thuggish brutality and contempt for legal norms is the key to regime survival. Maduro is unlikely to join Mugabe in the club of dictators who got away, but there is no current reason to believe that Syria’s Bashar al-Assad won’t eventually join him there.

When we are reduced to looking at dictators through the lens of historical analysis, rather than placing them on trial in the halls of justice, we are compelled even more to consider the role of our own governments and societies in perpetuating their rule. Few would dispute that Mugabe was a target of moral opprobrium in the West, but that was about as far as it went; protected by the Soviets for the first decade of his rule, Zimbabwe’s misery after the Cold War ended was never regarded See Tyrant on page 19

JonatHan S. toBin

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hat are the details of the Middle East peace plan that President Donald Trump will use to craft what he hopes is the “ultimate deal?” Sometime in the next few months, they will be unveiled as part of an effort to revive the dead-in-the-water peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

Though we’ll have to wait and see what exactly is in the proposal being cooked up by a team led by presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner and chief negotiator Jason Greenblatt, the only two things that seem certain are that it is likely to be acceptable to Saudi Arabia and that it will have zero chance of success.

That’s why instead of merely repeating the mistakes of its predecessors, the Trump team should try a paradigm shift that will predicate peace on a simple concept: the Palestinians have to admit they’ve lost their war on Zionism. Avoiding this admission in order to mollify them or their supporters or concentrating, as every U.S. administration has done, on pressuring Israel to make concessions, merely makes it impossible for the Palestinians to accept the sea change in their political culture

that is the only thing that will make peace on any terms possible.

It was this idea that brought two members of the Knesset—representing a larger group of legislators that come from six different parties that are in and outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government—to Washington to meet with several like-minded members of Congress to promote the concept of an Israeli victory in the long conflict rather than a selfdefeating compromise. The launch of a joint #IsraelVictory caucus at the Capitol Hill gathering is a small step and, as of yet, hasn’t influenced the administration’s thinking. But the gathering, which was sponsored by the Middle East Forum think tank, is a long overdue effort to promote a concept Kushner and company ought to be thinking about.

Trump’s team is likely to embrace an “outside-in” strategy in which Arab states, principally the Saudis, will use their influence and money to pressure the Palestinians into finally accepting a two-state solution. In return, the U.S. would get the Netanyahu government to agree to terms that are likely to largely resemble past plans floated by the Obama, Bush and Clinton administrations. Trump may think the missing ingredient for peace has been the absence of a master dealmaker, but this scheme has no more chance of working than the efforts of his predecessors.

The reason is that the essential element for peace is still missing. The Palestinians are still

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Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Donald Trump with Jared Kushner in Jerusalem in May. Kobi Gideon/GPO

stuck in a mindset that rejects Israel’s legitimacy. The Palestinian Authority (PA) won’t accept a deal that ends the conflict for all time no matter where Kushner, Greenblatt and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman draw the borders between the two states, how much of Jerusalem the Palestinians receive, how many descendants of the 1948 refugees are allowed to “return” to Israel or even how much money is thrown at them. That’s because the Palestinians’ national identity as a people is still inextricably bound up in a futile centuryold war on Zionism that its people have been taught to think they will eventually win.

t various times, the PA has declared a willingness to accept peace. Yet every such gesture has been undermined by its cradle-to-grave incitement that promotes a culture of hatred for Israel and Jews, and makes new rounds of bloodshed inevitable. The history of the last 24 years of negotiations since the Oslo Accords shows that peace is impossible so long as the Palestinians still hold onto hope of eventually winning this war. As with every other conflict, this one will only be settled when one side admits defeat and that is something no one, not even a Trump team that appears to be more realistic about Palestinian behavior and intentions than past administrations, seems willing to force them to do.

Critics of the #IsraelVictory idea mock its simplicity. But generations of would-be peacemakers have forgotten that it really is that simple. Once the Palestinians concede the war is lost rather than being paused and put aside their dreams of a world without a Jewish state, compromise would be possible. But if the compromises precede acknowledgement of an Israeli victory, then all the Jewish state will be doing is trading land for more terror, not peace.

The Trump team may not be listening to the #IsraelVictory caucus as it hatches its plans.

But if the White House ignores the basic truths the caucus proclaims, it will be wasting its time and making the next round of violence more, rather than less, likely.

In Bereishis, origins of both strife and brotherhood teHilla r. goldBerg view from central park

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t is in last week’s Torah portion of Toldot that we see the genesis of so much of the conflict in the world. After 20 years of childlessness, Rebecca has finally conceived.

Yet her pregnancy is marked by struggle — “And the boys were active within her womb.”

The Rashbam interprets this to mean, simply, that the fetuses were active, as is natural for a fetus in utero. But Reish Lakish, in the Talmudic era, interprets the verse more homiletically. Looking etymologically at the Hebrew word vayitrotzasu (and they were active), he hones in on its two-letter root tzadi vav. It is a word unto itself: tsav, commandment. He concludes that the wrestling that the babies were undergoing was not merely a natural physical movement in utero but, rather, a theological struggle. “Each baby violates the command of the other.”

According to Reish Lakish, a deep theological divide will come from this womb.

These are not merely twins, but twin en-

Sadat...

Continued from page 18 With American “cover,” the true identity of the Israeli in the Egyptian capital would be known only to the American ambassador in Cairo.

Carter’s acceptance of the proposed liaison scheme would have signaled American backing for Sadat’s unprecedented peace initiative. But Carter said no.

Carter wanted his Geneva talks. He didn’t care that the nascent process begun by Sadat and Begin might lead to peace, Carter wanted his plan or nothing. But thankfully Carter

emies, if you will.

Then there is a midrash that says that the babies are struggling over who will be born first. They are vying for this first rite of (literally) passage. In a dialogue, the midrash puts the words into Esau’s mouth that come what may, even if it takes killing his mother, he will do what it takes to be the firstborn. Whereupon Jacob ceases to wrestle. He will not spill his mother’s blood, not be a murderer, for the sake of carrying the mantle of “firstborn.” ater in their lives, we encounter the painful deception by Jacob of his aging, blind father, Isaac, in order to acquire his father’s blessing. This took place after Jacob’s strange negotiation with Esau over a bowl of soup and, finally, Esau’s cry of pain at understanding what he lost.

Still later — a lifetime later — the two brothers reconcile. Jacob is already a grandfather. The relationship is lost, the brotherhood is lost, it is too late. Nonetheless, there

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is a gesture of reconciliation.

The book of Bereishis began with an actual murder, a fratricide — Cain kills Abel — not just imagined midrashic in utero conflict.

There is brief hope when Abraham courageously manages to find a way to avoid conflict by separating from his family, setting out on his own.

The book of Bereishis concludes with the strife between Joseph and his brothers — a long, fraught story that includes a decoy murder with a bloodied coat. Bereishis is fraught with conflict and pain.

But then comes along the book of Shemot. We are introduced to the duo of Moses and Aaron, role models of what brotherhood should be — caring and harmony. In Bereishis, it is often the younger sibling who becomes the conduit of blessing and supplants the older sibling, but with Moses and Aaron, even though the same displacement occurs (Moses the younger brother is chosen to be the leader of the Jewish people), Aaron finds it within himself to accept this news with

Brotherhood is possible.

Harmony is possible.

Working in partnership is possible.

couldn’t stop the approaching peace train.

Within days Israeli journalists were allowed into Cairo, breaking a symbolic barrier, and from there the peace process quickly gained momentum. Sixteen months later there was a treaty signing ceremony at the White House.

On Dec. 25, 1977, Begin reciprocated Sadat’s gesture and traveled to Ismailia, Egypt, holding a summit meeting with the Egyptian president. By then Carter had no choice and had to join in on the effort.

Once he got involved, Carter — who had done his very best to screw up what would eventually become the only foreign policy success of his presidency — was instrumental in keeping the talks going. The peace which was signed on March 26, 1979, wouldn’t have happened without him.

Tyrant...

Continued from page 18 in Western capitals as a major threat to peace and security. If, in Eastern Europe, communism was replaced by multiparty democracy, in Zimbabwe it evolved into an undisguised kleptocracy, with psychological fear, state brutality and violence by pro-government vigilantes the three main instruments of control.

It wasn’t until 2002 that the European Union (EU) imposed a regime of travel restrictions and sanctions on Mugabe and his lieutenants, but the dictator was still spotted at United Nations gatherings in New York and Rome, as meetings at international organization were conveniently

grace. Aaron extends exceptional support to his younger brother Moses. ike so many of the pairs in Bereishis, Aaron was the overlooked eldest, yet his response changes history of our people.

Brotherhood is possible. Harmony is possible. Working in partnership is possible.

That is the model we see in the next four books of the Torah, as we trace a journey of 40 years and witness the harmonious duo of Moses and Aaron. They did not have examples. That is why they became our examples.

Bereishis presents the founding story of our patriarchs and matriarchs who, at the dawn of Jewish civilization, learned through painful experiences the right thing to do. But Bereishis is not the final word on brotherhood. Ultimately, it is not Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, or even the 12 tribes of Israel, who teach us how to be a family. The teachers of close knit love and the loyalty of siblings are Moses and Aaron and, of course, their guardian older sister Miriam.

While last week’s parsha of Toldot, and the book of Bereishis in general, sadly projects a motif of family strife and conflict, it ultimately is dominated by the love and harmony of the special sibling bond of MosesAaron-Miriam.

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exempted. In 2015, perhaps as a gift to mark Mugabe’s 90th year, the EU lifted most of these restrictions in recognition of his status as chairman of the African Union. As for the Western left and the post-colonial nations, Mugabe was seen as an anti-imperialist hero in many of these circles, had Western nations gathered to bring him down, he would doubtless have become an icon of the anti-war movement.

A close ally of the Palestinians and of Yasser Arafat personally, Mugabe occasionally uttered anti-Semitic remarks about Jewish money and influence. Anti-Semitism was marginal to his actions, but it seems to have played a role— as it does with most dictators—in shaping his view of the world. It goes with the territory, after all.

Ben Cohen’s column is distributed by JNS.

THE JEWISH STAR November 24, 2017 • 6 Kislev 5778

Key to peace: Palestinians must admit they lost

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U.S. says it wants to close PLO mission. Now what?

Backgrounder

The PLO flag is visible above its offices in Washington on Nov. 18.

Those applications followed the collapse of the Oslo process and then the 2007-08 Annapolis talks.

There’s a tit-for-tat dynamic to the events: Palestine obtained UNESCO recognition in 2011; Congress passed a law the same year saying that any subsequent entry into a U.N. body would mean shuttering the office. Palestine obtained recognition in the International Criminal Court in 2015 — the ICC is not a U.N. body, PLO officials noted. So, the same year, Congress passed a measure saying the office can stay open if the Palestinians did not advance actions against Israel at the court.

The office seems to be open — for now.

According to the letter of the 2015 law, the office should not stay open if the law has indeed been violated (more on that in a moment). The office must immediately shut down and not reopen for at least 90 days — and then only if the president certifies to Congress that “the Palestinians have entered into direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel.”

The office’s top officials are not answering emails or returning calls, but it’s not closed — a receptionist took a request for an interview on Tuesday morning.

So let’s call the State Department, which initiated the process.

“We are working through the modalities of the closure process,” a State Department spokeswoman told JTA on Monday in an email after a reporter tried to speak with a human.

What modalities? What are modalities?

What process? Does the process start with the closure of the office or end with it? Welcome to Washington-speak.

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Are government officials meeting with the PLO representative, Husam Zomlot?

“We have nothing to announce regarding meetings at this time,” the spokeswoman said.

Saeb Erekat, a top Palestinian negotiator who is in the Washington area recovering from a lung transplant, said in a video that the ICC was the trigger for the closure announcement.

Except the most critical Palestinian actions regarding the court — joining and requesting an inquiry into alleged Israeli crimes — took place before the relevant law was passed.

Much blame or credit is going around, depending on your perspective.

It’s Mahmoud Abbas’ doing.

This is what the Palestinian Authority president and PLO chairman said in September at the U.N. General Assembly: “We have called on the International Criminal Court to open an investigation and to prosecute Israeli officials for their involvement in settlement activities and aggressions against our people, and we will continue to pursue our accessions to international conventions, protocols and organizations.”

The 2015 law says “any action with respect to the ICC that is intended to influence a determination by the ICC to initiate a judicially authorized investigation, or to actively support such an investigation, that subjects Israeli nationals to an investigation for alleged crimes against Palestinians” would trigger closing the office.

Was the Abbas speech an “action” that was “intended to influence” the court? Or was he describing actions the Palestinians had already taken before the law was passed?

It’s Ron Dermer’s doing.

Palestinian officials told the Al-Monitor news site that Israel’s ambassador to the United States, who has close relations with the Trump administration, has been behind the effort.

“This is the pressure being exerted on this administration by the Netanyahu government at a time when we are trying to cooperate to achieve the ‘ultimate deal’,” Erekat said, using the term President Donald Trump has used to describe a Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

Israelis are not taking credit, although they seem pleased.

“This is about an American law,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office told Ynet. “We appreciate the decision and expect to continue our work with the United States advancing peace and security in the region.”

It’s the White House’s doing.

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and top adviser on the Middle East, and Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s top envoy to the talks, want to jump-start the peace process,

according to this theory. The Palestinians will have to commit to peace talks with Israel, so goes this theory, if they want to get back their Washington office.

“It sure looks like this is being used as a tactic to force [the Palestinians] to the negotiating table on terms determined by the United States, Saudis and Israelis,” said Lara Friedman, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.

The problems with this theory: The action was initiated by the State Department and it’s not clear whether Greenblatt and Kushner were in the loop. Plus, the two — especially Greenblatt — have gone out of their way to cultivate the Palestinian Authority leadership, hoping to reinstall it in the Gaza Strip, where the Hamas terrorist group currently runs things. Kushner and Greenblatt made a wellpublicized visit to Erekat’s bedside just weeks ago. Why undercut the Palestinians now?

It’s Rex Tillerson’s doing.

He is the secretary of state, after all, albeit one accruing a reputation for ineffectualness.

But he’s as invested as Kushner in cultivating good will in the region. What would Tillerson’s game be here?

It’s Obama’s doing.

President Barack Obama could have shut down the PLO office when Erekat repeatedly urged an ICC investigation of alleged Israeli war crimes during the 2014 Gaza War. Instead, Obama punted to the next administration.

“This is the first time the Palestinians have made such a move with the Trump administration in charge,” said Jonathan Schanzer, the vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “And it looks like they’re applying the law instead of punting on it.”

What happens to the peace process?

What peace process? Schanzer said any process was all but moribund anyway.

“What I question right now is whether the PLO is engaging in any serious negotiations thereby necessitating a presence in Washington,” he said. “The PLO embassy has served to engage in a public relations effort that primarily demonizes the Israelis and shirks diplomatic efforts.”

Trump administration officials in recent days have been leaking like sieves about plans to relaunch the peace process as soon as next year. The Palestinians until now have been game — Zomlot, the PLO envoy to Washington, has been effusive in his outreach to Jewish groups, the media and American politicians about Trump’s “ultimate deal.” They have put on hold bids to join international agencies.

Nuh-uh, the Palestinians now say. Closing the office “is unprecedented in the history of U.S.-Palestinian relations, which could have serious consequences on the peace process and U.S.-Arab relations, as well as serves as a blow to peacemaking efforts,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, Abbas’ spokesman, said over the weekend.

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By Ron Kampeas, JTA WASHINGTON — In 1987, Congress passed legislation that declared there would never be an office of the Palestine Liberation Organization on U.S. soil. President Ronald Reagan agreed and signed the law.

Seven years later the law was still on the books. But that year the PLO opened an office in Washington — with the blessing of Congress and President Bill Clinton.

Since then, a PLO office has remained in the U.S. capital, navigating a persistent anomaly: The 1987 law officially bans the existence of a PLO office, but it remains open as long as the Palestinians abide by certain conditions.

Now, however, the PLO may have violated some of those conditions — consequently, its D.C. office may close.

Late Friday, the Trump administration announced that the PLO cannot operate a Washington office because it tried to get the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israelis for crimes against Palestinians.

Confused? You’re not alone. Here’s an explanation of the law and what’s happening.

The law is clear, but Congress has been lenient.

The Foundation for Middle East Peace has helpfully posted a timeline of the relevant laws.

Most saliently, the ‘87 legislation renders it “unlawful” to establish an office with funds provided by the PLO or any of its constituent groups.

Reagan, like many presidents before and since, did not love the infringement on his executive privilege of making foreign policy. But in his signing statement, he said the PLO was not a suitable negotiating partner.

“I have no intention of establishing diplomatic relations with the PLO,” Reagan said, so he signed the law.

Within a year or so, however, Reagan recognized the PLO as a suitable negotiating partner — conveniently in the lame duck period following the election of his vice president, George H. W. Bush, as president.

That recognition, although rescinded by Bush within months, was one of the predicates for the Madrid peace process launched

by Bush in 1991. Those talks led to the 1993 Oslo accords between the PLO and Israel, which led to the opening in 1994 of the office.

Congress, in a series of laws starting in 1993, granted exemptions to its ban on a PLO office. It gave two reasons: sustaining the peace process and, later, reserving a matter of U.S. national security.

Congress cracked down after the PLO sought unilateral statehood.

Congress retaliated following efforts by the PLO to obtain statehood recognition outside the parameters of an agreement with Israel.

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The JEWISH STAR

CAlendar of Events

Send your events to Calendar@TheJewishStar.com • Deadline noon Friday • Compiled by Zachary Schechter Thursday November 23

Mashiach and the End of Days: YU in partnership with the shuls of the Five Towns presents a shiur at the YI of Woodmere by Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff. Open to men and women. 9:30 am.

859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere. yulongilsnad@ yu.edu.

Chanukah Yom Iyun: All women and girls are invited to Mahon Basya Rachel Seminary for a series of lectures. 9:30 am. $10 per shiur, $25 for the morning. 137 Lawrence Ave. 516-362-5000.

Iyun Tefilah: [Weekly] Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum at the Young Israel of Lawrence Cedarhurst.

9:45 am. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhurst.

The GRA, Thanksgiving and Pentecost: YU in partnership with the shuls of the Five Towns presents a shiur at the YI of Woodmere by Rabbi Ezra Schwartz. Open to men and women. 10:30 am. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere. yulongilsnad@yu.edu.

Learn Maseches Brachos: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Eliyahu Wolf at the YI of Woodmere for a shiur on Maseches Brachos. 5:15 pm. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere. 516-295-0950.

Halacha Shiur: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Yoni Levin at Aish Kodesh for a halacha shiur. 9:30 pm.

894 Woodmere Pl, Woodmere.

Friday November 24

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

Saturday November 25

Military Appreciation Shabbos: YI of North Woodmere is holding a special military

appreciation Shabbos in loving memory of SPC. Harold Feldman with special guest speaker Rabbi Dr. Barry Dov Schwartz Lt Col. United States Air Force. 634 Hungry Harbor Rd, North Woodmere.

516-791-5099.

Sunday November 26

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

8 am. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhurst.

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

Torah 4 Teens: [Weekly] Local teenage boys are invited to join Yachad Long Island for a meaningful and fun Sunday morning learning program with davening and breakfast at Ohr Torah. 9:15 am-12:30 pm. 410 Hungry Harbor Rd, Valley Stream. Torah4teens5T@gmail.com Gemara Shiur: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Moshe Sokoloff at the YI of Woodmere for a gemara shiu.r 9:15 am. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere.

516-295-0950.

Monday November 27

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

10 am. 894 Woodmere Pl, Woodmere.

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

Tuesday November 28

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

894 Woodmere Pl, Woodmere.

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

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

516-295-0950.

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

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

Wednesday November 29

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

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

8 pm. 894 Woodmere Pl, Woodmere.

Shiur and Tehillim Group: [Weekly] Join the women of YI of Woodmere at the home of Devorah Schochet. 9:15 pm. 559 Saddle Ridge Rd.

Thursday November 30

Parsha Shiur: [Weekly] Michal Horowitz at YI Woodmere shiur on the parsha. 9:30 am. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere. 516-295-0950.

Loaves of Love: Women are invited to learn the art of baking challah and to experience the beauty of this important mitzvah and have mean-

ingful discussions, hosted by Chanie Wolowik. 10 am. 758 Central Ave, Woodmere.

Saturday December 2

Avot to Matan Torah: Join Rabbi Dr. Ari Bergman at the YI of Woodmere for a special lecture series titled “From the Avot to Mattan Torah: A Deeper Understanding of the Genesis of the Abrahamic Religions & of Our Mesorah.” 7:30 pm. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere. 516-295-0950.

HANC Alumni Reunion: HANC invites all alumni from the graduating classes of 19622017to a special reunion. 8:30 pm. 215 Oak St, Uniondale. RSVP MichaelSHurtes@gmail.com.

Sunday December 3

Basya Rochel Open House: Machon Basya Rochel Seminary invites prospective students and their parents to its open house. 10:30 am. 137 Lawrence Ave, Lawrence. 516-362-5000.

Achiezer Jewish Healthcare Conference: Achiezer invites you a special Jewish healthcare conference and expo, featuring a variety of lecture topics and vendors, at Citi Field. 11 am. 516-791-4444 x 113.

Monday December 4

Chazaq Dinner: With special musical performance by Mordechai Shapir will be held at Leonard’s Palazzo. $250 per person. 7:30 pm. 555 Northern Blvd, Great Neck. RSVP 716-285-9132.

Reserve a spot by Nov. 28, 516-295-2478.

Thursday December 7

Educator’s Journey: Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County presents An Educator’s Journey of Spiritual Resistance Courage and Resilience. 11 am. $10. 100 Crescent Beach Rd, Glen Cove. 516-571-8040.

THE COMMUNITY-WIDE Motzei Shabbos Tanach Shiur Please join us for the 22nd season of the Community -Wide Tanach Shiur

NOVEMBER 25, 2017 7:00PM tmhu ,arp e"amun

PROGRAM HOSTED BY: Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst 8 Spruce Street

Rabbi Mordechai Sitorsky will be learning

Perek 28 & 29 of Tehillim v"g jubn rzghkt crv ,c kyhd ,nab hukhgk Sponsored by Mr. and Mrs. Mordy Kriger in memory of their beloved parents: k"z rhtn cegh "r ic ctz 'r wv"g kmrv hk,pb 'r ,c gmbj vhj ,rn wv"g ehzhht ejmh 'r ,c vsbhv vbj

Co-Sponsored By:

Agudah of the Five Towns Rabbi Yitzchok Frankel Agudah of West Lawrence Rabbi Moshe Brown Bais Haknesses of N. Woodmere Rabbi A. Lebowitz Bais Medrash D’Cedarhurst Rabbi Dovid Spiegel Chofetz Chaim Torah Center Rabbi Aryeh Z. Ginzberg Cong. Bais Avrohom Rabbi Osher Stern Cong. Anshei Chessed Rabbi Simcha Lefkowitz Cong. Bais Ephraim Yitzchok Rabbi Zvi Ralbag Cong. Bais Tefila Rabbi Ephraim Polakoff Cong. Beth Sholom Rabbi Kenneth Hain Cong. Kneseth Israel Rabbi Eytan Feiner

Cong. Shaaray Tefila Rabbi Uri Orlian HILI Bais Medrash Rabbi Dov Bressler Kehillas Bais Yehuda Rabbi Yaakov Feitman Cong. Tifereth Zvi Rabbi Pinchas Chatzinoff Y.I. of Bayswater Rabbi Eliezer Feuer Y.I. of Far Rockaway Rabbi Shaul Chill Y.I. of Hewlett Rabbi Heshy Blumstein Y.I. of Lawrence-Cedarhurst Rabbi M. Teitelbaum Y.I. of North Woodmere Rabbi Yehuda Septimus Y.I. of Woodmere Rabbi Hershel Billet

A Priority-1 Community Initiative Promotion Courtesy For more information orof dedication opportunities, please call Priority-1 at 516.295.5700.

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Thank you...

Carol & John Harrison Susan & Michael Kerr

Dessert Sponsor

On November 2 Community Chest South Shore recognized the opening of the new Marion & Aaron Gural JCC Sustenance Center at its Eighth Annual Neighbors in Need Evening.

The Center is home to the Rina Shkolnik Kosher Food Pantry, just one of twenty local organizations Chest supports.

Trudi & Michael Haberman

Gold Sponsors

Community Chest’s “Neighbors Helping Neighbors” program has assisted hundreds of families per year facing sudden hardship since its inception in 2010. Through a donation card holiday drive held at the “Eighth Annual Neighbors in Need Evening”, the organization raised much-needed funds to help families in need during the upcoming winter.

Thank you to all who made this evening possible and continue to help turn our neighbors’ hardships into hope through your generous contributions.

Guest Honorees

Bernie Keslowitz, Ambassador Eric Keslowitz, past President Steven J. Spiro, past President

Raquel Israel, Co-Chair Trudi Haberman, Co-Chair Cori Berke Sheryl Bouzaglou Amy Epstein (not pictured) Eric Keslowitz Diane Rattner Michelle Schornstein Craig Spatz

Youth Board Volunteers Amit Barmashiah Jordan Epstein Justin Fleigel Ross Gilman Brian Gomberg Elliott Graber

Bradley Hagen Louis Halperin Maddy Israel Hannah Levine Andrew Schornstein James Verschleiser

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Barbara & Philip Altheim Richard Holland Rhonda & Marc Marinoff Richner Publications – Nassau Herald Signature Bank Linda & Stephen Sklar

Silver Sponsors

Greenstein, Levine, Scheer & Wetchler The Henry Family The Israel Family The Kaminer Family The Kaufman Family The Kirschner Family The Nathan and Gluck Families The Rattner Family The Schlaff Family The Schornstein Family – Wond-A-Rama Tire

Bronze Sponsors Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Costco Wholesale, Oceanside Dime Community Bank Applebee’s & Panera Bread The Feingold Family Green Acres Mall The Grobman Family The Kemp Family The Mohler Family – Carefree Air The Senders Family

Donors

The Acriche Family Bernstein Grantor Trust The Bouzaglou Family The Brodwin Family Heather Cohen The Einstein Family The Epstein Family The Feiler Family Marc Feinberg Robert Fisher The Fliegel Family Sharon Fogel The Gerber Family Muriel Goldberger The Gordon Family The Gutner Family The Kafenbaum Family The Kaplan Family Howard and Phyllis Kaufman Bernie Keslowitz Nancy Koopersmith The Lavin Family The Levine Family The Liebman Family The Mlawski Family Michael Papilsky The Port Family The Reide Family The Robbins Family The Rosenberg Family The Roth Family The Slomovits Family The Spatz Family The Stein Family The Taub Family – Sunny Atlantic Partners The Troyetsky Family The Weinhoff Family The Wolf Family

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Five Towns Early Learning Center Executive Director, Pepper Robinson, showed her gratitude at the event on behalf of the families with whom she works, “Thank you for almost 70 years of support…for the winter jackets and gloves to keep us warm…for the roof you helped pay for when our ceiling was about to collapse…and for giving these families a hand…and hope.”

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