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THE JEWISH Dec.18, 2015 • 6 Tevet 5776

Parshas Vayigash • Candlelighting 4:11 pm • Luach page 12

Vol 14, No. 48 • TheJewishStar.com

THE NEWSPAPER OF OUR ORTHODOX COMMUNITIES

Nachum Segal’s Concert of Jewish Unity:

Lighting up Paris

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By Nachum Segal It is almost hard to believe that it has been just a year since the horriďŹ c events in Paris in January of 2015.

The painful memories of the attack at the Charlie Hebdo magazine, followed by the murderous strike on the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket, persist when we are forced to contend with all that has happened since.

It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that the times we live in are more tumultuous and uncertain than any that we have seen since the end of World War II. Rarely does a day go by in which another innocent person doesn’t lose his or her life to the madness that is modern-day terrorism.

So as we gathered in Paris last week for “Let There Be Light: A Concert of Jewish Unity,� a Chanukah event designed to unite the Jewish world, I would argue

that never before has the concept of Jewish unity been more important.

It is well-known that throughout our history, the Jewish people have been the victims of hatred, discrimination, persecution, and genocide in degrees far greater than any other group. While sadly there is no easy or comprehensive response to ensure our complete safety against those threats, it is also apparent that the best-possible response that we can present in the face of terror is to stand united.

As damaging as our enemies have been to the wellbeing of the Jewish people, we must also admit that all too often our failure to unite has been the very recipe for our undoing.

The Jewish world today is divided along political and cultural lines, and we are certainly divided along religious lines.

Continued on page 13

O and Trump: Tweedle dee, Tweedle dum BEN COHEN VIEWPOINT

T

he massacre in San Bernardino by an Islamist husband-and-wife terror team forces us to recognize, once again, that the United States has to choose between

isolationism and internationalism in its foreign policy.

Put another way, it’s a choice between disengaging from the world’s most febrile regions, in the hope that doing so will put us out of harm’s way and rein in our “imperial� instincts, or actively engaging on our own terms, in the expectation that we can effectively counter rogue regimes and terrorist groups.

This is where we get to a disturbing simi-

larity between President Barack Obama and GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.

The reason? Both of them approach foreign policy from the vantage point of isolationism.

Take Obama ďŹ rst. A rare Oval OfďŹ ce address to the nation in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting manifestly failed to say anything we hadn’t heard before—and never mind that the president stood before Continued on page 16

‘Loaded discussion’ this Shabbos in Woodmere: Entering Har Habayit

A scholar in residence from Jerusalem will take a Woodmere shul on a spirtual journey through the Holy City this Shabbos, offering what is billed as “a loaded discussion� on entering Har Habayit.

Rabbi Ari Cutler, director of the Yeshivat Hakotel Leadership Program, will speak on Friday night and Saturday at Congregation Bais TeďŹ lah of Woodmere, 409 Edward Ave. His Har Habayit talk will be during Friday night oneg, at 7:30 pm.

Rabbi Cutler will also present on “Talmud Torah and Arevus� (at Kabbalas Shabbos), “Seeing is Believing� (at 8:30 am on Shabbos), “Yerushalayim and Kibbud Av V’Aim� (at 3:25 pm, before

Mincha), and “Sefer Bereishit: Lessons in Sanctity of Place� (during Seudua Shlishis). For further information, call 516-313-6196.

0RW]HL 6KDEERV PRYLH

On Motzei Shabbos, the Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst continues its winter ďŹ lm series with “The Gatekeepers,â€? in which six former heads of Israel’s secret service tell their story. 7:45 pm, 8 Spruce St, Cedarhurt.

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Recalling a Japanese hero who saved lives ALBANY (AP) — Early in World War II, a Japanese tourism official helped rescue Europeans seeking haven from the Nazis. Now, 75 years after seven of those refugees gave Tatsuo Osako photographs of themselves to show their gratitude, a team of Internet sleuths has identified four of the people in the black-and-white snapshots.

The months spent by researchers delving into WWII archives and poring over passenger manifests turned up stories of narrow escapes, long journeys by train and ship, and previously unknown details — and helped shed new light on the role of the Japanese in helping Jews and others flee Europe.

“Imagine the journey they had to make.

It’s unbelievable,” said Linda Birnbach, whose mother’s photograph is among those identified.

Osako, who died in 2003, was a tourism bureau clerk based in the Japanese port city of Tsuruga who assisted refugees making the voyage from Russia’s Pacific port of Vladivostok to Japan in the period before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. As the ship’s escort and clerk, he distributed money provided by Jewish agencies.

To thank him for his kindness, a man and six women he helped in 1940–41 gave him portraits of themselves.

They began their harrowing journeys to the Far East after WWII began with Germany’s invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. The man and four of the women eventually made it to the United States. He and three of the women were Jewish. The other woman was

a gentile. The fate of the other two women remains unknown, as does their religion, although the researchers say it’s very likely they were Jewish.

Descendants of the three refugees who had children were tracked down with the help of Kiyotaka Fukushima, of Chiba, Japan, and Mark Halpern, a retired business executive and Jewish genealogy buff from West Chester, Pennsylvania. Some of those descendants met this week in the New York area with the late Osako’s former colleague, Akira Kitade, who wrote a 2012 book about Osako and the seven photographs.

Using data supplied by the International Tracing Service in Germany and found online in databases and archives, the author and the two researchers succeeded this year in identifying four of the seven people in the photographs.

Sonia Reed had been identified in 2014 after a Canadian relative saw her photo on the website of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial. It had posted the refugees’ photos after Kitade sought help from the Israeli embassy in Tokyo.

According to Halpern, the refugees identified this year are: •Antonina Babb, a Polish Jew who died in Santa Monica, California, in 1994.

•Nissim Segaloff, a Bulgarian Jew who later changed his name to Nicholas Sargent and lived in New York City; the place and date of his death remain unknown.

•Vera Kronberg, a Norwegian gentile who Continued on page 16

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December 18, 2015 • 6 Tevet 5776 THE JEWISH STAR

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3 THE JEWISH STAR December 18, 2015 â&#x20AC;˘ 6 Tevet 5776

Violinist Perlman wins â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Jewish Nobelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; prize

Donate to Jewish National Fund and build a stronger, healthier, more secure Israel.

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conducted the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s top

By Josef Federman symphony orchestras, and has JERUSALEM â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Isbeen a regular guest at White raeli-American violinist House events. Last month, he Itzhak Perlman has been received the U.S. Presidential awarded this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;JewMedal of Freedom, the naish Nobelâ&#x20AC;? for his accomtionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s highest civilian honor. plishments as a musician, Perlman has shared his teacher and advocate for love of music with diverse the disabled, organizers audiences, appearing on of the $1 million prize late-night comedy programs, announced Monday.

Sesame Street and in special The Genesis Prize is programs on American public given each year to an intelevision. With his wife Toby, dividual who has achieved he helps run the Perlman professional success, conMusic Program for talented tributed to humanity and young musicians. Treated shown a strong commitfor polio as a child, Perlman, ment to Jewish causes and ,W]KDNB3HUOPDQ LQ who walks with crutches, has the state of Israel.

Perlman said he was â&#x20AC;&#x153;humbledâ&#x20AC;? to be recog- also been a vocal advocate for the disabled.

Perlman intends to use his prize money nized not only for his personal accomplishments, for projects to assist individuals with disabilibut also his commitment to his Jewish identity. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I have always been very proud of my Jew- ties and to develop young musicians of speish heritage, which has greatly inďŹ&#x201A;uenced my cial talent, prize organizers said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itzhak Perlman is the embodiment of music, my world view, and my work as an advocate for individuals whom society often everything an ideal Genesis Prize Laureate leaves behind,â&#x20AC;? he said in a statement issued should be,â&#x20AC;? said prize chairman Stan Polovets.

He said Perlmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s music â&#x20AC;&#x153;brings joy to milby the prize organizers.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is lions of people,â&#x20AC;? and that Perlman has been slated to present the award to Perlman at the â&#x20AC;&#x153;an incredible source of inspirationâ&#x20AC;? for people with special needs and â&#x20AC;&#x153;given back to soJune 23 ceremony in Jerusalem.

Perlman, 70, has won 16 Grammys, includ- cietyâ&#x20AC;? with his teaching and advocacy work.

The prize, inaugurated in 2014, is run in ing a lifetime achievement award in 2008, and played the violin solo in John Williamsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; a partnership between the prime ministerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Oscar-winning soundtrack for the 1993 ďŹ lm ofďŹ ce, the Genesis Prize Foundation and the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Schindlerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s List.â&#x20AC;? He has performed with or chairmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ofďŹ ce of the Jewish Agency. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;AP

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December 18, 2015 • 6 Tevet 5776 THE JEWISH STAR

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Officials of 12 Five Towns and Far Rockaway area yeshivot met last week to share best practices and explore avenues of cooperation. The effort was organized by Rabbi Dovid Kramer of Yeshiva of the South Shore and hosted at the new Cedarhurst campus of the Shulamith School for Girls.

Security, medical insurance costs and compliance, recent changes in state law, coordinated UJA donations by parents, joint programming and coordinated fundraising were the topics discussed at the biannual meeting of the yeshivots’ executive directors.

“The community at large should

Stolen goats show Israeli camaraderie

By Megan Turner, JNS.org The morning of Dec. 4 was crisp and chilly, with just the right amount of sunlight to stave off the cold. I found myself standing in a circle of pokerfaced men and women listening to an intelligence and organizational brief of a volunteer search-andrescue operation to recover stolen goats. Many laughed when I told them I was going to the Negev desert to help search for stolen livestock.

The organization in charge of this operation, HaShomer HaChadash (“The New Guardian” in Hebrew), was on a quest to comb the desert for a herd of 200 rare Alpine goats stolen in the dead of night three days prior from Moshav Idan, located in Israel’s Arava region. It may have been a laughable matter for some, but for the farmer who owned the goats, it was a big blow to his livelihood. The prized stolen livestock were valued at 5 million shekels, or approximately $1.3 million, making it one of the largest incidents of agricultural theft in Israel’s history.

HaShomer HaChadash was founded in 2007 by a group of activists who love Israel and strive to uphold Zionist values through assisting farmers in remote areas. In partnership with Jewish National Fund (JNF), they provide security and protection to Israel’s smaller, more vulnerable communities in the Negev and in the Galilee, while also promoting agricultural and pioneering ventures.

When they heard about this massive theft, they jumped to action.

Forty volunteers donated their time, cars, and hiking and scouting skills on a Friday before Shabbat just to help a fellow IsraeliS. “There’s something significant about the fact that I’m choosing to do this on a Friday, when I’m already stressed about Shabbat and preparing things for my family–this gives me purpose,” said a volunteer who has been with the organization for four and a half years and who requested to remain anonymous.

“There are people from many walks of life in our organization,” he added. “There are those from the political right and left, those who are religious and those who are not, and that is what gives us all the motivation to do something bigger than ourselves.”

The search went on for more than a week, with almost daily scouting parties setting out to continue the effort. On Dec. 7, HaShomer HaChadash volunteers found 23 of the 200 goats. The organization is not disclosing the exact location as a safety measure, and will continue its search efforts until the last goat is recovered.

know that our schools help each other on a daily basis,” said HALB Executive Director Richie Hagler. “What unites us is much greater than the minor differences between our schools.”

Participants were Rabbis Shaye Kohn (Yeshiva of Far Rockaway), Ari Ginian (YKLI), Moshe Goodman (Siach Yitzchak), Michael Grad (HANC), Richie Hagler (HALB), Yehuda Harbater (Darchei Torah), Dovid Kramer (YOSS), Yirmiyahu Lasker (MAY), Rubin Maron (HAFTR), Avraham Mayer (Bais Yaakov Ateres Miriam), Steve Reisbaum (TAG), Baruch Rothman (Darchei Torah), and Perry Tirschwell (Shulamith).

THE JEWISH STAR December 18, 2015 • 6 Tevet 5776

Execs from 5T-Far Rock yeshivot cooperate

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December 18, 2015 â&#x20AC;˘ 6 Tevet 5776 THE JEWISH STAR

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THE JEWISH STAR The newspaper of our Orthodox communities

ESTABLISHED 2002 Proudly produced and printed on Long Island by The Jewish Star LLC 2 Endo Blvd, Garden City NY 11530 516-622-7461 Publisher & Editor: Ed Weintrob EWeintrob@TheJewishStar.com 516-622-7461 x291 â&#x20AC;˘ cell 718-908-5555 Advertising Director: Celia Weintrob CWeintrob@TheJewishStar.com 516-622-7461 x241 â&#x20AC;˘ cell 917-723-4500 Ad Sales Representatives â&#x20AC;˘Yonah Lindner, 516-622-7461 x240 YLindner@TheJewishStar.com â&#x20AC;˘Ethan Jerome, 516-622-7461 x290 EJerome@TheJewishStar.com Contributing writers: Rabbi Avi Billet, Jeff Dunetz, Rabbi Binny Freedman, Alan Gerber, Judy Joszef Editorial Designer: Stacey Simmons.

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Churchill and the Jews: The facts

By Michael D. Cohen Eastern Director, Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance New York

T

he theater in the Simon Wiesenthal Centerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s New York Museum of Tolerance provides visitors with one simple lesson â&#x20AC;&#x201D; you have a choice.

To the left side of the screen, there are lists of each of the Nazi concentration camps where six million of our Jewish brethren were brutally massacred. The right side, however, is labeled â&#x20AC;&#x153;Righteous Among Nations,â&#x20AC;? and recognizes those who risked life, limb or some alternatively disastrous punitive consequence to rise above evil to save the life of a Jew. The message is that each of us has the option, regardless of its difďŹ culty, to choose to blindly follow the masses, or to look to the right for that which is in fact right.

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill consistently chose to the path on the right.

Jeff Dunetzâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s column, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Keep them out! Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bogus to compare Syrian refugees to Jews ďŹ&#x201A;eeing Hitlerâ&#x20AC;? (Politics to Go, Nov. 27), arguably makes many valid points, including his viliďŹ cation of those who obstructed our brethren from entering ports of refuge from Hilterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wrath. However, in subjecting Churchill, a man without whom tens of thousands of additional Jews would have most certainly perished, and without whom there would likely today be no state of Israel, to such factually incorrect criticism is to both ignore the historical record and simultaneously deny a hero the hakarat hatov, the recognition and gratitude for good, that he is most deďŹ nitely owed.

Dunetz reďŹ&#x201A;ects that Churchill was â&#x20AC;&#x153;worse than FDR; not only did he think Great Britain had enough Jews but he refused to allow them to escape into what was then called Palestine.â&#x20AC;? I would like to offer a number of points clarifying the record and demonstrating the consistency with which Churchill, against a government leadership who truly did abandon prioritizing the salvation of European Jewry, stood tall in opposition to such sentiments and did what was within his statutory authority to not only obstruct the Nazi killing machine but to create a haven for the Jewish people for all time.

1. In 1904, at age 27, Churchillâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s makes his ďŹ rst parliamentary speech in the House of Commons leading the opposition to the Governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Alienâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bill aimed at curbing Jewish

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immigration from tsarist Russia for those attempting to escape pogroms. He succeeds.

2. In 1921, as British Secretary for the Colonies, Churchill single-handedly ďŹ ghts off Ibn Saudâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s demand to the British cabinet to cut off Jewish immigration to Palestine by administrating the mandate through a democratically elected local assembly at a time when the Arab:Jewish ratio was greater than 3:1 and would have permanently led to sole Arab control over immigration.

3. In 1922, in response to the British governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s desire to placate the Arab population for geopolitical considerations, there is another attempt to severely limit Jewish population into the mandate. Churchill issues a British white paper creating a compromise position allowing for Jewish immigration to be calculated rather on the Jewish â&#x20AC;&#x153;economic capacity to absorb new arrivals.â&#x20AC;? This policy alone allowed for over 400,000 Jews to escape Europe between 1922 and 1939.

4. In 1939, the Chamberlain government prioritizes Britianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s relationship with the Arab world on the eve of the war by issuing an overriding white paper limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine to 15,000 a year over a ďŹ ve year period. Churchill, albeit unsuccessfully, leads the ďŹ ght to increase the white paperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s annual quotas to match the annual high water mark of Jewish immigration over the previous decade.

5. In 1941, President Roosevelt presents Churchill with the Atlantic Charter, his vision for the post-war world which requested a pledge to â&#x20AC;&#x153;respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live.â&#x20AC;? Churchill supports the pledge but exempts Palestine, understanding that the Arabs would claim a majority and block Jewish immigration entirely after the war, not to mention the creation of a Jewish state.

6. In 1943, opposing Roosevelt, Churchill agrees to allow all Jews who reach neutral Spain to be given sanctuary in allied-controlled Gibraltar, saving hundreds of Jews who were being held in detention camps.

7. In 1944, Churchillâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own son Randolph parachutes behind enemy lines acting as the Jewish Agency contact aiming to seek out and rescue surviving Jewish communities in Hungary and Slovakia. n Nov. 2, 2015, the Simon Wiesenthal Center posthumously honored Winston Churchill for his everlasting love and affection for the Jewish people. With his greatgrandson present to accept this recognition, over 600 people watched with an awe that transcends generations and signaled gratitude to a family that bore much criticism, heartache and professional consequence for its steadfast support of our people and our national home.

Asked his views of the Jewish people, Churchill once responded, â&#x20AC;&#x153;We owe to the Jews â&#x20AC;Ś a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all other wisdom and learning put together.

On that system, and by that faith, there has been built out of the wreck of the Roman empire the whole of our existing civilization.â&#x20AC;?

I hope that Jeff Dunetz will take the time to better explore the record at hand beyond the above snapshot, and will join me in appreciating a true defender of the Jewish people.

O

Obama: Grinch who stole Chanukah JEFF DUNETZ POLITICS TO GO

L

ast weekâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s White House Chanukah party was different from the usual fare. President Obama invited a BDS-supporting Reform rabbi and used the event to disrespect Israel and the Jewish people.

The Presidentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s choice for making the Chanukah candlelighting blessings at the gala, Susan Talve, gave a candle-lighting speech that called for justice for the Palestinians and invoked Black Lives Matter and the Muslim deity Allah. Talve called terrorism something that should be dealt â&#x20AC;&#x153;with with peace and understanding.â&#x20AC;?

Talve is more than just a rabbi ordained by the Reform Movement; she is also a board member of the organization Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ruah, which calls itself â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.â&#x20AC;? Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ruah is a leftist group which, among other things, supports the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement against Israel. It takes the same â&#x20AC;&#x153;Israel is always wrongâ&#x20AC;?

position that President Obama takes.

For example, the Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ruah website features a campaign called #MosesStandard whose purpose is to convince the Jewish National Fund to start labeling any of its dollars spent on Israeli communities built outside the 1949 armistice lines; they call the area â&#x20AC;&#x153;occupied territories, â&#x20AC;&#x153; the term used by anti-Israel groups instead of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Judea and Samariaâ&#x20AC;? or â&#x20AC;&#x153;disputed territories.â&#x20AC;? They hope to exploit the information to pressure the JNF and its donors to stop spending money on over the green line communities. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Join rabbis, cantors, and Jewish community members across the country in asking the Jewish National Fund to sign onto the #MosesStandard. That means being fully transparent about where American Jewish donations are being spent, and to stop investing our money in peace-blocking settlements,â&#x20AC;? the campaignâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s page says.

The #MosesStandard refers to Shmot Rabbah 51:6, where Moshe makes an accounting of the money spent to build the tabernacle.

The website goes on to explain the program with, â&#x20AC;&#x153;If Moses could ensure that all his ďŹ nancial records were fully transparent, then

we should expect nothing less from a Jewish organization like the JNF which has held our peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sacred trust for over 100 years.â&#x20AC;?

Other Israel-related efforts by Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ruah includes pressuring Israel to accept African refugees, giving rights to Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bedouins, and supporting â&#x20AC;&#x153;Palestinian nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x2122;ruah web pages call the rash of stabbing attacks in Israel the â&#x20AC;&#x153;circle of violence,â&#x20AC;? and â&#x20AC;&#x153;condemns the recent vicious attacks on our friends and partners at the New Israel Fundâ&#x20AC;? (an organization that Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ruah supports that was named one of the top ten anti-Israel groups in America by the ADL).

The site also discusses the groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s support of the anti-police Black Lives Matter movement.

After expressing her joy at being at the White House with the president of the United States to light the menorah, Talve jumped into a political speech which covered many of her favorite causes. Finally, she took the opportunity to slap at Orthodox Jews with, â&#x20AC;&#x153;And, of course, I stand with my sisters Continued on page 16

T

RABBI BINNY FREEDMAN THE HEART OF JERUSALEM

T

he thundering sounds of artillery ďŹ re echoed through the valleys beneath the Golan Heights and across the Sea of Galilee. All along the northern border with Syria, civilians were huddled in their bunkers and bomb shelters, wondering when this latest round of violence would abate.

On the face of it, this was nothing new.

For 19 years the Israeli citizens of the north had endured an almost daily barrage of shellďŹ re from the Syrian guns perched in the Heights above. In fact, an average of 1,000 shells a day fell on the kibbutzim, towns and villages within range of the Golan, when the Syrian army had control of the Heights.

But this time it was different. It was June of 1967, and Israel had ďŹ nally decided enough was enough. Gambling that the Syrians would never expect a surprise attack on such strategically superior positions, the Israelis were climbing the Golan in an attempt to remove, once and for all, the Syrian guns terrorizing the citizens of the north.

The battle was not just about a piece of real estate; at stake was Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s right to live in peace and her responsibility to protect her citizens from aggression. Finally, after 19 years of unremitting terror, Israel had an opportunity to set the north free. There would be no second chance.

In the northern thrust, the elite Golani brigade was in trouble. The terraces up the side of the mountain were completely impassable to armor, so the infantry found themselves

all alone. Everything came to a head on the slopes beneath the Syrian fortiďŹ cations at Tel Facher.

The Syrians had spent an inordinate amount of time building this defensive position, as it was clear that this was the gateway to the entire Golan Heights. The Israelis, caught in an impossibly exposed position, with no armor support, and with quarters too close for real artillery and air support were being forced into almost single ďŹ le up the mountain path, as they encountered intense defensive positions including mines and barbed wire.

Tel Facher was dangerously close to becoming the turning point of the war. The advance up the mountain ground to a halt.

Stuck on the barbed wire, within range of the Syrian machine-gun nests above, the boys from Golani were being cut to pieces.

Enter one David Shirazi. Shirazi had already been wounded in the ďŹ ghting but refused to let the platoon medic evacuate him.

He had spent the better part of three years with these men, and they were more than just members of his unit; they were his brothers.

They say he looked up that hill, and knew there was no way he would make it to the top; the climb was too steep, his wounds were too great, and the merciless hammering of the artillery and machine gun ďŹ re meant there was nowhere to go. The rows of barbed wire, normally a simple obstacle, were, because of the terrain, proving to be the undoing of the Golani brigade. The narrow approach meant only one man at a time could approach the wire, which gave the Syrian machine gunners more than enough time to cut the Israelis down, one by one.

There is a powerful teaching in Pirkei Avot: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Beâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;makom Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Ein Ish, Hishtadel Leâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;hiyot Ishâ&#x20AC;?

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(â&#x20AC;&#x153;In a place where there is no man, try to be that manâ&#x20AC;?).

Someone had to do something, and in that place at that moment, with the Golan and the entire Seventh Brigade hanging in the balance, Shirazi was that man.

Shouting out one word, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Alaiâ&#x20AC;? (on me) over and over again, he leapt forward and threw himself on top of the barbed wire transforming himself into a human bridge over which the men could run across and storm the Syrian positions. With tears in their eyes as they trampled over his body, the men of Golani took heart from Shiraziâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s example, and reclaimed the Golan Heights.

Only three men eventually reached the top of Tel Facher, but it was enough. On June 12, 1967, the Syrian guns on the Golan Heights

ďŹ nally went silent. Two thousand years after the Roman legions had exiled them, the Jewish people had ďŹ nally come home to the ancient mountaintops of the Bashan.

One wonders what gives a man the strength to pursue something he knows he will not ďŹ nish.

David Shirazi, who is memorialized for eternity in the Golani museum at Tsomet Golani, had no illusions that he would ever reach the top of the Golan, yet he kept moving up that hill to get as far as he could, clinging to the belief that he could still make a difference. his weekâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s portion of Vayigash begins with one of the most intense confrontations in the entire Bible.

Binyamin, youngest son of Yaakov, stands accused of stealing the goblet of the viceroy and the Continued on page 16

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THE JEWISH STAR December 18, 2015 â&#x20AC;˘ 6 Tevet 5776E

At crisis moment, ďŹ nding unity under Hashem

7

December 18, 2015 • 6 Tevet 5776 THE JEWISH STAR

8

A spark is ignited and a Jewish soul lives ALAN JAY GERBER KOSHER BOOKWORM

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e live in interesting times that witness murder as state policy and also brazen and often violent religious intol-

erance.

These are also times, by contrast, of religious tolerance in many quarters between Judaism and Christianity, a spiritual give and take that would have been unheard of just a century ago.

Among this spiritual transference of belief that peaked my interest was a meeting I had in Jerusalem this past August with the two authors, both converts to Judaism, Michaela Lawson and Ashirah Yosefah. Their joint work, “Spark Ignited” (Menorah Books), hits a raw spiritual nerve of any reader sensitive enough to appreciate the sacrifice these ladies went through in their spiritual journey to our faith.

My having met these two intelligent and sensitive people was among the most inspiring experiences of an already exciting trip.

In the words to follow I will use their individual thoughts to present to you a method of thinking that may prove both challenging and refreshing.

In her essay in this book, Ashirah shares with us the following that I found timely to the calendar at this time of year. This is just a hint as to her thinking on so sensitive a matter as change of faith. Consider this:

“There is a saying in Hebrew, ‘Ein mikreh, ha’col mi Hashem,’ which translates as, ‘There are no coincidences, everything is from Hashem.’ And so it was that, in 1995, I happened to meet the Orthodox rabbi of my hometown, where I was working. … This rabbi was frequently ‘out and about,’ active in interfaith dialogue, yet for some reason we had never met once during the previous 40 years of my life. Forty. What an amazing number in Torah: Transformation, maturation, change.

“For the next few years, our paths were constantly crossing. As marketing director [for the Downtown development agency], I developed all the seasonal promotions for the downtown business community. In 1995, Christmas and Chanukah were very close to each other, so I decided to use my thriceweekly column in the local newspaper to do a two-part feature on Chanukah. I went off to the library to do research, wrote my articles, then called up Rabbi Spiro to share with him what I wanted to do and ask if he would read the articles I had written, and tell me whether they were accurate and appropriate for publication. He agreed. And suddenly we seemed to be bumping into each other everywhere, and nearly every week.”

The author goes into some detail as to how this experience with this rabbi’s help, further hastened her continuing spiritual journey from Christianity to Judaism.

Now consider this: “My quest to know the true nature of Christianity was expedited by my rapidly growing hunger to learn about Torah.”

These words were reflected in my inter-

view with her in Jerusalem, and to then read them, in print, a half-year later, during the Yuletide season, only further reinforced my initial impression that Ashirah was a very special person.

In the decade to come, Ashirah was to eventually convert to Orthodox Judaism in Israel under the authority of the Rabbinical Council of America (Jerusalem branch) and a Beit Din of the Rabbanut Yerushalayim. Fifty years exactly from the Hebrew date upon which she was born, Ashirah entered the waters of a mikvah and emerged a Jew, her own personal yovel.

She made aliyah four months later.

In a follow up review I intend to continue to further elaborate upon the spiritual journey of these two extremely talented women. ecently, Rabbi Evan Hoffman, the gifted and noted lecturer on Jewish history at the Young Israel of Woodmere, wrote a fascinating and learned essay entitled, “Gentile Reactions to Chanukah” wherein we learn of the following teaching concerning the place that Chanukah holds in Christian holy writings: “The Catholic Church accepted [the books of] ‘First and Second Maccabees’ as deuterocanonical books. The holy Maccabean martyrs, also known as ‘Hanna and her Seven Sons,’ are memorialized in the Eastern Orthodox Church

R

with a feast on Aug. 1.

Christianity had no reason to object to Chanukah and its message of sustained religious commitment in the face of possible martyrdom.

But the ant-Semitism of the Christian laity proved to be of greater relevance than official Church doctrine with respect to influencing the ritual behavior of Jews.

“As early as the 11th century, Ashkenazic Jewry developed the practice of lighting Chanukah candles inside the house. An overt display of one’s Jewish identity was too risky in a society that held Jews in contempt as deicides and that tolerated murderous Crusades.”

It should be noted that while today we enjoy a more open practice of our faith due to the tolerance of the American republic, this year numerous incidences of deliberate vandalism against open air menorahs have been reported. Given the increase in bigotry against both our faith, and against Christianity in many parts of the world, including Israel, such behavior should place us on guard in the conduct of the practice of our faith and in the integrity of law enforcement officials, both here and abroad.

As detailed by Rabbi Hoffman, this season both in theme and in our holy writings share much to be proud of. This common heritage must serve as a bond to ensure the peaceful practice of our respective faiths for all time.

From water book springs grassroots movement

By Jacob Kamaras, JNS.org peaking with me in between his 55th and 56th speaking engagements for “Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World,” author Seth M. Siegel laments how the Barnes & Noble retailer places his book in the wildlife section. There isn’t a single animal mentioned in the volume’s 352 pages.

“They have me in the wildlife section because they don’t have a context,” Siegel says. “I would love to see a day, and I think it’ll happen soon, that there’s a water section in the bookstore.”

Indeed, at Siegel’s current pace, that day is fastapproaching. The New York businessman never believed he’d sell the book to a major publisher, but scored a deal with Thomas Dunne Books. He didn’t think he had a bestseller for any list, let alone the book’s eventual designations as a New York Times science bestseller and a Los Angeles Times nonfiction bestseller. He never expected his flood of invitations to speak nationwide—more than 300, of which he has accepted 120. Despite the natural Jewish interest in a book that tells a story about Israeli achievements, only a third of Siegel’s speaking invitations are from Jewish groups.

Everything considered, “Let There Be Water” is shaping up as not just a popular book, but a grassroots movement that Siegel hopes will help influence water policy around the world.

“Most authors, their goal is to sell as many books as they can. While to be sure I’m happy to sell as many books as I can, my goal here is to start a conversation,” Siegel tells me.

I caught up with Siegel at one of Jewish National Fund’s (JNF) ongoing series of water summits, which have been held or are forthcoming in New York City, Albany, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Austin, Phoenix, San Diego and Washington. Given its own contributions to Israel’s water breakthroughs, JNF has championed Siegel’s book, which is among the topics the author discusses below in the rest of his interview with JNS.org.

JNS: Pro-Israel activists today face a balancing act between “bad cop advocacy,” namely addressing security threats and countering anti-Israel propaganda, and “good cop advocacy,” such as telling positive stories about the Jewish state. Is good cop advocacy one of your goals in telling Israel’s water story?

S

Seth Siegel: “I am completely not thinking of myself as an extension of the [Israeli] Foreign Ministry or as part of the Israel advocacy apparatus. But here’s what I will say: As one who feels strongly about Israel’s safety and security, what bothered me for a very long time is that we need positive stories. We need positive stories for ourselves, to keep ourselves engaged, and we also need positive stories to get people of our children’s generation motivated and excited—the same way that most everybody, unless you grew up in a strongly Zionistic or Orthodox household, had a galvanizing moment.

Whether it was the Yom Kippur War or the Six-Day War or the Ethiopian airlift or the Russian aliyah or the raid in Entebbe, or something like that. I was tired of being in a position of saying ‘yes, but…’ in talking about Israel.

“The book was not written with the thought that it was going to be a Jewish book. The book was written with the idea that it’s going to be a policy book, and that as a second order of magnitude, it also comes out in a way that people can feel a very good feeling about Israel and that people who are strangers to Israel can be introduced to Israel in a whole new way.”

JNS: So you didn’t write it as an advocacy book—but as someone who has worked as a branding agent, do you think this is a story proIsrael activists can use to “brand” Israel?

Siegel: “I don’t think there’s a more positive story one could tell about Israel today—whether it’s the historical section about what Israel did, overcoming adversity, whether it’s how Israel through trial and error figured out it’s technological needs, or the last third of the book, where I talk about ‘hydro-diplomacy,’ how Israel used water as

a way of opening the world to itself and changing its relationship with its neighborhood. I think those are all very inspiring stories. So I think it would be wonderful if people would use [the book] for that purpose [of branding Israel]. I’d be ecstatic. But I don’t want to take my eye off the ball and say that that’s my purpose.

My purpose is to make sure that we start thinking about our water policy.”

JNS: Does it make a difference that this water story comes from an independent source like you rather than an entity with more “skin in the game,” such as the Israeli government?

Siegel: “If the audience is a water commissioner in Texas, then I don’t think it makes a difference whether I’m the source or whether the Israeli government is the source. If it’s somebody who comes to this with more skepticism, then I think probably an independent party is better.

JNS: “That’s why the book is so heavily footnoted, and that’s why the book has such a deep bibliography. There are close to 600 footnotes in the book, there’s a 12-page bibliography. The reality is that I wanted to have that level of documentation because I thought to myself, the neutral people coming to this, they’ll accept it as is. But the people who come to this with a skeptical eye or even a hostile eye, I want them to know that there’s no game being played here. There is no propaganda in this. This is the story.”

Siegel: The book discusses how from 1962 until the Islamic revolution in 1979, Israel to a large degree ran the water industry in Iran. Is that something worth mentioning in the debate over Iran’s nuclear program and the threat it poses to Israel?

“What I think should’ve been done [during the nuclear negotiations], and repeatedly, is to point

out to the world that Iran once upon a time had a good water system, and that after Iran threw the Israelis out, and exiled or killed some of their water engineers, now Iran has perhaps among the world’s worst water systems. What I would have said is, ‘So how do they have the money to build this nuclear program, but they don’t have money to build up their water system?’”

JNS: What’s JNF’s role in the success of your book?

Siegel: “When I made the decision that there was a book to be written, I needed to develop a sense of what the story was, and I had the good fortune of calling JNF. They not only were excited about this, but they were exuberant about the idea of sharing ideas and sources with me.

“I was a business guy, and a business guy who walked into their office and said, ‘I wanna write a book.’ I’m gonna guess they must get five of those a day. They could not have been more supportive. They set up for me more than dozen of my first interviews.

“The second thing is that while this is primarily an Israeli story—a story of what Israel did for itself and now, a great benefit for the world—what I discovered along the way is that the one great supporter [of this cause] from outside of Israel was JNF. “JNF-USA was the prime mover. Whether it’s the work down in the Be’er Sheva area with the river park, whether it’s the lake, whether it’s Israel’s national network of reservoirs, all of that is a JNF story. And there’s now some 250 of these reservoirs built in Israel, and the truth of the matter is, they probably never would have been built without JNF. Had they never been built, it would have taken Israel a generation before they would’ve been ready to be water-independent.”

JNS: Do you see the global water situation improving? If so, do you see Israeli ingenuity getting some of the credit for it publicly?

Siegel: “If the world fixes its water problems, Israel will be just fine. First of all, it’ll reduce instability in its own region. Second of all, Israel—as a source of innovation—will benefit economically from selling its technologies elsewhere. Third of all, if it turns out that Israel does get credit, that’s good, but no deed is a better deed because somebody gets credit for it. It’s not about the PR value in my mind.”

9

WHOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S IN THE KITCHEN

With Judy off this week, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re reprinting one of her recipes from December 2011. This is one of her ďŹ rst columns for The Jewish Star â&#x20AC;&#x201D; all food, no Jerry. s a personal chef, I am sometimes asked by clients to recommend a signature, mouthwatering dish that is sure to â&#x20AC;&#x153;wowâ&#x20AC;? their guests. Without hesitation, I always offer my favorite appetizer â&#x20AC;&#x201D; baby lamb chops in pastry dough smothered in mushroom sauce.

This recipe consists of quite a few steps, but the ďŹ nished product will be well worth the effort. Just ask my good friends, Ira Grosser and Joe Grob. When they are invited to my home for dinner, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a given that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m going to make baby lamb chops wrapped in pastry dough and smothered in onion and mushroom sauce %DE\ /DPS &KRSV LQ SDVWU\ GRXJK HOHJDQW ÂżUVW FRXUVH Jeremy Pollack â&#x20AC;Ś or else.

In my opinion, no single gesture by a of the lamb chop meat, intact. You can put host or hostess shows culinary sophistication the pieces of meat from the bones along with quite like serving an impressive appetizer. the cut pieces of shoulder lamb chops While this recipe may initially sound a bit in$VVHPEOLQJ WKH EDE\ ODPE FKRSV timidating, to quote Chef James Beard, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Keep the puff pastry frozen until you are only thing that will make a soufďŹ&#x201A;ĂŠ fall is if it ready to assemble the lamb chops. They only knows you are afraid of it.â&#x20AC;? Keep that in mind take about two minutes to defrost. Stretch as you follow these directions. the dough gently by the sides so that it enlarges the area of the square a bit. Lay the %DE\ ODPE FKRSV ZUDSSHG dough on a lightly ďŹ&#x201A;oured surface.

LQ SDVWU\ GRXJK VHUYHG ZLWK Place a teaspoon of caramelized onions, a PXVKURRP DQG RQLRQ VDXFH tablespoon of mushrooms and a tablespoon ,QJUHGLHQWV of shoulder lamb chop chunks in the center 10 baby lamb chops, uniform in size of the dough square. Gently place the baby 4 round bone shoulder lamb chops lamb chop â&#x20AC;&#x153;eyeâ&#x20AC;? on top. Fold the pastry 10 pieces of puff pastry frozen dough (3 x dough around the lamb chop, until all the in3 inch) can be found in most supermarkets, gredients are covered, but leaving the entire in a 10 or 36 piece package long bone bare.

10 frilly paper caps to encircle the bone end Place chop, seam side down, on a lightly of the chops (made of white paper), optional greased half sheet pan. Repeat with the re2 pounds fresh mushrooms maining 9 baby lamb chops.

5 large onions, peeled and diced Place in oven for about 10 minutes at 425 1/8th cup of Mikee garlic, stir-fry and rib degrees, until till the pastry dough turns a sauce golden brown.

10 sprigs of fresh rosemary You are now ready to prepare the onion garlic powder and mushroom sauce. salt Place 8 tablespoons of the Osem mushpepper room soup and seasoning mix in a pan. Slow8 tablespoons Osem mushroom soup and ly add 2 cups of cold water, while stirring, seasoning mix making sure to smooth out any lumps.

2 cups cold water Place on a low ďŹ&#x201A;ame and stir constantly 1/4th teaspoon Kitchen Bouquet brown- until mixture starts to thicken, about 5 mining and seasoning sauce utes. Then add the remaining mushrooms 1 cup canola oil and onions and 1/8th tsp of Kitchen Bou,QVWUXFWLRQV quet. Let simmer for another 5 minutes stirSlice and sautĂŠe mushrooms in a small ring occasionally. amount of canola oil.

If you are serving this dish on Friday night, When mushrooms are just about done, place lamb chops and mushroom sauce in the raise the heat and pour in a tablespoon of warming drawer or on the blech, but not on the Garlic Sauce and mix thoroughly for a the hottest part. minute.

When ready to serve your appetizer, place Peel, dice and sautĂŠe the onions in canola the lamb chop in the center of the plate and oil until they are soft and caramelized (about spoon the sauce on half the pastry portion of 40 min) the chop, letting it drip down the sides onto Rinse, and pat dry 10 baby lamb chops. Place the plate. Place a sprig of rosemary in the them on a lightly greased half sheet pan and center of the dough. sprinkle with garlic powder, salt and pepper.

This dish is sure to appeal to advanced Broil, on high for two and a half minutes epicures as well as novices. Enjoy!

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on each side. Remove from oven and set aside.

Rinse and pat dry 4 shoulder lamb chops, place in lightly greased 8 x 11 pan, and brush with Mikee Garlic Stir Fry and Rib sauce.

Pour a 1/4 cup of water in the bottom of the pan and cover with aluminum foil and bake for one hour at 350 degrees. After removing them from the oven, keep covered while letting them cool. Once cooled, cut the shoulder lamb chops into small pieces and discard the bones. Set aside.

Take the 10 baby lamb chops and â&#x20AC;&#x153;frenchâ&#x20AC;? the bones. To do this, scrape the meat on the long part of the bone, but leave the main part

THE JEWISH STAR December 18, 2015 â&#x20AC;˘ 6 Tevet 5776

Wowing your guests right from the start

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11 THE JEWISH STAR December 18, 2015 • 6 Tevet 5776

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12 December 18, 2015 â&#x20AC;˘ 6 Tevet 5776 THE JEWISH STAR

Finding the messages we need to hear RABBI AVI BILLET

dryness and build some super plumbing system, they could make the desert bloom! believe the answer can be understood when one considers that as much as Yosef transmitted to Pharaoh the interpretation of Pharaohâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dream that Pharaoh needed to hear â&#x20AC;&#x201D; including the suggestion that rocketed Yosef to greatness â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Yosef did not give Pharaoh all the details that Yosef read in the dream.

For example, Yosef told Pharaoh that his two dreams were one and the same. But if, in fact, they were the same, why didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t he have the same dream twice? One dream took place at the river and involved two sets of seven cows, while the other dream took place in a ďŹ eld and involved two sets of seven stalks of grain. They are surely not the same dream. So how could Yosef say they are?

Because Yosef saw in the dreams multiple messages. There was one for Pharaoh, there was one for Egypt, and there was one for Yosef. For Pharaoh, he needed to know that his nation would be in distress and that, through culling together all his powers and authority, he could be the leader that saves Egypt.

For Egypt, they needed to know that a famine was coming.

But for Yosef, he saw in Pharaohâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dreams a fulďŹ llment of his own dreams. As Abravanel explains, he also understood from the different symbols in Pharaohâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dreams â&#x20AC;&#x201D; cows and stalks â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that there would be an end to plowing (which is often done by cows), and an end to harvesting grains.

Perhaps Pharaoh even realized that Yosef was holding back in some of the interpretation, hoping or trusting that Pharaoh would catch the hint and realize that the best person to take on the job of saving Egypt is the person who understands all the intricacies of Pharaohâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dreams.

So, when Yosef conďŹ ded in his brothers what would be taking place in the next ďŹ ve years, he told them the truth. Not just that thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s famine, but that there is no hope to even try anything. Plowing and harvesting will not be happening.

This is a micro reďŹ&#x201A;ection of the faith that the Jewish people have. We go about our business, we do our thing. But we are well aware of the prophesies that have kept our people going throughout the generations.

A friend of mine recently encountered a man preaching gospel on the street, who, noting my friendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kippah, challenged him to agree that the Jews know who the â&#x20AC;&#x153;real Messiahâ&#x20AC;? is. My friend said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Well, let me put it this way, there is a reason that after thousands of years of torture, exiles, forced conversions and suffering, us Jews are still Jews. I think that tells you all you really need to know.â&#x20AC;?

We have the inside scoop. We know the story. And we will continue to do what we need to do to see through to the day when the promises made to us, that we understand in the way they were meant for only us to understand, will be fulďŹ lled.

I

PARSHA OF THE WEEK

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hortly after revealing himself to his brothers, Yosef tells them that â&#x20AC;&#x153;It has already been two years of famine throughout the land, but there will be ďŹ ve more years where there will be no plowing and [no] harvest.â&#x20AC;? (45:6) Why doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t he just say there will be no food? Ramban translates Yosefâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s statement here to mean exactly that â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but if thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what Yosef meant, why didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t he just say it? Furthermore, why mention both? Isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t it obvious that if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not plowing, you wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be harvesting?

To the latter question, Rabbenu Tam noted that there are lands that do not require plowing to be fertile. When they have a Nile River which provides as a constant source of water, harvesting can take place without the plowing.

But the former question still remains: Why is Yosef so speciďŹ c when all he needed to say was, â&#x20AC;&#x153;There wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be food. I will provide the food for you.â&#x20AC;? he Baal HaTurim notes that Yosef was actually quite careful with his language.

There is one other place in the Torah when the concept of people harvesting is noted â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in Parshat Noach, after the ďŹ&#x201A;ood, when G-d promises that for the remainder of the existence of the world, seeding the ground which will lead to harvesting will never cease to be a function of the natural world. If you know how to farm, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll produce food to eat. The terminology G-d uses there is â&#x20AC;&#x153;Zera Vâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Katzir,â&#x20AC;? while Yosef says there will not be â&#x20AC;&#x153;Charish Vâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Katzir.â&#x20AC;? Yosefâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s point was that we have zera (the seeds to plant), but that we will be much better off eating those seeds than having them go to waste during a time in which the plowing will not produce a harvest.

But how did Yosef know that the seeding of the ground would not work? All he told Pharaoh in his interpretation of the dream was that there would be years of famine; maybe if they could somehow bypass the

Yosef told Pharaoh what Pharaoh needed to hear, not all the details that Yosef read in the dream.

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mains entrenched in a very dangerous and uncertain period. Islamic terror continues to place Jews and Jewish institutions at the top of its target list. Painfully, the people of Israel are living in a time where the streets of our beloved nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cities are being struck almost daily by attacks, and where physical security in all too many places is no longer a certainty.

This sense of unease by no means is contained to Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s borders. We have seen hateful attacks being perpetrated against Jews on almost every continent, and anti-Semitism is as much a thing of the present as one of the past.

Unity, therefore, is imperative, to remind every Jew that they are not alone. The Jew on the streets of Paris must know that he or she is as important as their co-religionist walking the pathways of Jerusalem, Sydney, Brooklyn, London, Moscow, Tehranâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or anywhere.

It is deeply unfortunate that it takes tragedy to remind us to be united. Many ask why we need our enemies to force us into ďŹ nding our common bonds. I would agree that this is an important question, but the stakes are far too high to dwell on it for more than a moment. Rather, we must recognize the threats that we are facing as well as the opportunity that is being presented to us.

If we are truly united, and if we spread that message of unity to the world, no terrorist or dictator will ever be able to destroy us.

We owe it to the victims of past terror attacks to recognize and embrace this reality.

Nachum Segal is president of Nachum Segal Network, host of JM in the AM, and initiator of last weekâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unity concert in Paris.

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Long Beach celebrates

Jewish unity concertâ&#x20AC;Ś Continued from page 1 While this diversity can often be described as a positive, when our various factions fail to live and work alongside one another, we are largely failing to embrace the dictum which should deďŹ ne Jewry as one people with one heart.

Though we all can trace our roots back to Sinai, since that time those roots seem to have grown further and further from the source. We are a people of sects, streams, differing ideologies, and countless forms of practice and dress.

The old joke of â&#x20AC;&#x153;two Jews, three opinionsâ&#x20AC;? is not just a humorous take on our social practicesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it is a truism that deďŹ nes who we are as a people.

With all these lines having been drawn within our community, one could naturally become pessimistic over the prospects for Jewish unity.

But I am by no means pessimistic.

I know that when we are confronted by threats, and when one Jew is at risk, those differences must fade away and the Jewish ideal of unity will rise above all. In recent years, we have seen this on numerous occasions.

Perhaps most telling were the events of the summer of 2014, when the kidnapping of the three Israeli boys by Hamas caused Jews of all backgrounds to come together in prayer and hope for their safe return. Sadly, we know that those prayers did not bear the result we hoped for, but the boysâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; deaths did allow that spirit of unity to persist, and in many ways that spirit continues to inspire our community until this day.

Since that time, even while there have been highs and lows, the reality is that our worldâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; the greater world and the Jewish worldâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;re-

THE JEWISH STAR December 18, 2015 â&#x20AC;˘ 6 Tevet 5776

LIâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Chanukah telethon raises joy â&#x20AC;Ś and cash

13

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December 18, 2015 â&#x20AC;˘ 6 Tevet 5776 THE JEWISH STAR

14

JEWISH STAR Schools Rambam alumni in Israel still part of the family Last Shabbos, Rambam alumni learning in Israel joined together for the annual Alumni Shabbaton with Rabbi Zev Meir Friedman, who travels to Israel speciďŹ cally for this occasion. It is a much anticipated and joyous Shabbos as the talmidim reunite with each other and with Rabbi Friedman. Students who are currently in shana bet and older joined as well.

Students were surprised to learn that the guest with the black, greying beard that Rabbi Friedman embraced was none other than Avraham Butel, who graduated Rambam 20 years ago, in its ďŹ rst graduating class, and subsequently made aliyah.

The Shabbos ruach was palpable as each meal was ďŹ lled with divrei Torah and zemiros.

Although, technically, high school is a thing of the past for them, the talmidim expressed a tremendous interest in getting updated on the latest events at Rambam.

They applauded when they heard that their alma mater was the only yeshiva in the country to be awarded National Blue Ribbon status, cheered when they learned of the upcoming plans to confront the NIF, listened intently as Rabbi Friedman discussed the current situation in Israel, and questioned and probed during the various shiurim and discussions

Rabbi Friedman had with the group. While a number of the boys thanked Rabbi Friedman privately for their great high school experience, one talmid got up and publicly thanked the rosh mesivta for four great years and for organizing the Shabbaton.

This yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Shabbaton was held at Yeshivas Migdal haTorah in Modiin. Students, coming from all parts of the country,

took charge and led all aspects of the davening and layning.

Virtually all students shared a dvar Torah with the group â&#x20AC;&#x153;It truly was an amazing Shabbos, and I had such nachas seeing the achdus that exists between all the alumni and how beautifully they davened, sang and learned,â&#x20AC;? said Rabbi Friedman.

Collecting Chanukah food and toys

Top left photo: As part of HAFTRâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Chanukha tradition, students collected and donated toys and gifts for the children of Ohel. Pictured are six graders Joely Steinlauf, Noa Kerity and Raquel Gottlieb, with seventh grader Gabe Baratz, accompanied by Dr. Brand and the Ohel representative.

Top right photo: On the eighth day of Chanukah, HAFTR ninth grader Daniel Baker and YCQ eighth graders Hillel Golubtchik and Jonah Fishbein used their own money to buy food at Gourmet Glatt for the Five Towns Kosher Food Pantry, then delivered it personally.

HANCsters send letters to chayalim

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When second graders in Morah Rebeccaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s class at HANCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Samuel & Elizabeth Bass Golding Elementary School, in West Hempstead, found out that sixth grader Aderet Weiss was going to Israel for a family simcha, they jumped at the chance to show support for our chayalim.

The students wrote beautiful, heartfelt letters expressing their gratitude to the chayalim for keeping them safe and for protecting Eretz Yisrael.

The students also drew pictures for the chayalim in honor of Chanukah.

15

A standing room only crowd of over 100 students attended a tehilim memorial assembly for terror victims in Israel, including seminary student Ezra Schwartz and Rabbi Yaakov Don, HY’D, a seminary teacher, who were murdered on the same day.

The Dec. 9 event at Queens College was organized by Queens senior Limor Brody (second from left), and held under the auspices of the OU-JLIC, directed by Rabbi Robby and Shoshana Charnoff (at right).

THE JEWISH STAR December 18, 2015 • 6 Tevet 5776

Standing room only at ‘Stand with Israel’ event Rebecca Gottesman (at left) assisted by arranging for Ezra’s roommates at Yeshiva Ashreinu, Michael Benzaken and Jason Geller (center), to address the audience. They were in the van at the time of the terrorist attack.

Brody was initially motivated to approach the Charnoffs to hold a tehilim assembly since Rabbi Don had been her seminary teacher at Emunah V’Omanut, ironically having taught her current events of Israel.

OU-JLIC photo

At Shulamith MS, everyone’s a critic As an enhancement to their English Language Arts class, Shulamith eighth graders attended “Encore,” a Chamber Theatre production at Hofstra University on the first day of Chanukah.

The girls enjoyed a performance of five short stories, as well as a dramatic enactment of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven.” As they watched, students were mindful of the various elements of the theater, from lighting to sound effects to the use of props.

In the next few days, they will be writing reviews of the show, allowing them to hone their abilities to present opinions clearly and in an organized way. While they may not each be in agreement about what they enjoyed best, they all agree that the production was fun to watch.

Making news in The Star The Jewish Star publishes news of yeshivot and day schools in the Five Towns, Far Rockaway. Nassau County and Queens.

Email Schools@TheJewishStar. com. Attach a high-res photo, with caption, when available.

Question? Call Editor Ed Weintrob at 718-908-5555.

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December 18, 2015 • 6 Tevet 5776 THE JEWISH STAR

16

Obama, Trump: Tweedle dee, Tweedle dum…

Continued from page 1 the camera with a 64-point disapproval rating on his handling of terrorism. After giving us a perfunctory lecture about Islamic State being the only threat in the Middle East (a complete falsehood), and after assuring us that a political solution to the Syrian civil war is still possible so long as we work with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Obama turned to the subject that really animates him: gun control.

Taken as a whole, the speech was an artless attempt to turn a debate about international policy into one about domestic issues. There was no explanation for the current predicament of the Middle East. Indeed, Iran, which has fueled the rise of Islamic State through its backing of the Bashar al-Assad regime, wasn’t even mentioned. Instead, we were told that preventing the denizens of a dubious “no fly” list from purchasing guns was the chief priority for our national security.

The problem for Obama is that while many Americans share the president’s distaste for foreign engagements, they don’t draw the same conclusions that he does. Once you start on the path of isolationism, and when you repeatedly tell your citizens that America can’t be the “world’s policeman,” you encourage the sense that the outside world and the people who live in it can’t be trusted.

Is it any wonder that a president who has

regarded the trampling of the human rights of Muslims and non-Muslims in the Middle East with studied indifference has, as a result, failed to persuade many Americans that they should respect Islam as a faith?

It is this disconnect that Donald Trump has exploited. s the quintessential fake tough guy, Trump’s rhetoric about confronting Islamic radicalism should be taken with a fistful of salt. Like Obama, he ignores the wider problem of Iranian power, while his frankly embarrassing crush on Putin suggests that Trump too would cede strategic ground to the Russians.

Trump’s extensive business interests in the slave labor economies of the Arab Gulf coun-

A

tries only bolsters this sense. As for Israel, his understanding of what binds America to the Jewish state is superficial enough to make any informed American Jew worry that a Trump administration would do little to repair the damage of the Obama years.

To further understand the company that Trump keeps on these vital questions, look across the Atlantic Ocean. In France, the farright National Front party of Marine Le Pen has surged in recent local elections. In Poland and Hungary, right-wing nationalists are in government. Like Trump, they talk about Muslims in crude and bigoted terms, but they don’t exactly love Jews or Israel either. This isn’t Obama’s cuddly, progressive isolationism. It’s a surly version of the same phenom-

Obama: Grinch who stole Chanukah…

Continued from page 6 who lit these lights at the Kotel this year.”

Talve sermonized that the Chanukah lights, “say no to the darkness of Islamophobia and Homophobia and Transphobia and anti-Semitism,” and called for “security for Israelis and justice for Palestinians as allies committed to a lasting peace for all people.”

“Ins’Allah, Ins’Allah, Ins’Allah, Ins’Allah (Allah willing),” she continued calling for greeting terrorism with “love and understanding.”

“The real miracle, that no matter how much violence there is in Paris, in California, or in the streets of our nations, we will respond with more love and more understanding and more compassion,” Talve said, “and we will see that

the good in us has grown like the lights of Chanukah, and in spite of all odds, like the Maccabees of old, we too, we too, will win.”

Finally, when it was time to light the candles, the reform rabbi led the assembled in the two blessings for lighting the Chanukah candles on the fourth day. However, in the second blessing she added a word; “sheasa nisim lahvoteynu” in Hebrew became “sheasa nisim lahvoteynu vematanu,” as she added “foremothers” to the Hebrew for forefathers in the blessing.

Given the Obama administration’s policies toward Israel during the past seven years, it is probable that Tavle was brought on to continue the Obama administration’s assault on the Jewish State.

This same president would never bring someone to call for the end of Palestinian violence at the annual White House dinner to celebrate Iftar, the ending of the Ramadan fast.

Neither would Obama allow a speaker to call for easy access to abortion at the annual White House Christmas celebration. But “Justice for Palestine” is an allowable topic on Chanukah in front of the President of Israel.

Chanukah is a holiday commemorating (among other things) the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Ironically, those Palestinians whose justice Talve speaks of, deny that the Temple ever existed, and seek to remove the mount upon which the Temple stood 2,000 years ago from the possession of the Jews.

enon, and its adherents believe that they have an inherent right to determine who does and doesn’t belong within their borders.

That’s why we are having a nonsensical debate about Islam and Islamists instead of a sensible one. Thanks to Obama, the notion of deploying special forces to secure a safe haven in Syria has evaporated, because he has turned opposition to the intervention of ground troops into a dogma. And thanks to Trump, Americans are being persuaded that discriminating against their fellow citizens on the grounds of religious belief, in flagrant violation of the Constitution, is a better option than using a limited number of ground troops to help turn the tide in the Middle East against the terrorists and their backers.

Thus do we compromise our values at home, by not effectively intervening abroad.

The question is whether, a year from now, we will have a new incumbent heading into the White House with a much sharper understanding of what needs to be done.

At minimum, this requires an explicit acknowledgement of what it is that we are fighting, and why we are fighting it. And ironically, the best explanation I’ve seen has come from a member of the opposition Labour Party in the United Kingdom.

While Labour is now led by Jeremy Corbyn, a dinosaur of the far left, the party’s internal fissures mean that he has a potential rival in Hilary Benn, who currently holds the foreign affairs portfolio. During the recent debate in the British parliament about extending airstrikes against Islamic State into Syria, Benn delivered a remarkable speech in which he identified the enemy in the Middle East as fascism.

“What we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated,” Benn declared. “It’s why this entire house stood up against Hitler and Mussolini. It’s why our party has always stood up against the denial of human rights and for justice and my view...is that we must now confront this evil. It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria.”

Remember, back in the 1930s, it took the violation of Czechoslovakia and Poland by Hitler to convince Europeans of the imperative of defeating the Axis powers. Neither Obama nor Trump, you can be sure, will draw any salient lessons from that stark fact. But the rest of us should.

In crisis moment, finding unity under Hashem…

Continued from page 7 punishment for such a crime is to become a slave in the dungeons of Egypt forever.

Seemingly in an impossible situation, with no way out, Yehuda steps forward to challenge the Viceroy (whom he apparently does not yet know to be Joseph) and in what becomes his finest hour, rises to the challenge of saving his brother from a horrible fate. How does a moment of such confrontation transform into the ultimate reconciliation, with Joseph weeping in the arms of the brothers who 22 years earlier hated him enough to abandon him to the world of Egyptian servitude?

The word the Torah uses for Yehuda stepping forward to confront Joseph (after which our portion is named), Vayigash, really means “to come close.” When Yehoshua calls the Jewish people to “come close” and listen prior to entering the land of Israel (Joshua 3:9), he says, “geshu hena” (“come close here”), which is the same word used when Joseph calls the brothers to come close. As he reveals himself to them (45:4) he also says “Ge’shu na elai” (“come close to me”). Indeed, Onkelos translates the word as “to come close” — hardly the language of confrontation!

Even more interesting, when all is revealed and Yaakov and his sons eventually

come down to settle in Egypt, they dwell in a land called Goshen (46:28), which literally means the land of closeness.

Quite a turn of events for the brothers who once had such enmity and hatred for their brother Joseph that “they could not even speak to him in peace” (37:4).

The Ohr Hachaim (R Chaim Ibn Atar) goes so far as to point out that when the brothers see Joseph approaching in the field (whereupon they conspire to kill him) the verse says “they see him from afar” (37:18), precisely because if they came close they would not have hated him as much; it is only when

Remembering a Japanese hero…

Continued from page 2 died in Rochelle Park, New Jersey, in 2001.

•A Jewish woman who died in the U.S. in 2005. The researchers are withholding her name at her family’s request.

Information written on the back of those four snapshots, including partial or full names, helped identify the subjects of the photos and track down their families, Halpern said.

One of the photos of the two unidentified women has a message in French and the name Marie written on the back, but otherwise clues to their identities remain scant, Halpern said.

The researchers plan to continue trying to identify the two women and have asked Yad Vashem to publicize their photos.

Kitade, who is now 71, said in an email to The Associated Press that he wanted “Japanese people and people of the Jewish communities in the world to know about the important roles played by those ordinary Japanese citizens.”

Kitade said Osako was a kind person who was struck by the refugees’ plight and took particular interest in their well-being during the voyages. Kitade met this week with the children of Reed, Kronberg and the woman who died in 2005.

Kronberg’s daughter Linda Birnbach, of Hartsdale, New York, knew some of her mother’s story of escaping Europe, including her work with Norway’s resistance movement. But other details were never divulged, including

that Vera and her future husband, Emil Kronberg, sailed aboard the same Japanese ship that arrived in the U.S. in March 1941.

Emil, an Austrian Jew, had met Vera in Norway before the war but was married to another woman at the time.

Once in the U.S., he divorced her and married Vera in 1942.

Now knowing the details of her parents’ long journey to freedom, Birnbach believes her father orchestrated not only his own escape and that of his wife at the time, but also arranged Vera’s itinerary to coincide with his.

“I knew nothing else about that story whatsoever,” Birnbach said. “She never really talked about that excursion.”

you see someone figuratively from a distance, that you can really hate him.

Essentially, Yehudah offers himself as a slave in lieu of his brother; he will take his brother’s place. But the language he uses is “avdecha’ arav et ha’naar” (44:32), which literally means he had promised their father Yaakov he would be responsible for the lad (Binyamin, allowing him to be brought to Egypt in the first place.) But the word areiv related to irvuv really means to be mixed together and to be one. The first step in doing away with the internecine hatred and rivalry, jealousy and envy that plagued the brothers then, and still plagues us today, is to come close, to realize we are really one.

Ultimately, for the tragic error of assuming we are better off being apart, the brothers will spend 200 years in Egypt learning that we need to work on being one.

When we view each other as “other,” we are repeating the original mistake of the brothers which led to such tragedy. However, when we tap into the reality that we are all really one — one family created in Hashem’s image — then we are capturing the spirit of reconciliation that led to the birth of the Jewish Nation and speaks to its mission of sharing a reality in which the whole world one day becomes one.

David Shirazi, on that lonely hill understood that we are never alone; he became one with his brothers in arms, with the Jewish people, and ultimately with the dream of a world in which all of humanity becomes so aware of the oneness we all share that there will no longer be a need for war.

17 THE JEWISH STAR December 18, 2015 â&#x20AC;˘ 6 Tevet 5776

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In Israel and America, 18 Thanksgiving: P. 17â&#x20AC;&#x201C;

Chanukah brings warmth, community to Ukraine

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In rebel-held Donetsk, whose bombed-out airport has been a ďŹ&#x201A;ashpoint in the conďŹ&#x201A;ict, the local Jewish community celebrated with a holiday performance in central Shakhtar Plaza, outside the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s soccer stadium.

Sborovskayaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s daughter is having a very different Jewish childhood from her mother. The 7-year-old, who wears a Magen David around her neck, is leading a Chanukah dance performance at the Odessa Beit Grand Jewish Community Center. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was forbidden here to be religious â&#x20AC;Ś when we celebrate Chanukah so openly, it means weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve really returned to our tradition,â&#x20AC;? said Sborovskaya. â&#x20AC;&#x153;And when we see young people, who do it very naturally, it means there is really another [Jewish] generation today in Ukraine.â&#x20AC;?

Children are a particular focus of efforts to stoke a Jewish revival in Ukraine. In Odessa, JDC partners with Tikva Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Home, a center for at-risk children based out of Odessaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s historic Great Choral Synagogue, which held a party fea

turing a klezmer band on the ďŹ rst night of Chanukah. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The miracle of Chanukah speaks of a small group of people who managed to deal with adversaries from all sides and still win,â&#x20AC;? Tikva CEO Refael Kruskal wrote in an email. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This year, as we celebrate Chanukah in Odessa in a country at war and ďŹ nancially unstable, the message of the twinkling candles is that, as in the past, we will overcome these hurdles and difďŹ culties.â&#x20AC;?

The border war, ignited by the same protests that ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych for his pro-Russian leanings, has stoked a testy nationalism in Ukraine that already stood at a soft boil. These days, toilet-paper-sporting Yanukovych and Russian President Vladimir Putinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s face has become a popular souvenir.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a region where mounting nationalism has never been a good sign for Jews, and the violence has been accompanied by a spate of anti-Semitic incidents. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not uncommon to see pejorative grafďŹ ti like swastikas on the ruins of

Get the

moldering synagogues.

Less than two years ago, the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Jewish leaders mulled evacuating in the face of unrest, going so far as to temporarily shut down the Great Choral Synagogue.

But Odessaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 35,000 Jews remain, and during the holidays they make an effort to include internally displaced families as they approach their second full year away from their homes, Sborovskaya said.

In eastern Europe, Chanukah also means a shift in the weather that can be dangerous for people who have been forced to ďŹ nd impromptu shelter in a foreign city.

Accordingly, the JDC ramped up its winter relief program last year, continuing to distribute boots and heating supplies to families like that of Valeriya Sarabun, a 6-year-old who shares a poorly insulated room with her mother and two other relatives in Odessa.

But Odessa is only one node of a JDC network that operates through 32 local Hesed social welfare centers in Ukraine and partners with organizations such as the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and The Jewish Federations of North America.

A JDC spokesperson said it cares for 65,000 Jews across Ukraine.

For Chanukah, JDC-backed Hesed centers are hosting a marathon of food fairs, performances, festivals, holiday meals, educational programs, and workshops. â&#x20AC;&#x153;By providing these celebrations for Jews and Jewish communities in distress, along with the ongoing relief weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re deploying for the crisis, we are enabling those who need it most to ďŹ nd comfort in their Jewish community,â&#x20AC;? Michal Frank, JDCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s director for the Former Soviet Union, said in an emailed statement.

Meanwhile, internally displaced Jews in Odessa and the community playing their host are hoping for a Chanukah miracle of Maccabean proportions: a peaceful resolution to the violence in the east.

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By Eitan Arom, JNS.org In the United States, there are those who believe Christmas has swallowed Chanukah whole, reducing it to a sort of Christmas for Jews. But in places like Ukraine, where historic anti-Semitism is not remote, the holiday still retains some of its original meaning: for instance, as a parable of Jewish resilience in the face of war and oppression.

So when Ira Sborovskaya sees a huge Chanukah menorah near the Potemkin Stairs, the iconic entrance to Odessa, once a major Jewish hub, she feels something akin to pride. Sborovskaya didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t ďŹ nd out she was Jewish until she was 16 or 17 years old, as Soviet control once made all religions taboo in her birthplace of Odessa. Now, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the point person for one of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest Jewish charities, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), in southern Ukraine and neighboring Moldova. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I thought that if I live in Ukraine, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m Ukrainian,â&#x20AC;? she said.

Since religious freedom was restored to the region with the Soviet Unionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fall, the JDC has positioned itself in an attempt to help renew Jewish life behind the former Iron Curtain. That mission is now complicated by its related goal of providing for the spiritual and physical needs of Ukrainian Jews displaced by war in the east.

Odessa has experienced pro-Russian unrest, though it remains safely in Ukrainian hands.

Part of celebrating Chanukah for people like Sborovskaya is continuing to welcome in hundreds of Jews ďŹ&#x201A;eeing the armed conďŹ&#x201A;ict in eastern Ukraine between the government and Russian-backed separatists.

JDC representatives share information, and so when Jewish families began arriving, Sborovskaya was aware of them and ready. JDC is helping organizations on the ground commemorate Chanukah with celebrations that range from a costume show behind rebel lines in Lugansk to Chanukah menorah handouts for internally displaced families in Odessa.

793449

December 18, 2015 â&#x20AC;˘ 6 Tevet 5776 THE JEWISH STAR

18

By Michael Virtanan ALBANY (AP) â&#x20AC;&#x201D; The state capital has a deep corruption problem that can ďŹ&#x201A;ourish when people fear challenging longtime powerful leaders, the federal prosecutor who convicted New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s two top lawmakers said Monday.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said the fraud and extortion convictions of ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and former Senate Leader Dean Skelos also show the Legislature has done a poor job of self-policing.

He declined to say on Monday whether his ofďŹ ce is still investigating Gov. Andrew Cuomoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s early shutdown of the stateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Moreland anti-corruption commission in 2014, when it was investigating Silver, other lawmakers and inďŹ&#x201A;uential political donors. Bhararaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ofďŹ ce inherited and used those investigation ďŹ les, he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Everyone has their part to play in making sure we have honest and clean government,â&#x20AC;? Bharara said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The politicians themselves have a role in self-policing. Any institution can have bad apples in them that need to be prosecuted whether itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s on Wall Street, in banks or anywhere else. But the ďŹ rst line of defense against bad conduct is the institution itself.â&#x20AC;?

He noted that Senate Ethics Committee Chairman Tony Avella testiďŹ ed at Skelosâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; trial that he was never permitted to advance a bill or even hold a hearing. He added that Albany was a special case, imagining the outcry if the U.S. House speaker and U.S. Senate majority leader were convicted back-to-back of selling their ofďŹ ces and inďŹ&#x201A;uence for personal gain.

Strict limits on outside income should be considered, the prosecutor said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Common sense will tell you it is much harder to disguise a bribe or a kickback as a referral if you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the ability to have the same outside income.â&#x20AC;?

Silver, 71, was convicted of taking $4 million in kickbacks disguised as law practice referral fees in return for advancing legislation that beneďŹ ted wealthy developers and funneling $500,000 in grants to a cancer researcher.

The Manhattan Democrat ruled the Assembly for 21 years until he was indicted and replaced as speaker this year.

Skelos, 67, was convicted of using his inďŹ&#x201A;uence to get payments and no-show jobs for his 33-year-old son, Adam. The Long Island Republican led the Senate from 2011 until he was indicted earlier this year.

Both lost their legislative seats with the convictions.

Bharara declined to discuss what heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll seek in forfeitures and ďŹ nes, but noted â&#x20AC;&#x153;it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem at all fairâ&#x20AC;? that someone who uses public ofďŹ ce for private gain should get the full pension.

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After 32 years in Senate, gone in ďŹ&#x201A;ash

By Alex Costello Herald Community Newspapers Dean Skelosâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spent 32 years representing his Long Island district in the state Senate, and was sworn into his 16th term last January. But within minutes of his conviction last week, he was removed from the state Senate list, and his own web page stated, â&#x20AC;&#x153;This Senator is no longer serving in the New York State Senate.â&#x20AC;?

Skelos, 67, and his son, 33, both Rockville Centre residents, were charged with monetizing Skelosâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s position in the Senate for Adamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s benefit. Prosecutors said that Skelos procured a number of jobs for his son during the years he was majority leader, and used his influence in Albany as leverage to keep money flowing to Adam.

Father and son were each charged with three counts of extortion under color of official right, two counts of soliciting bribes in connection with a federal program and one count of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud.

Prosecutors said that shortly after he was named majority leader, Skelos secured a job for Adam at Physiciansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Reciprocal Insurers

in Roslyn. However, Adam rarely showed up for work, and was accused of being disruptive when he did. In testimony, his supervisor said that Adam threatened him when he tried to get the younger Skelos to actually do his job.

Later, prosecutors said, Glenwood Management made a payment of $20,000 to Adam, though he did not do any work for the company. Witnesses for both businesses said that Dean Skelos pressured them to make sure Adam got paid.

The third company he worked for was Arizona-based AbTech, which won a $12 million contract with Nassau County for floodwater mitigation technology while Adam was an employee. According to prosecutors, Dean Skelos pressured the county to get the work done more quickly so that money could start flowing to AbTech and, by extension, Adam. The defense acknowledged that Adam Skelos was a bad employee, but contended that that itself was not criminal.

The convictions capped a fall from grade that began when Skelos and his son were arrested in May. Days later, Skelos was forced to resign from his position as majority leader.

Rip it up? NYS weighs a new constitution

By David Klepper ALBANY (AP) â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Many New Yorkers have lost faith in a state government thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been embroiled in one corruption scandal after another. But instead of merely complaining, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll soon have a chance to tear it all down and start over.

Voters will be asked in 2017 whether the state should hold a constitutional convention to consider fundamental changes to its 121-year-old state Constitution.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a question thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s automatically on the ballot every 20 years as a way for the public to circumvent lawmakers, and backers say itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s notable that the latest opportunity comes amid a crisis of conďŹ dence in state government. â&#x20AC;&#x153;When the stars align, it can be a very powerful moment,â&#x20AC;? Gerald Benjamin, a political scientist at SUNY-New Paltz, said recently at a Bar Association forum to begin a public dialogue on the question.

New York is one of some 14 states that automatically put the question of convening a convention on the ballot every 10 or 20 years, though that hardly guarantees a convention will happen. Another, Rhode Island, saw voters opt against calling one last year.

Ten states have created new constitutions since 1964, according to the National Confer-

ence of State Legislatures. Georgia adopted a new document in 1983. Illinois, North Carolina and Virginia did so in the seventies. Though it has been amended more than 100 times, the Massachusetts constitution, by contrast dates back to 1780.

In New York, voters fed up with political graft could be positioned to make big changes.

The recent convictions of longtime Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and former Senate Leader Dean Skelos on corruption charges put them among an infamous line of 30 lawmakers who left ofďŹ ce facing criminal charges or ethical misconduct allegations since 2000.

Among the suggestions to ďŹ x the problem on a fundamental level: Make the Legislature a full-time body. Prohibit its members from accepting outside income.

Close a loophole allowing large, largely anonymous donations from wealthy interests.

Create a system of publicly funded elections to drain the money out of politics. Impose term limits on lawmakers. Replace the Senate and the Assembly with a single unicameral chamber.

Supporters of a convention say it would be a chance to make other changes to the way government operates and handles such priorities as education, health care and social services. Abortion, gun control and charter

schools are among the issues that could be on the table. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the state as a whole to reinvent state government,â&#x20AC;? said Hank Greenberg an attorney and the chairman of the state Bar Associationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s state constitution committee. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It has been so long since we had one â&#x20AC;&#x201D; nearly 50 years.â&#x20AC;?

Polls of New York voters show signiďŹ cant public dissatisfaction with state government and wide support for a convention: 69 percent of voters surveyed by Siena College in July supported the idea. But the poll also found many voters are unclear about the process, and 75 percent of respondents said they had heard â&#x20AC;&#x153;nothingâ&#x20AC;? about the possibility of a convention.

If approved, a convention wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be held until 2019 to give time for voters to pick delegates and organize the gathering. Voters would also have ďŹ nal say over any recommended changes.

States differ in the ways they alter their constitutions. Delaware allows lawmakers to make changes without referendum. Alabamaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s constitution is 376,000 words long â&#x20AC;&#x201D; longer than Dostoyevskyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Brothers Karamazovâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and has nearly 900 amendments. California and some 16 other states allow citizens to alter their constitutions through direct initiative.

No one has come out against a convention in New York â&#x20AC;&#x201D; yet. Calls for a convention were rejected in 1977 and 1997 when various special interests objected. Labor unions worried about changes that would undermine their power. Environmentalists wanted to preserve existing protections for the Adirondacks. Conservatives worried about liberal revisions on gun control and abortion. Abortion rights supporters feared the opposite.

The current constitution â&#x20AC;&#x201D; which at 50,000 words is seven times longer than the federal constitution â&#x20AC;&#x201D; was drafted in 1894 and heavily revised in 1938. The last convention was held in 1967, though voters recommended the proposed changes.

This time around, supporters are calling on Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has supported a convention, to convene a preparatory commission to begin reviewing possible topics for a review by delegates.

Even if the voters are reluctant to make big changes, the stateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most important document could do with at least a modest trim, said Peter Galie, co-author of three books on the New York state Constitution and a political science professor at Canisius College. He said about 15,000 words could be cut by removing outdated or redundant language.

THE JEWISH STAR December 18, 2015 â&#x20AC;˘ 6 Tevet 5776

Prosecutor: Albany corruption runs â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;deepâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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December 18, 2015 • 6 Tevet 5776 THE JEWISH STAR

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Touro confab eyes halachic issues in IVF Touro’s Lander College for Women, New York Medical College and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons have hosted an innovative conference on “The Future of Reproductive Medicine: A Jewish Perspective.”

The symposium covered in vitro fertilization (IVF) and newly emerging genetic technologies such as gene editing and mitochondrial replacement therapy. By allowing scientists and clinicians to modify the human genetic code, our holy human grail, these new biotechnologies have the potential to alter our lives in remarkable ways.

In the future, these revolutionary technologies may be employed to prevent or correct over 6,000 disease-causing mutations, such as Tay Sachs disease, cystic fibrosis, Gaucher’s disease, early onset Alzheimer’s disease, and even some types cancers.

Legal, medical and halachic experts discussed the benefits and risks of new reproductive technologies, including ethical barriers. The consensus among the experts at this conference was that Jewish tradition focuses not on fear but rather on the suffering of infertile couples.

Furthermore, Judaism takes a lead position in explicating the positives in promoting basic research in these new biotechnologies to ensure the development, within a halachic framework, of appropriate therapeutic interventions.

In welcoming remarks, Dr. Alan Kadish, president and chief executive officer of Touro College and University System. discussed recent findings in reproductive medicine, demonstrating that the genetics of a surrogate woman gestating an embryo could influence the genetics of the fetus. He raised a question that was repeated throughout the conference and set the stage to address other legal and halachic issues of new genetic technologies: How will halacha view this scientific discovery vis-a-vis the ongoing debate whether genetics or gestation confer motherhood?

The complexities of IVF and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) in generating healthy fetuses was illustratively explained by Dr. Susan Lobel of Metropolitan Reproductive Medicine, a leading clinician and expert on IVF. Dr. Lobel introduced several halachic questions including whether IVF could be used to increase the odds of a successful pregnancy by couples that are not infertile and whether IVF can be used for

sex selection in order to fulfill the mitzvah of pru u’ruvu (two children, one of each gender).

Lastly, Dr. Lobel informed the audience that current IVF procedures do not necessarily require women to “come into the physician’s office or hospital on the Shabbat or holidays.”

Such potential transgressions, Dr. Lobel explained, can be often circumvented by planned scheduling and administration of the various medications involved in IVF. Dr. Marian Stoltz-Loike, LCW dean and vice president of online education, highlighted how LCW provides students with the opportunity to learn about the interaction of medicine, science and halacha in new technologies.

Rabbi Tzvi Flaum, machgiach and professor of Judaic studies at the LCW, emphasized a major principle in Jewish law — that intervention in reproductive medicine is an option not a mandatory halachic obligation and should never be used to replace normal marital relations in creating embryos. He also addressed critical halachic issues that are rarely spoken about in reproductive medicine. He showed where halacha is permissive in delineating those medical situations where IVF procedures could be performed on Shabbat even though one might think there would be a violation of the laws of Shabbat. Finally, on the issue

of sex selection, he emphasized that only when there are medical reasons to engage in IVF, could sex selection be considered as a halachic option.

The topic of mitochondrial replacement therapy and gene editing was presented by Dr. Dieter Egli, assistant professor of cell and developmental biology at Columbia University, and senior research fellow at the New York Stem Cell Foundation. He provided the audience with a summary of serious medical symptoms in women who suffer from mutations in their mitochondria and outlined how mitochondrial replacement therapy has the potential of providing a safe procedure for these women to have healthy children, free of such mutations.

Rabbi Dr. Moshe Tendler, sh’litah, one of the leading poskim and senior Rosh Yeshiva and Professor of both Biology and of Medical Ethics at Yeshiva University, reviewed the many halachic and Jewish philosophical implications of the new technologies that Dr. Egli presented.

Rabbi Tendler reiterated the important obligation that G-d instructs human beings to serve as partners in the creation process, which means that new genetic research areas are to be pursued with great vigor and care given their tremendous potential medical benefits.

Rabbi Tendler also emphasized the social re-

sponsibility of all Jews to contribute to general society, and to volunteer for clinical trials for the benefit of humankind.

Rabbi Tendler concluded with an in-depth explanation of the efficacy of prayer. He stated that the laws of nature are divine and immutable and that people cannot rely on miracles that violate natural law for cures. Rather, we must understand the importance of the prayer as we ask G-d for da’at (knowledge) in our shemoneh esrai. He interpreted the prayer of da’at to mean that we are asking G-d to give human beings the ability to expand our knowledge of medicine, to choose the correct therapy and to select the most appropriate doctor in treating any critical disease.

Throughout his talk, Rabbi Tendler emphasized the need in bioethics to recognize the principle of respecting human sanctity and not allow human autonomy to dominate the other principles of bioethics.

Dr. Theodore Silver from the Touro Law Center in Central Islip explored secular legal issues surrounding genetic technologies. He emphasized that, unlike Jewish law, secular legal law focuses on the obligations of a parent to the child and not on the obligations of a child to a parent. In addition, unlike Jewish law, U.S. law does not generally recognize genetics as a criterion of parenthood.

Shalom Task Force workshop in Israel Over two dozen young women gathered in a private home in Ramat Beit Shemesh on November 29 to attend the “Shidduch Shmooze,” a workshop run by Shalom Task Force to educate them on critical components to look for when dating and choosing a potential spouse.

The workshop, the first of its kind held in a communal setting in Israel, covered the elements of a healthy relationship and explained the warning signs of an unhealthy one.

“This event was a milestone for Shalom

Task Force in Israel since it was community-based, and not seminary-based,” said Rikki Davies, MSW, Shalom Task Force’s Director of Women’s Education in Israel.

“The young women were engaged and involved and it was a wonderful family-like environment.”

Many women and parents requested that a similar session be held for their parents to explore these crucial topics, and Shalom Task Force hopes to implement that idea in the future, in addition to running similar workshops for women who

could not attend this first session.

Founded 23 years ago, Shalom Task Force promotes peaceful family resolutions and healthy marriages for Jewish families.

STF offers legal services and maintains an anonymous domestic abuse Hotline (718377-3700) that has received thousands of calls. The organization also sends staff members to speak about relationships to Jewish high schools across America and seminaries and yeshivas in Israel.

For additional information about the Shalom Task Force, call 212-742-1478.

Gurwin to open Fountaingate Gardens in Commack Gurwin, a provider of health care services on Long Island since 1988, will complete a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) on its 67-acre campus in Commack with the addition of the proposed Fountaingate Gardens, an independent living community.

Roughly 10,000 baby boomers will retire each day over the next 19 years. As the country’s population ages, Long Island—where the percentage of the population aged 65 or older is higher than the state average—must prepare for the fast-approaching influx of retirees. But, this generation of boomers, particularly New Yorkers, are looking for something far beyond the stereotypical retirement community lifestyle. Gurwin planned Fountaingate Gardens

to offer these young seniors a retirement option that is anything but average.

This proposed community will become the 14th CCRC in the state and only the fourth on Long Island. Fountaingate Gardens will feature spacious one- and two-bedroom apartments, some with dens and balconies, and an extraordinary clubhouse complete with onsite restaurants, a bistro, a theater, an indoor heated saltwater pool, classrooms, and visual arts studios.

Because it is new construction, residents will have the opportunity to customize the finishes in their apartments. Weather issues like snow, rain or heat will not be a concern for residents due to the underground parking ac-

commodations and walkways. Housekeeping services will be provided, and all apartment maintenance and repairs will be handled by maintenance staff, at no additional cost.

“CCRCs are vibrant lifestyle options for older adults who wish to stay active during retirement, without the burden of maintaining a house,” explained Herbert H. Friedman, Gurwin’s executive vice president and CEO. “Fountaingate Gardens’ mission is to provide this lifestyle opportunity for active seniors by creating a community that nurtures lifelong learning, inspiration, wellness, freedom, convenience, and most importantly, a secure, dependable future.”

That dependable future includes access to

the trusted Gurwin family of services including short-term rehabilitation, assisted living, memory care and skilled care, should they need them.

Interest has been high for the proposed CCRC, which is expected to break ground in 2018. Karen Striegl, Director of Sales and Marketing, has been pleased with the response, citing more than 70 depositors already involved in the Charter Club program.

“People can reserve their place in line to choose their new residence with a small, fullyrefundable deposit,” explains Striegl.

“This overwhelmingly positive response just goes to show that Long Island really needs this type of option for today’s active senior.”

21 THE JEWISH STAR December 18, 2015 â&#x20AC;¢ 6 Tevet 5776

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December 18, 2015 • 6 Tevet 5776 THE JEWISH STAR

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Home of the week Gil Shemtov • Douglas Elliman Real Estate

1890s charm with spacious, modern amenities Wrap yourself in warmth sitting by the fireplace inside this Victorian 6 bedroom, 4.5 bathroom home in Hewlett. Great features include a distinguished formal living room with hardwood floors, master suite with custom storage and dressing room, grand dining room with antique chandelier.

This home boasts a country kitchen with separate pantry, double ovens, granite countertops, work island and a separate breakfast area. Lovely outdoor space includes a rustic in-ground swimming pool, and deck geared for outdoor dining.

You’ll enjoy living in this wonderful neighborhood, near Anshei Chesed of Hewlett, Young Israel of Hewlett, Toras Chaim, Aish Kodesh and Congregation Sons of Israel.

Entertain to your heart’s delight in this vintage home, especially with its separate guest house. All a quick walk from the Hewlett LIRR station, library, post office and shops.

This is a residence you’ll never want to leave.

Contact Gil Shemtov at 516-763-6131 or 516-835-3333; email gil.shemtov@elliman. com

M A N H AT TA N | B R O O K LY N | Q U E E N S | L O N G I S L A N D | T H E H A M P T O N S | T H E N O R T H F O R K | R I V E R D A L E | W E S T C H E S T E R / P U T N A M | L O S A N G E L E S | F L O R I D A

30 WEST PARK AVE, LONG BEACH, NY 11561

THE JEWISH STAR December 18, 2015 • 6 Tevet 5776

Reduced To $975,000

One-of-a-Kind Victorian Home Boasts 6 Bedrooms 4.5 Bathrooms.

A Rare Gem that must be seen to be appreciated.

GIL SHEMTOV

LICENSED REAL ESTATE SALESPERSON

DIRECT: 516.763.6131 OFFICE: 516.432.3400 MOBILE: 516.835.3333 FAX: 516.431.6328 gil.shemtov@elliman.com

110 WALT WHITMAN ROAD, HUNTINGTON STATION, NY, 11746. 631.549.7401 | © 2015 DOUGLAS ELLIMAN REAL ESTATE. ALL MATERIAL PRESENTED HEREIN IS INTENDED FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY. WHILE, THIS INFORMATION IS BELIEVED TO BE CORRECT, IT IS REPRESENTED SUBJECT TO ERRORS, OMISSIONS, CHANGES OR WITHDRAWAL WITHOUT NOTICE. ALL PROPERTY INFORMATION, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO SQUARE FOOTAGE, ROOM COUNT, NUMBER OF BEDROOMS AND THE SCHOOL DISTRICT IN PROPERTY LISTINGS ARE DEEMED RELIABLE, BUT SHOULD BE VERIFIED BY YOUR OWN ATTORNEY, ARCHITECT OR ZONING EXPERT.PHOTOS SHOWN MAY HAVE BEEN MANIPULATED. EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY.

Spectacular Hewlett Home With Pool And Guest Quarters

809351

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807922

December 18, 2015 • 6 Tevet 5776 THE JEWISH STAR

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