TRANS-ATLANTIC DOUBLE MITZVAH IN WOODCLIFF LAKE page 6

LEARNING HOW TO TEACH THE HOLOCAUST page 8

EX-PILOT HI-TECH PIONEER GOES FOR SPIN page 12
INDIGNATION ON THE BIG SCREEN page 37
AUGUST 5, 2016
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Page 3
Fried matzah balls
are fair game
The New York State Fair is getting its first kosher

vendor. Topping its menu: deep-fried matzah balls

with ranch dressing.
According to Syracuse.com, the Oaks at Menorah
Park in Syracuse will be the first certified kosher food
vendor at the fair, held in Syracuse from August 25 to
September 5.
A spokesperson for the State Fair told Syracuse.
com it had been searching for a kosher vendor for a
long time, part of an effort to cater to diverse dietary
needs. Last year, the fair added a vegan vendor.
In addition to matzah balls, the menu will include
deep-fried apple blintzes, deep-fried cheese-filled
knishes, and non-fried items including lox, bagels,
JTA WIRE SERVICE
and Israeli salad.

When Lenny met Leena Al-Arian

A Facebook post by a Muslim-

American woman about the kindness of a 90-year-old Jewish man

has been attracting the attention of
thousands of social media users.
Leena Al-Arian wrote that she met
a man named Lenny at her Bostonarea Barnes & Noble, where she
took her two young daughters for a
childrens program.
Lenny approached the young
family and conveyed a heartfelt
apology for the general anti-Muslim
sentiment in our society today, AlArian wrote in her Facebook post.
He had tears in his eyes and told
me that it must be so hard to turn
on the news, that he feels awful
about the bigotry my kids might
one day experience, and that as a
Jewish man whose parents didnt
speak any English growing up, he
personally understands what it feels
like to be rejected and discriminated
against.
I asked if I could give him a hug
(he looked like he needed one more
than me, but I guess I needed one
too) and he wanted to reassure me
that most Americans are decent
people who dont hate people like
me or believe what they hear on the
news, she continued.
Lenny took a photo with the fam-

ily and then bought both of the girls

a present at the store in honor of his
90th birthday.
Al-Arian said she decided to post
after a friend suggested she put it
out there to add to what I guess is
our modern day chicken soup for
the anti-racist soul.
More than 14,000 people have
liked the post, and 3,779 people
have shared it .
JTA WIRE SERVICE

Candlelighting: Friday, August 5, 7:49 p.m.

Shabbat ends: Saturday, August 6, 8:51 p.m.

PEN helps translate Yiddish Yenta

Yenta Mash was born
For the first time, PEN is
in 1922 and grew up in a
giving money to translate a
small town in Moldova. In
Yiddish work.
1941, she and her parents
Each year, PEN America,
were exiled to a Siberian
the local branch of the inlabor camp, from which
ternational writers organizashe escaped in 1948. She
tion, offers grants for works
then spent a number of
of translation. Last week
years working as a bookit announced 14 grants of
keeper in Kishinev. In 1977,
$3,670 each.
Mash immigrated to Israel
Among the recipients
Yenta Mash
and settled in Haifa, where
was Ellen Cassedy, for her
she finally gained the courage to begin
translation of selected stories by Yenta
writing and publishing her work. Her
Mash. The story was first reported by
last book was published in 2007 and
the Yiddish Daily Forward.
she died in 2013.
The stories are a vivid and often
The Yiddish Book Center also providhumorous portrayal of Jewish and noned some funding for Cassedys translaJewish life in three very different 20thtion of Mashs work.
century societies: Moldova, the Soviet
LARRY YUDELSON
Union, and Israel, according to PEN.

CONTENTS
NOSHES ...............................................................4
BRIEFLY LOCAL ..............................................14
OPINION ............................................................16
COVER STORY ................................................ 22
KEEPING KOSHER......................................... 26
DEAR RABBI ZAHAVY..............................35
DVAR TORAH............................................36
ARTS & CULTURE .......................................... 37
CALENDAR ...................................................... 38
CROSSWORD PUZZLE ................................ 39
OBITUARIES .....................................................41
CLASSIFIEDS .................................................. 42
REAL ESTATE..................................................44

PUBLISHERS STATEMENT: (USPS 275-700 ISN 0021-6747) is

published weekly on Fridays with an additional edition every
October, by the New Jersey Jewish Media Group, 1086 Teaneck
Road, Teaneck, NJ 07666. Periodicals postage paid at Hackensack,
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JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016 3

Noshes

This is what $1,200 of

Cats stuff looks like!
Lena Dunhams boyfriend, Fun lead guitarist Jack Antonoff,
showing off a big bag of merch he bought at the Broadway
musical revival; photographs from that evening show him
wearing a Mets hat and a battered flasher-style trenchcoat.

OLYMPIC LINEUP

Tribe members
at Rio games
The Rio Olympic
Games begin
Friday. Here are
mini-bios of confirmed
American Jewish
athletes. Following that,
heres a list of confirmed
Jewish athletes from
other countries other
than those on the Israeli
team.
ELI DERSHWITZ, 20,
individual saber fencing. This Boston native,
a Jewish summer camp
veteran, has just finished
his sophomore year at
Harvard. He has a decent
chance at a medal based
on outstanding performances at international
competitions during the
last two years.
NATE EBNER, 27,
rugby sevens. Ebner now
is most famous for his
outstanding special team
play with the NFL Boston
Patriots, but he was also
a top high school rugby
player. He inquired about
playing rugby in the
Olympics this past April,
and while the coach was
skeptical, Ebner surprised him with his play
and game smarts. He
made the team, which
is given a good chance
to medal. Rugby sevens
is a modified version of
traditional rugby (7 players per side, instead of
15; two 7 minute halves,
instead of two 40 minute
halves). This increasingly
popular sport is making
its Olympic debut. As I
noted when Ebner was in
the Super Bowl, his late
father, a businessman,

was also a Jewish Sunday school principal.

Swimmer ANTHONY
ERVIN, 35, will compete
in the 50M freestyle race.
A Southern California native, he was an 18-yearold U.C. Berkeley freshman when he won the
gold medal in the 50M
race at the 2000 Olympics. However, as hes
told the press, he just
couldnt handle the fame.
From 2001-2007, his life
was out of control. But
he pulled himself together, returned to Berkeley,
finished his degree, and
began training again. He
made the 2012 Olympic
team but didnt medal.
Rhythmic gymnasts
MONICA and JENNIFER
ROKHMAN are 19-yearold identical twins. They
are the daughters of Russian Jewish immigrants.
The twins spent part of
their childhood near San
Diego, and their parents
still live there. However,
like many talented young
gymnasts, in 2010 they
moved to Illinois to train
at a top facility near
Chicago, where they live
with a host family. Last
year, the twins won three
medals, including a silver
medal in the group allaround, at the Pan American Games. Also last
year, they secured Olympic berths when their
team performed well at
the World Championship
of rhythmic gymnastics.
(Monica is a full team
member, and Jennifer is
an alternate.) This sport,

Eli Dershwitz

Nate Ebner

Anthony Ervin

Monica Rokhman

Jennifer Rokhman

Merrill Moses

which is most popular

in Eastern Europe, has
evolved in recent years
as the scoring has begun
to emphasize athletic
prowess. By the way, the
novelty of identical twins
has already led NBC to
highlight the sisters on
their website.
MERRILL MOSES, who
will turn 39 during the
Games, is the goalie on
the U.S. water polo team.
This is his third Olympics.
His team won the silver
medal in 2008, but didnt
medal in 2012. Moses,
who had a bar mitzvah,

grew up near Los Angeles. He was a swimmer in

high school, but he was
relatively slow. Then a
coach persuaded him to
try water polo where the
63 Moses height and
long arm span would be
great assets. Moses was
a college water polo star
and played professionally
in Europe, where water
polo is very popular.
Gymnast ALY
RAISMAN, 22, the biggest Jewish Olympic
star since MARK SPITZ,
thrilled Jews worldwide
by winning the gold med-

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al in the individual floor

exercises as the music
of Hava Nagila played
in the background. This
Massachusetts native
also helped lead the 2012
squad to a team gold
medal in her sport.
JOSH SAMUELS, 25, is
a driver on the U.S. water polo team. A driver
tries to get away from
his defender, position
himself on the perimeter
of the goal, catch a pass
from a teammate, and
score. Samuels is a very
good driver and was a
star player on the UCLA

water polo team. He

graduated in 2013 and
has played professionally in Europe. Samuels,
like Merrill Moses, is from
Southern California.
ZACH TEST, 26, competes on the American
rugby sevens team. He
grew up in a nice suburb
near San Francisco. He
played both rugby and
football in high school
and at the University of
Oregon. Test is a superstar in his sport and that
along with his good
looks earns him media
coverage in unexpected
places, like this Februarys GQ. He played
rugby for the U.S. team
at the 2009 Maccabiah
Games in Israel.
Other countries: AUSTRALIA: JESSICA FOX,
22, canoe slalom (K-1).
She won the silver medal
in this event in 2012. Both
her parents are canoeists who competed in the
Olympics her father
for the UK and her mother for France. Her mother
won the bronze in 1992.
Aussies NATHAN KATZ,
22, and JOSH KATZ, 18,
are brothers and judo
athletes. CANADA: JOSH
BINSTOCK, 35, and
his team partner, SAM
SCHACHTER, 36, play
beach volleyball. NEW
ZEALAND: JO ALEH,
30, womens sailing (470
dinghy). She won the
gold in this event in 2012.
Her father is Israeli and
her mother, a Brit, served
in the Israeli army.
N.B.

California-based Nate Bloom can be reached at

Middleoftheroad1@aol.com

Discover.
benzelbusch.com
7/29/16 1:52 PM

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Local
Bat mitzvah girl, bar mitzvah grandpa
Multigenerational celebration in Woodcliff Lake brings everyone together
JOANNE PALMER

The family gathers at Mitzpe Ramon in Israel; from left, Alexas grandfather, Sam Warsoff; her grandmother, Sue Romanoff;
her younger brother, Zevick Shachar; her father, Albert Shachar; Alexa, and her mother, Cindy Shachar.

At left, Alexa Shachar learns her haftarah trope with Cantor Sokoloff on FaceTime. Right, Alexa Shachars second bat mitzvah and her grandfather Sam Warsoffs second bar mitzvah will happen together at Temple Emanuel of Woodcliff Lake.
6 JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016

ometimes everything just comes

together exactly right.
Take a family with three generations of involvement in one
synagogue.
Add aliyah to Israel three years ago, stir
in a daughter who became bat mitzvah,
Israeli style, at 12, but whose family would
like her to do it in the American way at 13.
And then put in a grandfather whos
about to turn 83 second bar mitzvah age.
That will yield the August 27 bat mitzvah
of Alexa Shachar and the second bar mitzvah of Sam Warsoff at Temple Emanuel of
the Pascack Valley in Woodcliff Lake.
Cindy Shachar, Alexas mother, grew up
in Hillsdale; when she married, she and
her husband, Albert, and their two children lived in Demarest. Emanuel always
was their shul. As is the shuls custom, it
gave Alexa her bat mitzvah date four years
in advance, in 2012. We made aliyah in
August 2013, but we decided to keep the
date, Cindy Shachar said. We didnt
know what wed be doing.
Alexas birthday is in August, so the
summer date was logical, but most American synagogues try not to schedule bar or
bat mitzvah services during the summer,
when school is out and many potential
guests are away. For the Shachars, though,
the date made sense. I had asked for the
summer so our Israeli family could join
us, Ms. Shachar said. Her husband is one
of 10 children, and his family is huge.
Emanuel is Conservative, and the
Shachars allegiance to that stream of
Judaism is deep. In Israel, they belong to
Yedid Nefesh, a Masorti shul in Modiin.
(Masorti is what the Conservative movement is called outside North America.)
Alexa became bat mitzah there last summer; as the shuls custom demanded, she
read Torah and haftarah but did not give a
dvar Torah.
Its not the same in Israel, Ms. Shachar
said. About ten weeks before, they sat
down with her and taught her the trope.
It was easier than here, of course, because
she speaks Hebrew.
In Israel, generally only Masorti or
Reform girls go to synagogue for their bat
mitzvah and there arent so many of us.
Mostly, for most girls, its just a party, like
a Sweet 16.
Its different for boys, she added. Even
non-religious boys usually will read Torah
on a Monday or Thursday, and then be
called up for an aliyah on the following
Shabbat.

The Shachars wanted more for Alexa

and they knew where they wanted it. Im
from a family of four girls, and we all had
our bat mitzvahs here, at Emanuel, Ms.
Shachar said. Rabbi Ungar was the rabbi
then thats Rabbi Andre Ungar, the
enormously influential and beloved rabbi
whose decades at Emanuel left an indelible mark on the community. Rabbi Ungar
married us, and he married Sam, Alexas
grandfather, and my mother. He did the
baby naming for Alexa, and for some of my
sisters. Alexa first went to Rosh Hashanah
services at Emanuel when she was a couple
of days old. She knows everybody in the
synagogue, and it was really important that
we continue that connection.
So the family has deep roots in the
shul and in Conservative tradition. They
have generations of family in the Northern
Valley. They have a bat mitzvah date.
Theyll have a bat mitzvah!
Next, there was the question of how to

help Alexa learn her new Torah parshah

and haftarah. Thats where technology
came in. Alexa and the shuls new cantor,
Alan Sokoloff, had not met in person until a
week or so ago, but they became very well
acquainted with each other over FaceTime.
Cantor Sokoloff tutored Alexa. They had
class for 35 to 40 minutes once a week, for
her to learn the trope, Ms. Shachar said.
Luckily, Cantor Sokoloffs trope is the same
one that Alexa learned in Modiin, so she
did not have to relearn a new one. Cantor
Mark Biddleman, the shuls long-time hazzan, who retired last year, is a family friend
and will be at the bat mitzvah. He used a
slightly different trope; had he still been in
charge, Alexa would have had to face that
extra intellectual challenge.
Mr. Warsoff was able to become bar
mitzvah again because of the tradition
that says that a lifespan is three score and
ten. Thats 70. Once you reach that age,
you begin counting again. Therefore, 83

is your second chance at being 13; albeit

in a very different body and with very different expectations.
As he prepares for his second bar mitzvah, Mr. Warsoff remembers his first one.
It was at the Ocean Parkway Jewish Center in Brooklyn, he said. It was Conservative, tending toward Orthodox. My bar
mitzvah was in 1946.
I lucked out, I guess, in one way,
because it was parshat Ki Tetze, which
had the shortest haftarah, but because
there were so many bar mitzvahs, I had
to share it. Then I read Torah and half of
the haftarah.
He doesnt remember the other bar
mitzvah boys name, he added, but he
remembers the rabbis name Bosniak
and the cantor Savitt. Its funny, he said;
One time when we went to Israel, the El
Al security asked me about my bar mitzvah. She asked me the rabbis name, and
was shocked that I could remember it.

Mr. Warsoff and his wife, Sue Romanoff,

Cindys mother, have been involved with
synagogues throughout their lives. Mr.
Warsoff began to sing in the choir at Ocean
Parkway from the time he was 12 until he
was about 20, starting as a soprano, later
becoming falsetto.
Hell be sharing the haftarah again,
but this time it will be with Alexa. Family
members children and grandchildren
will read all but one of the aliyot; that one
will go to Cantor Biddleman. Family members, many of whom live locally, will come
in droves.
It feels great, Mr. Warsoff said. I have a
sense of accomplishment, and I am proud
that I am physically and mentally able to
do it. And to be able to do it with my granddaughter adds something extra to it.
What will the Shachars do when Alexas
younger brother, Zevick, becomes bar
mitzvah? Well figure it out then, their
mother said.

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Local

How to teach the Holocaust

Moriah teacher returns from Israel with ideas from Yad Vashem
ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN

ames, Not Numbers is

a copyrighted curriculum that teaches Jewish middle-schoolers
about the Holocaust with an emphasis on
the oral testimony of survivors, which the
children immortalize on film.
Focusing on individuals rather than
numbers also is the approach encouraged
by the International School for Holocaust
Studies at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem.
The Holocaust is about the murder of
a Jewish person. Unfortunately, this happened six million times. And each person had a life story that should be told,
said Rachel Schwartz, chair of the English
department at Englewoods Moriah School
and teacher of the afterschool Names, Not
Numbers elective for eighth-graders.
Ms. Schwartz recently returned home
with 62 pages of notes she took during
an educators seminar at Yad Vashem, an
experience she called life-altering.
The philosophy of Yad Vashem is to
bring the children into the study of the
Holocaust safely and take them out safely
as well, she said. Teaching about the
Final Solution is too massive for the children to understand, so you start and end
with the voice of one person who survived,
and you try to impart what was lost.
In addition to learning about and
learning how to teach about 19th and
20th century anti-Semitism, Nazi ideology,
Jewish life before the war, and Jewish resistance during the war, the July 19-28 seminar for 30 teachers from across the United
States included meetings with five survivors: Daniel Gold, from Lithuania; Yehudit Kleinman, from Italy; Tibi Ram, from
Slovakia; Yitzchak Arad, from Poland, and
Hannah Pick, a childhood friend of Anne
Frank who lived in both Germany and
Holland.
It was these encounters that especially
moved the Moriah teacher. I am the
granddaughter of survivors, and I felt that
the people I met resembled my grandparents, Ms. Schwartz said.

Rachel Schwartz, at right, stands with Holocaust survivor Yehudit Kleinman, who
originally was from Italy. Ephraim Kaye, the director of the International Seminars for Educators department at Yad Vashems International School for Holocaust Studies, stands behind them.
COURTESY OF RACHEL SCHWARTZ

Dr. Arad, former chairman of the Yad

Vashem Directorate, fought with the partisans as a teenager and was among approximately 1,200 Jews saved from the Nazis by
German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who
employed as many as he could in his factories in order to keep them out of concentration camps.
By the time he was 16, everyone in
his family was dead, and he went to fight
because there was no other choice, Ms.
Schwartz said. He told us again and again
that Jews only killed and went on the offensive when they knew that otherwise theyd
be dead. Every other time, they had a little
hope that they would get through it, that

next year would be better.

Participants were introduced to a Yad
Vashem curriculum called How Was It
Humanly Possible? which introduces
strategies for teaching middle-schoolers
about the complexities of human behavior during the Holocaust by looking at perpetrators and bystanders and the personal
choices they made.
Ms. Schwartz said that Shulamit Imber,
Yad Vashems pedagogical director,
started us thinking of moral and ethical
dilemmas during the Holocaust. We had
an exploration of spiritual and cultural
resistance what it meant to have faith,
what it meant to meet a righteous gentile.

An understanding of prewar Jewish

life and norms, especially in heavily Jewish areas of Poland and Germany, is vital
to helping children make some sense of
the enormity of the Nazi effect on European Jewry, the Yad Vashem educators
emphasized.
Let the children see thriving Jewish
communities, culture, and art, and see
what was lost, Ms. Schwartz said. Let
them understand that these were people
who went to school, had jobs, celebrated
Pesach. The whole Jewish culture was
destroyed.
Reading or hearing about something
isnt as vivid as seeing it. One session that
brought this point home was Everyday
Life of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto
Using the New Yad Vashem Video Toolbox, which introduced the teachers to
an educational unit built on photographs
taken by a German soldier in September
1941, combined with diary entries by three
Warsaw Ghetto residents Mary Berg,
Chaim Kaplan, and Emanuel Ringelblum
in order to emphasize the individual
struggle to survive.
Participants also were introduced to
a Yad Vashem educational unit called
Circles, meant for primary and middle
school grades. It highlights Jewish religious traditions, rituals, and holidays that
Jews struggled to maintain during the
Holocaust.
Another session analyzed the fraught
question of whether fictionalized Holocaust-related films, such as Inglorious
Basterds, The Devils Arithmetic, and
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, can be
used responsibly to teach the Holocaust.
Ms. Schwartz said that in addition to
the weekly Names, Not Numbers elective,
in which 54 Moriah eighth-graders participated last year, Holocaust literature
is taught to all Moriah middle-schoolers
in their English classes. The sixth grade
reads The Island on Bird Street by Uri
Orlev, the seventh grade reads The Diary
of Anne Frank, and eighth-graders read
Maus by Art Spiegelman.
Ill be meeting with the teachers to
SEE HOW TO TEACH PAGE 35

You can make a difference in someones life

Do you have an hour a week to do a mitzvah?
Consider becoming a JFS Volunteer.
Many opportunities are available. All are welcome.
201-837-9090 www.jfsbergen.org
8 JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016

Local

Bike4Chai combines love

of riding, dedication to children
3-state ride tests both stamina and generosity
LOIS GOLDRICH

very year, undaunted by hills

and valleys, cyclists pedal their
way through three states.
Its the same basic route
every year, said Melanie Kwestel, communications director for Chai Lifeline, a
nonprofit organization dedicated to the
idea that seriously ill children need and
deserve as happy and normal a childhood
as possible.
Bike4Chai, the groups annual cycling
event now in its seventh year, raises money
to provide emotional, social, and financial
support to children with life-threatening
or lifelong illnesses, and their families.
This years ride took place August 3-4.
The route runs through Connecticut,
New Jersey, and New York, Ms. Kwestel
said. But every year we vary it because
the bikers ask for more challenging routes.
The first year, a guy said it wasnt hilly
enough. Someone else wanted the 180mile route to be longer.
This is a group of people who are
extremely competitive with one another,
she added.
Fortunately, the riders, a lot of top business guys, compete not only to ride the
farthest but also to raise the most money
for the organization. Some are part of the
100K club, raising more than $100,000 to
benefit sick children. Their efforts extend
throughout the year, and theyre not just
in conjunction with the race.
The race concludes as riders pass
through what Chai Lifeline calls The
Worlds Greatest Finish Line, the entrance
gate to Camp Simcha Special, Chai Lifelines overnight camp for children with
chronic illnesses and medical challenges.
As the riders get stronger every year,
so must the challenge, rider Yehuda
Blinder of Englewood said. Though
every participant recognizes the B4C ride
is about the kids in camp, their families,
and the organization, its still great for
riders to feel a true sense of accomplishment at the finish line.
Mr. Blinder has been a Bike4Chai participant since 2011, but a supporter of
Chai Lifeline for at least 20 years. He first
became acquainted with Camp Simcha
when a group of friends dedicated a basketball court there in memory of a close
friend who passed away from cancer at a
young age in 1987. That was my first exposure to the organization, and Ive been
more or less involved ever since.
Mr. Blinder said he rides throughout the
year, most frequently with fellow B4C
riders Brian Haimm, Chaim Wietschner,

Yehuda Blinder of Englewood rides in the annual Bike4Chai race.

Yossi Cohn, and Richard Schenkman. He

also participates in group rides with the
Tenafly Roadawgz, a local riding club. Chai
Lifeline, he said, does an incredible job
for the riders, from the accommodations
to the food and support. No other ride is
comparable. And the finish line celebration is the greatest in the world!
Mark Sultan, also from Englewood, has
been participating in Bike4Chai since 2012
as part of Team SYclist, a group of Syrian
Jewish riders. I do it for the cause, Dr. Sultan said. Its just amazing. If youre lucky
enough to witness the camp in action at any
time, you see what incredible work the people there do the administration as well as
the volunteers. Its awe-inspiring.
Its an organization that puts helping
people at the forefront of its goals and
does an amazing job in achieving that
goal, he continued. Theres very little
ego in the administration. Theyre not
looking for accolades.
Of course, Dr. Sultan also participates
because of his love of riding, and the
feeling of camaraderie. Since he rides
with both the Englewood group (which
includes riders from Teaneck) and the Syrian group, I straddle the border, he said,
noting that the Syrian group includes riders from Manhattan and Brooklyn as well
as from Bergen County.
Acknowledging the increasing difficulty
level of the ride each year, Dr. Sultan said,

Theres a lot of testosterone on that ride.

We like to be challenged. He agreed with
Mr. Blinder that organizers do an incredible job in picking the route. While the
number of riders has grown exponentially, their safety record is quite amazing.
(This is an all-male ride. A womens ride,
Tour de Simcha, was held in July, and 200
women raised $1 million.)
Many of this years 500 participants
cannot ride the full course. They can call
up at any point and say, Im done, Ms.
Kwestel said. Vans come to pick them up
with their bicycles. They do as much as
they can, but they all end up at the camp.
They go there together.
One participant knew from the start
that he couldnt finish the race. Yossi Rotberg was born with physical challenges
that delayed normal development. He
began walking when he was 5 years old,
and he learned to ride a bicycle when
he was 9. Growing up in Lakewood,
the home of Chai Lifelines New Jersey
regional office, friends inspired Mr. Rotberg to join Team Lakewood in riding for
Chai Lifeline.
Raising $18,000 new cyclists are asked
to raise a minimum of $5,000 Mr. Rotberg was philosophical from the start: I
dont know if Im going to complete Chai
Lifelines ride, but Im going to complete
my ride, he said before the ride began.
The participants include both corporate

and honorary teams. There are a number

of Bergen County riders, from Bergenfield,
Englewood, Teaneck, Tenafly, and Woodcliff Lake, and some from Passaic as well.
This year, there were 33 cyclists from Bergen and Passaic counties.
Theyre such a committed group, Ms.
Kwestel said of the riders. The number
one team is Team Meridian, which, as
of this weekend, had raised more than
$900,000. Team SYclist had brought in
some $620,000. As of this writing, the
total amount raised by participants was
just short of $6 million.
Joining the 500 cyclists were Cadel
Evans, who won the Tour de France in
2011, 17-time Tour de France competitor
George Hincapie, and three former NFL
players Amani Toomer, Tony Richardson, and Alan Veingrad.
Ms. Kwestel has deep admiration for
all the riders. Theyre committed to the
event and to the children, she said. To
do this, they get up at 4 a.m. for training
rides. They ride into camp and dance with
the children. This truly is the worlds greatest finish line. The cyclists will be enveloped in a great hug by 120 campers, many
who need wheelchairs, respirators, or
other medical equipment to survive, and
200 staff members.
The kids know theyre doing it for
them, she said. Theyre pumped up. Its
a major celebration. When the riders come
into camp, they see a huge arch that says
Finish Line: Bike4Chai. There is also singing and dancing.
Theres nothing Chai Lifeline does not
do to help kids and families.
Volunteers visit hospitals to cheer kids
up and provide support for parents, and
the iShine program provides after-school
programs for children living with illness or
loss in their homes, she continued. Every
year, the Englewood community creates a
Friendsn Fun Weekend in memory of
Sari Ort, for girls who are battling cancer
and other serious illnesses. This years
commemoration was on April 2.
Chai Lifeline has affiliates not only in
the United States but in Canada, England,
Israel, and Belgium as well, and the organization serves 5,000 families around the
world each year. All programs are free.
Illness is so expensive, Ms. Kwestel said.
Everything [from Chai Lifeline] is free.
For kids who dont come from here, we
pay their airfare from their home city.
And someone is there to fly with them.
The camp is kosher and provides a Jewish
environment.
For more information about Chai Lifeline, go to chailifeline.org.
JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016 9

Local

Teaching the IDF about being Jewish

Rabbi to speak locally about outreach work to secular soldiers
JOANNE PALMER

ou would think that if anything

would give someone a sense of
Jewish identity and of the roots,
structure, and meaning of the
entire Zionist adventure, it would be his
or her time in the Israel Defense Forces.
But it doesnt necessarily work that
way, Rabbi Shalom Hammer said.
Rabbi Hammer works for both the
IDFs Jewish Identity service part of
the office of the IDFs official rabbinate
and Makom Meshutaf, an organization that advocates tolerance and unity
between religious and secular Jews in
Israel through educational programs, as
its website tell us.
Rabbi Hammer, who lectures through
the United States and Israel, will be in
Teaneck and Fort Lee this week. (See
box.) His subjects, he said, are the ideology of the IDF, Zionism and the direction
its taking, and the Jewish identity crisis,
which is a very big crisis in Israel as well
as outside it.
Rabbi Hammer grew up in Monsey; in
1990, when he was 24, he and his wife
made aliyah, and we havent looked
back since, he said. In Israel, hes spent
his life trying to reconcile the Zionist ideal
with changing realities, helping young,
often secular people understand their
roots and cherish them.
He works with IDF members because
its particularly important for them to
understand why theyre in the army, what
theyre defending, and why the need for
that defense is so urgent.
When you live in a world thats based
more and more on instant gratification
a whats-in-it-for-me generation then
the old Zionist chalutz ideal, the pioneer ideal, of whats in it for my people
becomes more challenging, Rabbi Hammer said.
Ideology and idealism have to be
reworked and reinstituted and re-minded
to the people who are defending our
country, he said.
Its particularly important to bring
that out for soldiers, for people who are
sacrificing themselves in Israel, not only
soldiers but settlers, other pioneers. This
country is challenging, and it faces many
obstructions, but we see them as a means
of moving closer to the vision laid out for
us by our ancestors a long time ago. We
have the privilege and the opportunity of
making it happen.
Makom Meshutaf, the organization he
founded and fronts, stands for United
Camp, he said. It fills in the gaps that the
IDF must leave, given the realities of its
budget. He travels around Israel speaking to large groups of soldiers for the IDF.
10 JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016

Above, Rabbi Hammer with soldiers

in the field; at left, leading a Havdalah
service.

Attendance at those lectures is mandatory for soldiers. The beauty of what

Makom Meshutaf does is that we are
stationed in regular IDF bases, so every
week we each go to three or four bases,
Rabbi Hammer said. We go to the same
bases every week, and we are able to
make direct connection with the soldiers
who are there. Those relationships are
entirely voluntary.
Rabbi Hammer is Orthodox; many of
the young people with whom he works

are not. I personally like to have the

opportunity to speak predominantly to
non-observant soldiers, because for me it
feels like Im doing more of a service, he
said. They are not as familiar with Jewish sources or expectations, or with what
Judaism has to say about fundamentals.
When I tell them about them, in a respectful way, without religious coercion, that is
very impactful.
Many secular people know little about
Zionism or about Judaism, he said.

There are many Israelis today who do

not appreciate or understand the difference between Israel and everyplace else.
But when you are talking about Israel,
you are not talking about any other country, but about a Jewish country, founded
on Jewish principles. We are a special
people; we are expected to be a light to
the world. In how we behave, we are supposed to be a light unto the nations.
It is important for them to understand
that. It instills pride, and it helps them
deal with various challenges. When it
comes to war, God forbid, it helps them
understand.
There is no religious coercion involved
in his work, he stressed. One of the
things that I think is problematic in this
country is that there is a lot of religious
coercion from the secular Jewish perspective For example, in Israel people
are required to get married with a rabbi,
a chuppah, and kiddushim. Classically,
people wouldnt have a problem with
it, but because its done in a wrong way
a coercive way and because it is not
explained to them and because sometimes they have to pay money and they
dont know why or where it goes it

Local
leaves a bad taste in their mouths.
Its not so much the practice as the
preaching, or the lack of preaching. If
things were explained in a proper fashion, it would paint a different picture. But
to a secular Jew his voice trailed off.
As the generations go on, there is
less and less connection to tradition and
to understanding the tradition, Rabbi
Hammer continued. So why would
they want to do any of this? When you
tell them that they have to do this or
that, you are infringing on their right of
choice. But if you were to explain it to
them in a proper way, in a traditional

This country is
challenging, and
it faces many
obstructions,
but we see them
as a means
of moving
closer to the
vision laid out
for us by our
ancestors a
long time ago.
Rabbi Shalom Hammer
Jewish way, with kid gloves, then their
attitude would be different. Then they
would be open to hear and to discuss,
instead of feeling threatened.
The IDF is not allowed to coerce its
members religiously, Rabbi Hammer
said. They cant say you have to go
to the beit knesset the synagogue
for mincha afternoon prayers.
And if there are nine men for a minyan, you cant tell a tenth that he has
go to. Thats forbidden. While there are
certain standards of Judaism that have
to exist in the Jewish army, there also
are big no-nos in terms of coercion that
you cannot cross.
When we lecture, we are very clearly
warned not to involve ourselves in politics, or to say anything that can be translated as religious coercion. The press in
Israel is predominantly left wing, as it
is in America, and they are looking for
any excuse to find something wrong
in what we say. As religious people,
we are expected to hold ourselves to
a higher standard, to be extra careful
with what we say and how we say it, so
that it isnt, God forbid, mistranslated
or misunderstood.
Makom Meshut af i s necessar y
because of all the priorities in the rabbinate, the rabbinate is the lowest priority and understandably so, Rabbi

Hammer said. The highest is to protect

the countrys security. We understand
that. So Makom Meshutaf fills in by,
for example, providing shofar blowers
on the High Holy Days, Shabbat meals
that complement the IDFs more utilitarian fare, extra food and haggadot for
Pesach seders, and extra copies of the
Book of Esther to read on Purim.
Makom Meshutaf is privately funded,
he added, and everything it raises goes
directly to the soldiers who want their
offerings. It buys them tefillin and Jewish texts; it gives young women soldiers
copies of Tehillim, the psalms they are
encouraged to read and chant. We
have a program that takes army officers
for two days of Bible studies before they
go out in the field, Rabbi Hammer said.
We will show them in the Tanach
the Bible what they are looking at.
We have a Purim party for 500 soldiers
every Purim.
If God forbid there is a war, we go
around with freezers of cold sodas
and toiletries. In other words, Makom
Meshutaf provides the unglamorous
items that make life a bit more comfortable during times of extreme discomfort and active danger.
It also works with lone soldiers we
have a home for lone soldiers that we
support, Rabbi Hammer said but
thats not unusual. What is unusual is
we exclusively have a chaplaincy for
IDF prisons. There are kids who go
AWOL both guys and girls, men and
women and they are doing it because
they have families who dont have
money, and theyre doing it to support
their families.
They come from the lower socioeconomic classes, and they need help. We
go into the prisons, we teach them, we
bring in psychologists and therapists,
who teach them that the army will help
them reach success.
They need motivation, and we motivate them. Thats a tremendous service
we give them.

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Who: Rabbi Shalom Hammer, inspiration speaker for the IDF and founder
of Mekom Meshutaf
What: Will speak locally about Jewish
identity, Zionism, and the IDF twice
this week
When: On Sunday, August 7, at 10
a.m., after a light breakfast
Where: At Congregation Beth Aaron,
950 Queen Anne Road, Teaneck
For more information: Go to www.
bethaaron.org or call (201) 836-6210.
When: On Monday, August 8, at noon,
for a Lunch and Learn
Where: At Young Israel of Fort Lee,
1610 Parker Avenue
For more information: Go to yiftlee.
org or call (201) 592-1518.
For more information about Rabbi
Hammer: www.rabbihammer.com

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Local

Zoom!
Internet pioneer opens Tenafly fitness center
LARRY YUDELSON

f Lior Haramaty really enjoyed flying

airplanes, he probably never would
have opened ZingCycle in Tenafly
last year.
He would have stayed with the Israeli air
force as a pilot, rather than transferring
after a year into a research and development army career.
He would not have met Alon Cohen,
who became his friend and business partner as they developed some of the first
computer sound cards in the 1980s. Their
company, VocalTec, would not have taken
off in the 1990s, leading Lior to move from
Israel to Tenafly. And if he nonetheless had
gotten the idea that he could build a better indoor cycling parlor in 2015, he would
not have opened it in Tenafly.
But flying airplanes, the mission he
was assigned when he was drafted by the
Israeli army, didnt interest him.
The way I saw it, youre becoming a
driver, he said.
Before he was drafted, he had already
discovered the thrill of tinkering with electronics and computers. When he was 15,
in 1981, he started writing and selling educational software and developing add-on hardware for his
first computer (a Sinclair Spectrum, for the record).
He was following in his
fathers footsteps. Both Haradevelopment; what he did
matys attended technical high
was classified. His knowledge and experience let him
schools. Liors father, Yisrael, was born in Petach Tikwork alongside those who
vah. After high school Yisrael
had attended college before
moved to a kibbutz, where
their army duty, although he
he met his wife, Lea. Then
had not.
the couple moved to Tel Aviv,
Lior served a total of five
where Yisrael worked in the Lior Haramaty
years in the army, and he
Habima theater. Not on the
and Alon Cohen started
stage but behind the scenes, working on
their first business while they still were in
the technical equipment, the electricity
uniform, creating one of the first PC sound
and the sound. He started working behind
cards. This was back in 1985. They had perfected the hardware. It recorded sound
the camera, taking pictures for the theater.
and played it back. People were impressed
Then he branched out as a general purpose commercial photographer; he was so
but they couldnt understand the point.
good that some of his negatives ended up
Why do you need sound on a computer? they asked.
in Harvards archives. Last year an Israeli
Working with IBM Israel, Lior and Alon
stamp featured one of his photographs.
integrated sound into a pre-Powerpoint
Lior began his working career being an
slideshow program. You have to rememunpaid kid model for many years, he said.
ber that this was before Windows and mulBut he was more than a cute face Lior
titasking. It was still a DOS environment on
also inherited his fathers technical aptitude and initiative.
very slow computers, Lior said.
With his heart in the technical work
The pair worked with Israels Ministry of
and entrepreneurship rather than in the
Defense to develop a program to let blind
cockpits of the Pipers and Fougas he flew,
people use computers. They developed the
Lior transferred after a year from flying
first Hebrew text-to-speech software. It
for the IDF to using his technical talents.
was very nice to see users writing their university papers using our system, Lior said.
He was recruited to work in research and
12 JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016

A ZingCycle class
VocaTec built a system that allowed the
Israeli lottery to read lottery results over
the phone. It was Israels first automated
toll-free number. The pair also built electronic music boxes for ice cream trucks,
replacing mechanical music boxes, which
would break down because they were
locked in the ice box overnight.
They built an external sound device
for the 1990 equivalent of laptops the
20-pound computers with fat-screen
monitors designed to fit under an airplane
seat, referred to, not all that fondly, as
luggables. They called it the CAT (compact audio technology) and started selling it in the United States. It became the
first Israeli technology product on retail
shelves in the U.S., Lior said.
In 1987 we started playing with transmitting voice over computer networks,
he continued. It was way too early for the
market, because nearly nobody had local
area networks at the time. At the beginning of the 90s we started experimenting
with that again, because networks within
an office environment had become more
common. We developed vocal chat, which
enabled you to have an intercom inside
the office using your computer network.
It was very innovative. Most computers did

not come with sound cards. We were selling packages of sound cards to enable the
system to work.
Then users started trying to connect with
far-flung offices. The software designed for
a local network didnt work well for transAtlantic conversation, but the demand led
to the next product, which offered voice
chat over a wide area network.
In the early 90s, hardly anybody connected to a global network. When the
Internet craze started, in 93 and 94, we
worked on something for the internet. In
February 95, we started selling the InternetPhone, or the iPhone for short, he
said. This first iPhone pre-Apple was
a program that used patented data compression technology to make phone calls
over the internet. And it required what
Wired described as high-end hardware: a
fast 486, 8 Mbytes of RAM, a 16-bit sound
card. Oh, and to work well, you needed
more than the 14.4k dial-up modem that
was the standard way to connect to the
internet.
Wired was typically breathless over the
new technology, but it understood the
impact that voice-over-internet technology would have. As the magazine noted,
back then it cost $15 an hour for a phone

Local
call from New York to Los Angeles.
VocalTec demonstrated that calls could
be made for free and that long distance
phone tolls were headed the way of the
typewriter.
We made a lot of noise at that time,
Lior said. We had literally thousands of
media clips in the next few months. This
was a huge success for all.
VocalTec became one of the first companies to do commerce over the internet. We had to develop most of the system that was doing the sales, he said.
To give you an idea, credit card charging over the internet was nonexistent.
We had a group of temps coming in in
the morning to charge the cards.
Lior was 29 when he took the company public at the beginning of 1996. He
had moved to Tenafly the year before. He
was married by then, and his son, Ben,
was 3. (Dan and Ori were born later.) I
was looking for good schools, he said.
Everyone recommended the school system in Tenafly. The JCC was by far the
best preschool facility I could find.
There were not so many Israelis in
Tenafly then, he added. There was a
big community in Fair Lawn. I was one
of the pioneers.
Liors VocalTech partners followed
him, and so did some army buddies.
He left VocalTechs day-to-day operations in 2000. Since then he has worked
as a consultant and started a few
companies.
His most recent venture is ZingCycle,
a spin exercise center in Tenafly. Its
riding bikes to music, he said, with
an instructor setting the pace. He had
become a devotee of the exercise and
decided he could set the stage for a better experience.
He and his business partner, Laurie Spiropoulos, designed ZingCycle.
Everything from the interior design to
the electrical and sound system, he said.

He views it as a startup. For the first

eight months, we probably spent most of
our time there, being literally in almost
every class, he said. We wanted to create
a place that was as welcoming and friendly
and easy as possible without compromising the workout.
While 30 years ago the idea of sound
cards in computers was a novelty, today
its no surprise that stationery bicycles
come with built-in computing power,
showing how many calories are burned
in a session and then sending a follow-up
email afterwards. A projector on a big
screen shows a simulation of the bikes
with avatars. They can race on a virtual
road, Lior said.
The goal of ZingCycle was to open
many sites and franchise the operation.
They were close to opening a center in
Paramus when space adjacent to their
Tenafly studio became available. Instead
of expanding to other towns, ZingCycle
opened another store next door to ZingCycle. It was a conceptual expansion,
with non-bicycle fitness classes including kickboxing and piloxing, a cross
between Pilates and boxing, and its
called ZingroupX.
All told, the two centers offer 64
classes a week.
Liors two oldest children Ben, 24,
and Dan, 20 work part-time at ZingCycle. (Ori, 17, is in high school). Like their
father, all of his children are technically
inclined. But theyve been more smitten
by one of Liors avocations cooking.
One is considering entering the hospitality business, another in attending culinary school. They consider themselves
Israeli, said Lior, who still speaks mostly
Hebrew with them.
Looking back on his career, Lior said
that there are no shortcuts.
To make a startup into a real company, there is a lot of work that has to be
put in, he said.

Picasso and Rembrandt

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Lauren Levant, Executive Director
Jewish Home Assisted Living

Lior Haramaty preferred technology to piloting.

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JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST
5, 2016
13

PHOTO PROVIDED

Briefly Local

Peri is surrounded by her team.

COURTESY CHAI LIFELINE

Chai Lifelines Team Peri going strong

Team Peri, based in West Hempstead,
N.Y., trains daily for the January Miami
Marathon/Half Marathon for the children of Chai Lifeline.
Doctors told Peri, 16, who has muscular dystrophy, that she would never
walk. To date, Team Peri has raised more

than $120,000 the past seven years racing for Team Lifeline, a project of Chai
Lifeline. In January Peri walked more
than 1,000 steps, a journey that was
filmed by Lifetime Fitness. For information, go to www.teamlifeline.org.

Locals at Hadassah convention in Atlanta

Some of the delegates chosen to represent the Pascack and Northern Valley
chapter of Hadassah theyre among
the more than 600 members of Hadassahs Northern New Jersey region are
pictured at the recent National Hadassah

Convention in Atlanta. From left are Simone Wilker, Barbara Baum, Judy Shereck
(a member of the Hadassahs National
Assembly), Rachel Baum, Hannah Price,
and Nancy Feldman.

DOMCs
36th annual
golf classic
The 36th annual Daughters of Miriam
Center/Gallen Institute Golf Classic is
set for Monday, August 15, at Trump
National Golf Club in Bedminster. Proceeds will benefit Alzheimers and
dementia care at DOMC.
The day begins at 10:30 a.m. with
registration and the range opening;
brunch will be at 10:45, shotgun tee off
at noon, cocktails and hors doeuvres
at 5 p.m., and the Jewish Family Trust,
Larry A. Levy Trustee Shootout at
5:30. The day will end at 6 with an
awards reception.
Alex Fleysher, Andrew Kanter, David
Kessler, and Leslie Levine are the cochairs. For information, call (973) 2535281 or go to www.daughtersofmiriamcenter.org.

Keep us informed

Swimathon benefits Sinai schools

Children at Camp Shalom participated in the fifth annual
Swim for Sinai Swimathon, swimming laps at camp on July 5
to raise money for the children of Sinai. The schools provide
an inclusive Jewish education to children with complex learning needs and a wide range of disabilities. All of the proceeds

14 JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016

raised at Camp Shalom will go toward the Sinai Schools

Scholarship Fund. Camp Shalom is the founding site of this
annual fundraiser and has helped raise thousands of dollars
in scholarship funds for Sinai every year. For information, or
to donate, go to www.sinaischools.org.

We welcome photos of community events.

Photos must be high resolution jpg files.
Please include a detailed caption and a
daytime telephone. Mailed photos will
only be returned with a self-addressed
stamped envelope. Not every photo will
be published.
PR@jewishmediagroup.com
NJ Jewish Media Group
1086 Teaneck Rd., Teaneck, NJ 07666
(201) 837-8818 x 110

COURTESY MORIAH

PHOTO PROVIDED

Briefly Local

Golfers at last years Moriah outing.

Tee off with Moriah

The Moriah School in Englewood, one of
the nations premier Jewish day schools,
which educates more than 700 students
from across Bergen County, will host its
13th annual Golf, Tennis & Cycling Outing on Monday, August 15. The outing
will be at Edgewood Country Club in
River Vale, from 10:15 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
It also will include yoga and Barre classes
and mah jongg, breakfast, lunch, cocktails and dinner.
Each year Moriah holds an online
auction in conjunction with the outing to help raise more funds for the

school. The auction began on Wednesday and runs through August 16 at

www.bididngforgood.com/moriah.
Items include tickets to major sporting
events and concerts, golf foursomes,
beauty treatments, childrens classes
and camps, personal training packages,
travel-related items, and local shopping
and restaurant offerings.
For more information, call Ari Lewis
at (201) 567-0208, ext. 393, or email ari.
lewis@moriahschool.org. To register
for the outing or the dinner only, go to
www.moriahgolf.org.

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Locals get taste of history

A group from the JCC of Fort Lee/Congregation Gesher Shalom, including, from left,
Hennie Ostrower, Nancy Green, Marilyn Saposh, Seymour Green, and Dr. Irving
Plutzer, traveled to the Jewish Historical Society of North Jersey in Fair Lawn to view
an exhibit on anti-Semitism.

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JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016 15

Editorial
Lets just
stop hating

Truth regardless of consequences

Will America win

or lose in November?

his is an election like none in our lifetime; in fact, it seems to be

an election unlike any in our parents or grandparents lifetimes
either.
If the stakes were not so high, it would be great theater. The
outrages would be comic. The pouts and smirks and fancy dances around
the truth would be hilarious.
But the stakes are so high that its likely that any possible joke will be
on us.
In this space, we have been obsessed, we acknowledge, with the symbolism of the Three Weeks, the Nine Days, and Tisha BAv itself. The weeks
narrow down to days, and then to one day, the day when we mark the
destruction of both Temples, as well as many other tragedies of Jewish
history. (It also echoes Dr. Faustus, whose horizons shrink and tighten
and constrict until the devil with whom hes bargained and to whom hes
sold his soul claims him. But we digress and we digress because the
main topic is so ugly.)
The Temples were destroyed, we are taught, because of sinat chinam,
baseless hatred. After Tisha BAv, though, we are offered consolation and
then we rise through the reflection and self-examination of Elul to Rosh
Hashanah and beyond it to Yom Kippur.
But the sinat chinam that our political system spews constantly now
will not end then. It wont end until after Sukkot, and it will keep going
after Simchat Torah.
Our fear now is that it wont end even after election day.
There is some serious hatred going on now.
We in this office have very strong feelings about the upcoming election,
but we are not going to write about that here and now. Many of us most
of us feel strongly that one of the candidates is stark raving mad, a sociopathic lunatic. The problem is that we dont agree on which candidate fits
that description.
This office probably is a fairly representative microcosm of the outside world. Most of us here have known each other for many years, and
despite being very different from each other were all very fond of one
another. Were a small, non-biological, tightly bound family. And many of
us think that others of us are insane.
The election will end, but we will continue working together. We cannot afford to let the extraordinarily strong feelings that this election has
evoked poison our relationships with each other.
The election season will end I fervently hope that my candidate, the
sane one, wins, because I think that the world as we know it will cease
to exist if the other one triumphs but our lives will go on. We all have
to work hard to keep the toxicity of the outside world from infecting us.
So we have to follow the election, and we have to draw our own conclusions, and we have to vote (particularly if were voting for the right
candidate) but we also have to keep our own sanity and sense of humor
intact. That still matters.


JP

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thejewishstandard.com
16 Jewish Standard AUGUST 5, 2016

n Tuesday night ,
November 6, 2012,
my campaign manager, James Genovese,
turned to me after studying the
returns in our congressional district, and told me that I had lost
the election.
It was time to call my opponent,
Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr., Rabbi
Shmuley
whom I had battled the previous
Boteach
few months, and concede.
I reached him on his cell, congratulated him graciously on his
victory, and went to address assembled supporters and friends.
It was, arguably, my best speech of the race.
And I offered it, believe it or not, with a full and
content heart. In the speech, I bowed to the majesty of the democratic system. I said that the people had spoken, and Pascrell had won a decisive
victory. I said that Pascrell would now be my congressman. I said that we Americans are the luckiest people in the world, able to speak our minds,
voice our views, run for elective office, and then
have the privilege of accepting the will of the people with a grateful heart. I cracked a few jokes and
tried to make the somber crowd laugh.
Was I fooling myself? I had just been defeated
in my first run for office. What was I so
happy about?
I was happy because I had contributed to
the strength of democratic institutions, first by
running for office and then by acceding to and
embracing the voice of the people without reservation. I had lost but the people had won.
Thats why I have to respectfully take issue
with the nominee of the same party under whose
banner I ran, when he said that this Novembers
election may be rigged.
Speaking at a rally on Monday, August 1, in
Columbus, Ohio, Republican nominee Donald
Trump said, Im afraid the elections going to
be rigged. I have to be honest.
I have appreciated Trumps candor throughout

the campaign. But casting aspersions on the integrity of the American voting system is dangerous.
People have to have faith in
democratic institutions. If someone runs for office and wins, then
they have every right to feel giddy
because they are the peoples
choice. And if they lose, they must
bow to the will of the people and
salute the majesty of democracy.
The only exception to this rule is
when there is undeniable, verifiable, and demonstrable proof of
election tampering or voter irregularities.
I have no idea who is going to win the presidential election this November. Hillary Clintons
support for the Iran nuclear agreement, and
her claims that she is its ultimate architect, are
downright scary. Will she continue President
Obamas extremely dangerous policy of handing over billions of dollars to Iran so it can kill
innocent people the world over? Will she continue Obamas policy of overlooking Irans open
contempt and violations of the agreement as it
pursues nuclear weapons technology, as was
recently confirmed by even German government intelligence?
Likewise, Donald Trump has said many things
that I have publicly and vociferously protested,
like his call for a temporary ban on Muslims
or his recent criticisms of a Gold Star mother
whose son died heroically in Iraq.
But whether it is Trump or Hillary who prevails, its the American people who have to win,
through the preservation and protection of
democratic institutions. And that begins with
candidates accepting that American democracy
works and cannot be called into question without proof.
To be sure, Bernie Sanders turned out to be
right in calling the Democratic primaries rigged,
at least in part, once it was revealed that the
DNC was in Hillarys corner all along. Debbie
Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chairperson, had

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach of Englewood is the executive director of the World Values Network,
which promotes universal values in politics and culture, and the author of 30 books, including his
forthcoming The Israel Warriors Handbook. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

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Opinion
made the DNC into an arm of the Clinton campaign. Only after embarrassing the party, and
distracting from the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, which I attended, was
Wasserman Schultz forced to resign the chair.
I long have said that politicians who lack
conviction in one important area will show
they have no conviction in other areas as well.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz demonstrated
with her support for the Iran deal that she
would do anything including selling out the
security of her people for political gain.
Of all the people to have betrayed Israel
and the Jewish people over the Iran deal, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was near the top. She
always had traded on her Jewish identity to
gain currency in politics and had massive Jewish financial support.
Her support of the Iran deal, amid Irans
near daily genocidal incitement against her
people, was treacherous. Worse was when she
went on CNN to cry crocodile tears about how
torn up she was about her support for the deal.
Tears mean nothing. Action is everything. Its
now clear that she also betrayed her power
as DNC chair to stay close to the presumptive nominee.
So abuses of the system do occur. But there
is no reason to believe that American voting
is itself rigged and saying so without proof
undermines the confidence in our institutions.
This does not mean that American democracy is perfect. Far from it. What I learned
from my Congressional run is that its nearly
impossible to unseat an incumbent officeholder. Amid serious corruption allegations,
guys like Charlie Rangel have been in Congress
since the battle of Yorktown. And severe Israel
critic Senator Patrick Leahy has been in the
Senate since the Dead Sea first got sick. (OK,
thats an old joke.)
Our congressional districts are gerrymandered to the point where, for the most part,
they guarantee either a Republican or a Democratic victory. Few districts are competitive,
which explains why every two years about 90
percent of incumbents retain their seats.
Even more troubling is the continued
imperfection of the Electoral College, which
all but guarantees that only a few states actually choose the next president. We call them
battleground or swing states, which makes
residents of Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania
mighty important and citizens of New Jersey
and New York almost irrelevant in presidential voting. If our country had real willpower
we would get rid of the Electoral College once
and for all and allow this countrys chief magistrate to be chosen by a straightforward vote
of all the people, rather than Pennsylvania
and Virginia.
But be that as it may, what we cannot do
is allege that the votes themselves even in
these states is rigged, that the American democratic system is corrupt, that voting in this
country is rigged, forcing a potential showdown after an election between a chosen
president and the disgruntled supporters of a
defeated candidate.

Kosher cheeseburgers?

an a cheeseburger be kosher?
By using talmudic logic, however, we may
Of course not, you say. Cheesefind a loophole to the prohibition. And it may be
burgers may be the archetypical nonavailable just over the horizon.
kosher food.
A few years ago, the worlds first lab-grown
Not so fast. It might be kosher.
burger was introduced and taste-tested.
We are talking about meat, and we arent
The burger was created by harvesting stem
referring to veggie burgers.
cells from a portion of cow shoulder muscle
This question is especially relevant, as Jews
that were multiplied in petri dishes to form tiny
begin the first nine days of the Hebrew month
strips of muscle fiber. About 20,000 of the strips
David E. Y.
of Av, which begins this year on August 5th,
were needed to create the five-ounce burger.
Sarna
when meat is not traditionally eaten except on
The research was partially funded by Google
Shabbat, until after the fast of Tisha BAv, comco-founder Sergey Brin and based on a research
memorating the destruction of the temples
program begun by Willem Van Eelen, an 86-yearin Jerusalem.
old entrepreneur who filed for a patent in 1997.
Kosher is Hebrew for proper, or fit.
Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands
Jews who keep the kosher dietary laws eat only food that has
unveiled the first cultured hamburger in August 2013. In a
been prepared in accordance with the kosher dietary rules.
world first, Professor Post revealed it in a widely publicized
Observant Muslims keep somewhat similar rules, known as
event in London. The burger was made up of around 20,000
halal, Arabic for permissible, in accordance with Islamic law
muscle strands grown in Marks laboratory. It was made with
called Shariah. The opposite of halal is haraam (forbidden).
a little egg powder and bread crumbs and a few other comWhat is kosher? The general rules are fairly widely known.
mon burger ingredients. The burger was cooked by frying in
They are based on the biblical specifications in Leviticus
a pan and Mark, food writer Josh Schonwald, and nutritional
and Deuteronomy. (You can find a good introduction to
researcher Hanni Rtzler tasted it. They all prokosher eating at www.jewfaq.org/kashrut.htm.)
nounced it pretty good.
An important element of eating kosher,
This could help solve the coming
relevant to kosher cheeseburgers, is
food crisis and combat climate
the separation of dairy from meat
change.
and poultry. This rule is speciHow did Mark do it?
fied nowhere in the Torah, but is
Posts cultured meat creinferred by the rabbis based on
ation process goes somethree separate occasions
thing like this: myosatellite
where the Torah tells us not
cells, a kind of stem cell that
to boil a kid in its mothers
repairs muscle tissue, are
milk (Ex. 23:19; Ex. 34:26;
taken from a cow neck and
Deut. 14:21).
put in containers, along
Any product derived from
with fetal calf serum, which
forbidden animals including
is the medium. (Post since
their milk, eggs, fat, or organs also
has switched to a non-animal
cannot be eaten. For example, rennet,
source.) The cells are placed onto
an enzyme used to harden cheese, often
gel in a plastic dish, where the calf
is obtained from non-kosher animals. Thus,
serums nutrients are reduced, trigThats not kosher! Wait. What?
kosher hard cheese must be derived from a
gering the cells to go into starvation
kosher animal, and can be more difficult to find.
mode and split into muscle cells.
The reasoning behind the dietary laws is not
Those cells eventually merge into
given. In his book To Be a Jew an excellent resource on
muscle fibers called myotubes and start synthesizing protein.
traditional Judaism Rabbi Hayim Halevy Donin suggests that
The end product is a tissue strip, described by the New York
the dietary laws are designed as a call to holiness. The ability
Times as something like a short pink rice noodle.
to distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, pure
By the end of the production of the burger, the muscle
and defiled, the sacred and the profane, is very important
strands were grown in media with zero fetal bovine serum.
in Judaism. Imposing rules on what you can and cannot eat
Believe it or not, Sir Winston Churchill (1874 1965) clearly
ingrains in us that kind of self-control, requiring us to learn to
foresaw this development. In 1931, he said, Fifty years hence,
control even our most basic, primal instincts.
we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in
Over millennia, the sparse biblical verses have been anaorder to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts sepalyzed, expounded upon, and codified into a complex set of
rately under a suitable medium. In an essay for the Strand
dos and donts. Food technology has become increasingly
magazine called Fifty Years Hence, Churchill predicted a
complex; thus those who keep kosher rely on rabbinical cerfuture wherein scientists exploit microbes to produce labtification by rabbis well-versed in the details.
grown meat, just as bakers use yeast to make bread. (We are
This brings us to the burger. It may be derived from forbidnow lagging Churchills prediction by 30 years.)
den animals, not slaughtered in accordance with Jewish law,
But would such a burger be kosher? Would it be considand the blood may not have been drained properly. A cheeseered meat?
burger compounds the offense, improperly combining dairy
The answer may surprise you.
and meat.
Meat produced through this process could be considered
parve neither meat nor dairy, similar to vegetables accordDavid E. Y. Sarna is a retired entrepreneur and a longtime
ing to Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO of the Orthodox Unions
resident of Teaneck, where he lives with his wife. Dr. Rachel
kosher division. Rabbi Genack is a leading authority on the
Sarna. He has published eight books and many articles and is
rules for keeping kosher and the longtime rabbi of Englenow working on a book on the Talmud for general audiences.
woods Congregation Shomrei Emunah.
see CHEESEBURGERS paGe 18

Jewish standard aUGUst 5, 2016 17

Opinion
Cheeseburgers

20 to 30 years before its commercially

from page 17 viable. The chief hurdle still left to over-

Under traditional Jewish law, a burger

produced this way also could be paired
with dairy products.
Several key conditions would have to
be met to create kosher parve cultured
beef. The tissue samples to be grown in
the lab would have to come from an animal that had been slaughtered according
to kosher rules, and not from a biopsy
from a live animal, Rabbi Genack pointed
out. The cheese would have to be kosher
as well, derived from kosher rennet.
The principle underlying this theory
is much like the principle applied to the
status of gelatin in Jewish law: Though
the cultured beef is derived from an animal, it is not actually meat. The OU, in
fact, certifies some bovine-derived gelatin as parve.
Rabbi Genack noted another source
for viewing cultured meat as parve: a
19th century Vilna-born scholar named
Rabbi Shlomo HaKohen (18281905),
known as the Heshek Shlomo, wrote
that the meat of an animal conjured up
in a magical incantation could be considered parve.
Some have nicknamed the product shmeat.
It may not be too much of a stretch,
then, to apply the same logic to modern genetic wizardry. If you think that
the rabbis inclination would be to forbid such innovation, you would be
wrong. In B. Sanhedrin 29a, the Talmud teaches a principle called Bal Tosif,
prohibiting new restrictive regulations,
except as a temporary measure in exigent circumstances.
As the Talmud tells us: Hezekiah said:
Whence do we know that he who adds
[to the word of God] subtracts [from it]?
From the verse, God hath said, You
shall not eat of it neither shall ye touch
it. The codifier Maimonides stated (Laws
of Rebellion 2:9), What then is the meaning of the scriptural prohibitions, Do
not add to it and do not detract from it?
(Deut. 4:1-2). The intent is that they (the
rabbis) do not have the authority to add
words of the Torah or to detract from
them, establishing a matter forever as
part of scriptural law.
So you now have permission to try
OU-approved synthetic meat, when it
is available.
But dont run to Google Shopping or
to Amazon to order some just yet.
The first lab-born burger cost
$325,000 and took two years to make.
Back in 2013, researchers warned it was
still a long way from market availability,
kosher or otherwise. If it is mass-produced, researchers estimated then that
it would cost $30 a pound.
They were (half ) wrong.
The price of the ingredients dropped
to just over $11 for a burger ($80 per kilogram of meat). But Post told Australias
ABC that he thinks it will still be another

18 Jewish Standard AUGUST 5, 2016

come is to figure out how to scale testtube meat. An earlier major obstacle
coming up with a way to produce it
that doesnt use fetal calf serum was
accomplished in early 2015
Tracey Hayes, CEO of Australias
Northern Territory Cattlemens Association, doesnt think it is coming too soon.
I think its too big a stretch to expect
the broader public or the general consumer to consume beef that has been
prepared in the laboratory, he said. Of
course, some might say that he has an
ax to grind.
Rebecca Ruth Seidel is the dairy manager and cheese maker of Wholesome
Dairy Farms, a grazing operation in
rural Pennsylvania. Shes a fourth-generation farmer, and she disagrees with
Hayes. Cellular agriculture should not
be viewed as a threat by the agricultural
community, she said. Rather, it should
be viewed as yet another tool to feed a
growing population on a planet with limited resources.
And as Dr. Post responded, Attitudes
can change.
Scalability is a different expertise,
outside of his training, so we cant really
forecast when parve cellular meat will
become commercially available. You will
have to stay tuned.
There already is competition from
related but pure vegetarian products.
One, the Impossible Burger (impossiblefoods.com) a hotly awaited, laboratory-created, all-plant product meant to
look, taste, and smell like beef and even
ooze blood recently was unveiled
by its biochemist creator, Patrick O.
Brown, and superchef David Chang.
It was developed with an investment
of $80 million, and will be offered for
sale at Momofuki Nishi, Changs (nonkosher) Chelsea restaurant. It is made
from wheat, coconut oil, and potato
protein, along with one you might not
know heme, a deep red iron-containing compound, C34H32FeN4O4. While
it looks and smells like beef, sizzles on
the grill, and even browns and oozes fat
when it cooks, taste reviews have been
less than enthusiastic.
Beyond Meat also just released Beyond
Burger, which is made from pea protein
and is 100 percent vegan.
Neither of these products are based
on the muscle tissue, so they do not
present the same halachic questions
posed by harvesting stem cells from a
portion of cow shoulder muscle, which
also promise to taste and feel much
more like beef.
However long it takes to enter production, the analysis of its kosher consequences provide an interesting example
of how talmudic logic is used to analyze
new technological developments within
a halachic framework.


2016 by David E. Y. Sarna

Jews to be named
Indias newest
(and smallest) minority

t is indeed true that

economically underdeveloped communities, such as
Jews represent an
the Scheduled Castes and
infinitesimally small
Tribes; reservations for the
portion of the Indian
relatively well-off Indian
population. In fact, there
Jewish community seems
are only about 4,000 Jews
unlikely. But there may be
in India in a population
other benefits for Jews
of about 1.2 billion (about
when Jains were recognized
0.00033 percent of the
Meylekh
as a minority in 2014, they
Indian population), but they
Viswanath
became eligible to receive
have not been an officially
special scholarships from the
recognized minority community, as have the Parsis (who
Central and Karnataka state
are estimated to number about 59,000),
governments; such scholarships, based
the Sikhs (1.72 percent), the Jains (0.4
on economic need, may be available for
percent) and the Christians (2.3 percent).
Jews too. The Mumbai Mirror also quoted
Even the Muslims are a recognized minorsome Mumbai Jews from the Bene Israel
ity a large minority comprising, about
community as expecting better job opportunities as a result of this official decision,
14.2 percent of the Indian population.
which also should stem the tide of emigraIndian newspapers recently reported
tion to Israel.
that Narendra Modi, Indias prime minister, soon will declare the Jews to be an
The Indian Constitution accords recognized minorities the right to maintain
official minority community in India. The
educational institutions and to ensure that
state of Maharashtra, where Mumbai is
their traditions, languages, and culture are
located, declared the Jews a minority in
not forgotten. There are not many Jewish
June of this year; West Bengal, where Kolkata is located, granted the community
educational institutions in India the
minority status a decade ago.
few that exist include the Jacob Sassoon
You may wonder why it matters whether
School in Mumbai and the Elias Meyer
Jews are officially recognized as a minorFree School and Talmud Torah and the
ity in India. After all, the small size of the
Jewish Girls School in Calcutta. All of those
Jewish population is not a new thing the
schools were created for Jewish children.
Jews always have been a minority in India.
As recently as 1987, there was a small but
At its largest, just after Indian indepennot insignificant number of Jewish childence in 1947 and just before the establishdren in the Sassoon school, and Hebrew
ment of the State of Israel and the ensuwas taught as a subject there. Almost no
ing aliyah, the community had fewer than
Jewish students are in the school now,
30,000 members.
however; the majority of its students
It might matter just because of money.
are Muslim.
Muslims, for example, as a recognized
Finally, it turns out at least according to some sources cited by the Indian
minority community, have the right to
Express that its not only money that is
have their once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to
behind this decision, but politics as well.
Mecca, the Haj, subsidized. Indias Minority Affairs minister, Eknath Khadse, said
Prime Minister Modi is keen to establish
recently that when Jews are given offigood political and economic relations with
cial minority status, they will be eligible
Israel in the expectation of investment,
for state funding for a trip to the Wailaid, and other kinds of technical assising Wall. In fact, he said, Jews would
tance. It is probably also not irrelevant that
have their complete travel costs covered,
Mr. Modi belongs to the Bharatiya Janata
because there are so few Jews in India
Party, which sees a kindred soul in Israels
that it would not be a burden on the
right-wing Arabophobic prime minister,
Indian exchequer.
who, just before the 2015 Israeli elections,
Another economic windfall is that loans
called attention to Arab voters turning
banks extend to the Jews as a minorout in droves, gaining Knesset seats and
ity community would qualify for priorsecuring political influence.
ity sector lending status. Among other
As everybody knows, the enemy of an
advantages to which Indian Jews can look
enemy is a friend.
forward, according to Abner Pingley, a
Mumbai Jew, are reserved seats in Indian
Dr. Meylekh (P.V.) Viswanath of Teaneck
universities. This is desirable, given that
teaches finance at Pace University, where
admission to Indian colleges is highly
hes working on strategies for bottom-of-the
competitive. There is no official word on
pyramid-communities in India and East
this possibility, though. Educational resAfrica.
ervations usually are provided only for

Opinion

A view from the pew

Looking at the Reform movements historical support of Zionism

y colleague, Rabbi Neil

Hirsch, invited me to teach
an adult education class in
his synagogue, Hevreh of
Southern Berkshire, in Great Barrington,
Mass., last month.
The class was called Zionism and American Reform Judaism, 1885 to the present.
My interest in researching and teaching it
was sparked by what I know to be a deep
misconception on the part of both Israelis
and American Jews, including members of
Reform synagogues, on the critical effect
that American Reform Jews had on Zionism, from the beginning of the movement
in 1897 to the present, as well as the deep
impact that the emergence of Zionism and
the birth of the State of Israel had upon the
American Reform movement.
The texts I used for this class were the
four major Statements of Principles that
the Central Conference of American
Rabbis adopted in 1885, 1937, 1976, and
1999. What I discovered both through
my research and through the great discussions I had with my students was how
world events and American public opinion
deeply affected the positions that these
different generations of rabbis would
take on the question of the role of Zionism. Each statement of principles therefore represents a snapshot in time that is
both descriptive of the American Jewish
community of its era and a proscriptive
statement about the future that these four
different generations of American Reform
Jewish leaders envisioned.

The false claim that Reform Judaism is an anti-Zionist movement has its
roots in the 1885 Pittsburgh platform,
which proclaimed:
We recognize, in the modern era of
universal culture of heart and intellect,
the approaching of the realization of Israel
as great messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and
peace among all men. We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious
community, and therefore expect neither
a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the
Jewish state.
Eighty years earlier, French Jews had
made a similar statement, defining Judaism as only a religion as part of their pursuit of citizenship in Napoleons France.
The fact that American Reform Jews, who
were fighting to keep open the doors to
Jewish immigration, gave up the hope of
returning to Zion, 12 years before the first
visionaries gathered in Basel to convene
the World Zionist Congress, should not be
surprising. Those Reform Jews goal was to
find a way for Jews to immigrate to America and to live as Jews in this New World.
The Jewish population of America at the
Civil War was 150,000. By 1885 that number had more than tripled, and 100,000
Jews were arriving from Eastern Europe
every year. Anti-immigrant sentiment in
America in the 1880s was loud and strong.
Just as we now see Muslims and Mexicans
being targeted, Jews, and to a lesser extent,

were members of Reform

Italian and Polish Catholics,
congregations. American
were the targets of immigration discrimination. The
Reform Jews clear support
Reform rabbis who wrote
for Jewish settlement in Palestine, shown in Columbus,
the Pittsburgh Platform
Ohio, in 1937 and through
had among their concerns
political action and charitaboth the question of how
ble fundraising throughout
to acculturate hundreds of
the next decade, was also in
thousands of American Jews
Rabbi Neal I.
no small measure a response
without losing them to assimBorovitz
ilation and how to combat
to the closed doors of America, as millions of Jewish refuthe rising anti-Semitism that
gees were fleeing the Nazis.
was spreading across Europe
As the immigration debate rages durand America in the late 19th century.
ing our presidential election season, I am
The most radical change in the CCAR
reminded of how our American Jewish com1937s Columbus Platform concerned
munity benefitted both before the immiZionism. Instead of rejecting a connection to the land, this new platform said:
gration laws of 1924 shut the open door to
In the rehabilitation of Palestine, the
America, and again in the 1990s, when successful American Jewish lobbying efforts
land hallowed by memories and hopes,
allowed hundreds of thousands of Soviet
we behold the promise of renewed life for
Jews to chose America as the destination at
many of our brethren. We affirm the obligation of all Jewry to aid in its up building
the end of their exodus. Rediscovering the
as a Jewish homeland by endeavoring to
reality of what Americas closed-door immigration policy meant to millions of our peomake it not only a haven of refuge for the
ple between 1933 and 1945 reminds me of
oppressed but also a center of Jewish culture and spiritual life.
Hillels moral imperative, found in the Talmuds tractate Shabbat:
From the first Zionist Congress in 1897,
That which is hateful to you do not do
and especially after the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917, a significant numunto others. That is the essence of Torah.
ber of Reform rabbis and lay leaders had
Now go forth and learn!
become advocates for Zionism, encouraging Jewish immigration and supporting the
Neal Borovitz, rabbi emeritus of Temple
building of a self-sufficient Jewish society
Avodat Shalom in River Edge, is a past
in Palestine. A clear majority of the leaders
chair of the Jewish Community Relations
of American groups funding Jewish settleCouncil of the Jewish Federation of
ment in Palestine between 1897 and 1937
Northern New Jersey.

Federations should support school choice

he Jewish federation system

began in Boston in 1895, as a
one-stop shop for Jewish communal donations and institutional support.
Inspired by the Qahal / Kehilla system
of Jewish communal governance in Europe
but without the coercive authority of the
host governments, each federation is a voluntary endeavor. In the shtetl, ghetto, and
Jewish quarters of yesteryear, the Jewish
community was sequestered by law, and
it was required to pay taxes to the Jewish
communal government.
Jewish life now is on a qualitatively better level, as each Jew is free to associate
as she or he desires, but one aspect of
the pre-modern Kehilla world the community should note is its support for Jewish education.
Over the last several decades, our modern day voluntary Kehilla the federation
system has been challenged by assimilation and dropping rates of communal
affiliation. Today, with directed donations

all the rage among the philfollow the student to whichanthropic set, the system
ever school her or his parents
has had to cope with yet
choose. It would have two
another existential issue. In
benefits. Many people in the
order to address assimilaJewish community (particution and disaffiliation, the
larly in northern New Jersey)
federation world (includwould like to send their chiling the Jewish Federation of
dren to Jewish day schools but
Northern New Jersey) has
find the cost prohibitive. And
Joshua
turned to funding Jewish
many parents who do make
Sotomayorsummer camp experiences,
the financial sacrifice of tens
Einstein
scholarships for day school,
of thousands of dollars would
supplementary Jewish eduhave more funds to allocate to
cation (Hebrew schools),
other worthy Jewish causes.
and Hillel, as well as Birthright and
If the federation were to lead the fight
Moishe House. To adapt to the changing
for school choice, many of these community members with a high in-group
tide within philanthropic giving, many federations encourage directed giving within
identification might be inclined positively
their spectrum of in-house programs and
toward the federation.
beneficiary agencies.
Study after study has shown that Jewish
One area that has the potential to
education is the most effective means to
address both the assimilation/disaffiliation
increase our childrens affiliation and create a lifelong commitment to Judaism. By
and general fundraising issue is supporting school choice. School choice means
supporting school choice, the federation
that education-earmarked tax dollars
world can get the funds its community

paid for their childrens education spent at

Jewish schools, ensuring greater affiliation
rates in future generations, making Jewish
education affordable for all, and ensuring
that a large potential donor base has a positive association.
The federation world is not the same
as the one the Jewish community faced in
Europe and the Middle East not too long
ago, but one of the solutions a voluntary universal Jewish education is a very
real possibility.
While building the public case for
school choice will undoubtedly take time,
addressing assimilation and supporting
the continued good work of the federations is worth it.
Joshua Sotomayor-Einstein is originally
from Teaneck and has lived in Hoboken for
9 years. He founded Moishe House Hoboken
in January 2007, is the chairman of both
the Hudson County Republican Club and
the Hudson County Young Republicans,
and enjoys reading and science fiction.
Jewish Standard AUGUST 5, 2016 19

Opinion

Mahmoud Abbass desperate gesture

have drawn Arab states from Egypt to
which has greeted his tactical error of going
Saudi Arabia further into Israels orbit.
after the Britishand therefore going too far.
ts been a long time since I saw a gesture this desperate.
One senior Israeli army officer even
Similarly grandiose gestures by Abbas in the
At the recent Arab Summit in Nouakchott, the capivolunteered to a reporter for the Econpast, for example his failed campaign for intertal of Mauritania, the Palestinian Authoritys foreign
omist: The Egyptians now are more
national recognition of a Palestinian state outminister, Riyad al-Maliki, announced that his boss,
anti-Hamas than even we are. Theyre
side of negotiations, also have gone south, so
PA President Mahmoud Abbas, had asked the Arab states
actually pressing too hard now on Gaza.
it should be no surprise if his threat to sue the
to prepare a legal case against Britain in retaliation for the
Even if this remark is slightly overBrits comes to naught. Within a couple of days
Balfour Declaration of 1917.
stated, the Arab drift away from the Palof Malikis Nouakchott announcement, British
Ben Cohen
The Balfour Declaration, which took the form of a letter
estinians is unmistakable. Abbass PLO
diplomats were reporting that their Palestinian
from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to the Zionist
fears that Israels ultimate goal is to forcounterparts were telling them that there was
leader Lord Rothschild, confirmed Britains favorable view
malize peace with the Arab states withno substance behind it.
of a national homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine,
out creating a Palestinian one in the process. This view
Yet given that Abbas has been fixated on gesture politics
which came under British control towards the end of World
seems to be shared in the Palestinian street. A recent
for several years now, substance may not be the point here.
War I. For that reason, the PLOs National Covenant dates
poll among Palestinians found 78 percent of them
Rather, its point is to remind the world that the Palestinian
the beginning of the Zionist invasion to 1917. Any Jews who
acknowledging that their cause no longer is the leadquestion has not been resolved, and no matter what haparrived in the land after that date are considered to be illeing priority in the Arab world, with another 59 percent
pens in the coming years a Donald Trump presidency,
gal settlers.
angrily accusing the Arab states of allying with Israel
thousands more refugees fleeing the atrocities in Syria, terThese days, thats basically every Jew in Israel.
against Iran.
rorist attacks in Europe on a weekly basis, Iran flouting the
Of course, Abbas has been able to get away with this kind
But as much as the regional balance tilts against the
nuclear dealthe peace the world craves will not come withof incitement many times in the past, so there was no reason
Palestinians, there is precious little internal reckoning
out the establishment of a Palestinian state.
for him to expect any moral condemnation from Western
going on. The implications that accompany the diffiAbbass woes are compounded by the fact that among
leaders. Had he stuck to denying the link between Jews and
cult truth that they could have achieved meaningful
the Arabs themselves, never mind the rest of the world, the
the city of Jerusalem, or named another public square after
statehood in the last days of Bill Clintons presidenworthiness of the Palestinian cause is diminishing. The coma terrorist, he probably would have been spared the ridicule
tial administration, were it not for the intransigence
bined threats of Iranian ascendancy and Islamist barbarism
of the late Yasser Arafat, still are to be grasped. The
West Bank and Gaza still are split between Fatah and
Hamas, with both factions gaining in unpopularity.
And yet, rather than tearing up the old playbook, the
Palestinians persist in advancing initiatives that question their own commitment to the two-state solution
that they insist the Israelis are wrecking.
Like the BDS campaign and the other campaigns
ostensibly focused on securing justice for the Palestinians, Palestinian diplomacy has become just another
vehicle for sullen grievance politics that bear little correspondence to the historical record. Anyone who
examines British policy in Mandatory Palestine will
find many episodes that undermined the Balfour Declarations intentions toward the Jews. Pressure from
Arab leaders meant that in 1939, at just the time when
the need for a Jewish national homeland had never
been greater, Britain decided to limit Jewish immigration to 75,000 during the next five years, with any
future immigration requiring explicit Arab consent.
In the years immediately after the Holocaust, British
soldiers imprisoned, beat, and deported thousands of
Jews who had escaped from the killing fields and concentration camps of Europe.
When the British finally threw in the towel on their
mandate, the Arab states faced the choice between
diplomacy and war. They chose the latter, and the consequences still are with us today, feeding the notion
expressed here by Sir Vincent Fean, a former British
consul-general in Jerusalem, in an interview with the
Guardian that Abbass threat to sue the British was
a cry of anger and despair rather than a statement of
intent ... the problem is that the two-state solution that
Respite care provides caregivers with time off to focus on
he has advocated and argued for for so long is rapidly
their personal needs. We make sure their loved one spends that time in a nurturing, stimulating
drifting away.
environment as well as providing support based on our years of experience to the caregivers as well.

bEncOhEn

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20Jewish standard aUGUst 5, 2016

Ben Cohen, senior editor of TheTower.org and the

Tower magazine, writes a weekly column on Jewish
affairs and Middle Eastern politics. His work has been
published in Commentary, the New York Post, Haaretz,
the Wall Street Journal, and other publications.

Opinion
But depicting the Balfour Declaration as
a crime against the Palestinians suggests
the opposite: that Abbas still cannot stomach the idea of legitimizing Zionism. As
Maliki, his foreign minister, put it, the Balfour Declaration gave people who dont
belong there something that wasnt theirs.
There we have it, a tired staple of Palestinian propagandadenying Jewish indigeneity recycled yet again. The conclusion
that the Palestinian leadership prefers continued Israeli occupation over an independent state is becoming inescapable.


JNS.ORG

The opinions expressed in this

section are those of the authors,
not necessarily those of the
newspapers editors, publishers,
or other staffers. We welcome
letters to the editor. Send them to
jstandardletters@gmail.com.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addresses a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in
Geneva last October. 
UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferr

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Cover Story
The rabbi of

Nepal M

YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI

Why an Orthodox Jew from L.A.

has spent nine years galvanizing
hundreds of volunteers to help
Nepalese villagers out of poverty

Micha Odenheimer, third from left,

with a group of Napalese and Jews.

22 JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016

icha Odenheimer is
sitting in a restaurant in the Mahaneh
Yehudah market in
Jerusalem in late
April of 2015.
Hes having one
last good meal before taking off for Nepal
the next day. He was last in Kathmandu
barely two weeks earlier, in mid-April, just
before the earthquake earlier that month
that killed more than 8,000 people.
As head of the Jerusalem-based NGO
Tevel bTzedek, which brings young Israeli
volunteers to Nepalese villages to support
long-term change, Micha regards Nepal as
a second home.
A young woman waves at Micha and
approaches his table. Whats the situation

in Mahadav Besi? she asks.

She is, it turns out, a former Tevel volunteer, and Mahadav Besi is the village where
she worked.
It hasnt been totaled, Micha replies
carefully. But its been pretty hard hit.
She covers her face in grief.
Well be in there in the next few days,
Micha adds, consoling. Well do what we
can.
Tevels goal is to help Nepali villagers
enter the modern world without losing
their sense of community and traditions.
The highest level of charity, according to
Maimonides, is to help someone become
self-sufficient, and thats how Tevel works.
Tevels local Nepali staff of nearly 50 people, headed by a Nepali with a Ph.D. in
agronomy from Ben-Gurion University,
teaches farmers how to create irrigation
systems and market their produce, and it

empowers women to become village leaders. Israeli and Jewish volunteers work
together with the local staff. One Tevel
volunteer, working with his Nepali counterpart, adopted the model of an Israeli
youth movement and created a Nepali
equivalent, with a thousand members.
We want to help villagers feed themselves and more, says Micha. That way
people wont move to the Kathmandu
slums, where they lose their sense of
community and the little they have. And
with much of the country now devastated by the earthquake, thats even more
important. If people leave the villages,
then less food will be grown. Our work
was already a matter of life and death for
the villages; now thats true for the rest of
the country as well.
Running a Third World aid organization is hardly an expected career option
for an Orthodox-ordained rabbi. But there
is nothing conventional about Micha
Odenheimer.
Micha, 58, grew up in the Orthodox
community of Los Angeles. His father was
a refugee from Nazi Germany, and most
of his yeshiva classmates were children
of survivors. I never thought of the Jews
as white, he says. Twenty-five years earlier we were being murdered in Europe
because the Nazis said we were a mixture
of Negroid and Mongoloid races. And now
were suddenly white? When I was in sixth
grade they distributed a census form in
school, and I refused to check the Caucasian box.
As a young rabbinical student in New
York, Micha gravitated to the circle around
the late chasidic singer Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. Shlomo taught that in our time

Above, Jews and Napalese

working together. At left,
Micha addresses volunteers.

we need three tikkunim, three changes in

Judaism: in relations between parents and
children, between men and women, and
between Jews and non-Jews.
Shlomo urged Jews to make their peace
with Germans and Poles and others who
had wounded them. If I had two souls,
one would hate the Germans, Shlomo
liked to say. But I cant waste my only soul
on hatred.
Most of all, Shlomo taught by example.
His synagogue on Manhattans Upper West
Side was a drop-in center for the neighborhoods homeless. When Shlomo would go
to Israel he left me in charge of the synagogue, Micha recalls. Shlomo would
leave me money with the names of homeless people, telling me how much each

one received. On Sundays, Shlomo would

bring his guitar to Riverside Park and sing
for the men living on benches.

Journey into the Third World

Micha internalized Shlomos deep love for
the Jewish people along with his love for
humanity. And that convergence led Micha
to his journey into the Third World.
It began with a 1990 trip to Ethiopia.
Thousands of Ethiopian Jews had come
down to Addis Ababa from their mountain villages, waiting to be flown to Israel.
Micha, who had moved to Israel the year
before, was on assignment from several
Israeli and American Jewish newspapers.
He fell in love with Ethiopias Jews. They
were poor, black, rural, illiterate defying

the conventional Western notion of Jewishness. Here were the Jews Micha unknowingly had been searching for his entire life.
They stretched our boundaries of Jewish
identity, Micha says.
But Micha also fell in love with Ethiopia. People had nothing, but they preserved tradition and community, the
magic of what it means to be human. But
I also encountered tremendous suffering and vulnerability to evil. I befriended
some street kids in Addis: One moment
theyre laughing and playing, the next
moment theyre hiding from the army
that would swoop down and drag them
off to the front.
In May 1991 Micha returned to Ethiopia. It was his fourth trip there that year.
The country was torn by civil war, the rebels were closing in on Addis Ababa, and
Israeli planes were landing in the capital
to bring the Jews home. As the last plane
was filling with Jews, Micha had to decide:
Does he fly back to Israel or stay behind
and report on the fall of the regime? Micha
stayed, spending a month in the chaotic
capital, getting shot at and also embraced
as an Israeli by Christians who called him
zamet, our family.
JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016 23

Cover Story
That was Michas first indication that his
infatuation as a Jew with the Third World
was reciprocated that even as much of
the West was turning against the Jewish
state, there was deep respect and affection
for Israel in unexpected places.
Back in Israel, Micha wrote about the
absorption problems of Ethiopian immigrants. The very mistakes that had been
made with Jewish immigrants from
Arab countries in the 1950s were being
repeated now by a paternalistic system
that ignored the cultural strengths of the
Ethiopian Jews. Young Ethiopian Jews
were being shunted into trade tracks,
effectively denied an academic education. Id thought that once Israel brought
the Ethiopian Jews it would somehow all
work out, Micha says. But something
was going very wrong.
In response, Micha founded the Israel
Association for Ethiopian Jews to act as
the communitys lobby. Id known Ethiopian Jews in Ethiopia, he says. They were
proud and independent. But government
policies were treating them like an urban
underclass. I ran IAEJ out of anger.
The IAEJ repeatedly took the government to court on housing and employment issues, but its greatest victory was in
reversing the Education Ministrys policy
on trade schools, opening up an academic
track for young Ethiopian Israelis. Along
with large numbers of high school dropouts, the community now also was producing thousands of college graduates.
Michas goal at the IAEJ was to turn
over the organization to those emerging
Ethiopian leaders. And five years after
founding the IAEJ, he did precisely that.
Its rare in the NGO world for a founder
of an organization to relinquish control

Connecting Israelis,
Jews, to the most forlorn
parts of the world

Tevel works with young girls on the problems they face in their villages and provides them with a safe space to meet.

to an indigenous leadership. The move

enhanced Michas credibility, especially
among Ethiopians.
In 1998 Micha returned to Ethiopia,
this time on a rescue mission. An Israeli
backpacker had told Micha that hed discovered a community of 2,000 Jews in the
remote region of Quara on the Sudanese
border, left behind by the Israeli rescue.
No one even knew they were there.
Micha, along with a young Israeli and an
Ethiopian doctor, set out for Quara. The
region was so inaccessible that they had to
travel by tractor, because a jeep couldnt
navigate the riverbeds. You go to Gondar
and take a right for 500 kilometers, Micha

Rubble left by the devastating earthquake in April 2015.

24 JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016

says, laughing.
Micha found the Jews. Most suffered
from malaria and skin diseases. There was
no government authority there, only tribal
rule. The nearest phone was 100 kilometers away.
Micha learned that there had been a
feud among the Jews of Upper Quara
and Lower Quara. The Jews of Upper
Quara had been rescued and told Israeli
authorities that there were no other Jews
left in the area.
Back in Israel, Micha campaigned to
convince the government that in fact there
were Jews still in Ethiopia. A year later, the
last Jews of Quara were airlifted to Israel.

Michas restlessness brought him to some

of the most dangerous places on the planet.
Working as a journalist, he went to Somalia during the famine, to Myanmar during
martial law, to Iraq just after the war.
But Micha wanted to do more than just
write about the Third World; he dreamed
of connecting Israelis, Jews, to the most
forlorn parts of the planet, honoring the
messianic vision of the prophets.
And he went to Nepal, to interview Maoist rebels fighting the government.
Nepal enchanted him. The power of
the landscape, the simplicity and joy of its
impoverished people, their affection for
Israel. He met Israeli backpackers, young
people recently out of the army. Mostly
they were hanging out with other Israelis on the so-called Hummus Trail, with
little interaction with the local population.
They were traveling through the East not
only because it was cheap but because
they wanted to understand the world,
Micha says. I felt that many of them
would want an opportunity to deepen
their experience.
And Micha felt that they had so much
to give. Young Israelis are hard working.
Theyre used to improvising from the
army, from living under threat. They have
the skills of the First World and a taste for
its good life, but they also can live without.
Theyre Western and not Western at the
same time.
Micha raised some money and recruited
his first cohort, 16 young Israelis. But what
exactly were they going to do in Nepal?
Hed had an intuition, but no actual plan.
Five weeks before the program was to
begin, Micha flew to Kathmandu and
arranged for his volunteers to work as
interns in local NGOs.
That makeshift arrangement eventually
was replaced with a systematic plan for
tackling poverty. Micha hired his Nepali
staff and recruited not only young Israeli
volunteers but also young Nepali volunteers, who work together in the villages.
The goal is to make the villages places of
opportunity, Micha says. To transform a
village, he adds, requires a program that
lasts between three to five years.
Tevel now is working in 13 villages. Over
the last eight years, it has graduated nearly
800 volunteers. Most of them are Israelis,
but increasingly it attracts young American Jews too. Creating a meeting place
between young Israeli and diaspora Jews
is, for Micha, one of Tevels most important achievements. Were enabling Jewish connections based on shared Jewish
values, he says. Were producing future
leaders of Israel and the Jewish people,
with a real understanding of how the
world works and a commitment to making it better.
Young Israelis and American Jews bring
different strengths to Tevels work, Micha
says.

Cover Story
Israelis, he notes, have a genius for community. Bring together a random group
of young Israelis and immediately someone will start playing a guitar and someone else will start cooking. Theyre very
loving with each other, very intimate;
theyre always massaging each other. For
me, start-up nation means the incredible Israeli ability to create community.
Thats precisely the quality Tevel is trying
to strengthen among Nepali villagers.
Young American Jews, Micha notes,
bring Tevel a sophistication about social
justice issues Israelis lack. And, he adds,
they also bring an openness to Judaism.
For American Jews, Judaism isnt black
and white, Orthodox or secular.
Tevel reflects Michas commitment
to deepening Jewish identity. On Friday
night, volunteers gather in Tevels headquarters in Kathmandu to welcome Shabbat together and study Jewish texts on
social justice. Sometimes those texts are
taught by leading Israeli scholars visiting
the region, like Moshe Halbertal and Melila
Hellner-Eshed.
Tevel recently opened a project in
Burundi, one of Africas poorest countries.
Michas boyhood intuition that Jews
somehow belong among non-white peoples has become a vision for the place
of the Jewish people in a changing world.
In the year since the earthquake,
Tevels commitment to Nepal has only
deepened. It has more than doubled the
number of households its working with
and in response to the emergency, it has

Tevels Income Generation project in Dolakha supports 180 farmers with training and provides supplies for off-season vegetable cultivation.

cooperated with Israeli relief organizations, such as the Magen David Adom.
The earthquake hit communities from
which Tevel had already pulled out, after a
successful four years of building leadership

and capacity, Micha said. But with all the

homes down in these villages, we felt we
had no choice but to return. Tevel gave out
materials for temporary housing, including tin roofs, to some 4000 households.
Michas goal is to
teach Nepalese
villagers to feed
themselves.
Below, inaugurating
a Tevel-built
irrigation pool.

The villagers emphasized their need for

income to rebuild, so we launched generating projects ranging from commercial
beekeeping to ginger production.
Appropriately, Tevel now has brought
its service corps idea to Nepalese villagers, who receive stipends for taking part in
the two-year program. We want them to
become leaders moblizing their communities for transformative change, Micha says.
This story is reprinted with permission
from the Times of Israel

JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016 25

cap-

CREDIT

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HummusElite.com

Shellys, a dairy cafe and

caterers, is taking reservations for the 9 days. They
have a special menu. 482
Cedar Lane, Teaneck. (201)
692-0001. Shellyscafe.net.

Summertime and
the snacking is easy
Farmers Pantry, the new American snack brand,
debuts the first in its line of exciting new snacks
Farmers Pantry Cornbread Crisps. Farmers Pantry
snacks are the first cornbread cracker snack to hit the
market. The OU-certified kosher snacks are for children and adults alike and offer a satisfying, healthy,
and natural snack that is delicious. Farmers Pantry
snacks are made in America with ingredients you
would only find in a farmers pantry and grown on
U.S. family farms. Go to www.farmerspantry.farm for
a store list or to order online.

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CHALLAH

Nut Free
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Large selection of delicious
Challah Pastries cookies bobkas pies & More...

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26 JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016

482 cedar lane

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Cedar Market
gives all unsold
food to charity
In an attempt to help eradicate the growing problem
with food waste, Cedar Market quietly has been donating all unsold food to poor families in the North Jersey area.
The supermarket, at 646 Cedar Lane in Teaneck,
has been giving unsold food to Shearit HaPlate of Bergen County for several months, the Jewish Standard
has learned.
Shearit HaPlate, a nonprofit organization dedicated
to minimizing the waste of kosher food by distributing
it to those in need, usually within 24 hours, was created about six years ago to help combat food waste in
the Jewish community.
Each night, one or two members of the Shearit
HaPlate team visits Cedar Market to pick up food,
sometimes leaving with four to five boxes packed with
items including sushi and sandwiches. Next, the food is
repackaged and distributed to individuals and families
in North Jersey in a respectful way that helps to ensure
the recipients privacy and self-esteem, the organization said.
This makes a lot of sense on so many levels, said
Cedar Markets owner, Jeff Hollander. If there is an item
in our store that can be eaten, it should not be wasted.
We encourage everyone to get involved in Shearit
HaPlate, he said.

A guide to
gluten-free flours
Pereg Natural Foods has extended its popular line
of gluten-free flours, offering consumers even more
cooking and baking options. The new line of flours
consists of five varieties almond, banana, buckwheat, chickpea, and coconut. All are gluten-free,
all are 100 percent natural, non-dairy, and certified
kosher. They are packaged in 16 oz. re-sealable stayfresh bags and retail for about $3.99.
There are so many types of gluten-free flour in the
marketplace that it can be overwhelming when its
time for cooking or baking. Some flours just work better for certain types of recipes than others and for
many recipes a blend of flours is needed as a single
flour may not have the same properties as a standard
gluten variety. Once you start experimenting and
learning which combos and flavors you love best,
youll become a pro at making the gluten-free breads,
pancakes, muffins, and more.
Since each gluten-free flour type offers its own
unique flavor and baking properties, Pereg offers
a guide to using these flours for the best and most
SEE GLUTEN PAGE 27

P
G

B
i
o
b
f
m
t
t
f
b
u

Keeping Kosher: The 9 Days

RCBC
RCBC

Delicious recipe for the Nine Days

The first nine days of the Jewish
month of Av are called the Nine
Days. The religious observance
starts on rosh chodesh Av, which
falls this year on Friday, August 5,
and ends on the fast day of Tisha
BAv on Sunday, August 14. (Normally
Tisha BAv would be on the 9th of Av,
but this year its on the 10th because

the 9th is Shabbat.) The days are

mourning the destruction of the first
and second holy temples.
There are many restrictions during
the Nine Days, including not eating
meat or poultry and drinking wine.
Here is a recipe from JTAs the Nosher
for a delicious salad. It also timed well
with National Watermelon Day, Aug. 3.

Watermelon steak topped

with chickpea and feta salad

Gluten

Still the Best

Hand Sliced Nova,
Sable & Baked Salmon
in Bergen County

Available Daily

Fresh Homemade

MOZZARELLA
available only
at Maadan

Grilled Salmon
Poached Salmon
Moroccan Salmon
Fried Flounder
White Fish
White Fish Salad
Tuna Fish Salad
Egg Salad
Creamy Rice Pudding
Cheesy Noodle Pudding
Pasta Pesto w/Sundried
Tomatoes and Feta
Teriyaki Salmon
Tilapia
Spinach Quiche

Mushroom Onion Quiche

Baked Salmon Salad
Broccoli Quiche
Baked Farmer
Vegetable Cream Cheese
Scallion Cream Cheese
Nova Cream Cheese
Fresh Sliced Cheese
Macaroni & Cheese
Cheese Blintzes
Stromboli
Eggplant Parmesan
Baked Ziti/Lasagna
Stuffed Zucchini

Fruit Soup, Strawberry Banana Soup,

French Onion, Split Pea, Vegetable & Gazpacho

446 Cedar Lane Teaneck, NJ 201-692-0192 Fax 201-692-3656

www.maadan.com for complete menu
6 small yellow tomatoes,
quartered
1 cup crumbled sheeps feta
cheese (about 6 ounces)
1 15-ounce can garbanzo beans
1 cup chopped parsley
2 teaspoons sumac
Dressing:
2 tablespoons brown mustard
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/8 teaspoon salt
DIRECTIONS:
Slice the watermelon into four
1/2-inch rounds and remove
the rind.
Place the rest of the salad ingredients in a large bowl. Whisk
all dressing ingredients together
until well incorporated. Add
dressing to salad and toss well.
Arrange salad on top of each
watermelon slice and sprinkle
with sumac. Serve immediately

flavorful culinary creations.

blends. Use it to make crepes, pancakes,

English muffins, cookies and buns, and
to thicken soups, stews and sauces.

Pereg Buckwheat
Gluten-Free Flour

Pereg Quinoa
Gluten-Free Flour

Buckwheat is the seed of a plant and

is related to rhubarb, not wheat, rye,
or barley. Despite the confusing name,
buckwheat is gluten-free and high in
fiber. Because its packed with essential
minerals, it can really boost the nutritional value of gluten-free recipes. Gluten-free buckwheat is among the top
five easiest flours to work with. It can
be considered a base flour and can be
used as a large proportion in your flour

Its good to know just how versatile quinoa flour is. It creates soft baked goods
but also is a fantastic all-purpose type
of flour. Quinoa flour is especially great
for baking gluten-free breads because
of its protein content. Since gluten is a
protein, it is important to use higher protein flours, such as quinoa, when baking
gluten-free. The protein in quinoa flour
helps to give your bread structure and

FROM PAGE 27

Celebrating 34 years and still serving The Best Food

by The Best Staff to The Nicest Customers
9 DAY MENU 8/5-8/14

FRESH
HOT BAGELS

VICKY COHEN AND RUTH FOX

A warm night, a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean,
and a big bowl of watermelon
with feta cheese: If we had to
take a guess, that would be
our moms definition of the
perfect summer dinner.
If youve never tasted
watermelon and feta together
before, you might think it will
be a strange combination. But
give it a taste, and you will
certainly be hooked. The sweetness
of the juicy watermelon meets the
rich, salty feta creating an explosion
of flavor on every perfect bite.
Inspired by the traditional Israeli
watermelon salad, we created this
recipe incorporating protein rich
chickpeas, greens, and sweet tomatoes, beautifully arranged on top of a
thick, slice of watermelon all drizzled with a tangy lemon, mustard,
and olive oil dressing.
Its a light, refreshing addition
to a summer brunch, lunch or
light dinner.
INGREDIENTS:
SALAD:
1 small baby watermelon
6 romaine lettuce leaves,
chopped (you can also use your
favorite greens)
16 red cherry tomatoes, sliced
in half

Glatt Kosher Caterers

RCBC

WE
DELIVER

Sunday August 7 to Thursday August 11

ALL YOU CAN EAT

BUFFET

Sushi, Salads,
Fish & Vegetarian
Asian Entrees

$26.50
Limited Space
Reservations Recommended
515 Cedar Lane, Teaneck

201-530-5665

Sun 11:30am - 10pm Mon-Thurs 12pm - 11pm

www.estihana.com

SEE GLUTEN PAGE 29

JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016 27

Keeping Kosher: The 9 Days

Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggety dogs!! (For after the Nine Days)
BETH JANOFF CHANANIE
Oscar Abeles and Leopold Heymann,
an uncle-and-nephew team, opened a
butcher shop in Washington Heights in
upper Manhattan in 1954. The company,
known as Abeles & Heymann, still produces the same premium quality hot
dogs, deli meats, and sausages as it did
the day it opened. Our recipes are still a
closely guarded secret, says Seth Leavitt,
44, CEO of Abeles & Heymann. Nineteen
years ago, Leavitt and his cousin David
Flamholz, a lawyer by training, bought
out Mr. Heymann and his wife, Sophie.
Leopold Heymann, then the only surviving partner, stayed on for more than a
year to teach the two young men how to

make a hot dog, among other things, in

the Bronx facility. Since then the familyrun company has seen an over tenfold
increase in sales, moved to a state-of-the
art facility in northern New Jersey, partnered with the manufacturing arm of an
Israeli kibbutz, Maadany Yehiam, makers
of the Hod Golan line of turkey products,
and produces over 1,000 tons of quality
glatt kosher deli a year, including hot dogs,
beef fry, kishka, cervelat, no nitrate added
reduced fat and sodium hot dogs, knockwurst, and cocktail franks, salami, chipotle franks, corned beef, and pastrami.
A&H products are available at Shoprite of Englewood and Paramus, Acme in
Bergenfield, BJs in Paramus, Costco in
Teterboro, and many local kosher stores

in Bergen County. The hot dogs are served

at many Teaneck restaurants, including
the Dog House, Noahs Ark, Dougies, and
Salsa Metsuyan.
Here at the Jewish Standard office, we
made a hot dog lunch, tasting and testing
some of the hot dog offerings. By far, the
Fully Cooked Kosher Beef No NitrateReduced Fat & Sodium Frankfurters
were the clear favorites. Some of us added
deli mustard, sauerkraut, and coleslaw to
enhance their franks on the bun, but even
those who ate them plain loved them.
The franks plumped up really well in our
toaster/oven broiler which only leads
us to imagine how delicious they will be
on the grill! The No Nitrate, Low Sodium/
Reduced Fat hot dogs are for people

looking for healthier alternatives for bbq

season but who still love hot dogs.
In 2005 and 2013, Abeles & Heymann
kosher franks were voted top hot dog, each
time beating out large conglomerate producers such as Ballpark, Applegate Farms,
and Hebrew National, among others.
A&H invites everyone to take the Abeles
& Heymann hot dog challenge. Follow it
on Instagram and answer the weekly trivia
questions for a chance to win an assortment of its award-winning hot dogs. It also
will post recipe ideas, photos, contests,
and photos of the new packaging.
All Abeles & Heymann products are
certified glatt kosher by the Orthodox
Union. For information, go to www.
abeles-heymann.com.

Serving The Kosher Way Since 1976

DELI RESTAURANT CATERING

Avi & Haim
Proprietors

Annual
Readers
Choice
Poll

New Jersey

Under Rabbinical Supervision

www.koshernosh.com

894 Prospect Street

Glen Rock, NJ
Tel: 201-445-1186
Fax: 201-670-5674

Kosher Market

More than
376,000
likes.

Like us
on
Facebook.

Meats Chicken Deli Appetizing

Prepared Foods Groceries Frozen Foods Catering
67 A. East Ridgewood Ave. Paramus, NJ 07652

201-262-0030
www.harolds.com

MON-WED 8-6; THURS 8-7; FRI 8-4; SUN 8-3; CLOSED SATURDAY
UNDER RABBINICAL SUPERVISION

ORDER FROM OUR 9 DAYS

VEGETARIAN MENU
August 7 August 14

RCBC

Chinese Take-Out

FRESH & DELICIOUS!

AS SEEN IN

172 W. Englewood Ave.

201-833-0200

order online @ www.chopstixusa.com

28 JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016

facebook.com/
jewishstandard

Keeping Kosher: The 9 Days

Gluten
FROM PAGE 27

will improve the overall texture. For best

flavor, try toasting your quinoa flour
before using it: Spread it out onto baking sheets covered in foil or parchment
paper, and bake at 215 degrees for 2 to
3 hours. Youll know the flour is ready
when its scent is nearly gone and the
flour has a mild flavor. Once its been
toasted, your quinoa flour should keep
well in the fridge or freezer for about 8
months. Even after toasting, quinoa flour
does have a very slight sour flavor, which
lends itself to bread and English muffins.

Pereg Gluten-Free
Banana Flour
Because of the high starch content in
banana flour you can use less flour than
specified in your everyday recipes. Rule
of thumb is to use 30 percent less banana
flour than wheat flour. Banana flour mimics the results of wheat flour remarkably
well, making for an easy transition to
banana flour in your everyday baking.
Banana flour works well by itself, but also
complements most other flours wonderfully. Made from peeled ripe bananas, the
flour has minimal taste. When consumed
raw, it has a hint of banana flavor, but
once baked into a final creation it has an
earthy, wholesome taste. The texture is
light and fluffy youll have a tough time
believing it comes from bananas. Banana
flour can add a boost in nutrients to your
morning smoothie, add thickness to your
soups or sauces, and can be used as a
great additive to natural homemade baby
foods. As you might imagine, it also makes
great banana bread.

Pereg Gluten-Free
Coconut Flour
Baking with coconut flour is like nothing youve ever experienced before. Its
super absorbent, but doesnt have a lot of
binding power. Youll notice that recipes
using coconut flour use a lot of eggs and
very little flour. Thats because, as it lacks
structure, without the addition of other
ingredients to add body it wouldnt hold
its shape well. The eggs provide moisture,
act as a binder, and also give the baked
goods structure. Like almond flour, if
youre new to baking with coconut flour,
stick with recipes that have already been

tested and proven to work. You cant substitute coconut flour 1:1 with any other
flour; it simply wont work. If youre building a coconut flour recipe from scratch,
a good rule of thumb is that for every 1/4
cup coconut flour in a recipe, you need
to add two eggs. If youre mixing in other
dry ingredients, such as cocoa powder,
your egg ratio will need to go up even
higher. In neutral tasting items such as
pancakes, you can taste the coconut flavor a little. But if you have other strong
flavors in your recipe, you usually wont
be able to taste it at all.

Pereg Gluten-Free
Almond Flour
When youre baking with almond flour,
remember that it does not behave like
a normal flour. Its much higher in
fat and therefore needs some adjustments. When you bake with almond
flour, youll notice the texture tends to
be more on the tender and cake-like
side. Thats because of the higher fat
content. Almond flour recipes tend to
use more eggs and less fat. The eggs
provide more structure and moisture,
but your baked good wont taste eggy.
Almond flours natural fat content
reduces the need to add such fats as
butter or cooking oil. Use almond flour
in small amounts. Dont let the texture
of the batter throw you off: Almond
flour batters are almost always thicker
than traditional wheat-based or other
gluten-free recipes. Refrain from adding more liquid, because if you do, your
baked goods wont bake through. Great
uses are in pizza crust, shortbread
cookies and chicken nugget coating.
In addition to gluten-free flours, Pereg
Natural Foods produces an extensive line
of quinoa products, spices and ancient
grains, flavored basmati rice, couscous,
farro, salad toppings, and salad spreads.
All Pereg products are kosher certified by
both the Orthodox Union and CRC, are
dairy and lactose-free as well as all natural, with no additives or preservatives.
Many products are also certified glutenfree and non-GMO. Pereg products are
available at select retailers throughout the
United States and Canada, and through its
website, www.pereg-gourmet.com.
Pereg Natural Foods was established
in 1906 and is based in Clifton.
JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016 29

Jewish World

Uneasy Republicans and confident Democrats

diverge on Jewish issues
BEN SALES

ts never been easy for Jewish

Republicans.
Jews have broken overwhelmingly
for Democratic candidates since
Woodrow Wilson. Despite rising American
Jewish affluence, usually a harbinger of conservative voting patterns, a plurality of Jews
self-defines as liberal.
Republican Jews have poured millions
into upping their share of the Jewish vote in
recent elections, portraying the GOP as the
pro-Israel party and telling largely affluent
Jewish Americans to vote their economic
self-interest. The needle has moved only a
little, despite those efforts: 80 percent of
Jews voted for Clinton in 1992, 79 percent
voted for Gore in 2000, and 74 percent
voted for Obama in 2008.
Organizations like the Republican Jewish Coalition have kept pushing, despite it
all. Most Jews dont vote based primarily on
Israel, but as Democrats passed a controversial Iran deal and condemned Israels West

Bank occupation, Republicans saw a window of opportunity.

Republicans doubled down on the Israel
case at their national convention in Cleveland last month. Donald Trump, Mike Pence,
and a handful of other speakers included
lines in support of Israel in their speeches,
and those lines drew loud applause. President Barack Obamas support of Irans
nuclear program, anathema to the Israeli
government, was a nightly punching bag.
Dozens of delegates said that the main
reason why Jews should vote for Trump is
that hes better on Israel than his opponent,
Hillary Clinton, is. The Republican platform
swung right on Israel, eliminating the longheld bipartisan consensus supporting the
two-state solution, and rejecting the United
States right to dictate terms on Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Even so, Republican Jewish uneasiness
showed at the convention. Big-name Jewish
donors declined to attend. Republican Jews,
from journalists Bill Kristol and Jennifer
Rubin to such former Republican operatives

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Donald Trump speaks on July 21,

the fourth day of the Republican
National Convention in Cleveland. 

JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES

Hillary Clinton speaks on July 28,

the fourth day of the Democratic
National Convention in Philadelphia.

PAUL MORIGI/GETTY IMAGES

as Noam Neusner and David Frum,

oppose Trump. In a departure from previous conventions, the Republican Jewish Coalition held no events that were
open to the media.
Much of this ambivalence has to do
with Trumps string of statements insulting minorities, Jews among them. Its a
point Democrats stressed every day of
their confab a week later in Philadelphia. A video aired on the first night of
the Democratic convention featuring
Trumps retweet of an image widely seen
as anti-Semitic. The conventions explicit
message was that anyone who cares
about safeguarding minority rights has
to vote for Clinton.
The first night of the Democratic
National Convention featured a string of
Jewish public figures Sarah Silverman
and Sen. Al Franken among them and
it ended with a keynote speech by Bernie
Sanders, the first Jewish candidate to win
a major party primary. Jewish entertainers, activists, and politicians peppered
every nights roster, from singer Paul
Simon to Senator Barbara Boxer.
Criticism of Israel was a recurring
feature in Philadelphia, a point the RJC
pressed in an ad released last week calling the party stridently anti-Israel.
Many Sanders supporters wore pro-Palestinian stickers, and a few advocated
changing the United States historically
pro-Israel policy. On Wednesday, a night
devoted largely to national security, no
one mentioned the U.S. alliance with
Israel. There was full-throated support
for the Iran deal throughout the convention. At one point, protesters outside the
convention burned an Israeli flag. At a
roundtable discussion held outside the
convention by the US Campaign to End
the Israeli Occupation and the American
Friends Service Committee, Georgia Rep.
Hank Johnson compared Israels West
Bank settlement movement to termites.
But in the end, the party could point to
the ways it shored up its traditional proIsrael wing. The Democratic platform

committee rejected an effort merely to

mention settlements and occupation in
its section on Israel. Like Trump, Clinton
threw a shout-out to Israels security into
her acceptance speech, and she didnt
mention the Palestinians. Gen. John
Allen, the former commander of NATO
forces in Afghanistan, gave a convention
speech in support of Clinton that echoed
neoconservative rhetoric, which tends to
be forcefully pro-Israel. Even Bill Clinton
got into the act, sporting a Hebrew Hillary button during Obamas Wednesday
night speech.
It could be that in future election
cycles, discord over Israel will drive
more Jews to the Republican party. Part
of Sanders dissent from Democratic
orthodoxy was in his call for more criticism of Israel. In her acceptance speech,
Clinton adopted much of his domestic
rhetoric but none of his Middle East policies. But if Sanders delegates become
the new Democratic mainstream, the
party could gravitate away from its proIsrael stance.
At Jewish Democratic events, though,
the old guard held sway. If anything, the
Democratic Jews biggest problem came
from one of their own, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was ousted as chair of
the Democratic National Committee at
the conventions start. Schultz was the
favorite daughter of Jewish Dems, a former National Jewish Democratic Council
staffer who rose to be a congresswoman
and party bigwig. Now, shes facing a
primary challenge and could exit political life.
Even as she was embattled, the NJDC
stood with her, presenting her with an
award on the conventions final afternoon. Wasserman Schultz sounded defiant at the event, calling Trump a traitor
and promising to win her primary. And
despite her fall from grace, Jewish Democrats cheered her, as if to say that whatever the future held, they felt good about
this year.


JTA WIRE SERVICE

Jewish World

Facing peace push, Israels

settlers present world with new face
EFRAT, WEST BANK The Yesha Council has represented Israels settlement of
the West Bank for nearly five decades.
Its helped create what appears to be an
irreversible reality to both critics and
champions: Some 400,000 settlers live
in settlements, where they enjoy their
own wineries, Israeli chain stores, a
university, and a security infrastructure
staffed by the Israel Defense Forces.
In the meantime, much of the world
remains opposed to the settlements,
which the United Nations considers illegal under international law, and which
the United States variously considers
unhelpful and illegitimate. Critics
say the Jewish presence in land the Palestinians demand as part of a future state
is a major impediment to any IsraeliPalestinian peace plans, including the
recently launched French initiative.
For the Yesha Council, the umbrella
group for Israeli settlements its name
is a Hebrew acronym for Judea and
Samaria, the biblical names commonly
used in Israel to designate the West Bank
impeding efforts to give back the biblical land of Israel is part of the point.
With the French initiative, and possibly a regional peace push, looming,
last month the council appointed a new
chief foreign envoy to make the settlers case to the world. Lt. Col. (res.)
Oded Revivi will be the second person
to hold the position, filling the shoes
left empty more than a year ago by Dani
Dayan, the former council head who just
became Israels general consul to New
York. (That happened only after Brazil
rejected his appointment as ambassador
there because of his settler past.)
Revivi, 47, sat down with JTA Monday
at the Gush Etzion Winery to discuss his
plans for the job.
A powerfully built man who wears a
small knitted kippah and speaks British
English with a Hebrew accent, Revivi is a
relatively rare Israeli because he claims
to understand diaspora Jewry. When he
was a child, he lived in the United States
and England for several years. After finishing his Israeli army service as an officer in the Armored Corps, he earned a
law degree in London, where he met the
Englishwoman who is now his wife.
Since 2008, Revivi has been the mayor
of Efrat, a large settlement in Gush
Etzion with a majority immigrant population and a reputation for ideological
moderation.
The interview has been edited for clarity and structure.
JTA: What will you tell the world
about the settlers?

COURTESY OF AVI HYMAN COMMUNICATIONS

ANDREW TOBIN

Oded Revivi

Revivi: For the last 50 years, Yesha

was mainly busy trying to build up the
community and increase the numbers,
and not so much telling and spreading
the story. And all of a sudden we wake up
almost 50 years later, finding ourselves
with all sorts of initiatives not understanding our message, not really understanding the reality in which we are living here, and that needs to be conveyed.
The message is, at the end of the day:
There are hundreds of thousands of Jews
living here, there are a lot of Palestinians
living here. There is an ecosystem that is
working. It can be improved. There are
things that need to be amended.
But its definitely not a conflict zone.
Most of the terrorist attacks occur outside of Judea and Samaria. Yet the myth
is that once there wont be any Jews in
Judea and Samaria, there will be peace
and quiet in this region. And Im trying to convey a message that lets see
how the people actually live here day
to day, one next to the other, how can
we maybe create and spread a different
story that there is coexistence going on,
that there is cooperation going on, and it
definitely can be improved, but we need
to start somewhere.
JTA: And your message is obviously
that the settlers are here to stay.
Revivi: Of course.
JTA: What will you take from Dani
Dayan, and what will you change?
Revivi: Dani basically set the foundations for the understanding that we cant
just focus locally. He definitely invested
a lot of time with the official diplomats,
with the international media. I think its
not enough. I think we need to do more.
I think we need to find efficient ways to
spread messages and relatively cheaply,
which is what this whole new media is
about, something that during Danis
time wasnt developed.
Having said that, we also need partners, and one of the potential partners

that is out there but needs to be pampered,

developed and hugged, is the international
Jewish community, which, because of some
religious disagreements, sometimes feels
out of the picture. Maybe by creating alliances with them, well be able to multiply
the message through the Jewish organizations throughout the world.
JTA: That might be hard in the U.S. A
growing number of American Jews are giving up on Israel, in part over frustration with
the occupation. Does that worry you?
Revivi: I think some of the Israeli politicians dont realize the importance of the
alliance with the different sectors of Judaism
around the world. When you are saying, I
have nothing to do with Conservative Jews
anymore, youre basically saying that within
a few years, youre going to close down the
strongest lobby that Israel has around the
Natalie Jay Jewish Media Group 5 x
world, which is called AIPAC [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee]. That
is something that Israel cannot allow itself.
Again, lets see whats the common

denominator, lets see whats the common

ground, lets see where the bridges are we
can build with Conservative and Reform
even if we dont fully accept the way that they
practice their Judaism. Theres a joint interest. And thats a major theme in what Im
trying to convey. And it doesnt matter again
with which groups were having the dialogue.
One way we want to start reaching out to
the diaspora Jewish community is to let them
buy products from Israel, including Judea
and Samaria, on our website. We actually
got the idea from AIPAC Canada. Thats an
excellent way to overcome BDS [the Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions movement against
Israel]. Not confronting it, just overtaking it.
JTA: The current wave of Palestinian violence, which is centered in the West Bank,
seems like a challenge to the message that
6.5Jews and Arabs can live together there under
Israeli rule. Do you see it that way?
Revivi: Thats an excellent example of
how people dont know the facts and jump
to conclusions. Most of the stabbing attacks,

New York Mets vs

Philadelphia Phillies

JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016 31

Jewish World
the last time I looked at statistics, over 60
percent of them, happened in what we call
Little Israel [within the 1967 borders]. Only
40 percent happened in Judea and Samaria.
That misconception is an example of how
the conflict is going wrong, what the challenges are and how a wrong reputation is
being built up. Then, all of a sudden, you
need to challenge the myth instead of actually dealing with the problem itself. Again,
what Im trying to do is to build bridges and
to show the common denominator.
The majority of the developed world
today is dealing with that same challenge. If
we understand that its a global challenge,
if we understand that theres a common
denominator to what were suffering here
and what people are suffering in Brussels
and in France and in England and in the
United States, maybe the leadership of the
world will put the focus on those small, violent, strong minorities, instead of rejecting
the majority by collective punishment.
JTA: When you refer to collective punishment, is that a criticism of how Israel
responds to Palestinian violence?
Revivi: Building fences is not the answer.
You have all the time to build security, which
as far as Im concerned means to find a
shared interest, or an interest that the result
will be the same that both parties can benefit.
For example, in Efrat, where the security
fence is not built, its not a motorway for
suicide bombers because and not a lot of
Israelis are willing to admit this the Palestinian Authority realized that the pictures of

suicide bombers dont serve their interests,

and theyre doing quite a lot to stop those
extremists from coming and blowing themselves up.
So you see both sides have interests, it
doesnt necessarily have to be the same
interest, but the result is the same. Both
sides enjoy the fact that theres no fence and
there are no suicide bombers crossing.
JTA: I know you are close with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and many other
Israeli officials. Will you work closely with
the government?
Revivi: I think anybody who thinks at
this stage that you can work independently,
ignoring the different views, ignoring the different politicians, doesnt understand how
the system works.
I had here yesterday the minister of religion [David Azoulay], who is one of the people who is getting criticism from the Reform
and the Conservative movements. I can have
a discussion with him, and yet I can go and
speak to the Conservative and Reform synagogues or temples asking them to support us
in our initiative against BDS.
Once we establish that connection with
the different groups, maybe it will be used
even to support the agenda of the Conservative and Reform movements. I dont know
where its going to lead. What I do know is
that we are not strong enough to stand by
ourselves, and we need allies of all different
sorts, and were going to try to reach out to
anybody who can help.
JTA WIRE SERVICE

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Israel poised to get official

Air Force One within a year
After years of using chartered planes
for overseas travels, Israels leaders
may soon get their own Air Force One.
Israel Hayom has learned that
the government plans to buy a used
commercial plane that would be
fitted with various communication
and defense systems. The cost of the
aircraft and the overall refurbishing is
estimated at $70 million.
According to the plan, the plane
will have technoloy to allow Israeli
leaders to carry out their duties in
full while airborne and have room for
some 100 people.
According to sources familiar with

the issue, assuming an Israeli company will refurbish the yet-to-be-purchased plane, it will need about a year
to fit the necessary technoloy according to the criteria set by a special
committee comprising representatives
from the Shin Bet security agency, the
Transportation and Road Safety Ministry and the Finance Ministry.
A company has been chosen
through a bidding process but its
name cannot be published for security reasons. The plane could be ready
by mid-2017 at the earliest. It will have
an estimated maintenance cost of $7.8
JNS.ORG
million per year.

Palestinians file FIFA

complaint on Israeli restrictions
The head of the Palestinian Football
Association has submitted a complaint
to the international soccer governing
body, Fdration Internationale de
Football Association, after Israel prevented seven soccer players and staff
from traveling from the Gaza Strip to
the West Bank.
Jibril Rajoub says the Shabab Khan
Younis players were attempting to
attend the final Palestine Cup match
in Hebron. The game, scheduled for
Saturday, was postponed.
Israels Shin Bet security agency

said team members were barred

due to severe negative security
background. Israel has maintained
a blockade on Gaza since Hamas
wrested control over the strip in a violent coup in 2007.
In 2015, Rajoub asked FIFA to suspend the Israeli soccer association
because of restrictions of movement
on Palestinian players.
Israel has asked FIFA to condemn
Rajoubs hailing of Palestinians who
attack Israelis as courageous heroes.
JNS.ORG

Saudis: Israel visit does

not reflect government stance
The Saudi government distanced itself
from a recent visit to Israel by a delegation of Saudi citizens, which included a
former general.
An unnamed Saudi Foreign Ministry
official told the state-owned al-Hayat
newspaper that the visit does not
reflect the views of the Saudi government, the Associated Press reported.
Last week, a rare delegation of
Saudis, headed by outspoken retired
Saudi general Anwar Eshki, visited
Israel. The delegation met with Israeli
Foreign Ministry officials including

Director-General Dore Gold at the

King David Hotel in Jerusalem. The
group also met with opposition Knesset members and Maj. Gen. Yoav
Mordechai, head of the COGAT, the
military body that coordinates Israeli
activities in the West Bank and Gaza.
Eshki reportedly led the delegation
of businessmen and academics to
promote the stalled Saudi-led 2002
Arab Peace Initiative, AFP reported.
Eshki and Gold had met last year at a
Council on Foreign Relations conferJNS.ORG
ence in the United States.

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Jewish World

From LA to Israel
One swimmers journey to the Rio Olympics
opportunity for me. I love it. Its been the
best experience. I wouldnt have it any other
way.
Murez lives in an apartment on the
grounds of Wingate and spends much of
her day training. In her free time, she said
she has enjoyed visiting the Dead Sea and
coastal places like Caesarea.
A human biology major at Stanford, Murez
plans to enroll in Tel Aviv Universitys medical school beginning in the fall of 2017, following the next Maccabiah, when she will
represent Israel.
Stratton-Mills said that at an early age
Murez enjoyed swimming, but she didnt
take it too seriously, in a wonderful way.
That changed, Stratton-Mills said, during
a drill in which the coach placed pieces of
paper in hats and instructed the swimmers
to draw two: a stroke and a distance. Murez,
who was about 11, drew the 500-meter butterfly the worst selection, Stratton-Mills
said.

HILLEL KUTTLER
NETANYA, ISRAEL Andrea Murez
steps on the diving board, adjusts her
goggles, swings her long arms, and propels herself into the water at the Wingate
Institute athletic complex here.
Murez is training with a dozen other
swimmers but shes the one preparing
for the Summer Olympics a few weeks
later.
The 24-year-old Los Angeles native will
represent Israel when she hits the pool
on August 8 at Rio de Janeiros Olympic
Aquatics Stadium; she immigrated to
Israel in 2014 after excelling at the Maccabiah Games there a year earlier and in
2009.
Her coach sees her reaching the semifinals in the 100 meters freestyle. Murez,
who will be one of six Israeli swimmers
in Rio three women and three men
isnt making any predictions.
Im really just focused on swimming
a personal-best time, she said. Its hard
to know what itll take to swim a semifinal or a final. The best you can do is
swim your own race.
Murez, who stands 6-foot-1, will compete in three other events in Rio: the 50and 200-meter freestyle and the 100meter backstroke.
She has been excelling in the water
since she and her older brother, Zachary, first took up swimming as children at the condo pool of their paternal
grandfather, Joe. In the 1930s, he swam
for Hakoach, the legendary Jewish sports
club, in his native Vienna.
At 7, Murez completed the compulsory
100-meter swim in her countys junior
lifeguard program. She reached the time
requirement on her third try.
At a lifeguards suggestion, Melanie
and James Murez enrolled the siblings in
a swim club. Murez then was more passionate about karate than she was about
swimming. She took lessons six days a
week, beginning when she was 3, at a
studio in the same building as one of the
synagogues in Venice, California, that
the family attended.
But Murez progressed nicely in the
pool. In 2004, when she was 12, she
went to the U.S. Olympics swimming trials in 2004 in nearby Long Beach as a
spectator.

Andrea Murez recalls Israelis telling

her at the 2013 Maccabiah Games
that she should swim for Israel
and now she is.
HILLEL KUTTLER

Youre talented. You can make it at

15. Start dreaming, her coach at Team
Santa Monica, Rachel Stratton-Mills, told
her there.
Murez recalls thinking: I realized I
was getting to be the age where thats
possible.
She competed at the 2009 Maccabiah
Games in Israel, her grandfather and
parents looking on, and then swam for a
strong Stanford University team. Returning to the 2013 Maccabiah, Murez set
many records in the very pool where she
is practicing now and she was selected
the outstanding female athlete at the
games.
Her overall Maccabiah medal count:
15, including 10 golds.
But Murez remembers the games as
much for how well she was treated by
the Israelis, especially in 2013, as for
those medals.
They asked if I could swim here [as
an Israeli], which was funny because
Id wanted to, she said poolside before
practice. It seems like this is the best

In completing the assignment, however,

something clicked for Murez, the coach
continued. I saw her turn into a serious,
high-level swimmer. She handled everything
from that point forward with the attitude of
I can do this.
Stratton-Mills, who now coaches in Cleveland with her husband, has stayed close with
the family. In preparation for Rio, shes been
sending Murez workout tips: speed and aerobics training, attention to fundamentals,
and other instructions.
Stratton-Mills wont be going to Brazil, but
Murez will have plenty of fans there: her parents and brother, along with other relatives,
including one from nearby Argentina.
Melanie and James Murez are no strangers to the Olympics. They first met just
before the 1984 Summer Games, when she
worked for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, in charge of the cadre
of interpreters. Melanie recruited James
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Dear Rabbi Zahavy

Your talmudic advice column

the nave among us, magiGolem, who saves the lives
cal thinking will continue
of Jews during dark times in
to attract. Its tantalizing to
Eastern Europe. And the Talmud is full of stories of Jews
imagine that a holy man or
practicing magic in one way
woman has what the classical anthropologists called
or another.
In actuality we do say
mana the invisible powers to control the forces of
some things in our daily
nature and the world.
prayers that sound like
Dear Scared,
Rabbi Tzvee
It scares you because your
curses directed at our eneZahavy
There are charismatic religious leaders in
mies. For instance, in the
friend is swallowing the idea
many religions who say that they can cure
weekday Amidah we recite,
of faith healing, hook, line,
people of illnesses. In Judaism we say that
And for slanderers let there
and sinker. You intuitively
we do not believe in, or practice, magibe no hope, and let all wickedness perish
know that there must be a balance among
cal faith healing. The Torah condemns
as in a moment; let all your enemies be
the beliefs we have in magic, science, and
sorcerers, soothsayers, and witchcraft
speedily cut off, and the dominion of arroreligion.
You may want to tell your friend about
gance do you uproot and crush, cast down
as abominations. But also note that the
your concerns. But do not expect her to
and humble speedily in our days. Blessed
Torah tells us about Moses magical staff,
understand. She seems enthralled and
are you, O Lord, who breaks the enemies
capable of outperforming Pharaohs magicians. And some say the magical phrase
will not be open to discussions. Still, as
and humbles the arrogant.
Additionally, we conclude the weekday
Abracadabra comes from Aramaic words
long as she is not endangering herself by
that mean, As I speak it, so foregoing medical treatments, or by giving Amidah with an invocation of Gods name,
it shall come to pass.
saying that God should protect us against
away her wealth to charlatans, you have
And we do say some things in prayers
the curses and spells of other people,
no cause to try to intervene more actively
that sound pretty close to invoking relito such as curse me let my soul be dumb,
against her beliefs.
gion to cure sickness. In the weekday AmiUnfortunately, even if something bad
yea, let my soul be unto all as the dust.
dah we say Heal us, O Lord, and we shall
does happen, there may not be much
Open my heart to your Torah, and let my
be healed; save us and we shall be saved;
you can do to deter a truly determined
soul pursue your commandments. If any
for you are our praise. Vouchsafe a perbeliever in magic. Once magical thinking
design evil against me, speedily make their
fect healing to all our wounds; for you,
has a grip on someone, it is hard to pry off.
counsel of none effect, and frustrate their
almighty Monarch, are a faithful and merGood luck to you in whatever course you
designs. Do it for the sake of your name, do
ciful physician. Blessed are you, O Lord,
decide to pursue.
it for the sake of your right hand, do it for
who heals the sick of your people Israel.
the sake of your holiness, and do it for the
Dear Rabbi Zahavy,
In many shuls, mesheberach prayers
sake of your Torah. Yes, that is a prayer.
My neighbor is building an addition to his
are made for sick people every week. You
But in its formulation and language, it tilts
home that will destroy my view, take away
surely can argue that prayers for recovery
a bit in the direction of a spell. And in Jewish Kabbalah, we find elements of magic,
my sunlight, and create constant terrible
are not the same as instant magical cures
in addition to mysticism. The evil eye and
noises from many central air conditioning
but they are on the same spectrum.
the hamsah symbol are widespread Jewish
units right next to my backyard. It will ruin
And you are worried that your friend
magical beliefs and talismans.
my domestic peace and joy. Ive spoken to
has gone off to one fringe of the continuum, or even over the edge, into the abyss
The Pulsa dnura incantation is an actual
him, asking him to make some accommodations to my needs, but he does not care a
of cultic magical beliefs.
magical Jewish curse, accredited by some
whit. He is firm in sticking to his plans.
Now, a strictly scientific thinker will
religious authorities. It was invoked by
My friend tells me he knows a voodoo spell
argue, with a good deal of authority, that
rabbis in recent years against Israeli Prime
that I should try to cast against this person.
diseases cannot be cured by magic or
Minister Ariel Sharon because he gave
Is there some effective Jewish magical curse
prayer. Medicine alone has the capacity
land back to the Palestinians. Something
that I can invoke to change his mind or to
to cure. On the other hand, many scienlike it was invoked years before against
tific minded people find comfort in the
make all this go away?
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Were these
Cursing in Cresskill
thought that someone has prayed for their
the causes of those leaders deaths? No,
recovery and health.
I am sure they were not. Yet others who
Dear Cursing,
Indeed, think about it. If magical or
believe in black magic will say the curses
Yes, in our world there are many people
prayerful cures were effective in any predictable way, wouldnt every health plan
who will tell you that there is black magic,
in America want to save money by urging
with spells and curses, that you can invoke
us to go get cured by the local equivalent
against other people. In contemporary
How to Teach
of a shaman?
Judaism, we say that we do not believe in
FROM PAGE 8
Yes, we do need religion and prayer to
or practice such dark magic. Yet we Jews
discuss how to enhance the teaching of
give us hope in times of despair. And for
do have legends of a magical hero, the
these books, said Ms. Schwartz, who
teaches sixth-grade English. I believe our
program was already in line with the Yad
Dear Rabbi Zahavy offers mindful advice based on Talmudic wisdom.
Vashem approach, and now I can enhance
It aspires to be equally open and meaningful to all of the varieties and
it. I want to implement the Yad Vashem
denominations of Judaism. You can find it here on the first Friday of the
pedagogy in the entire program.
month. Please email your questions to zahavy@gmail.com.
Moriahs head of school, Rabbi Daniel Alter, said he feels it is critical that a
Dear Rabbi Zahavy,
My friend has started to scare me. She tells
me often about her beliefs in the magical
powers of religion and religious people. She
claims to have witnessed faith healings right
in front of her eyes. I think shes gone off the
deep end. Guide me please in what to do.
Scared in Secaucus

have effects.
Use of a magic curse is appealing to
powerless and angry people, who have
exhausted all their alternatives and seek a
solution of last resort.
Many of us have our personal stories
of curses we or our friends have invoked
when nothing else would avail. The stories
become particularly memorable when it
appeared that they worked.
Its nice to imagine that your curse
caused the harm to those you wish to hurt.
Its more likely that happenstance can lead
to various random outcomes.
Im sure that in fact, black magic doesnt
work. If it did, we would not need a military. Wed just conscript a corps of holy
men and women skilled in the art of the
magical spell to fight our enemies.
My advice is that you dont stoop to
seeking out curses, lest you attract dark
and negative energy to yourself alone.
Your target will not even know what you
intend at a distance. That negativity of
the curse will pull you down in mood,
and may affect your health, and will not
do a thing to damage the well-being of
your enemy.
Move on, then, from your darkness.
Perhaps sit on your front lawn instead
of in your backyard. If you are really distressed, you may consider moving to
another home. Sorry, but I cannot provide you with the solutions you seek out
of the mainstream traditions of Judaism.
Good luck in dealing with your cursed
annoyances.
Tzvee Zahavy received his Ph.D. from
Brown University and his rabbinic
ordination from Yeshiva University.
He is the author of numerous books
about Judaism, including these ebooks on
Amazon: The Book of Jewish Prayers in
English, Rashi: The Greatest Exegete,
Gods Favorite Prayers and Talmudic
Advice from Dear Rabbi which
includes his past columns from the Jewish
Standard and other essays. And dont
forget his classic, Babylonian Talmud
Tractate Hullin.

program of such gravitas as Names, Not

Numbers be run by a teacher who has a
strong sense of adolescent development,
is a master teacher, and is able to connect
students emotionally to the content they
are studying.
Rachel Schwartz possesses all of these
skills. The opportunity to deepen her own
learning about the Holocaust will enable
her to give our students an even more
powerful educational experience.

JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016 35

Dvar Torah
Matot-Masei: Life is a journey

here have we been and

where are we going?
Though we are just beginning the month of Av,
these are questions we shall be asking ourselves a month from now when we enter
Elul and begin our spiritual preparation
for the Yamim Noraim, the High Holy Days.
Masei, the second of the two portions
we read this Shabbat, begins by recounting all the journeys traveled by our Israelite ancestors who left Egypt. Masei is the
concluding portion of Sefer Bamidbar,
the Book of Numbers. Our ancestors are
about to enter the land promised to Israel.
That is where they are going. But Moses
reminds them where they have been.
Rashi asks why all these journeys were
recorded. He cites a homily found in
Midrash Tanchuma. It is analogous to a
king whose son became sick, so he took
him to a faraway place to have him healed.
On the way back, the father began citing
all the stages of their journey saying to
him, This is where we sat, here we were
cold, here you had a headache, etc. So, in
this way, R. Tanchuma suggests that sometimes people need to be reminded how far
they have come.
And where are we going? Moshe
Chaim of Sudlikov, in his Degel Machaneh Ephraim, teaches something he had
heard, attributed to his grandfather, the
Baal Shem Tov. The 42 journeys of the
Israelites are to be found in every person,
from the day of his birth until the day of
his death Expounding further, Each persons birth should be understood within
the context of the Exodus from Egypt, and
the subsequent stages of life are journeys
that lead from place to place until one
comes to the land of the supernal world
of life.
This theme is explored in a poem by
Rabbi Alvin Fine, of blessed memory. It

their way to Shanghai.

begins, Birth is a beginning,
While they survived, they
/ And death a destination; /
endured hardship there
But life is a journey. He then
during the Japanese milirecounts the journey through
tary occupation.
the stages of life, learning, love
In a report to the Joint
and loss. It is a poem that has
Distribution Committee,
spread from Reform Jewish circles on through the wider JewRabbi Fine wrote of overish world and beyond.
crowded housing condiRabbi Bruce
tions, public health and
More people have heard the
S. Block
medical needs, and ecopoem than know who the poet
Rabbi emeritus,
nomic issues. As most of
was. More have read it and
Temple Sinai of
the Jewish refugees were
know the name of the poet,
Bergen County,
of German or Austrian oribut do not know much about
Tenafly, Reform
gin, the Chinese governhim. But when you know his
ment had classified them
life story you understand how
as enemy nationals; hence, they were not
he came to write this beloved poem.
allowed to pursue their trades or profesAlvin Fine was born in Portland, Oregon, on October 25, 1916. He was ordained
sions. Thus, there was widespread poverty. Rabbi Fine concluded that their only
as a Reform rabbi by Hebrew Union College in 1943. Rabbi Fine then went to Conhope was emigration to the U.S., Australia,
gregation Beth Emeth in Wilmington, DelCanada, or Palestine. But, he also reported
aware, whose rabbi had just entered the
on the opening of a rest center for the
U.S. Army Chaplain Corps. Not long after,
aged, establishment of a hospital, and
Rabbi Fine, too, became an Army Chapschools, where the children were learning
lain, as so many rabbis of that generation
Hebrew and English. He also reported that
Orthodox, Conservative and Reform
many young Jewish men and women were
volunteered for the Army and Navy Chapbeing employed by the American occupylain Corps during World War II. And, like
ing forces. Moreover, Jewish soldiers stationed in Shanghai befriended the refuso many, Chaplain Fine served overseas.
gees, arranged parties for the children, put
Alvin Fine served for 27 months with the
on shows for them and brought them the
U.S. Army in China, and was awarded a
first cheer they had known in a decade.
Bronze Star. One can only wonder what he
And, he added, I performed three marobserved as American and Chinese forces
riages between American soldiers and
fought those of Japan.
refugee girls.
At the wars end, in September, 1945, he
Rabbi Fine came home from China
was sent to Shanghai as the Armys liaison
in 1946. In 1948, he became the Rabbi
to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which worked with
of Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco. He was a Zionist who brought harnumerous agencies to assist refugees and
mony to a congregation whose members
displaced persons. Among these was the
were divided in their attitudes toward the
Joint Distribution Committee. And so,
newly founded State of Israel. He spoke
Chaplain Fine began working to assist
out against Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his
the many European Jews who were lucky
witch hunts. He spoke at the funeral of
enough to escape the Nazis and make

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Netanyahu affirms he will not accept

racism against Ethiopian-Israelis
In response to a report about racism against Ethiopian
Israelis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday
said he will not tolerate any racism in Israel.
I am not prepared to tolerate racism in our state.
I am not prepared for people to be tripped up by the
color of their skin. This is terrible, Netanyahu said
in a statement.
Netanyahu received a report on the eradication
of racism against Israelis of Ethiopian origin from
Justice Ministry Director General Amy Palmor, who
heads the team established by Netanyahu.

36 JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016

We, on the ministerial committee, have heard

heart-rending and hair-raising stories and we started
to take action against racism even beforehand. But
now, in the wake of this report, which is part of
our decisions, we will take further steps and I am
pleased that there are people, men and women,
who are determined to uproot this phenomenon
from our lives. This befits neither our country, our
citizens nor our people, Netanyahu said.
The ministerial team expects to approve the recommendations in the report.
JNS.ORG

Chief Justice Earl Warren. An active supporter of civil rights, he invited Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to speak at the Temple. As a young woman, Maya Angelou,
exploring religious faith, came to speak to
Rabbi Fine.
In 1964, Rabbi Fine suffered a mild heart
attack. There is a line in his poem: From
health to sickness / And back, we pray, to
/ health again. He decided to leave the
pulpit and make a change in his life. He
thought he should pursue something less
stressful and less demanding than being
the rabbi of a large urban congregation.
So he became a professor of humanities at
San Francisco State University, where he
would teach for the next 15 years.
From loneliness to love. He and his
wife, Elizabeth, raised their son and
two daughters, saw each of them marry,
and enjoyed their grandchildren. His
beloved wife, Elizabeth, died in 1973.
From pain to compassion, / And grief to
understanding.
Rabbi Alvin Fine died in January, 1999,
at the age of 82. In an obituary, he was
remembered by Rabbi Stephen Pearce as
a brilliant preacher who had a tremendous following when he was Emanu-Els
rabbi. Cantor Joseph Portnoy recalled that
he had the ability to inspire and even
mesmerize by the use of his poetic words,
the strength of his voice and the sincerity
with which he prepared his work. Rabbi
Pearce described him as a real salt-of-theearth kind of person, someone who knew
no bounds in terms of his affection.
Birth is a beginning, / And death a destination; / But life is a journey, / A sacred
pilgrimage / Made stage by stage - / From
birth to death / To life everlasting.
And so, as our ancestors continued
on their journey, so do we continue our
own. Life is a journey. May yours be filled
with blessings.

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www.thejewishstandard.com
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Arts & Culture

Indignation
brings Philip Roths novel
about anti-Semitism
to the big screen

ALISON COHEN ROSA

country and we can accommodate these

people as long as they toe the line.
BOSTON James Schamus rememSchamus says he was drawn to Roths
bers the block he faced while writing the
novel by the appeal of the characters,
screenplay for director Ang Lees 1994
including Caudwell. That is not to say that
film, Eat Drink Man Woman.
Schamus condones Caudwells
Creating the right voices for the
subtle version of anti-Semitism,
films Taiwanese characters was not
but that he places it in the context
going well, he said, and Ang Lee was
of a complex of qualities demanding more nuanced assessment.
getting very nervous.
As Schamus sees it, Caudwell
In a desperate effort to turn the
responds warmly and enthusiasscript around, Schamus, who is Jewish, decided that he would just make
tically to Marcus, knowing that
them all Jewish in my mind, changthis is the smartest kid whos
ing the names to Jewish ones during
walked in there in a long time,
the writing and then changing them
yet he still cant keep himself
back to Chinese names afterward.
from pursuing that insinuating
The technique succeeded; the result
cross-examination.
In his explicitly autobiographiwas a modern cinematic classic.
That capacity to bridge cultural
cal 1988 work The Facts, Roth
differences while working within his
recalled how his time at Bucknell
own idiom is evident in Indignation,
constrained both his Jewish identity and his artistic sensibility. In his
Schamus adaptation of Philip Roths
student writing, he set out to prove
2008 novel. The film traces the effects
that I was a nice boy, period, he
of subtle institutional anti-Semitism
wrote. The Jew was nowhere to be
on a nice Jewish boy, a stellar student
seen; there were no Jews in the stofrom New Jersey who finds himself at
ries, no Newark, and not a sign of
a conservative, Christian-influenced
comedy.... I wanted to demonstrate
Midwestern college in 1951. In his
Logan Lerman in a scene from Indignation, a film adaptation of the Philip Roth novel.
that I was compassionate, a totally
directorial debut, the veteran screenwriter (The Ice Storm, Crouchharmless person.
ing Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and producer
by Tracy Letts, also a Tony Award-winning
In portraying Marcus, Lerman echoes
forced him out of Newark.
At Winesburg, Marcus also encounters
(Brokeback Mountain) manages to
playwright). Schamus script manages to
the spirit of the young, decent, inhibited
the beautiful but troubled non-Jewish
remain empathetic to all his characters,
expose the subtly prejudicial indictment
author, ready to ripen into the funny, indecent, vivid one.
beauty Olivia Hutton. Living somewhat
even the most seemingly anti-Semitic one.
by the very non-Jewish dean of the JewIndignation, which was screened at
ish kid, demonstrating the deans sincere
To a certain extent, I know Marcus
dangerously for the first time, Marcus
the Sundance Film Festival in January,
admiration as well as his scorn.
Messner very well, Schamus observed.
is lured by another Jewish student into
arrives in theaters July 29. Schamus, along
Director Schamus, who grew up in a
Theres a little of him in me. Theres a
dodging chapel attendance and by Olivia
with star Logan Lerman, sat down for an
strongly identified Jewish family in Southlittle of him in any good Jewish boy who
into dark sensual corners, leading him
ern California and now lives in New York,
interview in Boston on July 18.
went on to try to do well in school.
eventually to clash with Winesburgs
Schamus says that among those expressand 24-year-old star Lerman, who also
Roths novel is set in the middle of the
patrician dean, Hawes D. Caudwell. The
ing the strongest appreciation of the film
is Jewish and was raised in Beverly Hills,
Korean War. Marcus Messner, 19, a bright
deans insinuating and vexing crossare young people of color, who relate to
remain empathetic to the character of the
Jewish kid from Newark, flees his neurotiexamination effectively draws out Marcally controlling father, a kosher butcher,
cus indignation and defines his fate. (The
its portrayal of the subtleties of prejudean, while acknowledging the systemic if
dice. And while many barriers have been
by transferring from a local college to
novel is explicit about the nature of that
subtle form of anti-Semitism he embodies.
removed, minority students at colleges and
the fictional Winesburg College in Ohio.
fate early on, but the film does not reveal
For Lerman, Caudwells version of antiuniversities continue to identify its effects.
(Through not explicitly autobiographical,
it until the very end, so well avoid the
Semitism doesnt crudely exhibit hostility or ill intentions, but rather a sincere
In somewhat idiosyncratic cinematic
Indignation draws from Roths parallel
spoiler here.)
A central but daringly extended scene
prejudice.
terms, the film distills Roths view of how
experience transferring as a sophomore
in the film depicts the charged encounSchamus agrees.
justifiable fury sprouts, how that sense of
from Rutgers Newark campus to Bucknell
ter between Marcus (a penetrating and
Caudwell doesnt get up in the morning
indignation can simmer over time, and
College in Pennsylvania.) Though serious and studious, Marcus finds himself
simmering performance by Lerman, the
and say how can I hurt the Jews? Schahow it eventually can boil over.
mus says. He thinks hes doing a good
JTA WIRE SERVICE
in a strange land. Obligated, as are all the
boyish heartthrob from the Percy Jackson adventure series and the 2012 film
thing well expose them to the Chrisother students, to attend chapel regularly,
tian part of the Judeo-Christian tradition
Charles Munitz publishes the blog Boston
The Perks of Being a Wallflower) and
he is newly constrained and cornered by
and itll be good for everybody. Its a great
Arts Diary.
the dean (played tautly and convincingly
completely different forces than those that

CHARLES MUNITZ

JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016 37

Calendar
at Temple Beth Sholom
in Fair Lawn, 11 a.m.
Program includes lunch
and talk by Rabbi Ronald
Roth of the Fair Lawn
Jewish Center about his
new book, The Jews
of Pacov Remembered
in Fair Lawn.
Transportation available.
40-25 Fair Lawn Ave.
(973) 595-0111 or
www.jfsnorthjersey.org.

Friday
AUG. 5
Shabbat in Emerson:
Congregation Bnai Israel
holds Shabbat Under
the Stars, including a
discussion, Judaism
and Peace, 7 p.m.
Homemade refreshments
at the oneg Shabbat. 53
Palisade Ave. If it rains,
services will be inside.
(201) 265-2272 or www.
bisrael.com.

Lunch/games in
Edgewater: Englewood
& Cliffs Chapter of ORT
America holds its annual
summer luncheon and
card party at the River
Palm Restaurant, 11:30
a.m. Games include
cards, mah jongg,
Scrabble, dominoes, and
RummiKub. 1416 River
Road. Reservations, (201)
346-9165.

Saturday
AUG. 6
Film in Leonia: Women
Art Revolution, a
documentary by
Lynn Hershman
Leeson, is screened
at Congregation Adas
Emuno, 7:30 p.m. Film
delves into the feminist
art movement that
fused free speech and
politics. Discussion
with Lance Strate, shul
president and professor
of communications at
Fordham University,
follows. Mature content,
parental discretion
advised. Refreshments.
254 Broad Ave.
(201) 592-1712 or www.
adasemuno.org.

Sunday
AUG. 7

Singles
Sunday
AUG. 7
Seniors meet in West
Nyack: Singles 65+
meets for a social
get-together with
refreshments, at the JCC
Rockland, 11 a.m. All are
welcome, particularly
from Hudson, Passaic,
Bergen, or Rockland
counties. 450 West
Nyack Road. Gene,
(845) 356-5525.

Wednesday
AUG. 17
Seniors meet in
Montvale: Singles 65+ of
the JCC Rockland meets
for dinner at Daveys
Locker, 6 p.m. Individual
checks. 5 Park St. Gene,
(845) 356-5525.

Thursday
AUG. 18
Widows and widowers
meet in Glen Rock:
Movin On, a monthly
luncheon group for
widows and widowers,
meets at the Glen Rock
Jewish Center, 12:30 p.m.
682 Harristown Road. $5
for lunch. (201) 652-6624
or email Binny, arbgr@
aol.com.

Seeking bottle caps

for art project
The Summer Concert
series at the Wayne
YMCA continues with
a performance by
Lisa Sherman, who will sing The
Jewish Divas (including Bette
Midler, Barbara Streisand, Carly
Simon, Leslie Gore, Carole King,
Eydie Gorme, and Janis Ian) on
Thursday, August 11, at 7 p.m. She
will be accompanied by Bob Egan.
The Metro YMCAs of the Oranges
is a partner of the YM-YWHA of
North Jersey. 1 Pike Drive. (973)
595-0100 or www.wayneymca.org.

AUG.

11

Rabbi Shalom Hammer

Tuesday

Uniting with Tzahal:

AUG. 9
THOMAS GARSIDE

Rabbi Shalom Hammer,

a contributing editor
to the Jerusalem Post,
speaker for the IDF,
founder of Makom
Meshutaf, and author of
four books, discusses
A Time to Unite with
Tzahal: The Challenges
of Ideology in the IDF
Today Purification
and Preservation, at
Congregation Beth
Aaron in Teaneck, 10 a.m.
Light breakfast. Proceeds
of book and CD sales
will go to Tzahal. 950
Queen Anne Road.
www.bethaaron.org or
(201) 836-6210.

E. 304 Midland Ave.

Shari, (201) 837-9090,
ext. 237 or sharib@
jfsbergen.org.

The JCC of Fort Lee/

Gesher Shalom and
its CSI Scholar Fund
present visiting scholar
Eitan Kastner, 1 p.m.
Refreshments at 12:30.
The series continues
with The Geopolitics
of Tisha bAv. Kastner
is a history teacher and
department chair at the
Frisch School in Paramus.
Series continues August
23. 1449 Anderson Ave.
(201) 947-1735.

Dementia caregiver
support: Vivian Green
Konner, a certified
dementia practitioner,
leads a support/
education group for
dementia caregivers,
at CareOne at Teaneck,
7 p.m. Refreshments.
544 Teaneck Road.
(201) 862-3300.

AUG. 17

Opera in Paterson: The

38 JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016

History in Fort Lee:

Wednesday

Annamaria Stefanelli
and Rory Angelicola
Passaic County Historical
Society presents lyric
soprano Annamaria
Stefanelli and tenor
Rory Angelicola in An
Afternoon of Italian
Opera Plus for the
Lambert Castle Concert
Series in Lambert Castle,
5 p.m. 3 Valley Road.
(973) 247-0085 or
lambertcastle.org.

Eitan Kastner

Rabbi Ronald Roth

Program for Holocaust
survivors: Cafe Europa,
the social program the
Jewish Family Service of
North Jersey sponsors
for Holocaust survivors,
funded in part by the
Conference on Material
Claims Against Germany,
the Jewish Federation of
Northern New Jersey, and
private donations, meets

Holocaust survivor
group in Paramus:
Cafe Europa, the social
program the Jewish
Family Service sponsors
for Holocaust survivors,
funded in part by the
Claims Conference and
the Jewish Federation
of Northern New Jersey,
meets at the JCC of
Paramus/Congregation
Beth Tikvah, 11:30 a.m.
The Alacorde Trio will
entertain. Kosher lunch.

Areyvut is collecting bottle caps for a mural to be

created during 5 Days/5 Ways, a one week chessed
camp set for the week of August 8.
All incoming sixth, seventh, and eighth graders are
invited to participate in the weeklong camp, whose
mission is to travel to different sites daily bringing
cheer and kindness to people in need.
The camp will be based at Friends of Lubavitch of
Bergen County (a camp partner) at 513 Kenwood Place
in Teaneck. It will be led by Alisa Danon Kaplan and
Daniel Rothner.
All bottle caps can be dropped off through Monday,
August 8, in the box outside the Areyvut office at 147
South Washington Ave., in Bergenfield.
For information, call (201) 244-6702 or email daniel@areyvut.org.

Catskills film in Wayne

Shomrei Torahs adult
education group offers
a nostalgic night at the
movies with a screening of the documentary Four Seasons
Lodge, on Tuesday,
Aug. 9 at 8 p.m. It tells
the story of an aging
group of Holocaust
survivors that gathers
each summer at an
idyllic hideaway in the
Catskills, where they
savor tightly bonded
friendships, find new
love, and celebrate
their survival.
For information, call (973) 696-2500 or go to www.
shomreitorahwcc.org.

Calendar

Crossword

YVONNE KAHAN

PROPER PRONUNCIATION BY YONI GLATT

KOSHERCROSSWORDS@GMAIL.COM
DIFFICULTY LEVEL: EASY

Dance and percussion group in NYC

Jewish performing arts festival that runs
through Aug. 29. Tararam is a precision
dance and drumming ensemble that
mixes tap, acrobatics, sound and light to
produce a sensory experience that is distinctly modern while channeling sounds
and rhythms from ancient and Middle
Eastern world traditions.
Go to www.kulturfestnyc.org.

RICHARD REX THOMAS

The Tel-Aviv-based percussion group

Tararam, Israels answer to Blue Man
Group and Stomp, makes a rare New
York appearance in a free outdoor concert on Sunday Aug. 7 at 4 p.m., at the
Robert F. Wagner Park. It is adjacent to
the Museum of Jewish Heritage A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, 36 Battery Place, in New York City.
The event is part of KulturfestNYC, the

Paper Dolls, a triptych, 24 x 60, acrylic/mixed media on mounted presentation board, 2014

Mixed media in
Englewood
The Bergen Performing Arts
Center Intermezzo Art Gallery
in Englewood presents Truth or
Dare, a solo exhibition of mixed
media paintings by Kim Schmitt
Thomas, through August 31.
There will be a reception on
Thursday, August 18, from 6 to
8 p.m. BergenPAC is at 30 North
Van Brunt St., in Englewood.

Thomas Twister

Across
1. Groom
6. Cho-Sen Island pans
10. Jewish folklore setting
14. Second to last month some years, biblically
15. Noahs Ark was 50 wide
16. Short-sighted twin
17. One sitting on a Maccabi bench, in a
way
18. Bibis wife
19. Roladin amts.
20. Brooklyns J with many kosher eateries: Abbr.
22. Most severe (like Sekila)
24. Seasonal greeting
28. Hudsons Penny and Adams Lois
29. Lingus that might connect to El Al
30. Efes
31. Tchelet, e.g.
32. We make one for shalom
34. Il ___, Mussolini title
37. Actress Gershon
41. Rice-John musical performed at
Hebrew University in 2014
42. Wise ones
43. Aka for 16-Across
44. Arnaz who worked with Jesse
Oppenheimer on I Love Lucy
45. Song with Hu
46. Joseph was one, once
47. Ima, in England
49. Make chosen
51. Kylos sci-fi dad
52. Sends (all of ones belongings to Israel)
55. Middle holiday period
58. The Baba Salis nationality
60. A Gershwin
61. Its the truth
62. Actresses Gardner and Haddad
64. Zayn who got into hot water for
tweeting #FreePalestine
68. Jay who donated an ambulance to
United Hatzalah
69. Former Israeli P.M.
70. A Haim sister
71. With 9-Down a JJ Abrams movie
72. Makes like one involved with 10-Down
73. Name of a major Jewish holiday (or
half of a minor holiday)

The solution to last weeks puzzle

is on page 43.

Down
1. Thats life?
2. Annex (the Golan)
3. Dew blessing
4. West Bank and Gaza Strip
5. Beach in Israel with the same name as
a 90s trio
6. ...and G-d saw that it ___ good (Gen.
1:12)
7. Middle America locale of Beth Israel
Synagogue
8. Notable rebel with a Parsha
9. See 71-Across
10. Major low point in the Torah
11. Eppes follower
12. Expire, like a subscription to Moment
Magazine
13. Some Elite gums
21. Label that released Pink Floyds The
Division Bell (sans Roger Waters)
23. Like Judah Maccabee as a general
24. Many a Jewish house across the world
25. Place to do a mitzvah involving birds
eggs
26. YU alums
27. Part of a rhyming prophesying duo
31. Guillermo ___ Toro (he directed Ron
Perlman in Hellboy)
33. The Chosen author
35. Arm of Israel
36. Kane of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
38. Potato state of a 1991 River Phoenix
film
39. Bursts created on the fourth day
40. Modify (a Talmudic translation)
42. One on Noahs Ark
46. Heavenly chart?
48. The Shoah Foundations CA school
50. City where Bibi went to HS
52. Refine (a metal menorah)
53. Simpson that said That Yentl puts the
she in yeshiva
54. Sherlock Holmes Adler, who was
never actually confirmed as Jewish
55. Shalom ___ (Clinton)
56. Where a truly happy kallah might walk
57. Adumim go-with
59. Along ___ A Spider (movie with
music by Jerry Goldsmith)
63. They might spend next yr. in Israel
65. Viva ___ Vegas (Elvis hit)
66. Garten whos the Barefoot Contessa
67. Kahanes party

JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016 39

Jewish World

Israels had success against lone wolf terrorists.

Heres how it works
paid for the weapons, the officer said of the
Sarona shooters, who wore dress suits during the attack. And our logic is very simple.
If not everyone can get a weapon with 2,000
shekels [about $500], the price will go up
and theyll have to make all sorts of arrangements and meet more and more people in
order to get the weapon they want, we will
see fewer attacks with weapons because
people will make more mistakes.

ANDREW TOBIN
JERUSALEM Lone-wolf terrorism in
Europe is making headlines around the
world. But in Israel, the phenomenon of
angry or troubled people taking up arms
is old news.
Since October, Israelis have endured a
wave of violence that has been carried out
largely by individual Palestinians without
backing from terrorist groups so much
so that some have called this the lone
wolf intifada.
As of the end of June, 38 people had
been killed and 298 injured by attackers,
according to the Shin Bet security service.
Yet the violence appears to be winding
down, at least for now. In October, when
the wave of violence is said to have started,
the number of attacks against Israelis
spiked to 620. In June, there were 103
attacks, lower than in September, before
the wave of violence began.
A large majority of the attacks some
1,500 out of 2,000 were in the West
Bank, where the Israel Defense Forces is
responsible for protecting Israelis. Here
are five key methods the army used to turn
the tide of violence.

Keep the terrorist groups

out of it
The wave of violence may be considered
a lone wolf intifada, but thats because the
army has put a lid on the terrorist groups,
a senior IDF officer told reporters during
a briefing this week. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the nature of
his job.
Since the second intifada, the last major
Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s, the
Israeli army largely has managed to dismantle the networks run by Hamas and other
terrorist groups in the West Bank, according to Shlomo Brom, a retired brigadier
general and an analyst at Israels Institute
for National Security Studies think tank.
Basically the terror networks are dismantled, and basically the security forces
are dealing with maintenance, he said.
But that doesnt mean that terrorist groups have stopped trying to launch
attacks against Israelis. In the past three
months, the army has thwarted dozens of
attempted attacks by Hamas alone, in what
the senior official called the old war
against organized terror.
Were still having day-to-day indications of them trying to find people in the
West Bank, fund them, give them weapons,
give them explosives and tell them to shoot
Jews, he said. This hasnt changed.

Predict the unpredictable

A new war is being waged against the lone
wolves. Their attacks started last fall in
40 JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016

Limit blowback

Israeli soldiers check Palestinian IDs at the Qalandia checkpoint between the
West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem on July 1. 
FLASH90

Jerusalem, sparked by Palestinian fears

of Jewish encroachment on the Temple
Mount. But the center of the lone wolf intifada quickly shifted to the West Bank city
of Hebron, with attacks on soldiers and
settlers in the area, as well as across Israel.
Around that time, at the end of last year,
the army began building a system to deal
with the new threat that was emerging, the
senior officer said. The goal was to predict
the unpredictable: when, for example, a
particular Palestinian youth might grab a
knife from his moms kitchen and take to
the streets to spill Israeli blood. Motives
can range from nationalism to family problems, he said.
Unlike terrorists who belong to Hamas
or the Islamic Jihad, if you get to their
house the week before the attack, the kid
doesnt know that hes a terrorist yet, the
senior officer said. So thats the main
challenge.
Based on what was known about previous attackers, the army created an alert
system that constantly is being tweaked.
These days, army analysts feed huge
amounts of intelligence information into
that system a combination of social
media, human intelligence, signal intelligence, according to the senior officer,
who declined to provide further details
about intelligence gathering. In return, he
said, the system produces a small number
of alerts about potential future attacks.
One of the ways you produce an alert
is, what are the last actions that a specific
individual did, the senior officer said.
For example, if hes exposed to incitement and right afterwards he rents a car,
maybe an unregistered car, this raises
questions.
In response to an alert, options include
arresting a suspect, monitoring his or her
actions, intervening through the family,
or deploying troops to a potential target

area. When attackers are arrested or killed

without managing to cause carnage, future
attackers are thought to be deterred.
The attacks are decreasing because
of their ineffectiveness, because most of
them fail, said Brom, the Institute for
National Security Studies analyst. There
is a limit to the number of even frustrated
young people who are willing to give their
life and to achieve nothing. So it makes
sense that over time, the numbers of
attacks are fewer and fewer.

Go after the inciters

Incitement to violence can occur in person, through traditional media, or over
social media. Hamas is responsible for a
large portion of the incitement of Palestinians against Israel, the senior officer said.
They create some of the memes of the
high-level incitement, or the incitement
which is very powerful that you see on the
web, he said. So when you handle most
of the Hamas incitement, or when you
stop some of the incitement from getting
to social media, you also have less incitement by private people that are just sharing a specific post or adding incitement.

Get guns off the streets

Despite Israels control of the West Banks
borders, weapons manufacturing in the
territory has increased drastically in
the past couple of years, according to the
senior officer. He estimated there are hundreds of production centers there.
In recent months, he said, the army has
launched an organized crackdown, including closing some 20 locations producing
homemade Carl Gustav submachine guns,
or Carlos, like those used last month
by two Hebron-area cousins in a deadly
shooting at the upscale Sarona market in
Tel Aviv.
They paid for their suits more than they

According to Brom, the army also pushes

to limit collective punishment, like the
withholding of taxes that Israel collects on
behalf of the Palestinian Authority, which
governs parts of the West Bank, or revoking permits to work in or visit Israel.
The more you can separate between
the public from the perpetrators, the better, he said.
When the army does implement measures with punitive effects, like refusing
to return the bodies of Palestinians killed
during attacks or destroying attackers
homes, it aims to target only the attackers
supporters, according to Brom.
Col. Ido Mizrachi, the head of engineering in the Central Command, which is
responsible for the West Bank, acknowledged in another briefing with reporters
that demolishing Palestinian homes causes
resentment, but said he thinks the deterrent effect is stronger. To maintain that balance, he said, his engineers work quickly
and use techniques to ensure that surrounding homes, or even adjoining apartments, are not damaged.
While the senior officer downplayed the
Palestinian Authoritys security cooperation with Israel, Brom said the partnership
is one of the main factors that enables the
army to limit wider tensions.
If the Palestinian Authority stopped
cooperating, the Israeli security services
would be in a situation in which they
would have to do themselves what the
Palestinian Authority is doing, he said.
The problem is, that would create much
more friction with population at large.
And more friction with population at large
means more motivation for more youngsters to join terrorist groups.
Overall, the army believes this combination of tactics has helped to change the
mentality of Palestinians in the West Bank,
reducing the number of people willing to
risk their lives to attack Israelis.
We saw more and more people not
becoming pro-Israeli or pro-Zionist, but
understanding that they dont achieve
anything from this escalation, that it hurts
them economically, that it doesnt help
the life conditions, that it doesnt achieve
anything on the national level, the senior
JTA WIRE SERVICE
officer said. 

Obituaries
George Auerbach

George F. Auerbach, 93, of Englewood, died July 31.

A Brooklyn College graduate, he served in the infantry in World War II and was awarded the Bronze Star.
He was a writer and editor for the New York Times and
opened a public relations firm. He was president of the
New York Financial Writers Association and on their
board until retiring in 2014.
He is survived by his wife of 67 years, Doris; daughters, Karen Levine of Chicago and Deborah Gespass of
Pittsburgh; and four grandchildren.
Donations can be sent to the New York Financial Writers Associations George Auerbach Scholarship Fund.
Arrangements were by Gutterman and Musicant Jewish Funeral Directors, Hackensack.

Helene Panzer

Helene Rea Panzer, ne Applebaum, 78, of Boca Raton,

Fla., and Cliffside Park, died July 28.
Born in Brooklyn, she was a sales person for Oleg Cassini in Manhattan.
Her husband, Bernard, daughter, Nadine Kurzman of
Boca Raton and a grandson, Brett, survive her.
Arrangements were by Eden Memorial Chapels,
Fort Lee.

Jacqueline Schwartz

Gail D. Feiner, 87, of Monroe Township, died July 29.

Arrangements were by Louis Suburban Chapel, Fair Lawn.

Jacqueline Schwartz, 79, of Fort Lee, died Aug. 1.

Before retiring she was a guidance counselor at Fair
Lawn High School. She was a member of the JCC of Fort
Lee/Congregation Gesher Sholom.
A brother, Howard Schwartz of Clermont, Fla., and
nieces and nephews survive him.
Arrangements were by Eden Memorial Chapels,
Fort Lee.

Melvin Freund

Norma Sedler

Gail Feiner

Melvin Freund of Delray Beach, Fla., and Paramus, died

July 24.
A U.S. Navy World War II veteran, before retiring he
was an artist, businessman, and community leader. He
was a past president of the Jewish Commuity Center
of Paramus.
He is survived by his wife, Judith, ne Epstein; children, Laurie Schwartz (Leonard), and Richard (Dr. Lisa
Duddy); and grandchildren Dina Gluck (Michael), David
Schwartz (Sarah Cassidy), and Alec Freund.
Contribution information, RaFreund2@gmail.com.
Arrangements were by Gutterman and Musicant Jewish
Funeral Directors, Hackensack.

Norma Sedler, 88, of Clifton, formerly of Fair Lawn, died

July 28. She was a former member of the Fair Lawn Jewish Center.
Predeceased by her husbands, Allan Sedler and
Theodore Wiener, she is survived by children, Bruce
Wiener, Lance Wiener, and Susan Kornitzer (Robert);
a sister, Jeanette Felig; eight grandchildren; and four
great-grandchildren.
Donations can be made to the Chabad Center of Passaic County in Wayne. Arrangements were by Louis Suburban Chapel, Fair Lawn.

Donna Tonner

Donna Tonner, ne Sacks, 57, of Dumont, died July 31.

Born in the Bronx, she is survived by her husband,
Gerard; sons Brian and Adam; and a brother, Steven
Sacks of Dumont.
Arrangements were by Eden Memorial Chapels,
Fort Lee.

Gertrude Zeidman

Gertrude Zeidman, 93, of Edgewater, died July 28.

Arrangements were by Louis Suburban Chapel, Fair Lawn.
Obituaries are prepared with information
provided by funeral homes. Correcting errors is
the responsibility of the funeral home.

Planning in advance is a part of our lives.

We spend a lifetime planning for milestones such as
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JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016 41

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(201) 837-8818

Cemetery Plots For Sale

Help Wanted

SINAI Schools is seeking motivated and

experienced special education teachers
to work as part of its highly collaborative
and interdisciplinary team for the
2016-17 academic year.
Both Judaic Studies and General Studies
teaching positions are available in our
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Please email resumes to
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Murez
FROM PAGE 33

as a technology consultant. Melanies all-access pass

enabled entry to all venues; she watched some swimming.
I dont know if my seats will be as good this time,
she joked.
Regardless of what the ticket says, of course, the view
promises to be far better at these Olympics.
I never thought Id have a child go to the Olympics,
so its amazing, she said. Its definitely a cycle and a
circle.
So just how can Murez, who will be inducted into
the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame this

winter, reach the 100-meter semis?

Her coach, Leonid Kaufman, estimates that Murez
must shave a fifth of a second off her personal best of
54.40 seconds and cut that to 54.0 to qualify for the
finals. Should that happen, he said, shell be a national
heroine.
Thats the goal, to be in the top 16 in the world, said
Kaufman, who also coaches the Israeli team. She can
do it.
Its not just to make the Olympics, but to reach the
semifinals. Were working hard to get there. It would be
a huge achievement.
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JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016 43

Real Estate & Business

Butterfly festival returns
to Teaneck Farmers Market
On Thursday, August 18, the Teaneck Farmers Market will feature a return visit from the Butterfly Festival. The festival will
feature Lauren Hooker, the founder of Musical Legends, who
will present her musical tale of Mariposa, a butterfly.
There will be two shows at 2:30 and 4 p.m., featuring songs,
percussion instruments, and puppets. Children will learn
about metamorphosis, migration, and the need to plant butterfly bushes in hopes of saving the butterflies from extinction.
The festival will also present Rabbi Daniel Senter of New Jersey Bees at 12:30, who will bring one of his hives and explain
the fascinating bee behavior in their hives, and bee societies.
Children are urged to dress up in their own butterfly costumes. The Teaneck Creek Conservancy will have a table of
arts and crafts, where kids can color their own butterflies.
There will also be face and body painting by Indigo Art Studios, for $3 per design, free tastings from market vendors,
and more.
The Teaneck Farmers Market is located at Garrison Avenue
and Beverly Road, behind The Wells Fargo Bank on Cedar
Lane. For more information visit: www.cedarlane.net or call
201-907-0493

Lauren Hooker

COME TO
FLORIDA

Children at New Jersey Bees exhibit

GoforIsrael 2016 tech

conference set for debut in China

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44 JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016

Intuition Robotics, Emefcy, Audiopixles, HeraMed, Bioview, Gal Medics, and

Some 1,000 investors and entreprePentalum are scheduled to send repreneurs are expected to take part in the
sentatives to the Shanghai event being
16th GoforIsrael annual conference,
organized by Cukierman Investment
being held for the first time outside
House and Catalyst Funds together with
of Israel in Shanghai. The September
Yafo Capital.
20 gathering will address Israel-China
Israeli Minister of Transportation and
M&A; market strategies for Israeli comIntelligence Yisrael Katz leads the list of
panies in China; Chinese investments
speakers set to address opportunities
in Israeli MedTech and BioTech compabetween Israel and China.
Edouard Cukierman,
nies; and the Israel-China partnership.
Representatives from Chinese compachairman of Cukierman
The goal of this conference is to
nies such as Baidu, Alibaba, Lenovo, SinInvestment House and
leverage the opportunity of a unique
ochem, NetEase, Tencent, ChemChina,
managing partner of
encounter with hundreds of Chinese
and many other leading business leaders
Catalyst CEL, Israeliinvestors, in a very focused and direct
and decision makers will take part in the
Chinese Fund
way. Israeli technology companies will
GoforIsrael meeting.
benefit from pre-organized meetings
There will also be elevator pitches by
with potential investors, and from the opportunity to
Israeli companies seeking investors.
present their technologies on stage. We expect to have
Event partner China-Israel Changzhou Innovation
continuous 1:1 meetings between investors and entrePark provides Israeli tech companies including Lycored,
preneurs during the conference, said Edouard CukierGrowponics and Tuttnauer with space in the Wujin Ecoman, chairman of Cukierman Investment House and
nomic Zone, the leading science innovation center of
managing partner of Catalyst CEL, Israeli-Chinese Fund.
Jiangsu Province.
ISRAEL21C.ORG
Startups Ironsource, Kaiima, Curalife,

VIVA SARAH PRESS

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Real Estate & Business

A perfect view of northern Israel from Mount Tabor

The pine-covered mountain offers a wonderful vantage point and the
peak houses churches built in commemoration of the Transfiguration
Ask a child to draw a picture of a mountain and the
result will probably look a lot like Israels Mount Tabor:
a simple sphere topped by a neat cap, surrounded by a
green valley.
There are very few mountains that look like it in the
world, says Gil Haran, tour planning director and lead
tour guide at Touring Israel.
From the window of his office on Moshav Nir Yafe in
the Jezreel Valley, he can see Mount Tabor (Har Tavor,
in Hebrew) in the distance.
The modest pine-tree-covered peak about 11 miles
west of the Sea of Galilee rises 1,886 feet at its highest
point.
Its not a very high mountain compared to the surrounding area; the mountains in Nazareth are higher.
But because it sticks out in the middle of a valley in a
perfect shape, that makes it unique and very noticeable, Haran says.
Situated at the top of the Jezreel Valley at an important crossroads, Tabor overlooks one of the two strategic highways of the ancient world used by merchants
and conquering foreign armies from all directions. The
rabbis of the Talmudic period called Mount Tabor the
navel of the world.
One reason for Mount Tabors popularity is the
360-degree view of the Jezreel Valley, Mount Gilboa, the
Samarian mountains, Mount Carmel, the Golan Heights,
Gilead, Afula, the Lower and Upper Galilee, and even
Mount Hermon at the Lebanese border to the north.
Some kibbutzim have an annual tradition of a youth
climb up Mount Tabor to see the sunrise. Lots of tourists also find this to be one of the best places in Israel to
watch the glorious sunrise.
Reach the peak on foot via a trail built by Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund or by car or minibus. There is no entry charge.
In the summer, its best to climb before the hot
hours of midday, although some of the path is shaded,
Haran recommends. At an average pace it will take
about an hour.
If you dont have a vehicle, a taxi service operated by

An aerial view of Mount Tabor and Lower Galilee

residents of the Bedouin village of Shibli will take you

up for a fee. They also run a gift shop at the bottom
of Tabor. Inside Shibli is the Galilee Bedouin Heritage
Center.
Note that there are no campgrounds, picnic or barbecue areas or food concessions on Mount Tabor. Restrooms are available.

Inside the newer chapel, on the peak of the mountain, you

can see in a crypt there are steps leading down to a chamber
where you can see the natural rock and a crevice in the rock
thought to be the footprint of Jesus.
According to the Christian Information Centre, the Church
of the Transfiguration is open every day from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
in summer, till 5 p.m. in winter, except between noon and 2
p.m. Saturdays. Its closed on Good Friday and Holy Saturday.
Information: 972-(0)4-662-0720 or basilicatabor@yahoo.com.
ISRAEL21C.ORG


Tabor in the Bible

The mountain figures prominently not only on the horizon but also in Jewish and Christian Scriptures.
We read about it in the Hebrew Bible in several
places. When the prophetess Deborah is fighting against
the Canaanite general Sisera, she gathers the fighting
forces of the 12 tribes on the steppes of the mountain.
And she sits under a tree to pass judgment next to the
mountain, says Haran.
One of the villages in the foothills is Daburiyya, an
Arabic variation of Deborah. That preserves the historical events mentioned in the Bible.
Mount Tabor isnt named specifically in the Christian
Bible, but it is the assumed location of the Transfiguration, where according to the Gospels Jesus took three
disciples following a three-day walk south from Caesarea
Philippi (Banyas) and miraculously spoke there with the
prophets Moses and Elijah.
Due to this distinction, the top of Mount Tabor is
shared by the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The 19th century St. Elias Greek Orthodox Monastery
on Mount Tabor was the first religious structure built
by Romanian Christians in the Holy Land. This side also
has a church and a small museum open by request. An
all-night vigil is held every August 6 in commemoration
of the Orthodox Feast of the Transfiguration.
The Franciscan (Catholic) Church of the Transfiguration was built in the early 1920s on the ruins of a Byzantine church from the fifth or sixth century and a Crusader church from the 12th century.
Inside this church are two chapels, one built toward
the end of the 19th century under the Ottoman
Empire, and a larger one built during the British Mandate, Haran explains.

TM

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JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016 45

Real Estate & Business

The new 2017 Mercedes-Benz E-Class Sedan available now at Benzel-Busch
The 10th generation 2017 MercedesBenz E-Class SedanWelcome is
the worlds most technologically
advanced vehicle and the future of
autonomous driving.
Like every Mercedes-Benz vehicle
and the legendary E-Class in particular the all-new 2017 E-Class Sedan
is a work of art. Beautiful to behold,
this new vehicle has all the hallmarks of
the best cars Mercedes-Benz has to offer,
from its sportiness to its stunning interior.
But most important of all, the new E-Class
Sedan is the smartest, most technologically
advanced sedan that the world has ever seen
and it is available now at Benzel-Busch. This
is a car that monitors other vehicles and its
surroundings to help avoid danger working for an accident free future.
You will see that it all begins with classic
Mercedes-Benz engineering. The new 2017
Sedan boasts a 2.0-liter engine capable of
reaching 241 horsepower and 273 lb-ft of
torque. Plus, all models come standard with
a nine-speed 9G-TRONIC transmission thats
quiet, efficient, and perfect for cruising.
Seductive and luxurious from the outside,
the new E-Class features an exterior thats
sporty, stylish, and absolutely sensual. Its
design features include familiar MercedesBenz sedan hallmarks, plus an elongated
hood, muscular proportions, and unique
radiator grille designs in the Luxury and
Sport editions. And for the first time ever,
the new E-Class features specially designed
rear light details that create a beautiful stardust effect.

In the years to come, however, the all-new

2017 E-Class will be known above all for its
technological advancements, which offer the
best and latest innovative technologies demonstrating the long-standing commitment
of Mercedes-Benz to develop the industrys
first autonomously driving vehicle. When
you come to Benzel-Busch, we will review
the the all-new E-Class breakthrough Car-toX communication system. It is the first-ever
production vehicle thats able to exchange
information with other vehicles on the road,
in real time. This incredible new technology
allows the E-Class Sedan to see whats
happening blocks away even through
obstacles, or around corners keeping you
safe from any danger that might be lurking
around the next curve. Its a masterpiece of
intelligence and intelligent driving.
Other brand-new technologies in the
E-Class Sedan include DRIVE PILOT with
Active Lane Change Assist, which automatically controls and steers your E-Class Sedan
during lane changes. And the E-Classs new
systems are connected to its brand-new
Touch Button Controls, located on the steering wheel, which use smartphone-inspired
touch and swipe gestures to give you

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An Equal Opportunity Company. Equal Housing Opportunity. Owned and Operated by NRT LLC.

46 JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016

complete confidence and control

all while eliminating the need to take
your eyes off of the road.
When Mercedes-Benz built these
never-before-seen technologies into
the E-Class Sedan, they knew they
had to craft an interior to match.
Thats why the inside of the E-Class
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Anchored by Mercedes-Benz design
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the interior features Natural Grain Ash

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Warmth and Comfort package allows for
maximum relaxation, with heated seats,
armrests even a heated center console
and steering wheel.
The all-new 2017 E-Class Sedan is the
most intelligent vehicle that MercedesBenz has ever engineered. Visit or call
Benzel-Busch today to arrange for a test
drive and learn more.

Chinese consortium pays

$4.4 billion for Playtika
In Israels third-largest deal ever,
Israeli social games developer
to continue to run independently;
headquarters remain in Herzliya
VIVA SARAH PRESS
A consortium of Chinese companies
has announced that it is paying $4.4 billion for Playtika, the Israeli social games
developer, which was owned by Caesars
Interactive Entertainment. The group,
led by an affiliate of Shanghai Giant Network Technology, one of Chinas largest online games companies, said it has
entered into a definitive agreement with
Caesars to acquire the Herzliya-based
Playtika in an all-cash deal.
According to reports, Caesars
announced it would sell off the Slotomania developer in order to pay down
debt. South Koreas Netmarble reportedly made an offer for the Israeli gaming
company but was outbid by the Chinese
consortium.
The consortium includes Giant Investment (HK); Yunfeng Capital, a private
equity firm founded by Alibaba Group
Holding founder Jack Ma; China Oceanwide Holdings Group; China Minsheng
Trust; CDH China HF Holdings Company; and Hony Capital Fund.
This transaction is a testament to
Playtikas unique culture and the innovative spirit of our employees who for
the past six years have consistently
designed, produced, and operated some
of the most compelling, immersive and
creative social games in the world, said
Robert Antokol, co-founder and CEO of
Playtika.
We are incredibly excited by the commercial opportunities the Consortium
will make available to us, particularly in
its ability to provide us access to large

and rapidly growing emerging markets.

This is an amazing milestone for all Playtikans and we truly value how unique
this opportunity is to continue executing
our vision with such a strong partner.
Playtika is credited as the pioneer of
free-to-play games on social networks
and mobile platforms. It is the creator
of Slotomania, House of Fun, and Bingo
Blitz, which consistently rank among
the top-grossing games on Apples App
Store, Google Play, and Facebook. Playtikas games are played daily by more
than six million people in 190 countries,
in 12 languages and on more than 10
platforms.
It has been a particularly rewarding experience growing Playtika from a
10-person start-up, when CIE acquired
them in 2011, into a global leader, said
Caesars Interactive Entertainment Chairman and CEO Mitch Garber. Playtika
today is a highly profitable growth company with more than 1,300 employees,
multiple top grossing titles and millions
of daily users. Robert is a true visionary
and Israeli business leader who has created not only a great business, but also
the most unique corporate culture I have
seen in my career.
Following the transaction Playtika,
which was founded in 2010, will continue to run independently at its headquarters in Herzliya with its existing
management team continuing to run
day-to-day operations.
Playtika has additional studios and
offices in Argentina, Australia, Belarus,
Canada, Japan, Romania, Ukraine, and
ISRAEL21C.ORG
the United States.

Ruth Miron-Schleider
Broker/Owner
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JEWISH STANDARD AUGUST 5, 2016 47