NORTH JERSEY/ROCKLAND

JULY 12, 2019

VOL. LXXXVIII NO. 43 $1.00 88 2019

THEJEWISHSTANDARD.COM

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Israeli celebrity chef shocks with $24 tomato
l It’s difficult to shock New York.
But Israeli celebrity chef Eyal Shani,
best known for esoteric and poetic ram-
blings about cuisine and a deep passion
for tomatoes, has just done that — with a
tomato.
Shani’s newly opened HaSalon in Hell’s
Kitchen offers a single tomato. It costs
$24.
The offering, called “The best tomato in
NY is naked,” comes peeled, cut into eight
chunks, and served lightly drizzled with
olive oil and sea salt.
“It was a very nice tomato, but, for that
price, it should come with a massage and
a pedicure,” the New Yorker wrote.
The New York Post was slightly more
enthusiastic about the actual tomato,
which it described as having a “deep,
nutty-and-sweet, late-August, just-picked
flavor.”
But still.
“Its appearance on the menu offended
my wallet,” the Post said.
“We spared no expense and journeyed
for a month to find these tomatoes and
finally found them” at the Union Square
Page 3
Greenmarket, the paper quoted Shani as
saying.
He commented on his tomatoes before
opening the restaurant.
“Yesterday, two weeks before we open
HaSalon New York, the tomatoes that
I planted ripened, and it was as if they
rubbed my eyes and said to me, ‘this is
not a dream, it is reality’,” Shani wrote on
his Instagram (where, of course, he goes
by eyaltomato.)
According to the Post, the tomatoes he
uses are grown hydroponically in nutrient-
infused liquid. The process is said to elimi-
nate the need to wait for the late-summer
growing season.
HaSalon is Shani’s second venture in
New York, following the popular pita-
themed Miznon. It is not kosher.
In Israel, Shani has been a long-time
judge on Israel’s “Master Chef” TV show,
where he frequently waxes poetic about
his love for tomatoes, something he
continues on his Instagram page. “This to-
mato in the picture is the single best living
at this moment in the entire universe,” he
wrote in one post. Times of Israel A tomato from chef Eyal Shani’s Instagram feed.

CONTENTS
The case of the censored seafood Noshes���������������������������������������������������������4
briefly local���������������������������������������� 16
l Israel’s envoy to Brazil attempted to defend himself cover story������������������������������������������ 20
after he was ridiculed for trying to conceal the lobster oPINION������������������������������������������������������26
on his plate as he sat at a restaurant with President Jair dear rabbi zahavy���������������������������32
Bolsonaro. He claimed he’d eaten salmon. THE FRAZZLED HOUSEWIFE������������� 34
The Israeli mission tweeted a picture of Yossi Shelley crossword puzzle�������������������������� 34
and Bolsonaro eating lunch before watch the Brazil- arts & culture�������������������������������������35
Peru soccer game. Their plates were covered with black calendar�������������������������������������������������37
slashes in an apparent attempt to hide Shelley’s non-ko- obituaries�����������������������������������������������39
sher meal. But the photoshopping was sloppy and the classified ads�������������������������������������40
offending crustacean peeked out from under its cover. real estate��������������������������������������������� 41
The tweet garnered thousands of likes and comments
ridiculing the embassy for its efforts to “censor” the lob-
ster, mostly from Brazilian Twitter users. Dozens played PUBLISHER’S STATEMENT: (USPS 275-700 ISN 0021-6747)
is published weekly on Fridays with an additional edition
with the picture, superimposing other foods onto Shel- every October, by the New Jersey Jewish Media Group, 1086
ley’s and Bolsonaro’s plates, while others pointed out Teaneck Road, Teaneck, NJ 07666. Periodicals postage paid
at Hackensack, NJ and additional offices. POSTMASTER:
that the embassy could have hidden the lobsters effec- Send address changes to New Jersey Jewish Media Group,
tively by simply cropping the bottom third of the image. 1086 Teaneck Road, Teaneck, NJ 07666. Subscription price
is $30.00 per year. Out-of-state subscriptions are $45.00,
In a statement to reporters, Shelley said that “all sorts Foreign countries subscriptions are $75.00.
of foods were served, including salmon. I didn’t eat what The appearance of an advertisement in The Jewish Standard
was served to avoid offending the participants. For the does not constitute a kashrut endorsement. The publishing of
a paid political advertisement does not constitute an endorse-
same reason I blackened the photo so that it wouldn’t ment of any candidate political party or political position by
be understood otherwise, God forbid.” the newspaper or any employees.

Later, in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 news, The Jewish Standard assumes no responsibility to return
unsolicited editorial or graphic materials. All rights in letters
Shelley clarified his remarks and said seafood had been and unsolicited editorial, and graphic material will be treated
as unconditionally assigned for publication and copyright
served but “I don’t eat those things and definitely don’t purposes and subject to JEWISH STANDARD’s unrestricted
order them. I put it aside and took salmon, which has a right to edit and to comment editorially. Nothing may be
reprinted in whole or in part without written permission from
similar color. the publisher. © 2019
“You’re at a private meal and are being served — what
will you do, throw it out?” he said. “This doesn’t cast a Candlelighting:
shadow over my relationship [with Brazilian authorities] Friday, July 12, 8:10 p.m.
or the state’s. I didn’t eat the shrimp.” Times of Israel
Shabbat ends:
Saturday, July 13, 9:17 p.m.

Jewish Standard July 12, 2019 3

Noshes “It’s good to be a nobody who can look in
the mirror and not be repulsed.”
— Writer Daniel W. Drezner, responding on Twitter to Alan Dershowitz’s
comment to the New York Times that “In those days, if you didn’t
know Trump and didn’t know Epstein, you were a nobody.”

DARK, HILARIOUS:

‘Art of Self-Defense’
may muscle up as
sleeper summer hit
“The Art of turn things eventually A Douglas about the life and
Self-Defense” take — all to strikingly milestone career of rock legend
opens on July 12. It got original effect.” Last week, on NEIL DIAMOND, 78,
rave reviews at film YouTube, I will hit the boards
festivals. Here’s a long Family matters: sometime in the next
stumbled on a quite
quote from the The lowdown on entertaining but fairly year. The still untitled
“Variety” review that Kravitz/Glusman obscure Western movie musical will follow him
encapsulates how (“Draw!”) starring KIRK from his origins as
unusually good it is: ZOE KRAV- poor Brooklyn Jewish
ITZ, 30, wed DOUGLAS, now 102,
“Casey Davis [JESSE and the late James boy until he hits
EISENBERG, 35] may actor Karl Glusman, 31, super-stardom. Many
on June 28. The Coburn. The film
be the least macho prompted me to look at of Diamond’s songs
man you’ve ever met … secular wedding was will be used. Diamond
Jesse Eisenberg Zoe Kravitz an online bio of Douglas
mugged by thugs on held in the palatial has expressed happi-
Paris home of her and I noticed some-
motorbikes. Casey thing not in many news ness with the new
hardly puts up a father, famous rocker show and the creative
Lenny Kravitz. The four outlets: Kirk’s wife,
fight…. Dark, sinister, ANNE BUYDENS, team behind it.
and disarmingly other female stars of The two princi-
Zoe’s HBO series, “Big turned 100 last April.
hilarious [the film] tells Last May, the couple pals are topnotch:
the story of how some- Little Lies,” were there. the director is MI-
Zoe’s mother, actress celebrated their 65th
one like Casey learns wedding anniversary. CHAEL MAYER, 59, a
to stand up for himself LISA BONET, 51, was Tony winner for best
there, too, accompa- Buydens converted to
by signing up for Judaism in 2004, when direction of a musi-
karate classes. But it’s nied by her husband, cal. He’s also adept at
actor Jason Momoa the couple renewed
hardly that simple: their wedding vows. I directing dramas and
Once enrolled, he (“Aquaman”). fixing scripts when
Okay — here is the checked a bit, and
starts to feel more Lisa Bonet Neil Diamond could not find another necessary. Andrew
confident in his condensed Jewish McCarten, a long-time
story. Lenny’s father famous person who
personal life, even as now. Zoe has defined top physician, was a was alive and over 100 Diamond fan who
he begins to realize was Jewish, and his herself as a “secular WASP. (I don’t know specializes in biopics,
mother was Afri- when their spouse also
that something bizarre Jew” and does seems if she converted to Ju- turned 100. is writing the show’s
is going on behind the can-American. He had to like Jewish guys daism. Clues make me book. He wrote “Bo-
a very light exposure Douglas and
scenes of the dojo — most of her prior think she didn’t.) Karl’s Buydens may be hemian Rhapsody”
[school]: violent night to Judaism as a child, steadies are Jewish. maternal grands were (about rocker Fred-
and as an adult he unique. Statistically,
classes for select An inaccurate sto- Irish and Swedish. marriages between die Mercury) and he
students, weird mind identifies as a Chris- ry that Glusman is Bottom line: There is snared an Oscar nomi-
tian. His mother was centenarians are very
games, and broken the son of a German enough Jewish going rare, period. Imagine nation for his script for
bones… This singular African-American Jewish father is all on here that there’s “The Imitation Game”
actress Roxie Roker the odds against one
black comedy balanc- over the internet. The a chance that the 100-plus spouse being (about computer pio-
es off-kilter humor (“The Jeffersons”). true 411: Karl’s pater- newlyweds’ children, neer Alan Turing).
Bonet’s mother was famous. Imagine the
with an unexpectedly nal grandfather, Dr. if any, will be raised odds against them Sadly, Diamond
thriller-esque under- white and Jewish, and MURRAY GLUSMAN, Jewish. They will be ceased touring in Jan-
her father was Afri- both being Jewish.
current, to the extent a distinguished phy- halachic Jews, since uary 2018 following
that audiences will find can-American. She sician, was the son of their mother, Zoe, is From Brooklyn tests that determined
was raised “Jewish
it tough to anticipate Russian Jewish immi- the child of a woman, to Broadway he had Parkinson’s
either the jokes or the light” but doesn’t grants. Karl’s paternal Bonet, whose mother disease.
A new Broad-
dark, ‘Fight Club’-like practice anything grandmother, also a was Jewish. way musical –N.B.

Want to read more noshes? Visit facebook.com/jewishstandard California-based Nate Bloom can be reached at
Middleoftheroad1@aol.com

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 JS-6*

Local
FIRST PERSON

Jews in Hong Kong join protests

Local reporter, a longtime Hong Kong resident,
talks to her friends about what they see and fear
LEAH KRAKINOWSKI
SILBERSTEIN

Twenty-two years ago, on July 1,

1997, legions of international report-
ers stood in the rain watching
armored convoys of the People’s
Liberation Army enter Hong Kong
in the predawn hours, just after the
territory returned to China after 150
years of British colonial rule.
As a reporter living and working
in Hong Kong for an early-generation
online news outlet, I was among the
witnesses to history.
The scene clearly was orches-
trated for maximum drama: Young
PLA soldiers knelt upright on open
flatbed vehicles, whose flashing red
lights cast a glow on to their faces.
Wearing white gloves and clutching
a rifle to their chests, each soldier
fixed his gaze forward, apparently
disregarding the hundreds of villag-
ers who turned out to herald their
new army.
The seemingly jubilant bystand-
ers waved newly emblazoned flags,
showing the bauhinia flower — the
flag’s circular pattern of white flower
petals is set against a bright red back-
ground. The flag was designed as a
symbol of unity and the embodi- Thousands demonstrate in Hong Kong against mainland China’s tightening grip on the Special Administrative Region’s
ment of the rights and freedoms that legal and political life.
would be enjoyed under a so-called
“one country, two systems” principle outlined in the adults who have taken to the streets in both peace- For some longtime Jewish residents, however, the
Sino-British Joint Declaration signed at the end of 1984. ful and violent protest against the gradual passage of steady stream of post-1997 changes have been simul-
The agreement was meant to pave the way for the restrictive legislation over elections, the mandatory taneously depressing and alarming — and a cause for
return of Hong Kong to Chinese control, making it a implementation of pro-Chinese curriculum in schools, them to join the protests.
Special Administrative Region of the People’s Repub- and most recently, the looming threat of draconian “Hong Kong has become our home,” said Eli Bitan,
lic of China, with the promise of self-rule and an inde- extradition laws — all of which have been happening far an entrepreneur in the financial and real estate sector
pendent judiciary that would remain unchanged for 50 earlier than the avowed “50 years of no change” would who has lived in the city for more than 25 years. “The
years. Each year, beginning that year, July 1 would be have allowed. issue of loss of universal suffrage was the starting point
celebrated at “Hong Kong SAR Establishment Day.” “The love of freedom and the belief in the value of an for me to get involved.”
The handover officially began at 11:30 that evening, economically and politically liberal society are deeply Shani Brownstein, a former toy manufacturer and
with a farewell speech read by Britain’s Prince Charles rooted in the soul of Hong Kong,” said David Zweig, now a certified life coach living in Hong Kong, acknowl-
on behalf of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. At the professor emeritus of social science at the Hong Kong edges that although Westerners may not seem as con-
stroke of midnight, the handover of Hong Kong took University of Science and Technology, who has lived in cerned by the changing political landscape, inside the
on a decidedly celebratory tone, accompanied by the Hong Kong and been a member of the Jewish commu- Jewish community there are people who have actively
pomp and grandeur of traditional lion dances, over-the- nity there for 23 years. “The steady erosion of freedoms supported the protestors.
top parties, outsize fireworks displays, and carnivals. of the press and of assembly, and the capitalist system “On one level, there’s an appreciation that should
The voices of relatively small pockets of pro-democ- under which they have grown up, have become flash- things take a turn for the worse, there’s an exit strat-
racy protestors positioned throughout the territory points for these growing annual protests on July 1.” egy,” she said. “However, for those with businesses
were almost entirely drowned out by the merry-making. Until now, Hong Kong’s longstanding status as a free- here, there is definitely more risk.”
Today, the voices of dissent have swelled to as high as wheeling economic hub of international banking and She noted that there has been an annual tradition of
two million of Hong Kong’s seven million citizens, esti- finance, and its reputation as a bustling, yet safe and protests on July 1, but that this summer, the tenor and
mates say, and the images of clashes with police have sophisticated city, have long been a draw for expatri- magnitude have shifted fundamentally.
gone viral over the past several weeks. ates from around the world — among them, according Before 2003, protests during Establishment Day
The majority of protestors are thought to be young to an estimate from 2010, about 5,000 Jews. were, in fact, small compared with the size to which

6 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019

 JS-7*

Local

the annual march has grown today, Pro-
fessor Zweig said.
In 2003, the largest protest in Hong
Kong’s post-handover history took place.
Then, some 500,000 people protested
the government’s national security legis-
lation, which they feared would restrict
their civil liberties. In 2012, Hong Kong
students opposed mandatory curricular
changes that included topics on Chinese
history, culture, and national identity, all
of which were seen as vehicles to brain-
wash them.
In 2014, protestors camped out in the
streets for more than two months in
what became known as “the umbrella
movement,” referring to the makeshift
tents set up during Hong Kong’s rainy
season. Protestors balked at not being
able to elect the head of the city’s gov-
ernment freely; instead, a pro-China
committee first handpicked the candi-
dates, before they could vote.
Now, over the past several weeks,
demonstrations in Hong Kong have been
cited as the largest in the city’s history.
Sparked by a proposal to change extradi-
tion laws that would allow suspects to be
transferred to mainland China for trial,
Eli Bitan, David Zweig, and Shani Brownstein, all members of the Jewish
community in Hong Kong, stand together as they protest the dissolution of
democracy at home.
two marches drew astonishing numbers
into the streets.
The tenets of the Joint Declaration
do not expire until 2047, but attempts
by Beijing to exert greater control over
Hong Kong in the meantime have cast
doubt on the reliability of the “one coun-
try, two systems” policy.
The looming deadline is particularly
worrying to Hong Kong’s young people,
who have grown up with liberal values
and expectations in an international city
outside what is commonly known as Chi-
na’s “Great Firewall,” a combination of
legislative actions and technologies that
regulate the internet in China.
“I am sad for the local people,” Profes-
sor Zweig said. “We [Westerners] have a
passport, so we can leave.”
“On the one hand, Hong Kong stu-
dents are being encouraged to partic-
ipate; to make a difference, but they
now feel they are stuck in a society that
is becoming increasingly repressive, a
place to which their grandparents fled
from China with nothing on their backs.”
After a 25-year career as a newspaper
reporter, radio producer, and magazine
editor working for such media outlets
as Dow Jones, the Voice of America, and
Knight-Ridder in the U.S. and Southeast
Asia, Leah Krakinowski Silberstein of
Tenafly has chosen to apply her skills to
promoting Jewish education.

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 JS-8*

Local

FIRST PERSON

Once-proud synagogues of Newark

Exhibit evokes
memories of our
correspondent’s
childhood in
the Weequahic
JONATHAN E. LAZARUS

Growing up in Newark’ s Weequahic sec-

tion, I was never part of the Other. My
friends, classmates, parents, and rela-
tives comprised the Whole. It was only
when I reached high school did I realize
there were Others, and even then Jews
remained decidedly in the majority and
shared it, to some degree, with the Irish,
Italian, Poles, blacks, and a sprinkling of
WASPs in our midst.
To be defined and stereotyped in the
1950s in Weequahic was by your school
(Maple, Peshine, Hawthorne, Bragaw,
Chancellor, Bergen Street, the Annex
to Weequahic High, and finally the big
building itself ), the stickball lot where
you played (mine was a vacant stretch
on Osborne Terrace between Scheerer
and Shephard avenues), the candy story
you hung out at (Stein’s on the corner of
The domes of Temple B’nai
Shephard and Osborne, where I was also
Abraham, above, and B’nai
a crossing guard until a fight cost me my
Jeshurun, left, became familiar
shield; my future brother-in-law hung
sights to Newarkers. Both buildings
out at Barry’s a block away, but Stein’s
were sold to black churches after
had less tilt-prone pinball machines),
the congregations moved to the
the movie theater you frequented (the
suburbs.
Park on Bergen Street, where Saturday
afternoon serials, cartoons, and two fea-
tures cost 25 cents)) and the stoop-ball I was consistently ridiculed by some of
“court” you zealously defended with my Conservative and Orthodox friends
your trusty Spaldeen. I never made the for belonging to a “church,” since much
vaunted corner court at Maple Avenue of the service was in English, no one dav-
School because Johnny Drury, one of the ened or wore a tallis, and the loft choir
few gentiles around, kept all challengers consisted mostly of gentile “ringers.” My
at bay with his superb carom play. spiritual leader was Ely Pilchik, and I,
Of course, there was one more defin- ahem, worshipped him. In retrospect,
ing symbol, perhaps in its own way, the I suppose he modeled the image of a
most important; the temple, congrega- somewhat distant and detached rabbi
tion, or shul where you and your par- to perfection. He seemed ideally cast
ents belonged. Was it Reform, Conserva- House Hotel), how many guests would decidedly Reform in its service, B’nai for the role, with a thatch of silvery hair,
tive, or Orthodox? How difficult was its attend, how gaudy would it be (after all, Jeshurun was one of Newark’s “Big ceremonial robes, and a voice supple
Hebrew school? Was the rabbi a good ser- it was the 1950s), and, afterward, how Three,” along with Conservative Oheb to perfection. His pronunciation would
monizer? A strict disciplinarian? Did the much swag did you collect. Tikkun olam Shalom farther up High Street and just take a word like “revealed” and stretch it
services run long? As bar mitzvah time or special uplift projects rarely entered next door to the imposing Newark Y, to reveal-ed-duh. Rabbi Pilchik, who was
approached (bat mitzvahs were rarer in the conversations. and Temple B’nai Abraham, also Con- also a prolific author, would officiate at
the 1950s), my friends and I would com- My family belonged to B’nai Jeshurun, servative and domed, more uptown on my bar mitzvah (especially festive since it
pare notes and try to establish bragging the domed downtown edifice with Byz- Clinton Avenue. Its rabbi, Joachim Prinz, was Sukkot and the bimah was festooned
rights about whose shul was “better,” antine architectural flourishes at Waverly who had fled the Nazis, was an early sup- with harvest decorations}, confirm me,
where was the reception going to be held Avenue and High Street (now MLK Bou- porter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and eulogize my parents, and preside at my
(mine was at the Mirror Room of the Essex levard). Founded by German Jews and later marched with him. wedding. He also chanced to meet me
at a restaurant when I was in a military
Jonathan E. Lazarus celebrated his bar mitzvah and confirmation at Temple B’nai Jeshurun, then in Newark. He retired after a career policeman’s uniform while making up an
of nearly 40 years as an editor at the Star Ledger and now works as a proofreader at the Jewish Standard. SEE SYNAGOGUES PAGE 10
8 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019
 JS-9

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Local
Synagogues
FROM PAGE 8
Army Reserve assignment, and both of
us skipped eye contact.
What caused this sudden surge in nos-
talgia? I trace it to the recent afternoon
when I arrived at the JCC Metrowest in
West Orange for a workout and spotted
a group of visitors deeply absorbed in
the glass-enclosed Gaelen Gallery East.
I joined them out of curiosity and in an
instant became just as engrossed as they
were in an exhibit entitled “Synagogues
of Newark”.
The space featured eye-catching bill-
boards, some suspended from the ceil-
ing, others floor-mounted, illuminating
the history and evolution of individual
shuls, their mergers, relocation to the
suburbs, or, sadly, their demise. Many
of the photos of buildings, spiritual
leaders, and bar mitzvah celebrations
stretched back a century or more. Mov-
ing from billboard to billboard created a
virtual streetscape, offering a rich pan-
orama of a city and its Jewish underpin-
nings. And the Gaelen’s limited space
actually worked to advantage, making
the tour even more intimate.
Curated by the New Jersey Jewish His-
tory Museum and using the resources
of the Newark Library, the records and
archives of the synagogues themselves,
and the research depth of the New Jer-
sey Jewish Historical Society, the exhibit
is fully titled “The Synagogues of New-
ark: Where We Gathered and Prayed,
Studied and Celebrated.” (See box.) The
sense of community is overwhelming
and reflects the city’s vitality as a des-
tination for immigrant German Jews in
the early 19th century and their Eastern
European cousins in even greater num-
bers decades later.
These arrivals and their offspring (my
grandfather and mother among them)
accounted for approximately 20 percent
of Newark’s population in the 1910 cen-
sus and they fully invested themselves
in the city’s economic, educational, cul-
tural, and political destiny. This in turn
meant more shuls for different streams
of worshippers spread across different
neighborhoods. The “Big Three” syna-
gogues did, however, attract congregants
citywide. Soon after B’nai Jeshurun was
founded in 1848, a rift developed with a
faction opposed to its Reform tendencies,
whose members bolted and formed Oheb
Shalom in 1861. B’nai Abraham came into
being in 1853, supported by Jews from
Poland who disliked the Germanic trap-
pings of the other houses of worship.
All three congregations thrive today in
Newark’s suburbs, having been spurred
to move by dramatic changes in demo-
graphics and the jolting aftereffects of
the 1967 Newark riots (or civil disorders
or rebellion, depending on your point
of view). The vacated or demolished
10 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019
JS-10*
Jonathan Lazarus, second row from top, holding the Torah, with members of his 1958 confirmation class at Temple
B’nai Jeshurun. Rabbi Ely Pilchik is at right.
Congregation Ahavas Shalom at 145 Broadway is home to the New Jersey
Jewish History Museum.
buildings — ranging from magnificent
edifices to humble storefronts, with
some finding second acts as homes
for black churches — underscored the
assimilation, determination, prosperity,
and pride of Newark’s Jewish commu-
nity. B’nai Jeshurun and B’nai Abraham
contained massive sanctuaries under
the domes. Oheb Shalom’s original
brooding structure on Prince Street cast
a red brick glow of Moorish design over
a swath of the Central Ward. And Aha-
vath Zion’s classic revival design, built
on the flatiron contours of a 16th Ave-
nue tract for $200,000 in 1921, served
the Orthodox congregation handsomely
until it moved to Maplewood in 1967.
The riots represented a watershed
for every Newark shul and resulted in a
rebalancing of already strained relations
between Jews and blacks. For Newark-
ers who lived in the city from the 1940s
(when there were 33 congregations)
through the early 1970s (when only eight
remained) and now call the suburbs
home, the exhibit will prove especially
resonant. You can locate your childhood
place of worship, view photos of its
leaders, its sanctuary, or even its Torah
scrolls, and learn about its ultimate insti-
tutional fate. Helpful charts delineate the
Jewish population of the city by wards
and the number of shuls from decade to
decade. A sidebar illustrates the life and
blueprints of architect Nathan Myers,
whose design showpieces include Beth
Israel Hospital, B’nai Abraham, Ahavath
Zion, and the Court Theater.
Of the three shuls to which my rel-
atives belonged, two vanished and
one relocated within several blocks
of my West Orange home. Cousin Yale
attended Young Israel, quite Orthodox
and quite extinct after an intra-New-
ark relocation and the riots. Grandpa
Max worshipped at tiny Agudath Israel,
now forlorn and empty at Peshine and
Custer avenues after being bought and
abandoned by a church. My uncles Sam
and Hesh belonged to Ahawas Achim
B’nai Jacob on Hawthorne Avenue,
which added “David” to its name when
it merged and moved to West Orange,
where today it maintains itself as a
robust modern Orthodox congregation.
Only two shuls remain in Newark;
the activist, inclusive Ahavas Shalom at
145 Broadway, home to the New Jersey
Jewish History Museum on its second
floor, and Mount Sinai Congregation
at the Ivy Hill apartments, serving an
exclusively Russian-émigré population.
One of the more dramatic examples of
the consolidation (or disappearance or
self-selection) process occurred when
Congregation Israel came into being in
1968 as the inheritor of 16 predecessor
shuls. Located initially at Knesseth Israel
on Bergen Street, only two years later
it moved to join with Young Israel of
Springfield, where it survives under its
original name and preserves the memo-
rial plaques of former congregants.
Visitors to the JCC’s “Synagogues of
Newark” are encouraged to contribute
to a work in progress. Because certain
older records have been difficult to vet,
and various narrative and anecdotal gaps
exist, exhibit-goers can become interac-
tive and supply additional information as
their own memories percolate. Newark’s
rich Jewish history and lore represent a
vital chapter about a city in constant
reinvention, and it’s certainly worth the
efforts to preserve and pass on.
What: “Synagogues of Newark,”
an exhibit curated by the New
Jersey Jewish History Museum. An
automated slide show highlights
Jewish Newarkers of note
Where: JCC Metrowest Gaelen
Gallery East, 760 Northfield Ave.,
West Orange
When: Through July 31
Cost: Free to the public
For more information: (973)
530-3400 or www.jccmetrowest.org

JS-44*
Every year, the American Jewish Press Association gives the Rockower Awards to the writers whose work
its judges consider the year’s best. We win something every year. This year we got five. (That’s a lot!)
Editorial
How to say it?
I
t used to be that we writers and edi-
tors at Jewish newspapers knew
what we could say.
We did not use profanity.
We did not use contractions, we did not
use slang, we did not use nicknames. We
wrote everything out in very long form.
We wrote in the third person. (If we could
have, we would have written in the 93rd
person.) We were pompous, perhaps even
ponderous, but we also were polite. Very
very polite.
Things have changed. We use contrac-
tions. We use slang. We use short sen-
tences. We write in the first person singu-
lar (even though here I’m writing in the
first person plural — but whoops!). We
try not to be pompous. We try not to be
ponderous. We might not always succeed,
but we try.
Despite all that, we do hope that we’re
still polite.
But how are we supposed to report on
the world around us?
Yes, this part is about our president.
How do we report on what he said?
What do our readers want? We could use
asterisks to replace some of the letters in
the four-letter word he used, or we could
call it the place that a barnyard epithet
could fall into (or, in the alternative version,
the place where the barnyard epithet lives).
We’re a weekly, so we know that all our
readers and all their reading-age children
will have read the unvarnished, un-aster-
isked, un-gussied-up version of what he
said, so in some senses our decision mat-
ters less. It’s the daily media, the up-to-the-
second online news sources, that really
have to worry about that decision. And it’s
the on-air reporters and podcasters who
have to figure out exactly what to say.
So really we could skip it.
But there is something that we really do
have to say. That is that our ancestors — our
parents, or grandparents, or great-grand-
parents — came from those s-hole places.
They came from obscure villages in the
Pale of Settlement, in central and eastern
Europe, where life was hard and it coars-
ened the people who lived there (and yes,
Jews could be coarse too).
You look at pictures of some of the Jews
Jewish
Standard
1086 Teaneck Road
Teaneck, NJ 07666
(201) 837-8818
LISTENING TO ALAN ALDA IN TENAFLY page 10
Fax 201-833-4959
REMEMBERING THE YOUNGEST SURVIVORS page 12
ISRAEL COMING TOGETHER TO PRAISE THE MIRACLE OF ISRAEL page 16
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AT 70
SPECIAL SECTION: ISRAEL AT 70
Publisher 86
James L. Janoff
NORTH JERSEY
Associate Publisher Emerita
It happens here
Marcia Garfinkle
thejewishstandard.com
Opening up
about addiction
at Teaneck forum page 22
44 Jewish standard JanUarY 19, 2018
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Jewish Standard
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APRIL 13, 2018
VOL. LXXXVII NO. 30 $1.00
THEJEWISHSTANDARD.COM
of eastern Europe, and you see dirt and
desperation. You look at their eyes and
you see the same despair that you see
now in the unwanted immigrants from
Africa; fear and hope fighting hard with
each other.
When they got here, they were not wel-
come. They were among the unwanted
who were told dismissively not to bother
applying for jobs.
They often brought children with them
— those were our parents or grandparents
or great-grandparents — who were too
young to remember much about the old
country, too young to have any choice in
where they were taken. Those children
grew up to be citizens of the United States.
They were the Dreamers of their day, and
we should not forget that.
They were the tired, the poor, the hud-
dled masses yearning to be free that the
Statue of Liberty welcomes with her lamp.
Had they been sent back, many of us
would not be here. That is a simple and
incontrovertible truth.
We also think of the irony that it was
not one of those s-hole countries that
created and carried out the Shoah. No,
it was a clean, efficient, well-educated,
thoroughly modern state. Germans were
welcome here.
It is the immigrants from poor countries,
who come here fueled with desperation
and hope, who are determined to make
their way here, to learn and to earn, and
have good lives, or at least give good lives
to their children — immigrants like our
ancestors — who have succeeded here, and
who have given birth to us. It is something
we owe them to remember.
Here at the Jewish Standard we try not
to be political — it is far too divisive — and
we will continue that attempt. We know
that the immigration laws need a great
deal of revamping. But we look at the
attempt to turn away the immigrants who
need us, who are drawn by this country’s
promise, by its founding ideals, who might
not resemble our ancestors physically but
who have the same ambitions, needs, goals,
and dreams as they had, and we hope that
they are allowed to enter and then to stay
in this golden, golden land. —JP
Editor
Joanne Palmer
Associate Editor
Larry Yudelson
Community Editor
Beth Janoff Chananie
About
Cover Story
VOTE! Our Children Editor
READERS'
Heidi
CHOICE Mae Bratt
SEE PAGE 51
2017
Talking about addiction
in the Jewish community
Local family decides to break the silence,
discuss awareness and education, at Teaneck meeting
I
JOANNE PALMER
t would be wonderful to live in a
world where all you have to do is
refuse to acknowledge a problem,
and then it would dutifully go away.
You know, a world where denial
truly would be a river in Egypt.
But we don’t live in that world.
We do live in a world, though, where
some problems are swept under rugs and
left to molder, where some issues aren’t a
big deal but others are paralyzingly embar-
rassing. We live in a world — all of us live
in a world, no matter which world we live
in — where no matter how you define per-
fection, the ability to enact perfection con-
vincingly is highly valued.
We also live in a world where the rate
22 JEWISH STANDARD APRIL 13, 2018
Read. Follow. Join the conversation.
We won!
Correspondents
Warren Boroson
Lois Goldrich
Banji Ganchrow
Abigail K. Leichman
JS-22
Miriam Rinn
Dr. Miryam Z. Wahrman
Advertising Director
Natalie D. Jay
Classified Director
Janice Rosen
of drug abuse is skyrocketing, where the the Centers for Disease Control, in 2010
opioid crisis is making itself felt even in approximately 88,000 people basically
places where no one ever imagined it drank themselves to death.
could be felt. There are very real mental health issues
In places like the local Jewish community. that underlie these statistics, as well as
On Sunday, April 22, Torah Academy of social policy decisions. There also is the
Bergen County will host a meeting about the fact that addiction is a very real physical
opioid crisis, detailing, among other things, phenomenon, not a moral failing, and
what parents should look for and where that some people’s body chemistries make
they can turn for help. (See box on page 28.) them more likely than others to develop
According to a March 2018 report by physical addictions.
the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part It is a messy and unpleasant subject.
of the National Institutes of Health, more Often it is easier to stigmatize people who
than 155 Americans die of drug overdoses develop drug or alcohol dependencies as
every day; opioids include prescription morally delinquent than it is to acknowl-
medications, synthetic opioids, and her- edge the illness and help them recover
oin, among others. It is a horrifying sta- from it; the fact that there is no simple
tistic. It does not include deaths that are remedy, no magic pill, no penicillin equiv-
alcohol related, although, according to alent, makes treatment hard and complete
Award for Excellence in Editorial Writing
Division A. Newspapers 15,000 circulation and over; Broadcast; Magazines; Web-based Outlets
Second Place
“How to say it?,” “Ban assault weapons,”
“Taking children from their parents” Joanne Palmer
TruTh regardless of consequences
Alan Dershowitz
peddles dangerous
Cover Story
NORTH JERSEY
Qatari propaganda‘People of air’
Boris Gulko,
grandmaster
I
How Fair Lawn’s
former refusenik
outplayed the
Soviet Union Page 22
was profoundly shocked to learn that
a colleague and friend that I greatly
admire, Professor Alan Dershowitz,
became the latest Jewish junketeer
to succumb to the lure to visit Qatar and be
duped to parrot the emirate’s propaganda.
It is sad that someone so renowned for fight-
ing anti-Semitism — and a hero to so many,
myself included — would enable the Qataris’
anti-Semitic belief that Jews are
so powerful in the United States
that convincing prominent Jews
of the virtue of their cause will
lead them to provoke a change
in U.S. policy. JS-1*
Professor Dershowitz is
known for sometimes working
for unsavory characters, based
NORTH JERSEY
on the attorney’s mantra that
the U.S. constitution guaran-
tees everyone a fair trial and the
right to a defense. The emir of
Qatar, however, is not an Ameri-
can citizen and is not entitled to
these protections. He is, in fact, a dictator; the
State Department Human Rights Report says
his government “prohibited organized politi-
Popeye the Sailor’s
cal parties and restricted civil liberties, includ-
ing freedoms of speech, press, and assembly
Glen Rock man
and accessMeet toHyaEisman,
fair trial for persons held under
who draws
the Protection ofPopeye’s
and writes Society Law and the Combat-
adventures
in the Sunday papers
ing Terrorism Law.” The report also says that
women’s participation in society is “limited by
cultural discrimination” and that “trafficking
JS-1*
in persons” is an ongoing problem.
These are all the human rights abuses that
Dershowitz normally fights against. How can
EVENTS &
CELEBRATIONS
OurChildren
About
he defend such an unsavory regime? 86
IN THIS ISSUE
WINTER 2018
By far the most outrageous comment Der-
NORTH JERSEY
showitz made, however, was that “Qatar is
quickly becoming the Israel of the Gulf States,
surrounded by enemies, subject to boycotts
and unrealistic demands, and struggling for
its survival.”
This is an absolutely shocking statement
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the author of 31 books, including
Warrior’s Handbook.” Follow‘In
him
Thy
on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
Tent I Dwell’
Advertising Coordinator
Jane Carr
Account Executives
Peggy Elias
Category 13: Chaim Sheba
Brenda Sutcliffe
Administrative Assistant
Jenna Sutcliffe
Medical Center Award for Excellence
International Media Placement
P.O. Box 7195 Jerusalem 91077
Tel: 02-6252933, 02-6247919
in Writing about Health Care
Fax: 02-6249240
Israeli Representative
Second Place
Division A. Newspapers 15,000 circulation and over;
Broadcast; Magazines; Special Sections and Supplements; Web-based Outlets.
”Talking about addiction in the Jewish Community” Joanne Palmer
recovery sometimes chimerical.
Given all this, given the stigma that
envelops drug and alcohol use, and given
the close-knit nature of the Jewish com-
munity, and the myth that Jews never fall
“Addiction isn’t someone else’s problem, as one Bergen County, N.J., family learned. In this
prey to such problems, it takes courage
for families to admit that they have that
problem. But of course once those fami-
lies do take that step, the easier it becomes
for others to admit to their own problems.
Because it is even harder to deal with
drug abuse when people feel isolated by
it, because there is strength in these num-
bers, the more people come forward, the
perceptive piece, Joanne Palmer relates the story of a young Jewish woman in rehab for drug
better it gets.
That’s why the Forman family of
Teaneck has decided to go public about
the problems their daughter Elana, the
second of their five children, has had with
addiction and her parents’ decision to demystify addiction by speaking publicly about it at a
Jewish community event. Palmer deftly captures the daughter’s struggles and the parents’ angst,
and supplements the family portrait with details about a local Jewish organization helping
victims of sexual and drug abuse. The family’s courage and the compassion of caregivers are both
memorable, thanks in good part to Palmer’s thorough and probing research and forceful writing.”
JS-11
JS-1*
JS-22
The David Frank Award for
NOVEMBER 23, 2018
VOL. LXXXVIII NO. 10 $1.00
THEJEWISHSTANDARD.COM
87 2018
Excellence in Personality Profiles
Soviet chess grandmaster-turned-refusenik-
turned-Fair Lawn householder talks about his life
First Place
that must be totally and completely rebutted.
I
Joanne Palmer
t’s hard to know which comes
He is comparing Israel, a democracy, to an
first, chess or the ability to think
analytically.
Boris Gulko of Fair L awn
He’s a modest man, living in a house
that’s half empty because he and his wife,
Anna, already have sent many of their
belongings ahead of them to Israel. His
thick Russian accent does absolutely noth-
ing to camouflage the quickness or depth of
His parents, like everyone who sur-
vived the Holocaust, had a story. They
both were engineers, they were already
married, Bella had been born, when
Ephraim Gulko decided that he had a suit
that needed alteration, and he brought it
his customer.
(That’s why so many Jews were killed
at Babi Yar, Mr. Gulko added. They didn’t
know the extent of the Nazis’ murderous
hatred, or that it would lead to wholesale
massacre. The depth of the hatred, and
Division A. Newspapers 15,000
circulation and over; Broadcast
(although very soon to be of his thought, and his knowledge of history. to a Polish tailor. That tailor, speaking in the willingness to act on it, had been kept
Israel) is a German-born Russian Jewish And his own history is astounding. Yiddish, told Mr. Gulko that he’d been from them.)
autocratic regime that has exercised “full exec-
grandmaster who became a refusenik, Boris Gulko was born in Erfurt, East Ger- expelled from Poland, and that he was The family escaped, by freight train, to
the veteran of three hunger strikes and a many, in 1947. His father, Ephraim, was an lucky. The Germans, he said, wanted to the Ural mountains, on the western edge
brilliantly conceived monthlong series of officer in the Soviet army, stationed in the kill all the Jews. The Soviets were intent of the vast expanse of the Soviet Union
demonstrations that finally forced his Rus- Soviet zone; his mother, Genashia, and on keeping that information quiet, and that is Siberia. It was an industrial region,
sian overlords to let him and his family go. their daughter, Bella, joined him there. he was putting himself at risk by warning and Ephraim worked in a factory. He was
utive power” since 1868 and whose constitu-
in the Soviet army, and later was moved
to Germany. The army celebrated the first
anniversary of its victory over the Axis
tion “provides for hereditary rule by men in I asked my
mother why
didn’t she make “People of air” Joanne Palmer
the emir’s branch of the Al Thani family.”
me a bris, and
she said, ‘Exactly
“A great read, and portrait of a personality, that
where would I
find a mohel
He says that Qatar, which is surrounded
in Germany
in 1947?’
forces, and “I was born exactly a year and
not by enemies, but by friendly Arab/Islamic
nine months later,” Boris said. After two
along the way tells the long and winding road of
years, the family moved back to Russia.
They lived outside Moscow, but the city
o’s next move
grew, and eventually they found them-
om Fair Lawn to Israel.
selves within its limits.
countries engaged in a temporary political dis-
to by Jerry Szubin
The Gulkos were not able to practice
Judaism — “I had my bris in the United
States when I was 40 years old,” Mr. Gulko
said. “I was born in Germany. I asked my
mother why didn’t she make me a bris,
the effort to free Soviet Jewry.”
and she said, ‘Exactly where would I find
pute, is similar to Israel, which
a mohel in Germany in 1947?’”
Also, he said, the word “Jew” — in
CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED Boris Gulko achieved grandmaster status in the Soviet Union and had his salary as a chess professional funneled through German, in Russian — “was not such a
Teaneck, NJ 07666 the KGB. He came to chess relatively late but learned quickly. good word to use then. We tried to use
has fought multiple wars with its
1086 Teaneck Road
Jewish Standard 22 Jewish standard nOVeMBer 23, 2018
neighbors and remains threat-
ened by Islamic radicals, terror-
ists, and countries such as Iran.
He compares the boycott of
Qatar,JS-16
which is maintained by
87 DECEMBER 21, 2018
VOL. LXXXVIII NO. 14 $1.00 2018
its neighbor Gulf states based
only on their unhappiness
The David Frank Award for
Excellence in Personality Profiles
THEJEWISHSTANDARD.COM
with the emirate’s policies and
Rabbi support of terrorism with the
Shmuley international anti-Semitic cam- Second Place
Boteach paign to boycott Israel based
COVER STORYon its existence.
Division A. Newspapers 15,000 circulation
Popeye Dershowitz claims that Qatar,
rankedthetheSailor’s
richest country on the planet by
and over; Broadcast
man inno one threatening its existence,
Forbes,
Glen
with
Rock
is struggling for survival like Israel, a country
“Popeye the Sailor’s man
in Glen Rock” Larry Yudelson
Meet Hy Eisman,
that last
hasof been threatened with genocide by
the old-time
cartoonists
terrorists and neighboring states for nearly
“Good read, the subject comes alive, along with
LARRY YUDELSON The old man shows up in the center of Popeye readers might know, Mr. Geezil understand.) Mr. Eisman didn’t learn Eng-
T
a nine-panel Sunday cartoon. (The strip is a Russian Jewish immigrant, complete lish until he started school. His mother
oward the end of the interview, would have arrived in Sunday newspapers with a stereotyped accent and a job as a learned it with him. His father never did.
70 years.
Hy Eisman of Glen Rock pulls in glorious color, but it left Mr. Eisman’s pawnbroker. George W. Geezil was created by Elzie
out a comic strip featuring an drawing board, and entered his collection, Mr. Eisman has been drawing the Sun- Crisler Segar, the cartoonist who first cre-
old man with a beard. in black ink.) “There goes Mr. Geezil,” Pop- day Popeye comic strip since 1997. (The ated Popeye as a bit character in his pop-
The reporter has closed up his note- eye muses, as he watches the old man go weekday strip has been in reruns since ular comic strip, “Thimble Theater.” Mr.
book, but Mr. Eisman still is flipping by. We see Popeye from behind, his sailor’s then.) As he talks about Mr. Geezil, it’s Geezil first appeared in 1932. Popeye first
I am in shock.
through the framed comic strips that are hat, corncob pipe, jutting chin, and prom- clear the insult inherent in the character showed up on January 17, 1929.
propped up against a bookcase in front of inent muscles instantly recognizable. “I is personal for Mr. Eisman, the son of Pol- And yes, that means that Popeye is
the era when Sunday comics were king.”
his artist’s desk. He shows the reporter the ain’t seen ‘im in years,” Popeye says. ish Jewish immigrants. Mr. Eisman grew turning 90 next month. Mr. Eisman
strips, each in a different style of illustra- “I didn’t like him,” Mr. Eisman said, up in Paterson, speaking Yiddish. (Polish first brought back Mr. Geezil as part of a
CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED tion, each featuring different characters, explaining Mr. Geezil’s long absence from was the language they spoke to each other reunion to celebrate Popeye’s 75th birth-
Page 16 all drawn by Mr. Eisman. Popeye’s neighborhood. As longtime when they didn’t want their children to day in 2004. He already has finished his
In an effort to appear tough on the Qataris,
Teaneck, NJ 07666
1086 Teaneck Road
Jewish Standard 16 JEWISH STANDARD DECEMBER 21, 2018
he says he asked them about all the allegations
made against them and declares them inno-
cent of all charges. JS-32 I doubt Dershowitz is as
AOC-01
Useful Information
for
the Next Generation
of Jewish Families
SURVIVORS IN A BUNGALOW COLONY page 6
RALLYING AGAINST AR-15S pages 10, 42
naïve when defending clients who also declare
their innocence.
Award for Excellence in
Arts and Criticism News
A PROUD GRANDMOTHER IN JERUSALEM page 14
He makes Qatar sound like some pathetic
ROCKLAND FILM FESTIVALS HAVE SOUL page 22
Bringing Baby Home
Sweet Things
for the Bundle of Joy
Adar When Joy Jumps FEBRUARY 23, 2018
Purim Fun Around Town
Supplement to The Jewish Standard • March 2018
VOL. LXXXVII NO. 23 $1.00 2017
7
victim of crimes committed by bullies. He
THEJEWISHSTANDARD.COM
complains that the Saudis are leading the
campaign to boycott “their tiny neighboring and Features – Reporting
state” and asserts this is immoral and ille-
gal. One may always question the morality of
Second Place
blockades, but they are not illegal; they are a
recognized tactic in economic and shooting
Division A. Newspapers 15,000 circulation
The long road home
COVER STORY
and over; Broadcast; Magazines;
his most recent, “The Israel
Brazilian-American artist’s crypto-Jewish heritage to be on display in Teaneck
JOANNE PALMER academic, a man in his mid-30s with a his- family — he couldn’t eat in other people’s historical terms,” he said. “In 1909. And
Web-based Outlets.
W
tory that stretches back centuries, a Brazil- houses, he didn’t go to church ever, he that branch of the family always empha-
hat is Jewish identity? ian-American, a born Jew who had no idea knew that he, like his parents and aunt sized what it is to be an immigrant, so I
That’s an old question, that he was Jewish, much less what being and uncles and cousins, eventually would grew up with them always telling us that
“The long road home” Joanne Palmer
hackneyed even, hard to Jewish meant, until he dug out that truth, be expected to marry someone who came we are not from Brazil. That we have to live
answer, at times politically someone who could have represented a from his huge extended family. He knew as people who belong somewhere else.”
fraught. It’s got so many answers, depend- historic dead end but instead has become that his family was different, somehow. He Where it was that they belonged, how-
The art and life of
ing on what the question means. Is it reli- a vibrant beginning. His story is both fasci- didn’t know how or why — he just knew ever, was not clear.
gious? Ethnic? Halachic? Tribal? Genetic? nating and ongoing. that his family had odd customs and an “I grew up with stories of the challenges
Does it have to be accepted? Can it be He will present some of that story, in expectation of separation. of immigration — language, culture, tra-
Jônatas Chimen Dias rejected? How far back does it go? How far
forward does it stretch? Is it elastic?
the form of an art installation called “In
Thy Tent I Dwell,” as well as other stories
He is an immigrant to the United States
— he, his sister, and his parents moved to
dition, different values. There always
was the idea that we should not blend in,
DaSilva-Benayon What is it?
It’s complicated.
and more artwork, at Temple Emeth from
March 9 to March 11. (See box.)
Miami when he was 16 — and so are his par-
ents. And so were his grandparents. “This
because we come from somewhere else.
Not necessarily somewhere better, but
on display in Teaneck
"Fascinating deep dive into one piece of art –
Jônatas Chimen Dias DaSilva-Benayon, Jônatas’s part of his story begins in story is all about immigration,” he said. somewhere different.”
CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED as his name might signify, is a particularly Brasilia, Brazil, in 1981. He grew up in His father’s mother’s family arrived in On his father’s father’s side, the family
complicated person. He’s an artist, an what struck him as an unusually strict Brazil from Spain “not that long ago in “had been in Brazil for many generations
Teaneck, NJ 07666 page 32
1086 Teaneck Road
Jewish Standard 32 Jewish standard FeBrUarY 23, 2018
Production Manager Founder
Jerry Szubin
I've read pieces on entire museums that haven't
Morris J. Janoff (1911–1987)
Graphic Artists
Deborah Herman
Editor Emeritus
Meyer Pesin (1901–1989)
Bob O'Brien City Editor
Mort Cornin (1915–1984)
been this informative.”
Editorial Consultant
Max Milians (1908-2005)
Secretary
Ceil Wolf (1914-2008)
Editor Emerita
Rebecca Kaplan Boroson
 JS-12*

Local

The evil eye is Jewish?

Rabbi Abraham Eckstein will discuss superstition and folklore in Nyack
JOANNE PALMER literature compared to ancient

W
Near Eastern literature. And
hy do we blow I went from there to folklore
a shofar? — superstition.”
W hy d o e s Some Jewish superstitions
the groom are similar to other cultures’;
smash a glass underfoot at the some probably were influ-
end of the wedding ceremony? enced by the outside world,
Where do demons live and others probably by human
anyway? needs that undergird cultural
And what does this have to understanding.
do with anything? That’s fancy! What about a
Abraham Eckstein, the long- real-life application? “If some-
time leader and now rabbi one is lying down, what happens
emeritus of the Little Neck Jew- if you walk over them? If they’re
ish Center in Queens, has con- maybe lying on the floor watch-
sidered these and many other ing television, and you have to
questions; he’ll discuss the get something? If you walk over
answers either to them or to them, they will not grow any
similar ones on July 17 at Con- more, so you have to walk back
gregation Sons of Israel Nyack. over them to cancel it.
(See box.) “Or say that you lost a button
It’s folklore, he says; ancient on your blouse, and you say,
Jewish folklore, superstition, ‘Hey, Ma, will you sew my button
with centuries if not a full back on?’ And you’re still wear-
millennium of rabbinic mid- ing the blouse? If you sew some-
rash and other explanations thing on while you’re wearing
accreted to it. it, you will sew up your brains.

Before he plunges into a dis-
cussion of where his under-
standing of folklore, as well as
his fascination with it, comes
from, Rabbi Eckstein wants to
make clear that he is not say-
ing — he would never say — that This 1903 painting by Dutch artist Jozef Israëls shows a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony.
these are customs that should
be abandoned, because of their provenance. Not at all,
he says. It’s just fascinating to know where they come
from.
He is “a rationalist,” he said. “I am a person who
always asks why something is. Why is it done that way?
What does it mean?”
Rabbi Eckstein’s background is wide-ranging. He was
born in 1931 and went to Orthodox yeshivas; his under-
graduate degree is from Yeshiva University, and so is his ment, he lives in Great Neck. He was not an academic
rabbinic ordination. Then he went to the Conservative
movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary, where he
earned a doctorate in Bible. It was there, at JTS, which
then was home to the scholars Nahum Sarna and Louis
Ginsburg, among others, that Rabbi Eckstein first was
exposed to biblical criticism, and the idea that the Bible
and Jewish law and lore have antecedents and parallels
in other ancient cultures. “No one had ever told me that
there were other flood stories,” he said; it was there
that he first heard about Gilgamesh.
From JTS, Rabbi Eckstein became an Army chaplain;
after that he was a pulpit rabbi, moving around the met-
ropolitan area before settling in Queens. Now, in retire- a reason; we’re told, in later sources, that it’s to get
— “I had a pulpit! Who had time?” — but he was an insa-
tiable reader, and superstition intrigued him.
“My interest always was in Bible rather than in Tal-
mud because it deals with people; the Talmud is legalis-
tic, and I am a people person. My doctorate is in biblical horn hidden in the bag. That’s to ensure that demons
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
You counteract that by chewing
something — sometimes thread
— in your mouth.
“Some superstitions are dis-
tinctly Jewish, but these two
are not.”
Okay. What about distinctly
Jewish superstitions?
Start with the understanding that demons live in
caves; they yearn for darkness and silence. That’s not
a particularly Jewish understanding, Rabbi Eckstein
said. It’s more general than that. But it has Jewish
implications.
Why do we blow a shofar on Rosh Hashanah and
at the end of Yom Kippur? The Bible doesn’t specify
our attention, to call us to attention, to repentance, to
spiritual reawakening. It does mean all those things,
Rabbi Eckstein said, but at its base it is to scare away
the demons. A shofar traditionally is inside a tallis
bag; the shofar blower walks up to the bimah with his

Make Jewish tomorrows. Leave a Jewish Legacy!

Ensure the organizations you care about endure.
· Beth Am Temple · Congregation Sons of Israel, Nyack · Hillel of Rockland · Holocaust
Museum & Center of Tolerance and Education · JCC Rockland and/or Jewish Community
Campus · Jewish Federation & Foundation of Rockland County · Montebello Jewish Center
· Nanuet Hebrew Center · New City Jewish Center · Orangetown Jewish Center
· Rockland Jewish Family Service · Temple Beth Sholom · The Reform Temple of Rockland For more information, call 845-362-4200 ext.170

12 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019

 JS-13*

Local

The hamsa — this modern version was made in
Venezuela — is an amulet Jews wear to ward off
the evil eye. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
of the destruction of Jerusalem,” Rabbi Eckstein said.
“Where does that come from? Not the Bible. And the
Talmud tells the story of the great rabbi whose daugh-
ter was getting married, and the party was getting out
of control. Glass was very expensive, and he took up a
very valuable glass, and smashed it, and that shocked
everybody into sobriety. That had nothing to do with
the Bible.” That was an accretion on top of an accre-
tion; the original reason for smashing the glass was to
scare away demons.
And that is absolutely not a reason to stop smashing
a glass at the end of a wedding, Rabbi Eckstein said. Of
course smash the glass!
The most basic reason for superstition is “supersti-
tious people believe, although they may never verbal-
ize, that there are evil spirits in this world that want
to harm humans. We have to combat them, and there
are certain things that we can do to prevent them from
doing their wickedness. If we don’t do those things —
we’ve got problems.”
In Nyack, Rabbi Eckstein will talk about the evil eye.
That’s not a uniquely Jewish concept, he said; “every
culture has an evil eye. In Turkey, you can buy jewelry
against it that actually is an eye.” That jewelry — usu-
ally a necklace — usually is a blue stone with an eye-
ball, with a pupil centered in it. “The Italians wear a
horn, to stick it in the evil eye — they call the evil eye
malocchio.” That’s literally “evil eye.” “And Jews wear
the hamsa, the hand with the fingers extended, to stick
it in the evil eye,” he said.
Rabbi Eckstein will be in Nyack for the M. Nathan
Cember Memorial Lecture Series. It’s presented by
Mr. Cember’s widow, Esther. Both the Cembers were
very active members of Sons of Israel. “He was very
prominently involved locally,” Ms. Cember said. “He
was president of Bnai Brith District 1, head of the Israel
Commission, a former president of the shul — a major
macher in Jewish life, so I figured that this would be a
nice way to memorialize him.”
She heard Rabbi Eckstein speak twice in Florida,
where she spends six months every year. “He was very
entertaining, very knowledgeable, and everybody
loved him,” Ms. Cember said. If only he could get to
Rockland County to speak. Once she learned that he’d
been visiting Florida but lives in Great Neck, everything
fell into place. “I’m thrilled about it,” Ms. Cember said.

don’t catch sight of it too soon and thus have the

chance to prepare themselves for its blast, he said.
Why do a bride’s mother and about-to-be-moth-
er-in-law accompany her down the aisle carrying

34
candles, as they do in very traditional weddings?

one
Why do they walk around the groom seven times?
It’s because the candles and their light, and then
the circles, protect him against Lilith, Adam’s first
lives
month
wife, who would suck his soul.

saved
Rabbi Eckstein also has been struck by non-Jew-
ish applications of this principle. He remembers his
time at Fort Dix, when he saw a Catholic mass. At
the moment of transubstantiation, when the wafer in June, 2019
and wine become Jesus’s body and blood, accord-
ing to Catholic belief, “when the priest picks up the
wine and turns it into blood, all of a sudden the
bells ring.” It’s the only time during the mass that World’s Largest Jewish
they are sounded, Rabbi Eckstein said. Why? “The
priest said it’s to emphasize it — but it’s because the
Bone Marrow Registry
noise scares away the demons.”
In all these stories, the sound and light ward off J U N E 2 0 1 9  M O N T H LY U P D AT E
the attacks that would happen at liminal moments,
times of change, when people are open to that 34 transplants facilitated in June, 2019
change, and therefore vulnerable.
Back at a Jewish wedding, why does the groom
3,230 total transplants including 1,965 from IDF Recruits
smash the glass? “We’re told that it’s in memory 985,186 members in registry
including 544,281 IDF HEROES
TRANSPLANTS FACILITATED IN: Argentina, France, Germany, Israel, Italy,
Who: Rabbi Abraham Eckstein
Netherlands, Spain, UK, USA: Seattle, WA; Tampa Fl; Gilbert, AZ
What: Will talk about “The Evil Eye:
Superstition in Jewish Life” TRANSPLANTS FACILITATED FROM THE FOLLOWING DONOR POOLS:
Where: At Congregation Sons of Israel, 300 • S. Adelsberg & Co. • Adiram • Blood Brothers • Brazil Community - 5
North Broadway, Upper Nyack • Damaghi Family • Izzy Englander • Michael David Falk Foundation
When: On Wednesday, July 17, at 7 p.m. • David & Sara Farajun - 3 • Hershel Fink • Florida Community
• Chana Perl Freund • Gimzu Community • David & Judy Hager
Why: For the M. Nathan Cember Memorial
Lecture Series • Hole In One • Harvey & Gloria Kaylie • Ronald O. Perelman
• Ira & Ingeborg Rennert • George & Pamela Rohr - 2 • Mark & Barbara Silber
How much: Free, but RSVP is requested;
• Benjamin & Friedl Sommer • Tobetta
email csioffice@optonline.net or call (845)
358-3767
For more information: Go to www.csinyack. Become a hero today at ezermizion.org
org or call (845) 358-3767 For more information, contact Ryan Hyman at 718-853-8400 • ryan@ezermizionusa.org

JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019 13

Local

Shakespeare in the Park with Matt

Black Box Studios brings free shows to Bergen County venues
LARRY YUDELSON

T
here is a case to be made that the
works of William Shakespeare
are the Talmud of English litera-
ture. It is part of the canon — by
terms lively and convoluted, contemporary
in its concerns yet often obscured by the
dust of a dimly understood old-fashioned
language. And while we are past the era
when Shakespeare dominated our theater
and culture as he did a hundred years ago,
his work remains a solid and stolid part of
our curriculum.
But the works of Shakespeare hold an
advantage over the Talmud. When a bad
classroom experience has drained the joy
from the texts, there is always the bracing
experience of the live stage.
And now it’s summertime, and the Shake-
speare is free — at least in Teaneck’s Votee Stacy Cancelarich
Park, at Englewood’s library, and other
stages in Bergen County where Black Box
Studios will present Shakespeare in the
Park, thanks to the sponsorship of the local
towns and institutions, including Englewood
Health and Holy Name Medical Center in
Teaneck.
“It’s free theater for the masses,” Matt
Okin said. Mr. Okin is the founder of the
Black Box Studios. “We modernize the set- Ben Shanblatt
tings and the feel, but the language stays the
same. Everyone likes a little fighting, a little murder.” starting in September, we will do five main stage shows.
Black Box is presenting “Romeo and Juliet” as “punk “The theater school is the lifeblood of what we do.
rockers versus country clubbers,” he said. (Mr. Okin The classes are for ages seven to adult. There’s acting,
used a similar punk rock versus Starbucks theme when improv, writing classes, drama, musical theater. We
his student troupe staged “Fiddler on the Roof” several have about 55 students and hope to get to our height
years ago.) He’s staging “Othello” as a story of corporate of 70 again.
intrigue. “It tells how one corporation eats itself alive “In ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ you have a bunch of Black
over jealousy,” he said. Box students represented. One of the more advanced
Mr. Okin said that understanding the 400-year- teams from our group is acting in it. A couple of teens Matt Okin
old plays is not difficult when they are performed by are doing all the tech. And our assistant director, Ben Stacy Cancelarich plays Lady Capulet. It’s her first
actors who understand what they’re saying. At Black Shanblatt, is in college now but only a couple years professional performance. A native of Teaneck who
Box rehearsals, Shakespeare’s words are translated into out,” Mr. Okin said. now lives in Hillsdale, she discovered Black Box five or
modern idiom; the words revert to their original form “I started as an actor in one of the teen productions six years ago, when her son, Sam, then in high school,
in performance. around 2013,” Mr. Shanblatt, 19, said. “I’ve been doing was looking for an acting opportunity. She signed up
“If you have a bunch of well-trained actors, it’s guar- music and acting for them since.” Mr. Shanblatt lives for adult acting class with Black Box. “I did six shows
anteed you will understand it,” Mr. Okin said. “It’s the in Fair Lawn and is a student at the School of Jazz and with them,” she said. “Then Matt Okin asked me to
exact words, a little edited down. Each show is a little Contemporary Music in the New School in Manhattan. audition for Shakespeare. They thought I was ready to
under two hours. He said his experience with Shakespeare had been move on up. So this is my first time with the pros.
“It’s great exposure to what we do all year round, but limited before this summer. “I read a few plays in high “It’s great. It’s a lot of fun. But it’s much more of a
for free. It’s the sort of theater we do. It’s very intimate. school,” he said. “I did a reading of ‘A Midsummer time commitment — it’s a lot of fun. I’m learning a lot.
The audience is very close to the actors. You get to see Night’s Dream’ when I was younger. If you’re a runner and they put you with faster runners,
the type of talent we work with.” Many of the actors are “During the rehearsal process for ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ you learn to run faster. It’s a wonderful thing to do
part of the Black Box repertory company during the year. a lot of us were surprised by how modern and relevant something brand new in a second or third part of your
Black Box started as an after-school acting school. the material felt. Putting it into a more modern con- life. It’s great to discover something I love and always
Three years ago, it began presenting professional the- text really felt pretty natural. I can tell you the way we wanted to do and didn’t do.
ater from its own small building in Teaneck, awkwardly physicalize things makes the text clearer. Everything is “I don’t think I was a fan of Shakespeare in high school.
positioned in the parking lot of a kosher grocery store. presented in a clear way, so it’s easy to understand.” The language was challenging. When we started rehears-
Now it has moved out of that building and is looking Besides directing and acting in the play, Mr. Shanblatt als, I didn’t fully grasp all of the beauty of it. Now I love it.
for a larger space, probably in Englewood, for the fall. performs on electric and acoustic guitars. “I allow the Once you get into it, it’s really great. I find myself wanting
Meanwhile it is rehearsing in the park. music and acting choices to connect,” he said. “I feel to use Shakespeare on a daily basis at home.
“We’ve done about seven shows a year in the last them as one thing. A lot of time I’m doing both at the “Speaking in iambic pentameter is fun. Much less
three years,” Mr. Okin said. “In our fourth season, same time.” Jersey-like.”
14 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019

IDF veterans in the Peace of Mind program gather with their host
familes at Ahavath Torah in Englewood.
FIRST PERSON
Their peace of mind
brings us inner peace
Englewood shul hosts IDF veterans
for a week of relaxation, renewal
TANI FOGER
W
hat an inspiring week
it was!
The Ahavath Torah
community in Engle-
wood hosted 15 members of the IDF
Givati Brigade, and all of us, veter-
ans and host families alike, were pro-
foundly moved by the experience. In
fact, we feel we got back much more
than we gave.
As one of the hosts shared in the
farewell circle on the final morning,
“15 strangers arrived last Sunday, and
yet we welcomed them into our homes
as family because they are acheinu, kol
beit Yisrael.” The house of Israel are all
our brothers and sisters.
That is exactly how we all felt; as it
is written in the scriptures, so it was in
reality.
Eight Ahavath Torah families hosted
the IDF veterans, while many more
congregants were involved in the
countless tasks (carpooling, organizing
sports activities, donating meals, and
on and on) needed to make this week
a huge success. We raised $53,000 to
cover the all-expense-paid program,
which is funded solely by the host
community.
The Givati unit had fought in the
second Lebanon war and later in
Gaza. These 15 veterans now were
in the United States as participants
in Peace of Mind, a nine-month
Tani Foger, Ed.D, LPC of Englewood
is a psychologist and educational
consultant and the founder of “Let’s-
Talk” Workshops, guidance workshops
for all ages at all stages.
JS-15*
Local
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OF NORTHERN NEW JERSEY
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To learn more about Private Care
Management, please call us at
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Caregiver support and guidance
program developed by Metiv, the
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ans process and heal from the invisible
effects of service-related trauma. A cen-
Brightview.
tral component of the Peace of Mind
program is a week of therapy in a dias-
Bright Life!
pora community abroad; the distance
from Israel, from family, and from job
obligations is deemed critical to the
therapeutic process.
Traveling together with their two
therapists, the group landed early
Sunday morning and were welcomed
into the warm embrace of our modern
Orthodox community. The veterans’
days were comprised of eight hours of Independent Living: It’s the carefree
group and individual therapy sessions. retirement you’ve dreamed of! At Brightview,
In the evening, there were trips to the Let Your all you have to do is what you want to do.
Life
mall and New York City, with carpools
shuttling the group back and forth.
There were BBQs and pool parties.
Bright Assisted Living: Highly trained
associates provide the care you need.
Local kosher restaurants generously
donated all the veterans’ lunches. Shine Wellspring Village®:
The IDF veterans were astonished at Bergen County’s Premier Compassionate professionals
to learn how much our diaspora com- deliver our highly specialized
Senior Living Community dementia care program
munity was willing to do for them, and
how eager everyone was to be part of in a state-of-the-art
this initiative. Throughout the week, neighborhood.
we tried to convey how much the IDF
and the state of Israel mean to us. We Call Mary or Marianne to
explained that by protecting Israel they schedule your personal visit.
are in fact protecting us and our free- 201.479.9437
dom to be practicing Jews, both here 396 Forest Avenue • Paramus, NJ 07652
and across the globe. www.BrightviewParamus.com
While the veterans repeatedly
thanked us for inviting them so warmly
into our homes, we told them that it is
us who should be thanking them. We
told them how much we appreciate
their sacrifice, dedicating three years of www.thejewishstandard.com
their lives to serving in harm’s way, and
SEE PEACE PAGE 24
JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019 15
 JS-16*

Briefly Local

Norpac will sponsor meetings

with Senators Graham, McSally
Jocelyn and Shmuel Jonas
along with Debbie and

PHOTOS COURTESY NORPAC

Howard Jonas host a Norpac
pro-Israel event in Engle-
wood on Sunday, July 14, at
6 p.m., for Senator Lindsey
Graham (R-S.C.).
Esther and David Muschel
will host a Norpac pro-Israel
meeting on Sunday, July 21,
at 6 p.m., in Englewood, for
Senator Martha McSally,
(R-Ariz.). For information, email Avi@Norpac.net or call (201) 788-5133.
Shmuel Jonas, left, and
Senator Lindsey Graham
Senator Martha
BCHSJS head attends conference
McSally Fred Nagler, the principal and director
of the Bergen County High School of
Jewish Studies, recently attended the
Jewish Teen Education and Engage-
ment Network conference in Hous-
ton. The JTEEN meeting’s theme was
“Learn, Innovate, and Create Opportu-
nity”; sessions included “Gen-Xers as
Parents: Why Those Parents are So Dif-
ficult,” “Digital Addiction: What You
Need to Know,” and “Keeping the Con-
versation Civil: Talking About Israel in
a Political Divisive Time.” Another ses-
sion, “Gen Z Now: Understanding and
Connecting with Jewish Teens Today,”
was a glimpse of the report that the
Jewish Education Project will release.
Each day began with text study with a
member of Pardes Institute of Jewish
Studies.

Senator Blackburn confers

with OU leaders in Washington
U.S. Senator Marsha
CLICK PHOTOGRAPHY

Blackburn (R-Tenn.)
met with leaders of

IDF lone soldiers enjoy FIDF “Fun Day” at the Israeli water park. 
Cool day for FIDF lone soldiers
One June 27 — “Fun Day” — 5,000 lone
soldiers launched Israel Defense Forces
Appreciation Week in Israel at Shefayim
Water Park, the nation’s largest water-
park, just outside of Tel Aviv. There are
about 6,116 lone soldiers from 80 coun-
tries in the IDF, including 810 from the
United States.
The day of rest and recuperation was
hosted by Friends of the Israel Defense
Forces in partnership with the IDF and
Yachad Le’maan Ha’chayal (the Associa-
tion for the Wellbeing of Israel’s Soldiers
and the LIBI Fund).
In addition to the park’s attractions,
the day included a pool party with
Israeli DJ Eran Barnea, access to game
and fitness areas, and an all-day smor-
gasbord featuring barbecue and des-
serts. The lone soldiers also received
information about life after their mili-
tary service, including about the FIDF
IMPACT! Scholarship Program, which
grants college scholarships to Israeli
combat veterans of modest means. IDF
unit commanders, non-commissioned
officers, high-ranking military officials,
and FIDF supporters also attended the
“Fun Day” festivities to meet and thank
the soldiers for serving. Go to fidf.org.
16 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019
The Friends of the Israel Defense
Force’s New Jersey chapter — of-
ten referred to as the Lone Soldier
chapter — was co-founded by
Sammy Bar-Or, left, an FIDF nation-
al board member who moved to
Israel from Iran when he was 13 and
served as a lone soldier in the IDF’s
Paratroopers Brigade. He joins Brig.
Gen. (Res.) Effi Idan, FIDF’s execu-
tive director in Israel; Alon Even, its
managing director in Israel; and Maj.
(Res.) Relli Zin, IDF’s chief operating
officer, at “Fun Day.” FIDF
OU ADVOCACY CENTER
the Orthodox Union
on Capitol Hill on
June 26 to discuss
the organization’s
federal advocacy
priorities, including
funding for Depart-
ment of Homeland Security grants to protect synagogues, day schools,
and other nonprofits. Joining her, from left, are OU board members Man-
ny Schnaidman of Teaneck and Drew Parker of Englewood. 
Cancer survivors rally at ‘Relay’
Seventy cancer survivors who par- to remember loved ones who died
ticipated in the seventh annual Relay from cancer. The day was organized
for Life of Paramus at Paramus High by a committee of student and adult
School last month raised more than volunteers, and it featured an all-stu-
$90,000. In addition, more than dent executive board. Donations can
500 community members partici- be made at relayforlife.org/paramusnj.
pated in the 12-hour event, which is For more information or to be involved
a fundraiser for the American Cancer in the planning for the 2020 fund-
Society. A luminaria ceremony fea- raiser, email relayforlifeofparamus@
turing a caregiver speaker was held gmail.com.
 JS-17*

Briefly Local

Rabbi David Widzer leads a service on the Palisades last year.
Shabbat ‘Prayers on the Palisades’
Kol Dorot: A Reform Jewish Commu-
nity, the new congregation formed
with the merger of Temple Beth El of
Northern Valley in Closter and Tem-
ple Beth Or in Washington Township,
plans two outdoor family-friendly
Shabbat services. The first will be held
on Friday, July 19, at 6:30 p.m., at the
State Line Lookout off the Palisades
Parkway. Kol Dorot’s clergy, Rabbis
David Widzer and Noah Fabricant and
Cantor Sarah Silverberg, will lead the
informal service, which will include
COURTESY KOL DOROT
both prayers and songs.
State Line Lookout is at the highest
point on the Palisades Cliffs, and it
has a large parking lot. Enter off the
Palisades Interstate Parkway north-
bound, two miles north of Exit 2.
Bring lawn chairs and bug spray. If it
rains, the service will be held at Kol
Dorot, 56 Ridgewood Road, Washing-
ton Township. A second service will
be on Friday, August 23. For more
information, go to koldorot.org or
call (201) 664-7422.
New boards in Teaneck and Wayne
During Shabbat services on June 21,
Rabbi Steven Sirbu and Cantor Ellen
Tilem installed Temple Emeth’s new
officers. Front, from left, Cantor Ellen
Tilem, assistant secretary Jill Kantor
of Leonia, first vice president Michael
Robinson of Teaneck, president Nicole
Falk of Glen Rock, second vice presi-
dent Michael Goldberg of Teaneck,
BARBARA BALKIN
assistant financial secretary Emily
Hadjis of Fair Lawn, and Rabbi Steven
Sirbu.
Back, from left, financial secretary
Alan Winters of Leonia, secretary
Robert Kahn of Tenafly, and treasurer
Gary Richards of Cliffside Park. Ellen
Buckwalter of Fort Lee, third vice
president, is not pictured.

Munch and learn in West Nyack

Rockland Jewish Family Service offers
“Munch & Learn — The Wisdom of Jew-
ish Literature in Two Bites.” The next
class is Wednesday, July 17, at 10:30
a.m., discussing “The Healing Wisdom
of Rabbinic Tales.” RJFS is at 450 West
Nyack Road, West Nyack. Refresh-
ments will be served. For informa-
tion, call Carol King at (845) 354-2121,
ext.142, or cking@rjfs.org.
Wayne’s Temple Beth Tikvah formally Pressler, Eric Cahn, Hope Haiman,
installed incoming co-presidents on and Steven Alexander, who began
June 14. From left, Andy Abrams, Steve their term on July 1.

Happy birthday, Rabbi Kanelsky 

Front row, from left, Olena Marchenko, Lovey Beer, Arielle Gorbatov,
Norman Gurman, and Ronald Brisman. Back row, Julia Nock, Alisa Macari,
Zarina Kosinovsky, Rivkah Lewin, Rabbi Mordechai Shain, Yossi Levy, and
Norman Findling.  COURTESY LOTP

Adult ed group graduates in Tenafly

Participants in “With All My Heart — The
Jewish Art of Prayer and Spiritual Experi-
Rabbi Mordechai Kanelsky of Bris Avrohom celebrated his 58th birthday ence,” a six-week adult education course
during a weekend celebration last month with family, friends, and com- offered by Lubavitch on the Palisades in
munity members. Many of the attendees shared their personal histories Tenafly and taught by Rabbi Mordechai
and the impact of Bris Avrohom and the Kanelsky family.
Shain, celebrated their graduation. The
class explored the meaning and art of
Jewish prayer. For upcoming classes and
events, go to chabadlubavitch.org.

JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019 17

 JS-18*

Congregation Bnai Yeshurun’s Briefly Local

Adult Education Committee presents

Dr. Howard Zvi Goldschmidt

CURRENT TRENDS
elected new president of ACSZ
The American Committee for Shaare
Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem

AND EFFORTS
has elected Dr. Howard Zvi Gold-
schmidt of Teaneck as its new pres-
ident. He takes over for Debbie Kes-

TO COMBAT
tenbaum, who served for the last
three years.
Dr. Goldschmidt’s maternal grand-
father, Herman Warisch, was a class-

ANTI-SEMITISM
mate and lifelong friend of Dr. Falk
Schlesinger, the hospital’s second
director-general. His paternal grand-
father, Carl Goldschmidt, was an

COURTESY ACSZ
American Committee board mem-
ber in the 1960s and 1970s and was
honored posthumously in the 1980s.
His parents, Helen and Eric Gold-
The Fascinating Personal and schmidt, were strong supporters of
Shaare Zedek, and Dr. Goldschmidt
Dr. Howard Zvi Goldschmidt

Professional Background of was honored by the American Com-

mittee in 2016 for his outstanding
volunteer service in providing world-
Elan Carr, Special U.S. Envoy class cardiac care to the people of
Jerusalem and beyond.
and received his undergraduate and
medical degrees at Columbia Univer-
sity. He trained in internal medicine
and cardiology at Mount Sinai and is
a senior cardiologist at the Cleveland

to Monitor and Combat

“I feel honored to be stepping into Clinic Valley Heart & Vascular Insti-
the role of president of this amazing tute in Ridgewood, subspecializing
institution,” Dr. Goldschmidt said. “It in interventional echocardiography

Anti-Semitism has been my privilege since 2016 to

spend a month at Shaare Zedek each
year, working with senior physicians
and residents in the cardiology and
emergency medicine departments.
During my visits, I have had the
opportunity to fully understand the
ethos of this unique beacon for hope
and healing. I believe that Shaare
Zedek is one of the greatest providers
of high-level medicine in a compas-
sionate and supportive environment,
making critical advancements in clin-
ical care and research each day. I see
it as my mission to get as many people
as possible to visit the Hospital so that
together, we can help make Shaare
Zedek even greater than it is today.
After all, what better place is there for
Tuesday, July 23, 2019 a cardiologist than ‘the Hospital with
a Heart!’”
for diagnosis and minimally invasive
treatment of valvular heart disease.
Dr. Goldschmidt’s wife, Debbie,
is an immigration lawyer in Man-
hattan. The Goldschmidts have four
children, Ari, Noah, Alyssa, and Eli,
and four grandchildren, Eitan, Ezra,
Lior, and Ami.
The Americ an Committee for
Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jeru-
salem provides financial support
to fund services, capital projects,
research, and equipment for the
Jerusalem hospital. Founded in 1902,
Shaare Zedek has been known for
more than a century as the “Hospital
with a Heart.” Patients come to Shaare
Zedek seeking top level treatment in
a compassionate, supportive, and
nurturing environment. Today, with
international accreditation, Shaare

8:15 pm Dr. Goldschmidt attended the

Yeshiva of Central Queens and Yeshiva
Zedek provides industry leading, cut-
ting-edge medical care, and its reputa-
University High School in Manhattan tion continues to grow.
New Main Shul
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18 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019

 JS-19
``

UPCOMING AT KAPLEN JCC on the Palisades

Early Fall Registration
OPEN TO MEMBERS

T IO N OP
Don’t miss out on your favorite early childhood and
after school classes including art, science, cooking,
sports, dance, drama, music and more.
RA

EN
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Sign up now and make your summer and the
beginning of the school year stress free!

!
eJ
Visit jccotp.org/class-finder for classes you want on
the days and times you need.

th
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Infant Program at the J! f un
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Going back to work after your maternity leave? Having
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Leonard Cohen Exhibit at

the Jewish Museum
Join us for a private tour of Leonard
Cohen: A Crack in Everything at the Jewish
Museum. This exhibit of contemporary art,
inspired by the imagination and legacy
of the influential singer/songwriter and
poet, is the first devoted entirely to Cohen.
Trip includes bus from the JCC, admission
and private tour. Lunch on your own at
Russ and Daughters (in museum) or local
restaurant.
Tue, Jul 23, 9:15 am-2:30 pm, $60/$75
Visit jccotp.org/adult-day-trips-tours

COMMUNITY ADULTS SENIORS

SIGN UP TO SUPPORT GROUP WITH

Play Fore! The Kids
GOLF CLASSIC, TENNIS & GAMES
Includes Men’s & Women’s Golf &
Tennis, & Mah Jongg, Bridge or Canasta.
Come play with us to support the JCC’s
programming, services and camps for
children with special needs.
Mon, Aug 5
Alpine Country Club, Demarest
Information and registration at
jccotp.org/playforethekids
JUDY BRAUNER, LCSW THERAPIST
Widows and Widowers:
You Are Not Alone
This bereavement group for those
recently widowed provides an
opportunity to share your feelings with
others that understand.
7 Mondays, Aug 5-Sep 23, 6:15-7:45 pm,
$115/$145
Registration required; Call Esther at
201.408.1456.
The Club
A social group for individuals with mild cognitive
impairment. Maintain brain vitality and cognitive
skills through meaningful self-selected programs and
activities such as photography, dance, virtual travel,
fitness, and more! Additional cognitive support and
supervision provided.
Mon-Fri, 9 am-2 pm
For additional info please contact Judi Nahary at
201.408.1450.
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VISIT jccotp.org
STAY IN THE KNOW! LIKE US ON
facebook.com/KaplenJCCOTP

KAPLEN JCC on the Palisades TAUB CAMPUS | 411 E CLINTON AVE, TENAFLY, NJ 07670 | 201.569.7900 | jccotp.org

JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019 19

Cover Story
My child’s cancer
Oded Grinstein makes very smart lemonade
from what could have been nightmarish lemons
I
JOANNE PALMER
n the end, his is a happy story,
Oded Grinstein of Fair Lawn says.
He repeats that frequently, and
he’s right. In the end, his daugh-
ter survived the childhood cancer
that would have killed her if her
parents didn’t work as hard and
tirelessly and selflessly and cleverly as they
did, and if they hadn’t had the resources —
not only financial but also intellectual and
emotional — that allowed them to keep going.
But not every story ends as Oded’s did.
Sometimes children die of cancer. Some-
times their cancer is incurable — maybe
some day it won’t be, but today it is. But
sometimes we can’t be sure. Some cancers
are very rare, but curable with the right
approach. Sometimes, if a patient (or the
patient’s family) can find a doctor with the
right experience, aware of the right studies,
seeing the right data, that child might be
cured, just like Oded’s daughter was.
The first step for parents who are faced
with the nearly unendurable news that their
child — it could be a newborn, an infant, a
toddler, a school-age child, or a teenager,
that part doesn’t matter — has cancer is
learning how to navigate that new reality. As
they so often report, they find themselves
complete strangers in a terrifying new land,
where people use incomprehensible lan-
guage that conceals harsh truths behind its
impenetrable syllables. Oded Grinstein cradles his infant daughter, who suffered from a rare
Although Israel is known — and known and aggressive cancer.
correctly — for its extraordinary advances
in medicine, often it’s not the best place to find treat-
ment for children with rare cancers. That, Oded said,
is because it’s small. “Israel is at the forefront of med- diagnosed with a very rare and aggressive type of sar-
ical research, but because it’s small there is not a lot
of experience,” he said. “We know that there are more
than 50 types and subtypes of pediatric cancers.” That
means that there are few doctors there with more than
limited experience with a few of those types. “I don’t
want parents to start leaving Israel — but with any rare
disease, you want your child to be seen by experienced
doctors.”
When the elder of Oded’s two daughters, who now
is 10 1/2, was six months old, and the family lived in
20 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019
Israel, “we noticed a little bump on her lower back,”
he said. “By the time she was nine months old, she was
coma, a soft tissue cancer that in her case attached to
the muscle tissue in her lower back. It is very rare. The back would get all her internal organs. We were very
chances of having it at her age, in that location, was one concerned about the implications of that.” That, in
in 403 million.” But she did have it.
When Oded and Meital Grinstein realized that there
were no doctors in Israel with experience in their
daughter’s condition, “we searched all around the
globe, in Japan and Switzerland and a number of other
places in Europe and in the United States.” (Oded is
a business developer; he has connections and knows
how to work them, and how to search.)
There was no organization then that
could help him. “You are like a deer in the
headlights,” Oded said. “You don’t know
what to do, and you deal with doctors like
they are God.” Still, he was looking for a
god with experience in the sarcoma that his
daughter had.
They found the doctor they needed at
Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan.
Dr. Leonard Wexner, a pediatric hematolo-
gist and oncologist, “is one of the leading
experts in the world on pediatric sarcoma,”
Oded said. “He’s seen about three-hundred
cases.
“My brother took a plane from Israel to
New York and met with him, and he basi-
cally said to me, in a nutshell, ‘If you want
to save my niece, bring her over,’ and that’s
what we did. It was a very tough decision, to
leave your comfort zone, your support sys-
tem, to go to the other side of the world, to
a different language and a different medical
system, which you do not understand.”
Oded Grinstein’s roots in Israel are deep.
“My mother’s family are several generations
there,” he said. “And Meital’s parents are
seventh-generation in Jerusalem, from Iran
and Iraq.”
On the other hand, he already spoke
English, but despite his background in inter-
national business, “it was tough to do the
research,” he said. His daughter was being
treated in Israel, and “we didn’t have an
iPhone then. I did research on a Nokia, at
night, from the hospital, on dial-up internet.
“In the hospital in Israel, the protocol
called for her being treated first with chemotherapy,
and then radiation, and then surgery — or maybe it
was surgery first, and then radiation — but mind you,
she was like two feet long, so radiation to her lower
fact, was the trigger for his investigation into overseas
options. “She completed chemo in Israel — the Israeli
doctors said that she couldn’t get any more chemo
— and then we came to the United States basically to
undergo surgery, and then potentially radiation.
“We came to the United States for two months, we
thought. The doctors here looked at her scans, and

Odel Grinstein’s daughter, now 10 1/2, required massive chemotherapy,
radiation, and surgery for her cancer. Today, she is the leading scorer
on her hockey team. Inset, as an infant in her hospital crib.
said, ‘No no no. She is not ready for surgery. The tumor
has been growing. It would be wrong to do surgery
now. We need to do chemo.’
“So I said, ‘But she got the maximum chemo she
could get in Israel!’
“And the doctor said, ‘Let me do my job.’
“That’s where experience comes into play,” Oded
continued. “Chemotherapy is a recipe. There’s some
of this, and some of that. They check with 50 kids, and
they take the average. But if the kid gets too much of
this or of that, it is toxic. And if it’s too little, it’s not
effective. So what if your kid is on one of the edges?
“That’s when the doctor can take the recipe and his
experience and intuition.” Medicine is as much art as
it is science — it is very much science but it also is very
much art.
“The doctor gave her nine times the dose she got in
Israel. He killed her — and he saved her.”
He remembers the first time he met Dr. Wexner.
“We were in the waiting room at Memorial Sloan Ket-
tering, waiting, anxious about our first meeting with
the doctor. We’re with the baby. They call us, and they
say that he’s waiting for us in Room 9. We enter the
area, and start walking down a long hallway, down to
the room, which was at the end.
“I see it at the end of the hallway, and I see someone
down on his knees and elbows, doing something on the
floor, and I’m sure that it was the janitor. And then he
JS-21
Cover Story
sees us, and he stands up, and he says, ‘Hi. I’m Dr. Wex-
ler.’ And I think, ‘This is the best doctor in the world?’
And he said, ‘Sorry. I saw that there was a baby coming
to see me, so I just wiped all the toys on the floor with
sanitizer.’ That’s Dr. Wexler.”
Despite her doctor’s sensitivity, the treatment neces-
sary to save the little girl’s life was hellish. “Luckily she
was a baby, and she doesn’t remember the suffering,”
Oded said. “But it was really really tough.
“Not to mention that my wife was 8 1/2 months preg-
nant with our second child — there are only a year
and three months between them. We timed the birth
between the chemo cycles. My wife was admitted to The Grinsteins decided to stay in the United States
Cornell Weill for ten days, and our other daughter was because they knew that Dr. Wexner saved their daugh-
across the street, at Memorial Sloan Kettering. ter’s life. “We know this is the guy we want to be near
“It was an emotional roller coaster.” if and when the cancer God forbid returns,” he said.
Now that ride has ended. “We stayed for a year. The “Cancers tend to come back. So I want to be a taxi ride
doctor said, ‘No surgery now, no radiation, we’re going away from him. If we go back to Israel, what happens if
back to chemo, so we did a whole other cycle, and then she has a relapse? So for the first year we lived in Man-
the doctor said, ‘Now it’s time for surgery to remove hattan, and the second year we got some courage and
the tumor.’” Then the little girl underwent radiation, moved to Queens, and then six years later we moved
then more chemo, and then, “in 2010, she was offi- to New Jersey.”
cially NED.” There was No Evidence of Disease. “Today, (As readers might notice, when he talks about them
at 10 1/2, she is the leading scorer on her hockey team,” for publication, Oded does not use his daughters’
her father said. names. He talks about the daughter who survived can-
“She’s an athlete, and a good student, and mainly cer all the time, but he balances his need to publicize
what she has, aside from a couple of marks on her body, his cause with his daughter’s need for privacy, and that,
is just a story. And she doesn’t remember any of it.” he says, demands that he refer to his daughters only by
JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019 21

Cover Story
Tobi Bressler
relationship, not by name.)
“I always joke that after their treat-
ment, teenagers and young adults
should be entitled to PTSD treatment,
but with babies, it’s the parents who
should get it,” Oded said. “But that was
our journey. I did my research, and then
I was in Memorial for almost a year,
and I became an expert in this specific
kind of cancer. I knew the treatments
and the protocols and the complica-
tions. I met other parents who became
experts on the specific kinds of cancer
they were dealing with — brain cancer
or lymphoma — and I thought to myself,
‘Where does all this information go at
the end of the journey? At the end, we
may have a child, or we may not have a
child. But we have all this information.’
“And I thought that it would be a total
waste to let all this information just stay
in our heads, so I decided to document
our journey, and the journeys of the
other people who were willing to share
it. I uploaded it on a website, and I called
it mychild’scancer.org.
“And then parents started contact-
ing me to ask for more information and
advice.” That how the website grew to
what it is today.
“This is how we took our lemonade
and made lemons out of it. Knowledge
can save lives, and I wanted all the par-
ents who are going through this process
to share information with other parents.
“When you go online to buy a car, you
can find all the details. When you want
to save your child’s life, the information
is not available. If you go online, prob-
ably the first search results would be
the hospitals with the biggest marketing
budgets. Where do you find the informa-
tion about what to do next? Where do
you find advice?
“This is the information that we have
on our website.”
Most of the parents who My Child’s
Cancer helps are Israeli. That’s because
most of them find the group through
word of mouth. It’s open to everyone
22 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019
JS-22
Avital Gaziel
who needs it, though, Oded said, and so
far the group has worked with children
from other countries as well.
Oded Grinstein still has his day job,
but he devotes much time and attention
to My Child’s Cancer. It is his passion.
It “has four programs,” he said.
The first is “personalized research.
“For each and every child, we build a
research team to find the best expert for
their own specific condition or complica-
This is how we
took our
lemonade and
made lemons
out of it.
Knowledge can
save lives.
tion. No two kids are the same. And it is
this program that has the biggest impact.
“Just a couple of examples, from the
last few months. An 11-year-old girl was
scheduled to have her leg amputated,
and information from us changed that
decision. January 26 was when she was
supposed to undergo the surgery, and
as of July she still has two legs.” That
decision was based not on an aversion
to the surgery, but to new information,
he added.
“There also was an 18-year-old girl
who has cancer in her lower back, and
she was scheduled to undergo a surgery
that would have left her disabled, para-
lyzed in at least one leg. It was not clear
how many internal organs would have
been affected. It was very complicated
surgery.
“Her parents didn’t want to go that
route,” at least without knowing that
it was inevitable, “so they contacted
us. We did our research, and brought
Michael Kasdan
second opinions from some of the best
doctors in the country.
“Eventually the decision was not to
do it. This girl is now receiving radiation
instead of surgery.” That was after con-
sulting with Dr. Wexner; it seems to have
been the right decision.
“We do personalized research,” Oded
said. “We have teams of cancer research-
ers, of doctors who can take a case, learn
it, just dive into it. And we also have a
network of parents, who have connec-
tions. I don’t know another organization
that does that.” Those researchers, like
Oded, are volunteers.
My Child’s Cancer’s researchers do
not offer advice, he added. “We find
information. We give the information.
We say, ‘Go discuss it with your doctor.’
Sometimes doctors are not open to sec-
ond opinions. If someone still wants to
pursue other options, then our second
program kicks in.”
That second program entails patient
advocacy and facilitating treatment. “We
represent patients in front of hospitals,”
Oded said. “In many cases, these are
international patients. Often they’re from
Israel. We help deal with the language
barrier. We help negotiate prices down.”
Some of the families who work with
My Child’s Cancer stay in their home
countries — most but not all are Israeli —
and they too need help negotiating a sys-
tem that works in their native language,
but not with their vocabulary.
In the third program, “when a family
needs to relocate, we help them to find
housing. Sometimes there are siblings;
we help them find schools and summer
camps. We host them during holidays
and Shabbat.”
And then, finally, “at the end of the
journey, we interview the parents. We
take all that information, curate it, put
it on the website, and make it avail-
able to everyone. We also have a You-
Tube channel with parents sharing this
information.
“That is our tikkun olam,” he added.
Limor Offer
It is the way that he, his board, and the
other people who work for My Child’s
Cancer can help heal the world, one sick
child at a time.
Tobi Bressler, who is on the group’s
board, is a registered nurse, and has a
doctorate in nursing, is the director of
nursing for oncology and clinical qual-
ity at Mount Sinai’s medical school, and
she is an assistant professor of medical
oncology there.
“I can see from the other end” — the
hospital end, that is, rather than the par-
ent’s — “the need for something like My
Child’s Cancer,” Dr. Bressler said. “How
can I not do this? As a Jewish woman,
this is about doing chesed. This is the
ultimate form of chesed. It is an oppor-
tunity to be part of people’s lives at a
time when they need it the most.
“It is humbling.
“Oded is inspiring, and his story is
profound, but it is not unique, although
what he did with it is unique. His experi-
ence is the experience of many families.
Of too many families.”
Her job, she said, is to “provide a clin-
ical lens, so Avital and I” — that’s Avital
Gaziel, another board member — “look
through the most recent data, the most
recent studies, the most recent clinical
trials” — and after they conclude that the
information is accurate and applicable,
they translate it into a form that parents
can use, and give it to them.
What she does, Dr. Bressler said, “is
combine science and love.” What the
organization does is “an act of loving
kindness, through science.
“Parents have a lot of questions,” she
said. “It sometimes can be hard to trans-
late everything into terms parents can
understand. You walk into a physician’s
office, and you leave with a thousand
questions.”
She also can provide the kind of con-
nections that parents should not need
— but this is the all-too-real world, and
they do need them. “Because I am in
the health care field, I have worked with
 JS-23

Cover Story

many of those providers,” Dr. Bressler
said. “We all know each other. So when
someone calls a physician’s office or a
hospital or a clinic and says I need an
appointment, they say come in six weeks.
But if you know someone on the inside,
you can send them a note, or a text, or
give them a call, and I say I know this
family — and they get seen right away.
“We can use the connections that we
have through our day jobs to do import-
ant work for the most vulnerable.” For
desperately sick children.
“This is a very family-centered
approach,” Dr. Bressler said. “We are
not only caring for the child, and inves-
tigating the science for the child, we are
taking care of the whole family. We are
creating a cocoon, a support system. We
are making a place for them.”
These are Jewish values, she added.
“The strongest one is tikkun olam. Of
healing the world. We live our lives
through the service of others. That is
not only a Jewish concept. That is an
everybody concept. But it is also a Jew-
ish concept.
“What really drives this mission, is
that these children, no matter where
they live — they are ours. We have to do
right by them.
“It is hard work,” Dr. Bressler con-
cluded. “There is a lot of heavy emo-
tional lifting. But when you have the
opportunity to know that you have had
a small part in making someone’s expe-
rience just a drop easier, it is worth all
the tears.”
Avital Gaziel earned her doctorate in
molecular oncology and immunology at
NYU’s medical school, and she also is on
My Child’s Cancer’s board. Like Oded,
she was born in Israel.
She’s a cancer researcher; after she
finished her post-doctoral work, also at
NYU, she worked with pharmaceutical
companies, doing communications. “And
then I started my own business,” she said.
That’s Trialjectory, where she’s head of
medical affairs. “Throughout this pro-
cess, I lost my mom to cancer,” she said.
“So I was kind of trying to make a differ-
ence from the scientific point of view. I
was trying to do something good with
my knowledge. And then a mutual friend
introduced Oded and me. The friend said
that Oded needed help figuring out the
whole clinical part of things.
“I had that knowledge from my work
with pharmaceutical companies. I knew
about clinical trials, and how cancer
patients are treated. I know that space
very well. We met in 2015, and I was
extremely moved by his story and by
his journey, and I understood that there
was something that I could do.” Now, as
a volunteer, Dr. Gaziel does the person-
alized research that helps parents, their
children, and their doctors learn what
specific treatment might be most likely
to work for them.
Her own business, Trialjectory, is not
nonprofit, but it fits in with her volun-
teer work. “We are using artificial intel-
ligence to match cancer patients to
clinical trials,” she said. “So what I do
manually and very specifically for kids,
we are trying to automate and democ-
ratize for the people across the world.”
Remember how important person-
alized connections are for the parents
of sick children? That’s true now, but if
Dr. Gaziel’s company is successful, that
might cease to be true some day. That’s
where the democratization comes in.
But it’s different for children now,
because — happily — there are so very
few of them who have some of these
very rare illnesses. “It is very hard to dig-
italize this right now,” she said. “Every
case is so specific. We have to look at
their medical records, and find this
one surgeon who has done this surgery
twice in his or her entire career, and this
would be the third surgery.
“It’s not like, say, breast cancer, where
there is so much information that we can
digitalize it.
“With my company, we are trying to
eliminate the need to know someone.
We are trying to eliminate the need to
have someone like me. But until then, I
am committed to doing this.
“Losing a kid is not what nature
intended for us. It was such a great loss
to lose my mom, but that is the cycle of
life. When you see these parents strug-
gling to save their kid’s life, and the kid
is 4 years old, it breaks my heart. That is
not right, and it needs to be fixed.
“That is my personal connection.”
Michael Kasdan of Maplewood — who
went to the Frisch Academy in Para-
mus for high school, he said parentheti-
cally— also is on the board. He’s an intel-
lectual property lawyer, not a medical

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 JS-24

Cover Story/Local

professional; he is as passionate about the mission of My
Child’s Cancer as Dr. Gaziel and Dr. Bressler are, but he
helps in another way. “My focus is on development,” he
said.
To back up, Mr. Kasdan’s connection to My Child’s Can-
cer, like Dr. Gaziel’s and Dr. Bressler’s, began with Oded
Grinstein, whose affect clearly is charismatic. “I met Oded
when he was working at the Israeli economic ministry,
and I was focused on doing an IP for startups and entre-
preneurs,” he said. Although Mr. Kasdan then was working
with another nonprofit, the two men kept in touch. “I don’t
have a personal connection to pediatric cancer, but I was
drawn to what he was doing,” Mr. Kasdan said. “His story
is really compelling, and I love the concept of using infor-
mation from parents’ experiences to help other patients.
“My day job is fun and interesting, but I tend to look out-
side it for my real passion projects.”
So he became a board member.
“We are looking to grow,” he said. “We are getting to be
the size, and we are getting to have the track record, where
I think we can reach out to corporate and private
foundations. Until now, our most effective develop-
ment has been with people who are interested in
Jewish causes — individuals and families who we’ve
known through personal connections.
“I’ve always been told to have one big event a
year, but we’ve found that what’s most effective for
us is to have small events, either a breakfast in the
city or living-room events.
“That’s because every time you put someone in
a room with Oded, that gets them. That reaches
them.”
He works on My Child’s Cancer because, he said,
“to me it is the ultimate tikkun olam. It is being
there. It is the community aspect, of relying on a
Jewish community that always is going to be there
for us, across the world.
“At first, I thought that I had a resistance to chari-
ties that seemed to be only Jewish, that seemed only
tribal,” he added. “But now, with the perspective I
have on life, I think that the community aspect of it
is important. There is something about being able
Jewish understanding of community only helps — and
it helps everybody.
Limor Offer, another Israeli native, lives in Closter;
unlike the board members, she is an employee of My
Child’s Cancer. “In January, I started as the program
director,” she said. “I am responsible for the family
coordinators. There are five of them, wonderful women
who help our families in New Jersey and New York.”
Most of the work that she and the family coordinators
do is related to comfort, not research.
“We have families who come to the United States for
treatment, and some that stay in Israel,” she said. “If
they stay in Israel, we support them. We are in touch
with them every other week, to see if they need a sec-
ond opinion or to check about insurance, or anything
else they need.
“If they come here, it is complicated. Not all insur-
ance companies cover it. We don’t encourage any
family to come to the United States for treatment. We
listen to them and offer options.” She and the fam-
ily coordinators help the families who come to this
country “find apartments, rent cars, find a school. We

ammy’s to come from Israel to America, to a scary place, to invite them to Shabbat dinner. We are like a second
Sammy’s
S have someplace to go for Shabbat or holidays.” That
matters, he said; and, he pointed out, My Child’s
family for them.
“We also have families who came here and then go
Cancer isn’t only for Jews anyway. But having that back to Israel when the treatment is done. They need
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www.inapoli.com Peace
FROM PAGE 15
then continuing to do a month of reserve duty each

Solved!
year until they turn 40. So the least we can do is to offer
them one week of our time, we told them, to help them
Overwhelmed? gain some peace of mind, and a healthier emotional life
going forward.
It became apparent that the vast majority of Israe-
Out of control? lis know very little about the Jewish community in the
diaspora. Our guests seemed oblivious to the vital role
Craving shalom that Israel plays in the lives of our families and in our
bayit? children’s education. I wondered how is it that most
Israelis are so unaware of the centrality of Israel to our
lives. And what can be done about that? We implored
our guests to become ambassadors for us and to let
(201) 364-6833 ! LGOrganized.com their friends and families know that Israel is so near
and dear to our hearts.
Helping You As one of the hosts so poignantly said, “Thank you
Make Space for Blessings!
for giving us the opportunity to give back to you, and

24 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019

 JS-25

Sandi M. Malkin, LL C
help with follow-up.”
Ms. Offer finds the work emotionally compelling.
Interior Designer
She also tells the story of the 18-year-old girl who Dr.
Wexner saved from the surgery that most likely would (former interior designer of model
have paralyzed her, instead giving her radiation. rooms for NY’s #1 Dept. Store)
She also tells the story of “a family that went back
to Israel four months ago.
“The kid was nine months old, and was isolated
in the hospital for chemo for almost a month.” This
For a totally new look using
was back in Israel.
“His mom and I became really close. We are now
your furniture or starting anew.
friends. And she called me right after he was released
from the hospital, and she told me that not only was Staging also available
he out of the hospital, but, she said, ‘Today I pre-
pared dinner for my family, and I made a salad. 973-535-9192
“‘I cut a tomato for the salad, and I felt like I was
normal again.’
“And she told me that, and I was listening to her
and crying. It was very emotional. It was so simple.
She just cut a tomato for a salad.”
Had it not been for My Child’s Cancer, and for
Oded Grinstein and the work he’s done, that mother
might not have been cutting that tomato.
It’s pure tikkun olam.
Learn more about My Child’s Cancer at www.
mychildscancer.org.

Soli Foger, center, gives some of the vets a

boat tour of New York Harbor.

in this small way to slightly assuage our own guilt that

you, in the IDF, are carrying the entire burden of pro-
tecting our homeland.”
So not only did they gain peace of mind, we too
gained a small measure of inner peace.
On the following Sunday, as the bus pulled out of
the Ahavath Torah parking lot, taking the group back
to the airport, we were like a group of parents waving
wildly to our children as they departed for camp. The
IDF veterans waved back at us, their hands flailing
out of the open windows, as they tried to catch a last
glimpse of their host families of the past week. Those
host families now felt truly like extended family. They
are after all, acheinu kol beit Yisrael, and these are
relationships that will continue way past the Peace
of Mind program in Englewood.
While we in the Ahavath Torah community
touched 17 lives, the Peace of Mind veterans, in the
course of one week, touched our entire community.
We look forward to the privilege of hosting yet
another unit of released IDF combat soldiers from
the Peace of Mind program next year, and the year
after that, and the year after that… If you’d like to get
involved, please reach out to me at Drfoger@gmail.
com

JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019 25


Editorial
Try a podcast!
W which side is God on?
hen I was little, my father would talk about the
radio. That was the medium of his youth, even
though he also loved the movies he saw the
Loew’s (pronounced Low-eez) Pitkin in Brook-
lyn. That was a movie palace, but the radio played to the pal-
ace in his head. His imagination, he told me dreamily, could
build a better, grander, more royal palace than even the Pitkin.
I think of my father often as I listen to podcasts.
I know that some people listen to podcasts as they talk, mix-
ing the sounds coming from their car radios with horns and
turn signals and conversations with their kids. But I listen to
them as I walk, just the voice coming directly into my ears and
me. (And yes traffic sounds, and yes dogs, and yes people on
the streets, but it’s all filtered, and I can make it all go away.)
This week, the new season of the English-language Israeli
podcast Israel Story began. The couldn’t-be-anyone-else’s voice
of Mishy Harman, with his mix of almost entirely unaccented
English (there are tiny vowel shifts that occasionally gives him
away as not American, but they’re rare) studded with abso-
lutely unmistakably Israeli Hebrew when he mentions names
or places, told a story that had absolutely everything.
Israel Story is a marvel. It proclaims itself apolitical, but for
an Israeli production to be entirely, truly apolitical it would
have to be stupid, and Israel Story is anything but stupid. It’s
brilliant. It’s apolitical in that it doesn’t take sides on partisan
issues, but it’s deeply political in that it considers a question
from all sides and manages to be sympathetic and, somehow,
warmly unjudgmental to everyone its interviewers get on tape.
This week’s Israel Story traces a Hungarian Auschwitz survi-
vor whose life was Dickensian even before the Holocaust, and
then plunged into hell. It tracks her family-less, friendless trek
through the DP camps and then to Israel, and it follows her
from two marriages to two Muslims — one of them abused her
and the other loved her; what she felt toward either is not at all
clear — to childbirth at the Kotel the day it was liberated, with
the help of the soldiers who had just reached it, to life in Mea
Shearim. It’s an extraordinary story, deeply human, and also
deeply Israeli.
My father, who also loved tinkering with radios — I spent
many bored-to-tears childhood mornings with him in Lafay-
ette Radio as he worked his way through rack after rack of tran-
sistors — died without ever listening to a podcast, much less
figuring out how they worked. But I know that he would have
loved their combination of intimacy and sweep, their appeal
to our imagination, their letting us make our own pictures out
of their words.
If you listen to podcasts — or maybe even more if you don’t
— try Israel Story. See what pictures you can make for yourself
with its words in your ears. -JP
Jewish Editor
Joanne Palmer
Standard Associate Editor
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James L. Janoff
Associate Publisher Emerita
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26 Jewish Standard JULY 12, 2019
JS-26*
keeping the faith
War is hell — but
I
“ ’ve seen thousands of men lying on the
ground, their dead faces looking up at the
skies,” Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
told the Michigan Military Academy gradu-
ating class in June 1879. “I tell you, war is Hell!”
The Civil War general, who is considered one of
the earliest advocates of “total war,” in which every-
thing is fair game, including attacks on civilian infra- after the Great Flood (see Genesis 9:6).
structure and resources, surely could not have imag-
ined how hellish war would become 140 years later.
He also could not have imagined how widespread
war would become in the world.
In his world, wars happened, but they were not
ubiquitous in any sense, they did not run concur- world (see Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5).
rently, and they did not go on for interminable
periods of time.
Today, war is a fact of life in the
world, and “thousands of men lying
on the ground” has been replaced by
millions, and includes women and
children too. Some 600,000 peo-
ple died in the war Sherman fought
in. More than 100 million people —
civilians as well as military — died in
the 20th century’s two world wars,
Korea, and Vietnam combined. Today,
wars are being fought in Afghani- Shammai
stan, Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, Engelmayer
and Ukraine, with more than a mil-
lion people dead so far and with no
end in sight on any front. Civil war may break out
at any time in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Venezuela.
War between the United States and Iran remains a
looming possibility, and could involve other nations, he wrote, “is to be taken as murder.”
including Saudi Arabia and Israel, as well as several
U.S. allies in Europe. If Hezbollah ever succeeds in
carrying out a terrorist attack here, we could expect
the United States to bring that war home to Lebanon.
And, of course, Israel is in an unending war against
Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas.
In virtually every conflict, God is invoked by
those who start the war, and by those who claim
they are merely carrying out God’s will by fight-
ing to stop it. Either way, everyone, it seems,
knows God’s mind when it comes to war. They
Shammai Engelmayer is a rabbi and adult education teacher in Bergen County. His website is www.shammai.org.
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have no interest, however, in really following
what God actually has to say.
Those who “know” that God “opposes” war are
quick to note that all human beings are created in
God’s image (see Genesis 1:26-27). Thus, to maim
or kill a fellow human is to commit sacrilege against
God’s very own likeness. God said as much to Noah
After Cain kills Abel in Genesis 4, God confronts
Cain with the words, “your brother’s bloods cry out
to Me,” rather than “your brother’s blood.” From
this we learn that for someone who destroys a single
individual it is as if that person destroyed an entire
God, in fact, hates killing so much, so the argu-
ment goes, He even tried —unsuccessfully — to
keep humans or animals from killing
for food (see Genesis 1:29-30). This
changed after the Great Flood, but
only because God recognized that
human nature is baser than He hoped,
forcing Him to make some conces-
sions and set new rules.
God’s aversion to killing for food,
however, never changed. This is
brought home in Leviticus 17:3-4,
where we are told that a person who
kills an animal for food without some
kind of sacred justification, “blood
shall be imputed to that man; he has
shed blood….” The late 19th century founder of rab-
binic moralist moralist, Samson Raphael Hirsch, put
it bluntly. Killing an animal for no “sacred” purpose,
As for killing animals with a sacred purpose, the
Torah suggests that sacrifices were yet another con-
cession on God’s part. His preference, we are led to
believe (and as Maimonides, the Rambam, argues in
several places), was prayer.
To all this, add God’s aversion to killing in general.
We see this in the laws God gave prohibiting mur-
der, severely restricting the taking of human life in
general, and otherwise protecting the sanctity and
dignity of the human being. Thus, “there can be no
doubt” where God stands.
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Rebecca Kaplan Boroson

It is a pretty persuasive argument,
but only if we disregard everything
in the Torah that says the opposite.
For example, while God said “You
shall not murder” (see Exodus 20:13),
He did not issue a blanket ban on
killing. Only moments after proscrib-
ing murder, God makes clear that a
distinction exists between murder
and manslaughter (see Exodus 21:13).
Then, in Exodus 22:1-2, He asserts
that a difference exists between jus-
tifiable homicide and cold-blooded
murder. God does not like violence
and bloodshed, that is true, but He
also is a realist.
As for war, it was God, after
all, who literally sank the advanc-
ing Egyptian army at the Red Sea.
“The Lord is a man of war,” Moses
declared at the time (see Exodus
15:3-4). Only weeks later came the
war against Amalek, an unbeliev-
ably cruel enemy. When it ended,
we are told that “the Lord will have
war with Amalek from generation
to generation.” (See Exodus 17:9-16.)
Later on (Deuteronomy 25:17-19), we
are told that God’s war with Amalek
was ours to carry out: “You shall blot
out the remembrance of Amalek
from under heaven.”
God also tells the Israelites of the
Exodus that they must make war on
the seven nations that populated
Canaan at the time, although this law
was limited to those nations and no
longer applies. (See the Babylonian
Talmud tractate Yoma 54a and Ram-
bam’s Mishnah Torah “The Laws of
Kings and Their Wars” 5:4.) Never-
theless, it is hard to make a case that
God is anti-war when He Himself
mandates some conflicts.
Based on all the Torah says on
either side, Jewish law deduces that
only two kinds of war are acceptable:
the obligatory war and the discretion-
ary but divinely sanctioned one.
The discretionary war that has no
sanction is an “illegal war.” David’s
war of conquest against Syria may
have been one such war (see Sifre
to Deuteronomy, Piska 51). At least
some of the wars now being fought
fall under this category, no matter
what its combatants claim. There are
no “rules of engagement” for an ille-
gal war because there should be no
engagement at all. Any deaths that
occur in the course of such a war are
considered to be outright murder.
The Talmud explains the two
legitimate categories (see BT Sotah
44b) in this way: “The wars waged
by Joshua to conquer [Canaan]
were obligatory…, [while] the wars
waged [with divine sanction] by the
House of David [to complete the
conquest of Canaan which Joshua
JS-27*
failed to do] were discretionary….”
Regarding the obligatory wars,
the eternal war against Amalek is
also included, since it is mandated
by the Torah. That would seem to
shut down the possibility of obliga-
tory wars in our day, since neither
the Canaanite nations nor Amalek
exist any longer. Rambam, however,
includes as obligatory a war waged
to fend off an attacking army (see MT
Kings 5:1). Elsewhere, he refers to
the defensive war as a “commanded”
one, in an effort to distinguish it
from the “obligatory” war. Ostensi-
bly, he bases this on Numbers 10:9,
which recognizes the need to “go to
war in your land against an enemy
who oppresses you.”
Pre-emptive strikes against an
enemy who poses a credible and
somewhat immediate threat falls
under Rambam’s definition of a
defensive war.
That leaves us with the hala-
chic rules of engagement. Rule
No. 1 requires that the enemy be
offered more than enough seri-
ous chances to “make peace,” as
required by Deuteronomy 20:10.
Rambam, in MT, Kings, 6:1, claims
that this is a requirement in both
sanctioned wars, but others dis-
agree with him as far as obligatory
wars are concerned.
The second rule, as Rambam for-
mulates them, is that once an enemy
is surrounded, there must be a way
left open for innocent civilians and
even faint-hearted combatants to
escape (see MT, Kings, 6:7), some-
thing severely lacking in modern
wars and even, perhaps, in Sher-
man’s idea of “total war.” Sadly, Ram-
bam offers no suggestion on how
such a rule can be made practical.
The third rule is to leave stand-
ing the fruit-bearing trees of the
enemy, as demanded by Deu-
teronomy 20:19—a law violated
when “scorched earth” is part of
the war plan. Says Rambam, “any-
one who breaks utensils, tears gar-
ments, destroys buildings, stops
up a stream, or ruins food with
destructive intent (derech hash’cha-
tah) transgresses the command….”
(See MT Kings 8 and 10.) Obviously,
only that which is used as cover for
aggression is fair game. There is no
question, however, that this rule is
being violated in every current war
as it was in past ones.
“War is hell,” Sherman said,
without understanding just how
hellish war can be. Even though
some wars are necessary, however,
it should be obvious that, at least
the way wars are fought these days,
God would agree with him.
Opinion
A late-life vaccine and
the virus of anti-Semitism
A
few weeks ago, I thought I
should check if I needed a
measles vaccine.
Measles, once a childhood
scourge, has become a viral infection on
my social media feeds — not to mention in
real life, too — and somewhat of a personal
obsession. I didn’t really think I needed
to be vaccinated. But I live in Rockland
County, and measles is having a bit of a
renaissance here.
First, let me categorically state that my when vaccine hesitancy takes hold. It
mom is super diligent, and I know with-
out question that I must have had a vac-
cine when I was a kid. I vividly remember
the pain, itch, and remaining scar of the
smallpox vaccine; the tiny multiple tines
of the tuberculosis one; the sweet sugar
syrup for polio; and the flyers they sent
home from school about getting a new-
fangled shot against rubella
— German measles — when
I was in third grade. So I’m
sure that at some point,
good ol’ garden-variety mea-
sles had been taken care of.
But the local measles
hysteria was reaching a
fever pitch. All the com-
munity board groups on
Facebook have been filled Marla Cohen
with anti-vaxxers — reli-
gious and not — insisting on
their right to infect me and mine, facing
off against the pro-vaccine anti-Semites
who have decided that measles is just one
more awful thing that charedi Jews have
brought to the world.
In the midst of this, I learned that those had a stunningly low vaccination rate
of us born in the 1960s just might want to
get checked for immunity. Since I live near
a measles hotspot, I asked my doctor. She
agreed. When the results of my titer test
popped up in the online app the medical
practice uses for communications, it bore
a rather blunt note at the top:
You need to get vaccinated.
I was a bit shocked. I hadn’t really
thought I was going to need it. I imag-
ined I was being kind of snarky, having an
over-the-top overreaction to the escalat-
ing numbers of measles cases so close to
where I live. But clearly, time was up on
my resistance.
I got the vaccine. My arm was sore.
I moved on. I now don’t have to worry
about contracting measles while kosher
food shopping in the Orthodox areas
Marla Cohen is a freelance writer. She lives closed the pools during the summer in
in Rockland County.
The opinions expressed here are those of the authors, not necessarily those of the newspaper’s editors, publishers,
or other staffers.We welcome letters to the editor. Send them to jstandardletters@gmail.com.
of the county where the disease is most
prevalent, having gained a foothold late
last year after visitors to Israel brought
back the unwelcome souvenir. Currently,
the number of cases in Rockland County
stands at 275 confirmed. That’s a quarter
of the total in this largest outbreak — at
1,095 cases — in the United States since
1992, and since the measles was declared
eliminated here in 2000.
But elimination is a porous concept
seems to have traction in insular com-
munities whatever their flavor — Amish,
Nation of Islam, far-right Texans, charedi
Jews, progressive leftists. These groups
must create eternal feedback loops
of misinformation within their tribes,
which no amount of data or science
seem able to undo.
In Rockland County, the
vaccine issues in the charedi
community did not give
birth to anti-Semitism — that
flourishes over a myriad
of other unrelated issues,
including schools, taxes,
and development. But it
has allowed what was there
to spread like a contagion.
Comments on social media
go unchecked. “Dirty self-
ish measles people” is one
of the more printable ones.
The Luddite mindset extends to the
local “progressive” community in Rock-
land. At the start of the measles outbreak,
Green Meadow, the local Waldorf school,
of 42.3 percent for the 2017-2018 school
year, according to the New York State
Department of Health. That was the very
lowest in the county. Some 20 Green
Meadow parents sued the county health
department when their unvaccinated kids
were banned from attending school. But
because the actual measles cases stem
from the charedi community, the idea
persists that they are the font of anti-
vaxx fervor. You don’t see anyone writing
“dirty selfish measles people” about natu-
ral-fiber yoga-mat Green Meadow parents.
I never imagined that I’d ever see
people so dead-set against one of the
greatest feats of modern medicine. Vac-
cines are a victim of their own success
— they’ve eradicated the very evidence
that proves why they’re necessary. My
mom remembers polio outbreaks that
See vaccine page 29
Jewish Standard JULY 12, 2019 27

Opinion
We need positive reasons to be Jewish
J ewish communal priorities are in need of
re-evaluation.
In the alphabet soup of Jewish organizations, it
seems many are dedicated to transmitting external
Jewish values based a negative out-group identity, while
fewer are geared toward incubating a sense of positive
in-group identity and knowledge base. The former is an
attempt to scare people into identity, the latter inspire
them. Without a positive and information-based identity,
value judgments about living an internal and external
Jewish life are impossible, as Jewish values are reduced
to screaming matches between the advocates of different
threatening issues arguing over which is more the oppo-
site of what it means to be Jewish.
There are two main culprits.
First is the misguided use of the Holocaust as a de facto
reason to be Jewish. Stemming from a rational desire to
engage in Holocaust education, the Holocaust often is
used as a substitute for Jewish education and quickly
becomes an emotional bludgeon with which to attempt
to beat Jewish identity in. With the rise of prominent
global anti-Semites, from Louis Farrakhan in the United
States to U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, from
the genocidal ayatollahs who rule Iran to the polling
across Middle Eastern expat communities that show sky-
high anti-Semitism, we must always remain on guard. But
failing to emphasize the amazing history of the Jewish
Goal-setting for life … the bigger picture
S
ometimes I feel as if I have several separate
lives.
I have my life as a mom of four kids, my life
as a single woman working full time, my life
as an elected official, my life as a friend and a partner
and a community member and an elementary school
parent, and, and, and...
I’m not sure how most people manage the juggling
act that comes with adulthood, but for me, I seem to
be best at addressing things in bite-sized pieces. Often
this works great — I dig in, chewing each individual bite
of my many separate lives as I tackle one challenge at
a time. Occasionally, though, these small, easy-to-man-
age bits come at me all at once, and I end up with a
mouth so full of bite-sized pieces of my life that I am
worried I will choke on the sheer volume of them.
It is precisely at these moments that I wonder how
realistic it is to try to unravel the many intercon-
nected and complicated parts of my life into seem-
ingly easy-to-tackle buckets, and why I prefer this
over taking the broad view of my life in all its mess-
iness and plotting a more strategic path forward. In
my professional and volunteer leadership positions,
I advocate goal-setting, benchmarking, and making
data-driven decisions. But somehow when it comes
to managing my own life (personal and professional
together), long ago I fell into survival mode and hav-
en’t yet begun to plan to strategically and methodi-
cally meet my life goals, year after year.
I recognize, of course, that future planning is a lux-
ury that some who are struggling to survive don’t have.
Perhaps this is why it’s taken me so long to begin to flirt
with the idea, beginning only now, at a point where I
28 Jewish Standard JULY 12, 2019
JS-28*
people, our triumphs as well as our trag-
edies, does the community a disservice.
Second is the hyperbolic screaming of
the holier-than-thou crowd. This group
generally can be broken down into two
camps, which has different beliefs but
similar operating procedures. While
the first half is religious and the sec-
ond political, both claim that anyone
who does not see the world the same Joshua
way they do and anyone disagrees with Einstein
them are not being truthful to Judaism.
Whether they are religious scolds or the
bellowing political activists, both define being Jewish
by what they say it is not.
The empty negative rhetoric of the Jewish professional
chicken little, whether noxiously yelling in the face of
passersby that their take on their one momentarily pop-
ular issue defines Judaism, or of the religious scold, is
the same genre of negative-based totalitarian argument.
Moreover, they take many socio-political issues of the
contemporary era and yell that Judaism is unilaterally
and completely on one side or the other of that issue,
defining out of existence those who disagree agree with
them from a Jewish perspective and failing to define in
anything but negative terms what Judaism and Jewish
identity mean.
am not (currently) struggling with all of
the overwhelming hardships that keep a
person frantically paddling to stay afloat
rather than adjusting the sails for slight
course-correction. And knowing that I
could be thrown back into the deep end
at any time is just as good a reason as any
to attempt to tackle this question right
now, while I have, in theory anyway,
some time to map out what I really want Cheryl Weiner
my life to look like. Rosenberg
It’s funny, in a way, to think about
your daily existence in terms of a stra-
tegic plan, but, then again, don’t we all have bucket
lists? The real question is how these lists of things we
hope to do before we die tie in to our life goals. Are
these our measurable outcomes? Are they perhaps a
reflection of our priorities?
Instead of checking specific things off our list, which goals, grand achievements, and world surroundings
feels great but seems all too similar to approaching
separate parts of our life in bite-sized pieces without
regulating the pace, why can’t we instead plan for the
achievement of our life goals in a more methodical
and strategic manner?
If my bucket list consists of things like eat at this
place, travel to that place, and experience that amaz-
ing adventure, my strategic life plan probably would
contain more all-encompassing goals, like “make
meaningful memories and create solid relationships
with my children” and “ensure that I surround myself
with people who make life happy and joyful.” Essen-
tially, when I break it down, to-do lists — even really
awesome and awe-inspiring bucket lists — are more
The Jewish community needs more
positive-based and educational focused
communal priorities. Efforts must be
made to ensure every Jewish family that
wants to send their child to a Jewish
school be able to, and that Jewish camps,
youth groups, and supplementary
schools are expanded. The challenges
ahead are substantive and complicated,
but a Jewry that is taught almost exclu-
sively by threats, and that is told by the
holier-than-thou crowd that they must
agree with them or they are not Jewish,
essentially is being encouraged to abandon Judaism.
On the other hand, a community that is educated
and engaged with the full spectrum of Jewish history
and has a positive reason to continue being Jewish has
a much greater chance of celebrating its identity, even
in the face of adversity.
Joshua Einstein is a founding member of the Hudson
County Regional Jewish Council, an elected member
of the New Jersey Republican State Committee, sits
on the executive board of the New Jersey State Young
Republicans, and has been published in more than 14
newspapers and websites on Jewish and political topics.
about things and experiences, whereas
goal-based life plans trend more to issues
of the overall quality of living.
I imagine I am in good company when
I say that when I think about what I truly
want for my life, it is more about people
and relationships than it is about things
that can be checked off a bucket list.
Strategic planning for a business or an
organization is mostly about measurable
impact and financial sustainability or
success. To relate this to our lives, I imag-
ine we similarly would want to measure
in terms of how we impact others — our families, our
friends, and the sustainability of positive relationships.
I have started to map out a plan for my goals in life, and
it looks much less like a bucket list and much more like
a Venn diagram — one where family and relationship
overlap in the middle, in a place defined as joy.
I am choosing to pursue happiness and joy with the
same kind of aggressive plan I would use to achieve
higher profits for a business, and I hope that others will
join me in taking a leadership role in choosing the qual-
ity of the life they want to lead and live.
Cheryl Weiner Rosenberg lives in Englewood where she is a
council member representing the First Ward and a member
of Kehilat Kesher Synagogue. She’s the senior director of
marketing and communications for Prizmah: Center for
Jewish Day Schools, the immediate past president of Ben
Porat Yosef in Paramus, and a long-time activist in the areas
of civil liberties, equality, and women’s rights.
 JS-29*

Opinion

Our duty to accept each other

I
recently had the honor
of raising a flag in
honor of Pride Month
in my hometown
of Englewood. It was one
of many events across the
county where family, friends,
and neighbors came together
in the celebration of a value
that we all share — love. Michael
Pride celebrates the Wildes
achievements of the LGBTQ
community and invites all of
us to consider how far we have come as a nation and the
journey that still remains. Pride events ask us to consider
the often-lonely fight against intolerance and discrimina-
tion, reminding us that acceptance and diversity are truly
the qualities that make America great.
On May 31, 2016, President Barack Obama pro-
claimed June to be Pride month, and it so happens
that this year marks the 50th anniversary of Stonewall,
which propelled the gay rights movement forward and
was a turning point of sorts for LGBTQ acceptance
in America. It was a struggle that unfolded on busy
streets and in quiet homes, in raucous rallies and aus-
tere courtrooms. Across countless flickering screens we Michael Wildes, right, with members and support staff of the Englewood police department.
watched as private lives became public policy.
Throughout our nation’s history, long before Mar-
sha P. Johnson threw the first brick at the Stonewall
Inn on June 27, 1969, the LGBTQ community struggled
with hatred and hardship. The riots that followed were As a person of faith, the principles of
a response to the persecution and violence that kept
countless men and women closeted, fearful of the con-
compassion and acceptance have been
sequences that would follow simply for living their lives fundamental to my understanding of the world,
honestly and without malice.
Even after Stonewall and the resulting achievements, consistent refrains in the lessons I learned
like the decriminalization of homosexuality and the enact-
ment of laws to protect people regardless of their sexual
from my rabbis, family, and community.
orientation or sexual identity, the LGBTQ community faced
incredible adversity. The community battled the AIDS epi- concepts tested under the law. Countless articles have could be free to worship, to love, and to live freely and
demic and a government initially indifferent to the dire been written criticizing the U.S. Citizenship and Immi- without fear. We also must be prepared to extend this
need for treatment and a cure. Its members challenged gration Services (and I would know — I’ve written a few acceptance to those outside our shores, welcoming
Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell because it institutionalized discrimi- of them), but to the service’s credit, it was prepared to in those who might face abuse and even death for no
nation and marginalization. They stood strong in the face support same-sex marriage even before the Defense of other crime than being true to themselves.
of public contempt, which claimed the lives of innocent Marriage Act was struck down in 2013. Moreover, recent Regardless of the flag that is flying or the month of the
young victims like Matthew Shepard, Brandon Teena, and affirmative asylum decisions handed down by immigra- year, we have a duty to accept each other. If we can do
Sakia Gunn. And in what has forever redefined true equal- tion courts around the country show a growing under- that, we can all share in the pride that a courageous few
ity, they fought for — and won — the right for everyone to standing of the humanitarian issues faced by members of fought for — a fight that continues to this day.
marry and be recognized as equal under the law. the LGBTQ community around the world, and the need
As a person of faith, the principles of compassion and to protect those most at risk from persecution. Michael Wildes is the mayor of Englewood, a member of
acceptance have been fundamental to my understanding America is many things, but at our core we are a col- Congregation Ahavath Torah there, and the author of “Safe
of the world, consistent refrains in the lessons I learned lection of people who respect and seek out love. As Haven in America: Battles to Open the Golden Door.” He is
from my rabbis, family, and community. In my profes- we evolve as a nation, we must continue to build upon a former federal prosecutor and an adjunct professor of
sional life as an immigration attorney, I have seen those the successes of earlier generations, who fought so we immigration law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

Vaccine
from page 27
Houston, where she grew up.
The last known case of smallpox in
the world occurred in Somalia in 1977,
according to the World Health Orga-
nization. People a generation older
than I actually might remember the
ravages of these diseases. But today,
we can be cavalier about protecting
ourselves and our children — or con-
versely, infecting everyone else —
because these diseases are phantoms.
None of us has seen measles since the
last of the baby boomers (of which I
am one) were, well, babies.
New York State just passed legisla-
tion banning the religious exemption
for vaccine avoidance, something
that had not seemed possible until
the breadth of this outbreak. It is a
relief, and yet the objections cast as
an assault on religious or parental
freedom remain. There does not seem
to be any statistic you can throw at
determined anti-vaxxers to change
their minds. What exactly is unper-
suadable about this: In every 1,000
cases of measles, one or two people
Jewish Standard JULY 12, 2019 29
who contract the disease will die from
it, even with the best of care, accord-
ing to the CDC. Deaths from the mea-
sles vaccine? One in 1.5 million.
The risk/benefit analysis is obvi-
ous. Get the vaccine. And when they
come up with a vaccine for virulent
anti-Semitism?
We could use that, too.

Letters
Offcials urged to remedy
plight of immigrant kids
My family and I appreciate the hard work and dedica-
tion of Senator Booker, Representativer Gottheimer,
and Senator Menendez to public service. Right now,
I’m appalled by the humanitarian crisis at our border
and the children being separated from their parents
and detained without adequate basic necessities like
drinking water, soap, and diapers.
As a parent, I’m disgusted. As an American, I’m
ashamed. I urge my elected officials to use their posi-
tion of power to raise their voice to help these most
vulnerable people. Their voice matters, and the con-
stituents of New Jersey are watching. It is essential
to remedy this terrible situation as soon as possible.
Nessa Liben
Teaneck
Does Rabbi Boteach really
love all Jews unconditionally?
Rabbi Boteach portrays himself as the greatest
defender of Jews and Jewish interests in the United
States (“The liberal crusade against Holocaust mem-
ory,” July 5). His love for Jews, however, is very selec-
tive, and excludes Jews who don’t adopt his extreme
right-wing views. In fact, he is scornful of his fellow
Jews who hold opinions that differ from his own. If
you are a Jew who feels that detention centers bear
some modest similarity to the infamous concentration
camps in Poland and Germany, the rabbi is contemp-
tuous of you, and of that belief. The arrested Phila-
delphia Jews who witnessed their love for would-be
immigrants by displaying timeless Jewish values of
compassion and respect are labeled misguided fools
by the rabbi. Is the rabbi too young or too ignorant to
remember the ill-fated ship the St. Louis?
We celebrate the yahrzeit of the Lubavitcher rebbe,
a man who had room in his big heart for all Jews.
Rabbi Boteach must, indeed, have a very small heart
with room in it only for his brand of Jews.
I question, again, the wisdom of our Jewish Stan-
dard in giving Boteach such a prominent place in
the paper. The Standard is a lover of all Jews. The
rabbi is not.
Herb Steiner
Mahwah
Holocaust is not a brand name
You don’t honor the victims of the Holocaust by
assigning them their place in history, as victims of the
worst genocide, by giving their experience a brand
name, as if it were Kleenex, Rabbi Boteach. (“The lib-
eral crusade against Holocaust memory,” July 5.) You
honor their suffering and their memory by using their
experience to learn how not to allow it to happen
again. We do that by paying attention, and by calling
things what they are.
The dishonor is in having them pulverized and us
learning nothing. For us to have allowed it and now
to allow other people to be dehumanized. It’s only 70
years later. Survivors still are watching.
Lynn Makler
Metuchen
In support of Rabbi Boteach
I am taking issue with the July letter to you request-
ing that you discontinue printing Rabbi Boteach’s col-
umn. (“Please no more from Rabbi Boteach.”) Others
in the past have done so also. I do agree with his state-
ment that yours is an excellent paper, but not for the
30 Jewish Standard JULY 12, 2019
JS-30
reason in that letter. It is excellent because different
points of view are presented in it.
We still have freedom of speech in this country and
hopefully will continue to have it. And that means
speech that you may not agree with and even very
strongly oppose. Please do continue to print the rab-
bi’s column. I, for one, will read what he has to say,
whether I agree with it or not.
Susan Ebenstein
Hackensack
Harvard was unfair to Kashuv
It was interesting but not surprising to read the den-
igration of Kyle Kashuv by Rabbi Engelmayer, “The
Kashuv controversy: Post haste can make waste”
( June 28). I have yet to figure out what the headline
means but my comments concern the body of type.
We learn from the rabbi that Kashuv is Jewish,
he hid in a closet during the massacre, he posted a
video of himself firing an AR-15 (the rifle used in the
shooting) that so upset “many” that police questioned
him. He “became a politically (C)onservative activist.”
“Unlike most of his fellow classmates ...his activism
was geared to staunchly opposing restrictive gun con-
trol legislation.” The other side of the story. He hid
in a closet during the shooting but so did the darling
of the Left and MSM, David Hogg as did many oth-
ers in the school. He posted the video of his visit to a
shooting range with his father. He went to learn gun
safety, how to properly handle weapons and in the
process fired an AR-15. How many were “many” con-
cerning the students complaining of the video? We
will never know but he spoke with police officers and
he was given a clean bill of health by them. Kashuv
opposed some parts of gun control legislation but
not all. After being accepted to Harvard, he notified
them that he wanted to take a gap year off and work,
amongst other things, for the “STOP School Violence
Act”. He wanted to work for improving the safety of
all in schools and other public areas against the threat
of gun violence. He is for certain restrictions concern-
ing gun control but not all.
Rabbi Engelmayer must then negatively paper Kyle
Kashuv with meeting Melanie and President Trump
at the White House and working for “a (C)onservative
group with ties to the Trump family”.
Harvard later rescinded his admission to their
school after protests from some schoolmates con-
cerning videos he posted as a 16 year old. The videos
contained offensive material including racial terms.
Kashuv apologized for the material, stated that it
does not reflect the person he is and that it was writ-
ten several years before. One is inclined to question
whether his Conservative activism played a larger
role in getting him banned from Harvard. There were
some who questioned why David Hogg was accepted
to Harvard? When one compares the scholarship cre-
dentials of both, Kashuv has an SAT score 280 points
higher and a weighted GPA of “A” compared to Hogg’s
“B”. Then again Hogg is the darling of the Left and
Kashuv is not.
The rabbi then devotes almost half of his opinion
piece to prove that Jewish Law upholds his position.
He continually questions the sincerity of Kashuv’s
apologies and regrets and denies them as sincere.
The rabbi writes, “It is proper to question Kashuv’s
sincerity, but is it proper to give him the benefit of
the doubt?” According to Rambam there should be
a period of wait and see and it seems Engelmayer
agrees. With regard to this quote I must ask, has
Kashuv repeated his transgression since the incident
over two years ago? If not, then why no forgiveness?
Why won’t Harvard change their decision?
If we are to follow the direction of Rabbi Engel-
mayer concerning the path of Kyle Kashuv and his
condemnation by Harvard and the rabbi, why has he
not written an article of condemning those seeking
the Democrat nomination for president? We had, it
seems, all of them traveling to grovel at the feet of
Rev. Al Sharpton to get his blessing. Kashuv’s indis-
cretions were bigoted posts on the internet. Sharp-
ton’s? The incitement to riot, anti-Jewish incitement,
incitement to murder and the fostering of civil unrest
to name a few. More than enough to earn an article
complete with references to Jewish Law.
Howard J. Cohn
New Milford
Palestinians should go live in Jordan
I would strongly agree with the opinion of the
extreme leftist writer Aryeh Meir (“Annexation: The
road to a binational State of Israel/Palestine,” July 5).
He expressed his concerns about a binational state in
the Land of Israel should the “West Bank” be annexed
along with its Arab population. It has been more than
obvious over the last 100 years that the Arabs in the
Land of Israel cannot coexist peacefully with Jews,
despite all the rights and privileges afforded to many
of them as Israeli citizens. They have been a source
of terrorism, murder, and sabotage. Jews also need
not rule over other peoples, as we have enough chal-
lenges dealing with each other. It is plainly clear that
even when Arabs are granted autonomy or sover-
eignty, they will still seek to push the Jews into the
sea. The withdrawals from Lebanon and parts of
Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) and, of course,
Gaza show the folly of “land for peace.”
The League of Nations Mandate of Palestine com-
prised today’s Israel as well as Jordan. Britain cut off
75 percent of this territory to give to a political pup-
pet and created the artificial state of Transjordan in
1921. Today, Jordan’s population is majority Palestin-
ian Arab and the queen is a Palestinian Arab herself.
At the end of World War II, Greece and Turkey
exchanged populations allowing for a homogeneous
society in both nations. In 1945, millions of ethnic
Germans were purged from the countries they had
lived in for centuries and were sent back to Germany.
India and Pakistan similarly exchanged millions in
1947. As recently as the 1980s, Bulgaria sent hun-
dreds of thousands of Turks to Turkey. Borders are
not permanent, and neither are the populations of
territories.
Therefore, rather than partitioning each rock and
hill in the Land of Israel creating yet another terrorist
state, the clear approach is to have the Palestinian
Arabs go live in a Palestinian majority nation, Jor-
dan. The two-state solution has already happened.
The creation of a Palestinian Arab state in the “west
bank” would simply create a third. The behavior of
the Arabs in Gaza obviously precludes allowing them
more territory from which to murder Jewish women
and children. Rendering Judea and Samaria Judenrein
[free of Jews] as demanded by the Arabs would also
be a violation of Jewish rights as well, although few
seem to care about that. Perhaps the far left here and
in Israel will realize that reality sometimes trumps
ideology and accept it.
Scott David Lippe, M.D.
Fair Lawn
JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019 31
Dear Rabbi Zahavy
Your talmudic advice column
Dear Rabbi Zahavy,
These days I am increasingly unsure of the
nature of my Judaism — my religious iden-
tity. I know for sure that I am a Jew. Both
my parents were Jewish. And I do observe
the Jewish festivals and Sabbaths, but
now not so rigorously or in accord with
any single denomination. I find it more
and more difficult to define my affiliation
with any specific organized Jewish group.
Some of my friends politely tell me that I
need to decide where I stand and conform
to the beliefs and standards of one of the
forms of Judaism. I just don’t know that I
can do that anymore. I do want to explore
Judaism philosophically, but I don’t know
where to start. What is your advice?
Drifting in Demarest
Dear Drifting,
Most folks cannot tolerate too much ambi-
guity. They look for certainty. It sounds
like you are living with uncertainty in
your identification with Judaism. And
while in our society it is rare for people to
overtly butt into other people’s lives and
life choices, some of your friends must
sense your unease. That’s why they are
chiming in that you need to decide.
It is reasonable for people to want to
know where their friends and relatives
stand regarding Judaism. And they want
a label to name your choice and to make
the identification clear: Orthodox, Con-
servative, Reform, Reconstructionist,
chasidic, Lubavitch; and in Israel there
are category labels like dati, chiloni, Dati
Leumi, charedi.
And if you don’t fit neatly into a cate-
gory, that confuses people. I remember
some years ago in Israel standing wearing
my kippah, waiting for a bus, and reading
the Hebrew newspaper Haaretz. After a
short while a man came over to me and
demanded (in Hebrew) to know how it
could be that I — an obviously dati (reli-
gious) person — could be reading such a
Tzvee Zahavy of Teaneck has worked
as professor of Jewish studies, religious
studies, advanced Talmud, halacha, Jewish
law codes, and Jewish liturgy, at major
U.S. research universities and seminaries.
He has published numerous articles and
books about Judaism and Jewish life. He
received his Ph.D. from Brown University
and his rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva
University. Go to www.tzvee.com for details.
The Dear Rabbi Zahavy column offers mindful advice based on talmudic
analysis and wisdom. It aspires to be open and meaningful to all the varieties
and denominations of Judaism. You can find it in the Jewish Standard
usually on the first Friday of the month. Please mail your questions to the
Jewish Standard office or email them directly to zahavy@gmail.com
32 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019
chiloni (secular) paper?
I replied immediately, “Aval ani Amer-
ikai.” “But I am an American.” That satis-
fied the inquisitor, since Israelis know that
we odd Americans are not subject to their
categories and classifications.
There is in a sense a tribal element at
work here. Israelis are quick to want to
identify which tribe — political, social,
religious — a person belongs to. And it
seems to me that these days there are
way more than the classical 12 tribes of
ancient Israel.
But how does all this help you, dear
questioner? You are not seeking to be
compartmentalized. You appear to
be looking for a more nuanced, a less
theological, and a more philosophical
approach to your Judaism.
As your talmudic advice columnist, this
is no surprise to me. I recommend that
you consider exploring elements from a
variety of philosophical approaches to
Judaism. But I offer you a word of caution
here. Go slow. There is some deep philos-
ophy ahead in this column.
I suggest for you four straightforward
interrelated philosophical modes of
inquiry: the Talmud itself, mindfulness,
phenomenology, and existentialism.
I’ll explain to you, one by one, what I
mean by these options. And I hope this
will get you launched on your search
for meaning.
First, the Talmud itself is a unique body
of rabbinic traditions, containing critical
and analytical reflections, arguments,
debates, and insights into the whole dual
Torah — the written Torah, aka the five
books of Moses, and the Oral Torah, as it
was codified in the six orders of the Mish-
nah. Talmud is both a corpus of writings
and a way of thinking.
Through Talmud, guided by the rab-
bis, a person takes an actively reflective
and critical view of Judaism and of the
world. In the study of Talmud, we learn
about the nuance and uncertainty of Jew-
ish thought, as we read of the extensive
differences of opinions among our great
rabbinic thinkers.
Beyond that, I recommend you investi-
gate three more modes or approaches to
your Judaism: the mindful, the phenom-
enological, and the existential modalities
of thoughts and actions.
For the mindful mode of exploring
your Judaism you can use
a form of general mindful-
ness, integrated with the
beliefs and practices of
Judaism.
First, a definition. Mind-
fulness as a formal disci-
pline began as one of the
eightfold paths in Bud-
dhism. It was the basis for Rabbi Tzvee
meditative practices, and Zahavy
it cultivates techniques for
developing awareness of
the present moment. It presented the
promise of a means of overcoming suf-
fering and finding true happiness to Bud-
dhists. Right mindfulness helps practi-
tioners develop a thorough awareness of
their body, sensations, and feelings, and
of the activities of their mind.
A secular form of mindfulness has
been popularized here through the
efforts of Dr. John Kabat-Zinn and his
colleagues at the University of Massachu-
setts. Dr. Kabat-Zinn has worked to teach
people in physical and mental pain the
values of mindful recognition as a way
to help them cope with ailments that are
otherwise difficult to treat through con-
ventional therapies.
I dutifully learned mindful meditative
techniques while living in Minnesota in
the 1990s and I have practiced mindful-
ness in my life ever since.
In fact, I’ve written about ele-
ments of mindfulness that I found in
the practices of Judaism. In one case
in point, I argued that the system of
blessings that the rabbis prescribe to
be recited over foods and other phys-
ical pleasures and pains is a system of
mini-meditations — ways for Jews to
learn to be more immediately mind-
ful of themselves and their physical
surroundings.
My third suggestion for you in your
quest is to apply the phenomenologi-
cal mode, another form of analysis, to
examine Judaism.
That is an approach of thinking, akin to the direct experience in front of him or
mindfulness in some ways, that concen-
trates on the study of the consciousness
of the here-and-now and looks hard at the
objects of direct experience.
Phenomenology is a more philosophi-
cal method of inquiry that was developed
by the German philosophers Edmund
Husserl and Martin Heidegger and other
European thinkers. It is based on the
premise that human reality consists of
objects and events, denoted as phenom-
ena. It differs from mindfulness in that it more deep-thinking self, I’ve already
rigorously examines a wide range of expe-
riences. And according to Husserl it is the
“science of the essence of
consciousness.”
Phenomenology pre-
scribes that we see things
as they are perceived and
understood in our con-
sciousness, and not rely
on factors independent of
human consciousness to
facilitate our knowledge.
It is more broadly experi-
ential than mindfulness.
Rudolph Otto applied
a form of phenomenology to the study
of religion in his masterpiece 1917 book,
“The Idea of the Holy.” There he sought
to define the numinous spiritual experi-
ences of religion in general, apart from
any one-faith tradition.
Subsequently, in works like “The
Sacred and the Profane,” the Roma-
nian historian of religion Mircea Eli-
ade posited that the core components
of the mythic narratives of the world’s
religions were stories of creation and
revelation, suffering and redemption.
He sought to tease out, abstract, and
define these and many other phenom-
ena of religions in his writings.
Now beware. In its pure form, a phe-
nomenological insight and analysis of
religious ideas and behaviors may lead
to hard questions about their meaning,
thereby raising serious issues about
the received traditions and practices of
a religion.
Take for instance a phenomenological
look at the example of the Orthodox Jew-
ish mechitzah — the physical divider in the
synagogue that separates the men’s and
women’s seating areas. Some of our rab-
binic traditions teach that the barrier is
essential to the sanctity of the synagogue,
thus men and women sit separately.
From a rigorous phenomenologist’s
view, which puts aside historical prece-
dents and practices and excludes theo-
logical narratives, a person will see the
synagogue with a mechitzah vividly in
her. It will be a different experience, of
course, depending on which side of the
mechitzah you are on. When the phe-
nomena are laid bare and seen “as they
actually are,” to some observers they may
be less savory to view, and seem more like
segregation than sanctity.
Surely if you were looking to me in your
question for advice for some philosoph-
ical avenues to explore in your quest to
find a more relevant Judaism for your
given you three choices, and plenty to
SEE DEAR RABBI PAGE 33
 D’var Torah
Hukkat: Seeing the voice of God

W
e often get too complacent in our read-
ings of the Torah. Such is the case with
this week’s portion, easily one of my
favorites (due in large measure to its
impenetrability and obscurity). Examples of moral dis-
comfort or outrage, along with too cursory a reading,
doom many people to not confronting the crucial ques-
tions that stare us in the face, blunting our rational minds
and our ethical hearts. But the Torah — and we, ourselves
— deserve better! Up until this juncture in the Book of
Numbers (Bamidbar), various Israelites have challenged
Moses, unsuccessfully, as the putative leader of the nation
in their desert travels between Egypt and the Promised
Land of Canaan. His ingenuity, his earnestness and
humility, and his leadership skills always manage to bring
him through each crisis not merely unscathed, but often
stronger in the eyes of the people, as sometimes might
happen in a candidates’ debate.
Now, however, after many revolts, we learn that being
in proximity to a dead body forces a distancing from the
holiness of the sanctuary that only an inexplicable and
irrational ritual — using a purely red cow and fresh “liv-
ing” water — can dispel. Such a fate befalls Moses when
his sister Miriam dies and there is a concurrent lack of
water! What is even the finest leader to do?
Some people will no doubt recall the midrashic con-
nection of the two ideas: that the miraculous well of
water that has accompanied the people on their travels
due to Miriam’s merit dried up upon her death. One
version of this text, quoted by Rabbi Gedalya Shor in his
Or Gedalyahu, explains that three miracles were sus-
tained by the three leaders of the generation of the des-
ert: Miriam’s spring of water, Aaron’s Clouds of Glory
(that protected and guided them), and the manna that
fed them in honor of Moses. These were special gifts
to the Israelites for the duration of their
wanderings, but became unnecessary as
the desert generation gave way to those
about to enter the landX.
A leader with his wits about him might
look at the death of Miriam and the dis-
appearance of the water as a positive sign
that their long trek in the wilderness is
coming to its conclusion, and they’ll soon
set foot in their own homeland. But Moses, Rabbi David
after all, is human, too. When the people Bockman
kvetch at him as he is sitting shiva for his Congregation
older sister, he snaps back at them and Beth Shalom,
Pompton Lakes,
his fate is sealed: “Listen here, you rebels,
Conservative
shall we bring you water out of this rock?”
Instead of speaking to the rock, as God had
instructed, he hits the rock, bringing forth
copious water for the people and their animals. A good
outcome for a leader, no?
Well, no.
God becomes angry at Moses and Aaron, telling them
that because of what they did, they would die with the
generation that left Egypt and would never set foot in the
Promised Land. This is seen by most people as a pun-
ishment, and in some sense unfair. Moses got the peo-
ple water, from a rock, keeping them alive, miraculously.
Problem solved, leadership accomplished!
What do we miss when we analyze the situation this
way? Rabbi Meir Simcha ha-Kohen of Dvinsk points out
the rather unusual wording in the verse where God com-
mands Moses to provide water: “ve-dibartem el ha-sela
le-eineihem — Speak to the rock so they can see (Num-
bers 20:8).” Just as in the revelation at Mount Sinai, this of lovingkindness is on her tongue.” Absent that, every
miracle is to take place by the people seeing the sounds
of speech. Just as in that moment, the human senses
become overloaded at the divine voice
and a synesthesia occurs whereby one
type of sensory information is perceived
by a different sense pathway by everyone
there. This is a sure sign that God is speak-
ing, even though the voice is emanating
from Moses’ throat. Performing the mira-
cle of bringing water to the people is not
enough! Yes, leaders must “produce” and
“accomplish.” Yes, the miraculous support
to address the peoples’ needs must be met.
But not, says Rabbi Meir Simcha, “by any
means necessary.”
A miracle that provides for the people is
not enough, even if it is a miracle. Provid-
ing food and water for an entire nation is,
indeed, a miracle. It’s something that God
accomplishes day in and day out (see Ashrei: “You open
your hand and provide for every living being that which
satisfies it.”) But a leader who opens his mouth and does
not emanate a Divine voice detracts from the people’s
perception of the truth. And that is inexcusable!
It is neither Moses nor his magical staff that bring
about the quite unexpected miracle. It is always, as
originally, the voice of God speaking through the leader
that must be demonstrated. When a politician’s voice
only reflects him — or herself — all the greater perspec-
tive and opportunities are forfeit and the leader has
failed to lead. It is an impossible standard, but one that
all great mayors and presidents have embodied. We
should expect no less of those who would deign to lead
us: “(S)he opens her mouth with wisdom, and Torah
moment that passes hides and thus destroys a potential
Sinai, bringing darkness to the world.

Dear Rabbi seem to me to be forms of creative theo- of the existentialist movement.

FROM PAGE 32
think about.
Now to conclude, let me add one final
option into this mix, the existential mode
of thought as applied to Judaism.
Existentialism is defined in part as a
philosophical theory and methodology
that emphasizes the individual human as
an independent and responsible person
with free will. The quintessential existen-
tialists of note of the past century were
personalities who were radically atheis-
tic, like the famous author Jean Paul Sar-
tre and his lifelong lover, the writer and
thinker Simone de Beauvoir.
Yet some of my colleagues in Jewish
studies classified certain writings of my
teacher, the Orthodox rabbi Joseph B.
Soloveitchik, as existentialist. I’ve never
been able to visualize fully how that could
be true. His work of philosophical analysis
of biblical themes and talmudic lifestyles
logical midrash, and not existentialist
philosophy.
My late father (of blessed memory),
Rabbi Dr. Zev Zahavy, was a Judaic
scholar and philosopher. He wrote about
and taught existentialism in his rabbinic
and academic careers. He was con-
vinced that it could be integrated with
the religious experiences and values of
Judaism, as a kind of theistic existen-
tialism, explored by the likes of Martin
Buber for Judaism and Soren Kierkeg-
aard for Christianity.
Now if you do follow this final sugges-
tion and take up explorations into exis-
tentialism, to get a good sense of what it
was in its formative era in the 20th cen-
tury, its energies and challenges, I rec-
ommend you read with care a wonderful
recent survey and summary volume, “At
the Existential Café: Freedom, Being, and
Apricot Cocktails” by Sarah Bakewell.
Okay, there you have your advice —
Just keep in my four recommendations to start you
on your inquiries. Try the talmudic,
mind that you mindful, phenomenological, or existen-
tial methodologies. Each approach will
must be patient offer you amazing ideas and remarkable
and go slowly in challenges.
Just keep in mind that you must be
your quests. patient and go slowly in your quests.
These disciplines These disciplines that I recommend are
not entirely intuitive. At first, some of us
that I cannot get what it means to be mindful.
recommend are Some folks don’t want to be phenomeno-
logically reflective. And most people are
not entirely not willing or able to be existentialist — to
intuitive. countenance the terrifying challenges and
angst of facing the brutality of existence,
of making life determining decisions
That highly praised book also illumi- when confronted by the existential abyss.
nates the thought of many of the great But hey, your friend wants you to
existentialists and of the phenomenolo- decide. So, get started, get philosophical,
gists of the era who were the precursors and give your quests a try.

JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019 33

Kosher Crossword
“READY PLAYER ONE” BY YONI GLATT
KOSHERCROSSWORDS@GMAIL.COM
DIFFICULTY LEVEL: MANAGEABLE
Across
1. WWII-ending weapon
6. Quarrel
10. Skinny
14. Go ___ (start fighting)
15. Not quite a soprano
16. Zeus’s wife
17. What most Israelis answer at 18?
19. Ben (Platt’s) Tony role
20. Anticipate, as an arrival
21. Use a roller and brush
22. Son of Esther and Ahasuerus, for
one?
26. You can put it in your hair or in
your mouth
27. Auction units
28. Women’s fashion magazine
29. Trifle with
31. “Outs” partners
34. Comic actor Barinholtz
35. One getting around the second
plague?
37. Golf prop
38. Dorm supervisors, briefly
39. Moolah in Milan
40. Schmooze
41. Palindromic girl’s name
42. It’s a cliché to say it after drinking
scotch
44. Vehicular violation of the eighth
commandment?
49. “Monopoly” payments
50. Many politicians
51. Interested
52. One illegally entering The Cave of
the Patriarchs?
57. Bright signage light
58. “Gotcha”
59. A Benjamin
60. Refuse to grant, as access
61. Kitty sound
62. “Have ___!” (inviting words)
The solution to last week’s puzzle
is on page 40.
34 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019
Down
1. JFK tower grp.
2. “Constrictor” snake
3. “Harry Potter” letter-carrier
4. Feeling of uneasiness
5. The Giants made a shocking trade
with them in March
6. Hawkins or Sink
7. Former planet
8. iPhone carrier, initially
9. Buzz or Woody, e.g.
10. Scissors
11. Wranglers rival
12. One from Tehran
13. Black ___, foe of Aquaman
18. Kind of time or value
21. Father of Meg, Chris, and Stewie
22. Dot or music
23. Refs enforce them
24. Refs throw them
25. What a model may strike
26. Iron Lady of Israel
29. Book believed by many to be
3,300 years old
30. Not id
31. What “Some Like” in a Wilder
classic
32. “Rad!”
33. Adam’s third son
35. Repels, with “off”
36. Shrimp
40. Like Isaac and Rebekah
41. “Friends, Romans, countrymen”
orator
42. Lior Raz on “Fauda”, e.g.
43. Hand-held percussion instrument
44. Crush, as coffee beans
45. Fleming or Zellweger
46. “Uncle Vanya” author Chekhov
47. Toon Fudd
48. Essential for a healthy diet
52. Suggestion
53. “The” sch. in Columbus
54. Buck’s companion
55. Elal landing info.
56. No longer working: Abbr.
The Frazzled Housewife
O Canada
H
ello there! Let me set the
scene for you. It is a sunny
Thursday afternoon. It is
July Fourth — the birthday
of America.
I never really understood how July
Fourth became the official birthday
of our country. I am assuming it was
the culmination of some sort of war.
Unfortunately, the person who I am
driving with, husband #1, is equally as
bright as I am, and neither of us have
an answer to this question. We cannot
even google it because we
are in the middle of the
Adirondacks and there
is no cell reception. So
what happens when two
adults who have known
each other for more
than 30 years, have been
married for almost 24 of
them, share the parental
responsibility for three Banji
adult-aged sons (adult Ganchrow
only in age, not in any
other respect, unfortu-
nately), get stuck in a car
driving to Canada with no cell phone
reception? I will tell you. You play the
“Did I ever tell you this story” game.
A fun fact about husband #1 — one of
his fingers was accidentally amputated
by a barbell in the basement of some-
one’s house in Monsey. This person
whose barbell it was lives in Teaneck,
but I am not sure if he reads my column.
He has many family members who live
in Teaneck, so hopefully one of them will
pass this column onto him. Normally,
your reaction would be, “Yuck, how did
that happen? What happened to his fin-
ger?” He didn’t tell me this story until we ada doesn’t faze us, because for seven
had been married for a few years, and
my reaction to this story was, “How are
we married and I never heard this story
before?” (I did think it was odd that he
waited to tell me this story, as it is kind we don’t have our three adorable mon-
of a traumatic thing to happen to a kid.
Did he think it might ruin the shidduch if
I knew his finger had been stitched back
together?) So, yes, husband #1 was work-
ing out with barbells (not working out,
but it sounds better than, “I was lifting it willing, for a very long, long time.
up to see how heavy it was,” which is an
actual quote). He dropped the barbell,
somehow it landed on his finger and the
top portion flew off and landed across
the room (also true).
According to husband #1, he went
upstairs, sans finger, to tell the mother
www.thejewishstandard.com
that he had a problem, as he was miss-
ing the top portion of his finger. She
went downstairs and found the piece of
finger and took husband #1 to the hospi-
tal, where they were able to successfully
reattach it. Now this is a great date story,
so I am not sure why I heard it for the first
time at a Shabbes table at my parents’
house. But that is neither here nor there.
So we are in the car now, driving to
Montreal for a wedding, and we are play-
ing this game. Husband #1 and I know
each other pretty well, as most married
couples do, so it is really
good to know that after
all of these years of being
together, of going through
life-altering events, good
times, bad times, that he
still has the ability to make
me laugh so hard that I
almost pee in my pants.
(Almost, not almost, I am a
woman of a certain age, so
anything is possible.)
Of course this story
involved him driving
away with the bumper
of another car attached to the front of
his car, and all of these years later, he
cannot figure out how he pulled that
off without actually hitting said car,
and I cannot stop laughing because
I can totally see him doing this, see-
ing his sons do this, and not have any
idea how it happened. Now, none of
you probably think this is funny, but I
am the one stuck in the car, so just use
your imagination.
Why are we driving to Montreal
instead of flying? Well, for sure, some
of you can figure it out. Driving to Can-
summers we drove to a lot of places that
were even farther away than Montreal.
This road trip is like a trip to New York
City for us. The only difference is that
keys in the back seat. The only one who
is asking annoying questions and needs
to stop for snacks or the bathroom is
husband #1. And that is OK, because it
is just going to be the two us for, God
Hope you all had an enjoyable holi-
day weekend!
Banji Ganchrow of Teaneck enjoyed her
stay in Canada, our favorite neighbor to
the north. And that is the extent of her
geographical knowledge.
 Arts & Culture
In North Macedonia, unearthed headstones
shed new light on community the Nazis destroyed
CNAAN LIPHSHIZ

BITOLA, NORTH MACEDONIA — In a

LIAD MALONE/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

country where the Nazis killed 98 per-

cent of its Jewish minority, the survival
of five members from the Abravanel fam-
ily was seen as something like a miracle.
As more than 120 of their relatives
were shipped to the Treblinka death
camp, the family was spared because of
a set of unusual circumstances, includ-
ing a typhus outbreak. Four of the five
family members were physicians. The
Nazis and the Bulgarian occupation
forces needed all the help they could
get in curbing the outbreak in North
Macedonia, once a part of Yugoslavia
that today is a landlocked nation north
of Greece.
Eighteen years after World War II,
though, tragedy caught up with the
Abravanels. Three of the five survivors
were killed in the 1963 earthquake that
devastated Skopje, now the capital of
North Macedonia. The only survivors

YAEL UNNA/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

were an elderly couple and their 7-year-
old granddaughter.
The surviving couple, Haim and Berta
Abravanel, lost their son, daughter, and
son-in-law in the calamity. Their grand-
daughter, Rachel Shelley Levi-Drum-
mer, lost both her parents, an uncle,
and her home. She immigrated to Israel
with her grandparents, broken and hol-
lowed by their loss, soon after the earth-
quake struck. Many see their departure
as the end of centuries of Jewish pres-
ence in Bitola.
But more than half a century after
that tragic end, Levi-Drummer and oth-
ers are returning to Bitola — the mod-
ern name of the city once known as
Monastir — through several successful
projects that are lifting the nearly extinct
Jewish community of North Macedonia
out of oblivion.
In March, the permanent display of a
multimillion-dollar Holocaust museum
— the Holocaust Memorial Center for
Visitors tour the Jewish cemetery of Bitola, North Macedonia, in 2018. Inset, a headstone at the cemetery.
as a waste dump before 2015.
Oryan’s involvement in the case is
unusual. Israeli ambassadors generally
focus on bilateral ties; very few of them
take an active lead in restoring Jewish
heritage.
But “there was an amazing, heartrend-
ing story that needed to be told here,”
said Oryan, whom Levi-Drummer cred-
ited with a seminal role in restoring Bito-
la’s Jewish cemetery.
As for Levi-Drummer, a large part of
the reason she returned to Bitola, where
CNAAN LIPHSHIZ

the Jews of North Macedonia — was inau-
gurated in Skopje. It contains such rare
items as a German tank engine like the
ones whose fumes were used to kill Jews
and prisoners of wars, and wagon carts
like the ones used to ship Macedonian
Jews to their deaths.
The museum also has scrolls with the
names of 7,144 Macedonian Holocaust
victims, of whom only about 150 sur-
vived. The Jewish community of Bitola,
North Macedonia’s second-largest city,
had an even lower survival than the
her grandfather ran a large hospital, was
because of how she became an orphan,
she said. After the earthquake, “my
grandparents and I were the only branch
Rachel Shelly Levi-Drummer speaks at a Holocaust commemoration in left standing on this enormous fallen
Bitola on March 10, 2019 as Israel’s Minister of Jerusalem Affairs, Zeev tree,” she said. “My memories, roots,
Elkin, listens. and what used to be my home brought
me back here.”
national one: Only one and a half percent ambassador to North Macedonia, along Levi-Drummer was scheduled to be in
of Bitola’s 3,400-odd Jews survived. with others began a project to clean up Skopje with her parents when the 1963
In 2015, Levi-Drummer, now the Bitola’s Jewish cemetery — an 11-acre earthquake struck, on July 26. But her
academic secretary of Israel’s Bar Ilan hillside whose gate boasts an impressive grandmother, Berta, kept her in Bitola
University, and Dan Oryan, Israel’s arch, but that essentially had been used SEE MACEDONIA PAGE 36
JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019 35
Arts & Culture
Macedonia
FROM PAGE 35
a day later than the original plans had
specified. Berta had been making a dress
for her granddaughter, and she hadn’t
finished yet. Levi-Drummer’s grand-
parents did not tell her about the earth-
quake immediately, as her grandfather
searched for her parents and his son.
He and other diggers found their bodies
under a totally collapsed building. He
had them shipped to Israel for burial.
So far, cleaners at the Bitola Jewish
cemetery have unearthed only 40 per-
cent of its estimated 10,000 headstones.
They’re weather-resistant slabs of stone,
some dating back to the 15th century,
that were placed flat on the ground in
the Sephardic tradition.
The headstones turned out to be
unusual in other ways, too. Instead
of the terse epitaphs characteristic
of Jewish tombstones today, the ones
unearthed in Bitola contained rich
descriptions and even poems about the
deceased.
This verbosity isn’t unique to Bitola: It
can be found in various Sephardic Jew-
ish cemeteries, including ones in Ham-
burg, Germany, and even as far east as
present-day Ukraine.
But in Bitola’s case, these epitaphs
became the only source of information
about victims who died in obscurity.
Bela Balashnikov, 76, learned the
only information she has about her
great-grandfather, Matityahu Shmaya
Zarfati, from an epitaph exposed in the
cleanup in 2015.
“I was so moved to learn that he
was a donor to communal causes, that
he cared about the poor, that he was a
learned man,” said Balashnikov, whose
Zionist parents escaped the Holocaust
when they moved to pre-state Israel in
1932. “Before the cleanup, I knew only
his name. My parents wouldn’t speak of
the people they lost. It was too painful.”
His poetic Hebrew epitaph from
1901, featuring Aramaic and written
in rhymes, reads: “Inside this lump
of earth lies a man of great descent …
who studied the Talmud and Torah, the
good and honest, his hands were never
without a book. Then came the Angel of
Death before the due date and left his
wife and sons bereaved. He died in the
prime of his life.”
Another epitaph, of Esther Calderon,
who died in 1891, noted in remarkable
candor that she had visited Jerusalem
twice and tried to live there but never
acclimated. She returned to Bitola to
live out her life in penury, the grave-
stone says.
According to Levi-Drummer, this
openness is typical of the Jews of Bitola,
which today is a quiet and ornate city
with a developed café culture but few
tourists. “It was a warm Sephardic
36 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019
Maria and Zoran Behar visit the Jewish cemetery in their native Bitola, North Macedonia, on March 10, 2019.
Hassan Jasari, whose Muslim uncle assisted Jews awaiting deportation,
greets participants at the annual Holocaust commemoration in Bitola.
community with a lot tolerance that
basically functioned like an extended
family,” she said of Bitola’s Jews.
According to Balashnikov, matriarchs,
rather than men, had the ultimate say in
many Jewish families in Bitola.
None of the Bitola community’s build-
ings — it had several synagogues — sur-
vived World War II and the subsequent
communist rule when North Macedonia
was part of Yugoslavia.
The sudden and radical annihila-
tion of Macedonian Jewry — within
days, the Nazis achieved their highest
death rate anywhere — represents an
unusual challenge for activists seeking
to preserve the memory of this extinct
community, which is believed to have
settled in Bitola not later than the third
century CE.
CNAAN LIPHSHIZ
“Family lore was lost because whole
families were executed together,”
Levi-Drummer said.
The pain of the loss was so traumatic
that it made the few survivors suppress
their communal memories, she added.
Michael Bar-Zohar, an Israeli Bulgari-
an-born historian, lamented the obscu-
rity of Macedonian Jewry in his 1998
book, “The Trains Left Empty.”
The area’s Jews “became victims for
the second time after their death,” he
wrote. “Their sacrifice and suffering
were washed in waves of cold indiffer-
ence. Their memory had been erased
as though they had never lived on the
golden shores of the Aegean Sea or in
the green valleys of turbulent Mace-
donia. In life and death, they were the
orphans of the Balkans.”
CNAAN LIPHSHIZ
Bar-Zohar’s account isn’t entirely
accurate, according to Hassan Jasari,
a Muslim from Bitola who says his late
uncle risked his life to bring water to
Jews awaiting their deportation. Has-
san Jasari participates each year in the
annual March of the Living Holocaust
commemoration event in Bitola. Point-
ing at the Israeli flags of other partic-
ipants of the march in March, he said,
“It’s great to see this flag waving here, of
the greatest country on Earth.”
Macedonia’s Jews were detained with-
out food or water for about three days at
a disused tobacco factory before being
transported for days by train to Nazi-oc-
cupied Poland.
“By the time they arrived at Tre-
blinka, they were probably eager to
cram into that gas chamber, believing
it was a shower where they could drink
and wash away the filth they had been
forced to live in,” said Balashnikov, who
lost several uncles there.
Levi-Drummer, Balashnikov, and oth-
ers interviewed for this article believe
that the Abravanels were “the last Jew-
ish family who left Bitola.”
Yet Bitola now is home to Maria Behar,
60, and her son, Zoran. She said they are
the last Jews living in Bitola — and they
are preparing to leave for Israel after the
death of her late husband. He is not bur-
ied at a Jewish cemetery. Additionally, an
Israeli family recently moved to Bitola,
where they have businesses.
Balashnikov and others agree that
“the Jewish community of Bitola no
longer exists, and will probably never
return,” she said. “At least now the world
knows a little more that they even ever
existed.” JEWISH TELEGRAPHIC AGENCY
 Calendar
Friday  Sunday 
JULY 12 JULY 14
Shabbat in
Washington
Township: Kol Dorot:
A Reform Jewish
Community offers
summertime tot
Shabbat with songs
and rituals, 5:30 p.m.
56 Ridgewood Road.
(201) 664-7422 or
KolDorot.org. PHOTO COURTESY OF NJBG

Butterfly walk in
Saturday  Ringwood: The New
JULY 13 Jersey State Botanical
Garden offers an easy
butterfly walk led by
the Bergen County
Audubon Society,
1 p.m. Meet at the
Carriage House Visitor
Center, Morris Road,
Ringwood State Park.
Wear comfortable JULY The Kaplen JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly presents
shoes. Rain cancels. “Becoming Astrid,” 7:30 p.m. The film is about Astrid
Frieda Vizel
(973) 962-9534 or
njbg.org. 18 Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking’s creator. In Swedish and
Danish with English subtitles. (201) 408-1496
Shabbat in Fort Lee: Old Jewish radio or jccotp.org/films. COURTESY JCCOTP
Frieda Vizel speaks in Franklin Lakes:
during services for Temple Emanuel of
the CSI Scholar Fund North Jersey plays Life,” for the M. Nathan
at the JCC of Fort some surviving Jewish Cember Memorial American Jewish
Lee/Congregation radio broadcast Lecture series at history: Visiting
Gesher Shalom, recordings from the Congregation Sons of scholar Rabbi David J.
9:30 a.m. Ms. Vizel, a 1930s to the ’50s, Israel, 7 p.m. 300 North Fine of Temple Israel
former member of the including a simulated Broadway, Upper & JCC in Ridgewood
Satmar community two-hour broadcast Nyack, N.Y. (845)-358- continues a new series,
of Kiryas Joel/Palm of “Yiddish Melodies 3767 or csinyack.org. “American Jewish
Tree in Orange in Swing,” with a History,” for the CSI
radio commercial Scholar Fund of the
County, discusses “The
Vaccination Debate: from a Jewish Thursday  JCC of Fort Lee/
program between Congregation Gesher Broadway music in
An Insider’s Insights JULY 18 Benjamin Anthony Wayne: The eight
into the Chasidic songs, 2 p.m. Temple Shalom. Refreshments
Emanuel archivist at 12:30 p.m., program, indoor summer
Community.” 1449 Taste of Melton Israeli café in New
Charlie Sokol added “Jewish Culture and concert series at the
Anderson Ave., Fort in Rockland: The City: Rockland Israel
a descriptive video Identity in America Rosen PAC, housed
Lee. (201) 947-1735. Jewish Federation Bonds holds a café
track. Part 3 will follow Through Two World in the Wayne YMCA,
& Foundation of with Israeli music and
Shabbat in in August. Popcorn Wars” (chapter 5), at continues with
Rockland County’s dinner at a private
Englewood: Rabbi and ice cream. 558 12:45. Series continues “Married to Broadway,”
Florence Melton home in New City,
Lindsey Healey- High Mountain Road. July 25 and August 1. starring Ron Sharpe,
School of Adult Jewish 6:30 p.m. Benjamin
Pollack leads family (201) 560-0200 or Each self-contained Barbra Russell, and
Learning offers a free Anthony is the guest
Shabbat, sponsored tenjfl.org. lecture focuses on a six of their talented
introductory Melton speaker. Reservations,
by Congregation Kol chapter of Jonathan friends, 7 p.m. They
class with Rabbi Ilana, (845) 405-4028.
will perform Broadway
HaNeshamah, 11:15 a.m.
Kiddush lunch follows.
Wednesday  Brian Leiken, 10 a.m.
D. Sarna’s book
“American Judaism.” showstoppers from
JULY 17 Jewish Federation “Phantom of the
On the campus of St. 1449 Anderson Ave.,
suite, Rockland Jewish Opera,” “West Side
Paul’s, 113 Engle St. Fort Lee. (201) 947
Community Campus, Story,” “Carousel,”
(201) 816-1611 or KHNJ. Talk about evil eye in 450 West Nyack
1735 or geshershalom.
org. Upper Nyack: Rabbi org. “Fiddler on the Roof,”
Road, West Nyack, Disney hits, and “Les
Abraham Eckstein N.Y. (845) 362-4200,
explores “Evil Eye: Miserables.” 1 Pike
ext. 121. Drive. (973) 595-0100
Superstition in Jewish

JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019 37

Calendar

or metroymcas.org/ vintage jewelry,

rosenpac.
Friday  West Clarkstown
JULY 19
Shabbat in Paramus:
The JCC of Paramus/
CBT Hebrew school
invites current and
prospective families
to an open house
barbecue Shabbat
dinner with games,
6:30 p.m. East 304
Midland Ave. Free, but
reservations required.
(201) 262-7691,
edudirector@
jccparamus.org, or
jccparamus.org.
Saturday  8 a.m.-4 p.m., and
JULY 20
Havdalah/film in
Jersey City: B’nai
Jacob has Havadalah
services outdoors
followed by a
screening of the Coen
Brothers’ “A Serious
Man,” 8:30 p.m.
Popcorn and drinks.
176 West Side Ave.
(201) 435-5725 or
bnaijacobjc.com.
Sunday  group for widows and
JULY 21
Garage sale in New
City: The West
Clarkstown Jewish
Center hosts a gala
garage sale with
again on July 22. 195
Road, New City, N.Y.
(845) 352-0017.
Singles
Thursday 
JULY 18
For widows and
widowers: Movin’
On, a monthly lunch
widowers, meets at
the Glen Rock Jewish
Center, 12:30 p.m.
682 Harristown Road.
(201) 652-6624 or
arbgr@aol.com.
A freight car used to transport Jews to Auschwitz is positioned in front of
the museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.

Shul to view Auschwitz exhibit

Run/walk at Rockland College
will honor Holocaust victims
Registration is open for the Holocaust
Museum & Center for Tolerance and
Education’s “Run/Walk for the Six.” The
event is Sunday, September 8, at 9:30
a.m., at the Rockland Community Col-
lege track and field, 145 College Road
in Suffern. Registration begins at 9.
Proceeds will benefit meaningful social
and educational programs for Holocaust
survivors and school-aged children.
For information, go to holocaust-
studies. org/runwalk.html, call (845)
574-4099, or email holocaustrcc@gmail.
com.
at Museum of Jewish Heritage
The Montebello Jewish Center plans
a trip to see “Auschwitz. Not Long
Ago. Not Far Away” at the Museum of
Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial
to the Holocaust on July 28. The cost
includes round-trip bus transportation
from the MJC, exhibit tickets, museum
guide, headphones and audio guide
for self-exploration, and transporta-
tion to Nish Nush for lunch on your
own. The bus will leave MJC at 8:45
a.m., and return at 3 p.m. For reserva-
tions, call (845) 357-2430 or go to mon-
tebellojc.org.

Golf and games in Demarest

The Kaplen JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly holds its
19th annual Play Fore! the Kids — Golf, Tennis, and
Games outing at the Alpine Golf Club, on Monday,
August 5. Reservations for foursomes, games, or the
evening festivities are at jccotp.org/playforethekids.
The day’s offerings include men’s and women’s ten-
nis, a women’s 9-hole game, and a full 18-hole pack-
age with greens fees, cart, caddy, on-course refresh-
ments, and lunch. There also is mahjong, bridge, or
canasta; participants can play with friends or as a sin-
gle participant. It also includes brunch. The festivi-
ties continue into the evening, with a strolling cocktail
dinner reception (dietary laws observed) and online
and live auctions with exclusive sporting event pack-
ages and one-of-a-kind dream destinations.
“The goal of the day is to share in some light-
Last year’s golfers and tennis players at Play
hearted fun with friends and family while connect-
Fore! the Kids. PHOTOS COURTESY JCCOTP
ing people to a core mission of the JCC, which is to
do our part to ensure that all children with special auction co-chairs are Jacqueline Pollack and Lindsay
needs have access to important life experiences that Till; and Stephanie Cohn, Jenna Gutmann, and Jillian
not only bring them new skills, but make them feel Somberg are the games and tennis co-chairs. Commit-
included as valuable members of our community,” tee members include Becky Canarick, Lindsay Fries,
the JCC’s CEO, Jordan Shenker, said. “Our annual Daryn Katz, Gabrielle Marcus, Jonathan Marks, Jenni-
golf and games event helps us to succeed in this fer Peykar, Eva Rubach, JoJo Rubach, Bari Shore, and
effort, as we continue to draw new participants and Lindsay Skulnik. Michael Kollender, JoJo Rubach, and
reach new goals each year.” Barry Zeller are the founding co-chairs.
A wide range of sponsorship opportunities are avail- Proceeds will support programming for children
able. Presenting sponsors include the Hechler family with special needs. For information, call Fran Koszer,
and the Kurtz and Spadaccini families. Event chairs (201) 408-1404, email mkleiman@JCCOTP.org, or go
include Daniel Cohn, Cory Hechler, and Tracy Reichel; to jccotp.org/playforethekids.

38 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019

 JS-39*

Obituaries

Judith Garcia Mitchell Lieberman grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Judith Garcia, née Luftig, of Pittsburgh died July 8.
She is survived by a son, Joseph Garcia-Luftig
(Debbie), sister, Eva Tobias (Lawrence) of Teaneck;
nephew, Lane Tobias (Evi); grand nephew, and
cousins.
Donations can be made to the National Kidney
Foundation. Arrangements were by Gutterman and
Musicant Funeral Home, Hackensack.
Sandra Joseph
Sandra Joseph, 74, of Cliffside Park died July 6.
Predeceased by her husband, Morton, and
companion, James Kerr, she is survived by her 10
grandchildren.
Donations can be made to the American Cancer
Society. Arrangements were by Louis Suburban
Chapel, Fair Lawn.
Helene Lapin
Helene Ann Lapin, 85, passed June 18, 2019, in
Boynton Beach, FL, (formerly from Glen Cove and
Roslyn NY and Norwood NJ). She is survived by her
loving husband Robert, daughters Karen Ginsburg
(Eric), Joyce Lapin, Debra Altscher (Stan), Lissa
Canavan (John), and predeceased by adored son
David. Helene cherished her 7 grandchildren and
8 great-grandchildren. Her beloved family meant
everything to her and she will live forever in our
hearts. Donations in her memory to the Jewish Home
at Rockleigh in Rockleigh NJ.
— Paid Obituary —
Mitchell C. Lieberman, 55, of Hackensack, formerly of
Glen Rock, died July 2.
A professional painter, he was a drummer at the
Straight & Narrow program in Paterson.
Predeceased by his parents, Mae and Allan
Lieberman, he is survived by siblings, Chrissa and
Janine, and an uncle, Carl Lieberman.
Arrangements were by Louis Suburban Chapel,
Fair Lawn.
Yolanda Schwartz
Yolanda Schwartz, 91, formerly of Fair Lawn, Wayne,
and Paterson, died July 2.
She was a nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital in Passaic and
Wayne General Hospital.
Predeceasd by her husband, Marvin, she is
survived by children, David and Debra Berlinger; five
Betty Ann Josephs
12/29/57-6/20/19
Betty Josephs, 61, of Little Ferry, NJ, passed away on
June 20, 2019.
Betty was the daughter of the late Sidney Josephs
and the late Rose Josephs. She grew up in Englewood
Cliffs, NJ, attended Dwight Morrow High School and
Washington University in St. Louis. She is survived
by two sisters, Joanne Weber of Fort Lee, NJ and
Cindy Cohn of Yardley, PA.
She was an avid tennis player and had a loyal group
of tennis friends who will miss her dearly.
Donations in her memory may be made to the
American Cancer Society.
— Paid Obituary —
Donations can be made to the American Nurses
Foundation or St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Arrangements were by Robert Schoem’s Menorah
Chapel, Paramus.
Joel Shulman
Joel Howard Shulman, 66, of Bayonne died July 3.
He co-owned Majora, LLC, was president of
Congregation Ohav Zedek in Bayonne, and was
a part of the Bayonne and Bradley Beach Jewish
communities.
He is survived by his wife, Sharon, parents Arthur
and Marilyn of Bayonne, children, J.D. of Teaneck,
Lisa Shulman Korlansky of California, her husband
and children, and Rebecca of Brooklyn; siblings, Fern
Dembner of Springfield, Ira of Hillside, and Charlie of
Illinois, and nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great
nephews.
Donations can be sent to Congregation Ohav Zedek
of Bayonne, Congregation Agudath Achim of Bradley
Beach, Chevra Kadisha of Elizabeth, Yeshiva Gedolah
of Bayonne, or Chabad of Bayonne. Arrangements
were by Bernheim Apter Kreitzman, Livingston.
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 JS-40

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40 Jewish Standard July 12, 2019


Real Estate & Business
HOUSE CALLS
Answering a purchase offer
EDITH LANK
Ms. Lank: If you could answer me today that would
be helpful. We are selling our home ourselves, and we
got an offer this morning that is $8,000 less than we
are asking. It’s only good for 48 hours. My wife isn’t
sure about it. Can you discuss our options? We need
advice right away. - K. R.
Answer: First of all, we’ll assume that this is a signed,
written offer. If it isn’t you only have one option: Don’t
respond. Say that you’ll be happy to consider any writ-
ten offer. The statute of frauds says that verbal con-
tracts don’t count in the sale of real estate. Even if you
agreed in the presence of witnesses to take their bid,
and even if you accepted a good-faith deposit to bind
the deal, you couldn’t hold them to it if they changed
their minds later.
Your response will depend on lots of details you
haven’t told me. Perhaps the most important is, how
long has your property been on the market? Has it
always been for sale at this price? And has it been
widely exposed?
An all-cash offer is the most attractive, but you’ll
want some information about where the cash is actu-
ally available. Often, though, the proposal depends on
the buyers obtaining a specific mortgage loan. If a real
estate agent were involved these buyers would have
been screened. So, you’ll want to know about their
credit rating and income (how likely they are to obtain
that loan) before responding.
The purchase may have to wait until they sell
their current home (which would make their offer
a “contingent” offer). Whether you’d go along with
that depends on your own needs and how long your
home has been on the market. If you accept a contin-
gent offer, it should contain an escape clause, which
might let you out of the deal if you want to accept
another offer that comes in later.
So, you have three possible responses: yes, no
or maybe.
“Yes” is your acceptance of all the terms in the offer,
as it stands, without any alteration. You can, however,
write the words “subject to the approval in form of my
attorney” above your signature, in which case your law-
yer must later approve the wording and provisions of
the contract for it to become binding. (Most lawyers will
not counsel you on price, a matter they consider out of
their field of expertise.) There is always, of course, the
danger that a nit-picking lawyer unaccustomed to real
estate might dither around until you lost the deal.
In theory you are bound to accept if they offer your
full asking price in cash and accept all your original
terms. A real estate lawyer tells me it’s often possible,
though, to object to a proposed closing date or find
some such excuse if you change your minds about
what you’d accept.
“No” is a simple refusal of the offer. If their offer is
good for a relatively short time, simply let it expire unan-
swered. After that point the buyers are no longer bound.
If you change your minds a week later, you could not get
their proposal back — you’d have to ask them whether
they want to start over or not.
“Maybe” — which is usually better than a refusal —
takes the form of a counteroffer. You agree in writing
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Again, you risk losing your buyers. They are no longer
bound and are free to accept or reject your counter-
offer — or counter back with their own price or terms. TEANECK OPEN HOUSES
While their decision is pending, your house is pretty
Sunday, July 14th (1-4pm)
much tied up legally, so you’d make your counteroffer
good for only a day or two. Close to NYC Transport & Houses of Worship
If your home is new on the market and has turned 196 Norma Road
out to be a hot property, you may not want to be New Price, $725,000
Classic Tudor with 2700+ sq ft; 4BRs,
bound by a counteroffer. But if a couple of weeks have
3FBTHS; Large 2nd fl Family Rm w/
gone by and your house is widely exposed, the market FPL; Oversized Landscaped Property.
is probably operating normally. Before you reject or Great Opportunity!
counter that first proposal, consider that the first offer
sometimes turns out to be the best one. 1560 River Road
New Price $599,900!
Inexperienced negotiators often assume that the
Spacious 3BR, 2.5BTH Expanded
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practice, though, too much ping-pong can kill the deal. Priced to Sell!
Emotions rise, someone says, “It’s not the money, it’s
the principle of the thing,” and there goes the ball game.
Buyers are well-advised to make their first offer near BARBARA OSTROTH
what they’d pay if they had to. And you are well-advised (201) 965-3105 cell
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Kaplen JCC, Englewood Health
team up for wellness program
The Kaplen JCC on the Palisades of Tenafly
and Englewood Health have started a new
session of the Wellness and Longevity Heart
Health Program, aimed at people with
heart disease or who have such risk factors
for heart disease, including diabetes, high
blood pressure, and a family history. It is
also for people who have completed a for-
mal cardiac rehab program. The structured
five-week effort, led by medical and fitness
experts, aims to lead participants into a
well-rounded, healthy lifestyle. Physician
clearance is required.
The first class will meet on Thursday, July
18, at 6 p.m., at the Graf Center for Integra-
tive Medicine at Englewood Health.
The first group fitness class at the Kaplen
JCC on the Palisades will be on Monday,
July 22, at 6 p.m., and doctor clearance
forms must be submitted. Classes will be
Cross River forum discusses
new New York rent regulations
Cross River Bank, a New Jersey state char-
tered FDIC-insured bank known for its
robust commercial real estate lending and
deep market knowledge, hosted “New York
Rent Regulations: What it Means for Your
Business,” a forum to discuss the recently
signed New York State Housing Stability and
Tenant Protection Act of 2019.
“We are pleased to convene this forum to
help the real estate and banking community
better understand the recently passed rent
regulations and their impact in the indus-
try,” said Shimon Eisikowicz, executive vice
president and chief lending officer of Cross
River. “Cross River’s industry expertise is
unprecedented, and we are honored to join
experts on the legal and regulatory sides for Community Renewal Deborah Van Amer-
this important discussion.”
The event was hosted by the Cross River
Commercial Real Estate team, which orig-
inates, sources, and services multi-family,
Jimmy
the Junk Man
RESIDENTIAL & COMMERCIAL
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42 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 12, 2019
Real Estate & Business
Bergen Community College
selected to lead $12 million
led by certified trainers at the JCC’s fitness
center on Mondays and Thursdays at 6
health training consortium
Bergen Community College has
p.m. The class will be tailored to the par- consistent with the “ VISION
ticipants’ individual needs. received a $12 million U.S. Depart- 2028” framework for the future
The time commitment is 60 minutes twicement of Labor grant to lead a con- of New Jersey community colleges
sortium of education and health
a week for five weeks, for 10 sessions in total. designed to increase the percent-
care industry partners to expand
Participants will have access to the JCC gym age of working adults who have
and enhance apprenticeship pro-
at no additional charge. Fitness staff will be earned a post-secondary creden-
grams for more than 5,000 New
available to help with personal workouts at tial or degree to 65 percent by the
Jersey residents.
the JCC and participants will receive a free year 2025.
JCC membership for one month. The four-year NJ HealthWorks With six hospitals and more
A final wrap-up session will be held oninitiative includes 14 community than 70,000 jobs, health care
Thursday, August 22, from 6 to 7 p.m., at colleges and health care partners represents Bergen County’s top
the Graf Center for Integrative Medicine such as CVS Health, the Health
at Englewood Health. Baselines will be Care Association of New Jersey,
taken if requested. and the RWJBarnabas Health Sys-
The cost for the program is $100. For tem. The New Jersey Department
more information or to register, go to
EnglewoodHealth.org/HHP or call (201)
of Labor and Workforce Develop-
ment also supported the consor-
The health
608-2377. tium’s application. care sector
represents
“The health care sector rep-
resents one of critical importance
one of critical
to our county, state and nation,”
said Brian D. Agnew, Ph.D.,
importance
who oversees the college grants
to our county,
department. “This collaborative
retail, mixed-use, office, industrial com-
mercial real estate loans and also offers
effort of Bergen Community Col-
lege, education, and industry
state and
services and products that consist of per- partners will not only strengthen nation.
manent, bridge, renovation, and construc- the health care sector by provid-
tion loans. The Commercial Real Estate ing employers with highly skilled
team assists property owners, investors, workers but offer new career workforce cluster. The college
brokers, and institutions in accessing the oppor tunities for thousands has made significant investments
right financing product in a streamlined of men and women seeking to to support the sector, including
approval process, resulting in faster clos- improve their personal, economic opening the region’s only Health
ing times. The team specializes in the New and workforce mobility.” Professions Integrated Teaching
York, New Jersey, and Connecticut metro The Scaling Apprenticeship Center in 2016. The $25.5 mil-
areas. Through Sector-Based Strategies lion facility features simulation
The panel featured speakers including grant — one of only 23 applica- laboratories and SMART class-
New York State Assemblyman Simcha tions awarded a total of $183.8 rooms to enhance the learning
Eichenstein, former Commissioner of the million by the federal govern- experience, preparing students
New York State Division of Housing and ment during this cycle — will see with the advanced skills needed
the college expand nine existing to succeed in today’s evolving
ongen, and Phil Goldfeder, senior vice programs and create five new ini- health care labor market. A first
president, public affairs at Cross River, tiatives blending classroom edu- floor, 24-chair dental hygiene
and was attended by business partners cation and work experience in clinic allows students to complete
and industry leaders. positions such as sonographers, 600 hours of clinical practice and
patient care technicians, and also provides the local commu-
paramedics. The grant will spe- nity with a low-cost oral health
J
J
cifically target assisting residents care option. The college’s health
im
im
in the state’s underserved popula- professions degree, certificate,
tions, including displaced, unem- and licensing programs currently
ployed, underemployed, and vet- enroll more than 1,400 students
eran workers. Health care added and offer a direct pipeline to
220,700 new jobs in New Jersey
the
the
during the last 27 years, nearly
industry.
Based in Paramus, Bergen Com-
RESIDEN
outpacing the entire private sec-
tor’s employment growth over the
munity College, a public two-year
coed school, enrolls more than
same period. 14,000 students WE at locations in
The NJHe althWorks initia - Paramus, • Att
Hackensack and Lynd-
tive serves as a cornerstone for hurst. The college offers associate D
broader efforts in New Jersey’s degree, certificate, and continu- W
CALL TODAY
communit y colleges to build ing education programs in a vari-
career and credential pathway ety of fields. More students grad-
201-
collaboratives in key workforce
sectors. The program remains
uate from Bergen than any other
community college in the state.
We do not tran
 Shop & Dine
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Dine In • Take Out • Clothing • Jewelry • Candy FARMERS’ MARKET
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647 Cedar Lane 519 Cedar Lane 358 Cedar Lane Colombian Restaurant
Angelo’s Tailor Design by Flora Maum Meditation 477B Cedar Lane
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Annapurna Indian Direct Line Carpet & Flooring Max Dollar and Deals 445 Cedar Lane
Grocery & Catering 553 Cedar Lane 493B Cedar Lane Sciarra & Company
557 Cedar Lane Dovid’s Fresh Fish Market Mei Salon 504A Cedar Lane
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565 Cedar Lane Elite Nails Mod Corals 482 Cedar Lane
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408 Cedar Lane Empire Hunan II Mortgage Apples Cakes 738 Chestnut Ave
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Bettina’s Boutique 356 Cedar Lane 444 Cedar Lane Subway
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426 Cedar Lane Supply and Salon 493 Cedar Lane Tate Academy
Butterflake Bakery 492 Cedar Lane OnPoint Fitness Studio 549 Cedar Lane
448 Cedar Lane J & J Pharmacy/Liquors 409 Cedar Lane Teaneck Cinemas
BV Tuscany Restaurant 527 Cedar Lane Parisian Cleaners 503 Cedar Lane
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CVS 406 Cedar Lane Pickle Licious 509B Cedar Lane
540 Cedar Lane Jet Cleaners 384 Cedar Lane Teaneck Nails
Carly’z Craze 455 Cedar Lane PizzaLicious 386 Cedar Lane
472 Cedar Lane J R Coiffure Hair Salon 439 Cedar Lane UnWined
Castillo Salon 443 Cedar Lane Pottery, Paint & Love 441 B Cedar Lane
398 Cedar Lane Judaica House 502 Cedar Lane UPS Store
Cedar Lane Furs 478 Cedar Lane Rabbi A. S. Teicher Sofer Stam 492C Cedar Lane
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Cedar Market 494 Cedar Lane Rain 473 Cedar Lane
646 Cedar Lane Kameleas Beauty Boutique 399 Water Street Verizon Wireless
Chonji Academy of Martial Arts 362 Cedar Lane Rainbow Jewelry & Watches 418 Cedar Lane
424 Cedar Lane KFC 497 Cedar Lane Victor’s Pizzeria
Cohen Invitations & Stationery 585 Cedar Lane Raven Hair 540 Cedar Lane
547 Cedar Lane LabCorp 388 Cedar Lane Walgreens
Coliseum Pizzeria 463 Cedar Lane Regina’s Tailoring/Bridal Boutique 520 Cedar Lane
435 Cedar Lane Lark Street Music 405 Cedar Lane Yarn Dezvous
CompuTeaneck 479 Cedar Lane Rock Collage 495 Cedar Lane
569A Cedar Lane Ma’adan 364 Cedar Lane Yosi Unisex Salon
Couture de Bride 446 Cedar Lane Rocklin’s Paper & Cards 412 Cedar Lane
406 Cedar Lane 458 Cedar Lane Zoldan’s Judaica Center
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Your one stop grill shop
We carry a wide assortment of High Quality Beef, Lamb, Veal &
Poultry along with pre marinated, ready to grill items.
You can find an array of Spices, Sauces and Condiments to
compliment our meats.
Don't forget our Fresh Fruits & Vegetables...
They go great on the grill or even as
a healthy snack or dessert!