SEE OUR NEW WEBSITE AT THEJEWISHSTANDARD.

COM
GETTING READY FOR THE MACCABI GAMES pages 6, 27
FT. LEES GESHER SHALOM SELLS ITS BUILDING page 9
DEBATING THE IRAN DEAL pages 12, 25, 26
THEODORE BIKEL, 1924-2015: AN INTERVIEW page 36
JULY 24, 2015
VOL. LXXXIV NO. 44 $1.00

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84
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2015

JSTANDARD.COM

Retiring
fighter
looks
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We speak with the

legendary ADL chief
Abe Foxman on his
last day in the office
page 18

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Page 3

Meet Lady Gagas Israeli shoe designer

l Shoe designer Kobi Levi was work-

ing in his design studio in 2011 when he

got an email that he was sure couldnt
be real.
It was from a studio executive working on Lady Gagas newest video a
raunchy, otherworldly clip to accompany her pop anthem Born This Way.
The studio wanted to order several
pairs of Levis custom-made double
boots for the singer to wear in the
video, a request that Levi once he
determined that the email was indeed
real and not a practical joke from his
friends was happy to oblige.

But there was one problem: Levi had

no idea how much to charge for the
shoes. Thats because, despite spending the past 14 years furiously designing and executing fantastical footwear
in a side room of his snug Tel Aviv
apartment, he had never sold a single
pair.
A lot has changed since then.
Levi, 40, has now sold plenty of
pairs of his outlandish high heels. And
though he wont disclose sales figures
and still teaches design classes to augment his income, he says its enough to
make a living.

His creations are less shoes than they

are wearable works of warped and
dreamy art: divinely twisted flamingos,
their crossed stiletto legs masquerading as sleek spiked heels; a curved porcelain coffee pitcher, its arched handle
welcoming the foot and a splash of
free-flowing coffee anchoring it to the
ground; a convoluted sex doll, complete with a plastic air stopper and a
seductive mouth at the toe, its heel
mimicking the seductive yet sterile
shape of plastic inflated legs.
I like to blend the line between art
and design, Levi said over coffee at

Adventures in Google Translate

Splash Jerusalem style

l Amazingly, back-to-school season

l The hot nights are

has begun. The school-supplies list

arrived in last weeks email. With the
return to school, many of our children
will resume their study of Hebrew.
And in our generation, beyond the
groans that we inflicted on our parents, comes this cutting edge kvetch:
Why do we need Hebrew (or, for that
matter, any foreign language) in this
age of Google Translate?
Parents: Clip and save this photo of
an ordinary serving tray of goulash.
It was photographed in Israel by
someone whose photo credit, alas,
has been lost to the alienating nature
of the Internet.
And if you can read Hebrew, you
can make out the letters that spell
goulash.
So why the translation: surf?
Because the Hebrew for surf is

the legendary gay bar Shpagat on Tel

Avivs artsy Nachalat Binyamin Street.
By day, the crowds at this ultimate
hipster hotspot are thin, and he has
come here for some quiet to escape
drumming construction underneath
his nearby apartment. Artists can say
my shoes arent art because they are a
wearable product, and designers can
say theyre not design because they
dont follow trends and they dont
serve customers. And I can say to them,
youre both right. You can fight about it
or not, and I dont care.
Debra Kamin/JTA Wire Service

upon us, and children all over Israel are

staying out far into
the evening. Across
Israel, fountains are
popular places for
them to play.
In Jerusalem, it
doesnt get cooler
than this water fountain near the Tower of
David in the Old City
of Jerusalem.
Flash90/Israel21c.org

golesh and Hebrew is notorious for

not having vowels.
All of which is to say: No, you dont
want to stake your reputation on
Google Translate. Yes, you have to do
your Hebrew homework.
Larry Yudelson

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POSTMASTER: Send address changes to New Jersey Jewish Media
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unrestricted right to edit and to comment editorially. Nothing may be
reprinted in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher. 2015

CONTENTS
Noshes4
oPINION14
cover story 18
torah commentary30
crossword puzzle 31
arts & culture 32
calendar 34
obituaries 37
classifieds 38
real estate40

Jewish Standard July 24, 2015 3

Noshes

When

you fry it, which I have done, it

tastes like bacon, not seaweed.

Chris Langdon of Oregon State Universitys Hatfield Marine Science Center, in

a press release quoted by Tablet describing dulse, a red marine algae with twice
the nutritional value of kale that grows wild on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.

OPENING TODAY:

At and about
the movies
Paper Towns, a
coming-of-age
story (with
comedy and drama)
from John Greens
best-selling novel of the
same name, is opening
today. Green says that he
assumed that the lead
characters, Margo and
Quentin, were Jewish,
but only Margo is
identified explicitly as
Jewish in the text. (There
is a passing reference to
her bat mitzvah money.)
Quentin Jacobsen (NAT
WOLFF, 20) is a high
school student who
harbors an almost
lifelong unrequited love
for Margo Roth Speigelman, the girl next door.
The action takes off
when Margo (Cara Delevinge) disappears mysteriously, and Quentin
follows clues she may
have left as to her
whereabouts. HALSTON
SAGE, 22, and AUSTIN
ABRAMS, 18, have big
supporting roles as
friends who help Quentin
in his search.
Southpaw,
which opens the
same day, stars
JAKE GYLLENHAAL, 34,
as Billy Hope, a lightheavy weight fighter who
is on top of the world as
the film begins: Hes
made it up from the
streets to the championship, and he has a
beautiful wife (Rachel
McAdams) and a lovely

young daughter. But all

this comes to an end
when his wife is murdered and he goes into a
tailspin that forces family
services to take away his
daughter. A principled,
small-time boxing trainer
(Forest Whitaker) takes
Billy on and helps him
clean up his act and fight
once againwith the aim
of redemption and the
return of his daughter. By
the way, Gyllenhaal really
bulked up for the role
and is almost unrecognizable.
The Stanford
Prison Experiment, which
opens in limited release
today, is based on a real
1971 psychology experiment in which a small
group of students played
prison guards or prisoners under the supervision
of Stanford professor
Phillip Zimbardo. Billy
Crudup plays Zimbardo,
with OLIVIA THIRLBY,
28, playing Christine
Maslach Zimbardo, now
a University of California
psychology professor.
When she was a grad
student, Ms. Zimbardo
persuaded her husband
to stop the experiment
early because of its
brutality. The guards
brutality led to a prisoner revolt, led by
student Daniel Culp
(played by EZRA
MILLER, 22).
Because Stanford

Nat Wolff

Jake Gyllenhaal

Rachel Platten

Musical Notes

Olivia Thirlby

Roger Rees

got so-so reviews in

film festival showings,
you may have to wait
for the DVD/streaming
version to see this film.
Its probably worth seeing, however, because
of Millers extraordinary
performance, which
has been singled out
by virtually every critic.
Nothing is certain, but I
think it is highly probable
that Miller will earn a raft
of Oscar nominations in
the years to come. He
has a talent and intensity I have seen in only
a handful of actors. Hes
really something special
and you should check
him out.
ROGER REES, 71,
died on July 10.
The Welsh-born
actors notable roles
included rich guy Robin

Colcord on Cheers,
Frida Kahlos father in
Frida, and the sheriff
of Rottingham in the
MEL BROOKS satire
Robin Hood: Men in
Tights. In 2011, he wed
his partner of 33 years,
playwright and stage
producer RICK ELICE,
now 58. Elice is a quite
religious Jew, who
wanted to be a cantor
when he was young. The
couple belonged to
Congregation Rodeph
Sholom, a Reform
synagogue in Manhattan. In 2013, Elice told
the Jewish Journal of
Los Angeles about Rees
conversion in 1988. Elice
first explained that part
of Rees reason for
converting was to seek
in the Jewish community a sense of belong-

Want to read more noshes? Visit facebook.com/jewishstandard

As I write this, the single Fight Song has reached #8

on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song was written by
and is performed by RACHEL PLATTEN, 33, who has
had considerable success since her first CD was released
in 2003. But a top ten single is a first for her. On July 14,
she joined Taylor Swift onstage to sing her hit. She told
People: I had a moment of Oh my gosh my dreams
are coming true. Even though its not my own crowd
yet, I felt like that was exactly the moment Id always
dreamed about. Nice to note: In 2012, Platten married
attorney KEVIN LAZAN, 34, in a traditional Jewish
wedding.
N.B.

ing that he had lost with

the death of all of the
members of his immediate family. The conversion was strictly Rees
idea. Elice said, He
didnt tell me about his
conversion until he
came back from the
mikvah. I was so moved
that I wept.

Last week it was

announced that
music legend
CAROLE KING, 73, is one
of five artists selected to
receive Kennedy Center
Honors this year. The
awards ceremony and
concert will take place in
December.
N.B.

California-based Nate Bloom can be reached at

Middleoftheroad1@aol.com

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JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015 5

Local
Bonding through sports
Maccabi Games will bring young Jewish athletes together
LOIS GOLDRICH

his December, a group of teens,

preteens, and young adults
from northern New Jersey will
travel to Chile to demonstrate
their skill in a wide range of sports, from
chess to beach volleyball.
Under the rubric of the 2015 Pan American Maccabi Games sponsored this year
by the Latin American Maccabi Confederation the athletes will gather in Santiago
to compete with others their age in the
sports of their choice.
Maccabi USA the official sponsor of
the United States Team to the World Maccabiah Games in Israel and other Maccabi
competitions around the world brings
American Jewish youth together with
young Jews from other countries in programs that embody the Maccabi ideals of
Jewish continuity, Zionism, and excellence
in sport.
According to its website, the group
develop[s], promote[s] and support[s]
international, national, and regional athletic-based activities and facilities [striving] to provide Jewish athletes the world
over the opportunity to share their heritage and customs in competitive athletic
settings.

Daniel Wisotsky takes a jump shot.

6 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015

This years Pan American Maccabi

Games will take place from December 26,
2015, to January 5, 2016. Matthew Sarna
of Fair Lawn will be among the competitors. A graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, the 23-year-old now is
entering his second year at the University
of Maryland Francis King Carey School of
Law in Baltimore.
Mr. Sarna, who plays rugby, says his
coach at Maryland had been talking to me
about playing in the Maccabi Games for
some time. Several Maryland players have
played in the past and thoroughly enjoyed
the experience. This will be my first time
participating in the Maccabi Games, and I
could not be more excited.
The law student, who will play Rugby
7s and Rugby 15s at the games the number indicates how many will play on each
side said that he was not exposed to
rugby until he went to university. I was
recruited by several friends of friends and
was hooked instantly. I have now been
playing for almost 6 years.
The highlights of his sports career so
far have been playing in nationals twice,
and also playing in the Collegiate Rugby 7s
Championship in 2012 and 2014. In 2014,
my team and I won the plate championship at the CRCs.
Mr. Sarna who also enjoys cooking,
learning new languages, listening to rock
music, and, newly, boxing said he is
almost as excited about traveling to Chile
as he is about competing in the games.
I studied abroad in Rome during my
junior year at Maryland and loved the
opportunity to travel around Europe and
experience the different cultures, he said.
This will be my first time in South America. So, first and foremost, I am eager to
soak in the Chilean lifestyle. Further, it
brings me great pride to have the opportunity to meet Jewish athletes from around
the world. Luckily, my family will be joining me during this experience.
Mr. Sarna said the Maccabi Games are
not just important, they are essential.
The Maccabi Games are a celebration of
Judaism in a language that everyone in
the world can understand, athletic competition. From a religious perspective, I
believe that this competition will energize my faith and raise my understanding of Judaism to a higher level. Equally as
important to me is the opportunity to represent my country. It has been a lifelong
dream of mine to put on the red, white,
and blue and play for the United States of
America in any level of competition. As the
great Herb Brooks once said to the 1980
USA Olympic hockey team, The name on

Eden Glick makes a split leap from the balance beam.

the front is a hell of a lot more important
than the one on the back!
I have dreamed of the day when this
phrase could truly apply to my life. I am
beyond thankful to represent both my religion and my country at the same time.
Fifteen-year-old Jake Samieske, an
incoming junior at Wayne Hills High
School, said he became involved in his
sport, soccer, because of his grandfather.
My grandfather had been following the
games for a couple of years and knew the
passion I had for soccer. [He] encouraged
me to try and get on the team. The PanAmerican games will be the first time Ive
done anything with the Maccabi games.
Jake said that he has played soccer ever
since I can remember. I have done plenty
of different types of organized contests,
including the Olympic Development Program National Camp in Florida, as well as
playing varsity soccer for my high school
team, and for my club team as well.
He is extremely excited about the
upcoming games and thinks it will be the
experience of a lifetime.
I love to travel, and I think it will be
awesome to meet people from all over the
world. And, he said, I think the Maccabi
games are important because its a great

opportunity for the players not just to have

a good time but to find their Jewish identity through sports.
Daniel Wisotsky of Englewood will be
among the basketball players. The 16-yearold, who will be a junior at SAR high
school in Riverdale, N.Y., was asked to
play on the 16U national basketball team
by the coach, based on word of mouth
and possibly a video of games this season,
said his father, Dr. Burton Wisotsky. Daniel played on the Tenafly JCC team in the
Maccabiah games in Orange County, California, as a 14U. The team finished fourth
out of 24 teams.
Daniel is in Israel for the summer and
could not reply directly, but according to
his father, the young athlete has played
organized basketball since he was 7. He
was on his schools teams as played for the
Amateur Athletic Unions travel basketball
teams as well.
Daniel enjoys all sports and has played
competitive baseball, softball, and ice
hockey. Still, his father said, he enjoys basketball the most and plays several times a
week throughout the year, working hard to
improve his skills.
Dr. Wisotsky said Daniel is very excited
about traveling to Chile for the games.

Local
He is looking forward to meeting new
people and competing on an international
level, he said. He is excited about meeting other Jews from around the world,
especially those with similar sports interests. His two brothers, parents, and grandfather will join him for part of the trip.
They are excited as well.
According to Dr. Wisotsky, the Maccabi
games offer a unique opportunity to meet
Jews from all over the country and world
and to socialize and compete with them
in a unique atmosphere. It is a once-in-alifetime opportunity, and he is grateful to
have the chance to participate.
Eden Glick, a 12-year-old athlete from
Closter, is a student at Tenakill Middle
School. This will be her first time at the
games.
My mom knew about it, she said.
Eden, who will compete in womens
junior gymnastics, said she started gymnastics in Mommy and Me classes when
she was two years old and began to compete when she was eight. She is now training for level 9 at Galaxy Gymnastics in
Orangeburg, N.Y.
Eden is looking forward to the upcoming games.
I am excited because I have never been
outside of the country, she said. I am

looking forward to meeting athletes from

other countries, and its something that I
would never get a chance to do.
In addition, she is eagerly anticipating
the chance to compete with other Jewish
athletes that have the same goals as me.
Does she have other hobbies?
Between studying for my upcoming
bat mitzvah and competing in gymnastics, there isnt that much time left for
hobbies, but I like to spend time with
my family and play with my greyhound,
Lady, she said.
According to Edens mom, Lily Glick,
her daughter has no fear of heights. Neither, apparently, does Edens grandfather,
Shlomo Lev of Cresskill. As we wrote in
a Jewish Standard cover story, Scheherazade in Cresskill, Edens wiry, muscular grandfather was in Israels early army,
the Palmach, as well as its early navy, the
Palyam. His physicality and athleticism
were apparent at 87. According to her
mother, Edens physicality and athleticism
mirror his.
She also got a bit of his adventurousness, Ms. Glick said, adding that
her father was a marathon runner, who
completed 13 marathons and many
half-marathons.
Ms. Glick herself was a gymnast in high

Matthew Sarna gets airborne during a rugby match.

school, but I cant even compare what
she does to what I did, she said.
As for Edens free time, she is extremely
diligent about her work, her mother said.
She is an honors student, and when she
comes home right after school she knows
what she has to get done. Training is 5:30

to 9 every night during the school year.

During the summer, it is in the morning,
and sometimes she goes back in the evening. Its hard core.
As for the upcoming games, We are
excited and will be going with her. Well
make it a family adventure.

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JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015 7

Local

Summer science in Israel

Local college students intern
in emerging areas of study at Bar-Ilan
ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN

riella Levie of Teaneck is spending her summer researching a

gene that may be the fountain
of youth.
The Stern College for Women rising
senior is one of 23 Yeshiva University
undergraduate science majors participating in the fifth annual Summer Science
Research Internship program, a joint initiative with Israels Bar-Ilan University that
gives them hands-on experience in emerging scientific fields under the mentorship
of some of Israels top scientists.
Ms. Levie was assigned to the lab of
Haim Cohen, a noted molecular biologist
whose lab focuses on so-called longevity genes, especially Sirtuin 6, or SIRT6
for short. Her role during the seven-week
internship is to study the effect of SIRT6 on
the DNA of human cells.
The lab is looking at this gene as a
whole, and Im looking at its effect on DNA
to see if the cells with added SIRT6 make
fewer mutations that contribute to the
aging process, she said. The language
barrier was difficult at the beginning but
they were very patient with me, and now
Im learning lots of biology Hebrew and I
feel Im making a real contribution to the
research.
Because she hopes to move to Israel
one day, Ms. Levie values the language
acquisition as well as the networking this
program has afforded her. I am always
hearing about how Israel is amazing at
high-tech and advanced in science, and
now I get to see it firsthand, she said.
Four other Bergen County residents are
among the 23 interns housed at Yeshiva
Universitys Jerusalem campus and bused
daily to Bar-Ilan in the greater Tel Aviv
area. The interns are working in university
labs at the Institute for Nanotechnology
and Advanced Materials, the Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research
Center, the Mina and Everard Goodman
Life Sciences Department, and the departments of engineering, mathematics, chemistry, physics and computer science. The

program includes weekly

trips, lunchtime speakers
from the university, and
nightly Torah study.
Batsheva Reich of Bergenfield, a biology major going
into her junior year at Stern,
is working in the biology
lab of Benny Motro, where
researchers are studying a
protein whose deficiency
could be related to widespread anemia found in the
Bedouin population.
Im looking at different
Teaneck residents Ariella Levie, left, and
variations in the primary cilia
Rebecca van Bemmelen flank Elisheva Jacobov
of mice to find variations in
of Brooklyn at an archeological dig.
genotypes, she said. This is
a very new area of research.
Ms. Reich said that she is
putting into action what she
had learned in the classroom.
I knew the theory of a lot of
it but they have taught me so
much here. I think you cant
compare learning something
in a classroom and a lab
where theyre conducting real
research. It opened my eyes
to what is done on day-to-day
basis in research.
She, too, hopes to move to
Israel after college, so I hope
Chaim Metzger of Teaneck is creating and
this is giving me connections
testing samples of paramagnetic materials.
for the future.
Chaim Metzger of Teaneck,
Some of the most memorable field trips,
23, is one of two Summer Science Research
he added, took the group to Israel Aerointerns who participated last year as well.
space Industries, the government-run
This summer he is creating and testing
Agriculture Research Organization (Volsamples of paramagnetic materials in the
cani Center), and an archeological dig. Mr.
lab of physics professor Amos Sharoni,
Metzger plans to apply to graduate prohead of the Nano-devices and Materials Lab at the Bar-Ilan Institute of Nanograms in physics in both the United States
technology and Advanced Materials. Mr.
and Israel.
Metzger, about to enter his senior year at
The other local participants are Jonathan Karp of Fair Lawn, who is working in
Yeshiva College, also is creating a substrate
the physics lab of Emanuele Dalla Torre,
to guide the growth of neurons.
and Rebecca van Bemmelen of Teaneck,
The program gives you research experience with a built-in framework of room
who is assigned to the chemistry lab of
and board and transportation, and youre
Arie-Lev Gruzman.
in Israel, which is lots of fun, he said.
This years program, which ends August

Topics include:
A 90minute professionally
Coping with challenging behavior and feelings.
facilitated interactive support group Creative communication techniques.
designed to enhance your parenting Firm and compassionate limit setting.
Peaceful conflict resolution.
skills.
Alternatives to punishment.
8 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015

Ariella Levie is at work in Haim

Cohens lab.
6, is coordinated by Prof. Ari Zivotofsky,
a senior lecturer in Bar-Ilans Interdisciplinary Brain Science Program (and the
father of Menachem Zivotofsky, whose
birth certificate was the focus of a recent
Supreme Court case reflecting on the U.S.
governments policy regarding the status
of Jerusalem).
As always, the quality of the Yeshiva
University students joining us this year
is very impressive, Dr. Zivotofsky said.
Over the years, the students have integrated very well into our labs during their
brief stay such that the Bar-Ilan faculty
who have hosted them have been quite
pleased.
It is particularly impressive that
women comprise the majority of this
years group, he added. This will allow
us to drive home the message that observant Jewish women can thrive in the sciences in Israel, at the same level as their
male counterparts.
Dr. Harvey Babich, chair of the biology
department at Stern, said, This unique
internship program allows undergraduate students with a strong background in
the sciences to experience the nurturing,
interdisciplinary research environment
and to develop their basic research skills.
In addition, it increases the positive visibility of Israel and strengthens the very
special bond between Yeshiva University
and Bar-Ilan, encouraging faculty to pursue collaborative projects and visit each
others campuses to share their research
interests.

Group meets every Thursday ending

on August 20th at the JFS offices,
1485 Teaneck Road, Teaneck. The
cost is $5 per person. Please call
201-837-9090 to register.

Local
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This building has been home to Congregation Gesher Shalom since 1954.

Fort Lee shul sold to Korean church

Congregation may remain
in building for four years
ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN

ncorporated 65 years ago as the

Jewish Community Center of Fort
Lee, Congregation Gesher Shalom has sold its Anderson Avenue
building for $6 million to Onnuri Church,
the Conservative synagogues tenant for
the past six years.
The sale, which closed on June 1, stipulates that the JCC of Fort Lee has the
option to remain there for up to four
years. The synagogue, which has occupied the building since 1954, has formed
a committee to seek alternative sites in
and around the borough.
Our home and heritage is in Fort Lee,
so our desire is not to move very far at
all, said Marvin Josif, co-president of the
shuls board of trustees. We were not
actively seeking to sell the property, but

Onnuri Church broached the subject,

which led to talks and then an offer, and
we realized it was an exciting opportunity for us.
With the proceeds of the sale, we can
now afford to purchase a modern building, a facility thats right for us. We have
big plans for our future. A new location
is really just part of the whole picture.
The congregation began with 38
charter members and now has about
300 member units. Nearly half of those
members live in the borough; another
30 percent live in adjacent towns Cliffside Park, Edgewater, Englewood, and
Englewood Cliffs. Half the membership
is 70 or older, while 10 percent is 40 and
under. One-quarter of the members have
been on the rolls for 25 years or more.
Fully 60 percent have been members for
10 years or more.
Our goal is to redevelop a property
or build something that will appeal to
our existing congregants and attract

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JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015 9

Local

There are children who need us

Exploring the challenges and joys of foster parenting
LARRY YUDELSON

here are children out

there who need us,
Sigal Bekker Saban
said. Who knew there
were children in New Jersey waiting for
families?
Ms. Saban runs the Mom and Dad
Academy, a parent education center in
Fair Lawn that is hosting Tovah Gidseg
on Wednesday. Ms. Gidseg will present
a workshop on All You Ever Wanted to
Know About Foster Care and Adoption in
New Jersey.
Ms. Gidseg laughs at the idea that shes
some kind of expert, as the publicity for
the workshop bills her. But she does concede that having been a foster parent for
over five years several times and then
going on to adopt most of those children,
she does have some expertise in the logistical, emotional, and hands-on experience of being a foster and adoptive parent
through the Department of Child Protection and Permanency (formerly DYFS) in
Northern New Jersey.
Parenting many children she is now
the mother of four at home, the oldest of
whom is 6, as well as a teen who now lives
elsewhere but with whom she remains
involved is of course challenging. Ms.
Gidseg makes it clear that it is also rewarding and occasionally hilarious. She is hesitant about allowing too many details into
the paper you can hear more in her
talk. Its not just a question of her privacy;
its a question of the privacy of her foster and adopted children. As a foster parent, she doesnt even have the right to
sign media releases for schools or camps
to include her foster childrens pictures in
newsletters.
Fostering is by definition temporary,
she said. Reunification is always the goal
of foster care, and birth parents always
have the right to have a year to work a case
plan and receive services to help them
regain custody of their child.
It is only if birth parents arent able to
make adequate progress in providing a
safe living environment for their child after
Who: Tovah Gidseg, foster and
adoptive parent
What: All you ever wanted to know
about foster care and adoption in
New Jersey
When: Wednesday, July 29, 8:30
p.m.
Where: The Mom and Dad Academy, Fair Lawn, address given after
registration
Fee: $25 single / $40 couple
To register: momanddadacademy.
com/fostering
10 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015

Tovah Gidseg in the hall of the Bergen County Courthouse after her family
adopted their two youngest children
MAEGAN DOUGHERTY PHOTOGRAPHY

that year and if no other family members

are able to care for the child that adoption is an option.
Ms. Gidseg wants her workshop to start
people thinking about the possibilities
of fostering or adopting children in New
Jersey.
You can become a foster parent with
the goal only to foster, a foster parent who
is open to adopting children you foster
who may become available for adoption,
or you can apply to only adopt, in which
case you may wait longer but only have
children placed with you who are legally
free for adoption or will be soon. Most
people I know who have adopted through
foster care fostered those children first,
but I also know people who have adopted
directly through the state a child who was
already adoptable, she said.
And while its not the specific topic at
her Fair Lawn talk the Mom and Dad
Academy is non-sectarian as a religious
Jew Ms. Gidseg has a particular interest in increasing the Jewish communitys
awareness of the foster care system, and
its involvement in it, and she will discuss
some of those issues.
Unlike other religious communities,
particularly the evangelical Christian community, our community by and large has
not taken as much of a hands-on role with
this issue, she said. We are a generous
and chesed-oriented community that in
my experience is more likely to donate
to organizations that do this type of work
than to actually engage in it by mentoring at-risk parents, fostering children,

Hilary Levin and her daughter Dalia

on Mothers Day
adopting waiting children in the foster
care system, and so on.
Why become a foster parent?
Because you love children and want to
care and protect and advocate for a child
with all your heart while their birth family tries to heal and rectify whatever problems led to the childs removal. Because
you want to help a child blossom and be
part of supporting the child and familys
safe and lasting reunification. Because you
have empathy for families in crisis and
their children, and are willing and able to
fight hard for a child to get the support,
the education and therapies and whatever
else that they need and deserve, she said.
How can you imagine saying goodbye to
a child you have taken in?
Ms. Gidseg pulls out an anonymous
quote that circulates in the Internet sites

where foster parents gather: I am not

afraid to grieve. I am afraid of what would
happen to these children if no one took
the risk to love them.
Despite the grief that is possible if a child
does leave your home, she said, you have
the satisfaction of knowing that giving
a child a foundation of love and secure
attachment will make a huge impact on
that childs future relationships and life
success.
Adopting a foster child also has its emotional challenges.
With the gaining of a new permanent
adoptive family, a child will also experience grief, and feelings of rejection and
loss. You need to be committed to learning how to help them live with and resolve
those feelings.
Her class will go over the details of
whats required from foster parents, but
if youre a typical reader of this paper,
youre probably okay. You have to be over
18, have no history of violent crime or
abuse of or neglect of children, have a safe
home (rental apartments are fine) with
room for a child, and be able to play well
with a long list of others, including caseworkers, attorneys, therapists, teachers,
and in some cases birth families. ( Thats
a part Ive found especially rewarding,
she says.) You dont have to be married,
be a stay-at-home parent, or be well-to-do
financially, because the state assists with
the childs expenses.
Of course, there are additional challenges and opportunity for humorous
anecdotes when it comes to a family like
Ms. Gidsegs, which observes Shabbat and
kashrut, taking in a child who most likely
is not Jewish. (Not that there arent occasional Jewish children who need a kosher
home for emergency or permanent placement, highlighting the shortage of appropriate families who have undergone
the training necessary to take in those
children.)
You can take your foster children
to synagogue except in the case of an
older non-Jewish child who specifically
expresses that they do not wish to go, in
which case you can make other arrangements, she said.
Sometimes compromises have to be
made.
If they or their birth families ask, you
have to get them to church or mosque.
That doesnt mean the foster parent has
to go along; the childs caseworker will
help find someone in the larger community who will take them to services.
That hasnt actually come up in her
experience, however.
In our familys experience, the biological families have at times been confused
SEE CHILDREN NEED US PAGE 29

JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015 11

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Congressman Scott Garrett speaks in Teaneck

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onday night, in what was

billed as an Emergency
Town Hall Meeting ,
Congressman Scott Garrett told a crowd of 250 at Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck that he
strongly opposed the agreement reached
between Iran and the P5+1 powers.
The administration originally said
that a bad deal is worse than no deal,
said Congressman Garrett, a Republican
whose district includes much of Bergen
County. Instead, it delivered this bad
deal to the American people.
The evenings host, Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, strongly agreed.
In American history we have Theodore Roosevelts Square Deal, Franklin Roosevelts New Deal, Harry Trumans Fair Deal, Rabbi Pruzansky said.
Going forward, we have to label this the
Bad Deal.
In the deal, the administration played
complete deference to the Iranian parliament and paid no deference to the U.S.
Congress. The actual language of the
deal recognizes that certain provisions
cannot be implemented unless the Iranian parliament takes affirmative action.
It makes absolutely no reference to our
procedures, Mr. Garrett said.
In his reading of the Constitution, the
agreement is a treaty that should require
a ratification by two-thirds of the Senate,
Mr. Garrett said. The administration
shouldnt be able to just put a different
sticker on it, he added. But he admitted
that he has been unable to convince the
Republican leadership in the Senate of
his position. Unfortunately, this Senate,
like past Senates, have not insisted on its
prerogative.
Mr. Garrett lamented that even before
it was presented to Congress, the deal
was approved by the United Nations
Security Council.
The rest of the world has seen that
the resolution has passed and now
you see countries like Germany saying
theyre willing to reestablish their trading relations with Iran, he said.
Now it will be up to the U.S. Well be
methodically going through this with
respective committees for the next 60
says, while the world community will
be saying that the U.S. is on board, the
administration is on board, the U.N. is on
board. If we vote to override the presidents promised veto of a Congressional
vote to disapprove the agreement, that
would be a great thing. The world will
know that though the president is going
in this left direction, the House and
the Senate, speaking for the American

Scott Garrett

people, are going on the right position

on these issues. Even if this wont go
through, if we cant override the veto, we
have the power to tell the State Department that they cant use any of the dollars appropriate to do X, Y, or Z to implement the agreement.
Rabbi Pruzansky labeled the agreement a historic betrayal not only of
Israel and our Sunni allies such as
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq but of
democracy around the world. Going forward, it is destructive to America.

In the deal, the

administration
played
complete
deference to
the Iranian
parliament and
paid no
deference to the
U.S. Congress.
CONGRESSMAN SCOTT GARRETT

So what to do?
Rabbi Pruz ansky offered four
suggestions.
First of all, make calls to Congress.
Tell them of your opposition. You do not
need to be constituents. They respond
to calls much more than emails. If the
staff of a congressman is getting 30 or
40 calls an hour and cant get anything
done, they get the message.
Second, dont make it about President Obama. That will only make them
SEE BAD DEAL PAGE 42

Local
Maayanot student
among YU program winners

NCJW donates merchandise

Batsheva Leah Weinstein

with money that can be
of East Brunswick, a stuused to build the student at Maayanot Yeshiva
dents Judaica libraries,
High School for Girls in
while the top three performers in each of the
Teaneck, was among the
programs four tracks
winners in the girls Daf
receive cash prizes of
category at Yeshiva Universitys Bronka Weinup to $3,000.
traub High School Bekiut
This years program
program.
distributed more than
Nearly 300 students
$10,000 worth of Jewish books and $19,000
Batsheva Leah
from 30 North American
Weinstein
in cash prizes to highhigh schools mastered
achieving students.
significant portions of the
The program is named after Bronka
Talmud and competed for top awards
Weintraub zl, a founder and benefac through YUs Bekiut program. Students are given word lists to help them
tor of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a generous donor to YU.
tackle each chapter they learn. It then
For information, email Rabbi Reuven
tests them throughout the year to assess
Berman, program coordinator, at hightheir comprehension and comfort with
schoolbekiut@gmail.com.
the material. High scores are rewarded

Shul president Dr.

Mark Tanchel, left,
welcomes Cantor
Alan Sokoloff.
Courtesy TEPV

New cantor in Woodcliff Lake

Cantor Alan Sokoloff is the new cantor at
Temple Emanuel of the Pascack Valley in
Woodcliff Lake.
Cantor Sokoloff grew up in Sharon,
Mass., and was a protg of Cantor Harold Lew at Temple Israel of Sharon. He
continued his cantorial studies with master Cantor David Bagley in Toronto and
was a member of the Cantors Assembly class of 1990. He held positions in
Albany, N.Y., and Des Moines, Iowa,

served as cantor of the Westchester Jewish Center in Mamaroneck, taught at Solomon Schechter School of Westchester
for 12 years, and continues to volunteer
in the school community.
He is an active member of the Cantors
Assembly and a founding member of Kol
Hazzanim: The Westchester Board of Cantors. In addition, he will receive his rabbinical ordination this month. He and his wife,
Erica, are the parents of Arielle and Ranan.

Seeking Paterson connections

Not too long ago we reported on the
efforts of Jerry Schranz to help the minyan at the Federation Apartments in Paterson. His appeal for help was a success:
Two Torah scrolls were restored, prayer
books and chumashim were donated, and
the basement chapel received a dehumidifier and several chairs with armrests.
Now hes preparing for a dedication
ceremony and would like to make contact with surviving family members who
donated objects years ago to the Federation Apartments or to its one-time

neighbor, the Yavneh Academy, which

helped furnish the minyan when it first
began.
In particular, hes looking for surviving family members related to Reuben
J. Cohen (or Rose or Marshall Cohen),
Aaron Staretz, Leon Rosenblum, and
Breyna Grobart.
If you are related or know any of the
descendants or other relatives of those
familes, email JerrySchranz@gmail.
com or go to www.patersonshul.com
for more information.

The National Council of Jewish Womens

Jersey Hills sections recent garage sale
was forced to end early by torrential
downpours. The section, finding itself left
with many unsold clothes, shoes, books,
household items, and toys, donated them
to organizations including Fair Lawn High
School (to be used as a fund-raiser), the

Womens Information Center and Goodwill, and the Viet Nam Veterans of America. Sundries went to C.A.T.S (Caring
about the Strays) and Animals Need You.
Funds raised before the rain will support
NCJWs services provided to the community. For information about NCJW call (201)
794-6644.

Community launches JHF

SeniorHaven for elder abuse prevention
To launch the Jewish Home Familys opening of the SeniorHaven Center for Elder
Abuse Prevention, there will be a community breakfast on Tuesday, July 28, at 8
a.m., at the Jewish Home at Rockleigh, 10
Link Dr., Rockleigh.
SeniorHaven, a member of the SPRiNG
Alliance, joins other emergency shelters
around the country that are specifically
focused on meeting the unique needs of
the over-65 population. It will be the only
shelter in New Jersey and one of 12 in the
country.
It will offer short-term crisis stabilization
stays for victims of elder abuse, providing
an emergency safe haven for 90 to 120 days

at no charge to the victim. Victims will be

provided a full range of services, including
medical care, and nursing, rehabilitation,
and social services, along with pastoral
care, depending on individual needs.
Referrals to SeniorHaven can come
from any professional in the community,
including social service agencies, hospital
social workers, Adult Protective Services,
and police officers. For referrals, call (855)
455-0555. Speakers on elder abuse prevention and warning signs are also available and can be booked for organizations
of any type. For information on speakers,
call (201) 518-1176 or email SeniorHaven@
JewishHomeFamily.org.

Sunday volunteer activity

Safely@Home, formerly Bonim Builders, is
partnering with Rebuilding Together Bergen County to renovate a kitchen for an
elderly woman in Teaneck. The sheetrock
is up and volunteers, age 16 and up, are
needed to paint on Sunday morning, July
26, from 8:30 a.m. to noon.
Cold water and kosher snacks will be
provided on the work site. Materials, supplies, and tools will be provided. If you
wish to bring your own tools, label them
clearly. The address, work scope, and
waiver forms will be provided via email
several days before the project. Bring completed waivers for both Safely@Home and
Rebuilding Together to the project. Dress
for a mess. Closed-toed shoes are required;
no sandals or flipflops.
Register in advance by emailing Stacey
Orden at SOrden@jewishhomefamily.org
or by calling (201) 518-1175.

A volunteer prepares a wall.


Courtesy Safely@Home

Outdoor Shabbat services

Temple Beth El of Northern Valley in Closter continues outdoor family-friendly Welcome Summer Shabbat services tonight,
led by Rabbi David Widzer and Cantor
Ricca Timman, and on Friday, Aug. 14, held
jointly with Temple Sinai of Bergen County
in Tenafly and led by Rabbi Jordan Millstein
and Cantor Timman, at the State Line Lookout off the Palisades Parkway.

The Lookout is at the highest point on

the Palisades Cliffs, and it has a large parking lot. Enter off the northbound Palisades
Interstate Parkway, two miles north of
Exit 2. Bring a lawn chair and bug spray. In
case of rain, services will be at 6:30 p.m.
at Temple Beth El, 221 Schraalenburgh
Road in Closter. Call (201) 768-5112 or go
to www.tbenv.org.
Jewish Standard JULY 24, 2015 13

Editorial
Thank you, Mr. Foxman

braham Foxman of Bergen County, the AntiDefamation Leagues executive director and
public face, is newly retired.
As he enters the next adventure in a life begun
in peril and then marked by a full half century, to the day,
of work for an organization that has worked for the good
of the Jewish people steadily, faithfully, and open-mindedly for even longer than that, we want to thank him.
He has used his formidable brains; his firsthand

TRUTH REGARDLESS OF CONSEQUENCES

experience of hatred, trauma, and dislocation, as well as

of loyalty and love; his wide-ranging education; his courage; his optimism; his ability to take a stand, and to relinquish it should it prove to be wrong, and his warmth and
charisma in the service of his people, who are of course
our people.
We wish him joy in his personal life and hope to hear
his voice in our public life for the next many many years.
JP
Thank you, Mr. Foxman. 

Jewish vets trump Trump

one of us here in the Jewish Standard office have

experienced the military
draft firsthand, and none
of us are veterans; given that, obviously none of us have been prisoners
of war. We have no particular standing in the debate over Republican
presidential hopeful Donald Trumps
attacks on Senator John McCain, who
spent five years as a prisoner of war,
under torture.
But we have interviewed a number
of U. S. armed force veterans over the
years. Some have been prisoners of
war. Certainly their voices can contribute to the debate.
Walter Krug of Teaneck already
had been in a forced labor camp and
a Soviet gulag as he made his way
east, away from Nazi Germany. Once
in China he ended up in the American air force; he was shot down over
Burma and was a guest of the Japanese, as he put it, for 2 1/2 years. His
experiences parallel Mr. McCains.
I absolutely disagree with Mr.
Trump, Mr. Krug said. Its absolutely
stupid. If you are captured or not, it is
totally immaterial to whether you are
a hero. To attack an individual like
Mr. McCain is absolutely wrong. He
served his country and he served
it well.
Robert Levine of Teaneck was
drafted into the U.S. Army. He landed
on the beach in Normandy. Later, he
was shot, he was captured by the

Jewish
Standard
1086 Teaneck Road
Teaneck, NJ 07666
(201) 837-8818
Fax 201-833-4959
Publisher
James L. Janoff
Associate Publisher Emerita
Marcia Garfinkle

Germans in France, he was sent on

a forced march, he was saved by a
French doctor, his leg was amputated, he almost died, and he was
held prisoner in a hospital, Stalag
221, and eventually liberated by the
Americans. I am appalled, he said
about Mr. Trumps comments.
I just cant believe Trump would
say this, particularly because he
never even served, but the fact is that
is an area that is sacrosanct.
What amazes me most is that
there are people who are willing to
listen to him. I cant understand that
here is a guy Mr. McCain who
spent not one year but five years in
hell. Of all guys to point fingers at. It
just doesnt make sense.
I am trying to find words to say
what I mean. It is appalling. It is just
appalling.
Alfred Burstein of Tenafly was
drafted, and he is straightforward
as he talks about the horrors of war,
including the wretched trench foot
that nearly rotted his leg away completely. Trump does not have any
understanding, he said. McCain
was shot down; to think that he is
not a hero for undergoing that kind
of circumstance shows the limitation in Trumps thinking about what
national service means.
The other thing that is disturbing
to me is that of all the people who
might say something questioning
McCains values here is a guy who

Editor
Joanne Palmer
Associate Editor
Larry Yudelson
Guide/Gallery Editor
Beth Janoff Chananie
About Our Children Editor
Heidi Mae Bratt

jstandard.com
14 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015

avoided service, and when he was

asked how that came about he said
Oh, it was a bone spur, and when he
was asked which foot it was he said
he didnt remember.
It sounds like fraud. The guy who
speaks the loudest about how you
have to be the strongest, when you
come down to it, never had the patriotism to serve in the armed forces.
Mr. Krug, Mr. Levine, and Mr.
Burstein all are World War II veterans. We also spoke to a younger veteran, David Glass of Springfield, the
husband of the Jewish Federation of
Northern New Jerseys Lisa Harris
Glass. He was in the navy from 1986 to
1994 and was deployed to the Persian
Gulf three times, including during the
Iran/Iraq and the first Gulf wars.
It was ridiculous, Mr. Glass said.
McCain went on a bombing mission,
he was shot down, and he was held
captive for five years. He was a hero,
he was doing his duty, and then he
came back. And whether or not you
like John McCain, he dedicated his
entire life to the country.
And by the way, I dont see Donald
Trump serving anywhere.
This is a nonstarter. Thats how I
feel and I dont doubt that any veteran would say the same thing. Its
nonsense.
We salute these veterans for their
service and for their willingness to
share their wisdom.


Correspondents
Warren Boroson
Lois Goldrich
Abigail K. Leichman
Miriam Rinn
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Natalie D. Jay
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Janice Rosen

JP

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them sex?

feel sorry for all the cheaters on Ashley Madison.

They were assured that their affairs were discreet as they sought extramarital liaisons. But
along came hackers who obtained their personal
information and credit card numbers and are now
threatening to release it all, along with their declared
sexual fantasies, unless Ashley Madison shuts down.
After claiming that Ashley Madison never fully
deleted the information of even those who chose to
leave the site, the hackers wrote: Too bad for those
men, theyre cheating dirtbags and deserve no such
discretion.
Morally driven hackers? Who knew?
Well see how this all pans out. But one thing is certain. Whether or not married men and women find
hookups on the Internet, it wont stop them from
cheating. Infidelity is as old as time itself.
But why? Why, for example, do men who love their
wives still cheat?
What gets in the way of
any deep understanding of
infidelity is the publics natural assumption that husbands have affairs for sex.
In fact, the vast majority
of husbands affairs have
no physical component.
Rabbi
Theyre often cyber affairs
Shmuley
Boteach
that take place in Internet
chat rooms. They are conducted over the phone and
are never consummated. And even when they do get
physical it is often very bad and unsatisfying sex. Just
ask Monica Lewinsky (as revealed in her testimony in
the Starr Report).
In truth, men have affairs not for physical reasons
but emotional ones. They cheat not out of a sense of
confidence but out of a state of brokenness. Not out of
a sense of how desirable they are but out of a sense of
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach of Englewood is the author
of 30 books, including Kosher Sex, Kosher Lust,
and Kosher Adultery. Follow him on Twitter @
RabbiShmuley.

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Opinion
what failures they must be. And this
is especially true of men like Tiger
Woods and Bill Clinton, who live in
hyper-competitive environments
where they realize that they are only
special to the extent that they keep
on winning. Men like these are particularly broken, living as they do
just one failure away from obscurity. They know that their value as
human beings rests entirely in other
peoples hands. They constantly
question their self-worth and they
turn to women both to feel desirable
and sexy and to comfort them from
their pain.
Yes, I know. Superstar sportsmen
like Tiger Woods appear to the public to be as cool as cucumbers. But
beneath the calm veneer is a man
who has been trained to believe that
his value as a human being rests
entirely on a never-ending game of
human one-upmanship. Those who
have made their names in sports
and politics live with unimaginable
insecurity. And rather than deal with
these insecurities in a healthy way
by having deep emotional conversations with their wives about their
fears, it is easier simply to paper
them over by turning to strangers
who make them feel desirable. The
attention of other women brings a
momentary silencing of the inner
demons who constantly taunt them
with whispers of their own insignificance. And the more prized the
woman is by other men, the greater
the validation these men feel.
Coupled with this is mens intuitive gravitation to the healing powers of the feminine. Men who are
in pain use the caress and the care
of a woman as a salve to sooth their
broken egos. Having a woman care
for you and make herself available
to you not to mention tell you how
wonderful you are becomes a drug
that makes you feel better instantly.
Of course, the healing is ephemeral
and unfulfilling, based as it is on a
highly artificial sense of intimacy.
The obvious question, now, is this.
If a man who feels deeply insecure
looks to a woman to make him feel
special, then why doesnt he turn
to his own wife? After all, shes a
woman, right?
And the answer: because any man
who suspects deep down that he is a
loser is going to look at the woman
dumb enough to marry him as a
loser squared. She has allied herself
with failure and is part of the same
loser package. And if she has no
value, how can she make someone
else feel special?
The public makes the mistake of
assuming that powerful, successful men are the most confident
when precisely the opposite is true.

Everyone who seeks the spotlight,

whether in sports, television, or politics, does so to compensate for some
inner feeling of inadequacy, as Aristotle made clear more than two millennia ago. Every successful man
is inwardly broken in some way. If
not, why would he spend his life
seeking a place in the publics heart?
Many will argue with me. Adultery is about sex. Its about powerful
men behaving arrogantly. But then
why is the most common refrain of
the adulterous husband to his mistress the infamous My wife doesnt
understand me, meaning, My
wife cant take away my pain, but
maybe you can. My wife cant make
me feel good about myself. Even in
my marriage I still feel insignificant.
But being with you makes me feel
special.
Theyre expressing their inner
misery and blaming their wives for
their unhappiness when really they
are solely responsible for their low
self-esteem, which will carry over
into every relationship until they
finally decide to fix themselves.
Many have said that husbands
who cheat are sex addicts. But then
why arent they addicted to sex with
their wives? Why does it have to
come from another woman?
But from understanding the cause,
we can create a solution. Men who
learn to talk to their wives about
their deepest fears become more
immune to an affair. Infidelity, it
turns out, often provides a starting
point for couples to address the void
in their relationship, which usually
consists of the lack of truly intimate
communication about lifes anxieties
and apprehensions.
A mans deepest fear is of failure.
And the person he most masks this
from is his own wife, because she
is the person whose opinion matters most to him. But wives number
one complaint about their marriages
is that their husbands dont talk to
them about their feelings.
When a philandering husband
is trying to win his wife back after
cheating on her, what better way is
there than to open up to her, finally,
about the reasons for his unfaithfulness. It was never a rejection of
her. It did not happen because she
did not give him enough sex, or
she didnt go to the gym, or wasnt
emotionally available. Those are the
excuses of a coward. A boy blames
others for his failures. A man takes
responsibility for his actions. Rather,
it was because he falsely thought that
someone other than his wife could
make him feel good about himself.
And now he has learned that those
feelings of self-confidence are the
preserve of only one woman.

Saving Tisha BAv

y rabbi once told me

lights into the Beit Am, where
that the holiday of
we sat on the floor and listened
Tisha BAv had been
to the haunting trope (melody)
saved by Jewish
of Megilat Eicha, the Book of
summer camps.
Lamentations. In addition to
While summer is known univerEicha, singing kinot like Eli
sally as the time for fun, the solTzion, with its solemn, repetiemn, less known Jewish holiday
tive tune and deep meaning,
that commemorates the destrucalways spoke to me. It remains
tion of the First and Second TemJeremy J.
a highlight of the day.
Fingerman
ples in Jerusalem thousands of
I think about the power
years ago falls during the hot, long
of those sounds, which are
days of summertime. Not studied
unique for this holiday. Just
during the school year, the ninth day of the
as our sages developed a unique sound and
Hebrew month of Av is fully experienced as the
melodies for the High Holidays, which conjure up powerful memories and connection
only holiday celebrated in immersive summer
points, so too the powerful sounds of Tisha
environments.
BAv, in my case encountered at camp for the
In many ways, Jewish summer camps kept
first time, have been forever imprinted in my
Tisha BAv on the educational calendar. That
mind and my soul. I cherish these melodies
presents a relevant message for our entire
as my connection point to all that the holiday
community.
represents.
I found my own personal connection to
I remember, too, the bonfires later in the
this holiday during my summers many years
evening, which provided a time of introspecago. Those memories have remained with me
tion and action, as we reflected on themes like
and perhaps even strengthened over time.
tikkun olam (repairing the world) and hemilut
I remember so clearly walking amid candle
chasadim (acts of lovingkindness.) The mood
Jeremy J. Fingerman of Englewood is the CEO of
of the 24 hours encouraged us to know that we
the Foundation for Jewish Camp. Write to him
were part of something greater than ourselves,
SEE SAVING PAGE 16
at Jeremy@jewishcamp.org.

One rabbis conversion

regarding conversions

have an admission to make.

for Geirus Policies and Standards
I am a convert regarding
and refers to the network of
conversions.
regional conversion courts that
Thats the stark realizaoperate under the aegis of the
tion I came to as I participated
RCA, which represents Orthodox rabbis, and the Beth Din of
in the GPS review committees
America. Since this network was
report at the recent Rabbinical
established in 2007, more than
Council of America convention.
1,300 candidates have converted
Two weeks ago, this newspaper
Rabbi Shmuel
through the GPS process. Now,
ran a story about the committees
Goldin
12 courts function as part of the
findings, quoting me about my
network. My report at the RCA
participation in it.
convention was delivered in my
Since then, Ive continued to
role as chairman of the GPS review committee.
think about my experiences, and I want to
The truth is that when GPS was launched
elaborate on them here.
initially, I was one of the skeptics. I was deeply
The term GPS, as I am using it here, stands
afraid that the debits of establishing a formal
Shmuel Goldin, senior rabbi of Congregation
system of conversion courts would outweigh
Ahavath Torah in Englewood, is the honorary
the potential benefits.
president of the Rabbinical Council of America
Before GPS was established, the conversion process in America relied heavily on the
and served as the chairman of the GPS review
personal relationship between the conversion
committee. The committees full report, audio
candidate and his or her converting rabbi,
tapes of the presentations at the convention,
the rabbi responsible for guiding the candidate
and more information is available on the RCAs
website, Rabbis.org.
SEE CONVERSION PAGE 17

Opinions expressed in the op-ed and letters columns are not necessarily those of the Jewish
Standard. The Jewish Standard reserves the right to edit letters. Be sure to include your town. Email
jstandardletters@gmail.com. Handwritten letters will not be printed.
JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015 15

Opinion
Saving
FROM PAGE 15

and that we were connected to all of Jewish history.

Because Tisha BAv is usually a day of
fasting and introspection, camp directors
have grappled with how to acknowledge
this sad day during the fun, carefree days
of camp. Some will argue that Tisha BAv
may not be an easy or simple Jewish holy
day to observe, either practically, emotionally, and ideologically, for this generation of campers. Jewish camps use Tisha
BAv to effectively transmit Jewish values
and a deeper connection to Israel and to
the Jewish people. What I have witnessed
in camps across North America, though,
gives me encouragement that camp directors and educators are finding new, creative ways to bring meaning and relevance
to the day.
The educational themes of the holiday
include a range of Jewish values and provide for rich discussions among campers and counselors. These include, for

example, baseless hatred vs. brotherly

love (sinat chinam as opposed to ahavat chinam), mourning, anti-Semitism,
national tragedy and dealing with crises,
collective memory, exile to redemption,
Temple times, identification with events
that happened thousands of years ago, and
social responsibility.
One of the most powerful programmatic approaches came as result of a visit
to Israel. Although I have never personally
experienced the Yom Hashoah or Yom
Hazikaron sirens, I certainly have been
moved by the pictures or videos of the
entire country coming to a two-minute
stop. Cars on the Ayalon Highway in Tel
Aviv at a complete standstill. Young and
old, secular and religious, sabra and visitor, all stopping to reflect on the sound and
the meaning behind it.
One camp director, having experienced the siren on Yom Hazikaron firsthand, decided to bring it back to camp.
He told the story to his entire camp community one Shabbat, explaining what he

experienced and how he felt. A few days

later, on Tisha BAv, he played the twominute siren over the camps loudspeaker.
Everyone came to a stop in whatever activity in which they were involved. On the
sports field. At the waterfront. In the arts
& crafts pavilion. Everyone stopped for
two minutes. Next, they had an extended
discussion about what they experienced
and how they felt. They all connected the
experience to Israel, to a deeper connection with one another, and to being a part
of the global Jewish community. It was a
powerful and lasting memory created in a
contemporary way on Tisha BAv.
I heard of another dramatic program
that worked to link the significance of this
holiday with our shared history. Using
cardboard boxes, campers and counselors together built a mini replica of the
Kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The
camp community then took turns placing
notes into the cracks of the boxes, expressing their hopes and fears, reflecting on
their lessons, and connecting themselves

to Jerusalem and to Jewish history. With

everyone gathered safely at a distance, the
camp director then set the boxes ablaze,
vividly commemorating the destruction
of millennia ago and of our vulnerabilities
today.
All of us could benefit from the creativity of camp directors and educators in
bringing the contemporary messages of
Tisha BAv to the forefront. Just as campers discuss how to fight against baseless
hatred and how to spread a spirit of kindness and love in camp, so too we can
find ways to accept one another and to
fight the tensions which pull apart our
community.
Campers pledge to keep animosity out
of camp by sharing, by helping those in
need, and by encouraging those who may
be a bit down. Cant we do the same?
Years have passed since those long
summer days at camp where Tisha BAv
became imprinted in my being. Yet the
message of the holiday seems even more
relevant to me today.

Doubts about the Iranian nuclear deal

to urge that Israel be wiped

ast week, the Obama
out, and they have a hisadministration
tory of deception about the
announced the longcountrys nuclear program.
antic ipated signing of a multinational deal to
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus condemthwart Irans nuclear weapons
nation of the agreement as
ambitions.
The White House has begun
providing a pathway for Iran
a barrage of efforts to promote
to acquire the bomb comDr. Leonard
pounds the communitys
the agreement. Secretary of
A. Cole
angst.
State John Kerry joined Energy
Still, President Obama
Secretary Ernest Moniz on a
insists that the deal would
round of Sunday talk shows
prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear
to make the administrations case. Subsequently, Vice President Joseph Biden, in an
weapon. Mr. Kerry says the agreement will
hour-long phone address to Jewish commean that Israel and the region will ultimunity leaders, summarized the thicket of
mately be much safer.
details in the 150-page agreement.
Bidens assurances to his phone listenEnactment of the deal is subject to
ers were based on his review of the provisions for inspection of Irans nuclear faciliapproval by the Senate and the House
ties, reduction of the countrys uranium
of Representatives within 60 days from
stockpiles, limitations on centrifuges, and
when they receive it from the administration. The 60-day clock began ticking earmore. Skeptics believe the administralier this week. If both bodies reject the deal
tions assurances are based more on wishful thinking than reality. They cite Irans
and President Barack Obama exercises a
record of cheating on its nuclear activities
veto, overriding that veto will require a
and this deals unworkable complexity.
two-thirds majority by each house. Several congressional Republicans already
Further, they criticize the deals allowance
have announced their opposition to the
for the release of $150 billion in sanctions
deal, and some Democratic members have
relief to Iran. Observers believe that some
indicated support for it. But most are still
of that money is likely to be used to support terrorism.
uncommitted, and the outcome remains
These issues will continue to be debated
uncertain.
For many in the American Jewish comin the coming weeks in various forums. In
munity, the choices are especially vexing.
announcing that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold hearings on the
Even if they support the president on other
deal, the committees leaders exhibited
issues, they wonder if his eagerness for a
admirable restraint. Both the Republican
deal with Iran has resulted in his making
chairman, Bob Corker, and the Demotoo many concessions. Irans leaders continue unabashedly to support terrorism and
cratic ranking member, Ben Cardin, said
16 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015

Portraits of the former Ayatollah Khomeini, left, and Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stare out over Tehran on June 4. 
JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES

they would await forthcoming testimony

and clarifications before deciding to vote
for or against the agreement.
As debate continues about aspects of
the deal, three observations of particular
interest to the Jewish community deserve
emphasis. Each is based on a false assumption regarding Israels approach to the Iranian nuclear issue.
The first is the notion encapsulated by a
Reuters headline earlier this year: Kerry
questions Netanyahus judgment as U.S.Israel row deepens. Emphasis on Netanyahus pointed criticism of the deal fails to
give due weight to the massive support for
his position across the Israeli political spectrum. Nowhere is this better illustrated

than by the emotional assessment from

the prime ministers political opponent,
Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog. The deal,
Mr. Herzog said, will unleash a lion from
the cage; it will have a direct influence
over the balance of power in our region;
its going to affect our borders, and it will
affect the safety of my children.
The second ill-considered contention
is that Israel doesnt know what its own
best interests are. This 2013 assertion
by Obama came in the context of Israels
building plans in disputed West Bank territories. But the sentiment is consistent with
the administrations view of Israels dissatisfaction with the Iranian nuclear deal. An
assumption of superior knowledge about

Letters/Opinion
Conversion

LETTERS

FROM PAGE 15

No to the deal

In my view, this horrendous deal with Iran constitutes incompetency, capitulation and deceit. Far
beyond that, I consider this to be a crime against the
security of the United States. It literately hands nuclear
weapons to a rogue state intent on world destabilization and conquest. Incredibly, the Islamic Republic
will have this destructive power in hand within a few
SEE LETTERS PAGE 29

CORRECTION
The poet and the pol ( July 9) referred incorrectly to the location of a headstone erected
in memory of the late poet Allen Ginsberg.
The headstone is in the Bnai Israel Cemetery
in Newark, not at the Gomel Hesed Cemetery
nearby. Both cemeteries are on a triangle
formed at McClellan Street and Mt. Olivet Avenue, but various Ginsberg biographers and websites either ignored or were not aware of the distinction between the two cemeteries.

another countrys interests should at least be based on

a record of earlier successful assessments and actions.
Yet recent U.S. policy miscalculations about turmoil
elsewherein Ukraine and Iraq, in Libya, Syria, Egypt
and Yemenraise doubts about the administrations
foreign policy judgments, including to many in Israel.
The third and most provocative contention is that a
military strike against Irans nuclear facilities should
be avoided because it would be destabilizing. This
remark, made by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, General Martin Dempsey, in 2012, was part of
a U.S. effort to dissuade an Israeli attack. If anything,
U.S. concerns that such action would provoke Iranian reprisals and possibly war has grown since then.
Yet a recent poll of Israelis shows that nearly half the
respondents favor such action if it is necessary to
prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. No
doubt many of them recall that Israel bombed Iraqs
nuclear facility in 1981 and Syrias in 2007. Criticism
of those acts by outsiders later gave way to appreciation, because the nuclear threat in the region had been
reduced.
Meanwhile, at the outset of the 60-day congressional countdown, the U.N. Security Council voted to
endorse the agreement. In support of the decision,
Americas U.N. representative, Samantha Power, said
that sanctions relief for Iran would begin only after
verifiable Iranian compliance.
Hours later, however, the European Union
announced that its own sanctions on the purchase of
Iranian oil now would be lifted. As Congress considers
its options, the administrations claim that Iranian violations would evoke an immediate snapback of sanctions now seemed less assuring.
Dr. Leonard Cole is a past chair of the Jewish Federation
of Northern New Jerseys Jewish Council for Public
Affairs and now is a co-chair the Jewish Agencys task
force on Anti-Semitism. He lives in Ridgewood.

through training, assessing the candidates progress, and convening a bet

din a religious court for the actual
conversion. The converting rabbi
became familiar with the candidates
under his tutelage, gaining knowledge of each ones motivations, concerns, commitment, progress, and
limitations. This knowledge enabled
the rabbi to determine the candidates readiness for the life-changing
step of conversion to Judaism.
With the launching of GPS, however, everything changed. Most
significantly, the converting rabbi
became a sponsoring rabbi, and
the final decision about a candidates
readiness was handed to a separate
regional court. Proponents of these
changes argued that they would standardize conversion practices across
the United States, grant greater validity to individual conversions, prevent inappropriate conversions, and
free rabbis from pressure to perform
such conversions. But I found myself
wondering: Wouldnt these changes
depersonalize the conversion process and add another layer of bureaucracy? Wouldnt the regional courts,
largely unfamiliar with the nuances
of individual candidates, be encouraged to apply uniform standards to
all? Wouldnt the demands on each
convert become increasingly rigid
and overbearing?
In retrospect, it turns out that I was
right but to a much larger extent I
also was very wrong. For while the
GPS system, like all such systems,
does struggle with issues of distance,
depersonalization, and rigidity, its
fundamental value to the converts
overwhelms its faults.
Ironically, this realization was
driven home to me most powerfully
in the aftermath of the devastating
scandal involving Barry Freundel,
whom I had known since high school
and who served for years as the head
of the GPS bet din in Washington, D.C.
A few days after hearing the shocking news that this respected rabbi
had been arrested for clandestinely
filming conversion candidates in
the mikvah, I traveled to Washington together with Rabbi Leonard
Matanky, president of the RCA, and
Rabbi Mark Dratch, the councils
executive vice president. There, we
participated in an emergency meeting with more than 60 converts
and some of their significant others. Understandably, the meeting
was emotionally charged, challenging, and tense. A palpable sense of
betrayal pervaded the room, and
questions about how this travesty
could have occurred filled the air.
The most immediate and pressing

question raised, however, was totally

different. What is the status of our
conversions now? the converts asked.
How will the discrediting of the
supervising rabbi of our conversions
affect our halachic identity as Jews?
And, to my surprise, we were concretely able to help. Because of the
existence of a formal conversion network and because of the relationships
that we had cultivated with halachic
authorities throughout the world, we
prevented the inevitable questioning
of these conversions. Within days of
the meeting, at the urging of the RCA,
an official statement was released
from the chief rabbinates office in
Israel validating all conversions that
had taken place under Rabbi Freundels auspices.
I shudder to think of the consequences had GPS not existed. Had
these conversions rested solely on
the reputation of one person, a public battle over their validity inevitably
would have erupted, adding deep
insult to injury for those who had
already endured so much.
Yet another surprising comment
at the Washington meeting pushed
my newfound recognition of GPSs
value even further. In the midst of
difficult questioning about the RCAs
oversight of the network, one man in
attendance expressed his heartfelt
gratitude to the RCA for establishing
and maintaining a centralized system
of conversion courts. To the general
assent of many present, he noted that
such a system grants precious peace
of mind to those who pass through its
doors. GPS assures them that once
they are finalized, their conversions
will not be questioned.
It was at that moment that I realized
how deeply, in this contentious world,
converts need such reassurance. The
Jewish community owes these extraordinary individuals a guarantee that
once they have completed the arduous journey of conversion, their status as Jews will be unassailable. GPS
was established in order to provide
that guarantee. Scores of rabbis volunteer hours and hours of their time,
serving as sponsoring rabbis and dayanim (halachic judges) in the system, in
order to provide that guarantee.
An awareness of the value of GPS,
however, does not absolve us from
asking the tough questions about its
functioning. What are the systems
inherent weaknesses and shortcomings? How can these weaknesses be
addressed better? How can the personal experience of the conversion
candidates who pass through its
doors be improved? Above all, how
can the horrific abuse that occurred
in the Washington, D.C., bet din be
avoided in the future?
Granted that the process of

conversion rests, by definition, on a

power imbalance between the rabbis
and the conversion candidates, what
safeguards can be put into place to
protect the potential converts better?
To address these questions, I found
myself chairing an extraordinary
committee over these past seven
months. Rabbis, converts, health
professionals, and others, both male
and female, collaborated on the twin
tasks of reviewing the functioning
of the GPS network seriously and
making concrete recommendations
toward its improvement. Following
hours of respectful yet no-holdsbarred discussion, debate, deliberation, survey analysis, and more, we
agreed on a wide-ranging, comprehensive report, which was presented
at the RCA convention in extraordinary forum.
Before a detailed review of the
report, speakers, including prominent halachic authorities, two
women who had converted under
the aegis of Barry Freundel, and dayanim whose broad exposure to the
issues deeply informed their view of
the conversion process, addressed
the meeting. Reaction to the women
was immediate and powerful. Rabbis around the room were brought to
tears as one of the speakers choked
up, describing her difficult entry into
the Jewish community. When she finished her talk, the hundreds of rabbis
present spontaneously rose to their
feet, in an ovation that expressed not
only respect and admiration, but also
a clear sense of partnership.
The sentiment in the room was palpable: This is what a holy partnership
can be about. With honest communication if we really speak to and
listen to each other we can make
this process better. By all accounts,
the momentum established at that
convention session is certain to propel the timely implementation of the
committees recommendations.
So thats it. I am a convert regarding conversion
To those who question the value
of a centralized conversion system
in the United States, I can assure you
that I was once among your number.
My experience and involvement in
these issues over these past months,
however, has changed my view. Contrary to the claims of its detractors,
the RCA is not running GPS in order
to consolidate power over the community. The many hours countless
people devoted toward the establishment, running, and improving of this
conversion system do not represent
a subterfuge to impose halachic stringencies upon the community. GPS
exists for the benefit of the converts
and the Jewish community at large.
Thats all that really matters.
JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015 17

Cover Story

Having a voice
Abe Foxman looks back at a tumultuous childhood and 50 years at the ADL
Joanne Palmer

ast Monday, July 20, 50 years to

the day after he began his work
at the Anti-Defamation League,
its executive director, Abraham
Foxman, retired.
Mr. Foxman, who lives in Bergen
County, was born in 1940; fingertip arithmetic reveals that he must be 75 years old,
although he comes across as a convincing
50-something. Although he grew up in the
United States, he was born in Poland. It
was not a good time to be born as a Jewish
kid, he said. Wrong time. Wrong place.
Wrong kid.
The story of his early childhood has
not been filmed, but it is cinematic, if not
actively operatic, in the extremity of the
situation and the intensity of the emotions it evoked. The background could
have been directed by Steven Spielberg,
Europe at war, but the main story should
have been a work by Ingmar Bergman
subtle, haunting, so very complicated.
Abraham Fuksmans parents, Joseph
and Helen, married in Warsaw. They both
came from wealthy, Jewishly observant
families hers, straightforwardly Orthodox, owned a yarn factory; his, with chasidic tendencies, manufactured textiles.
My father was a journalist, Mr. Foxman
said. He did it for fun he didnt have to
work. He went from yeshiva to gymnasium
to university. He was the editor of a newspaper, a revisionist Zionist paper. His
hero was Jabotinsky.
When the war broke out in 1939,
Joseph and Helen Fuksman moved east,
to Baranowicze. Helen was pregnant.
Those people who had vision, foresight,
and luck, moved east, Mr. Foxman said.
Although money helped, you had to have
understanding, guts, determination.
After he was born, his parents saw
that the Germans were coming, and they
the two young parents, their baby, and
the recently employed nanny continued to move east, Mr. Foxman said. The
Germans caught up with us in Vilna. It
was 1941.
The orders went out for all Jews to
assemble in the ghetto, he continued.
My nanny said to them, You go. Ill take
care of him.
18 Jewish Standard JULY 24, 2015

Abraham Fuksman
when he was Henryk
Stanislaw Kurpi.
Young Mr. Fuksman with his nanny,
Bronislawa Kurpi.

Mr. Foxman speaks at a podium a position in which he frequently finds himself. This time, it was at a conference in Israel.

Thats what they did. They left the baby

with the nanny, Bronislawa Kurpi.
I dont think that anybody at that time
knew that it would be four years before
wed be back together. They knew what
was going on but they didnt know. But
they made the most fateful decision of
their lives.
He paused, imagining how unimaginably painful that decision must have been.
Thats the way we all survived, he said.
The fact that they were separate, that
they could make decisions and take risks
that they couldnt if theyd had an infant
with them that raised the chances of
their survival. With me, they wouldnt
have made it. Without me, they had a mission to reunite.
His parents survived separately. My
mother escaped the ghetto, Mr. Foxman
said. She spoke good Polish, and she
established a false identity as an Aryan.
Then she made contact with me. I knew
her as my aunt.
She provided for me. She worked, she
stole, she did whatever she had to do.
My father was sent from one camp to
another. He hid in the forest, he was hidden by a Lithuanian, and in 1945 he came
back to Vilna, looking for me. He found my
mother, and we were reunited.
Meanwhile, as far as the little boy knew,
and as far back as he could remember,
he was Catholic, the well-loved, properly

baptized son of a single mother. He was

named Henryk Stanislaw Kurpi Stanislaw was his patron saint and I went to
church every Sunday.
When he was 5, Mr. Foxman was
reunited with his family. When my father
came back and realized that everybody
else was gone, they decided that they
would go to Palestine, he said. They said
to my nanny, You are a member of our
family. Come with us. But she said no.
I raised him, and he belongs to me,
Ms. Kurpi told the Fuksmans. And he is
Catholic.
It was true. He still was Catholic. I
learned to spit on Jews, and I cried when
anyone called me a zhid.
Meanwhile, his nanny, who was in her
late 40s and had never had a baby, was not
willing to give up the child she thought of
as hers. She tried to get rid of my father,
Mr. Foxman said. She went to the internal
KGB Vilna was under Soviet control
and said that my father survived because
he collaborated with the Germans. As evidence, she pointed to the fact that there
had been nearly 100,000 Jews in Vilna,
and less than 30,000 or so survived.
They arrested him, interrogated him, and
let him go, Mr. Foxman said.
Next, she said that he was stealing
from a government factory where he was
working. They arrested him, interrogated
him, and let him go. The third time, she

Helen, Joseph, and

Abraham Fuksman

The Fuksman family at a DP camp in Austria

Jewish standard JULY 24, 2015 19

Cover Story

In Israel for Danielles bat mitzah

stole something and accused him of theft.

Eventually, the KGB said to my parents
that we dont have the time for these
games. You have to resolve this in court.
So I became the first custody battle
in Soviet-liberated Europe, and my parents won. The case hinged on whether
Abe Fuksman, then 5, was old enough to
choose whether he wanted to be Catholic.
There was a Catholic saying, Give me a
child until he is 6, and he will be a Catholic
for life, Mr. Foxman said. The judge said
that I would stay with my parents because
I was under 6.
To add an extra fillip of oddness, I
stayed at the judges house during the
trial, he added. I had to stay somewhere! After the trial, though, the nanny
continued to live with the family. The Fuksmans decided to end the oddness by going
back to Poland. Ms. Kurpi followed. She
kidnapped me, and my parents kidnapped

The Foxman family today

me back, Mr. Foxman said. They escaped

Poland for a displaced persons camp in
Vienna in 1947, pretending to be Greek;
6-year-old Abe had to pretend to be deaf
because Greek was not among the many
languages he spoke.
It was in the DP camp that I became
Jewish, Mr. Foxman said. Later, I realized
how smart my father was. I was raised in
faith I was a devout Catholic and my
parents continued to raise me in faith.
You dont explain theology to a 6-year-old,
and Joseph Fuksman didnt. I used to say
my prayers every night, before I went to
sleep, in Latin, and I used to kneel. My
father taught me the Shma. I didnt understand the Latin, and I didnt understand
the Shma, but before I went to sleep, I
prayed. And then my father told me that I
didnt have to kneel any more.
The first time my father took me to shul
it was very wise was on Simchat Torah,

Mr. Foxman walks on railroad tracks to Auschwitz on the March of the Living.
20 Jewish standard JULY 24, 2015

the holiday marked by its singing, dancing

(and, in times and places that allow for
it, joy). On the way there, we passed a
church, and I crossed myself. We passed a
priest, and I dropped my fathers hand to
kiss his. And then we went to synagogue.
When we got home, I said, I like this
church. I like the singing and dancing.
My Jewishness became natural in the
DP camp, he continued. All the kids
there were Jewish.
At that first Simchat Torah, Mr. Foxman
remembers, there was a Soviet officer
there, who went over to my father and
asked him, about young Abe, Is he Jewish? My father said yes, and the officer,
who was Jewish, said that he had traveled
many hundreds of kilometers and hadnt
seen a Jewish child. Could he take me?
the officer asked.
My father said yes, and he took me and
danced with me, and he said, This is my

sefer Torah.
A few years ago, Mr. Foxman added, he
told that story at a Birthright tour of Yad
Vashem, and an undergraduate there,
taken with the story, decided to research it.
The officer moved to the United States and
became an Orthodox rabbi, she learned.
Mr. Foxman was able to meet Rabbi Leo
Goldman, then 91, at his home in Detroit
in 2010, a few years before he died.
Mr. Foxman has vivid visual memories
of Ms. Kurpi because his father managed
to take photos of the nanny with the family. It was a risky thing to do, and I asked
my father why he took that chance. I was
not sure if you would remember her, and I
wanted to be sure that for the rest of your
life, you would have her image before your
eyes, his father told him.
I asked my father once why, if she loved
me so much, there was so much hate. He
taught me that everything in excess is no
good, even love. That was the model by
which Mr. Foxman, a deeply committed
moderate, has lived.
He never got to say goodbye to Ms.
Kurpi, though, and they never spoke
again. They never heard from her again,
but in a one-sided way the relationship
continued until 1959. My parents kept
sending her money and packages, and she
had to sign for them, although she never
otherwise acknowledged them, he said.
We just got the return receipt. And then,
we were told not to send any more. She
had passed away.
From Austria, in 1950, the Fuksmans
went on to America (where they became
Foxmans). They decided to go there
rather than to Israel because my father
was a revisionist Zionist, and he headed
up the Irgun in Austria, so when the state
of Israel was established, it was not necessarily the best place for him, Mr. Foxman
said. Instead, relatives sponsored them,
and they moved to a furnished room on
Manhattans Upper West Side, close to
them, and Abe enrolled in Ramaz. But my
parents werent comfortable there, so we

Cover Story
moved to the Lower East Side, which was
wonderful. There was a lot of Yiddish. He
went to a yeshiva there.
And then we moved to Toms River,
to a chicken farm funded by the Jewish Agricultural Society, and I went to
yeshiva in Lakewood. He took an Atlantic
City-bound bus to the very small school.
When I was sick or there was a Jewish
holiday, my father would flag the bus
down and say dont stop.
He collected eggs and learned about
chickens. In the summer, I would vaccinate them. You lift a wing and stick the
needle in. Youd do it when it was still dark;
youd take the chicken from one coop and
then throw it into the other when you
were done, so youd know.
Soon, though, the family realized that
their heart was not in their chickens, and
they moved to Brooklyn, where Abe went
to the Yeshiva of Flatbush, funded by a
secret scholarship I never knew who
paid it. The Jewish National Fund sent him

Its not popular

today to
compromise.
Its not popular
to be moderate.
Everyone wants
you to be
100 percent plus
10 percent on
their side.
to Israel right after graduation. There were
300, 400 kids on a boat, and every day we
got closer to Israel. When we landed, we
stayed up all night, singing and dancing.
Back home, he went to City College
uptown, and then NYU Law School. I
never intended to practice law in its raw
form, he said. It was a discipline, a skill,
and a credential. And then everything
is either bashert or ironic the issue of
Pope Pius how good, bad, or horrendous the wartime Catholic leader was for
the Jews of Europe began to surface
in the early 1960s. Thats what got him
to the ADL.
Dr. Joseph Lichten, a Polish-born Jewish lawyer and diplomat who specialized
in the relationship between Catholics
and Jews, at the end of his career taught
canon law at the Vatican, Mr. Foxman
said. Dr. Lichten wrote a pamphlet called
In Defense of Pope Pius that stirred up a
hornets nest in the Jewish world.
My father got a call from someone at
the ADL, asking him if he would be interested in translating attacks on the ADL
in Yiddish and Hebrew on the subject of
Pope Pius. My father said, No, but my son

might be interested. So I translated for the

ADL, for $15 each, articles on the attacks
on the ADL.
Soon, he was offered a job at the ADL
there were three assistantships available,
in law, in discrimination, and in fact-finding. He was offered the choice of all three,
I took law and the rest is history.
In 1967, Mr. Foxman married Golda
Bouman, from Montreal. The pair met in
a Jewish summer camp, Camp Herzl in
Webster, Wisconsin. She worked at the
waterfront, and he was a Hebrew educator. I am a great advocate of Jewish summer camps, he said. The couple lived
in Brooklyn; Ms. Bouman was a schoolteacher. Soon, she took a job as a fifthgrade teacher in Harlem, a job she held
for 40 years. Her trek from Brooklyn was
daunting, and the couple looked for a
home closer to her school.
Mr. Foxman met Nat Kameny at an ADL
retreat in Atlantic City. Mr. Kameny was a
major figure in Bergen County, Mr. Foxman said. He started the Jewish federation, was one of the early founders of the
community. He asked us, Why dont you
consider living in New Jersey?
We said, What? New Jersey? But we
came out, and we looked, and we liked
what we saw.
About six months after that idea was
born, in 1968, Abe and Golda Foxman
moved to Bergen County. They have lived
there ever since.
Jewish geography as always was at
work as well. Moshe Dworkin, the force
of nature who was a founding publisher
of Moment magazine and a presence in
Jewish publishing and culture, had known
the Foxmans for years; in fact, it was Mr.
Dworkin who recruited them to work at
Camp Herzl. He lived across the street
from us, Mr. Foxman said.
The couple had two children. Michelle,
an intellectual property lawyer, is the
mother of three children. Ariel, who
worked at the New Yorker, now is the editor of InStyle. His wedding, to Brandon
Cardet-Hernandez, was covered by the
New York Times in a story that includes
photographs of seemingly effortless fabulousness. At his sons wedding, I thanked
my son and my son-in-law for providing us
with the opportunity to appreciate and be
sensitive to various aspects of life that we
would not have been aware of except in
the abstract, Mr. Foxman said.
The Foxmans have seen the Jewish community in Bergen County grow over the
last 40-plus years. Michelle and Ariel went
to Moriah and then to Frisch. The family
belonged to Bnai Yeshurun. At that time,
it was the synagogue. That was it. Then
there was a little shtiebel that became Beth
Abraham. My son became bar mitzvah at
Bnai Yeshurun. I said kaddish for my parents there.
The community grew by leaps and
bounds. It was primarily traditional then,
but not Orthodox. Traditional. Then, we
used to go to Brooklyn or Washington

Mr. Foxman has

worked with many
powerful people
in a wide range of
fields. Here, he is with
Yitzhak Rabin.

With Shimon Peres

With Nelson Mandela

With Marion and Elie Wiesel and Hillary Clinton

WIth Pope
John Paul II

Jewish standard JULY 24, 2015 21

Cover Story
Heights for kosher food. Today, everything
is here. Restaurants, mikvahs, synagogues,
schools. We watched this exciting growth.
Today, you have a choice.
Famously, Mr. Foxman broke with Bnai
Yeshurun; he wrote a column, more in
sadness than in anger, he said, about that
break. It was a result of a move to the right
that the passionate moderate could not
make. But when the rabbi there changed
the prayer for the welfare of the State of
Israel, and then talked in a way that almost
justified the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin
I know that he is a great scholar, but nobody
said anything when he said those things.
Thats not acceptable. Thats not a part of
our tradition. I talked to some people, and
nobody wanted to say or do anything, so I
decided to leave publicly.
Thats when he attacked me. He said that
he doesnt need Jews like me. He has other,
better Jews. So I moved over to Keter Torah,
which was then Roemer. It wasnt an easy
decision to make, but in good conscience I
had to make it.
When I saw Shimon Peres, he said, You
lost a seat at your shul, but you gained a seat
at the peace table.
Mr. Foxmans work has put him in the
crosshairs of some very nasty groups rifles.
He has been the subject of a large number of
death threats. He takes them seriously but
is used to them. In fact, he said, he owes his

Mr. Foxman presents an award to Shimon Peres

life to death threats.

It was the night of the second seder about
15 years ago, he said, when he started to feel
unwell. Golda could see that something was
wrong. She didnt like the way I was breathing, Mr. Foxman said. A death threat had
caused an off-duty police officer to be stationed out in front of his house. She ran out
to the security guy, said there was trouble,
and he came running in with a gun. She said,
No. Not that kind of trouble.

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Mr. Foxman was in cardiac arrest.

As it turned out, a buddy, another
police officer, had brought him a cup
of coffee, and still was there. He had a
defibrillator in his car. Why? Because
a local doctor thought that his father
might still be alive if the police had a defibrillator in his car, so he bought some
for the police department. One of them
was in his car.
So, if not for the anti-Semites who
had threatened my life, I might have
died, Mr. Foxman said.
Ive had the good fortune of getting to
know police chiefs and officers in many
of the surrounding towns, people we
dont usually meet except God forbid in
an emergency, and they are of very high
caliber, he added.
He has been deeply connected to the
community, serving on many boards,
speaking at many organizational functions, although he has pulled back in
order to give younger people their turn,
he said.
On his last day of work at the ADL,
which has named him its executive
director emeritus, Mr. Foxman looked

back at the half century he spent there.

He brought up a quote from last
weeks Standard, where a rally against
the opera The Death of Klinghoffer
was said to be successful because it was
not performed in any other opera house
in the world.
I made that deal, he said. I made
the deal with the Metropolitan Opera
to have it play only there, for six
performances.
I was called a Judas, a capo, a quisling; I was accused of selling out the Jewish people.
Never mind that the Klinghoffer
daughters were pleased that they would
have a page in the program.
I upset people on the right and the
left. The left was upset because I limited
the 2,000 performances, and the right
was upset because I accepted six. From
my point of view, 2,000 performance
all over the world really would fuel
anti-Semitism.
Its not popular today to compromise. Its not popular to be moderate.
Everyone wants you to be 100 percent
plus 10 percent on their side.
Moderation in all things. We should
be smart because we are a minority. We
sometimes believe what the anti-Semites
say, but we are not as powerful as they
think we are. We are not as powerful as
sometimes we think we are.
I understand why the world thinks
we are more powerful than we are, he
continued. Look at the history of the
movement to free Soviet Jews. The
United States and the Soviet Union were
at war cold war or hot war and it
was basically the Jewish community
that set the condition of the relationship
between the two powers, and it was
about the issue of Soviet Jewry.
Jackson-Vanik set the standard about
trade, commerce, cultural exchange.
The Jackson-Vanik amendment to the
1974 trade act had to do with the trading
relationship between the United States
and countries that restricted the right to

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Mr. Foxman with Israeli-Ethiopian children

22 Jewish Standard JULY 24, 2015

Cover Story

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emigration, along with other human rights.

The criteria for the relationships in Jackson-Vanik
was how a country treated its Jews. If you are the ruler
of a country and you take a look and see Jackson and
Vanik, who dont have major Jewish constituents
Senator Henry Scoop Jackson came from Washington State and Rep. Charles Vanik was from Ohio
and yet you look at this amendment, you see why the
world believes that Jews are so powerful.
To us, it taught or reinforced that if we care
enough, we can make a difference. If we take our Godgiven democratic rights in this country, and we lobby
to a fare-thee-well, we can make a difference.
We had a moral issue religious freedom and we
made a difference. We had an impact on Washington
and the rest of the world. It was a just cause.
I dont think that history will ever find a people that
has been as persecuted, as reviled, as seen as conspiratorial, who have always been so close to extinction so
many times, and yet survived, as the Jews.
A few years ago, I went to a retreat at the Wye Plantation. The issue at hand was whether Jewish civilization will survive to the year 2025. There were American
Jewish leaders, Israeli leaders. There were thinkers,
scholars, and historians who were given the responsibility of distilling why Greek, Roman, Inca civilizations
came and went and Jewish civilization survived.
One difference, they said, is that after a major
defeat or tragedy, the other civilizations all said, No
more. They said they didnt want to be Greek or
Roman or Inca anymore. But after each trauma, the
Jews would pick themselves up, dust themselves off,
and say they want to be Jewish again.
The greatest miracle was that after the Shoah, one
of the greatest tragedies a people could suffer, the surviving people at least most of them recommitted to
being Jewish, and they built a Jewish state.
Overwhelmingly, the consensus was that they
wanted to continue being Jewish. That is the secret of
Jewish survival.
The question now is if we live in an era where there
is less persecution, less prejudice, more openness,
more assimilation, is this element of choice endangered? I dont think it is. I think that in the American
Jewish community and in Israel, there are creative,
dynamic expressions of Jewish civilizations. We are
recreating ourselves.
There are many more new paths to being Jewish
today than there ever were before. People make the
statement that they want to be Jewish, in whatever
sense Jewishness appears to them. As long as that
desire to be reborn in whatever reincarnation a person sees as Jewish continues, we will survive.
And, of course, anti-Semitism is still there to help
reinforce it too, just in case we get too nervous that the
good life will undo us, he added.
As deeply devoted as he is to Israel, he acknowledged problems there. There are issues in terms of
respect for pluralism. Israel is the home of the Jewish people, and it is being hijacked by a dysfunctional
political system. I think that the overwhelming majority of Israelis want religious pluralism and respect, but
they dont get to express their views because of that
dysfunctional system.
Israel doesnt have political accountability because
it doesnt have proportional representation. That is,
they are elected purely by party, with no tie to any
geographic base. As long as elected officials are not
responsible or accountable to the people instead of to
a party, there will be a struggle about pluralism, especially religious pluralism.
There are two big changes he has seen over the last

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Cover Story
half century, Mr. Foxman said. One is that although anti-Semitism has continued in Europe, now you have the governments
there condemning it, speaking out against it, and against Muslim extremism, and providing protection and security.
Thats a significant difference, he said. Imagine if you
had the rise of anti-Semitism and governments were indifferent to it.
The second, and even more significant, change is the
internet, which has revolutionized everything, including
the dissemination of hatred. It used to be spread by retail,
in churches, in printed materials, later by radio, but it could
reach a limited number of people. Now, though, it reaches
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was ugly. The Israeli government set up a commission of

inquiry and said that Israel was blameless. A couple of
weeks later, 60 Minutes did its own reportage and said
that Israel was not blameless.
I went after 60 Minutes in a big way. I accused them
of bias. Six months later, Israel had another commission of inquiry, and found that the first commission was
wrong. In fact, Israel was not blameless.
I wrote a letter to Mike Wallace and to Don Hewitt.
I apologized. I said I was wrong, and I said that if you
want to make this public, make it public.
Mike Wallace spoke at a synagogue a couple of weeks
later and gave the honorarium to the ADL, but the Jewish community was angry. They said, Why did you
have to apologize? Why did you have to say you were
wrong?
But the ability to say that you are wrong enables you
to be more outspoken. It is a feeling of liberation.
Now, Executive Director Emeritus Abraham Foxman
has left his full-time position at the ADL, but I will not
retire. I will rewire, he said. I will not give up my voice.
I think its an asset that I should not throw away.
I will continue my relationship with the ADL, and I
will act as a part-time consultant. At the same time, I will
establish a platform through which I will have the ability
to have a voice on the issues that I have been involved
with. Maybe it will be an academic institution, maybe a
media entity.
I will continue to be a voice on issues that have been
and are important to me. When they call on me, Ill be
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their rooms, staring not at a living human being but at

a screen. Our paradigm always has been that you fight
bad speech with good speech, but what do you do when
the bad speech comes in a tsunami?
The ADL has begun to talk with some of the biggest
internet companies Google, Facebook, and others
about how to handle it. We have been saying to the
geniuses in Palo Alto that there are unintended consequences to your genius. It is not your fault, it is algorithms, but you have to find an antidote. You have a
responsibility to find the anti-algorithms.
And how has he changed over the last 50 years? Mr.
Foxman paused. At first, he demurred. Thats for other
people to say, not me, he said. But then, he said, a
couple of things have changed.
As I matured, the first scary thing was to wake up one
morning and realize that people were listening to me. It
can paralyze you. It used to be that you talk, blah blah
blah, everybody talks. But then one day I came home
and I said, You know, theyre all listening.
It was a sobering, awesome thought. What you
say matters. You have to think, and you have to stand
behind what you say.
The second thing grew from the first. I had the realization that the worst thing that can happen is that I can
say that I was wrong, that I made a mistake. That was
liberating.
Most people are afraid to make a mistake, and if they
do, they arent capable of saying so.
The first time it happened to me was when there was
a riot at the Kotel, between Israelis and Palestinians. It

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24 Jewish standard JULY 24, 2015

Mr. Foxman buries his face in his hands as a memorial torch is lit at Auschwitz.

Talking with the towering basketball

legend Kareem Abdul-Jabar

Jewish World

The campaign for (and against)

the Iran deal gets personal

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RON KAMPEAS
WASHINGTON Vice President Joe Biden had an intimate phone call this week with about a thousand Jewish leaders, beseeching, teaching and preaching the Iran
nuclear deal.
Bidens imploring hour-long call on Monday typified
how personal the campaign for and against the Iran
nuclear deal is becoming.
(Dr. Leonard Cole of Ridgewood was one of those
leaders on the call. For his reaction to it, go to page 16.)
President Barack Obama, speaking to veterans on
Tuesday, cast the deal as one that would save American
troops from dying in a fruitless war. The pro-Israel lobby
AIPAC, a deal opponent, is bringing in its members for
face-to-face meetings with lawmakers. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu worked the weekend American talk shows. So did John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of
state, who brokered the deal. He called one of Netanyahus signature criticisms dumb.
Much of the focus is on Congress, which has two
months to review the agreement between Iran and the
group of six world powers led by the United States. It
could vote to disapprove, which would kill the deal, but
such a vote must garner two-thirds of Congress to overcome Obamas pledged veto.
On the call, Biden began by alluding to his longstanding relationship with the Jewish community.
Quite frankly, I wouldnt be in this job or any job that
I had in elected politics were it not for this community,
among others, he said.
Instead of taking questions, Biden unfolded a Q and
A with an imaginary Jewish interlocutor who addressed
him as an old friend would: Whats the deal here, Joe?
The questions the vice president put to himself reflect
concerns raised by a number of pro-Israel organizations, among them the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee.
So Joe, doesnt this mean that even if this stops them
from getting a nuclear weapon, theyve got $100 billion
and theyre going to go out there and destabilize? Biden
asked himself, reflecting concerns about how sanctions
relief will fuel Iranian mischief. His answer: The Iranians
would do much greater damage with a nuclear bomb
than they would without one.
Imagine stopping them now in the Gulf of Aden
referring to Irans backing for the Houthi insurgency
in Yemen and stopping them if they had a nuclear
weapon, Biden said. As bad, as much of a threat as the
Iranians are now to destabilizing the conventional force
capability in the region, imagine what a threat would be
if we had walked away from this tight deal.
Kerry also was unusually conversational, and personal, in lengthy interviews he gave the news media, but
not so convivial. In an interview broadcast Tuesday on
NPR, he grew livid when asked about criticism that he
and Obama were overly eager for a deal.
I mean, really, its one of the dumbest criticisms Ive
ever heard in my life because it has no relationship to
reality of what we were engaged in, he said. President Obama, in almost every conversation, would say,
Remember, John, you can walk away.
One of the main purveyors of the too eager trope
is Netanyahu.
We were right when we said the desire to sign an
agreement is apparently stronger than anything else,
he said at a news conference on July 14, the day the final

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Vice President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the

Good Jobs Green Jobs National Conference in
Washington, D.C., in April. This week he beseeched
Jewish leaders in a phone call on the Iran nuclear
deal.
CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

agreement was announced.

In his speech to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Pittsburgh, Obama cast opponents of the deal as similar to backers of the Iraq war.
In the debate over this deal, were hearing the echoes
of some of the same policies and mindset that failed us
in the past, Obama said. Some of the same politicians
and pundits that are so quick to reject the possibility
of a diplomatic solution to Irans nuclear program are
the same folks who were so quick to go to war in Iraq
and said it would take a few months. And we know the
consequences of that choice and what it cost us in blood
and treasure.
The intensity reflects the stakes as Congress begins its
review of the deal.
AIPAC is bringing in members from across the country early next week for the face-to-face meetings with
lawmakers, covering almost every office on Capitol Hill,
an AIPAC source said. The lobby also unveiled last week
a political nonprofit, the Citizens for a Nuclear Free
Iran, it is backing in the multimillions, according to
spokesmen.
Notably, the new group is being advised by five former Democratic lawmakers. Republicans already overwhelmingly oppose the deal, so groups like AIPAC will
focus their lobbying efforts on Democrats. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that AIPAC has spent
a record $1.7 million in the first half of the year in its bid
to rally opposition.
Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran will target lawmakers with TV ads in their home states during the August
recess.
Much of the focus of the opponents campaign is on
New Yorks Charles Schumer, a Democrat who is the
most senior Jewish senator. The Emergency Committee
for Israel has made Schumer the target of a campaign.
Obama is caving to Iran, its ad says.

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JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015 25

Jewish World

Timeline to a deal: Irans nuclear push

has been decades in the making
RON KAMPEAS
WASHINGTON The road to the Iran
nuclear deal did not start in November
2013, when the major powers and Iran
launched formal talks. It did not begin in
2010, when the U.S. Congress passed the
far-reaching Iran sanctions and the U.N.
Security Council approved its own set of
sanctions.
Rather, the road to the deal secured
last week, which will limit Irans uranium
enrichment in exchange for the lifting of
international sanctions, began decades
earlier. Here are some highlights on the
way to the deal that now faces Congresss
yea or nay.

Mid-1950s to late 1970s

With U.S. backing, the shah of Iran develops nuclear technology as an alternative
energy source. Toward the end of his reign,
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi begins to
look into nuclear weapons capacity. It is
not clear whether it is with the knowledge
or support of the United States.

1979
A revolution overthrows the shah in January and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
returns to Iran the following month a
week after promising to preserve the rights
of Iranian Jews. His aides say that they may
renew ties with Israel. But in May, the new
regime executes Habib Elkanian, a former
leader of the Jewish community, prompting calls from U.S. Jews for the imposition
of sanctions on the regime.
On Nov. 4, Iranian students, with the
regimes blessing, hold 52 Americans
employed by the U.S. Embassy hostage,
and 10 days later President Jimmy Carter
freezes $12 billion in Iranian U.S. assets
the first U.S. sanctions imposed on the
regime. Nearly half of the blocked assets
are in the overseas branches of U.S. banks.

1980s
Iran restarts its civilian nuclear program
in 1984 and Iranian officials meet in 1987
with A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, to discuss weaponizing their program. Meanwhile, Israel sells
Hawk missiles to Iran in the mid-1980s at
the behest of the United States as part of
a complicated arms-for-hostages deal that
culminates in a scandal for the administration of President Ronald Reagan.

1990 to 1992
Israel confirms that it has been importing
oil from Iran in 1990, despite the regimes
declared hatred of the Jewish state.
By 1992, just-elected Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin, who had authorized the
sale of arms to Iran when he was defense
26 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015

minister, is concerned about intelligence

that Iran is considering a nuclear weapon.
Israels political parties, left to right, share
concern at the prospect of a nuclear Iran
and the government launches an effort to
persuade other countries to isolate Iran.
Rabin, during meetings with American
Jewish leaders, urges them to leave IsraeliArab relations to the Israelis but asks them
to take on Iran.

1994 to 2000
The 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish
community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, kills 85 and spurs calls to isolate Iran.
(The Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah is suspected in the terror attack.)
In 1995, Russia signs a deal with Iran to
develop a civil use nuclear reactor at Bushehr, in southern Iran.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, working closely with the office of
then-Sen. Alfonse DAmato, R-N.Y., begins
drafting legislation in 1994 targeting third
parties dealing with Iran. Steve Grossman,
then the president of AIPAC and a friend of
President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary
Clinton, spends a cool evening on a White
House balcony after a dinner party in the
spring of 1995 smoking cigars and attempting to persuade the president to use his
executive powers to impose sanctions.
In May 1995, Clinton issues an executive
order banning investment in Iran, and in
1995 and 1996 Congress passes and Clinton
signs into law the Iran Libya Sanctions Act,
which targets foreign entities doing business with Irans energy sector.
Soon, however, Clinton is faced with
tough European opposition to the sanctions. He also is encouraged by the election
of a relatively moderate Iranian president,
Mohammed Khatami. Clinton begins to
waive some sanctions, disappointing some
members of the pro-Israel community.

2001 to 2008
President George W. Bush sustains Clintons delicate engagement with the Khatami government, especially after the
United States invades Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
(The U.S. and Iran have a shared enemy in
al-Qaida.) However, Bush includes Iran in
his axis of evil State of the Union speech
in 2002 alongside Iraq and North Korea.
Later in 2002, the Mujahedeen Khalq Iranian dissident group reveals that Iran is
enriching uranium in Natanz and building
a heavy water reactor in Arak. Bush, however, is preoccupied with plans to invade
Iraq and does not devote much attention
to Iran.
The Khatami government, rattled by
the initial success of the 2003 Iraq invasion, makes overtures to the international

A view of the reactor at the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran as the first fuel is loaded on August 21, 2010.
IIPA VIA GETTY IMAGES

community to discuss placing limits on its

nuclear activities in exchange for greater
engagement. Bush does not want to
directly negotiate with Iran until it ceases
uranium enrichment, but he does consult
closely with three European nations, Britain, France and Germany the E3 that
enter into talks with Iran.
The talks are buried with the election
of a hardline Iranian president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, in 2005. The Bush administration leads the passage of resolutions targeting Irans nuclear sector and arms sales,
as well as individual Iranians, in the U.N.
Security Council. Under Bush, the U.S.
Office of Foreign Assets Control builds an
architecture of sanctions that includes persuading third parties not only to end dealings with Irans energy sector, but with its
financial sector as well.
In a February 2006 meeting with Jewish leaders, for the first time Condoleezza
Rice, the U.S. secretary of state, intimates
that the United States would contemplate
a military strike to keep Iran from going
nuclear. However, two years later, in
2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
fails to get the go-ahead from Bush that
he believes he needs to launch an Israeli
strike.

2009 to 2015
In March 2009, newly elected President
Barack Obama offers Irans people and
leaders a message for Nowruz, the Iranian
New Year, saying greater opportunities
for partnership and commerce are available but they cannot be reached through
terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization.
In April 2009, the United States joins

talks between Iran and five other major

powers: Britain, France, Russia, China and
Germany. But Ahmadinejad is reelected
in June of that year, and in September,
Obama joins other world leaders in revealing the existence of a second uranium
enrichment plant embedded deep in a
mountain in Fordow, near the holy city of
Qom.
The Qom revelations accelerate legislation in Congress that would toughen
Iran sanctions, dropping the threshold
for banned investment in the energy sector from $20 million to $1 million in some
cases and expanding bans to Irans financial sector. The legislation passes in 2010.
Meanwhile, the same year, Obamas team
leads the passage in the U.N. Security
Council of expanded sanctions that target Irans energy and financial sectors and
restrict arms sales to the country.
In subsequent years, the intelligence
agencies of Israel and the United States disrupt Irans enrichment capacity through a
computer virus, Stuxnet, and a number of
Iranian nuclear scientists are assassinated,
reportedly at Israels behest.
In September 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a dramatic
(and much mocked) United Nations
speech, illustrates with a cartoon bomb
diagram Israels version of the red line
that cannot be crossed: Enough uranium
enriched at 20 percent, a step before
weaponization at 90 percent, to power a
bomb. Netanyahu predicts that Iran could
arrive at the red line within a year.
In June 2013, Iranians elect a relatively
moderate president, Hassan Rouhani.
Just before the election and anticipating its outcome, the United States begins
SEE TIMELINE PAGE 42

Jewish World

European Maccabi Games to play

at Olympic venues built by Nazis
Toby Axelrod
BERLIN They are roaring through
Europe, raising dust as they go: Jewish bikers bearing an Olympic-style torch all the
way from Israel to this German city.
Next week, 11 core riders will pull their
steel steeds into Berlins famous outdoor amphitheater, the Waldbuehne, to
help usher in the 14th European Maccabi
Games the first ever in Germany at a
venue the Nazis built for the 1936 Olympics. Other competitions will be held at the
Olympic Stadium here, where Hitler presided over the opening of the games that
year.
The riders are following in the treads of
the Maccabiah Riders, who rode through
Europe in the early 1930s to promote the
games then being held under British mandate in Palestine.
The July 28 opening ceremony, which
will feature remarks by German President
Joachim Gauck and a concert featuring
Matisyahu, Dana International, and others, will usher in 10 days of sports, parties,
a Limmud Germany learning event, and
more. Some 2,300 Jewish athletes from
36 countries will take part, cheered on by
fans bused in from across the country by
the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
And the sports venues, including Berlins
Olympiastadion, will be open to all, free of
charge, and under heavy security.
Athletes will compete in 19 sports, and
there also will be a few exhibition games
pitting Jewish athletes against German soccer and basketball stars. On July 31, participants will try to break the Guinness World
Record for the largest kiddush ever.
The European Maccabi Games grew out
of the Maccabi movement, which traces
back to Turkey in 1895, when Jews, then
shut out of local sporting clubs, founded
the Israel Gymnastic Club. Jews elsewhere
followed suit.
The first European Maccabi Games were
held in Prague in 1929, and the second a
year later in Antwerp. But with the rise of
the Nazis, Jewish sports associations were
banned. Germanys Makkabi Club was
reinstated only 50 years ago.
In 1969, the quadrennial competition
resumed, alternating every two years with
the Maccabiah Games in Israel.
Bringing the European Maccabi Games
to Germany was a herculean feat, according to Alon Meyer, head of Makkabi
Germany.
People told me they never could imagine setting foot in Germany because their
parents and grandparents were sent away
from there, said Meyer, 41, a Frankfurt
businessman whose father fled Nazi Germany for Palestine. Now these people are
coming back to see the changes [and take

The Berlin Olympiastadion was built for the 1936 Olympic Games. 

Elen Katz and Catherine Lurie-Alt ride in a motorcycle rally from Israel to Berlin
for the opening of the European Maccabi Games. 
Yosef Alony

part in] the biggest Jewish event ever held

on European ground.
The change to which Meyer referred is
the dramatic growth in Germanys Jewish population. Only a few thousand of
Germanys prewar Jewish population of
500,000 remained in Germany after the
Holocaust. Today there are some 240,000
Jews here, most of them immigrants from
the former Soviet Union. Membership in
Jewish sports clubs has grown, too.
Meyer wanted the competition to be
held in the Olympic Stadium, those same
stone halls where many Jewish athletes,
though not all, were banned in 1936.
They came all the way to Germany and
in the morning they got a call, they were

not allowed to run. They found out right

before the race, said Steven Stoller, 64,
of New Jersey, a distant cousin of the late
Jewish-American sprinter Sam Stoller, who
was told he could not compete by Avery
Brundage, then president of the U.S. Olympic Committee.
I wanted to come to Berlin for my children, my future grandchildren, to have the
story live on, Stoller said.
Jed Margolis, the executive director of
Maccabi USA, will fly in from Philadelphia
to cheer some 200 participating American
athletes, who range from 15 to 85 years old.
At one point in life I would say, I will
never go to Germany or buy a German
product, Margolis said. Yet there is a

Scott Heavey/Getty Images

vibrant and growing Jewish community

there. We want to support them and at
the same time teach our next generation
about what happened there.
Security will be tight for the event, in the
stadium and beyond. Berlin announced
the creation of a new digital reporting system for anti-Semitic incidents just in time
for the games. Security is the No. 1 priority, said Lena van Hooven, spokeswoman
for the games.
But Danny Maron is not worried. He
and the other Jewish bikers have been
traveling through Eastern Europe with
Israeli flags attached to their bikes. We
have no fear at all, Maron said. We are
very proud.
Marons father, Yoram, a Holocaust survivor, said that he wanted to show the
whole world that after all the death, we are
still alive, and we keep moving.
At each stop, from Athens to Romania
to Krakow, more Jewish bikers have woven
themselves into the pack. The Maccabi
torch itself rides in a specially built case
carried by Greek biker Kobi Samuel, 48.
Two of our riders are descendants of
actual Maccabi riders of the 1930s, nine
are descendants of Holocaust survivors,
and two of our bikers are actual survivors
aged 73 and 78, said filmmaker Catherine
Lurie-Alt, who snagged Jewish talk show
host Larry King as the narrator for her
documentary about the motorcycle rally.
This is where it all started, Lurie-Alt
said. We are going through communities where Jewish populations were decimated, on our way to Berlin, where they
will enter that stadium with jubilation and
joy. 


JTA Wire Service

Jewish Standard JULY 24, 2015 27

Jewish World

How would Jewish

presidential contender
Bernie Sanders be on Israel?
SEAN SAVAGE

es a Jew from Brooklyn. Hes

running for president. But is
Israel on his radar?
Once considered a long
shot for the Democratic presidential
nomination, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders
(I-Vt.) has gained significant momentum in
recent weeks. He now trails the presumptive nominee, former secretary of state
Hillary Clinton, by only eight percentage
points, according to a CNN/WMUR poll
released in June.
Sanders had a bar mitzvah and was
raised in a large Jewish community full
of striving middle class Jews who wanted
to get up through the education system,
said Alan Abbey, who now is the director
of internet and media for the Jerusalembased Shalom Hartman Institute but was
a political reporter for the Burlington
Free Press in the early 1980s, when Sanders first was elected mayor of Vermonts
largest city. Abbey described Sanders as a
frumpy politician who was really able
to connect with people and capture their
imaginations.
Abbeys parents both went to Brooklyns James Madison High School, a public
school with a largely Jewish student body,
around the same time that Sanders did.
These were working class assimilated
Jewish-Americans, and that culture is very
deep in his bones, Abbey said.
Sanders also spent time on an Israeli kibbutz after he graduated from the University
of Chicago in the 1960s. But Israel has been
far from the forefront of his congressional
agenda, taking a backseat to such issues as
income inequality, challenging Wall Street,
and raising the minimum wage.
In Congress, Sanders has become somewhat of a darling of the American political
left. Sanders has been relatively quiet as
a senator on Israel issues, Tevi Troy, who
was a White House liaison to the Jewish
community under president George W.
Bush, said. Compared to Hillary Clinton,
Sanders has been consistent in his role as
a backbencher on Israel, while Hillary has
gone back and forth a bit.
Since being elected to the House of Representatives in 1990, Sanders has been the
only openly socialist member of either
body of Congress.
I admire his courage. Most people who
come from that part of the political spectrum run like hell from the word socialist. He is very out front about it, said
Joshua Muravchik, who served as national
chairman of the Young Peoples Socialist
League from 1968 to 1973 but now leans
conservative and is a faculty member at
the Institute of World Politics.
28 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015

On his campaign website, Sanders lists

income and wealth inequality, getting big
money out of politics, and climate change
and the environment as his top issues.
There is no mention of foreign policy or
Israel. But as a high-profile progressive,
he comes from a part of the ideological
spectrum that has become extremely hostile to Israel, noted Muravchik, author of
the 2014 book Making David Into Goliath:
How the World Turned Against Israel.
Even if Sanders is relatively quiet on
Israel, theres a good chance that his leftist supporters are more critical, Troy
echoed.
At the same time, while Sanders has
kept his distance from his Jewish identity
over the course of his career, he has not
been able to escape it completely. Abbey
said Sanders faced some anti-Semitism
during his campaign for mayor of Burlington in 1981.
When Bernie was gaining steam in
the local political campaign, blatant antiSemitism bubbled up as a tool to try and
discredit him, Abbey said. They would
use phrases like Bernie is from New York,
which in some places is code for Jew.
More recently, in an interview on
National Public Radio in June, host Diane
Rehm mentioned that Sanders has dual
citizenship with Israel.
No, I do not have dual citizenship with
Israel, Sanders said. Im an American.
Dont know where that question came
from. Im an American citizen. I have visited Israel on a couple of occasions.
In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor after the NPR interview,
Sanders said he is proud to be Jewish
but that he is not particularly religious.
On Israel, meanwhile, Sanderss record
is mixed. In particular, last summers conflict in Gaza brought to light his complex
feelings on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Sanders was one of 21 of 100 U.S. senators not
to sign on as a co-sponsor to Senate Resolution 498, which expressed support for
Israel as it defends itself against unprovoked rocket attack from Hamas.
But during a town hall meeting last
August in Cabot, Vt., when Sanders was
attacked verbally by pro-Palestinian activists who yelled expletives at him for condemning Hamas for firing rockets at Israeli
civilians, Sanders responded to the hecklers with pro-Israel comments.
You have a situation where Hamas
is sending missiles into Israel and you
know where some of those missiles are
coming from? Theyre coming from populated areas, Sanders said. Hamas is very
clear. Their view is that Israel should not
have a right to exist.
After the activists replied to him,

In February, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) delivers an address on how to spur
the American economy during an event hosted by the Brookings Institution.

PAUL MORIGI PHOTOGRAPHY/BROOKINGS INSTITUTION VIA FLICKR.COM

Bullshit, fk Israel, Sanders went on to

explain that there are more pressing issues
in the Middle East, such as the Islamic
State terror group, which he condemned
for attempting to turn parts of Iraq and
Syria into a 7th century caliphate that is
suppressing womens rights.
During the same meeting, however,
Sanders described Israels Operation Protective Edge in Gaza as an overreaction.
His statement blaming Israel for overreacting to Hamas missiles, incitement, and
terror tunnels is worrisome, Troy said.
Sanders also has been outspoken in his
criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the NPR interview
with Rehm, he said he is not a great fan
of Netanyahu. He also was the first senator to announce that he would boycott
Netanyahus much-debated speech to Congress in March. Sanders called the speech
opportunistic and said he thought
Netanyahu was using it as part of his campaign for re-election in Israel.
I think that [Sanders] may try to straddle the issue [of Israel], but the base that
he is trying to appeal to has gone overwhelmingly to the anti-Israel camp,
Muravchik said.
That same base, however, has been at
odds with Sanders on other issues. Many
on the left slammed him for siding with the
National Rifle Association in his backing of
a law that blocked families who lost children to the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary
School shooting from winning a lawsuit
against gun manufacturers.
Abbey believes Sanderss willingness to
go against liberals on certain issues counters a fundamental misunderstanding of
what type of progressive the Vermont
senator really is.
It is interesting to look at his relationship
with the left, Abbey said. Sanders is an old
left-wing politician, more akin to a 1930s
blue-collar socialist working-class type.
For example, Abbey said, When he was
mayor of Burlington, anti-war protesters
were pressuring General Electric, which
owned a factory that made machine guns,

to shut down. Bernie had a lot of pressure

on him, but when it came to supporting
labor union workers who would lose their
jobs versus the pie in the sky anti-war leftists, Bernie sided with the workers.
When it comes to Israel, then, would a
Sanders presidency resist the increasingly
hostile views of his leftist base, or would
he conform to it? A recent study by pollster Frank Luntz, who is a Republican
party strategist and frequent Fox news
commentator, found that nearly half of
U.S. Democrats47 percentbelieve Israel
is a racist country, while an additional
76 percent of Democrats agree that Israel
has too much influence over U.S. foreign
policy.
The historical roots of Sanderss ideology are also a cause for concern, according
to Muravchik. Sanderss form of socialism
in the 1960s and 70s is to the left of Norman Thomas (a former socialist leader in
the 1930s who unsuccessfully ran for president six times), and he was more Marxist
than Thomas ever was, he said.
That is a place on the ideological spectrum that is very warm to America and
Israels enemies.
Abbey believes that Sanders would continue many of President Barack Obamas
policies on Israel and the Middle East.
Obama and Netanyahu have had a rocky
relationship, and they disagree on how
to deal with Irans nuclear program. Nevertheless, Abbey feels that because of his
Jewish upbringing and the time he spent
in Israel, if he were to become president
Sanders would bring a unique understanding about the Jewish state.
I think there would be a piece of Bernie that would understand Israel and get
the Israeli mentality more than Obama has
and even Hillary Clinton would, despite her
close contacts with Israel and American
Jews over the last few decades, Abbey said.
Bibi (Netanyahu) and Bernie would certainly disagree on many issues, but they
would do it from a place of deep understanding and respect, he added.


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FROM PAGE 10

about what Judaism is or been worried we

wouldnt give their kids any kind of Christmas, but they have never had an issue with
us taking the kids to synagogue or specifically asked that we take them to church,
she said.
Most children in our home have quickly
acclimated to living in a Jewish home and
love participating in Jewish rituals. Children
in foster care have by and large had very
chaotic lives with a lot of trauma before
they come to you. Rituals, boundaries,
and reliable, consistent schedules (such as
every Friday night all devices being turned
off, candles being lit, songs being sung, a
special meal being eaten) give them tremendous reassurance even if the specific
rituals are a bit foreign, she added.
If you adopt a child, however, their religious identity post-adoption is entirely up
to you.
When weve had older children who
are not on a track to be adopted by us,
we make sure they get to celebrate Christmas, but we do so by taking them to nonJewish family members houses or allowing them to decorate their bedroom or
doing secular things with them like going
to see the Christmas lights on the houses
in a nearby town.

Letters
FROM PAGE 17

short years.
I urge Congress to reject it. Furthermore, I urge that the House bring articles
of impeachment. The president must be
brought to trial before the Senate. Even if
he is (as is likely) acquitted, all the details
of this disaster will be graphically displayed before the American people and
the entire world.
Jerrold Terdiman MD
Woodcliff Lake

Editorial lacks objectivity

In his editorial, Fires of inclusion and

exclusion ( July 17), Mr. Yudelson writes
well while commenting on New Jersey
but lacks objectivity concerning Israel. He
writes: the silence of the Israeli leadership has been stunning concerning vandalism in Israel of churches and mosques,
as if nothing has been done, nor comments from the government made against
the actions of a few. He fails to include
vandalism against Jewish religious sites. If
one is to believe Mr. Yudelson, it was only
official outrage from the Vatican that
caused arrests to be made. Investigations
have taken place after every incident but
it has been very difficult to find and prove
the guilt of the perpetrators.
We then find out from Mr. Yudelson that
knowledgeable insiders such as Carmi
Gillon, the former head of Israels General
Security Services, the Shabak have said

All the children in our home have always

celebrated all Jewish holidays with us but
in the case of older kids who grew up in
Christian homes we just make sure they
have places and ways to celebrate their own
holidays in ways that dont compromise
our own faith system. Were obviously not
going to put up a Christmas tree in the living room. Believe it or not, weve fostered
an equal number of kids who have been
Christians whove never gone to church
regularly and kids whose parents practice
Wicca. Its a good reminder that children of
literally every faith and background do end
up in the foster care system.
A bigger issue than religious differences,
she says, has been making sure that we
are culturally competent in various cultures that we do not belong to and that we
make sure children who are of a different
race than us have lots of positive exposure
to children and adults who are of the same
race and or culture. Research is increasingly showing that this is absolutely critical
for children who are fostered or adopted.
Transracial adoption, which happens
frequently in foster care, can have great
outcomes, but when children have very
little exposure to people of their own race
the outcomes are much more negative in
terms of their self-concept, self-esteem,
comfort in their skin, and ability to cope
as adults.

Hilary Levin of Passaic has dealt with

some of these issues. Shes the adoptive
mother of Dalia, not quite 4 years old and
in Ms. Levins words super adorable
and the absolute best personality.
I really wanted to have a little girl, Ms.
Levin said. I couldnt figure out how to
do as I had no money for private adoption
or other avenues. A friend of mine showed
up on my doorstep one day with something she wanted to show me and it was
a 3-month-old baby. I was so excited and
said God, I want one of these! It turns
out that Dalia was born the next day! Ms.
Levin said.
Her friend guided her to the foster system. Dalia was my first real call, and it
was a dream come true, she said. She
was one and a half years old, had been in
only one foster home since she got out of
the hospital, and the state was ready to
terminate the rights of the mother and
wanted her in an adoptive home. Her foster mother at the time had been doing foster care for more than 40 years. Dahlia was
her 179th placement! She was in her 70s
and needless to say did not want to adopt.
The first week I visited twice a week at
her foster mother Mama Linda and
played with and fed Dalia and asked Mama
Linda a ton of questions about Dalia.
Then I took her on an outing and did a
another in home visit the next week and

then she spent a whole weekend with me

and then another and then she moved in
permanently.
I do think it was confusing for her. She
would cry when I dropped her off after
a weekend it was really hard to leave
her. I also had to be considerate of Mama
Lindas feelings she had her for over a
year by then. The day I picked her up for
good, we were all crying, except Dalia,
Ms. Levin said.
Some of the details of how the state
operates have changed since then (another
reason to attend the workshop).
Dalia has been accepted and loved and
adored in my circle of friends, Ms. Levin
said. I do get a lot of looks on Shabbos.
Im not sure if it is from the fact that my
hair isnt covered or her race its probably a combination.
Shes thinking about moving to a more
diverse community.
Right now Dalia goes to a non-Jewish
daycare and will go to a public pre-school
in the fall, she said. She is not aware of
her race or any differences between us at
all yet, and when she does become aware
I dont want her to be in a place where she
is the only non-white around. I converted
her through Rabbinical Council of America
and their guidelines state that I commit to
sending her to a Jewish school starting in
first grade, so that is the plan.

the perpetrators were well known to the

security services. If they were well known,
why no arrests? Gillon was the head of Shabak from March 1995 to February 1996. He
resigned as a result of the Shamgar Commissions findings, which were critical of
his actions before the Rabin assassination.
Id like to know the names of some of the
other knowledgeable insiders who know
the perpetrators. Will their knowledge
hold up in a court of law?
Mr. Gillon is well known in left-wing circles and is very anti-Netanyahu. At a leftwing rally against the government legislation in favor of defining Israel as a Jewish
state in November 2014, he was quoted
as saying, The State of Israel is led by a
group of pyromaniacs and headed by an
egomaniac towards final destruction.
Politicians questioned about the lack
of arrests have said: Its all politics. Who
are these politicians? Why not name them?
Mr. Yudelson writes that the perpetrators are not fringe loners. Its unfortunate that he does not pass on his information to the powers that be in Israel or
name the guilty in an article in the Jewish
Standard so that they can be arrested and
brought to trial.
Once more he accuses the Israeli government and condemns it for not taking
the attacks on religious sites seriously. It
has investigated every incident. Some have
proven to be accidents, not attacks. Israel
is a democracy, bound by the rule of law.
In order to prosecute, evidence that will

hold up during a trial must be found and

presented.
The way the Netanyahu government has
been attacked in this editorial is quite partisan and lacks objectivity.
Howard J. Cohn
New Milford
Mr. Cohn is indeed correct: The response
to the attacks on churches and mosques in
Israel, like so much else there, has become
a partisan issue. This contrasts with the distinctly nonpartisan response to the attacks
here in New Jersey.
A particular issue is how far Israeli
authorities should go in investigating those
suspecting of taking part. If the attacks
are attacks on all of us, as Prime Minister Netanyahu said after the attack on

the historic church on the Sea of Galilee,

shouldnt the same investigative techniques
be allowed as on other crimes against the
state? The suggestion has been raised, and
voted down, on clear partisan lines.
As to whether laying a problem that has
erupted on his watch at the feet of the prime
minister is objective or partisan there we
will have to agree to disagree.
A year ago, we editorialized that Israels
Ministry of Religion should follow the lead of
the U.S. Congress and begin offering grants to
increase security for churches and mosques.
A ten thousand shekel security system would
have gone a long way toward identifying the
vandals who set fire to the Church of Loaves
and Fishes. We repeat that suggestion.
Larry Yudelson

WHO
WON?
2015
READERS
CHOICE
A supplement to The Jewish

Standard Summer 2015

Readers Choice
Magazine will be
in your mailbox
next week.

JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015 29

Dvar Torah
Devarim: When sadness steals the show

the saddest day in the entire

the grill, set up the volleyball
Jewish calendar. The fourth
net, and enjoy a pace of life
chapter of Mishnah Taanit
thats ever so slightly slower
explains that there were
than the rest of the year.
numerous tragedies that
Mourning the loss of a sacrificial temple, or reflecting
befell the Jewish people on
on the tragedies that have
this day, among them, the
befallen our people since
destruction of the first and
the beginning of time, arent
second temples in Jerusalem.
Rabbi Paul
the first ideas that we jump
Further, the period of three
Jacobson
at when planning our sumweeks from the 17th of Tammuz to Tisha bAv is regarded
Temple Avodat
mer holidays.
Shalom,
by a tragic time, named aptly
But thats precisely the
River Edge
as a time bein ha-mitzarim,
point. Day after day we see
between the straits. The
that the world is not yet
Haftarah (prophetic) readwhat we want it to be. We
ings during this period focus on words of
question the recently proposed accord
admonition and rebuke from Jeremiah
between the United States and Iran and
and Isaiah. In this weeks Haftarah portion,
we fear for Israels survival. We watch with
taken from the opening chapter of Isaiah,
horror as Marines in Tennessee and parishioners in a Charleston church are the latest
we read that God has come to hate our
victims to be gunned down in bullet sprees
New Moons, feasts, and appointed festivals, and that God is no longer listening to
of hate. We still find unspeakable tension
our prayers (Isaiah 1:14-15). This is truly a
throughout the Jewish world. And our own
time of deep sadness.
lives are affected by sadness. We all endure
But its not easy to connect with sadloss and bereavement, loved ones are sufness, admonition, and rebuke. At this time
fering, and many of us go through life feeling unfulfilled.
of the year, deep in the throes of summer,
In addition to being a day of commemwith temperatures in the nineties, its
orating our peoples tragedies, perhaps
much easier to head for the beach, fire up

abbis rarely receive the opportunity to write movie reviews.

However, if you havent yet
had the chance to see Pixars
latest animation marvel Inside Out, you
are strongly encouraged to do so. Inside
Out follows the life of an eleven-year-old
girl named Riley who loves her parents, ice hockey, and her life in Minnesota after her father takes a new job in
San Francisco and the family is forced to
move. How the story is told is downright
clever. With brilliant brushstrokes, we are
brought inside Rileys mind, to understand the story and the impact of her journey through her emotions namely joy,
sadness, fear, disgust, and anger.
What is perhaps most remarkable about
the movie is that tension and discomfort
rest with the emotion of sadness. Just
like real life, we see how sadness is supposed to be suppressed, how we are often
instructed to perk up, snap out of it,
or get over it. Inside Out reminds us
that there are times in our lives when it is
perfectly acceptable for sadness to steal
the show.
As we approach Tisha bAv, (the 9th of Av,
beginning Saturday night after the conclusion of Shabbat), we prepare for arguably

Tisha bAv should also be the day in our

calendar when we acknowledge that our
world is not yet whole, and that focusing,
for most of the day on the emotion of sadness can be a good thing. In this weeks
Torah portion, Parashat Devarim, Moses
reflects on a moment of turmoil and sadness as he begins his final address to the
Israelites before they enter the Promised
Land. The Israelites have grown so numerous that Moses is overwhelmed. Sadly he
cannot bear their problems, burdens, and
disputes all by himself. But when he takes
a moment to pause amid his sadness, he
experiences a moment of pure reflection.
Moses knows that change is necessary,
and he suggests that wise, understanding,
and respected men be chosen to lead the
Israelites in smaller groups (Deuteronomy
1:9-13).
At this time of the year, our Jewish tradition and calendar remind us of the
importance of sadness in our lives. What
might happen when we pause in our lives
and allow ourselves to focus on that sadness? Like Moses, what fresh perspective
and new beginning might come when, as
a people, we acknowledge our pain, our
loss, and just for a brief moment, we allow
for sadness to steal the show?

Briefs

Hebrew University listed

among worlds top schools

Report: Jonathan Pollard

may be freed in November

Tissue samples from Holocaust

victims found in French lab

The Saudi Arabia-based Center for World University Rankings once again has ranked the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as one of the worlds top universities, placing it
23rd on its list of 1,000 schools. Hebrew University moved
down one spot from its 2014 ranking.
Among the criteria factored into the rankings are
quality of education, the number of alumni who
become CEOs in top companies, the quality of faculty,
and the number of research papers the institution published in reputable journals.
The Weizmann Institute of Science was ranked 39th and
Tel Aviv University placed 86th. The other Israeli universities appearing in the list are the Technion Israel Institute
of Technology (136), Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
(349), Bar-Ilan University (521), and the University of Haifa
(700).

Jewish spy Jonathan Pollard may be released from prison

on Nov. 21, which will mark exactly 30 years since he was
arrested for giving Israel classified information on the U.S.,
The Algemeiner reported Friday.
An unnamed source involved in the case said the U.S.
is seriously considering releasing Pollard, 60, from a
North Carolina federal prison in consideration of his failing health. Pollards freedom would not come for the purpose of calming U.S.-Israel tension over the Iran nuclear
deal, said the source.
Pollard is the only person in U.S. history to receive a
life sentence for spying for an American ally. Many former
American security and intelligence officials with first-hand
knowledge of Pollards case have called for his release.

A researcher has discovered the 70-year-old remains of

Jewish victims of Holocaust-era gas chambers at a medical
research facility in Strasbourg, France.
Along with tissue samples, Raphael Toledano found a
1952 letter by the director of the Strasbourg Medical Institute, Camille Simonin, that discussed the experiments
conducted by Nazi anatomist August Hirt. The tissue samples themselves were found in test tubes and a jar that
were stored in the institutes closed collection.
It was a shock to discover that these jars were still
there, that we put in a museum display a part of these
Jews who were murdered by the Nazis, Toledano said,
adding that the jar contained skin fragments and that the
test tubes contained tissue samples from intestines and a
stomach, the Associated Press reported.

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Crossword
A MOMENT OF SILENCE BY YONI GLATT
EDITOR: DAVIDBENKOF@GMAIL.COM
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: CHALLENGING

DANCE WITH US

ON TEANECKS CEDAR LANE

FREE DANCE LESSONS

Thursdays in J u l y & A u g u s t - 6:45- 8:00pm

Cedar Lane Pedestrian Plaza at Chestnut Avenue
Weather Permitting - All Skill/Age Levels Welcome

JULY 23
Cha Cha
JULY 30
Salsa
AUGUST 13
Hustle
AUGUST 20
Tango
Across
1. ___ Chip Frappuccino (option at Howard

73. Holder of Spielberg work

66. Org. with its own Jewish lost and

Schultzs chain)
5. Like Natalie Portman in Black Swan
10. Deli staple
14. Roth and Wallach
15. Like a day when chatzot is noon,
Talmudically
16. At first, David did it with his sword
before deciding to use pebbles against
Goliath instead
17. Oodles of shekels
18. Parsha
19. ___ Yisrael
20. Location of the Limerick Boycott of the
Jews: Abbr.
21. Moments of pressure for Abe
Sapersteins team
22. Some Abrams extras
24. Abbr. in a bar mitzvah invite
25. Have a chat
27. Yutz
29. Dreyfus was sent to Devils Island, which
was this kind of colony
31. To ___ For, 1995 Phoenix film
32. ___ up, as Ben Cohen and Jerry
Greenfield did in Vermont in 1978
36. One of many works attributed to David
40. Word that appears three times in the
title of a Sherman Brothers song written
for Disneyland
41. It comes before Gan?
43. Burl who co-starred with Newman in
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
44. Coffee chain with 125 Israeli branches
46. ___ Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art
(Jewish Museum exhibition)
48. Like Deuteronomy, verse 24:15, for the
Torah: Abbr.
50. Like traditional Jewish descent
51. Word before Hasenpfeffer
Incorporated! on TV
55. Source of many theme answers in this
puzzle
59. Israels Megiddo
60. Caesar known for his strength (and
humor)
61. Ketubah conditions
62. Mount in a Hammerstein musical
63. Ancestor of Haman killed by Samuel
65. And let us say...
67. ___ Brak
68. Florida philanthropist Garfinkle
69. Involving a Chanukah number
70. Skin woe for Adam Levine, once
71. ____ Yisrael
72. Whence some refuseniks

found
67. Start of a celebration

Down
1. 55-Across translated
2. Air raid siren, e.g.
3. Alex Clares War Rages On, e.g.
4. Where Samsons jawbone came from
5. Follower of Israels Galei Tzahal
6. Marchs was on Purim in 2014
7. ___ Talks (what ELI Talks are modeled

Sponsored by

Cedar Lane Management Group

www.cedarlane.net 201-907-0493

after)

8. Ahasuerus had one

9. In Heaven
10. Asian version of Mossad
11. Two-time Super Bowl champ John Frank,
once, for short

12. One from Shushan, now (Var.)

13. Routine
21. Ayin alternative
23. Upsherin sound
26. First class on El Al, e.g.
27. Bungler
28. Coveted
30. Much of Syria, biblically
32. A Schechter might have one: Abbr.
33. In 2015, JTS sold this kind of rights to its
campus

34. Sarnoffs studio

35. Too ___ Hot (number in a musical with
a book by the Spewacks)

37. Marvelous Arad?

38. Sportscaster Berman
39. Site of a 1933 anti-Hitler rally: Abbr.
42. Cafeteria latke measures
45. ___ O Lord God! Behold, I know not to
speak for I am a youth (Jerem. 1:6)

47. Sidekick in Donners Superman

49. ___ Hashem, youth group
51. Strong
52. Regarding one of 613
53. Haim sister
54. Spains 1492 Alhambra Decree, for
example

56. Abdul art

57. Graff of Mr. Belvedere
58. Spoof
61. If ___ the World- The Life of Lyn P.
Meyerhoff by Karen Folk

64. Marks of a kosher cookbook?

66. Org. with its own Jewish lost and
found

67. Start of a celebration

The solution to last weeks puzzle

is on page 39.
JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015 31

Arts & Culture

Judith: A parting from the body
MIRIAM RINN

oward Barkers Judith: A

Parting from the Body is a
midrash on the story of Judith
and Holofernes.
Of course, all artistic interpretations of
biblical and religious stories are midrashic
as they attempt to reveal the unseen in
sacred text. The British playwright and
poet Barker has described his work as a
theater of catastrophe, and an acting
group dedicated to his writing is called the
Wrestling School. It encourages wrestling
with the complex ideas in his plays.
Interesting, isnt it, that wrestling
is a popular concept in the Jewish world
these days in relation to both Israel and
tradition?
Now at the Atlantic Stage 2 on West 16th
Street, the Potomac Theater Projects scintillating production of Judith keeps the
outline of the story found in the Book of

Judith is
mysterious,
gripping, and
intellectually
exciting. It is
not an easy
play, but it is
never boring or
condescending.
Judith in the Catholic version of the Old
Testament, but veers far from the traditional characterizations of the people
involved. (References to Judith began to
reappear in Jewish sources during the Middle Ages in France and Spain.) Holofernes
is not the drunken lout familiar from the
tale told at Chanukah, but a philosophizing strategist who worries that he cannot
be loved. Judith is the beautiful widow we
know, but she seems as intent on deconstructing the nature of desire as she is to
cut off Holofernes head to save Israel. Her
maidservant plays a much larger role than
in the religious story, representing the real
suffering that results from the abstract theories of death, sex, and violence that consume both Judith and Holofernes.
PTP has made a custom of producing
Barkers work, and the actors on stage are
comfortable with his dense, challenging
dialogue, which is the opposite of naturalistic. As directed by Richard Romagnoli,
32 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015

Pamela J. Gray is Judith and Alex Draper is Holofernes in Howard Barkers Judith.

Orazio Gentileschis Judith and Her Maidservant With the Head of Holofernes,
completed in 1624.

Pamela J. Gray as Judith, Alex Draper as

Holofernes, and Patricia Buckley as the
servant give excellent performances,
imbuing their characters with intelligence
and energy. Barkers language is not easy
to absorb, so good acting is important.
While victory is the object of battle,
death is its subject, Holofernes opines,

and death is his great passion. As the play

goes on to suggest, death is orgasmic,
and it may be the only true thing. Words
are lies, and the words between men
and women are the greatest falsehoods.
As they circle one another, Judith and
Holofernes practice the most seductive
form of foreplay, which is conversation.

Like the stories of Esther and Ruth,

Judiths tale has all the elements of popular fiction: a beautiful woman, a powerful
man, danger and disguise, and lots of sexuality. It is a great emotional spectacle; no
wonder it has been the subject of so much
art and literature. Barker finds within the
story deep questions of mortality and the
human penchant for violence.
At one hour long, Judith is mysterious, gripping, and intellectually exciting.
It is not an easy play, but it is never boring or condescending. I cant say the same
for its partner on the bill, Vinegar Tom
by Caryl Churchill. Set in the 17th century,
the play is a relatively straightforward
history lesson on women and witchcraft
how innocent women were accused
of being witches, how superstition ruled
their communities, and how men maintained power and control. This all seems
historically accurate and must have been
filled with feminist fervor and outrage in
the late 1970s, when it was written. Unfortunately, it feels much less contemporary
today. Thats not to say that women in the
West are accorded full respect, but the
brutal persecution of women depicted
in the play takes place primarily in other
parts of the world these days. The barriers
Western women face are more subtle and
perhaps trickier to overcome. The large,
talented cast gives it the best they have,
but the challenge seems too great.
The plays run through August 8.

Arts & Culture

Phoenix a story of survivors

ERIC A. GOLDMAN

xactly what happened when

the concentration camps were
liberated?
Did all of the survivors simply stand outside the barracks and shower
accolades on those who saved them, as we
saw in Schindlers List? Or did they go
back to Warsaw, Lodz, Berlin, or a remote
shtetl, expecting to be able to return to
their homes?
How many wound up dying from an
inability to eat? How many from overeating? Who wound up in displaced persons
camps, and who ran off to the mountains
to find their way to Palestine?
Survivors stories, some fictionalized,
are the subject of countless books, plays,
and films, but how many of these works
look at a Holocaust survivor firsthand,
returning home, bewildered, broken, and
unsure of her way?
And how many are written by a German
filmmaker?
Since the turn of this century, German
moviemakers seem to explore their history continually as they ponder the complexities of how a modern and sophisticated nation could have been responsible
for the Holocaust. For many young Germans, uncovering secrets about Nazis in
their families or learning that the kind old
woman who lived next door was a guard
at a concentration camp seems to be an
ongoing experience.
Only last week, a German court sentenced a seemingly sweet nonagenarian
who was an SS officer and accountant at
Auschwitz to jail time. Many Jews now feel
that they have studied, read, and watched
movies about the Shoah, and have come to
a place where maybe it is enough for now.
Yes, they say, We have read about that
or have seen it, so I simply dont want to
read or see any more. I have heard Jewish
friends and colleagues say, Teach it to the
next generations. It is so important! But I
am already saturated. But after decades of
silence and denial, Germans cannot seem
to get enough. The search for answers has
become a German passion.
The postwar months in Germany were
complicated by efforts to find the monsters responsible for war crimes and moving ahead with a program for de-Nazification, while also creating an atmosphere
that might allow the German people to
heal. Once the Cold War began, America
and Britain, feeling that they needed all
the friends they could find, embraced Germany, often looking the other way when
Nazi criminals were identified.
And what about the victims, the survivors? Certainly, many amazing agencies,
like HIAS and JDC, did an incredible job in
assisting and providing support for survivors. But what actually happened to those

Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld) and Nelly (Nina Hoss) at a fraught moment in Phoenix.

Lene (Nina Kunzendorf) watches as Nelly picks her way through bombed-out
rubble.
SCHRAMM FILM

survivors in the weeks and months that

followed their liberation? How did they
transition into society after experiencing
untold horror? How many first-hand survivor accounts are there from that time?
What German writer and director Christian Petzold brings us is the story of Nelly
(Nina Hoss), a Jewish woman who survives
the camps and returns to her home in Berlin, her face disfigured by a bullet. She
is damaged and broken, as is everything
around her her home, her neighbors,
her country. Her entire family has been
murdered. Nelly is in a state of trauma, as
is the world outside her window. Encouraged by her friend Lene (Nina Kunzendorf )

to bandage her psychological and physical

wounds and chsose life, Nelly reconstructs
her deformed face but it is to be a new
face. Throughout the film the symbolism is
strong, as we see this Jew, scarred by her
experience, emerging into a new life as a
fresh person.
Is she not like the new Germany? But
can a new persona enable Nelly to reintegrate herself into German life? She and
Lene struggle to figure out how Jews can
continue to live in the country that they
both still love. At one point, with the
radio on, Nelly turns to Lene, and they
agree that they can no longer listen to
German music. Still, neither is ready to

SCHRAMM FILM

turn it off. Lene sees departure to Palestine as the only way to sanity, yet neither seems ready to leave. As I watched
their exchange, I pondered todays Berlin, which has more than 30,000 Jews. It
makes you wonder!
Petzold weaves a story of intrigue into
the film when we learn that Nellys husband Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), a nonJew, has survived the war. Lene has spotted him. We also glean that he believes his
wife to be dead and is hoping to inherit
her wealth. But exactly what has Johnny
been doing these many months since the
day when his wife was found in hiding and
taken away to Gestapo headquarters? Will
Nelly be reunited with her husband, who
might not recognize her on first sight? She
goes out to see.
These are but some of the twists and
turns that turn this powerful study of one
survivor into a film noir-style mystery. Petzold does a fine job at it.
How do you put onto film the plight of
a defeated, suffering, and unapologetic
nation, when you introduce a surviving
Jew, a reminder of the crimes to which you
were complicit, into the drama? Decades
ago, Germany as a nation admitted its culpability, but Christian Petzold and a generation of German filmmakers continue to
struggle with their legacy.
Eric Goldman writes and teaches about
Jewish cinema. He is president of Ergo
Media, a distributor of Jewish, Yiddish and
Israeli film.
JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015 33

Calendar
for The Record, will
discuss his book, The
Bus on Jaffa Road for
the Sisterhood of Temple
Emanuel of the Pascack
Valley, 8:20 p.m. (201)
391-8089 or www.tepv.
org.

Friday
JULY 24

Wednesday,
JULY 29
Family games/pizza in
Paramus: The JCC of

Cantor Ilan Mamber

Shabbat in Wyckoff:
Temple Beth Rishon
holds Shabbat
Tzavta (together), a
participatory folk-rock
service with selections
from contemporary and
classical repertoires, folk
rock melodies, liturgical
selections, traditional
motifs, and Israeli and
Argentinian melodies,
7 p.m. Service led by
Cantor Ilan Mamber
on guitar and harp,
with the Beth Rishon
Klezmer AllStars: Jane
Koch on keyboards, Gale
Bindelglass on vocals,
Adam Friedlander on
guitar, Jimmy Cohen on
percussion, Len Stern
on trumpet, and Jacob
Niederman on sax
and clarinet. Weather
permitting, service
outdoors on the shuls
garden patio. Dessert
and coffee. 585 Russell
Ave. (201) 891-4466 or
bethrishon.org.

Saturday
JULY 25

Paramus/Congregation
Beth Tikvah welcomes
families with children up
to age 13, to GPS (Gym
Pizza Sundaes), 6-8
p.m. In conjunction with
a synagogue/religious
school open house. 304
East Midland Ave. (201)
262-7691 or email Howie
at hblesq@yahoo.com.

Thursday,
JULY 30

Rabbi Natan Slifkin, director of the Biblical Museum of Natural

History in Israel, presents The Animal Kingdom in Jewish
Thought, a multimedia program, and discusses his new
book, The Torah Encyclopedia of the Animal Kingdom, at
Congregation Beth Aaron in Teaneck, 10 a.m. 950 Queen Anne Road. (201)
836-6210 or www.bethaaron.org.

AUG.

followed by a summer
lunch. At 6:30 p.m.,
seudah shlishit and
a Tisha BAv pre-fast
supper; Havdalah at 7:45,
and a Tisha BAv service
at 8. 176 West Side
Ave. (201) 435-5725 or
bnaijacobjc.org.

Youth theater in Wayne:

Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer

Shabbat in Teaneck:
Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer,
senior director of the
Tikvah Fund and a judge
on the beit din of Rabbi
Asher Weiss, discusses
Why We Cry on Tisha
BAv, after the 8:30
a.m. Ashkenaz minyan
at Congregation Bnai
Yeshurun. Hosted by the
shuls adult education
committee and Beis
Medrash program. The
main minyan is at 9. 641
W. Englewood Ave. (201)
836-8916.

Shabbat in Jersey
City: Congregation
Bnai Jacob offers midsummer Shabbat with
morning services, 9:15
a.m.; Torah Topics, 10:30,

Actn Youth Performing

Ensemble at the Wayne
YMCA performs Tarzan
the Musical, at the
Wayne YMCAs Rosen
PAC, 7 p.m. The Metro
YMCA of the Oranges is a
partner of the YM-YWHA
of North Jersey. 1 Pike
Drive. (973) 595-0100 or
www.wayneymca.org.

Sunday,
JULY 26
Tisha BAv in New City:
The Nanuet Hebrew
Center joins other
Rockland congregations
to offer a community
Tisha BAv service, 9 a.m.
411 South Little Tor Road,
off exit 10, Palisades
Interstate Parkway.
(845) 708-9181 or www.
nanuethc.org.

Tisha BAv in Teaneck:

Congregation Rinat
Yisrael offers an
afternoon video program.
At 2:45 p.m., the BBC
presentation The Jewish
- Roman War, 66-70

34 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015

CE will be shown. At
3:45, Shanghai Miracle,
produced by Torah
Umesorahs Zechor
Yemos Olam Project
will be featured, and at
4:45, Rebuilding from
the Ashes, a YU/OU
video featuring Rabbis
Dr. Jacob J. Schacter
and Shalom Rosner
is screened. 389 W.
Englewood Ave. (201)
837-2795 or www.rinat.
org.

Tisha BAv in Franklin

Lakes: The Chabad
Jewish Center marks
Tisha BAv with a
screening of a new
documentary With My
Whole Broken Heart,
5 p.m. The 45-minute
professionally-produced
film features stories of
parents whose childrens
lives were taken by
terror and their inspiring
responses to these
horrific experiences.
The documentary also
follows the lives of
two of the youngest
survivors of Auschwitz
and Buchenwald. (201)
848-0449 or www.
chabadplace.org.

Monday
JULY 27
Senior program in
Wayne: The Chabad
Center of Passaic County

continues its Smile on

Seniors program with
lunch, social time, and
a screening of YooHoo Mrs. Goldberg, at
the center, 11:30 a.m.
194 Ratzer Road. (973)
694-6274 or Chanig@
optonline.net.

Bobby DooWah
Childrens music
in Franklin Lakes:
Childrens entertainer
Bobby DooWah offers
his Music JAM (Jewish
Action Music) session
for children up to age
6, at the Chabad Jewish
Center of NWBC, 5-6
p.m. Dinner served. 375
Pulis Ave. Mimi, (201)
848-0449 or www.
chabadplace.org.

Federation of Rocklands
PJ Library hosts a free
pool party and barbecue
at Ramah Day Camp,
4:15-6 p.m. E-mail
lepstein@jewishrockland.
org.

Tuesday,
JULY 28

Carole Bufford
Music in Wayne: The

Blood drive in Teaneck:

Holy Name Medical
Center holds a blood
drive with New Jersey
Blood Services, a division
of New York Blood
Center, 1-7 p.m. 718
Teaneck Road. (800)
933-2566 or www.
nybloodcenter.org.

Kids pool party/

bbq in Nyack: Jewish

Marthe Cohn
Author in Haskell:
Marthe Cohn, 94, a
Jewish spy in Nazi
Germany, shares her tale
of survival at the Chabad
Jewish Center of Upper
Passaic County, 7:30 p.m.
She is the author of the
international best seller
Behind Enemy Lines
and at 80 she received
the Medaille Militaire,
Frances highest military
honor. 1069 Ringwood
Ave., Suite 101. (201)
696-7609 or www.
JewishHighlands.org.

Mike Kelly
Author in Woodcliff
Lake: Mike Kelly, an
award-winning columnist

Summer Concert
series at the Wayne
YMCA continues with a
performance by Carole
Bufford, 7 p.m. She is a
sought after performer
in the New York cabaret
and jazz scene. The
series, produced by
Naomi Miller, runs
through Aug. 20. The
Metro YMCAs of the
Oranges is a partner of
the YM-YWHA of North
Jersey. 1 Pike Drive. (973)
595-0100.

Friday,
JULY 31
Tot Shabbat in Nyack:
PJ Library in Rockland
County and Ramah
Day Camp in Nyack,
N.Y., co-host Bim Bam
Shabbat, a free Friday
morning program with
Shabbat-related songs,
stories, and Jewish
activities for toddlers
and preschoolers, at
Ramah Day Camp,
9:30 a.m. Program is
weekly through Aug.

Calendar
14. 303 Christian Herald
Road. Lara Epstein,
(845) 362-4200, ext.
180, or lepstein@
jewishrockland.org.

Shabbat at West Point:

The Mens Club of the
Nanuet Hebrew Center
invites family and friends
to services and kosher
dinner with cadets
at West Point, 7 p.m.
(845) 708-9181 or www.
nanuethc.org.

Shabbat in Franklin
Lakes: Barnert Temple
offers a Shabbat outdoor
experience with Rabbis
Elyse Frishman and
Rachel Steiner, 7 p.m. 747
Route 208 South. (201)
848-1800.

Saturday,
AUG. 1
Concert in Wayne: Steve
Alexander and the Jazz
Generation perform for
the Rosen PACs Summer
Concerts Under the Stars
series in the Berman
Atrium at the Wayne
YMCA, 7:30 p.m. Steve
and the band will play
jazz selections from the
American Songbook.
Indoors if it rains. The

Metro YMCAs of the

Oranges is a partner of
the YM-YWHA of North
Jersey. 1 Pike Drive.
(973) 595-0100 or www.
wayneymca.org.

Singles
Friday,
JULY 31
Catskills singles
weekend: Flakey Jake
holds a singles Shabbat
Nachamu weekend at
the historic New York
Hudson Valley Resort
& Spa, through Aug. 2.
Round trip bus service
offered. (718) 436-0682.

Shabbat in Clifton: The

North Jersey Jewish
Singles Meetup Group,
30s-40s, launches its
new meetup for younger
singles at the Clifton
Jewish Center, 7:15
p.m. Services, sermon
by Rabbi Bob Mark
on Tu BAv Jewish
Matchmaking Day,
kiddush, dinner, and
discussion. Reservations,
(973) 772-3131 or
meetup.com.

Sunday,
AUG. 2
Singles dance and
dinner in Clifton:
North Jersey Jewish
Singles 40s-60s at the
Clifton Jewish Center
celebrates Tu BAv with
a matchmaking event,
6 p.m. Buffet dinner,
desserts and ice cream
bar, socializing, ice
breakers, live singer/
pianist, and dancing. 18
Delaware St. Karen, (973)
772-3131 or join the group
at www.meetup.com.

Sunday,
AUG. 9
Seniors meet in West
Nyack: Singles 65+
meets for a social bagels
and lox brunch at the
JCC Rockland, 11 a.m. All
are welcome, particularly
if you are from Hudson,
Passaic, Bergen, or
Rockland counties. 450
West Nyack Road. $8
with reservations, $10 at
door. Gene Arkin, (845)
356-5525.

Announce
your events
We welcome announcements of upcoming events.
Announcements are free.
Accompanying photos must
be high resolution, jpg files.
Send announcements 2 to 3
weeks in advance. Not every
release will be published.
Include a daytime telephone
number and send to:
 Jewish Media Group
NJ
pr@jewishmediagroup.
com 201-837-8818

Revolution, radicalism,
and rebellion in Judaism
Revolution, Radicalism, and Rebellion in
Judaism, a class with
Rabbi David Kalb, will
be held at the Museum
at Eldridge Street Synagogue on Tuesday, July
28, at 6:30 p.m.
The talk continues a
tradition of learning in
this historic space that is
Rabbi David Kalb
more than a century old.
The museum is based in
the 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue, 12 Eldridge St.,
between Canal and Division streets. For information,
call (212) 219-0302 or visit www.eldridgestreet.org.

Don Rickles
at bergenPAC
Don Rickles, one of
comedys most famous
funnymen, celebrates
a Lifetime of Laughs
with orchestra and
classic video highlights
on Thursday, August 6,
at 7:30 p.m., at the Bergen Performing Arts
Center in Englewood.
Tickets are available
Don Rickles
at www.ticketmaster.
com or www.bergenpac.org or by calling the box office, (201) 227-1030.

Synchronicity by Rachelle Weisberger.


PHOTO COURTESY OF ARTIST

Local artist in NYC

Acrylic paintings by artist Rachelle Weisberger will be
exhibited at the Weill Cornell Medical College Library
in New York City through Sept. 19. The New York Society of Women Artists, a professional association of
painters, sculptors, and graphic artists, sponsors the
group show. Weisbergers imagery, inspired by curved
lines and organic shapes, evokes psychological and
spiritual themes through an exploration of color and
space. Over the past three decades her work has been
exhibited in leading galleries in the New York tri-state
area and is also in private collections.
Weisberger is also the author of Biblical Beauty:
Ancient Secrets and Modern Solutions and was one
of the Montaigne Medal finalists, awarded to the most
thought-provoking books by the Eric Hoffer Award for
Books. She is a member of the East Hill Synagogue and
is an associate member of Congregation Ahavat Torah,
both in Englewood. A lifelong supporter of Israel, she
is affiliated with Amit, Emunah, and Hadassah.
For information call (201) 871-3322.

Rabbi Yudins book

available through BCCLS
Visiting Israeli group
performing in Teaneck
Ukuleles for Peace in Israel will give a special performance
at the Jewish Center of Teaneck on Tuesday, July 28, at
8 p.m.
The non-profit musical group is composed of Jewish and
Arab teens that play in an orchestra with ukuleles, kazoos,
and other fun instruments. The children sing in Hebrew,
Arabic, and English.
Paul Moore, the groups founder, works with students
once a week in their schools and unites them for performances. The hope is that playing together will create
opportunities for communal activities, and parents and
members of the communities will get involved in the
program.
The group has been in the United States for three weeks
performing in Rhode Island, Maine, the Kennedy Center
in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Hawaii. The performance at the JCT is their last stop.
A $15 voluntary contribution is requested to enable
more children to participate in the group and to help buy
ukuleles for those who cannot afford to buy one.

Rabbi Benjamin Yudin on

the Parsha by Rabbi Yudin
is available for borrowing
to all residents of Bergen
County through the BCCLS
(Bergen County Cooperative Library System).
Rabbi Yudin has served as
the spiritual leader of Congregation Shomrei Torah
in Fair Lawn since 1969.
Before every yom tov and
every Friday at 8:20 a.m.,
Rabbi Yudin gives a drasha
on Nachum Segals JM in the AM radio program on
WFMU 91.1 FM. The program airs Monday to Friday,
from 6 to 9 a.m.

Canasta in Wayne
Wayne YMCA members play Canasta at 1 p.m. on
Thursdays and Fridays at the Y. Lessons will be scheduled when there are enough players to form a group.
For information on lessons, call Wendy at (973) 5950100 ext. 236. The Y is at 1 Pike Drive in Wayne. The
Metro YMCAs of the Oranges is a partner of The YMYWHA of North Jersey.
JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015 35

Jewish World

Sunrise, sunset
An interview with Theodore Bikel
RAHEL MUSLEAH

heodore Bikel died on Tuesday in

Los Angeles, where he lived. He
was 91, and survived by his fourth
wife, Aimee Ginsburg; his sons,
Robert and Daniel; two stepsons, Zeev and
Noam Ginsburg, and three grandchildren.
In 2006, journalist Rahel Musleah interviewed Mr. Bikel. We reprint an edited version of that interview here.
Theodore Bikels cell phone rang.
If I Were a Rich Man, it tinkled, though
it was hardly a match for the rich and stillrobust baritone of the man who played
Tevye in more than 2,000 stage performances for 40 years. In fact, Mr. Bikels
treasury of talents adds up to no less than
an embarrassment of riches: His versatility spans stage, screen, and television; he
is an actor, folk singer, lecturer, raconteur,
political activist, and advocate for the arts.
Throughout his life, he maintained a
relentless concert schedule. He lived at
home but called himself the flying Jew.
He was instrumental in reviving Jewish life
in Poland; he has active in Canada, Israel,
and Cyprus too. Where does his stamina
come from? From God, he said, with a
nod to Tevye.
At the North American Jewish Choral
Festival, where he received an award for
his lifetime contribution to the arts, the
Jewish people and humanity, Mr. Bikel
transported the audience to different eras
and characters through subtle transformations in his own demeanor. His timing was
as impeccable as his diction. In suspenders
and rolled-up shirt-sleeves, with his plentiful white hair boyishly combed down over
his forehead, he leaned into the microphone. He strummed his guitar among
early Zionist pioneers, then Russian gypsies. He became the original Captain von
Trapp crooning a tender Edelweiss; he
evoked the lost Yiddish world of his own
childhood. And suddenly he was on his
feet in front of the Soviet Embassy, his arm
raised in protest, Nye Byussa! I do not
fear on his lips.
The group was mesmerized. Hes the
voice of my childhood, said Cantor Erica
Lippitz, one of the participants.
To Mr. Bikel, acting and singing were as
important as breathing. As he wrote in
his autobiography, Theo, actors make
children laugh and clap their hands and
grown-ups forget the burdens of the day,
and thats just as important as sending
them off to learn a lesson.
A master of characterization, Mr. Bikel
played a Greek peanut vendor, a blind
Portuguese cobbler, a Russian submarine
skipper, an American university dean, a
Chinese crook, a Scottish police officer, a
36 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015

In May, Mr. Bikel, in wheelchair, spoke at Kulturfest NYC. With him, from left, are actor Alan Alda, film director John Lollos, and Jewish Standard film critic Eric Goldman.
Hindu doctor, and others. His autobiography overflows with the names of prominent actors with whom he has worked,
from Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh
on stage in A Streetcar Named Desire to
Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn
in The African Queen, his first film role.
He spoke five languages fluently (English, German, French, Hebrew and
Yiddish), two passably (Russian and
Spanish) and sang in 23 languages. His
television credits ranged from Star Trek
and Dynasty to Murder, She Wrote
and All in the Family. He received an
Emmy award for PBSs Harris Newmark
and an Academy Award nomination for
best supporting actor as the Southern
sheriff in The Defiant Ones (1968, with
Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis).
Though he asserted that the arts dont
have to have an agenda, for Mr. Bikel art
and activism were intertwined. Born
in Vienna in 1924, he recalled at 13 he
watched a celebratory Nazi procession
from his window, his neighbors cheering as Hitler and Goring rode by in open
limousines. Some of his neighbors were
silent, but they did nothing. Later, he said,
it became clear that I would never ever
put myself in the place of the nice people
next door who said Its not my fight. Its
always my fight. Whenever I see an individual or group singled out for persecution, theres a switch thrown in my mind
and they become Jews.
Mr. Bikels father, an ardent Zionist
who named his son for Theodor Herzl,

obtained a visa for Palestine; the family landed in Tel Aviv on Rosh Hashanah
1938. I always carry the specter of the
Holocaust with me, Mr. Bikel said. Why
was I saved? Maybe I was meant to use my
voice as a warning that history must not
repeat itself.
Mr. Bikel fought on behalf of civil rights
(he once sang a Yiddish socialist song at
a black church in Birmingham, Alabama)
and was arrested several times. He was a
delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1968.. He was senior vice president of the American Jewish Congress, a
board member of Amnesty International,
and chaired the progressive Zionist organization Meretz USA.
Mr. Bikel performed with an orchestra
whose members are Christian and Muslim
survivors of the Bosnian war in a series of
concerts called Bridge to Peace. On their
2005 tour of Poland, a Bosnian Muslim
woman cellist played Kol Nidrei in a Krakow synagogue. Im an idealist with occasional forays into reality checks, Mr. Bikel
said. I dream of better worlds and then
I try to do something about it.
Throughout his career, Mr. Bikel protected his peers interests. Along with the
genetic knapsack he inherited from his
socialist father, the actors strike of 1960
and a personal incident prompted him to
become active in Actors Equity. During his
stint in The Sound of Music with Mary
Martin, the Jewish producers, Rodgers and
Hammerstein, refused to let him off for
Yom Kippur. He was both vice president

and president of Actors Equity, was vice

president of the International Federation
of Actors, and was president of the Associated Actors and Artistes of America. He
acknowledged his midwifely role in the
establishment of the National Endowment
for the Arts and the National Council on
the Arts, on which he served for five years
by presidential appointment. He even
joined the picket line in front of NBC in
1967, minutes after he married his second
wife, a television producer. Horizons are
not meant to be shrunk, Mr. Bikel said.
Mr. Bikel said he learned from every
role, but playing Zorba the Greek has had
an extraordinary impact on his character and outlook. He started out envying
Zorba, then attempted to emulate his individualism, disregard for material possessions and joie de vivre but finds that is
clearly not possible in this materialistic
world.
His talent for performing started early.
He sang before he talked. He had his
mothers good voice and her ability to be
funny. (My parents names were Joseph
and Miriam. My name should be Jesus, he
deadpanned.) His father, too, was a fountain of song, an intellectual and amateur
actor who worked as a clerk and insurance
salesman.
Imbued with the pioneer spirit in Palestine, Mr. Bikel attended the Mikve Israel
agricultural school and joined a kibbutz,
Kfar Maccabi, near Haifa, neglecting to
observe I had neither talent nor inclination
SEE BIKEL PAGE 39

Obituaries
Ruth Adest

Ruth L. Adest, 96, of Cliffside Park, died July 20.

Born in New York City, she was a teacher for the
New York Board of Education.
Predeceased by her husband, Abraham, she is survived by a daughter, Rhonda Adest Goldberg (Kenneth Goldberg); a sister, Ethel Friedman; and two
grandchildren.
Arrangements were by Eden Memorial Chapels,
Fort Lee.

Bernice Berman

Bernice Berman of Paramus, formerly of Maywood

and Jersey City, died July 20.
She was an executive secretary at AT&T in New
York City, and volunteered with Bnai Brith Women
and United Jewish Community. Afterward, she
worked with UJC of Bergen County for more than
20 years. She started the Kosher Meals on Wheels
Program in Bergen County at UJC and retired as its
director at Jewish Family Service. She was an active
long-time Jewish Community Center of Paramus
member, where she was a board secretary and on
many committees.
She is survived by her husband of 60 years, Sheldon; children, Cheryl Katz (Chaim) of Shilo, Israel;
Robin Quinn (Steve) of Saddle Brook; and Michael
(Rachel) of Netanya, Israel; 14 grandchildren, and 14
great-grandchildren.
Donations can be made to the Neeman Foundation USA, (supporting charitable projects in Israel),
POB 702, Paramus, NJ 07653, or to the JCC of
Paramus, E. 304 Midland Ave., Paramus, NJ 07652.
Arrangements were by Gutterman and Musicant Jewish Funeral Directors, Hackensack.

The Board of Trustees and staff of

Jewish Family Services
of
Bergen and North Hudson
mourn the passing of

BERNICE BERMAN,
Past Coordinator of
Kosher Meals on Wheels
for
JFNNJ and JFS

May her memory be for a blessing.

201-791-0015

800-525-3834

LOUIS SUBURBAN CHAPEL, INC.

Exclusive Jewish Funeral Chapel

Sensitive to Needs of the Jewish Community for Over 50 Years

Serving NJ, NY, FL & Israel
Graveside services at all NJ & NY cemeteries
Prepaid funerals and all medicaid funeral benefits honored
Always within a familys financial means

13-01 Broadway (Route 4 West) Fair Lawn, NJ

Richard Louis - Manager
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The Christopher Family

serving the Jewish community
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Paterson Monument Co.

The staff of
the Jewish Standard
extends its sympathy to
Sheldon Berman and
family on the death of
Bernice Berman.
May her memory be
for a blessing.

MAIN
Paterson, NJ 07502
317 Totowa Ave.
973-942-0727 Fax 973-942-2537

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Joel Markowitz

Joel Markowitz, 78, formerly of Fair Lawn, died July

15. He was a New York University graduate and an
active member of the Fair Lawn Jewish Center for
many years.
He is survived by his wife of 57 years, Phyllis; children, Lori Steinreich (Stan) of Teaneck, Gary (Dina)
and Glen ( Judi), all of New York; brothers, Alan of
Florida, and Robert (Carol) of Iowa; eight grandchildren; and nieces and nephews.
Donations can be sent to the Fair Lawn Jewish Center, 10-10 Norma Ave., Fair Lawn, NJ 07410. Arrangements were by Robert Schoems Menorah Chapel,
Paramus.

Daniella Kis

Daniella Kis of
Lowell, Mass., died on
July 20, 2015. Beloved
daughter of Molly Kis.
Loving sister of Daphne
Kis. Memorial service
was held at Wien &
Wien Memorial Chapels,
Hackensack, N.J., on
Wednesday, July 22.
In lieu of flowers
remembrances
may be made to
Jewish Women
International,
www.jwi.org.

Veterans are Honored Here

We are committed to celebrating the significance of lives that
have been lived, which is why we have always made service
to veterans and their families a priority.
We assure that all deceased veterans have an American
Flag and a Jewish War Veteran Medallion flagholder placed
at their graves at the time of interment. Our Advanced
Planning service has enabled us to expedite military
honors, when requested, because the need for the
documentation is immediate and it is part of the pre-need
protocol. And if requested, an American Flag may drape the
casket at a funeral service.
We have also established an Honor Wall of veterans names,
and it is a part of our Annual Veterans Memorial Service.

A Traditional Jewish Experience

Pre-Planning Specialists
Graveside and Chapel Services

Barry Wien - NJ Lic. No. 2885

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JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015 37

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38 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015

Tree Service

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Public Notice
The Frisch School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the
rights, privileges, programs, and
activities generally accorded or
made available to students at
the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color,
national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational
policies, admissions policies,
scholarship and loan programs,
and athletic and other school
administered programs.

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Jewish Music with an Edge

Ari Greene 201-837-6158
AGreene@BaRockorchestra.com
www.BaRockOrchestra.com

Solution to last weeks puzzle. This weeks puzzle is

on page 31.

for agriculture. I stood on heaps of manure singing about

work I wasnt doing. He found an abandoned guitar on
the kibbutz and taught himself to play, but never learned
to read music properly. The kibbutz sent him to a cultural seminar and the rest, as they say, is history.
He left the kibbutz and joined the Habimah Theater in 1943 as an apprentice actor; a year later he cofounded the Cameri, the Israeli Chamber Theater. At 22,
he moved to London to study at the Royal Academy of
Dramatic Art. Impressed with his work at small London
theaters, Olivier cast him in Streetcar. In 1954, he was
brought to New York to appear on Broadway in Tonight
in Samarkand, fell in love with the city, and made the
United States his permanent home.
Mr. Bikel has performed solo recitals as well as with
symphony orchestras and opera companies. Many of
his 22 recordings feature Jewish, Israeli and Yiddish folk
songs; Silent No More introduced songs of the Russian Jewish underground. More recently recorded CDs
include In My Own Lifetime: 12 Musical Theater Classics, and Our Song, duets in Hebrew, Ladino, Greek,
Yiddish, Serbian and more, with Cantor Alberto Mizrahi.
I make no claim that the Jewish song is better than the
song of my neighbor. But it is mine, he writes. And
since it is the song of my people, it is up to me to cultivate it lest the blooms wither and the garden becomes
bare and desolate.
Despite his impressive general accomplishments,
Mr. Bikel often was seen as a Jewish performer, a label
he disputed only when he toiled in non-Jewish arenas.
Im a Jew who loves and knows the tradition, who has
studied a lot and speaks the languages of my people,
he said. Im a cultural Jew, universalist passionately
committed to equality for all people precisely because

of the Jew in me. He dismissed the ridiculous notion

of a melting pot where everyone is reduced to the lowest
common denominator. Society is meant to be a kaleidoscope, every part clearly delineated and contributing to
the beauty of the whole. Urging Jews to study their own
tradition instead of turning to others, he says, We all
have an attic. Our grandfathers attic is full of wonderful
heirlooms, most of them dusty and dull. A little dust on
an old heirloom is not so terrible. We can brush it off and
make it shine again.
As Tevye, he did just that. I played my own grandfather, Reb Shimon Bikel, he said. Sholom Aleichems
26-volume works lined the shelves of the Bikel home in
Vienna; when the family fled his grandmother had the
books sent to Israel. At 13, he played a bar mitzvah boy
in Sholom Aleichems Its Hard to Be a Jew. His first
paid role at Habimah was as the constable in Tevye
the Milkman, on which Fiddler is based. He had 29
words.
There are some things Mr. Bikel did not do well. He
claimed to be a clumsy and reluctant dancer, was not
good at sports, and didnt understand baseball. He was
an avid chess player and became a Scrabble fiend, playing it on planes and trains.
I keep slugging away at things of importance: the
Yiddish language, which was almost murdered along
with the six million; a sense of Jewish community that
believes justice to be more important than politics; a
Zionism true to its origins and not to a pragmatic accommodation of circumstance; a sense that the things that
are precious cannot be won and stored away, he said.
Freedom and justice have to be fought for over and
over again because they are in danger over and over
again.
As he traveled to places of stress in times of stress,
he took his guitar with him. That, he says, is the only
weapon I have or care to have.

We cant put off paying my moms medical bills and her

oxygen, so we struggle to get enough to eat.
- Rhonda

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Please donate to MAZON today.

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201-837-8818
JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015 39

Real Estate & Business

Touro to offer required legal exams for Sabbath observers
Touros Lander College of Arts and Sciences in Flatbush (LAS) will offer the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam
(MPRE) on weekdays to accommodate
Sabbath-observing Jews, beginning in
August. This is a test of legal ethics and
professional responsibility standards that
aspiring lawyers must pass to be eligible
for the bar in 48 states.
The MPRE is a standardized test created
by the National Council of Bar Examiners

and administered by the Law School

Admissions Council. It is offered three
times a year, usually in March, August and
November. Touro Law Center also offers
the MPRE in Central Islip.
Touros LAS will continue to offer the
Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) to
Sabbath observers, as it has since June
2011. The fall dates for the LSAT are
Wednesday, October, 7, and Tuesday,
December 8.

The MPRE test is one of two new services that Touro is offering to aid students
aspiring to become lawyers. Professor Tom
Rozinski, Touros principal prelaw advisor,
has also created a Facebook page to assist
students in learning about law school and
in applying for admission.
Touros Prelaw Advising program has
had significant success in placing its students in highly ranked law schools. Four
Touro graduates are currently attending

Harvard Law School, and this fall three

will enroll at Columbia Law School. An
average of 20 Touro College graduates
have begun law school studies between
2010 and 2014.
Students interested in law school and
the admissions process can view more
information at www.touro.edu/departments/prelaw, or on Facebook, www.
facebook.com/touroprelaw.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton

Carter visits Israel in wake of
Iran deal
U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter arrived in Israel
on Sunday, less than a week after America and the
other P5+1 nations reached a nuclear deal with Iran.
In a joint press conference with Carter, Israeli
Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said Israel greatly
disagrees with the nuclear deal, but maintained that
the scope and depth of the relationship between the
defense establishments of the United States and Israel
is unprecedented between the Pentagon and the
Ministry of Defense, between our armed forces, intelligence corps, and defense industries.
Carter, who also met with Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, said the U.S. is committed to help Israeli
security by funding joint military training, missile
defense, and advanced military equipment such as F-35
jets, which Israel is scheduled to receive before other
U.S. allies next year.
During his flight to Tel Aviv, Carter told reporters that
he was not going to change anybodys mind in Israel
about the Iran deal, according to the Associated Press.


JNS.ORG

Majority of Israelis support

rebuilding Jewish communities
in Gaza, survey says
A majority of Israelis believe the countrys disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005 was a mistake and
that Israel should rebuild Jewish communities there,
a new survey by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic
Studies think tank has found.
The surveys findings 63 percent of respondents
called disengagement a mistake, and 51 percent supported Jewish rebuilding contradict opinion polls
taken at the time of the disengagement in 2005, which
showed strong backing for withdrawing from the
coastal territory. Additionally, the survey found that 47
percent of Israelis oppose evacuating Jewish communities from Judea and Samaria.
Professor Efraim Inbar, who heads the think tank,
said the survey results are generally surprising, the
Times of Israel reported. Nevertheless, Inbar is not surprised that many Israelis have reconsidered their opinion on the Gaza disengagement, especially because
Hamas has seized power there and Israel has fought
several wars with the Palestinian terror group.
Since we know a majority of the public in 2005 supported the disengagement, its very clear that some of
the respondents dont feel comfortable with their past
support for the disengagement and therefore testify
today that they opposed it, Inbar said.


40 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015

JNS.ORG

Real Estate & Business

EU blasts Israel for policies
towards Palestinians
The leaders of the European Union slammed Israel for its
policies towards the Palestinians, especially the forced
transfer of Palestinians.
In a joint statement issued by the foreign ministers of
the 28-nation bloc, the EU said it reiterates its strong
opposition to Israels settlement policy and actions taken
in this context, such as building the separation barrier
beyond the 1967 line, demolitions and confiscation
including of EU-funded projects evictions, forced
transfers including of Bedouins, illegal outposts, settler
violence, and restrictions of movement and access.
In particular, the EU called on Israeli authorities to

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halt plans for forced transfer of population and demolition of Palestinian housing and infrastructure in the
Susya and Abu Nwar communities.
But the EU also criticized the Palestinian Authority
for not taking stronger action in reasserting control over
Gaza, which is ruled by the Hamas terrorist group.
The EU calls on the Palestinian factions to make reconciliation and the return of the PA to Gaza a top priority, the statement said.
The PA must take greater responsibility in this regard
and assume its government function in the Gaza Strip,
including in the field of security, civil administration,
and through its presence at the Gaza crossing points,
it added.

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thejewishstandard.com

JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015 41

Local/JewishWorld/RealEstate&Business
Shul sold
FROM PAGE 9

new families to join our congregation and Hebrew school, said

Rabbi Kenneth A. Stern, the congregations spiritual leader since July
2008.
Mr. Josif said that given Conservative Judaisms tremendous
decline throughout the country,
its time to have a fresh approach
and make something valuable to
the congregation and the community. This opportunity puts us in a
well-funded position of change that
will allow us to make this the place
we really want it to be. We must
position ourselves for the next 65
years to be a successful, thriving
congregation.
The religious school, which
now has an enrollment of close
to 60 children from kindergarten
through bar/bat mitzvah age, is a
primary area of focus. Mr. Josif said
its administrators have been working with the Jewish Federation of
Northern New Jersey to incorporate progressive technoloy and
pedagoy.
Mr. Josif also noted that the congregations first temporary headquarters in 1950 was in the Church
of the Good Shepherd, while meetings and religious school classes
were conducted in the Masonic
Temple. In a sense, then, the sale of
the Anderson Avenue facility closes

a circle.
Rabbi Stern said that selling to a
church is far preferable than having the shul building turned into a
warehouse, as has often occurred,
or into a florist shop, as happened
to the small shul of my father-inlaws youth.
Obviously, the most likely and,
I believe, the most appropriate
purchaser for a religious facility is
another religious institution.
He added that the congregation has a warm relationship with
Onnuri Churchs membership and
leadership.
We know that they will be
respectful of the building, the Jewish
symbols that will remain even after
our congregation has found a new
home, and that they are sensitive to
how difficult this is emotionally for
many of our members. And, just as
when they were our tenants, they
conformed to our kashrut requirements and we never had a conflict
about the use of space for religious
services for instance, when the
second day of Rosh Hashanah fell
on a Sunday we are not concerned
that that will change when the positions are reversed.
The sale agreement includes a
clause that enshrines Shabbat and
holiday use and kashrut standards.
As to the halachic permissibility
of selling the property, Rabbi Stern
relied on a ruling of the Committee

of Jewish Law and Standards of

the Conservative movements Rabbinical Assembly, which says: A
synagogue may sell its building,
but maintain usage of the facility. A
lease-back arrangement should be
built into the terms of sale, so that
while title will transfer, usage of the
facility and maintaining the sacred
symbols are retained until a specific
date. At that future date, the sacred
symbols and other ritual and holy
items are to be removed, and the
space will no longer function as a
synagogue.
Rabbi Emeritus Irving Spielman
led the JCC of Fort Lee in the 1980s
and 1990s. By the end of his tenure, the towns demographics were
changing and shul membership
had begun to drop. Rabbi Spielman
said that because he had not been
involved in the negotiations he
could not comment directly on the
sale of the building.
However, reflecting on the fact
that at one time during his tenure
the JCC of Fort Lee was the largest
Conservative synagogue in Bergen
County, with a membership of 700
units, he said, It is sad to note that
they must now seek other facilities. It is my sincere hope that those
involved with the sale of the building will use the proceeds to provide
facilities that will meet the needs of
the existing membership.

SELLING YOUR HOME?

Bad deal
FROM PAGE 12

circle the wagons. Its not about Obama, his administration; its about the bad deal.
Thirdly, dont be depressed and dont assume failure
is ahead. People have changed their mind over the course
of time, especially when they realize they made mistakes
and see the level of interest on the part of the citizenry.
Keep your spirits up.
Fourth, dont be alone and silent. Dont say that whatever happens, its all in Hakodesh baruch hus Gods
hands. Its true that its in Gods hands. But he relies
on us, on those of us who are active. God helps those who
help themselves.
All those points are exactly on target, Congressman
Garrett said.
But:
Emails are probably on the bottom of the list in terms
of effectiveness. Phone calls are next. You can call two
places for a congress person: the district office and the
D.C. office as well. Next up for impact is letter writing.
Its not the form letters. Actually take the 10 minutes and
write down why you are passionate about this. People
were coming into my office in May about the Corker bill
which mandated Congressional input into an Iran deal
and they were saying, Im Jewish, I have family members
in Israel, this is personal for me, this is existential. Try to
bring the issue home.
The best if you have the time you have 60 days to
do it is to be in their face. If youre able to get down to
D.C., fantastic. If not, schedule a meeting with the district
representative, Mr. Garrett said.
And what about rallies?
Very important, if the rallies are sizable. I encourage
you to go. Sometimes on some issues people say, I went to
a rally or I came here to this Town Hall meeting tonight
so I did my part. Dont let that happen. Make the rally just
item five on the agenda.

Timeline
FROM PAGE 26

secret negotiations with Iran to set up

talks toward sanctions relief in exchange
for nuclear restrictions. In November of
that year, they arrive at a formula and
announce a deal that ends Irans enrichment of uranium beyond civilian levels.
In January 2014, the major powers
and Iran launch talks aimed at an agreement, and an increasingly wary Netanyahu mounts an effort to oppose what
he sees as a dangerous deal, culminating
in his March 2015 speech to Congress,

organized with Republicans and without

the knowledge of the White House.
In April of this year, the sides reach
the outline of an agreement in Lausanne,
Switzerland. In May, Congress passes a
law that will allow it to disapprove of a
deal within a two-month period. On July
14, after multiple extensions of a June 30
deadline, Iran and the six world powers
arrive at a comprehensive agreement.
Two days later, 172 Republican co-sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives
introduce a resolution of disapproval.


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

42 JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015

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FIND OUT WHAT YOUR HOME IS WORTH!

s
.

Just call our 24/7 hotline for your complimentary consultation.

NJ:
NY:

Jeffrey Schleider
Broker/Owner
Miron Properties NY
ENGLEWOOD

201.266.8555
T: 212.888.6250
T:

201.906.6024
M: 917.576.0776
M:

ENGLEWOOD SHOWCASE

Ruth Miron-Schleider
Broker/Owner
Miron Properties NJ

ENGLEWOOD

ENGLEWOOD

ENGLEWOOD

421 LEWELEN CIRCLE $1,325,000

191 GLENWOOD RD $1,325,000

114 CHESTNUT ST $1,740,000

212 MAPLE STREET $1,600,000

ENGLEWOOD

ENGLEWOOD

ENGLEWOOD

ENGLEWOOD

GO
RGE
AC OU
RE S
!

E.H EL
CO EGA
LO NT
NI
AL
!

VI GR
CT AN
OR D
IA
N!

LIS JUS
TE T
D!

e
o

OP

EN SUN
HO DA
US Y
E2
-

P
AR RIM
EA E
!

J
SO UST
LD
!

J
SO UST
LD
!

164 GLENWOOD ROAD $898,000

286 BOOTH AVENUE $769,000

8 HOWARD PLACE

ENGLEWOOD

ENGLEWOOD

ENGLEWOOD

SO

LD

ENGLEWOOD

LD

34 LEXINGTON COURT

ENGLEWOOD

SO

285 MORROW ROAD

ENGLEWOOD

SO

184 SHERWOOD PLACE

ENGLEWOOD

SO

LD

185 E. PALISADE AVE, #D5B

SO

400 JONES ROAD

ENGLEWOOD

SO

215 E. LINDEN AVENUE

ENGLEWOOD

ENGLEWOOD

SO

LD

350 ELKWOOD TERRACE

SO

LD

121-B EAST PALISADE AVENUE

LD

341 MOUNTAIN ROAD

LD

SO

LD

35 KING STREET

LD

ENGLEWOOD

SO

LD

401 DOUGLAS STREET

LD

ENGLEWOOD

SO

522 CAPE MAY STREET

SO

LD

248 CHESTNUT STREET

Contact us today for your complimentary consultation!

www.MironProperties.com
Each Miron Properties office is independently owned and operated.

JEWISH STANDARD JULY 24, 2015 43

STORE HOURS

646 Cedar Lane Teaneck, NJ 07666

SUN - TUE: 7AM - 9PM

WED: 7AM - 10PM
THURS: 7AM - 11PM
FRI: 7AM - 2 HOURS
BEFORE SUNDOWN

Tel: 201-855-8500 Fax: 201-801-0225

We Will Be Open Sun 7/26/15
At 1:00 PM

Sign Up For Your

Loyalty
Card
In Store

Sale Effective
7/26/15 - 7/31/15

69

69

Pkg

25

Each

Cholent
Combo

Beef, Kishka
& Marrow Bone

$ 99

GROCERY

25
$

FOR

20% Free

Galil
Pickles
7-9 Ct

2 $3
23 OZ

FOR

12 Count

Ortega
Taco
Kit

2 $5
10 OZ

FOR

DAIRY

NEW
ITEM!

Assorted

Califia
Lemonades
48 OZ

$ 99
Assorted

Dannon
Yogurt

10 $4
6 OZ

FOR

Assorted

Chobani
Flips

99
5.3 OZ

lb.

lb.

646 Cedar Lane Teaneck, NJ 07666

201-855-8500 Fax: 201-801-0225
www.thecedarmarket.com
info@thecedarmarket.com

Organic

Yellow
Peaches

$ 99
LB.

Organic

Stem
Tomatoes

$ 99
LB.

FISH
SUSHI
`

Crispy
Onion Roll

475

25
6
Flying Fire
$

$ 99

Original

Chocolate Brownie,
Cinnamon Coffee
or Chocolate Chip

Osem
Chicken
Consomme

14.1 OZ

$ 99
Paskesz
Pop
Crisps

3 $1
.75 OZ

FOR

Assorted

Silk Almond
Milk

2 $7
64 OZ

FOR

Assorted

Yobaby or YoToddler
Yogurt

2 $7
6 PACK

FOR

Assorted

Sabra
Hummus

2 $6
10 OZ

FOR

CUT TO ORDER

Dragon

1295

Jerusalem Style

Dark Meat
Cutlets

$ 99

Lb

Lb

Save On!

Save On!

38 OZ

$ 99
Save On!

Frenchs
French Fried
Onions

Fiber One
Bars
6 PACK

2 6 2 $7
6 OZ

Mini or White

FOR

Assorted

32 OZ

$ 99
Assorted

Aromaville
Cafaccino

99
12 OZ. CAN

Assorted

FOR

FROZEN

NEW
ITEM!

2 $5

Assorted

Tuscanini
Pizza

14.1 OZ

$ 49
Hoffmans
Pizza
Snaps

20 OZ

$ 99
Mango or
Mixed Fruit

Turkey Hill
Teas

Sharons Sorbet

FOR

FOR

2 $3
59 OZ

Original Only

Shmerling
Rosemarie

Milk or Parve

2 $6
3.5 OZ

8 OZ

2 OZ

Natural & Kosher

Shredded Cheese

79

16 OZ

FOR

Save On!

5 $3

LaChoy
Bamboo
Shoots

$ 99

Natures Bakery
Paskesz
Fig Bars Marshmallow

$ 79

Save On!

Save On!

Mikee
Honey Garlic
Sauce
20 OZ

Assorted

Liebers
Mini
Wow
8.5 OZ

$ 99

FOR

Bite Size

99

3 LB

16 OZ

2 $7

Excluding
Sugar Free

FOR

Pepperidge
Farms Puff
Pastry Sheets

17.3 OZ

$ 99
Seapoint
Edamame
14 OZ

2 $4
FOR

Pardes
NEW
ower
ITEM! Caulifl
Florets
24 OZ

ea.

FISH

$ 99

$ 99
Lb

Tilapia

$ 99

American Black Angus Beef

Libbys General Mills

Extra Long
Cheerios
Grain Whole Kernel
12 OZ
Corn
Rice
15.25 OZ

FOR

Assorted

Lb

Ready to Grill

Ground
Lamb

Carolina

Fresh

$ 99

Lb

Save On!

$ 99

Lb

ea.

Whole
Brisket Family Pack

Middle Chuck
Steaks

999

$
Heinz
Ketchup

99

ea.

Cooked
Tuna Roll

American Black Angus Beef

American Black Angus Beef

Chicken
Cutlets
Pargiot

Shoulder
Lamb Chops

Hunts
Snack Pack
Pudding
4 PACK

Dark Meat

Fresh

Lb

Original Chocolate Only

4 LB. BAG

$ 29

$ 99

Lb

$ 99

Lb

Domino
Granulated
Sugar

Family Pack

$ 99

Lb

On The
Frame

Save On!

lb.

Chicken
Breast

$ 79

89

Sweet
Apricots

Ground

Chicken
Cutlets
Turkey
Breast

Juicy

White Peaches or
White Nectarines

MARKET

Cedar Markets Meat Dept. Prides Itself On Quality, Freshness And Affordability. We Carry The Finest Cuts Of Meat And
The Freshest Poultry... Our Dedicated Butchers Will Custom Cut Anything For You... Just Ask!

Fresh

FOR

California

MEAT DEPARTMENT
Super Family Pack

HEADS

Green
Cabbage

Hot House English

Cucumbers

3 5

3 4

Farm Fresh Locally Grown

Loyalty
Program

at:
Visit Our Website om
et.c
www.thecedarmark

646 Cedar Lane Teaneck, NJ 07666

201-855-8500 Fax: 201-801-0225
www.thecedarmarket.com
info@thecedarmarket.com

MARKET

TERMS & CONDITIONS: This card is the property of Cedar Market, Inc. and is intended for exclusive
use of the recipient and their household members. Card is not transferable. We reserve the right to
change or rescind the terms and conditions of the Cedar Market loyalty program at any time, and
without notice. By using this card, the cardholder signifies his/her agreement to the terms &
conditions for use. Not to be combined with any other Discount/Store Coupon/Offer. *Loyalty Card
must be presented at time of purchase along
with ID for verification. Purchase cannot be
reversed once sale is completed.

CEDAR MARKET

Sweet
Pineapples

each

Sunday Super Saver!

Golden

Snow White
Cauliflower

69

Farm Fresh

Crisp
Celery

Sweet Grape
Tomatoes

Loyalty
Program

ORGANIC ORGANIC ORGANIC

Cool

CEDAR MARKET

ORGANIC ORGANIC ORGANIC

PRODUCE
Sunday Super Saver!

Fine Foods
Great Savings

Butchers Cut
London Broil

LB.

Breaded

Lemon
Pepper
Fillet

$ 99
Salmon
Save On!
Osem w/Seafood

Mini
Mandel $

25

14.1 OZ

FOR

$ 99

Lb

LB.

1099
LB.

Check Out Our New

Line of Cooked Fish

Save On!

HOMEMADE DAIRY
Riverhead
Pearled 10 Inch
Barley Cedar
$ 99
16 OZ
Pizza

89

EACH

Poached

Salmon
Osem Salad
Multi Pack
Assorted
12 PACK
Ossies
Soups

$ 99

Assorted

$ 99

Family Pack

Eggo
Homestyle
Waffles
24 CT

2 LB

$ 99
Save On!

Kineret
Cookie Dough

24 OZ

$ 99

$ 99

EACH

BAKERY

Sandwich
Cake

$ 99

15 OZ

$ 99
Of Tov
Extra Thin
Chicken Cutlet

EACH

Cranberry
Macadamia
Mandelbread

$ 99

16 OZ

PROVISIONS
Aarons

Smoked
Turkey Breast

$ 99

4 OZ

Aarons

Chicken
Franks

$ 99

13.5 OZ

We reserve the right to limit sales to 1 per family. Prices effective this store only. Not responsible for typographical errors. Some pictures are for design purposes only and do not necessarily represent items on sale. While Supply Lasts. No rain checks.