1. religion and spirituality
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THE CHICAGO
JEWISH NEWS
April 17-23, 2015/28 Nisan 5775
www.chicagojewishnews.com
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Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
Clinton weighs loyalty to Obama with distinctions on Israel issues
By Ron Kampeas
JTA
WASHINGTON – Hillary
Clinton does not appear until 90
seconds into the two-minute
video rolling out her campaign.
No one among the bright and diverse array of everyday Americans in that video mentions
foreign policy. Or Barack
Obama.
Jewish Democrats say the
video is emblematic of the approach that Clinton is likely to
take as she tries to straddle her
loyalty to Obama with the perceived need to distance herself
from the tensions that have characterized his administration’s relationship with Israel.
That tack is embedded in her
statement issued through Mal-
colm Hoenlein, the executive
vice president of the Conference
of Presidents of Major American
Jewish Organizations.
“Secretary Clinton thinks we
need to all work together to return
the special U.S.-Israel relationship
to constructive footing, to get
back to basic shared concerns and
interests, including a two-state solution pursued through direct negotiations between Israelis and
Palestinians,” Hoenlein said, describing a phone conversation he
initiated with Clinton.
Clinton, notably, is once removed from the statement, delivered in Hoenlein’s voice.
Obama is not mentioned, but she
calls for a “return” to “constructive footing,” an acknowledgment that the relationship has
gone off track.
“The language she used very
much indicated it is time to
reignite the bonds that are essential to the counties and how the
U.S.-Israel relationship is perceived by the rest of the world,”
said Steve Grossman, a past president of the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee, who
supported Clinton in her first
presidential bid in 2008 and is
backing her for 2016.
Grossman chaired the Democratic National Committee during the presidency of Clinton’s
husband, Bill Clinton.
Steve Rabinowitz, a senior
communications official in the
Bill Clinton administration who
now runs a public relations consultancy, said there is “no needle
to thread”: Clinton and Obama
worked well together when she
was his secretary of state in his
first term, Rabinowitz said, and
she would be able to distinguish
herself from the president with-
out diminishing his accomplishments.
“It will be obvious she has
her own vision of the world and
that none of this is disrespectful
of the president,” said Rabinowitz, who backed Clinton in
2008 and this year helped found
the fundraising group Jewish
Americans for Hillary.
Barbara Goldberg Goldman,
a Democratic activist who campaigned for Obama in 2008 and
2012 and now backs Clinton,
said attempts to cast Obama as
harmful to Israel were “shameful.” She expected Clinton
would focus on the domestic issues that draw Jewish majorities
to Democrats.
“When you look at polls and
talk about the Jewish community
in terms of what issues are most
important, Israel’s not on there,”
Goldman said, noting that Jew-
ish voters are concerned mostly
with the economy – the issue on
which Clinton’s campaign
launch video focused.
Some Jewish Democrats
who have had longstanding relationships with the Clintons said
Hillary Clinton could ill afford to
alienate the party’s base by appearing to attack Obama.
“She’s really in between a
rock and a hard place,” said a former top party official who
worked closely with the Clintons
in the 1990s and has strong ties
to the pro-Israel community.
“Most Democratic voters in
primaries in particular will look
for someone who is agreeing with
Obama on everything,” said this
former official, who spoke anonymously in order not to alienate
any candidate. “Some of the most
The Chicago Loop Synagogue Presents
S E E C L I N TO N
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PAG E 1 1
3
Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
At Cannabis Seder, Bob Marley tunes and a blessing over the weed
By Rebecca Spence
JTA
PORTLAND – This seder
included a legal disclaimer.
“The cannabis products at
this Seder are available to OMMP
cardholders only,” the sign at the
check-in table read, referring to
the state of Oregon’s medical marijuana program. “All others consume at your own risk.”
The fine print explained the
facts: While Oregon voters legalized recreational marijuana use
last November, the measure
wouldn’t take effect until July 1.
Portland’s district attorney had
vowed not to prosecute in the
meantime, but the message was
clear: If I wanted to get stoned on
pot chocolates, the hosts of the
country’s first official Cannabis
Seder bore no responsibility.
Heading into the airy warehouse where the third-night
seder was held, I ran into Roy
Kaufmann, one half of the married couple behind the evening’s
festivities. Kaufmann – a seasoned activist – directs the advocacy group Le’Or, which since its
founding last year has worked to
put marijuana legalization on the
Jewish communal agenda.
The Cannabis Seder for a
New Drug Peace – billed as a
place for “an honest Jewish conversation about topics we were
taught were strictly taboo –
about drugs, race, and justice,”
marked Le’Or’s inaugural event.
Seated around reclaimed
hardwood tables, seder-goers pa-
The seder plate at Le’Or’s inaugural Cannabis Seder included a marijuana leaf. (JTA)
rsed the failings of America’s longrunning drug war – which has had
devastating consequences for people of color – and passed joints to
celebrate Oregon’s newfound
cannabis freedoms.
When it came time to begin
the seder and say the blessing
over the wine, a new tradition
was added to the service: reciting
the blessing over the weed.
In the absence of a prayer for
cannabis, Kaufmann – author of
the Drug War-themed Haggadah
that guided our seder – borrowed
from the Havdalah ritual. The
prayer “Blessed are you, Lord, our
G-d, the king of the world, who
creates myriad fragrant spices” –
traditionally recited over the fragrant spices at the close of every
Sabbath became the de facto
ganja blessing.
Later, a vocal soloist led us
in singing Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” (“Emancipate
yourselves from mental slavery/None but ourselves can free
our minds.”), and we chanted the
Shema prayer to the beat of an
African djembe drum.
Le’Or’s major sponsor, Dr.
Bronner’s Magic Soap Company
President David Bronner, was
seated at my table, along with his
partner in hemp activism, Adam
Eidinger. Eidinger had flown in
from Washington D.C., where he
led last year’s successful campaign
to legalize recreational marijuana
use in the nation’s capital.
Other seder guests included
Marsha Rosenbaum and Amanda
Reiman of the Drug Policy Alliance – a driving force behind
marijuana legalization efforts na-
This Yom HaAtzma’ut, celebrate red, white, and blue.
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lives since before 1948. And supporters like you provide MDA’s 14,000 paramedics and EMTs —
12,000 of them volunteers — with the training and equipment they need. So as we celebrate
Israel’s independence, save a life in Israel with your gift to MDA. Please give today.
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tionwide – and Diane Goldstein,
a 53-year-old retired police lieutenant from Rendondo Beach,
Calif., who traded in her badge to
speak out against the Drug War.
At the Le’Or seder, while some
Passover rituals were left intact –
the washing of the hands, for one
– most were subject to reinvention. Even the seder plate looked
different from all other seder
plates: As a symbol of freedom
and protest, a marijuana leaf had
been substituted for the usual
piece of lettuce.
By the time the seder meal
(wild-caught salmon) was finished, glass Mason jars previously
stuffed with Oregon’s Finest
cannabis flowers sat empty, and
the spread of dark chocolate truffles “made with full extract
cannabis oil,” according to the
Leif Medicinals label, had been
plundered.
What remained was a sordid
array of hemp wick, unopened
jars of cannabis butter and a
room full of activists who committed to ending America’s Drug
War in the name of the Jewish
ideal of tikkun olam, or building
a better world.
4
Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
Contents
Vol. 21 No. 28
THE CHICAGO
JEWISH NEWS
Joseph Aaron
Editor/Publisher
6
Golda Shira
Senior Editor/
Israel Correspondent
Torah Portion
Pauline Dubkin Yearwood
Managing Editor
8, 10, 23
Arts and
Entertainment
Joe Kus
Staff Photographer
Roberta Chanin
and Associates
Sara Belkov
Steve Goodman
Advertising Account Executives
Denise Plessas Kus
12
Production Director
Kristin Hanson
Cover Story
Accounting Manager/
Webmaster
Jacob Reiss
Subscriptions Manager/
Administrative Assistant
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Ann Yellon
of blessed memory
Celebrating Israel’s Birthday
with the Jewish Community
Israel at 67
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Calendar
At Park Plaza, we help our residents maintain
their connection to the state of Israel with discussions
on the news and current events.
At Yom Ha’Atzmaut, we celebrate with Israeli foods, music
and dancing, letting our residents rejoice
with their beloved Jewish community.
With delicious kosher meals, daily exercise,
social events and so much more, our residents thrive in
a vibrant, care-free environment.
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Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
Le Pen picks fight with father amid
party’s surging Jewish support
20TH ANNUAL
By Cnaan Liphshiz
JTA
At 27, David Rachline is the
youngest senator in the history of
France’s Fifth Republic and a rising force within the country’s
third largest party.
A university dropout and
the son of a Jewish Socialist
Party activist, Rachline crushed
his opponents in the 2014 mayoral elections in the city of Frejus. Six months later he was
elected to the French Senate.
Rachline is part of a new
generation of far-right politicians. His Jewish roots and wunderkind aura have helped make
him the poster child for efforts to
rehabilitate the National Front,
a far-right party long shunned
due to the open xenophobia of
its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Under Le Pen’s daughter,
Marine Le Pen, the party has
softened its image, in part by distancing itself from the elder Le
Pen, a political provocateur who
has been convicted multiple
times for inciting racial hatred
and once famously claimed that
the gas chambers were but a “detail” of World War II.
A series of dramatic and escalating clashes between the Le
Pens came to a head when Le
Pen demanded for the first time
that her father resign his party
posts and drop his candidacy in
regional elections. Jean-Marie Le
Pen said he would not run this
year, but told Reuters on Tuesday
that he will not give up his party
positions.
“National Front is behind
Marine Le Pen, her political line
and her appointees,” Rachline
wrote on Twitter hours after the
National Front leader made her
demand.
Stephane Ravier, a French
senator and another member of
the party’s young guard, went further, attacking Jean-Marie Le
Pen for “jeopardizing the party”
and wishing him “a happy retirement.”
The feud has exacerbated a
fissure in the party between older
activists loyal to Jean-Marie Le
Pen and a new generation of farright politicians hungry for mainstream respectability. Under the
younger Le Pen, who replaced
her father as party president in
2011, the National Front has
achieved unprecedented success
at the polls, and even made inroads among French Jews, some
of whom have been won over by
her harsh rhetoric against Muslims.
According to a poll last year
among 1,095 self-identified Jews,
the National Front earned 13.5
percent of the Jewish vote in
2012 presidential elections, more
than doubling its share from the
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National Front leader Marine Le Pen speaking with reporters following
a meeting with French President Francois Hollande. (JTA)
previous presidential contest five
years earlier.
Le Pen has insisted repeatedly that the real enemy of
French Jews is not the National
Front but Islamic fundamentalism, against which she has
claimed the party is “your best
shield.” She has also chastised
National Front figures who made
anti-Semitic statements. Last
year, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s blog
was temporarily taken offline on
Le Pen’s orders because he said in
a post that a Jewish singer should
go “in the oven.”
Yet many French Jews remain suspicious of the National
Front, noting that until this
month Le Pen kept her father as
a candidate and honorary president of the party. Her recent
break with her father has not
changed the official policy of the
CRIF, the umbrella group of
French Jewish communities,
which has long maintained that
Jean-Marie Le Pen is a dangerous
figure unworthy of elected office.
Le Pen’s break with her father is
“indeed a dramatic occurrence,”
CRIF President Roger Cukierman said, “but one that occurred
at the top, with little effect on
the main body of what remains a
xenophobic party.”
Still, there are signs that
Jewish opposition to the National Front may be softening. In
2011, the Jewish radio station
Radio J extended an invitation
to Le Pen to appear on its Sunday morning political program –
something the station had never
done for her father – though it
was forced to cancel the interview amid Jewish community
outrage. One prominent Jewish
intellectual urged the community to reconsider its policy of
avoidance.
“To advise France’s Jewish
establishment, I’d argue against
reducing National Front to what
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Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
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Silence is not the answer
We must continue
to tell the stories
of our survivors
By Rabbi Vernon Kurtz
Torah Columnist
Torah Portion: Shemini
Leviticus 9:1–11:47
The Torah reading of this
Shabbat describes the terrible sequence of events that led to the
death of Aaron’s sons, Nadab
and Abihu. The text does not
detail exactly what they did, it
simply states that as they offered
the Lord alien fire, “A fire came
forth from the Lord and consumed them; thus they died at
the instance of the Lord.” Moses
must then tell Aaron what happened. Aaron’s reaction is silence.
There have been many interpretations given as to what
this silence represents. Some
have suggested that his anguish
was too great for words. Others
see it as simple acceptance of the
decree of the Lord and the mistake of his young sons. Whatever
the reason, Aaron never talks of
it again. It remains a deep dark
secret of his life to which he
never responds publicly.
This past Thursday, the 27th
day of Nisan, was Yom HaShoah
v’HaGevurah, the day we recall
the terrible loss to our people of
six million of our brothers and
sisters and commemorate the
heroism of those who fought
back. As the generations after
the Holocaust have learned of
the terrible plight of those who
were killed, and those who survived, sometimes silence seems
to be a proper response; no words
can adequately convey comprehension of what occurred. However, for the survivors and the
liberators that should not be the
case. Words and stories should be
told and written so that future
generations will understand the
depravity to which human conduct can descend if given the opportunity.
When President Barack
Obama visited Yad VaShem two
years ago he was introduced to
Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, the former Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, and current chief rabbi of
Tel Aviv-Yaffo, who thanked the
United States of America for his
life. He was the youngest survivor of Buchenwald and was
saved by Gen. George S. Patton’s
Third Army, which liberated the
camp from the Nazis on April 11,
1945.
Rabbi Vernon Kurtz
Rabbi Herschel Schacter,
who was attached to the Third
Army’s VIII Corps, was the first
chaplain to enter the camp. He
commandeered a jeep and driver,
left the headquarters, and sped
toward Buchenwald. By late afternoon, when Rabbi Schacter
drove through the gates, Allied
tanks had breached the camp.
He remembered, he later said,
the stinging of smoke in his eyes,
the smell of burning flesh and
hundreds of bodies strewn everywhere.
Rabbi Lau’s memoir, titled
“Out of the Depths: The Story of
a Child of Buchenwald Who Returned Home at Last” tells a remarkable story of suffering and
death; of survival and achievement. Rabbi Lau was born in Piotrkow, Poland where his father
was the town’s last chief rabbi.
He was descended from an unbroken chain of rabbis spanning
over 1,000 years.
His book tells the terrible
story of how his entire family was
murdered during the Holocaust,
with the exception of his brother
Naphtali, his brother Joshua, and
an uncle who had already emigrated. Rabbi Lau was saved time
and time again by his older
brother, who eventually, as
Naphtali Lavie, was a member of
the Israeli Foreign Office, serving
for many years in the United
States, and who recently passed
away. One harrowing experience
after another seemed to descend
on both of them. Somehow,
Naphtali kept his vow to protect
his younger brother, Yisrael.
When Buchenwald was liberated, little Yisrael Lau was eight
years old.
According to Rabbi Schacter, when he entered the camp
he encountered a young American lieutenant who knew his way
around. “Are there any Jews
alive here?” the rabbi asked him.
He was led to a little camp where
in filthy barracks men lay on raw
wooden planks stacked from
floor to ceiling. “Shalom Aleichem, Yiden,” Rabbi Schacter
cried in Yiddish. “Ihr Zine Frei.”
“Peace be upon you, Jews, you
are free.”
As he passed a mound of
corpses, Rabbi Schacter thought
he saw a pair of eyes. He panicked and drew his pistol. Rabbi
Lau recalls that Rabbi Schacter
bumped into him, a little boy,
staring at him behind a mound of
corpses, wide-eyed. In Yiddish,
Rabbi Schacter asked him, “How
old are you, my boy”? Rabbi Lau
replied, “What difference does
that make? At any rate, I am
older than you.” “Why do you
think you’re older than I am?”
Rabbi Schacter responded.
Without hesitating, the little boy
replied, “Because you laugh and
cry like a child, and I haven’t
laughed for a long time. I can’t
even cry anymore. So, which one
of us is older?”
Rabbi Schacter asked who
he was and Rabbi Lau responded
using his nickname, “Lulek from
Piotrkow.” “And you’re here all
alone, without your father?”
“Without my father, without my
mother. I have a brother. He collapsed and is lying sick, here in
the camp.” Rabbi Schacter had
heard of his father and promised
to do whatever he could to help
the young boy. They found his
brother, Naphtali, in the
Buchenwald hospital where he
was being treated for typhoid
fever.
“My name is Herschel
Schacter,” he said, “I am the
army rabbi for the division that
liberated Buchenwald. I know
who you are, I am going to help
you and everything will be all
right.” He reassured Naphtali
and concluded with a mazal tov.
“Congratulations! We’ve gone
from slavery to freedom.” The
book details the amazing life of
the young boy, Lulek from Piotrkow.
As the years move on the
survivors and the liberators are
fewer in number. Those who
lived during that time will not be
present to give personal testimony to those of us who can only
read about it, visit museums, or
hear their stories. Their silence
will not keep their stories alive.
Their tales must be told, written
and archived.
We pray that no people,
ever again, will have to endure
what our people did 70 years ago.
We also pray that we, all of us,
shall be worthy of carrying on
their memories and working towards the fulfillment of their
dreams of a time of strength for
the Jewish people and peace for
all humanity.
Rabbi Vernon Kurtz is the
rabbi of North Suburban Synagogue Beth El (Conservative) in
Highland Park.
7
Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
First in line for Portuguese citizenship: Jewish dreamers and fortune seekers
By Cnaan Liphshiz
JTA
Hunched over a monument
for thousands of Jews killed in a
1506 massacre in Lisbon,
Danielle Karo (not her real
name) felt a swelling in her eyes.
To Karo, an American poet and
business analyst who is descended from one of Sephardic
Jewry’s greatest sages, the massacre is not just ancient history.
It is emblematic of the persecution that motivated her to apply
for Portuguese citizenship under
a 2013 law granting citizenship
to the descendants of Sephardim,
the term used to refer to Jews
who once lived in the Iberian
Peninsula.
“I think Portugal’s law is a
beautiful thing,” said Karo, who
asked to be identified by a pseudonym because she works in
Muslim countries in the Middle
East. “But when I think of the
persecution that my family endured there, I also believe it’s
Portugal’s duty.”
Karo is the first of approximately 300 people who have applied for citizenship under the
law, according to the Jewish
communities of Porto and Lisbon, which must vet naturalization requests for the government.
The law makes Portugal only the
second country in the world with
a law of return for Jews.
To qualify for citizenship,
applicants must demonstrate that
they belong to a Sephardic Jewish community or have Sephardic ancestry. They must also
provide certificates proving they
have no criminal record and a
birth certificate authenticated by
a Portuguese consulate in their
country of residence, among
other documents. The law does
not require applicants to travel
to Portugal.
So far, the Porto and Lisbon
communities have certified the
Sephardic ancestry of about 200
applicants. In Lisbon, most applicants come from Israel, according to Jose Oulman Carp,
president of the capital city’s Jewish community. In Porto, 55 of
the 100 certified are Turkish
Jews, according to a progress re-
port released by that community.
As yet, the applicants have not
received a response.
Karo, an avid traveler and
former student at the University
of Edinburgh, claims decent from
Joseph Karo, a 16th-century
Spanish rabbi who authored one
of the principal codifications of
Jewish law. She concedes that
beyond providing symbolic closure to her ancestors’ deportation
in the 16th century, a Portuguese
passport would have “some practical uses,” such as automatic
work and study visas in all 28 European Union member states.
Still, Karo insists that the
decision to apply for citizenship
“is mostly an emotional drive”
born of pride in her Sephardic
ancestry.
“It’s something that’s a part
of me, so I applied straight away,”
she said.
Portuguese politicians responsible for the legislation have
cited similar motivations. Jose
Ribeiro e Castro, one of the law’s
co-authors, said he intended the
legislation to serve as belated
reparation for the expulsion of
hundreds of thousands of Jews
from the Iberian Peninsula in the
15th and 16th centuries.
“In my political career, I am
most grateful for having achieved
this law,” Ribeiro e Castro said.
For some applicants, Portuguese
citizenship spells opportunity.
James Harlow, a 52-year-old
father of three from California
and owner of a high-tech firm in
the Silicon Valley, said that Portuguese nationality would allow
him to expand his business in Europe. Two Turkish Jewish business partners said that they are
considering an application so
they can start a computer firm in
the Netherlands.
“For young Turkish Jews, acquiring Portuguese nationality is
a matter of convenience,” said
Cefi Kamhi, a former Turkish
lawmaker and a prominent figure
in Turkey’s dwindling Jewish
community.
Like hundreds of thousands
of Sephardim, Kamhi’s family
fled to Portugal when the Inquisition began in Spain, and had to
flee again when it followed them
to Portugal. Kamhi already ap-
Congregants praying at the Kadoorie Synagogue in Porto, Portugal,
plied for Spanish citizenship
under a complicated procedure
put in place there in the 1990s,
but was never naturalized.
“I am considering applying
for Portuguese citizenship,
though I don’t need it for any
practical reason,” Kamhi said. “It
would just be a nice closure.”
Last year, the Spanish government approved its own bill for
the naturalization of Sephardic
Jews that was far more permissive than the Portuguese version,
but implementation has been delayed due to disagreements about
the procedure. The lower house of
the Spanish parliament is set to
vote on a second reading of the
bill, which would institute criteria beyond those required in Por-
tugal, including subjecting applicants to a Spanish language test.
Like their Portuguese counterparts, Spanish politicians say
the bill is meant to correct a historic wrong. Yet as Spain and
Portugal struggle to claw their
way out of an economic crisis
that left them with official unemployment rates of 23 and 14
percent, respectively, the Iberian
states may also see a financial incentive for attracting Jewish
newcomers.
“The Sephardic Diaspora
can be viewed as a large pool
with the potential to benefit
Spain and Portugal’s economies,
provided that pool can be drawn
to visit, settle and invest,” said
Michael Freund, founder and
chairman of Shavei Israel, a
Jerusalem-based nonprofit that
runs outreach programs for the
descendants of Sephardic Jews.
Freund noted that tourism officials in both countries often cite
the financial incentive openly in
advocating for the expansion of
Iberia’s well-developed network of
Jewish heritage sites.
Harlow, the applicant from
California, sees no contradiction
between the two.
“As a business leader in Silicon Valley, I welcome an opportunity to bring capital, jobs and
know-how to assist in cultivating
the Oporto region,” he said. “Perhaps this would include growing
muscat grapes or olives, as my ancestors did 1,000 years ago.”
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Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
Arts & Entertainment
What kind of Jew are you?
Popular new
comedy looks at
Jewish identity
By Pauline Dubkin Yearwood
Managing Editor
Who is a bad Jew? And why?
You might find some answers to these questions – in a hilarious way – at Theater Wit’s
Chicago premiere production of
Joshua Harmon’s comedy titled
just that, running April 24
through June 7 at the theater at
1229 W. Belmont in Chicago.
“Bad Jews” is funny and biting, but it poses thoughtful ques-
tions about family and religious
identity in the age of Facebook,
director Jeremy Weschler, Theater Wit’s artistic director, said in
a telephone conversation.
“When I read the play two
years ago, I was really struck by
how on the nose it was. The author has his ear to a lot of the
kind of identity problems facing
young American Jews in particular in these days of self-constructed personalities, the kind of
wars against the traditions that
were presented to you,” Weschler
says. “Do you embrace them, define yourself in relation to them,
or what?”
“Bad Jews” has a familiar,
fraught setting: a Holocaust survivor grandfather’s funeral.
Among those present are
The 13th Annual Dr. Arnold H. Kaplan Concert
Alberto Mizrahi and Friends
A Global Mélange of Music
Wednesday, May 6, 2015 | 7:30 P.M.
Anshe Emet Synagogue, 3751 N. Broadway, Chicago
Daphna Feygenbaum, who defines herself as a “real Jew” with
an Israeli boyfriend and plans to
move to the Jewish state. Also
confined to a too-small apartment after the services are two
brothers, Daphna’s cousins, including Liam, who has brought
his “shiksa” girlfriend Melody.
When each lays claim to their
grandfather’s chai necklace, a vicious and hilarious brawl ensues.
“A lot of the play has to do
with different attitudes toward
family history, family religion,”
Wechsler says. “The thing that
was awesome for me and for the
Jewish members of the cast was
the way you see the play and go,
oh I know exactly who that is.
It’s my cousin Chip or whatever.
No one ever says, this is me.”
“Bad Jews” had its world premiere in New York several years
ago and received a number of
nominations for Best Play. By the
end of its first season, 11 more
productions had opened around
the country, and it was called the
best comedy of the season in The
New York Times.
“One of the reasons it just
exploded is this kind of particular
amalgam of danger and recognition,” Wechsler says. “The things
people say are so hilarious and so
awful. We can all imagine them
being said in our family. The
electric part of the debate is, not
only do I know all these people
Top, from left: ‘Bad Jews’ stars Ian Paul Custer as Liam, Laura Lapidus as
Daphna, (bottom) Erica Bittner as Melody and Cory Kahane as Josh.
but in the right circumstances we
would say those things.”
Much of the comedy, he
says, “comes from this sense of
recognition and release of tension. Nobody can say unpleasant
things to another member of the
family the way you can in a Jewish family. It’s shock laughter.”
The characters, Wechsler
says, embody this. “Diane/Dafna
wants to move to Israel, she has a
boyfriend in the Israeli army,
she’s embracing that side of
things,” he says. “Another son is
sort of disavowing Judaism. He’s
culturally a Jew but dating a gentile. The conflict between these
two points of view is, where do
CONTINUED
O N N E X T PAG E
Can you live a life without regrets?
Visiting Hazzanim from the Cantors Assembly:
Roz Barak San Francisco, CA David Feuer Palm Beach, FL
Magda Fishman Stamford, CT Herschel Fox Encino, CA
Kim Komrad Gaithersburg, MD Nathan Lam Los Angeles, CA
Jacob Benzion Mendelson White Plains, NY
Alberto Mizrahi Chicago, IL David Propis Mike Stein Woodland Hills, CA Sol Zim Hollis Hills, NY
Ensemble: Larry Kohut Bass Howard Levy Piano/Harmonica
Kalyan Pathak Percussion Chris Siebold Guitar
Pianist: Craig Terry Chicago Lyric Opera
STARRING
FREDERICA
VON
STADE
Based on the play by HORTON FOOTE
Composed by RICKY IAN GORDON
Libretto by LEONARD FOGLIA
$20 per Ticket
Purchase your ticket(s) online at:
www.AnsheEmet.org/Kaplan
This year’s concert will include Hazzan Alberto Mizrahi’s
installation as the new President of the Cantors Assembly.
Please contact Mimi Weisberg if you have
any questions or would like more information:
[email protected] or 773-868-5123
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9
Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
CONTINUED
F RO M P R E V I O U S PAG E
we fall into this spectrum? It’s a
great little debate.”
Wechsler admits he brings
his own feelings into his work on
the play. “I have sympathies into
each of those characters,” he
says. “I’m in my mid-40s, and the
path I took to try to figure out my
relationship to my religion is not
the same as I might follow today,
but I have a lot of sympathy for
all three of (the characters), as
does Josh (Harmon, the playwright). He assured me there is
no one to-one mapping to people
in his family. They’re an amalgam.”
The funeral setting, Wechsler says, “is a huge trope in literature. These are moments of
tremendous personal and familial upheaval. Everyone has to
change and shift. Families put
themselves into this kind of
mesh net, they lose a knot, then
they have to string a new now together. These are moments of
change.”
France
CONTINUED
F RO M PAG E
5
research at France’s National
Center for Scientific Research.
Dayan said the party is changing
and the community must take
that into account.
“France’s Jewish establishment may find itself facing a National Front in a position of
power before long,” he said.
Under Le Pen, the National
“Bad Jews,” Weschler says,
will appeal to audience members
other than Jews. “Every family is
horrible in its own way,” he says.
“But the dynamics of the play for
the watchers are different if
you’re Jewish or not Jewish but I
don’t think the play is less fun.
The family dynamic challenges
are there for everyone. The question of marrying outside your
faith would apply to everyone.”
But, he adds, “it’s different
for Jewish audience members –
the immediate recognition of
specific people, the immediacy of
these particular questions. The
play does not require a huge
amount of background in Judaism to follow it. The issues
they’re debating are out front,
they’re explained.”
Yet, Wechsler says, “the
thing that is universal about families is because these are people
who will have to be your family
across the board for ever. You
don’t choose to remove yourself
from them. There’s a certain
safety net among families that
lets people say things to other
people” that they could not say
to non-family members.
“It’s the reason everyone
dreads holidays. That is universal,” he says.
But “Bad Jews” also raises
specific questions about its titular people. “How do you define
yourselves as Jews in modern culture? I think Jews will be more
interested. Those things will resonate with them stronger.”
Wechsler notes that he
wanted to produce “Bad Jews” at
Theater Wit several years ago,
but was not able to because the
show went to New York first.
Now he’s happy to be directing
the Chicago premiere.
“It is one sharp biting comedy,” he says.
Front has achieved record success at the polls. In 2012, a year
after Le Pen replaced her father
as party leader, she received 17.9
percent of the vote in the first
round of the presidential elections, surpassing her father’s best
electoral result from 2002.
In last year’s elections for
the European Parliament, the
National Front won 24.8 of the
vote, compared to 6.3 percent in
2009, when Jean-Marie Le Pen
was still boss. In last month’s regional elections, National Front
received 22.2 percent of the vote
in the second round of balloting,
edging the ruling Socialists of
President Francois Hollande and
finishing behind only the centerright UMP.
To Dayan, the surge in popularity is changing the party from
within.
“Telling anti-Semitic jokes
in a party made up of six members and someone’s grandmother
is one thing, Dayan said. “Leading a movement with 10 million
supporters is another.”
“Bad Jews” opens in previews
April 24-May 3 and continues
through June 7 at Theater Wit,
1229 W. Belmont Ave., Chicago.
For tickets ($12-$18 previews,
$20-$36 regular run) call (773)
975-8150 or visit TheaterWit.org.
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Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
Arts & Entertainment
Meet the new ‘Jewish Oprah’
By Beth Kissileff
JTA
Naomi Firestone-Teeter is
the new executive director of the
Jewish Book Council, which promotes the reading, writing, publishing and distribution of
English-language Jewish books.
What interested you in this
kind of work?
I studied literature in college, a passion of mine from as
early as I can remember, so the
importance of both having literature in my own life as I moved
forward, and helping to cultivate
that interest in others has been
one of my key drivers. In academic environments, reading
and literature are a natural part
of the culture, but beyond these
institutions it often requires effort to both keep up with one’s
reading and also create situations
in which one can engage with
others about what they’re reading. On the Jewish side, I grew up
in a family that took Judaism
very seriously and was surrounded (literally, wall to wall in
some rooms) by both Jewish and
secular texts.
I know that you have done
a great deal with using the Web
and social media to create a
presence for Jewish books. How
does the Internet affect reading
habits?
I think the Internet is a very
exciting place for the literary
community and has created
many new paths for discovery for
readers and many new opportunities for authors to find their
readers. Essentially, in a way, it
mirrors what has always existed –
mega-sites serving a similar function as big-box stores that sell
books and smaller, literary sites
serving a role that’s similar to independent bookstores (with both
usually working in tandem with
their physical counterpart). But
it has expanded opportunities
across the board. People have
more access to authors and more
opportunities to engage with
others about their ideas – even if
they’re not geographically in the
same area – including publishers.
Who are your favorite Jewish authors?
My list is constantly changing, and I work with so many in-
credible authors, that this is truly
an impossible question to answer! I can say, though, that in
the current crop of writers, I’m
very excited about the most recent batch of Sami Rohr Prize
winners and finalists: Ayelet
Tsabari, Kenneth Bonert, Molly
Antopol, Boris Fishman and Yelena Akhtiorskaya.
Do you have time to keep
up with all the required reading,
and do you have time to read
any non-Jewish authors?
It’s definitely difficult to
keep up, as I’m also in two book
clubs, both of which started
about a year after college and are
still going strong. I do the best I
can though and always have a
towering stack of books at my
bedside, much to my husband’s
chagrin! I don’t have time to
read books by non-Jewish authors, but I make time! I think
it’s important for me both personally and professionally to be
in tune with what’s happening in
the literary scene in general as
well as filling in classics, Jewish
and non-Jewish, along the way.
What Jewish literary trends
have you been noticing lately?
One of the most obvious
Naomi Firestone-Teeter
trends has been the influence of
immigrant. Both as Americans
and as Jews, we are a nation of
immigrants and this is represented in our literature. We’re
also seeing more about more
great works by Jewish authors
from around the world that have
been translated into English, and
new publishers that are devoted
to bringing these works to the
United States. And in conjunc-
tion with these trends, we’re seeing more books that reflect the
experience of Jews in Englishspeaking places like South
Africa, England and Australia.
All of these works create a
greater understanding of the
breadth and variety within the
Jewish experience as well as the
links and traditions that connect
Jews across the world.
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11
Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
Clinton
CONTINUED
F RO M PAG E
2
prominent Jewish Democratic
donors are very concerned about
the relationship the president has
had with (Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin) Netanyahu and the
Iran deal.”
Obama and Netanyahu
have been at odds for years over
Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking
and the nuclear negotiations between the major powers and
Iran. Obama backs the outline of
an Iran deal which trades sanctions relief for restrictions aimed
at keeping Iran from becoming a
nuclear power. Netanyahu has
said the deal, to be completed by
June 30, would leave Iran a nuclear weapons threshold state
and endanger Israel.
Clinton, as secretary of state
in Obama’s first term, was deeply
involved in the ultimately failed
Israeli-Palestinian talks as well as
in laying the groundwork for the
Iran talks.
In statements since then,
she has simultaneously endorsed
Obama administration efforts
while subtly staking out a position to the right. After this
month’s deal outline was released, Clinton called it an “important step” but added that “the
devil is in the details.”
A major donor both to the
Democratic Party and pro-Israel
causes wondered whether Clinton is the unalloyed Israel supporter she was during her term as
U.S. senator from New York,
from 2001 to 2009, or the secretary of state loyal to Obama.
“The senator was good on
Israel, the secretary was average,”
said this donor, who also asked
not to be identified in order not
to alienate candidates.
Clinton in her most recent
autobiography, “Hard Choices,”
depicts herself as unabashedly in
love with Israel. But like Obama,
she is also clearly ambivalent
about Netanyahu.
In the book, she called the
slain prime minister Yitzhak
Rabin a “close friend” and former
prime minister and president
Shimon Peres an “old friend.”
She said Tzipi Livni, a former opposition leader and a key negotiator in the talks with the
Palestinians, was “smart and
tough.” And then, upon Netanyahu’s 2009 election: “I had
known Netanyahu for years. He
is a complicated figure.”
She describes her March
2010 phone call to Netanyahu
after Israel’s government embarrassed Vice President Joe Biden
during a visit to Israel by announcing plans for new building
in eastern Jerusalem.
“I didn’t enjoy playing the
bad cop, but it was part of the
job,” she wrote.
But Republicans won’t let
her get off the hook so easily.
Matt Brooks, who directs
Hillary Clinton, then the U.S. secretary of state, meeting with Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a 2012 trip to Israel. (JTA)
the Republican Jewish Coalition,
said he will cast a Clinton presidency as a third term for Obama.
“She was the one who proudly
talked about spending 45 minutes on the phone yelling at the
prime minister,” he said, referring
to the 2010 call.
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12
Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
A new exhibit at
the Illinois Holocaust Museum looks at
Jewish photographers, World War II and the Holocaust
By Pauline Dubkin Yearwood
Managing Editor
In 2003, David Shneer, a
historian and author who was
then working on a project about
Yiddish culture in the former Soviet Union, saw an exhibition
that interested him at a Moscow
gallery, photographs from World
War II. A lover of photography,
he went inside to take a closer
look.
“I noticed that the photographers all had Jewish names,”
Shneer said in a recent phone
conversation. “I asked the curator very gently why she chose to
curate a show of Jewish photographers. She said the photographers were all Jewish. That led
me to ask, why were Jews photographing Stalin’s war? Why were
they given those positions of really important power?”
Those questions, and Shneer’s
new fascination with the Jewish
photographers of World War II,
led eventually to a well-received
book, “Through Soviet Jewish
Eyes: Photography, War, and the
Holocaust” and to an exhibition
based on the volume and displaying a little-known aspect of the
war.
“Through Soviet Jewish
Eyes,” currently residing at the
Illinois Holocaust Museum and
Education Center in Skokie
through Sept. 7, features more
than 60 photographs that span
the Nazi-Soviet war period, from
June 1941 through May 1945,
“Victory Day.” The photographs
show a side of World War II that
even enthusiasts of history may
not be aware of.
The exhibition is a Midwest
premiere and the first at any museum to present the entire exhibition with Russian translation,
done as a courtesy to the
Chicago area’s large Russian population.
The photographs on view
were among the first to document the liberation of Nazi concentration camps and other
aspects of the Holocaust as it was
witnessed by the Soviets.
But most of the photographers never intended their images to be hanging in a gallery.
“The photos themselves
were never intended to be seen
at the size they’re at. They were
made for newspapers and magazines,” Arielle Weininger, the
museum’s chief curator, said in a
phone conversation. “The fact
that they were enlarged so much
shows they’re not just war photo-
graphs but really works of art. By
blowing them up so large, we can
get a better feel for them as works
of art.”
There are a few original
archival prints in the exhibition
but most are prints made in the
1980s or ’90s, either by the photographers themselves or their
families working with the original negatives.
“These were news photographers, taking the photographs as
news,” Weininger says. The photographers had to enlist in order
to be embedded with the troops
they photographed, she explains,
so although they were wearing
army uniforms they were actually
working for press agencies, newspapers and magazines.
“They specifically wanted all
these photographs out there;
they were taking photographs of
atrocities very openly so the Soviet public would understand
that if they did not put everything they had behind the war
effort the Germans would destroy
them,” she says.
One pertinent question:
Why were so many of the photographers Jewish?
“Jews were allowed to do
certain professions and not others” in the Soviet Union,
Weininger says. “Photography
was a young art. When Jews were
in the Pale of Settlement they
were allowed to travel, and photography was one of the things
they were allowed to do. They
became professional photographers.”
When the Pale of Settlement ended and Jews were allowed to live in other cities,
“they went there and set up studios, and other Jews would apprentice with them, then others
followed them,” she says. A
group photo (not in the current
exhibit) of all Soviet war photographers showed just over half
were Jews.
“Those were incredibly high
numbers to be in this particular
profession” considering the number of Jews in the total population, she says.
Even with all that has been
written about the World War II
period and the Holocaust,
“Through Soviet Jewish Eyes”
tells a little-known story,
Weininger says.
“Because of the lack of access to Russian history and art for
Western and American audiences, maybe two photographers
in this entire exhibition might
be known to Americans, and
these works are really these mas-
“Stand Until the End,” 1944, by Emmanuel Evzerikhin.
terful works of photography,”
Weininger says.
She hopes viewers of the exhibit consider “where the photographers would have to be
standing to take these photographs. They were right in the
middle of this war, right next to
the tanks. There’s almost a
painterly quality to the photographs, a lot of movement. You
feel the Russian tanks, the horses
running through the snow. It really puts you right there and it
had to be incredibly effective and
moving to the Russian public.”
For Americans, Weininger
says, “it is another story of World
War II, and this specific story is
little known.”
For Shneer, now director of
the Program in Jewish Studies at
the University of Colorado,
Boulder, the photography project
represented a departure from his
usual fields of study, which were
already diverse. (He is the author
or co-author of, among other
works, “Queer Jews,” “A Captive
of the Dawn: the Life and Work
of Perets Markish”; “New Jews:
the End of the Jewish Diaspora”
and “Yiddish and the Creation of
Soviet Jewish Culture: 19181930.” He was doing research for
the latter work when he happened upon the photographic exhibition.
He recalls asking the curator
of the Russian show why the
photographers were all Jewish.
“That moment led me to ask why
were Jews photographing Stalin’s
war. And when the Soviet
Union changes and becomes
anti-Semitic, what happened to
them? I was fascinated by that
point. I was working really hard
at understanding the photography itself and I was not a scholar
of World War II either. Now I
can claim expertise on both subjects,” he says.
Paul and Teresa Harbaugh,
the collectors who purchased the
photographs and worked with
many family members of the
photographers, had been collecting Soviet photographs since the
1980s, Shneer says.
“They ended up becoming
fascinated by these photographs
and the stories behind them, what
they were documenting, and they
ended up being very excited at
putting on the show,” he says.
13
Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
Shneer hopes to guide viewers of the exhibition to some specific questions and ways of
looking at the photographs.
“What does the Holocaust
look like through Soviet eyes?” is
one of them. “These images on
display at the Holocaust Museum
create a context for the mass
murder of Jews. For the Soviet
Union, the Holocaust and World
War II were not separate stories,”
he says.
He also wants viewers to
“see (the photographs) as art. It’s
why the show opens with a preamble not about the lives of the
subjects but about the aesthetic
background of the photographs
themselves,” he says. “I would
love for them to walk away
knowing the names of these photographers.”
He also points out “the violent nature of the war against the
Soviet Union. The point is that
the Germans prosecuted a war
against the Soviet Union that
was qualitatively different than
the war against the West. And
these photographs look very different from the usual images of
the Holocaust.”
The show has been very well
received wherever it has traveled, Shneer says.
“What I find fascinating is
that this show of art photographs
is exhibited in a Holocaust museum, which usually exhibits historical photos,” he says. “A
number of the images are produced art photography, not documentations of external reality.
They are meant to conjure up experiences that the photographers
witnessed, but they are not necessarily historically accurate.”
When he gave a docents
tour at the museum, “the docents
were struggling to explain that.
In most photographs in the museum the information is the most
important thing,” he says.
Yet, he adds, “all images are
effectively works of creation –
choosing a scene, the framing.”
Shneer’s next book project,
in fact, is about one of the photographs in the show: “Grief,”
described as the world’s first
Holocaust liberation photograph, taken by a young Soviet
Jewish photographer, Dmitrii
Baltermants. He later became
photo editor of Ogonyok, described as the Life magazine of
the Soviet Union.
“From the moment the photographer selected a particular
scene of the Nazi mass murder of
Jews and Roma, his images universalized what would become
known as the Holocaust by embedding his photographs in
widely recognized aesthetic
tropes of post-battle scenes like
those of Matthew Brady during
the Civil War,” Shneer writes in
explaining the importance of the
photograph.
“Grief” and similar photographs, he writes, “functioned
domestically, in the Soviet
Union’s heroic memory of World
War II, in this case by demonstrating the unparalleled Soviet
suffering of genocidal violence.”
“It is a powerful way to think
about what a camera does and
doesn’t do,” Shneer says.
A number of special events
designed around the exhibition
are taking place at the museum,
including:
Community-Wide Commemoration of the 70th anniversary of Victory Day, 10-11:30
a.m. Friday, May 8, will emphasize the victory of Soviet and Allied forces in World War II.
Program is in English with Russian translation.
In Conversation with Holocaust Survivor Matus Stolov,
1:30-4 p.m. Sunday, May 31.
Hear first-hand how Stolov hid
with family members within the
Minsk ghetto for a year, until
false documents helped them escape. On the run for a year, the
family was at last able to cross the
front line to the non-occupied
Soviet Union where they were
liberated.
Lincolnwood Chamber Orchestra musical performance, 24 p.m. Sunday, June 7. $30; $20
museum members.
Under the direction of Phil
Simmons, more than two dozen
musicians will perform compositions by Wuerzburger, Haas and
Shostakovich and a new work
created specifically for this event
by Moscow-born Chicago composer Ilya Levinson. Levinson
shares his experience as an artist
from the former Soviet Union
with first-hand experience of religious oppression and Stalinist
propaganda. He will speak at the
concert about his perception
of “Through Soviet Jewish Eyes”
and how it inspired the creation
of his new work.
Programs take place at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, 9603 Woods Drive,
Skokie. For more information, call
(847) 967-4800 or visit www.ILHolocaustmuseum.org.
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14
Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
67
Israel at
Taking pride in Israel’s accomplishments
By Rabbi John Rosove
Los Angeles Jewish Journal
The State of Israel is the
100th smallest country in the
world with less than 1/1000th of
the world’s population, yet her
people have accomplished so
very much even as she has struggled in war and been forced to
spend more money per capita on
her own protection than any
other county on earth.
On Israel’s 67th birthday I
pause to marvel in all she is and
represents to the Jewish people.
I raise my glass to her accomplishments in literature,
medicine, agriculture, the arts,
science, and technology.
I tip my hat to her courage
and survival.
Consider the following:
· Israel is the only country in
the Middle East that based its
principles of government on
both democratic liberal values
and on the values of the Biblical
prophets.
· Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth.
· Israel has the world’s second highest per capita rate of
published books.
· Israel is the only nation on
earth that resurrected an ancient
language, Hebrew, as its national
language.
· Israeli poets and song writers are regarded as heroes.
· Israel is the only country in
the world that entered the 21st
century with a net gain in its
number of trees.
· Israel has more museums
per capita than any country.
· Israel developed the cell
phone, Windows NT and XP operating systems, Pentium MMX
Chip technology, the Pentium-4
microprocessor, the Centrino
Processor, voice mail technology,
and AOL Instant Messenger
ICQ.
· Israel has the highest per
capita rate of home computers in
the world.
· Israel designed the airline
industry’s most impenetrable
flight security system.
· Israel designed and implemented the Iron Dome Defense
system.
· Israel has the highest ratio
of university degrees in the
world.
· Israel produces more scien-
tific papers per capita than any
other nation, and one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed.
· Israel has the third highest
rate of entrepreneurship in the
world.
· Israel is second in the world
in the number of start-up companies behind only the U.S.
· Israel has the world’s largest
per capita number of biotech
start-ups.
· Israel has the third largest
number of NASDAQ listed
companies, behind the U.S. and
Canada, and is ranked second for
venture capital funds.
· Israel has the highest average living standard in the Middle
East.
· 24% of Israel’s workforce
holds university degrees, ranking
third in the industrialized world;
12% hold advanced degrees.
· Israel leads the world in the
number of scientists and technicians in the workforce.
· Israel is a world leader in
water renewal, recycling, desalination, and solar heating.
· Israel invented the drip irrigation system used around the
world.
· An Israeli company is de-
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to turn solid waste into sterile and
odorless fertilizer in 30 seconds,
thereby affecting 1.1 billion people who do not use a toilet.
· An Israeli scientist has developed a way to preserve 50% of
every grain and pulse harvest lost
to pests and mold in the developing world.
· Israel won international
praise for the speed and expertise
with which it responded to a 7.0magnitude earthquake in Haiti
that killed 300,000 by sending a
team of 240 Israeli doctors,
nurses, rescue and relief workers
to set up an advanced field hospital to work in search-andrescue missions.
· An Israeli company developed a water purification system
that delivers safe drinking water
from contaminated water, seawater and even urine thereby addressing the tragedy of 1.6
million children under the age of
five who die annually from untreated drinking water in developing nations.
· Israeli scientists developed
the first fully computerized, noradiation, diagnostic instrumen-
tation for breast cancer.
· Tel Aviv University Scientists say a nutritional supplement
commonly sold in health food
stores can delay the advance of
degenerative brain disorders such
as Parkinson’s disease.
· Israel’s Given Imaging developed the first ingestible video
camera, so small it fits inside a pill
that can view the small intestine
from the inside to detect for cancer
and digestive disorders.
· Israeli researchers developed a device that helps the
heart pump blood that is synchronized with a camera that
helps doctors diagnose the heart’s
mechanical operations through a
system of sensors.
· An Israeli company developed a computerized system for ensuring proper administration of
medications, thus removing human error from medical treatment.
In the spirit of Yom Ha’atzmaut I celebrate her, despite her
imperfections and challenges,
with enthusiasm and the words
of the Psalmist in my heart: “This
is the day G-d has made; we will
rejoice and be glad in it!” (Psalm
118:24)
15
Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
67
Israel at
When El Al flew to Tehran – and 9 other things
you may not know about Israel’s past
By Uriel Heilman
JTA
Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day, falls on April
23. In honor of the Jewish state’s
67th birthday, we present, in no
particular order, 10 little-known
aspects of its history.
1. El Al used to fly to
Tehran.
Iran and Israel enjoyed
mostly good relations up until the
Islamic revolution that overthrew
the shah in 1979. Iran recognized
Israel in 1950, becoming the second Muslim-majority country to
do so (after Turkey). Iran supplied Israel with oil during the
OPEC oil embargo, Israel sold
Iran weapons, there was brisk
trade between the countries, and
El Al flew regular flights between
Tel Aviv and Tehran. All that
ended a week after the shah’s
ouster, when Iran’s new rulers cut
ties with Israel and transferred its
embassy in Tehran to the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Even after 35 years of hostilities,
however, Iranians have less antipathy toward Jews than any
other Middle Eastern nation. A
2014 global anti-Semitism survey by the Anti-Defamation
League found that 56 percent of
Iranians hold anti-Semitic views
– compared to 80 percent of Moroccans and 93 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and
Gaza.
2. Israel is home to hundreds of Nazi descendants.
At least 400 descendants of
Nazis have converted to Judaism
and moved to Israel, according to
filmmakers who made a documentary about the phenomenon
several years ago. In addition,
others converted to Judaism or
married Israelis but do not live in
the Jewish state – such as Heinrich Himmler’s great-niece, who
married an Israeli Jew and lives
overseas. In Israel’s early years,
the state was roiled by a debate
over whether to accept German
reparations for the Holocaust (it
did), and Germany remained a
controversial subject: From 1956
until 1967, Israel had a ban on all
German-produced films.
3. Ben-Gurion invented Israeli couscous (sort of).
The tiny pasta balls known
as Israeli couscous – called ptitim
in Hebrew – were invented in
the 1950s at the behest of Israel’s
first prime minister, David BenGurion, who asked the Osem
food company to come up with a
wheat-based substitute for rice
during a period of austerity in Israel. The invention, which Israelis dubbed ” Ben-Gurion’s
rice,” was an instant hit.
4. Israel had no TV service
till the late ‘60s.
The first Israeli TV transmission did not take place until
1966, and at first was intended
only for schools for educational
use. Regular public broadcasts began on Israeli Independence Day in May 1968. For
almost two decades more, Israel
had only one channel, and
broadcasts were limited to specific hours of the day. A second
channel debuted in 1986, and
cable was introduced in 1990.
Today, Israeli TV is a popular
source for Hollywood scriptwriters” “Homeland” (Showtime),
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5. Queen Elizabeth II’s
mother-in-law is buried in Jerusalem.
Prince Philip’s mother, born
in 1885 as Princess Alice of Battenberg and congenitally deaf,
spent much of her life in Greece
after marrying Prince Andrew of
Greece and Denmark (yes, he
was simultaneously prince of two
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F RO M PAG E
15
different European countries).
During the Nazi occupation of
Greece, Alice hid a Jewish
woman and two of her children
from the Nazis, earning her eventual recognition by Israel’s Yad
Vashem Holocaust Memorial as
a “Righteous Among the Nations” and by the British government as a “Hero of the
Holocaust.” She moved to London in 1967 to live in Buckingham Palace with her son and
daughter-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II. After the princess died
two years later, her body was interred in a crypt at Windsor Castle. In 1988, she was transferred
to a crypt at the Convent of
Saint Mary Magdalene in Gethsemane on Jerusalem’s Mount of
Olives – honoring a wish she had
expressed before her death. The
Mount of Olives is home to the
world’s oldest continuously used
cemetery.
6. Alaska Airlines airlifted
thousands of Yemenite Jews to
Israel.
When anti-Jewish riots
broke out in Yemen after Israel’s
victory in the 1948 War of Inde-
pendence, Yemen’s Jewish community decided to move en
masse to the Jewish homeland.
James Wooten, president of
Alaska Airlines, was among
those moved by their plight. Between June 1949 and September
1950, Alaska Airlines made approximately 430 flights in twinengine C-46 and DC-4 aircrafts
as part of Operation Magic Carpet, the secret mission that transported nearly 50,000 Jews from
Yemen to Israel. Pilots had to
contend with fuel shortages,
sandstorms and enemy fire, and
one plane crash-landed after losing an engine, but not a single
life was lost aboard the flights.
7. Golda Meir was the
world’s third female prime minister.
Meir (nee Myerson), who
became Israeli prime minister in
1969, was preceded only by Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka
(1960-65) and Indira Ghandi of
India (1966-77). Born in Kiev
and raised in Milwaukee, Meir
moved to an Israeli kibbutz in
her early 20s and quickly became
active in Labor politics. Though
popular with American Jews,
Meir remains a subject of some
derision in Israel for her perceived failures during the 1973
S E E PA S T
ON
PAG E 1 8
17
Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
67
Israel at
The meaning of Israel: a personal view
By David Harris
I can still remember, as if it
were yesterday, my very first visit
to Israel. It was in 1970, and I
was not quite 21 years old.
I didn’t know what to expect, but I recall being quite
emotional from the moment I
boarded the El Al plane to the
very first glimpse of the Israeli
coastline from the plane’s window. As I disembarked, I surprised myself by wanting to kiss
the ground. In the ensuing
weeks, I marveled at everything
I saw. To me, it was as if every
apartment building, factory,
school, orange grove, and Egged
bus was nothing less than a miracle. A state, a Jewish state, was
unfolding before my very eyes.
After centuries of persecutions, pogroms, exiles, ghettos,
pales of settlement, inquisitions,
blood libels, forced conversions,
discriminatory legislation, and
immigration restrictions – and,
no less, after centuries of prayers,
dreams, and yearning – the Jews
had come back home and were
the masters of their own fate.
I was overwhelmed by the
mix of people, backgrounds, languages, and lifestyles, and by the
intensity of life itself. Everyone,
it seemed, had a compelling story
to tell. There were Holocaust
survivors with harrowing tales of
their years in the camps. There
were Jews from Arab countries,
whose stories of persecution in
such countries as Iraq, Libya, and
Syria were little known at the
time. There were the first Jews
arriving from the USSR seeking
repatriation in the Jewish homeland. There were the sabras – native-born Israelis – many of
whose families had lived in
Palestine for generations. There
were local Arabs, both Christian
and Muslim. There were Druze,
whose religious practices are kept
secret from the outside world.
The list goes on and on.
I was moved beyond words
by the sight of Jerusalem and the
fervor with which Jews of all
backgrounds prayed at the Western Wall. Coming from a nation
that was at the time deeply divided and demoralized, I found
my Israeli peers to be unabashedly proud of their country,
eager to serve in the military,
and, in many cases, determined
to volunteer for the most elite
combat units. They felt personally involved in the enterprise of
building a Jewish state, more
than 1,800 years after the Romans defeated the Bar Kochba
revolt, the last Jewish attempt at
sovereignty on this very land.
To be sure, nation-building is
an infinitely complex process. In
Israel’s case, it began against a
backdrop of tensions with a local
Arab population that laid claim
to the very same land, and tragically refused a UN proposal to
divide the land into Arab and
Jewish states; as the Arab world
sought to isolate, demoralize, and
ultimately destroy the state; as Israel’s population doubled in the
first three years of the country’s
existence, putting an unimaginable strain on severely limited resources; as the nation was forced
to devote a vast portion of its limited national budget to defense
expenditures; and as the country
coped with forging a national
identity and social consensus
among a population that could
not have been more geographically, linguistically, socially, and
culturally heterogeneous.
Moreover, there is the tricky
and underappreciated issue of the
potential clash between the
messy realities of statehood and,
in this case, the ideals and faith
of a people. It is one thing for a
people to live their religion as a
minority; it is quite another to
exercise sovereignty as the majority population while remaining true to one’s ethical
standards. Inevitably, tension
will arise between a people’s spiritual or moral self-definition and
the exigencies of statecraft, between our highest concepts of
human nature and the daily realities of individuals in decisionmaking positions wielding power
and balancing a variety of competing interests.
Even so, shall we raise the
bar so high as to ensure that Israel – forced to function in the
often gritty, morally ambiguous
world of international relations
and politics, especially as a small,
still endangered state – will always fall short?
Yet, the notion that Israel
would ever become ethically indistinguishable from any other
country, reflexively seeking cover
behind the convenient justification of realpolitik to explain its
behavior, is equally unacceptable.
Israelis, with only 67 years of
statehood under their belts, are
among the newer practitioners of
statecraft. With all its remarkable
success, consider the daunting
political, social, and economic
challenges in the United States
67 or even 167 years after independence, or, for that matter, the
challenges it faces today, including stubborn social inequalities.
And let’s not forget that the
United States, unlike Israel, is a
vast country blessed with abundant natural resources, oceans on
two-and-a half sides, a gentle
neighbor to the north, and a
weaker neighbor to the south.
Like any vibrant democracy,
America is a permanent work in
progress. The same holds true for
Israel. Loving Israel as I do,
though, doesn’t mean overlooking its shortcomings, including
the excessive intrusion of religion into politics, the dangers
posed by zealots, and the unfinished, if undeniably complex,
task of integrating Israeli Arabs
into the mainstream.
But it also doesn’t mean allowing such issues to overshadow
Israel’s remarkable achievements,
accomplished under the most difficult of circumstances.
Step back from the twists
and turns of the daily informa-
tion overload coming from the
Middle East and consider the
sweep of the last 67 years. Look
at the light-years traveled since
the darkness of the Holocaust,
and marvel at the miracle of a
decimated people returning to a
tiny sliver of land – the land of
our ancestors, the land of Zion
and Jerusalem – and successfully
building a modern, vibrant state
against all the odds, on that an-
cient foundation.
In the final analysis, then,
the story of Israel is the wondrous
realization of a 3500 year link
among a land, a faith, a language,
a people, and a vision. It is an
unparalleled story of tenacity and
determination, of courage and
renewal. And it is ultimately a
metaphor for the triumph of enduring hope over the temptation
of despair.
18
Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
Past
CONTINUED
F RO M PAG E
16
Yom Kippur War, when she
opted not to attack preemptively
Arab forces massing on Israel’s
border with Syria. Though the
Agranat Commission that investigated the war cleared Meir of
direct responsibility, she resigned
shortly afterward and was succeeded as prime minister by
Yitzhak Rabin in 1974 (who
served until 1977, but again became prime minister in 1992).
8. Israeli law began requiring solar water heaters in all
new homes in 1980.
The law was passed following the energy crisis of the late
‘70s and made Israel the world’s
leader in the use of solar energy
per capita. Today, an estimated
85 percent of Israeli households
use solar systems for hot water,
amounting to some 3 percent of
the nation’s energy consumption.
However, today Israel lags behind other countries in implemented other solar energy
solutions, and a growing number
of new buildings in Israel utilize
legal loopholes that provide exemptions to the solar heater law.
9. Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus is not technically part of the
West Bank.
Though situated in eastern
Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, where
Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital have campuses, has
been in Israeli hands since the
state’s founding. After the con-
clusion of the War of Independence in 1949, the hilltop was
controlled by Jews but surrounded by Jordan-controlled
eastern Jerusalem. Israel maintained its Mount Scopus exclave
by ferrying in troops and supplies
every two weeks under United
Nations guard. The convoys
were frequently subject to Arab
enemy fire, and an attack in
1958 killed four Israelis and one
U.N. soldier. Mount Scopus was
reunited with the rest of Jewish
Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day
War.
10. Albert Einstein was offered Israel’s presidency
The offer came from David
Ben-Gurion in November 1952
in the days after the death of Israel’s first president, Chaim
Weizmann. “I am anxious for you
to feel that the Prime Minister’s
question embodies the deepest
respect which the Jewish people
can repose in any of its sons,” Israeli Ambassador Abba Eban
wrote to the famed scientist. Einstein turned down the invitation,
citing his advanced age and inaptitude at dealing with people.
“I am deeply moved by the offer
from our State of Israel, and at
once saddened and ashamed that
I cannot accept it,” Einstein
replied, noting, “my relationship
to the Jewish people has become
my strongest human bond, ever
since I became aware of our precarious situation among the nations of the world.” Interestingly,
Ben-Gurion initially denied press
reports about the invitation. Einstein died less than three years
later.
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Community Calendar
Saturday
April 18
West Suburban Temple Har
Zion presents Anne Hills
and Michael Smith in concert, “Stars in the Sky.” 9
p.m., 1040 N. Harlem, River
Forest. $25. wsthz.org or
(708) 296-5465.
Sunday
April 19
Kol Zimrah and Lakeside
Choir (LC) present “Best of
15 years of Collaboration”
conducted by Richard Boldrey and featuring LC’s
Cantor Michael Davis. 4
p.m., Lakeside Congregation for Reform Judaism,
1221 Lake Cook Road,
Highland Park. (773) 2036711.
Temple Judea Mizpah holds
health and fitness fair featuring Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell of Center for
Jewish Mindfulness and
more. 9 a.m.-noon, 8610
Niles Center Road, Skokie.
templeJM.org or (847) 6761566.
Temple Beth Israel Brotherhood presents author Ken
Green speaking about his
book “I’m From Division
Street” after lox and bagel
breakfast. 9 a.m., 3601 W.
Dempster, Skokie. $5 suggested donation.
tbiskokie.org or (847) 6750951.
Jewish Child and Family
Services presents workshop
for parents of 3rd-8th
graders on “Helping our
Girls Feel Good about
Being Female.” 9:45-10:45
a.m., Temple Sholom of
Chicago, 3480 N. Lake
Shore Drive, Chicago. RSVP,
[email protected] or (847)
745-5411.
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Illinois Holocaust Museum
and Education Center presents “Commemorative Performance: Yom HaShoah,
From Darkness to Light”
featuring Craig Taubman &
Friends, Chazan Alberto
Mizrahi, Cantor Andrea Rae
Markowicz. 1 p.m., also 4
p.m. with special appearance by Israel Midwest Consul General Roey Gilad.
9603 Woods Drive, Skokie.
Reservations required. ilholocaustmuseum.org.
Sheerit Hapleitah of Metropolitan Chicago sponsors
70th annual Holocaust memorial service featuring
Roey Gilad, Midwest Consul
General of Israel and Skokie
Mayor George Van Dusen.
1:30 p.m., Skokie Valley
Agudath Jacob Synagogue,
8825 East Prairie Road,
Skokie. (773) 764-6350.
Congregation Solel hosts
Yom Hashoah Commemoration. 7 p.m., 1301 Clavey
Road, Highland Park.
[email protected] or
(847) 433-3555.
Monday
April 20
JUF’s Israel Education Center
and Metro Chicago Hillel
hold Chicago Israel Week
organized by students from
DePaul University, Columbia
College Chicago, University
of Illinois at Chicago and
Loyola University Chicago
featuring guest speakers,
film screenings, quad workshops and dance workshops.
Runs thru April 24. For
event locations, costs and
scheduling information,
chicagoisraelweek.com/sche
dule.html.
National Louis University
presents author Ken Green
speaking about his book
“I’m From Division Street”
at Lunch and Learn program (bring your own
lunch). 11:30 a.m.-12:45
p.m., 5202 Old Orchard
Road, Room 464, Skokie.
[email protected] or (224)
233-2366.
Max and Benny’s Restaurant presents Chicago author Lisa Barr speaking on
her book “Fugitive Colors.”
7 p.m., 461 Waukegan
Road, Northbrook. RSVP,
[email protected]
or (847) 272-9490.
Skokie Valley Agudath
Jacob Synagogue shows
film “Beneath the Helmet.”
7-9 p.m., 8825 East Prairie
Road, Skokie. (847) 6743473.
Tuesday
April 21
Project Shalom Bayis holds
annual buffet featuring
Charlie Harary speaking on
“The Secret to Amazing Relationships.” 7:30 p.m.,
Shaarei Tzedek Mishkan
Yair, 2832 W. Touhy,
Chicago. $18, $25 couple.
(773) 973-5147.WednesdayApril 22
Ezra-Habonim, the Niles
Township Jewish Congregation Sisterhood holds luncheon featuring Joanne Stein
as part of its Celebrate Israel Month. 11:30 a.m.,
4500 W. Dempster, Skokie.
$18 members, $23 nonmembers and at door. (847)
675-4141.
Jewish National Fund holds
Chicago Yom Ha’atzmaut
Community Celebration
with Declaration of Independence Megillah reading, Israeli music, dancing
and dessert reception. 6-8
p.m., Anshe Emet Synagogue, 3751 N. Broadway,
Chicago. Registration,
jnf.org/chiyomhaatzmaut
or (847) 656-8880.
Chai Tech Professional Networking holds meeting discussing Jewish Baseball
Players. 6:30-9 p.m., Merril
Corporation, 311 S. Wacker
Drive, Suite 1800, Chicago.
((312) 386-2278.
Thursday
April 23
Jewish Child and Family
Services presents third annual conference on “Help,
Healing and Hope after
Loss” featuring Rabbi
Naomi Levy followed by
dessert reception. 7 p.m.,
Doubletree by Hilton Hotel,
9599 Skokie Blvd., Skokie.
[email protected] or
(847) 745-5404.
StandWithUs presents “Israeli Soldiers’ Stories.” 7:30
p.m., Bernard Weinger JCC,
300 Revere Drive, Northbrook. (224) 392-3264.
Author David Laskin appears at Congregation Solel
to speak about his book,
“The Family: A Journey Into
the Heart of the 20th Century,” which traces more
than 150 years of Jewish
history through his family
story. Book signing follows.
7:30 p.m., 1301 Clavey
Road, Highland Park. (847)
433-3555 or solel.org.
19
Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
THEMaven
Chicago Jewish News
MUSIC, MUSIC
EVERYWHERE…
■ When in 2010, Cantor
Pavel Roytman was hired by
Beth Hillel Congregation Bnai
Emunah in Wilmette, one of
his charges was to “make music
sound from every corner of the
synagogue.”
Roytman and others have
been working to do just that,
and there are ambitious plans
afoot – some already in the
works – to establish a Jewish
music center at the synagogue
that will benefit both members
and the surrounding Jewish
community.
Thanks to a grant, the synagogue is embarking on a twoyear plan that will feature
concerts, music scholars in residence and community-wide musical events.
“I started with my own resources – a children’s choir, a
teen choir, an adult choir, a
kids’ band, the Lox and Bagel
Band,” Roytman said in a recent phone conversation.
In addition, every year the
synagogue hosted a cantorial
concert that included various
local groups plus cantors from
New York and other venues.
“People at the synagogue started
to be exposed to more and more
music,” Roytman says. (This
year the event takes place at 4
p.m. on Sunday, April 26.)
Next to come on board was
Zemer Am, an annual festival of
Jewish choral music that had
been a traveling program but for
the last three years has called
BHCBE home, with Roytman
as executive director and conductor.
Maxwell Street Klezmer
Band’s junior division is also
based at Beth Hillel. They rehearse at the synagogue and
members’ children can join for
free, Roytman says.
“By the end of last year, our
situation was, we had a few musical groups in the synagogue,
our indigenous groups,” he says.
“A couple of organizations now
have become more of a feature,
and the Cantorial Concert became the place to go.”
Then, several years ago, a
North Side Conservative synagogue, Shaare Tikvah B’nai
Zion, closed its doors, with
many members joining Beth
Hillel.
“When Shaare Tikvah
folded into us, the leadership
was very taken with what we
Pavel Roytman
have here musically,” Roytman
says. “They gave us a generous
gift that we would like to use to
enhance music at Beth Hillel
even more.
At around the same time,
Roytman received an offer from
the long-established Kol Zimrah
Jewish community choir to become its principal conductor,
and Kol Zimrah, which draws
singers from many congregations, began to rehearse at Beth
Hillel.
“Everything folded in at
once,” Roytman says.
With the grant, “we want
to reimagine ourselves as a congregation where music plays a
very important role,” he says. “If
you want to be exposed to various interesting aspects of Jewish
music, come to Beth Hillel. It’s
sort of like a musical community.”
Roytman says the synagogue will apply for more grants
and seek donations so the musical emphasis can continue.
“We are trying to get into
the 21st century with a new vision of a synagogue – not just a
worship place but a place that
attracts community in many aspects,” he says.
Next year, Roytman says,
three different performance
events are planned: the cantors
concert, which will include
blues musician Corky Siegel
and his Chamber Blues group; a
musical scholar in residence
during the winter; and Kol Zimrah’s annual concert in spring,
which Roytman says will be “a
thank you gift to the congregation” and will be open to the
community.
Other plans include Wintertanz (Winter Dance), an
event featuring Maxwell Street
Klezmer Band teaching klezmer
dance to members of the community, plus a competition for a
young composer, with a prize
that can be used for study or another Jewish music endeavor.
In addition, the junior
Maxwell Street band will play
at various events during the
year, including a service and a
mock Jewish wedding. Roytman
also wants to start a congregational klezmer band for adults.
One more idea builds on
Roytman’s hope of getting more
young people from the congregation’s religious school involved in musical projects.
“We’re in the process of
finding a playwright to write a
musical play” for the religious
school students, Roytman says.
“I thought how to get these kids
involved? One way is to expose
them to these wonderful events
-- junior Maxwell Street, two
choirs.”
The play Roytman hopes to
commission “would tell in 60
minutes the story of the Jews,”
he says. “We would teach the
play as part of the curriculum
and then stage it at the end.
Students would learn through
the play.”
He notes that in the past
five years, the congregation has
had a complete staff turnover,
involving Roytman, then Rabbi
Michael Cohen, who directs
the academy (religious school),
then senior Rabbi Annie
Tucker.
“It’s been sort of a push for
Beth Hillel to move forward in
a significant way,” Roytman
says, noting that more and
more, that push has involved
music.
Pauline Dubkin Yearwood
DONATE PASSOVER FOOD,
HELP OTHERS…
■ Though you may feel like
you had more than your fill of
macaroons, matza and grape
juice, many Passover products
can be used year round, and go
a long way toward helping
someone in need feed their family.
Chicago Chesed Fund is
now accepting matzah, grape
juice, potato starch, matza meal,
cake mixes, candy, chocolate,
and any other unopened
Passover food products.
Donating is simple: Bring
your non-perishable, sealed
kosher-for-Passover items to
their Lincolnwood warehouse.
Call (847) 679-7799 or visit
www.chicagochesedfund.org for
more information.
IN F
CUS
Hannah Schneiderman recently celebrated her bat mitzvah at
Beth Hillel Congregation Bnai Emunah and she chose to do a
mitzvah project in memory of her great aunt Deborah C. Shaw
who passed away a few months ago. Hannah organized an Ovarian Cancer Research Fund Day in which participants peddled
their stationary bicycles for two hours to the rhythm of lively
music, and raised more than $3,000 to support ovarian cancer
research.
Cantor Stuart Simon of Am Yisrael in Northfield recently sang
with the choir of Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Hebrew Ethiopian
Congregation in Chicago as part of his efforts to acquaint students from Am Yisrael’s Hebrew school with the diversity of Jewish experiences (Lois Bernstein Photography).
Watching as Sylvia Footlik cuts the ribbon on a new ambulance
she and her late husband Irving donated for Israel’s Magen David
Adom are, from left, Rabbi Jeffrey Weill of Ezra-Habonim, the
Niles Township Jewish Congregation, Edie Sue Sutker, Robert
Footlik, Skokie Mayor George Van Dusen, Janice Footlik, and
Ezra Habonim president Allan Carroll.
20
Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
Your Money
Raising financially sensible kids
By Ryan Torok
Los Angeles Jewish Journal
Spoiled children are made,
not born – and there’s something
you can do about that.
That’s the message of New
York Times “Your Money” colum-
nist Ron Lieber’s new book, “The
Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids
Who are Grounded, Generous
and Smart about Money.” The
43-year-old’s belief that financial
transparency in the household
bodes well for a child’s future is at
the crux of the 256-page book.
To that end, Lieber urges parents to speak candidly with their
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behavior and human decisionmaking,” Lieber said.
“So not to answer those
questions, not be upfront, not to
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children about their finances, including how much they earn, how
much money sits in their bank accounts and what thought
processes precede spending decisions. In fact, Lieber said, it is parents’ responsibility to do so.
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grown-up creation business. We’re
trying to wind them up and push
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narrate those decisions when it
comes to money – particularly
with teenagers – is to do a kid a
disservice. They will go out and
flounder their way through college and afterward, and they
won’t be ready, and it’s not OK to
send kids out in the world [with]
a lack of financial readiness.”
As the father of a 9-year-old
daughter, Lieber understands
that these sorts of conversations
can be awkward, but he stressed
that they need to take place.
“One of the things parents
should try and do more of is just
narrating their financial decisions
on an ongoing basis,” he said.
It makes more sense – and is
more effective in raising financially sensible children –than
just setting seemingly arbitrary
rules about what kids can have
and what they can’t have.
“Most … families want to
set some kind of limits, but the
limits we are setting are all artificial ones, which is a tricky position to be in as a parent because
you are drawing these lines and
saying on one side of the line is
overindulgence or spoiling or
creating a sense of entitlement,
and on the other side of the line
we are not doing that and we are
just being good, generous parents, and nobody knows where to
draw that line,” he said. “It’s not
like you get a manual when you
have your first child.”
On his website, Lieber positions his book as a practical guide
to handling “the tooth fairy, allowance, chores, charity, saving,
birthdays, holidays, cell phones,
checking accounts, clothing,
cars, part-time jobs and college,”
all the while keeping an eye on
maintaining and passing on important values.
Lieber lives in the Park
Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn,
N.Y., where he serves on the
board of his synagogue and is
married to fellow New York
Times writer Jodi Kantor (author
of “The Obamas”). His previous
books include the best-selling
1996 work “Taking Time Off,”
which discusses the benefits of
taking a break from education,
and 1998’s “Upstart Start-Ups”
for young entrepreneurs.
“‘The Opposite of Spoiled’ is
a constellation of values, virtues
and character traits that add up to
the decent, grounded children
that we all want to push out in the
world,” Lieber said. “It’s things like
modesty and patience and truth
and prudence and generosity and
perspective, and I think a subset of
perspective is gratitude for what
you have, even if you don’t have
as much as everyone else. ... To
me, it’s the opposite of being selfcentered.”
21
Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
By Joseph Aaron
CONTINUED
F RO M PAG E
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That’s right, two young Jews – one who was 18 and engaged to
be married, the other who was 27 with a wife and young son – were
trampled to death by mourners at the funeral of one of the Torah
world’s most prominent scholars. Three others, including a 14-yearold boy, were critically injured and are in the hospital.
Two young Jew dead, perhaps three more to follow. Because too
many people forgot or never knew that Torah is about learning how
to live a truly Jewish life, and who seem to have not at all learned the
teaching that “derech eretz kudmah l’Torah,” that before you focus on
learning Talmud, more important is to first learn how to be a mensch.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you today’s Jewish world.
And then we have the news that Israel will begin deporting
African migrants to third countries without their consent.
The migrants, from Eritrea and Sudan, will be sent to an Israeli
prison if they refuse. Israel has granted official refugee status to just four
of more than 5,500 official asylum seekers.
Approximately 1,500 African migrants have been sent to Uganda
and Rwanda over the past year. Israel as a signatory to international
refugee conventions may not deport asylum seekers to their countries
of origin if their lives would be in danger. If the asylum seeker is sent
to a third country, Israel must secure an agreement that they will be
treated fairly and have basic rights.
But, according to the Jewish news service JTA, “many of the migrants who left for Rwanda and Uganda, having no basic rights, left
their third countries and again became refugees.”
I frankly could not believe my eyes when I saw this story. Israel,
the Jewish homeland, throwing refugees who have fled hell and made
their way to Israel, out of the country, deporting them without their
consent to fend for themselves in countries that are not their own, often resulting in them being refugees once more.
If any people should know what that feels like, if any people
should remember what that means, and act accordingly, it is the Jewish people and the Jewish state. Shame on us. It is as if we have forgotten the Holocaust.
Speaking of which, I gotta give kudos to Prime Minister Bibi.
He seems to have accomplished his mission of terrifying the citizens
of the state of Israel, convincing them that nothing has changed
since 1939, that Jews are as much a target, as much under threat today as they were then.
Even the Jews of Israel, a country in possession of more than 200
nuclear bombs, with one of the most powerful militaries in the world,
possessor of the most advanced weapons in the world, a country with
diplomatic relations with every powerful country in the world, a
country supported in every way imaginable by the world’s only superpower.
Even with all that to provide it with a sense of security, Bibi’s constant fear mongering, labeling things as “existential threats to the very
survival of Israel,” has paid off. A new poll shows that nearly half of
Israelis believe another Holocaust could happen.
The annual study found that 46 percent of Israelis believe a second Holocaust is possible – five percentage points higher than just a
year ago. All thanks to Bibi scaring them for no reason, in spite of all
the might at Israel’s disposal.
The study had more bad news. Some 46% of Holocaust survivors
said that future generations will not remember the Holocaust after they
are gone – a spike of ni–e percentage points from last year’s study. This,
despite all the Holocaust museums that have been built, all the efforts
at Holocaust education that have been made.
My theory for why they feel that way is because the Jewish world
has cheapened the memory of the Holocaust, desecrated it into being a political card to play. Too many Jews, especially way too many
Jewish leaders, are constantly comparing events of today to the Holocaust, constantly warning about another Holocaust. By not treating
the actual Holocaust as something sacred, but casually and frequently
evoking it to show how something today, like Iran, is a mortal threat
to the Jewish people, we diminish the power, threaten the memory of
the events that took six million Jewish lives. When we make out like
everything today is just like then, we help ensure the fading of that
unique event in world history.
To me, though, the absolutely most heartbreaking thing in the report was that of the 189,000 survivors living in Israel, some 45,000,
or nearly a quarter, live in poverty. More than one-quarter, or 27%,
said they did not have heat in their apartment during the winter
months, while 65% said they needed help to pay for their groceries and
medications.
There is today a Jewish state with one of the strongest economies
in the world. And yet a quarter of Holocaust survivors live in poverty.
We seem to care so much about the Holocaust as a convenient political tool, but seem to care so little about the Jews who survived its
horrors.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you today’s Jewish world. Read
it and weep.
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22
Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
Death Notices
Bernard Becker, 91, dearly
beloved husband and best
friend of Adelle (nee Goldberg) for over 69 years.
Adoring father of Sheila
(Jack) Kail and Loren (Linda)
Becker. Loving grandfather
of Dr. Deborah (Darren)
Margulis, Andrea (Phillip)
Melahn,
Sam
(Lauren)
Becker, Neil (Sarah) Becker
and the late Eric Becker.
Greatest great-grandfather
of Maxwell, Tyler, Hunter,
Summer and Renee. Dear
brother of Harry (Nona)
Becker and Leo (Rookie)
Becker. Special uncle of
many nieces and nephews.
In lieu of flowers, contributions in Bernie’s name to
The Gidwitz Center for Living and Accord Hospice,
1954 First St., #176, Highland
Park, IL 60035 would be appreciated. Arrangements by
Mitzvah Memorial Funerals.
Hymen Factor, 86, founder
of Chicago Messenger Service Co. Inc. Beloved husband
of the late Cecilia M. Factor.
Devoted father of William
(Cathy) Factor, Randi (Daniel)
Melnyk and the late Barry J.
Factor. Dear stepfather of
Joseph (Janis) Higgins, Thom-
as Higgins and Maria (Joseph)
DeFrank. Loving grandfather
of Bradley ( Jamie} Factor,
Amanda
Factor, Adam
(Courtney} Melnyk, Brandon
and Ryan Melnyk, Joe and
Michael Higgins, and Brianna DeFrank. Dear brother
of Sheldon (the late Kayla)
Factor and Sandi (the late
Sam) Zelen. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions
in Hymen's name to The
Jewish United Fund, (JUF), 30
S. Wells St., Chicago, IL
60606, would be appreciated. Arrangements by Mitzvah Memorial Funerals.
Shirley B. Hersh, nee Beller,
age 88; beloved wife of the
late Elliott; loving mother of
Bruce Hersh and the late
Marci Faber; dear mother in
law of Richard Faber; devoted grandmother of Kyle,
Tyler, and Katya Hersh; and,
Gabi, Hannah, and Becca
Faber; fond sister of Louis
(Eleanor) Beller; caring aunt
of Michael and Steven
Hersh; Mindy, Larry, and Ina
Beller. In lieu of flowers,
contributions may be made
to National Multiple Sclerosis Society, www.national
mssociety.org Arrangements
by Lakeshore Jewish Funerals, (773) 625-8621.
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By
Joseph
Aaron
Today’s Jewish world
I like Jay Leno, think he’s very funny. I like Catherine Zeta-Jones,
think she’s very pretty. I like Michael Douglas, think he’s very talented.
But I don’t like that they’ll all be coming together soon in
Jerusalem for Michael to receive the Genesis Prize. Billed as “the Jewish Nobel Prize,” it is meant to recognize “a role model in his or her
community whose actions and achievements express a commitment
to Jewish values, the Jewish community and Israel, and who can inspire the younger generation of Jews worldwide.”
The winner of the prize receives $1 million.
Here’s the thing. Michael Douglas is a very good actor, but he’s
not Jewish. While yes, his father, famed actor Kirk Douglas, is Jewish,
Michael’s mother is Anglican. Meaning Conservative and Orthodox
Jews do not consider him Jewish. And while Reform Judaism does recognize patrilineal descent, that is only if the person was raised Jewish.
Michael Douglas was not.
So pretty much for all Jews, Michael is not Jewish. And yet he is
being given a prize because of his “commitment to Jewish values.”
Michael also, as you may know, is married to Catherine Zeta-Jones,
who is absolutely gorgeous, but who is not Jewish. So Michael was not
raised Jewish, his mother is not Jewish and his wife is not Jewish. And
yet he’s being given a prize intended to “inspire the younger generation of Jews worldwide.”
Beyond that, at the award ceremony where he will be given the
prize, the master of ceremonies will be Jay Leno, who is also not Jewish. Look, I love Jay Leno. I interviewed him in his hotel room about
25 years ago, and he was incredibly nice to me and was amazingly impressive. I walked with him from his room to where he was doing a
show, and was very taken with how kind he was to everyone we passed
on the way.
So I have nothing against Leno at all. But it’s not like there aren’t
any Jewish comedians out there. So how is it that a foundation giving a prize intended to honor Jewish values and inspire young Jews
chooses a non-Jewish one to headline its ceremony?
One more gripe. That million dollar prize. Note that Douglas is
the second person to receive the award. The first was former New York
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is worth like 15 billion dollars. If
there are any two people who don’t need the million dollar prize, it’s
the two Michaels.
Imagine how much it would mean, how much good it would do,
if that million dollars was awarded to an outstanding Jewish teacher
somewhere, or to some young Jew running an organization to engage
young Jews in Judaism, or to someone who has devoted her life to improving the Jewish world?
To my mind, if you are going to come up with a Jewish Nobel
Prize and award a million bucks, all of it intended to promote Jewish
values and attract young Jews, how about awarding it to a Jew who has
lived a truly Jewish life, shown in action a commitment to Jewish values, for whom the dough would allow them to expand their efforts, at
an event starring a prominent Jewish entertainer.
But, of course, Bloomberg and Douglas are big names, attract attention, which I guess is what really matters. Ladies and gentlemen,
I present to you today’s Jewish world.
And that’s far from the only example of how Jewish values these
days seem to take a back seat to other things.
Take the case of one of Israel’s most prominent and wealthiest rabbis. Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto, who is known as “rabbi to the stars” for
counseling such celebrities as LeBron James, just pleaded guilty in a
Tel Aviv court to bribery charges.
In a plea deal, Pinto pleaded guilty to bribery, attempted bribery
and obstruction of justice for attempting to bribe a senior police officer for information in another investigation about him. Pinto agreed
to provide evidence that he bribed an even more senior officer.
And so, another rabbi joins the long list of rabbis in Israel and the
United States who are disgraces, others including the former chief
rabbi of Israel, about to stand trial for bribery, and one of the most
prominent rabbis in Washington, who is soon to be sentenced for taking secret videos of naked Jewish women in the mikvah. Ladies and
gentlemen, I present to you today’s Jewish world.
And then there is this. Recently, a 101-year-old very respected
rabbi in Israel died. At his funeral, as is so often the case, in their desire to prove how pious they are, mourners pushed and shoved each
other to get closer to the casket. Pushed and shoved so much and so
hard that two young Jews died as a result.
SEE BY JOSEPH
AARON
ON
PAG E 2 1
23
Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015
Arts & Entertainment
Jessie Kahnweiler’s ‘bulimia dark comedy’
By Batya Ungar-Sargon
JTA
In an early episode of “Dude,
Where’s My Chutzpah?” the
2013 docu-comedy web series by
Jessie Kahnweiler that put her on
the comedic map, Kahnweiler’s
character ends up at the barrier
separating the West Bank from
Israel. She had asked a taxi driver
to take her to “the Wall.”
The character, Jessie – the
comedian’s amped-up, disinhibited alter ego – approaches a
woman standing in the shade.
“So this is the Wailing Wall?”
she asks, referring to the holy site
at the heart of Jerusalem’s Old
City, but pointing to the concrete
wall shrouded in barbed wire that
divides the Palestinian village of
Bil’in. “Is this where I put my
note?”
When the woman points
out the Israeli soldiers standing
guard, Jessie begins to flirt.
“Shalom!” she calls out,
with a smile and a wave. And
then: “Can I have diet tear gas?
I’m kind of trying to watch my
weight.”
It’s an early version of what
has become Kahnweiler’s trademark: a clueless Jewish girl is inserted into places (the West
Bank, skid row) and encounters
issues (rape, bulimia) of great import. Her obliviousness calls attention to privilege and injustice,
and the results are as radical as
they are hilarious.
In this sense, her latest web
series, “The Skinny,” about a
“feisty, free-spirited Jewish girl
named Jessie living, loving and
trying to overcome an eating disorder in Los Angeles,” is classic
Kahnweiler. The “bulimia dark
comedy,” as Kahnweiler calls it,
is expected to premiere on
Wifey.tv – the Internet channel
launched by Jill Soloway (the
creator of the Amazon series
“Transparent”) and digital entre-
preneur Rebecca Odes.
“It has to be rooted in
emotional truth to be funny,” Kahnweiler said. “It’s about
being really self aware. Who we
are and who we want to be and
what’s stopping us, and that is the
space I want to play, in that gap.”
Kahnweiler, 30, is quickly
shaping up to be a comedic force,
the enfant terrible of urban Millennials who dares to say what
everyone else is secretly thinking. Kahnweiler gives voice to
the disavowed anxieties and
night terrors of a generation. But
in a voice that is distinctly her
own. Driving her work, she says,
is the constant question: “How
do I make something that only I
can make?”
The Atlanta-raised Kahnweiler lives in Los Angeles “with
my plants and my cats.” The
spark that attracts her to the city
is the same spark that animates
her work – a deep and abiding respect for contradictions.
“There’s a really big tension
in Los Angeles because
it’s so beautiful, the sunshine is
repressive to a point,” she said.
“It’s like you’re not allowed to
cry, it’s so beautiful. And there’s
this whole element of Hollywood
and this presentation and this facade, and then there’s this underbelly of all of these cultures
coming together that exist in one
place but are also very segregated. This tension of what’s real
and what’s not, I really thrive in
that.”
But when I met Kahnweiler
(and her mother and grandmother) recently, it was on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where
her spry, flame-haired, 94-yearold bubbe lives.
“I’d come more, but my
grandmother is really busy,” Kahnweiler said over wine, crackers
and salmon spread. “It’s like,
when can you fit me in?”
“Not so!” her grandmother,
Lucille Boretz, protested laugh-
Comedian Jessie Kahnweiler is at work on a new web series “The
Skinny,” which is based on her own experience battling an eating disorder. (JTA)
ing. “Not so!”
Kahnweiler hails from a
family of writers. Her grandfather
was the celebrated TV, film and
radio writer Alvin Boretz; her
grandmother was his beloved
companion and soundboard until
his death in 2010.
“He went against the grain
then,” explained Kanhweiler’s
mother, Jennifer. Boretz was a
freelancer, and money was often
tight. “So we always had the
message as his daughters, my sister and I, that you need to love
what you do and you need to
make a contribution, and we
hopefully passed that on.”
Jennifer Kahnweiler, also a
redhead, is an accomplished
writer in her own right whose
books include the best-seller
“The Introverted Leader: Building on Your Quiet Strength.” She
and Kahnweiler’s father, Bill – a
professor at Georgia State University – both have doctorates in
counseling, and even wrote a
book together about leadership
in the workplace. (“It was really
fun to be at home when that was
happening,” Kahnweiler joked.)
“My dad is a really big wiseass, he’s really sarcastic, he has a
really dry sense of humor,” Kahnweiler said. “And Mom has no
filter. She’s never made a joke in
her life, and she’s the funniest
person.”
Jennifer and Lucille burst
out laughing.
Kahnweiler’s real mother
didn’t at the time know about
the real-life events that inspired
“The Skinny,” Kahnweiler’s
decade-long struggle with bulimia – “a struggle that will never
end,” the author says. She has
been in recovery for the past
three years.
“What I’m realizing is, the
way that parents don’t want to
see their children hurt, I don’t
want to hurt my parents, and I
don’t want to hurt my grandparents,” Kahnweiler said.
24
Chicago Jewish News - April 17-23, 2015