PATERSON PROFESSOR FLIRTS WITH ANTI-SEMITISM page 6

REMEMBERING A MURDERED CONDUCTOR IN GERMANY page 12

TAKING THE STAGE AS A CANCER SURVIVOR pages 14
‘STRICTLY UNORTHODOX’ FINDS THE FUNNY IN FRUMKEIT page 40

JUNE 8, 2018
VOL. LXXXVII NO. 38 $1.00 87 2018

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2 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018


Don’t let your kids
try this at home
l A little girl thought her baby
brother’s batteries had run
out, so she inserted a new one
into his nose, leading to an
emergency trip to the hospital,
Israel’s Channel 10 news
reported.
The two-year-old boy was
taking a nap. According to
the doctor who treated him,
the baby’s sister, thinking her
brother worked like her toys,
shoved a button cell up his
nose to get him going again.
The report did not say how old
the sister was.
The parents, from the north
of Israel, rushed their son to the
Galilee Medical Center, where
the battery was removed from
the boy’s nostril without caus-
ing any major damage.
Page 3
However, the center’s Dr.
Amiel Dror stressed that the
incident could have had a far
more serious outcome. Un-
like regular batteries, button
batteries release chemicals
even when not connected to
a circuit, and had it not been
removed quickly it could have
caused serious damage to the
nasal tissue. Or if the boy had
inhaled it further, or swallowed
the battery, he could have been
in serious danger.
Speaking to Channel 10, Dror
said that because summer
vacation is coming, and that
means that kids will have a lot
of free time, it is particularly im-
portant that parents supervise
their children at all times.
Times of Israel

High drama in the Knesset

l Even by the raucous standards
of Israel’s parliament, a hearing in
the Knesset Health Committee this
week was anything but chill.
The topic: medical marijuana.
Five witnesses supporting medi-
cal marijuana were ejected from
the hearing. They, along with op-
position legislators, were critical of
the Health Ministry’s skeptical tone
toward the medical benefits of can-
nabis.
The finale came as Meir Kadosh
talked about his child, who suffers
from epilepsy, and how much bet-
ter and safer the marijuana-derived
CBD oil he used to treat her is than
the readily prescribed opiate pills
she used to take.
“It says ‘dangerous drug’ on
the label,” he said as he opened a
container of CBD oil. He recited the
Shehacol blessing, thanking God
for making everything by God’s
word, and drank the oil. “You are
murderers!” he shouted.
“The pills are suicide!” he said,
and almost no THC, so users do not
feel stoned after using it.
Among Western countries, Israel
already has one of the highest
per capita rates of legal marijuana
use, with more than 21,000 people
medically licensed to use the drug.
Israel is well known as a pioneer
in medical cannabis. Two years ago,
the government approved a plan,
initiated by Health Minister Yaakov
Litzman, to relax some of the medi-
cal cannabis requirements. That
Israeli flag made of cookies
breaks Guinness record
l The Atlanta Jewish community broke
a Guinness World Record after making
a flag out of cookies.
The Israeli flag used about 117,000
cookies and spread over 3,224 square
feet of the plastic-covered floor of the
Heritage Hall in Atlanta’s Congregation
Beth Jacob.
The flag was created to celebrate Isra-
el’s 70th birthday. The previous record-
holder marked Pakistan’s 70th. The new
record-holder is 32 percent larger, the
Atlanta Jewish Times reported. to three nonprofit organizations in Israel:
The flag was certified shortly before United Hatzalah, the volunteer emer-
noon on Sunday by Guinness adjudica- gency medical service; OneFamily Fund,
tor Michael Empric. which supports victims of terrorism; and
People could sponsor the project, the Jewish Agency’s Partnership2Gether
called Cookies for Israel, by buying one program.
for $10; so far the project has raised The cookies were donated to charities
more than $103,000. The funds will go to be distributed and eaten. JTA

before jumping over the table to plan aimed to expand the number
evade security guards and leaving of doctors who can prescribe can-
the room. nabis, remove limits on the number PUBLISHER’S STATEMENT: (USPS 275-700 ISN 0021-6747) is pub-

The meeting was adjourned after of marijuana growers, make canna- CONTENTS lished weekly on Fridays with an additional edition every October,

the fracas.
The oil he drank was derived
from Avidekel, a strain of marijuana,
developed by Israel’s Tikun Olam
bis available at approved pharma-
cies, and possibly eliminate the
requirement for a Health Ministry
permit, so that a doctor’s prescrip-
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because it contains a lot of CBD
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Jewish Standard JUNE 8, 2018 3

Noshes
LOWER THE BARR:
Roseanne’s tweets
twist in the wind
Unlike many others, I
was not surprised when,
on May 29, ROSEANNE
BARR tweeted a highly
offensive racial “joke”
about former Obama
administration adviser
Valerie Jarrett. This
“joke” prompted ABC/
Disney head BOB IGER,
who is Jewish, to can-
cel the reboot of the
TV show “Roseanne,”
despite the fact that it
was highly rated and the
cancellation would cost
ABC millions of dollars.
Back in April, I wrote a
“Noshes” column item
that described what a
meshuga “loose cannon”
Barr is. The three follow-
ing column paragraphs
are what I wrote in April.
They are followed by
“current events.”
Long before Donald
Trump entered politics, I
was appalled by Rose-
anne Barr (currently a
vocal Trump supporter).
Yes, there are people who
radically switch political
positions for reasons that
they lay out in under-
standable, rational terms.
But Barr, 65, takes politi-
cal stances and changes
them for reasons that
I can ascribe only to a
personality disorder. This
is laid out in a must read
Daily Beast article (“How
Roseanne Barr Aban-
4 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018
doned All-Reason and
Embraced the Alt-Right”)
published on June 23,
2017. The only thing the
Daily Beast article doesn’t
quite capture is how dis-
ordered Barr’s thinking is,
as you hear in a full inter-
view. I saw one interview
taped in the summer of
2016 with a conserva-
tive host. Try as he might,
the host couldn’t extract
a coherent summary of
her views or why they
changed. She spouted
word salad.
The Daily Beast article
traces her Israel views.
Back in 2009, I wrote a
blog post about her viru-
lent anti-Israeli views and
then I had to watch as the
Jewish community media
lauded her in recent years
for her pro-Israel stance.
Over the last two years,
she even was invited
to speak before Jewish
audiences in the United
States and Israel.
My guess is that the
Jewish media and Jew-
ish organizations didn’t
know or choose not to
remember Barr’s quite
recent past. Courtesy
of the Daily Beast, that
past is revealed: In 2009,
she called Israel a “Nazi
state,” in 2011 “a “bru-
tal and undemocratic
theocracy.” She also
denounced “the ethnic
Want to read more noshes? Visit facebook.com/jewishstandard
“The minute I found out she was a
synagogue president, I knew she
could do anything. There’s nothing like
the politics of a synagogue.”
Roseanne Barr
Tom Arnold
cleansing that is happen-
ing in Gaza right now.” In
2012, she ran for presi-
dent on a left-wing third
party ticket with Cindy
Sheehan (who said many
times that her soldier son
died in Iraq for Israel).
But by 2014-15 Barr
swung the other way. In
2016, she began using
language that wins no
friends for Israel, like call-
ing Muslims pedophiles
and tweeting, “Hillary
Clinton is surrounded by
Jew haters who make
fun of the Holocaust and
— Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.), referring to Rep. Jackie Rosen (D-Nev.),
who is running for the Senate after one term in the House.
Bob Iger
George Soros
Jewish suffering.” She
also shared a link that
said that “Jew hater Hill-
ary Clinton’s ‘handler’
Huma [Abedin] Weiner
[a Muslim] is a filthy Nazi
whore.” Most alarming
is her support of wacko
conspiracy theory sites.
Barr particularly likes to
retweet a sicko con-
spiracy theory about
the “Deep State” and
Democrats running child
sex rings — a charge very
much like the totally false
Pizzagate story — that
Hillary Clinton was run-
ning a sex ring out of a
Washington pizza parlor.
Comedian TOM AR-
NOLD, 59 provides some
insight into recent events.
He was married to Barr
from 1990 to 1994 and
he converted to Juda-
ism after marrying her.
His current wife is Jewish
and he’s a practicing Jew
and an Israel-supporter.
In interviews last week
Arnold said that both he
and Barr long have wres-
tled with mental prob-
lems he didn’t describe in
detail. Regarding the of-
fensive tweet that result-
ed in the show’s cancella-
tion, Arnold said: “I knew
it was going to happen.”
He repeatedly had sent
notes to the show’s staff
telling them to take away
Roseanne’s phones and
stop the tweeting. Obvi-
ously, whatever controls
ABC put on Barr were
way too weak and there
is much justified criticism
of ABC for rebooting
“Roseanne” despite her
history of highly offen-
sive tweets.
ABC rebooted it be-
cause they saw a poten-
tial big moneymaker. The
Jewish/pro-Israel commu-
nity saw in Barr a celeb-
rity supporter. They chose
California-based Nate Bloom can be reached at
Middleoftheroad1@aol.com
to forget her anti-Israel
stance; they also ignored
the way in which her re-
cent tweets and retweets
played more than footsie
with alt-right sites that
peddle anti-Semitism.
You can find, for exam-
ple, the same or virtually
the same tweets about
African-Americans being
apes — or lies about bil-
lionaire GEORGE SOROS
being a (Jewish) Nazi
collaborator — on Barr’s
twitter site and on the
sites of dyed-in-the-wool
Jew-haters.
All Jews should de-
nounce those who attack
anyone in horrid and
personal terms, even if
they support Israel. Em-
bracing such people is
not only morally wrong,
but it tends to blow up
in the face of pro-Israel
groups. Is anyone going
to invite Barr, now, to a
Jewish event? She’s a big
embarrassment.
Likewise, those on
the progressive side
who criticize Israel in
measured terms should
always be on the look-
out for the anti-Semitism
that is a big undercurrent
in so many anti-Israel
groups and not try to
rationalize it away. –N.B.
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JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018 5

Local
Flirting with Holocaust denial in Wayne
Fair Lawn student videos her sociology professor
spouting conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic tropes
LARRY YUDELSON
A
professor of sociology at William Pater-
son University of New Jersey in Wayne
has been recorded on video espousing a
series of anti-Semitic beliefs about Jews
—including the ideas that Ashkenazi Jews are not
genetically related to the ancient Israelites, that
175,000 German Jews found safe harbor in the Ger-
man army during the Holocaust, and that Judaism
has degenerated from a universal religion, with
roots in ancient Egypt, to a racist religion.
The videos were recorded by freshman Benny
Koval, 18, of Fair Lawn. Ms. Koval was enrolled
in Dr. Clyde Magarelli’s course, Sociology 1020,
“Social Problems.”
This is not the first time Dr. Magarelli has stirred
controversy in the classroom.
Last year, another student complained to the
department head, and filed a formal complaint
with the school.
And in 1994, Dr. Magarelli was rebuked by his
department after handing students a document
that downplayed the number of deaths in Nazi
concentration camps. According to the February
7, 1994 issue of the Beacon, the school’s newspa-
per, Dr. Magarelli’s handout said: “In relationship
to the media theme of six million concentration
camp deaths… a figure of between 700,000 and
800,000 appears more realistic.”
The exposure of Dr. Magarelli’s in-classroom
comments comes as Jewish groups have criticized
Rutgers — like Paterson a New Jersey state university
6 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018
— for continuing to employ two professors who
made anti-Semitic and anti-Israel comments and
social media postings outside the classroom.
Just two week ago, staff from the Jewish Federa-
tion of Northern New Jersey, accompanied by New
Jersey Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg of
Teaneck, met with Rutgers University’s President
Robert Barchi to express their concerns.
At William Paterson University, Ms. Koval com-
plained to Dr. Jacob Felson, the chair of the soci-
ology department, who urged her to file an offi-
cial complaint. But after learning that a complaint
filed last year had no effect, Ms. Koval decided to
wait until the course was over before expressing
her concerns and posting videos publicly on Twit-
ter over the weekend.
According to Ms. Koval, and as verified by the
videos she recorded, Dr. Magarelli’s traffic in alter-
native facts is not limited to discussions of
Jews. Dr. Magarelli tells his students that the
moon landings were faked, and that human
space travel beyond the Van Allen radiation
belts is impossible. (In the real world, this
fear was debunked when the radiation was
first directly measured in the 1960s, living
on mostly as a key plot point in the Fantas-
tic Four comic books.)
Dr. Magarelli’s unorthodox beliefs extend
to his politics. According to campaign
Freshman Benny Koval, 18, of Fair Lawn,
donation records at opensecrets.org, Dr.
inset, recorded sociology professor Dr. Clyde
Magarelli has been donating to the Lyndon
Magarelli espousing discredited theories and
LaRouche Political Action Committee since
anti-Semitic comments.
SEE DENIAL PAGE 8
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Local
Denial
FROM PAGE 6
at least 2010. In 1979, Lyndon LaRouche lost a $26 million libel suit
against the Anti-Defamation League, which had declared LaRouche
“anti-Semitic.” The New York Supreme Court ruled that it was rea-
sonable to apply that label. Mr. LaRouche, who ran for president sev-
eral times, has long trafficked in conspiracy theories, some centering
on the Queen of England. Many of those theories have anti-Semitic
overtones.
Ms. Koval said that she first became concerned about Dr. Magarelli’s
understanding of the world when he discussed abortion.
Ms. Koval tells the story like this: “He made a claim that post-abortion
traumatic stress syndrome was a thing. It’s a long-outdated concept.
I knew that.” She tried to tell that to Dr. Magarelli and he cut her off,
changing the subject with an aggressive question.
“You would expect he would engage in discussion,” she said. “That’s
when I realized I should probably start recording him rather than
engaging him.” So she began compiling a list of “ridiculous claims
Magarelli had made,” she said.
She took the list to the chairman of the sociology department, Dr.
Jacob Felson. He told her she could file a bias complaint against Dr.
Magarelli, and that her complaint was not the first one made against
him. “He made it clear that the university wasn’t going to do any-
thing,” Ms. Koval said.
None of the videos of Dr. Magarelli that Ms. Koval recorded include
full-fledged Holocaust denial. But the snippets, which she recorded
because they seemed bizarre, reflect the beliefs of Holocaust deniers.
In one video, Dr. Magarelli explains that German Jews found safety
in the German army during the Holocaust. “One hundred and seventy
five thousand German Jews served in the German army — this is not
the SS — the Germany army — in World War II and occupied positions
from private up to field marshal, the highest ranks. Now, the leader of
that himself was a Jew,” he said.
Dr. Magarelli did not respond to requests for comment.
Dr. Michael Berenbaum, a professor of the Holocaust at the Ameri-
can Jewish University in Los Angeles, played a key role in the creation
of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He rebutted Dr.
Magarelli’s assertion.
“There were 525,000 Jews in Germany in 1933,” Dr. Berenbaum
wrote in an email. “Most emigrated between 1933-1941 when emigra-
tion of Jews was shut down. 183,000 German Jews are known to have
been murdered.
“What he may be saying is that there were some mischlinge (mon-
grels, partial Jews) who served in the German army. There were hun-
dreds, not 175,000. My student and friend Bryan Rigg can probably
name them. He wrote an important book with an unfortunate title
‘Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers’ detailing the mischlinge who served in then
Wehrmacht. But the number is 1 percent at best of what the profes-
sor quotes.”
Dr. Magarelli “knows not of what he speaks,” Dr. Berenbaum said.
“He should know better.”
In another video, Dr. Magarelli asserts that Ashkenazi Jews “have no
biological links to the original Judaism. They claim to have it, though
there’s no link at all. DNA follows that.”
In fact, however, as Science magazine wrote in 2012, “three of
the major Jewish groups — the Middle Eastern, Sephardic, and
SEE DENIAL PAGE 10
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8 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018
Campus update
Panel will detail Hillel’s efforts
to fight anti-Semitism at Rutgers
LOIS GOLDRICH
A
ndrew Getraer, executive director of
Rutgers Hillel, is no alarmist.
Mr. Getraer, who has held that posi-
tion for some 17 years, said that “in
fact, while anti-Semitism has been present for
many years among certain groups on campus,
what we see are occasional eruptions or incidents
that bring it to public knowledge, to a level where
the university needs to address it.”
Still, he acknowledged, “What we have seen is
that groups are more open about it.” An exam-
ple: “Every few years, a white supremacist group
would put flyers out on campus. It was usually
done at night in secret.
“This year, on Rutgers Day, a big event with over
100,000 people from all over the state, there was
a white supremacist walking around the campus
passing out flyers, and he left one at the Hillel
building. That’s new.” The new element, he said,
is the “boldness with which they feel comfortable
expressing themselves.”
And this, he said, is something we see across the
country since the 2016 presidential election cam-
paign. “Whether pro- or anti-Trump, it’s undeni-
able that the far-right anti-Semitic community
feels more comfortable expressing [their hatred]
publicly,” Mr. Getraer said. “Look at Charlottes-
ville, and at “fringe congressional candidates who
are openly anti-Semitic.”
As he has seen on his own campus, anti-Semitic
venom comes from the far left as well as the far
right. “Extremists on either end of the spectrum
are anti-Jewish,” he said. “Extremism is not a
friend of the Jews. As campuses, and the coun-
try, become more polarized, it bodes ill for the
Jewish community.”
Mr. Getraer, the OU-JLIC ( Jewish Learning Ini-
tiatives on Campus) rabbi on campus, Rabbi Tzvi
Wohlgelerntner, and two Rutgers students from
Bergen County will discuss the problem of anti-
Semitism on campus and how Hillel is addressing
it at Englewood’s Congregation Ahavath Torah on
June 11. (See box.)
“Anti-Semitism takes a lot of forms,” Mr. Getraer
said. He cited not only “the traditional overt anti-
Semitism” but also anti-Israel activities that are
motivated either by opposition to the Jewish state
Talia Schabes Jenna Kerschenbaum
or, at their root, by anti-Semitism itself. There is
also, he said, “an in-between level in which Jewish
concerns and sensitivities are deemed not as rel-
evant or important as those of others.”
That, unfortunately, is something he sees at
his university. And the school’s administration
has not gone as far as he would like in addressing
the recent outburst of anti-Semitic feeling among
what he called far-left members of the faculty, Mr.
Getraer said.
He cited the recent spate of anti-Semitic state-
ments and writings from three professors this
fall. The incidents involved Michael Chikindas,
a microbiology professor who published many
offensive social media posts; Jasbir Puar, a wom-
en’s studies professor whose latest book accuses
Israel of injuring Palestinians “in order to con-
trol them”; and Mazen Adi, an adjunct professor
of international law who accused Israeli officials
of trafficking children’s organs as he served as a
spokesperson for the regime of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad.
“One was fired,” Mr. Getraer said. That was
Mazen Adi. “He was not a full-time professor.
He was a part-time lecturer but will no longer
be teaching. One was a full tenured professor.”
That was Michael Chikindas. “His responsibilities
were removed. He was not fired but will no lon-
ger be allowed to teach required courses.” Hillel,
it should be noted, strongly expressed its view that
he should be fired as well; although that did not
happen, “we are grateful that the administration
took serious action.”
“No action was taken whatsoever” against Profes-
sor Puar, since the university administration held
SEE RUTGERS PAGE 10
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9 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018

Local

university. She also declined to use her name.

Jewish Federation’s Jason Shames
reports on Rutgers meeting
LARRY YUDELSON
Jason Shames and Robert Bar-
chi do not see eye to eye.
Mr. Shames is CEO of the Jew-
ish Federation of Northern New
Jersey and Dr. Barchi is presi-
dent of Rutgers University. After
the two met two weeks ago to
discuss complaints about anti-
Semitism at Rutgers, Mr. Shames
walked away unsatisfied.
“I can’t say anything came
out of it,” Mr. Shames said of the
meeting.
Mr. Shames said the meeting
began with state Senate Major-
ity Leader Loretta Weinberg of
Teaneck telling Dr. Barchi how
upset she was about Dr. Jasbir
Puar, the tenured Rutgers asso-
ciate professor of women’s and
gender studies, whose self-de-
scribed “anti-Zionist” book, “The
Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity,
Disability,” accuses Israel of de-
liberating maiming Palestinians.
Mr. Shames said that Dr. Barchi
defended Dr. Puar, though he
said he disagreed with her. “She
has academic freedom and First
Amendment rights,” Mr. Shames
quoted Dr. Barchi as saying. Dr.
Barchi defended her book as
having been published by an
academic press and passing
peer review.
Mr. Shames countered that
the endorsement of the book by
pro-BDS groups “ discredits and
undermines the credibility that
the book is academic in nature.”
Dr. Barchi reiterated his belief
that “you combat hate speech
with more speech, but good
speech,” Mr. Shames said. “He
was very proud of the sympo-
sium on hate speech put on by
the ADL on campus.”
Mr. Shames was less impressed
by the symposium.
“It was very poorly attended
by actual students,” he said.
Denial
FROM PAGE 8
Ashkenazi Jews — share a genetic connection
going back more than 2,000 years, and are
more closely related to each other than to
nearby non-Jewish groups.”
Dr. Felson said he is glad that Ms. Koval is speak-
ing out. “That’s important,” he said. “I encourage
students to speak up when they have a problem
in the classroom. There are not enough students
speaking up. On some campuses there would
have been a lot more discussion and debate about
something like this, much earlier.”
Dr. Magarelli has been teaching at William Pat-
erson for more than 50 years, Dr. Felson said.
“He was probably tenured when I was in ele-
mentary school.
“Unfortunately, particularly post tenure, the
only kind of thing that can be done is when
there are multiple complaints from students.
It’s unfortunate that, partly out of apathy or just
ignorance, not many students have complained.
Professors are given a wide latitude in what they
teach in their classes. If they have some wild and
erroneous things thrown it, it’s very difficult for
the department chair to do much about it.”
The student who filed a complaint last year
declined to speak to the Standard, citing a
confidentiality agreement she signed with the
Talia Mizikovsky, the director of Hillel of North-
ern New Jersey, said that she had encouraged the
student to file a complaint, and followed up with
a meeting with the university administration to
express her concerns over “the anti-Semitic and
racist comments” in the student’s account of Dr.
Magarelli’s classroom.
Eventually, she received a response from the
dean who had investigated the issue: “I found
that Professor Magarelli’s statements would
likely be protected under the First Amendment
and viewed as generating a healthy classroom
discussion/debate. I did, however, find that
Professor Magarelli (and consequently his stu-
dents), would benefit from a discussion to deter-
mine whether he was improperly veering off the
topic[s] of his Criminal Investigations syllabus/
outline. I was advised that a discussion was had
between Professor Magarelli and the Sociology
Department Chair. He was generally notified (no
student name was mentioned) about complaints
regarding some of his statements made during
class. The Department Chair also counseled
Professor Magarelli about the dangers of veer-
ing off the topic/subject matter while teaching
his courses.
“...if Professor Magarelli (or any other profes-
sor for that matter) engages in behavior or makes
statements that are deemed discriminatory in

Rutgers
FROM PAGE 8
that her writings are protected under the
umbrella of academic freedom. Interest-
ingly, Mr. Getraer added, when the profes-
sor delivered a talk at Dartmouth University,
including her “blood libel” charge that the
IDF harvests the organs of Palestinian chil-
dren, “the next day the university president
and provost came out and repudiated her.”
And yet, Mr. Getraer said, the Rutgers
administration considers her “anti-Semitic
assertions as part of her academic work,
and will not criticize her.” While he does
not agree, he said, he understands that the
university is dealing with “tenure, union,
and faculty. She is very well protected.” It
should also be noted that while Rutgers’
President Robert Barchi was urged to
speak out, declaring the professor’s state-
ments repugnant, “he didn’t want to do
that,” citing academic freedom.
“I’m not happy about it but I understand
the university’s position,” Mr. Getraer said.
“But what if a professor said something
virulent against African Americans or the
LGBT community? That’s an open ques-
tion. I think the sensitivity of the university
toward those two communities is much
stronger and sharper than it is toward the
Jewish community. That’s one of the things
we are working to change.
“There’s a lack of sensitivity to anti-
Semitism, so we’re working to educate
administrators. They don’t see us as an
oppressed community.”
He pointed out that despite the large
number of verbal attacks on the Jewish
community, “we’re still successful. It’s more
nuanced and difficult to understand, that
you can be successful and threatened. We
get it intuitively, but non-Jews don’t get it.”
Despite all this, “I think the Rutgers is
a very tolerant community overall,” Mr.
Getraer said. He said Hillel is having many
more discussions about anti-Semitism with
students. “We try to let students know that
anything they experience as anti-Semitic,
they should report to us.” He added that
Rutgers Hillel has “a strong story to tell”
about BDS. “At one point we were probably
dealing with more anti-Israel activities than
any other campus, but we have changed
the dynamic on the campus so that it’s not
as prominent as it once was and has signifi-
cantly less impact. We’ve never passed or
even voted on a BDS motion. We’ve taken
a proactive position regarding this, to pre-
vent it from taking root.”
Talia Schabes, a rising senior from Engle-
wood and a participant in the upcoming
program, is a member of Hillel’s Ortho-
dox contingent. An intern with the David
Project — a pro-Israel organization that
builds strong relationships with a wide
array of students on campus to strengthen
the pro-Israel community — she said she
doesn’t feel anti-Semitism “day to day,” but
she was actively involved in speaking out
against the three professors.
“We don’t have many protests on cam-
pus,” she said, and to see those that do
take place, “you have to be at the right
place at the right time.” She did note, how-
ever, a recent “writing war” in the campus
newspaper involving Students for Justice
in Palestine and Scarlet Knights for Israel,
for whom she plans to write.
Much of her campus activity, Ms.
Schabes said, emanates from her involve-
ment with the American Union of Jew-
ish Students, a new group patterned on
the model of student unions outside the
United States. As part of this effort, she
cited “the tactic of tabling” — setting up
a table and handing out flyers to students
who pass by. “I took a gap year and did
Israel training through Jerusalem U. But it’s
hard to learn in a vacuum and then apply
it. I had to get a feel from the campus,” she
said; she plans to make aliyah.
Ms. Schabes said that while the majority
of Rutgers students no doubt are opposed
to anti-Semitism, “it’s a big campus and it’s
difficult to speak up. You don’t know who
to direct your opposition to.” She charac-
terized Hillel as “active and visible, inviting
all denominations. It’s got a strong pres-
ence within the Jewish community.”
Jenna Kershenbaum, a recent Rutgers
graduate who lives in Teaneck and like
Ms. Schabes is planning to make aliyah,
also will be on the upcoming panel. Her
experience at Rutgers was, for the most
part, “extremely positive,” she said. “A lot
of high schools in the New Jersey area pre-
pare you for the worst in terms of dealing
with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activities.
But they don’t teach a lot about apathy.”
While she has taken many courses on
conflict, and read widely on both sides of
the Israel-Palestinian issue, “there’s not
much here in terms of rallying.” She remem-
bers a 2014 incident after the war in Gaza
when “there was a die-in at the main cam-
pus. People had fake blood on them. The
Jewish community didn’t really mobilize.
They didn’t think it through. We just waved
Israeli flags on the other side of the street
and it looked like we were celebrating the
deaths. It wasn’t well thought out.
“There was really nothing else until this
semester,” she said. “I’m very much a fan
of the academic process, going through
every possible outcome, immersing
myself ” in an issue. “But what happened
here — I was unsettled by this coming from
a professor. When you see a tenured pro-
fessor doing these things, who can have
respect for that?”
Ms. Kershenbaum, who had been a mem-
ber of the Hillel board for three years, said
she agrees “100 percent “ with Mr. Getraer
about insensitivity to Jewish issues on cam-
pus. “It’s hard to disentangle movements,”
she added, noting that during his first year
on campus, a friend went to a rally co-spon-
sored by different groups, including Stu-
dents for Justice in Palestine. While the orga-
nizers used “blanket statements to make it
sound like we’re all fighting together,” that
was clearly not the case. Jewish students
“were not comfortable if they had to chant
‘Free Palestine.’ They were caught in the
middle. It was a weird situation.”
Who: Congregation Ahavath Torah
What: Will sponsor a panel on anti-
Semitism at Rutgers and what Hillel is
doing to address it
When: On June 11 at 8:30 p.m.
Where: At the synagogue, 240 Broad
Ave., Englewood
For information: Call (201) 906-5840
And also: It’s open to the public.

10 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018


nature (as opposed to protected under
academic freedom), the University will
(and has as recently as this school year)
act accordingly to take action against that
professor.”
A call to the dean of the college of human-
ities and social sciences was returned by
the press office. “We are aware of the stu-
dent’s social media posts and have reached
out to encourage her to use official univer-
sity channels to voice her complaint,” Mary
Beth Zeman, the university director of pub-
lic relations, wrote in an email. “The uni-
versity policy is to investigate individually
each student’s complaint and then deter-
mine what action may be warranted.
“Sometimes disciplinary action is taken
against a professor. When that occurs, it
is a private matter between the university
and an individual faculty member,” Ms.
Zeman wrote.
Ari Cohn, who works at the Foundation
for Individual Rights in Education and
regularly defends college faculty mem-
bers’ First Amendment rights, said that
the faculty of William Paterson University
would have ample grounds to sanction Dr.
Magarelli for trafficking in disproven con-
spiracy theories.
Often the cases he works on “go back to
Arthur Butz in Northwestern,” Mr. Cohn
said. said. Dr. Butz is a professor of elec-
trical engineering whose 1976 book, “The
Hoax of the Twentieth Century,” argued
that the Holocaust did not happen. In
2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that
Dr. Butz had been quoted in the Iranian
media as supporting the Holocaust denial
of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who then was
the country’s president. At that point,
some of his colleagues launched a cam-
paign to encourage Dr. Butz to leave North-
western University.
The school’s president, Henry Bienen,
issued a statement saying that Dr. Butz was
“entitled to express his personal views,
including on his personal web pages, as
long as he does not represent such opin-
ions as the views of the University.”
But Dr. Butz was not accused of sharing
his views in the classroom.
“Professors do not lose the right to par-
ticipate in public conversation simply by
virtue of their government employment,”
Mr. Cohn said. “The First Amendment gen-
erally forbids retaliating against that.” But
“classroom speech is a different situation.”
Dr. Magarelli’s remarks, Mr. Cohn said,
raise two problems — bias and competency.
“One issue that comes up is when
someone says something unpopular,” Mr.
Cohn said. “The question then is, can the
teacher who said X fairly treat students of
category Y. It’s often brought up when a
faculty member says something and peo-
ple just imply that he will treat someone
from that group unfairly.
“If a faculty member opposes same sex
marriage, is it automatically true that he
can’t treat gay students fairly? Universities
must be circumspect in imputing discrimi-
nation based on views. In the absence of
complaints, we have to be skeptical about
accepting that logic.”
On the other hand, he said, “if he’s not
teaching the material they’re supposed to
be teaching, the university certainly has
the right to step in. If what he was say-
ing was germane to course content, you
get into the question of competency. If a
history professor were teaching that the
South won the Civil War, there’s a compe-
tency issue.”
That said, “it’s imperative those deci-
sions be left to the faculty,” Mr. Cohn said.
“It’s reasonable for a faculty member to be
concerned and want to figure out what’s
going on. When faculty members see their
colleagues are unfit, they tend to take
action.”
Local
Perhaps.
But had Dr. Magarelli’s colleagues logged
onto RateMyProfessors.com as long ago as
May 2004, they would read this review:
“Very strange and paranoid conspiracy
theorist. From the moment I walked in I
felt like I entered the twilight zone. Easy
grader. Didn’t learn much.”
The next year, Dr. Magarelli got a good
review from a student who wrote: “He is
very easy. Never takes attendance, and
all he talks about is 9/11 and how it was an
inside job. Oh yeah and don’t 4 get the U.S.
never went to the moon. Easy A.”
A more recent review directly addressed
the question of competence: “DO NOT
TAKE HIM! This man will not teach you
anything but conspiracies without any
backup evidence to support what he says!
He makes up historical facts and sells this
as the truth! Claims the inquisition did not
kill people, that some terrorist organiza-
tions are not terrorist at all, that 9/11 is the
Air force’s fault. ABSOLUTELY INSANE!”
Benny Koval, however, did not think to
check out Dr. Magarelli before enrolling in
his class.
“I looked on RateMyProfessor after I
had already chosen the course,” she said.
“Which was a mistake.”
JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018 11
Local

Turning horror to hope

Sisters remember their prodigy uncle, killed by Nazis in Germany,
with concert recreating post-liberation Bernstein performance
JOANNE PALMER of Mr. Durmashkin — and the 70th birthday

E
very person who was murdered
during the Holocaust contained
a whole world. Each one was
singular, unique, and irreplace-
able. Each slaughter, every single death
by accident or untreated disease, every
death by starvation, every premature
post-liberation death by lingering disease
or malnutrition or a broken heart or spirit
or soul, is the death of a never-to-be-dupli-
cated world.
That is indisputably true.
It is also true that some Holocaust vic-
tims were so talented that each death
represented two deaths, one of the physi-
cal being and the other of the gift that
went unopened.
That’s true of Wolf Durmashkin, a musi-
of the state of Israel, the Germans were
able to look both backward and forward in
ways that made Ms. Lerner, Ms. Reisman,
their brother, Abe Gurko of Los Angeles,
and the friends who accompanied them
to Germany, feel not only grief, which they
had expected to feel, and pride, which they
had hoped to feel, but also hope, which was
both unexpected and welcome.
On May 10, the Bavarian government
offered the first in what is meant to be
the annual Wolf Durmashkin composi-
tion awards, offered to musicians from
around the world as long as they are 35
or younger.
The city of Landsberg, which hosted
the awards celebration, also presented a Rita Lerner, fourth from left, and her sister, Vivian Reisman, in front of her,
concert that day. It was a recreation of the stand with their friends in front of a memorial stone at a subcamp of Dachau.
extraordinary one presented by the Dis-  ALL PHOTOS COURTESY RITA LERNER

cian who began performing when he
was 6, and went on, at 25, to become the
youngest person — and only Jew— to con-
duct the Vilna Symphony Orchestra. The
Nazis murdered him when he was 31, in
1944, hours before the work camp where
he was imprisoned — Klooga, in Estonia —
was liberated.
Two of Mr. Durmashkin’s nieces, Rita
Gurko Lerner and Vivian Gurko Reisman,
who both live in Englewood Cliffs, went to
Bavaria, where the German state officially
honored the man whose life another Ger-
man government had ended so casually
and so cruelly. Coinciding with the 100th
birthday of the American Jewish composer
and conductor Leonard Bernstein — whose
gifts, the musical world acknowledged at
the time, would have made him a close peer
It’s meta — one of the New Jersey
visitors holds up the front page of
Landsberg’s daily newspaper, which
chronicles the group’s visit.
placed Persons Orchestra, a group made
up of concentration and labor camp sur-
vivors who had been musicians, had met
after the war at the hospital called St. Ottil-
ien, and who could still find it within them-
selves to play music. The group played for
other survivors; in one memorable perfor-
mance, on May 10, 1948, Leonard Bern-
stein led the Displaced Persons Orchestra.
This May 10, with the Bavarian Philhar-
monic standing in for the survivor musi-
cians, its conductor, Mark Mast, did Leon-
ard Bernstein’s job.
It would understate the obvious to say
that both Ms. Lerner and Ms. Reisman,
along with their companions, felt a dizzy-
ing rush of contradictory emotions during
their stay in Germany.
Their uncle’s sisters, Henia Durmashkin
Gurko — their mother — and Fania Dur-
mashkin Beker— their aunt, as well as their
uncle, Max Beker, all had been talented
musicians; all three survived, and all three
were part of the orchestra that played with
Mr. Bernstein.
“The concerts on May 10 with the Dis-
placed Persons Orchestra might not have
been triumphal from a musical standpoint
— the instruments were nearly as worn
down as the players — but it left Lenny, the
musicians, and the listeners emotionally
overjoyed and inspired,” Michael Bern-
stein, the conductor’s nephew, wrote.
That, of course, was then.
Now, “I had second thoughts about
going before I went,” Ms. Lerner said. She
had been to Poland 30 years ago, but had
not returned before this trip. Ms. Reisman
had never been there. On this trip, almost
all of the friends who made the visit from
Bergen County with them were the chil-
dren of survivors. They all had grown up
with the legacy of pain; they all spoke the
same language, even when they didn’t
need, or couldn’t speak, words.
The group visited local concentration The group also went to St. Ottilien, the
camps. “We went to Dachau,” Ms. Lerner monastery first turned — at the American
said. “It had 11 subcamps — they discov- liberators’ insistence — into a hospital for
ered so many of them — and so they” — liberated camp survivors. That’s where the
their German hosts — “took us to a sub- Displaced Persons Orchestra was formed.
camp and showed us how the inmates The group was met with kindness in
lived there. And then they took us to the Landsberg, Ms. Lerner said. “The people
train station, where there is a plaque. And were so nice. It was mind-boggling.” This,
there is a cattle car. It is one of the originals she said, despite — or perhaps because
that brought the Jews to Dachau. “For all of — the city’s relationship with Hitler.
we know, our mother could have been on “He wrote ‘Mein Kampf ’ when he was in
that train.” prison there,” she said. “And Hitler Youth
“It was surreal,” Ms. Reisman said. was organized there.”
“It was like an out-of-body experience. Last month’s award celebration grew out
I couldn’t believe that I was walking the of book the Gurko siblings’ cousin wrote
grounds where my mother had been, about Wolf Durmashkin, the uncle none of
knowing what had happened there. It was them met. Sonia Beker wrote “Symphony
very painful.” The peaceful green beauty on Fire: A Story of Music and Spiritual
of the Polish countryside added to the Resistance During the Holocaust” in 2007;
sense of incongruity, she said. “The juxta- a few years ago, two non-Jewish German
position of such beauty against such hor- researchers — a journalist, Karla Schöne-
ror is so overwhelming, and so hard to beck, and an artist, Wolfgang Hauck —
fathom. How do you absorb such beauty found the book, and were so moved by
and such horror?” SEE HOPE PAGE 38
Wolf Durmashkin’s family stands with the contest winners; from left, third-place
winner Otto Wanke, Abe Gurko, Vivian Reisman, Rita Lerner, Sonia Beker, first
place winner Bracha Bdil, and second place winner Rose Miranda Hall.

12 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018

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Local
Playing for the cure
Our very own publisher, his guitar, and friends energize
Englewood Hospital and Medical Center’s Survivors Rock
Joanne Palmer
H
e might be a mild-mannered
weekly Jewish newspaper
publisher by day — in fact,
oddly enough, he is a mild-
mannered weekly Jewish newspaper pub-
lisher by day — but by night, or at least
some nights, or at least the night of Sun-
day, June 4, James Janoff looked like a rock
star. Or at least a very gifted guitarist, on
stage playing for more than 1,000 people
at bergenPac in Englewood.
Full disclosure — Mr. Janoff — or Jamie, as
he is known to almost everyone most of the
time — is the owner and publisher of this
newspaper, the Jewish Standard. That’s an
identity he’s had for almost all of his adult
life, and it’s a vocation he cherishes.
But playing music — that’s something dif-
ferent, maybe something even deeper.
And that’s how Jamie came to be onstage
for Englewood Hospital and Medical Cen-
ter’s Survivors Rock concert.
He and two other musicians — Joff Jones
on cello, pedal steel guitar, and bass, and
Alan Lerner on drums — were the open-
ing act for N.E.D., a rock band whose six
members all are gynecological oncology
surgeons. N.E.D. stands for “no evidence
of disease,” and those four words are the
four words people diagnosed with cancer
most want to hear.
The band’s members, who come from
across the country, and include, on drums
and percussion, Englewood’s Dr. Nimesh
Nagarsheth, started playing together at a
conference, as a lark, just because they
could, but have continued to make music
as a way of providing a voice of hope to
cancer victims and an affirmation to the
disease’s survivors.
That’s a message that Jamie knows well.
About 15 years ago, he was diagnosed
and treated for prostate cancer; he’s had
N.E.D. for so long that most of the time the
memory of the disease is tucked away in a
corner of his brain. When he is presented
with an opportunity to help people with
cancer by embodying a message of hope,
that memory pops out of its hiding place,
and he is ready to go. (Although, as the old
joke goes, when the bandages come off his
hands and the patient asks, “Doctor, will I
be able to play the piano?” and the doctor
says yes, and then the patient says, “That’s
funny, because I couldn’t play the piano
before,” if you weren’t a rock star before
you got sick, you won’t magically be one
once you’re better. Assume you’ll just stick
to air guitar.)
To see Jamie on stage is to see someone
confident in his chops and happy with a
14 Jewish Standard JUNE 8, 2018
Jamie Janoff rocks it to the house at the Englewood Hospital and Medical
Center’s Survivors Rock Concert.
guitar in his hand and an audience watch-
ing him play. That’s because he’s been
doing that for almost all of his life.
Jamie grew up in Jersey City and then
in Teaneck, where his parents moved
when he was a young teenager. He played
in bands — first in middle school at the
Yeshiva of Hudson County and then in
high school — his first two years at the
Rogosin Yeshiva High School in Jersey City,
and then in Teaneck High.
“I remember that my first band was
called Crushed Ice,” Jamie said, although
he cannot remember what that name
meant. “We changed its name to The Vio-
lations” — that sounded edgier — “but a
friend’s dad made us change it back. He
thought Violations was too negative.
“We would play at dances, and at Con-
gregation B’nai Jacob in Jersey City,” Jamie
continued. This was during the early to mid
1970s, and as he looks back, he remembers
things that he hopes are different now. “We
had a black drummer,” he said. “I remem-
ber a neighbor looking at him, and not in
a pleasant way, when we came to practice.
But we never looked at color.”
Jamie loved rock, and he was influenced
by his idols — Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy
Page, Duane Allman, Martin Barre of Jethro
Tull, Steve Howe of Yes. Of all of those rock
legends, he said, the one he worshipped
the most probably was Eric Clapton and
his early work with Cream and Blind Faith.
“We lived right near Roosevelt Stadium in
Jersey City,” Jamie said. “He came there. It
was a major event. I was getting to see one
of my heroes for the first time.”
But the concert wasn’t so great. “He was
drunk, and people were throwing bottles
at the stage,” Jamie said.
“And what a sign of the times — not only
were people throwing bottles, but they
were able to bring bottles in. There actu-
ally were bottles there.
“It was a very bad night for Clapton,”
Jamie added. “Don’t let your heroes disap-
point you.”
And then there was the radio station
WNEW FM. FM was where the exciting
new music was. “I would listen to it reli-
giously,” Jamie said. “At the time it played
all the new music coming out of England.
It was more or less classic free-form radio,
where they would play the entire album.
“That was FM in its classic heyday.”
Jamie went to the University of Miami,
which had a renowned music school;
students on campus then included Pat
Metheny, Steve Morse, and Will Lee. Jamie
majored in communications, market-
ing, and business. It was a logical major,
because the Standard was the family busi-
ness, but he always played music. “There
were times when I put the guitar down,
but I always picked it up again,” he said. “I
always returned to it.”
There were
times when I put
the guitar down,
but I always
picked it up
again. I always
returned to it.
Jamie has a collection of old guitars;
they’re mainly electric, some brightly col-
ored, many multi-knobbed, shaped in a
way that makes the most reserved, unmu-
sical person want to pick them up and run
their fingers over the curves.
“I have collected old guitars, but I have
never looked at them as an investment,”
Jamie said. “I love them. They’re like pieces
of art. I also have a large collection of vin-
tage amplifiers.” Much of his collection
has appreciated in value, but Jamie does
not buy these pieces of old instruments to
make money from them. Sure, a new his-
toric (to be clear on this unclear phraseol-
ogy, “new historic” means a new historic
reproduction) Gibson Les Paul is great, but
“once you sit there and play the real deal”
— an old-for-real guitar — “you see that
there is no comparison.” When you play
one of those imitation old guitars next to
the real thing, clearly there is a difference.
“I look at the guitar for inspiration,”
Jamie went on. “It’s like a good friend. I just
pick it up and play something. Sometimes
even I don’t know where the music comes
from. It’s like what I played on Sunday
night. Free-form stuff, interpretations of
things that are out there.” Interpretations
of well known songs, that is, songs that he
plays in non-obvious ways. “I just don’t
 Local

play it in the same way as you usually hear

it,” he said. “Sometimes it’s like I hear it in a
dream and play different interpretations.”
Jamie decided to play in the concert for

Photo courtesy Englewood Hospital and Medical Center

many reasons. The most obvious one is
because he’s a musician, and so he relishes
the thought of an audience, a big one, sit-
ting together in a darkened room, waiting
for him to begin. But probably the deep-
est and truest one is because “I thought
it would be a great opportunity to help a
worthy cause,” he said; that’s true even
though “I don’t even think about the fact
that I am a survivor anymore.”
Having cancer changes you, Jamie said.
“Although it has been a long time since I
dealt with it, you don’t ever forget getting
a call from your doctor telling you that we
have to speak. So then what you do is kid
around with the doctor, and ask, ‘What do
you want to talk about?’
“And then he says, ‘prostate cancer, but Jamie Janoff, drummer Alan Lerner, and cellist Joff Jones entertain at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center’s Survivors
don’t worry about it. It’s the slowest grow- Rock concert at bergenPAC.
ing cancer. So don’t worry — but one day
it will grow. One day it will leave the pros-
tate, and that won’t be a good thing.
“So then of course you ask him when it
will leave the prostate, and he tells you that
he doesn’t know, and then you are in the
hospital, having your prostate removed.”
Jamie’s treatment went very well, but
“I was in the hospital with my best friend,
David Taubenfeld,” he said. “I made it,
but he didn’t, and that is something that
haunts me to this day.” David Taubenfeld
of Closter died of brain cancer in 2005; he
was 38 when he died.
“When I would go back for regular
checkups, I’m in the waiting room with
other people, and I look at their faces, and
see how scared they are, and I remember
what that felt like,” Jamie said. “I remem-
ber that look.” Jamie’s first band, Crushed Ice, performs at Jersey City State College in 1971. Hero time: with Jeff Beck at bergenPAC
He wanted to do something to encour-
age people, and to show them what surviv-
ing can look like. “I wanted to help survi-
vors feel happy for a night, and I wanted
to remind people who haven’t had can-
cer to get themselves checked out. It’s
important.”
So there Jamie was up on stage, with
all these people staring at him, although
the lights were shining on him and he
could see none of them. “It’s like you’re
in a white cloud,” he said. “Being on stage
is very different from practicing. It is an
entirely different experience.
“Some stuff goes right, and some stuff
goes wrong. It’s strange. You can feel the
excitement in the room. And you want to
get people to react.
“It’s a strange feeling, really satisfying,
really physically and emotionally draining
but very satisfying. At the Fur Peace Ranch in Pomeroy, Ohio, Jamie stands With famed amplifier builder Jim Marshall and a friend.
“Really, there’s no other feeling like it,” between Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen of Hot Tuna Marshall built the red Park amplifier in 1967; it is the rarest
Jamie said. and Jefferson Airplane. piece in Jamie’s collection.

Jewish Standard JUNE 8, 2018 15

Local

Why New Jersey’s Orthodox fight

a bill to outlaw child marriages
BEN SALES

A
bill that would ban teenagers under 18 from
getting married in New Jersey has been stalled
because of opposition from the state’s charedi
Orthodox community.
Agudath Israel of America, the national charedi organi-
zation, says it supports the bill but that its provisions are
too strict. Citing child marriages that take place in obser-
vant Jewish communities, it wants to see an exemption
made for older teenagers who want to wed.
Saying that “any marriage under the age of 18 is illegal
seems a bit extreme,” Rabbi Avi Schnall, the group’s New
Jersey director, said. “It’s a cultural thing, mostly in the
Sephardic community; culturally they tend to get married
younger. It’s not a biblical obligation — most of our girls
don’t get married under 18 — it’s a cultural thing.
“It’s part of their heritage.”
Jewish activists are driving both sides of the debate. The
main group lobbying for the bill is Unchained at Last, a
New Jersey-based nonprofit that opposes underage mar-
riage. The group’s founder, Fraidy Reiss, who grew up cha-
redi, says child marriage, primarily of girls to older men, is
an abusive practice that can damage children emotionally
and physically.
“Marriage before 18 can so easily be a forced marriage
or it can turn into a forced marriage,” Ms. Reiss said.
“You’re subjecting this girl to a human rights abuse. It Fraidy Reiss, founder of Unchained at Last, addresses a recent rally opposing child marriages.
destroys girls’ health, their education, their economic
opportunities. It significantly increases the risk that
they’ll be beaten by their spouse. It literally destroys right decision.”
girls’ lives.” But the bill’s sponsors disagree, and have reintroduced
Under New Jersey law, 16- and 17-year-olds are allowed it this year now that Democratic Governor Phil Murphy
to marry with parental consent, and children 15 and has replaced Mr. Christie. The current bill was set to come It’s a cultural thing,
younger are allowed to marry with the permission of a to a vote last week, but was removed from the agenda
judge. The bill would outlaw both of those practices. If the after Assemblyman Gary Schaer of Passaic, who has spo- mostly in the Sephardic
bill passes, it would make New Jersey only the second state ken with Agudath on the issue, raised concerns about it. community; culturally
in the country to ban child marriage. Delaware banned the Mr. Schaer — who is Orthodox — has said he opposes the
practice earlier this year. bill because of Agudath’s objections. they tend to get
The bill is supported by a majority of the state’s Gen- But when he talked about it, Mr. Schaer avoided dis- married younger.
eral Assembly, the legislature’s lower house. A similar bill cussing religion, and said instead that he just believes
passed both houses of the state legislature last year, but the bill is too absolute. To illustrate his qualms, he gave It’s not a biblical
then-Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, required that the hypothetical example of a 17-year-old girl who is obligation.
the bill include the amendment Agudath is seeking, which pregnant but cannot marry the baby’s father because
the law would forbid it.
“To have a situation where we’re creating an absolute don’t allow 17-year-olds to vote.
— if you’re 18 you can get married, if you’re under 18 you “The age of majority in New Jersey is 18.”
can’t — that to me is a problem,” he said. “There needs Ms. Reiss, who attended a charedi Orthodox high
You’re subjecting this to be some room for maneuvering, for the reality of the school, remembers going to parties for classmates who
human condition.” got married while they still were in school. She says that
girl to a human rights Despite Mr. Schaer’s opposition, the bill is expected entering a marriage as a child is a situation fraught with
abuse. It destroys girls’ to pass the Assembly vote this week, and once it clears danger, because children are not allowed to leave home,
both houses Mr. Murphy is expected to sign it. The bill’s enter into their own contracts, or retain an attorney. She
health, their education, lead sponsor, Assemblywoman Nancy Munoz of Summit, said it’s unclear if a child is allowed to file for divorce in
their economic noted that of more than 3,000 minors married in New New Jersey. She also noted that the State Department con-
Jersey between 1995 and 2015, 95 percent were either 16 siders child marriage to be gender discrimination and a
opportunities. or 17. So if an exemption were created for 16- and 17-year- human rights issue.
olds, she said, the bill would be pointless. She said that given how vulnerable children are, it
would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to marry with the permis- Ms. Munoz, who is a nurse by profession, said that safe- would be wrong to make child marriage subject to the
sion of their parents and a judge. guarding the rights of children is a focus of hers as a leg- review of a judge — no matter the child’s age.
“Minors must be protected, and we applaud the attempt islator. She said that religious concerns should not trump “We know the judicial review process is not protect-
of the sponsors to protect children and underage girls protections afforded by secular law. ing children,” Ms. Reiss said. “We’re going to apply that
from very unfortunate situations,” Agudah’s Rabbi Schnall “We’re doing the bill so there won’t be exceptions to flawed process to the 95 percent of children affected by
said. “A 17-year-old girl shouldn’t be getting married by it,” she said. “Much of my legislation has to do with pro- the exemption? It’s like banning age discrimination prac-
herself, on her own. Take her before a judge. tecting the people from abuse and put them in a safe tices, except for job candidates over age 50.”
“We have confidence that the judge will make the situation. We don’t allow 16-year-olds to drive a car. We  JTA WIRE SERVICE

16 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018

 Thank you to our
PERPETUAL ANNUAL CAMPAIGN ENDOWMENT DONORS
Federation thanks the following individuals for their generosity
and leadership in establishing PACE funds.
DOR L’DOR SOCIETY MEMBERS
GUARDIANS Leonard Cole
Louis Green Cheryl and Edward Dauber
The Kaplen Foundation Alan M. Gallatin
Beth and Mark Metzger Hope and David J. Goodman
Henry Taub Steven Morey Greenberg
BENEFACTORS Harry Immerman
Eva Lynn and Leo Gans Daniel Jarashow
Sandor Garfinkle Morton Jarashow
Martin Perlman David Kessler
Martha and Samuel Richman Anna Berger and David Kramer
Helen and David Wajdengart Nina Kampler and Zvi S. Marans
BUILDERS Philip Moss
Anonymous Selma and Charles Pariser
Anonymous Ronald A. Rosensweig
Anonymous Trudy and Sy Sadinoff
Howard Blatt Norman Seiden
Vivian and Myron Bregman Stanley Shirvan
Doris and Dennis Brown and Leon Sokol
Monte Manton Muriel F. and George Wall

COMMUNITY SUSTAINERS
Anonymous Renee and Fred Gruenspecht
Susan Benkel Samuel Kent
Ella and Gerrard Berman Susan Klarreich
Pauline and Samuel Bograd Robert David Kessler (RDK)
Edward Epstein Lori Sackler
Sharry Friedberg Bernard Selling
Stanley Goodman Leslie Smith
Star of David
Society Member
Women’s JAYNE PETAK RONALD A. ROSENSWEIG
Pomegranate
Endowment Endowment Foundation Chair PACE Chair
In Memoriam
ROBIN ROCHLIN 201.820.3970
Endowment Foundation Managing Director

YOUR LEGACY MATTERS.

JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018 17
Local

It was a
full house
More than 250 people gathered at the Alpine Country
Club for the Jewish Federation of Northern New
Jersey’s 6th annual Federation Full House. They
enjoyed fine food, Scotch, stogies, competitive poker;
this year, organizers added blackjack to the mix.
Federation Full House raised more than $1,000,000;
this year’s proceeds will benefit the federation’s

PHOTOS COURTESY JFNNJ

hunger relief efforts.

Guests relaxed and had

fun as they raised money
to help fight hunger
in Bergen County.

Ami Rosen is the Federation Steve Rogers and Michael Saskin Josh Ralby and David Hausman Scott Basloe and Daniel Herz
Full House champion

Participants had great fun for a great cause. Guests raise their glasses in celebration.

Erika Jacobs,
Julie Fein, and
Andrew Jacobs

Noah Garden and

JoJo Rubach

18 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018

 10”

SAR High School Congratulates the Class of 2018

Bina Aaronson Gabrielle Cohen Ty Rocker Sammy Sokol

Joshua Askowitz Joshua Crisafi ‫ מזל טוב‬to Our Graduates Martin Rosen Dan Sonnenblick
Rosie Bader Joshua Dorfman Pinchas Rosenfeld Gabriel Spiegel
Nathaniel Ben-Meir Abigail Ebrahimoff Amit Ginzberg Anna Jonas Miriam Liberman Rebecca Rosenzweig Rebecca Spitzer
Keren Benillouche Jay Eisenstat Joely Glass Ayelet Kalfus Talya Lisker Sara Rosin Jacalyn Tokayer
Aaron Benillouche Jacob Epstein Saul Goldstein Eitan Karsch Avigail Maayan Abigail Saltzman Mia Tuchman
Max Berger Joshua Erber Sara Goldstein Dalia Katz Hillel Merkin Sophia Samuels Francesca Turek
Libby Bergier-Pesin Sophia Feder Ariel Greenwald Leora Santoriello Gilead Turok
Sydney Klein Maayan Milgram
Zack Bernstein Ariela Feinblum Joshua Greenwald Ellen Schanzer Ethan Turok
Benjamin Klestzick Joseph Minkove
Joseph Block Abigail Finkelstein Jessie Gronowitz Sasha Schreiber Ruth Wasserman
Naama Kobrin Noa Mintz
Oshi Bloom Netanel Fiorino Noah Gurin Hannah Schwalbe Nomi Weinberger
Julian Kofman Sara Morris
Ami Bloom Rafael Fischer Romi Harcsztark Jacob Schwalbe Sylvie Weinstein
Shai Bocarsly Jessica Fischler Sarina Kofman Jonathan Mukamal
Yael Hartman Debra Schwartzben Adam Weiss
Sarah Bolnick Judy Fogel Gordon Kolb Jacob Nayowitz Alexander Segal Meital Wiederhorn
Sophie Herskowitz
Gabrielle Broome Judah Fortgang Kobe Kranz Rebecca Ordan Ethan Shafer Ari Williams
Efraim Herstic
Jason Burian Odelia Fried Davida Krauss Noa Pitkowsky Tova Sidlow Sara Winter
Elan Hirsch
13” Jonah Burian Joshua Friedman Adir Landes Arielle Polinsky Zev Siegal Aleeza Wolff
Katriella Hirsch-
Jonathan Cappell Kayla Friedman Hoffman Liana Lapp Aliza Presser Sarah Smart Abigail Wolff
Meira Chasman Sarah Gabay Duvi Horowitz Mia Leibowitz Danna Rebibo Chloe Smith Joseph Yudelson
Rachel Cohen Tamar Geller Eva Ingber David Lewis Eric Risch Lily Snyder Hayley Yurowitz

We are proud of our graduates who will attend outstanding yeshivot The universities and colleges our graduates will attend reflect their
and programs in Israel for the 2018-2019 academic year. commitment to learning, Jewish life and their individual aspirations.
Women’s Yeshivot: Men’s Yeshivot: Co-Ed Programs: Barnard College Hofstra University Sarah Lawrence College
Amudim Mechinat Keshet Yehuda Artzi Baruch College of the CUNY Hunter College of the CUNY Tufts University
Machon Maayan Mechinat Otzem Bar Ilan XP
Binghamton University - Johns Hopkins University University at Albany - SUNY
Midreshet Amit Yeshivat Aish Gesher Beit Yisrael SUNY List College/Jewish University of Chicago
Midreshet Emunah v’Omanut Yeshivat Ashreinu Bina Brandeis University Theological Seminary
Eco-Israel University of Maryland,
Midreshet HaRova Yeshivat Eretz Hatzvi
Brown University Macaulay Honors College of College Park
Midreshet Lindenbaum Yeshivat Hakotel Hevruta the CUNY
City College of the CUNY University of Massachusetts,
Midreshet Moriah Yeshivat Har Etzion Kivunim
Columbia University McGill University Amherst
Midreshet Torat Chessed Yeshivat Hesder Birkat Moshe Kol Ami
Cooper Union Muhlenberg College University of Michigan,
Migdal Oz - Maale Adumim Nativ
New York University Ann Arbor
Nishmat Yeshivat Hesder Maale Gilboa Cornell University
We are proud of our Oberlin College University of Pennsylvania
Shaalvim for Women Yeshivat Lev Hatorah Dartmouth College
students who will be Pitzer College Washington University in
Tzahali Yeshivat Orayta Drexel University
serving in the St. Louis
Midreshet Torah V’Avodah Yeshivat Reishit Yerushalayim Israel Defense Forces Emory University Queens College of the CUNY
Yale University
Yeshivat Shaarei Mevaseret next year. Rutgers University, New
Harvard University Yeshiva University
Zion Brunswick
Yeshivat Torat Shraga
Yeshivat Torah V’Avodah
Michael Courtney, Director of College Counseling
Israel Guidance Department: Marjorie Jacobs, Director of College Counseling, Emerita
Laura Shaw Frank, Director of Israel Guidance Cari Cohen, Associate Director of College Counseling
Lisa Birnbaum Rabbi Yehoshua Lindenbaum Rabbi Josh Rosenfeld Lisa Birnbaum, Assistant Director of College Counseling
Rabbi Akiva Block Rachel Margolin Shuli Taubes Jamie Vichinsky, Administrative Assistant of College Counseling

SAR High School: 503 West 259th Street • Riverdale, New York 10471 • 718-548-2727 • www.sarhighschool.org
Rabbi Tully Harcsztark, Principal Nancy Lerea, Associate Principal, Director of Admissions Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz, Associate Principal
Gloria Schneider, Director of General Studies Lisa Schlaff, Director of Judaic Studies Rabbi Daniel Kroll, Assistant Principal

It’s not just what you learn. It’s who you become.
Jewish Standard JUNE 8, 2018 19
Briefly Local
Congressman Josh Gottheimer and Izzy Infield, president
of the Teaneck Volunteer Ambulance Corps, participate at a
remembrance service at Teaneck’s Municipal Green.
Relay for Life at Paramus High
Paramus will hold its sixth annual
American Cancer Society Relay For Life,
called “Super Relay Heroes,” at Paramus
High School on the weekend of June 15
and 16. The event is a celebration of the
year-long efforts to raise funds for the
American Cancer Society. More than
$62,000 has been raised so far through
personal donations and corporate
sponsorships; the goal is $140,000.
The opening ceremony will feature
a flag ceremony by the Paramus Boy
Scouts and speeches by Dr. Eleonora
Teplinsky, the director of breast medical
oncology at the Valley Health System,
and by a cancer survivor, who also will
cut the ribbon to begin the relay. Can-
cer survivors will walk the first lap and
caregivers will join them for the second.
Arzei Darom honoring couple
Congregation Arzei
Darom of Teaneck
will hold its 16th
annual journal dinner
on Sunday, June 10,
at 6 p.m., at Temple
Emeth in Teaneck.
Ron and Aliza Gold-
gewert will be the
guests of honor.
The Goldgewerts
have been ac tive
members of Arzei Aliza and Ron Goldgewert
Darom since they
moved to Teaneck in 2006. Their leader-
ship and support have been instrumen-
tal to the shul’s ongoing growth.
Ron Goldgewert, the shul’s treasurer,
has been a board member and presi-
dent. He has served as editor of Mikrai
Kodesh, a compilation of divrei Torah
20 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018
State Senate Majority Leader Loretta
Weinberg and Teaneck Mayor Mohammed
Hameeduddin with James DiMicco, left.
More than 100 cancer survivors and
caregivers are expected to participate.
Activities include photos with super
heroes, costume contest, yoga, and an
obstacle course. Local bands and DJs
will provide music. Teams also will have
fundraisers at their campsites.
“Relay is physical proof that you are
truly never alone in the fight against can-
cer,” Paramus High School senior Amanda
Felten, a committee co-chair, said.
Online registration is available until
June 14 and participants also can regis-
ter at the walk. For information, go to
www.RelayForLife.org/ParamusNJ, call
the American Cancer Society at (800)
227-2345; or request Danielle Therese as
a Facebook friend for relay updates.
written by congre-
gants, and he gives
community shiurim on
the High Holy Days as
part of the Oleh L’regel
series. He also con-
ducts a popular weekly
Gemara class on Shab-
PHOTO PROVIDED
bat mornings and is a
member of the syna-
gogue’s Torah reading
rotation.
Aliza Goldgewert
has chaired the mem-
bership committee for five years and
helps with the mishloach manot and
bake sale committees. At Yeshivat Noam,
she was treasurer and a member of the
executive board and volunteers.
Fo r m o re i n f o r m a t i o n go t o
arzeidarom.org.
PHOTOS PROVIDED
YU women’s group unveils gala
The Yeshiva University
Women’s Organization
will hold its annual bene-
fit gala luncheon on June
13 at the Grand Tier at
the Metropolitan Opera
House at Lincoln Cen-
ter on West 62nd Street
in Manhattan. A perfor-
mance of American Bal-
let Theater’s “Romeo &
Juliet” will follow.
Arlene Fox of Brook- Arlene and the late Moshe
lyn will be honored for Yehuda Fox
more than two decades
of service to the organization as a board
member and active volunteer. She will
accept the award in memory of her hus-
band, Moshe Yehuda Fox, z”l. Not only
has Ms. Fox been active in YUWO, she also
held presidential and vice-presidential
positions in Emunah of America for almost
half a century. She is a member of the
Zionist Organization of America, Amer-
ica for a Safe Israel, and the Kingsway
Memorial dedication in Englewood
The Lisa and Joseph Reibel Holocaust Memorial Garden at Congregation Ahavath Torah in
Englewood is set to open on Sunday, June 17 — Father’s Day — at 10 a.m. A light breakfast
will follow. For more information, call (201) 568-1315 or email office@ahavathTorah.org.
Memorial Day
on Cedar Lane
The Teaneck Family Festival, presented by the
Cedar Lane Management Group, was held on
Memorial Day, Monday, May 26, on Cedar Lane.
The festival, which celebrates war veterans, fea-
tured a remembrance service, patriotic music, a
cabaret competition, a street fair, and an awards
ceremony.
The day’s sponsors included Holy Name Medical
Center, Butterflake Bakery, and Davis, Saperstein
& Salomon, PC.
James DiMicco accepted an award for J&J Phar-
macy in recognition of 70 years of service to the
Teaneck community.
The festival is produced by Mort and Ray Produc-
tions. For information, go to www.cedarlane.net.
Jewish Center.
YUWO was founded
in 1924 to raise funds to
build the first student
dormitories, and its mis-
sion, to provide food,
clothing, and funds for
the students’ personal
PHOTO PROVIDED
welfare, has continued.
The President’s Soci-
ety for Torah Chesed
endowment fund pro-
vides monthly stipends
for undergraduate stu-
dents whose financial
needs are not covered by scholarships,
including food, clothing, textbooks, and
health care. YUWO also supports educa-
tional programs on campus, shabbatons,
the Torah Chesed Counseling Center Fund
for medical and counseling needs, and
general scholarship support.
Learn more about the gala at www.
yu.edu/yuwo.
COURTESY AHAVATH TORAH
UPCOMING AT KAPLEN JCC on the Palisades
Yoga on the Lawn
WITH ALISON MILLER, ROBERT HOON,
ZASHA DELVALLE & JUSTEEN NASON

Our FREE annual, all-level outdoor yoga class, led by

an inspirational team of JCC instructors, is a not-to-
be-missed exercise experience. Stretch out on the J’s
expansive camp field, with sunscreen, your mat, towel
and water bottle and prepare to breath deep!

Yoga
Sun, Jun 10, 9 am, 75-Min, Free and Open
to the Community, RSVP Recommended
Visit jccotp.org/yogaonthelawn FREE
NEW 7:30 AM-6 PM
Infant Program at the J!
Going back to work after you maternity leave? Having a
hard time finding a nanny you feel comfortable with? Don’t
fret! We’ve got you covered! Babies, 3-12 months, enjoy
our clean bright space, nurturing environment, and small
teacher to baby ratio. Contact Elissa at
eyurowitz@jccotp.org or 201.408.1436 to schedule a tour. ON THE LAWN
SPACE LIMITED—CALL TODAY!
Visit jccotp.org/nursery
Not just a gym,
A Family Wellness Center

Celebrate Summer with a

JCC Membership!*
We’re more than a summer swim club, we’re a
year-round wellness center for the whole family!
Take a tour and get a 1-week pass for your entire
family to try us out. Enjoy indoor/outdoor facilities
for all ages. *Offer valid through June 30, 2018.
Find out more today! Visit membership, call
201.408.1448 or email join@jccotp.org

1 MONTH FREE! JOIN TODAY!

*

MUSIC ADULTS MUSIC

Founder's Day Concert Bridge Intermediate 3 SHIRAH Spring Concert

An annual celebratory event featuring
our incomparable student ensembles and
honoring Dr. Sandra O. Gold, who had the
vision to create a community music school
at the JCC.
Thur, Jun 14, 6:30 pm
jccotp.org/thurnauer
WITH AMY NELLISSEN
Sharpen your defense, bidding and declarer play.
Topics include defensive signals, second and third
hand play, practice with Jacoby transfers, Stayman
and finesses. Optional practice follows.
8 Tuesdays, Jun 12-Aug 14, 1-3 pm
(Except: Jun 26 & Jul 24), $205/$245
MARSHA BRYAN EDELMAN, CONDUCTOR
MATTHEW LAZAR, FOUNDING DIRECTOR
SHIRAH Community Chorus presents the annual Bernie
and Ruth Weinflash z”l Memorial Concert celebrating Israel
@ 70! With special guests Cantor Ronit Wolff Hanan and
Cantor David Perper.
Sun, Jun 17, 7 pm, $16/$20, Taub Auditorium
Tickets: jccotp.org/thurnauer

TO REGISTER OR FOR MORE INFO

VISIT jccotp.org
STAY IN THE KNOW! LIKE US ON
facebook.com/KaplenJCCOTP

KAPLEN JCC on the Palisades TAUB CAMPUS | 411 E CLINTON AVE, TENAFLY, NJ 07670 | 201.569.7900 | jccotp.org
JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018 21
Briefly Local

Students are recognized in the community

Honorees gather at Valley Chabad’s Teen Leadership Appreciation ceremony.
On May 14, Valley Chabad hosted its 2018 Teen Leadership
Appreciation, honoring more than 160 teen volunteers
from the Pascack and Saddle River Valley communities.
Each of those teens participated in at least one of Valley
Chabad’s four Teen Leadership Initiative programs: the
Friendship Circle, which pairs volunteers with special
needs children and their families for mutually enrich-
ing and fulfilling relationships; Eternal Flame, which
examines the history of the Holocaust through a vari-
ety of media and personal narratives as well as a trip
to Washington; Linking Hearts, which allows middle
school students to establish strong bonds with home-
bound seniors and nursing home residents; and Cteen,
which develops core values and volunteer leadership
training for high schoolers through education and com-
munity service in a social environment.
GMSTUDIOS

Brad Leopold, Sherry Hausman, Jessica Rosenblum, Emily Skobac,

The religious school of Temple Emanuel of the Pascack Valley held its graduation Gabrielle Brayman, and Jon Mousserie display their graduation
in the Rabbi Andre Ungar Amphitheater on the hill in front of the shul. Joining the T-shirts from the religious school at the JCC of Paramus/
graduates in the photo are religious school director Rabbi Shelley Kniaz, school Congregation Beth Tikvah.
administrator Margie Shore, Rabbi Loren Monosov, and Cantor Alan Sokoloff.

Lubavitch on the Palisades celebrated the graduation of students in the

course “What Is? Rethinking Everything We Know About Our Universe.”
The class, led by Rabbi Mordechai Shain, boasted a record attendance,
both in person and online. Go to chabadlubavitch.org for class recordings
and videos.
Cantor Ellen Tilem, school director Dora Geld Friedman, and Rabbi Steven Sirbu,
join students and teachers at a moving up ceremony at Temple Emeth in Teaneck.
Students come from Bergenfield, Teaneck, New Milford, Oradell, Hackensack, Fort
Lee, and Englewood. BARBARA BALKIN

22 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018

 Briefly Local

Gottheimer addresses Norpac

Sarah and Dr. Robert Goodman
hosted a Norpac pro-Israel meet-
ing with Congressman Josh Got-
theimer (D-5th Dist.) at their
Teaneck home. Mr. Gottheimer’s
district includes parts of Ber-
gen, Passaic, Sussex, and Warren
counties, including the towns of
Bergenfield, Fair Lawn, New Mil-
ford, Paramus, and Teaneck.
Mr. Gottheimer’s discussion
focused largely on the need to
keep U.S.-Israel relations a non- Dr. Robert and Sarah Goodman flank Josh
partisan issue. The pro-Israel Gottheimer at a Norpac gathering. Robin Rogers, Donna Weintraub, and Tina Lieberman at last
community must maintain and  COURTESY NORPAC year’s ride. COURTESY JFCSNNJ

increase its advocacy efforts to

keep up with the growing anti-Israel rhet-
oric from other groups on Capitol Hill, he
told the group.
PHOTOS COURTESY MICHAEL LAVES
Representative Gottheimer is finishing
up his first term in Congress and will run
Wheels for Meals event
for re-election in November. closes the gap on hunger
Jewish Family & Children’s Ser-
vices of Northern New Jersey will
hold its 8th annual JFCSNNJ Wheels
for Meals —Ride to Fight Hunger
ride and hike on Sunday, June 17,
at the Jewish Home at Rockleigh,
10 Link Drive in Rockleigh. The
day is geared for the whole fam-

ily and raises awareness to fight

hunger in the community. All pro-
ceeds support the Kosher Meals on
Wheels program and the JFCSNNJ
Food Pantry.
Bikers and walkers, including
beginners, are welcome to a new
2.4-mile hike to explore the Rock-
leigh Woods Sanctuary on the west-
Avi and Ginnine Fried Siggi Laster ern slope of the Palisades.
Cyclists can register for courses
Jewish Center of Teaneck that are 3, 10, 25, or 50 miles long,
depending on their age and ability.
will honor three at dinner Ride along the “Rail Trail” through
Sigi Laster will be the guest of honor and Gemach, which assists Jewish families in Orange County. Jerry Szubin and Jamie Janoff represent-
Ginnine and Avi Fried will receive the dis- Bergen County by distributing free baby All registered riders will receive ing Team Jewish Standard last year.
tinguished community service award at equipment and clothing for babies and entry to the food and beverage and
the Jewish Center of Teaneck’s annual din- toddlers, and fundraising to buy formula family fun areas. Pre-registered riders Dog House, Tenafly Bicycle Workshop, If
ner, on Monday, June 25, at 6:30 p.m. and diapers for families who need finan- also will receive a JFCS Wheels for Meals You Care, Becton Dickinson, LB Good-
Mr. Laster’s service on the shul board cial help. The dinner also celebrates Isra- T-shirt. All registrants will get one raffle man & Co., Diamond Chemical Co., Inc.,
and ritual committee, and his presence el’s 70th anniversary. ticket for gift cards from the Tenafly Bicy- Optima Fund Management, and East-
on the shul’s daily minyanim have been a The evening begins with Mincha at 6:15 cle Workshop. wick College.
reflection of his devotion to the shul. p.m., followed by a cocktail hour at 6:30, Sponsors include Holy Name Medical For information, go to ridetoFight-
The Frieds jointly revitalized the sister- the program at 7:30, and dinner at 8:15. It Center, Glass Gardens ShopRite, Stop & Hunger.com, email jaymiek@jfcsnnj.org,
hood and men’s club. Together they vol- ends with Ma’ariv at 9:30. Shop, the Jewish Standard, Oritani Bank, or call Jaymie Kerr at (201) 837-9090.
unteer on the kiddush committee and in For more information, call (201) 833- Jewish Home Family, Tapestrie, Teaneck
all aspects of youth programming. In the 0515 or go to www.jcot.org.
community, they run the Teaneck Baby

Trip to Lubavitcher rebbe’s grave

Sign up for the FREE To mark the 24th yahrzeit of the guidance.

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Schneerson, Lubavitch on the Palisades
Buses will leave from 11 Harold St. in
Tenafly at 6 p.m. There will be a spe-
will host a trip to his ohel (gravesite) in cial program and refreshments will be
daily newsletter! Queens on Wednesday, June 13.
Thousands of people go to the reb-
served. For information, call (201) 871-
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JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018 23
Rabbi Mark Golub,
center, is surrounded
by Jewish Broadcasting
Service staff members.
Dancing inside
and outside the circle
Jewish Broadcasting Service, based in Fort Lee,
lives up to its name; its head, Rabbi Mark Golub, explains
I
Joanne Palmer
sraelis live in a Jewish culture.
Even secular Israelis arrange
their year by Jewish holidays,
and their weeks by Shabbat.
In the United States, we do
not live in a Jewish culture, even
though if you live in the tristate area you
might feel surrounded by Jews. All our
mass media assume a sort of bland default
Christianity. And the more mass the
media, the more true that assumption.
You can find Jewish podcasts to download
in the exact same place on your phone
where you find every other podcast, for
example, but if you turn on broadcast
television, you’re pretty much back to the
24 Jewish Standard JUNE 8, 2018
Cover Story
Christian default.
But there is one station that is all Jew-
ish all the time. Perhaps unsurprisingly,
it is called JBS — the Jewish Broadcasting
Service.
And its headquarters is in Fort Lee.
The channel is the brainchild (or per-
haps heartchild, given the emotion and
passion that is poured into it) of Rabbi
Mark Golub.
JBS takes a wide-ranging view of Jew-
ish life, and that makes sense, given Rabbi
Golub’s background. “I have a unique
perspective among American rabbis,”
he said. Unique in its range, he meant; it
would be fair to say that he had a foot in all
the major Jewish religious streams but he
is not a quadruped. And perhaps unique
in the way that multi-stream, four-footed
background has nurtured his dream of
making Jewish education available to
everyone.
Rabbi Golub’s maternal grandfather
“got smicha” — ordination — “from the
famed Slobodka Yeshiva,” in Lithuania.
“He came to the United States in the 1920s
to be a rabbi in Norfolk, Connecticut, but
after spending one day as rabbi there he
realized that American Jews had no idea
of how to treat rabbis,” Rabbi Golub said.
“So he left.”
But his grandfather, Benjamin New-
man, “remained a committed Orthodox
Jew,” Rabbi Golub continued. “He became
a painter” — of walls, not of fine art — “and
then he moved to the Midwest — to Union
City, Ohio — and became a peddler. And
then one lucky day he found a shiny piece
of steel, and it turned out to be valuable.
So instead of being a peddler, he went into
steel.” He flourished. He brought his wife,
Frieda, and their children to America.
The family — the oldest child, Rebecca,
became Rabbi Golub’s mother — moved to
the Bronx, and then to Manhattan’s Upper
West Side. They belonged to the Carle-
bach Shul, as it was not yet called. “I was
brought up going to shul there, on 79th
Street,” he said. “I remember my grand-
father sitting on one side of the mechitza,
and whenever he wanted to talk to my
grandmother, he’d pick up the curtain and
talk to Frieda, who was sitting right on the
other side.
“The way I grew up, it was all about yes,
and never about no.
“One of the things that really affected

Broadcasting on Yom Ha’Atzmaut, the iconic photograph of Israeli soldiers in
Jerusalem behind him, Rabbi Golub celebrates Israel at 70.
me was seeing my grandfather and grand-
mother horsing around, which you usually
didn’t see,” he added. “They were prob-
ably in their 60s then. They loved each
other very much.”
Rabbi Golub’s paternal father, Jacob
S. Golub, “was a friend and colleague of
Mordechai Kaplan,” who began as Ortho-
dox, taught at the Conservative Jewish
Theological Seminary, and founded the
Reconstruction movement. Once his par-
ents, Leo Golub and Rebecca Newman,
married, the couple joined the first Recon-
structionist synagogue, the Society for the
Advancement of Judaism, just a few blocks
away from the Carlebach Shul, where his
mother was the secretary for Ira Eisen-
stein, Kaplan’s son-in-law and the SAJ’s
rabbi. “The theolo�y of Mordecai Kaplan
is profoundly in me,” Rabbi Golub said.
“He was the most influential rabbi of the
20th century. Heschel” — that’s Abraham
Joshua Heschel, the mid-century Con-
servative teacher and theologian — “and
Soloveitchik” — as in Joseph Ber Soloveit-
chik, the mid-century Orthodox teacher
and theologian — were brilliant, but none
of them shaped Jewish life today the way
Kaplan did.”
Mark Golub was born in 1949; given his
parents’ backgrounds, “I grew up with
Orthodoxy on one side, and Reconstruc-
tionism on the other. And when my par-
ents married, they created a Conservative
household. I was raised in a mainstream
Conservative synagogue. That’s because
the family moved to Trumbull, Connecti-
cut, and joined Congregation Rodeph Sho-
lom in Bridgeport.”
Therefore, guided by an internal logic
and in search of as much experience as
possible, once he graduated from col-
lege — Columbia — “and I decided to go
Cover Story
to rabbinical school, I chose HUC,” Rabbi
Golub said. That’s Hebrew Union College
— Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reform
movement’s seminary. “That’s because
I did not consider myself to be a shomer
mitzvot Jew, and JTS required it,” he said.
“I wanted to be on the most observant side
of the Reform movement.
“So now, I have all four of those kinds
of Judaism profoundly inside me,” he con-
tinued. “I came to the understanding that
none of them is absolute truth. Each one
The way I grew
up, it was all
about yes, and
never about no.
has its strengths and weaknesses. And
we are all part of klal Israel.” He does not
like labels. He’s a member of the Central
Conference of Reform Rabbis, the Reform
movement organization, but “I don’t
consider myself a typical Reform rabbi”
he said. Instead, “Literally ‘rabbi’ means
teacher. I am a teacher.’”
Should he have to label himself, “I call
myself ohav Israel,” he said. A lover of
Israel.
This is an issue that means a great deal
to Rabbi Golub. “Rabbis are not holier or
better than anyone else,” he said. “Rab-
bis take themselves too seriously. The
point is to take Judaism seriously. To take
Torah seriously. But not to take yourself Fella gets around! From above, the puppet is with children,
seriously. I doubt, like any other sensitive with JBS associate producer Darah Golub, and musician Rick
Jew doubts, and any Jew who says they Recht, and with Ms. Golub as they explain the Passover seder.
don’t doubt I don’t take seriously. Jewish
Jewish standard JUne 8, 2018 25
Cover Story

hours, and the parents would spend as

At left, ventriloquist Jonathan Geffner with a friend; at right, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, on her own JBS show.
tradition is all about searching.
“There are moments when I am sure –
but only moments. Most of the time there
is doubt.
“The trick is not whether you believe in
God, but whether you act as if you believe
in God. Ke’elu — as if.
All this is relevant because it is reflected
in the JBS’s programming; when he says
that he spans the range of Jewish thought,
Rabbi Golub knows what he is talking
about and means what he says.
Rabbi Golub was ordained in 1971.
“There was very little adult education then
outside the Orthodox movement,” he said.
“But there was a group of educated Jews
in Stamford” — whose education had been
purely secular but whose curiosity about
their own tradition was strong — “who
wanted to learn more. There were young
parents in their 30s who said, ‘We don’t
want a rabbi just to teach our children. We
want a rabbi to teach us.’
“And that is every rabbi’s dream. Most
synagogues outside the Orthodox move-
ment were established for religious school
parents, who are members to get their
kids bar mitzvaed — as if bar mitzvah were
a transitive verb — and as soon as it is over
they are out the door.
“Parents literally would drive their kids
up to the synagogue’s front door, the kids
would go in for Hebrew school for two
little time as possible inside. But they paid
their dues, and that paid the bills.”
Instead, Rabbi Golub set up a model
where the parents necessarily were as
involved as their children; every other
Sunday night, he would teach parents of
Hebrew school kids. They’d meet in some-
one’s house and “I would do midrash or
Jewish thought with them,” he said.
Like many people, Rabbi Golub loved
more than one thing. Next to his passion
for Jewish life and Jewish education, in a
sort of parallel track, ran his love for radio.
“And I was just lucky,” he said.
He knew R. Peter Straus, the socially
connected, socially conscious New Yorker
— or “a big liberal Jew,” as Rabbi Golub
put it — who took over the radio station
WMCA, changed it from all music — it
played early Top 40 rock ‘n’ roll — to
become the country’s first talk radio sta-
tion. “Straus called me into his office just
as I was being ordained, and said, ‘I know
you love radio. Do you want to be the edi-
torial director and director of public affairs
for WMCA?’”
It was a no-brainer. Yes, Rabbi Golub
said. So he had two strands to his life —
“the chavurah in Stamford formally hired

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26 Jewish Standard JUNE 8, 2018

 Cover Story

me. It’s a unique entity — adults studying

every other Sunday night, coming with
folding chairs and a chumash.” He also
was the assistant editor of the Reform
movement’s journal of ideas, Shma. At the
same time, “I was WMCA’s editorial direc-
tor, writing all its editorials. (The station
was unusual in that it aired editorials; it
was liberal in its orientation.) “And I ended
up as a substitute host often, sitting in for
Barry Gray and Barry Farber.
“I was having the time of my life,” he
said.
In 1979, “Peter Straus was tapped by
Jimmy Carter to head the Voice of Amer-
ica,” Rabbi Golub said. “Before he left At left, the Jerusalem Post’s deputy managing editor, Caroline Glick, and at right, Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth
WMCA to do that, I made a deal with him. I Bader Ginsburg, both as they appeared on JBS.
would stay for another year, and he would
let me stay in my office and let me create necessary to add.) “I get to sit with the he sat with Ruth at our dining room table ideas were stupid. But the fourth idea was
a Jewish radio program called ‘L’Chayim.’ most brilliant, articulate men and women, every day. He began with children’s books.” not stupid at all. He said, ‘I see you do tele-
It premiered in February 1979, on Sunday, who are shaping Jewish life. My first pro- Ruth is his wife, Ruth Ellen Gelman vision. Do you want to do television for
and to this day it has never missed a week. grams in 1979 were with Isaac Bashevis Golub; “Everything that is good has hap- Russian Jews?’
“I still do it now. It airs on JBS now seven Singer and Elie Wiesel.” pened to me because of my Ruth,” Rabbi “I did due diligence. There was a large
days a week.” How does that work? “There In 1990, when masses of Jews left the Golub said. Russian Jewish community, and it wasn’t
are a lot of repeats,” he acknowledged. Soviet Union, one of them, a man named “I didn’t like Michael at all. I would walk all in Brighton Beach. And I saw that there
And now, like all of Rabbi Golub’s work, Michael Pravin, made his way to Connecti- by him and say hi, and he would not say was Asian and Haitian and Spanish televi-
it’s television rather than radio. cut; the chavurah sponsored him. “He a word. But one day he knocked on my sion, but not Russian.”
What is L’Chayim? “To me, it’s like a came to America not knowing a word of study door and said that he’d like me to That’s how the Russian Television Net-
Jewish Charlie Rose show,” he said. (Char- English, but he was determined to be a suc- help him with an idea. I was his rabbi. work, which was headquartered in Fort
lie Rose without the #MeToo taint, it is cess here. He wanted to learn English, so “The idea was stupid, and the next two Lee, began. “I could not speak a word of

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 More than
410,000 likes. Cover Story
Like us on
Facebook. Russian, but he brought me two people who could,
and who could speak English.” He hired those two —
Alex Gordon and Galina Todd — “on the spot, and they
were our two anchors.”
RTN began in 1993, on cable. “It changed every-
thing in my life,” Rabbi Golub said. “I had no clue how
important this would be.” The station was not Jewish,
although “95 percent of the audience was, and they
loved that a rabbi was its president. I taught English
facebook.com/ and Judaism on RTN, but other than that it was a secu-
jewishstandard lar channel.”
It was a cable channel; people had to subscribe to it.
Rabbi Golub’s business partner in this venture was
his brother, David Golub, who is a “wildly success-
ful attorney in Stanford,” Rabbi Golub said. “We lost
money every month at the beginning of the enter-
prise. Every month David would put in more money.
“After about a year, one month he didn’t lose money.
We broke even. And from that moment on we never
lost money again. We grew and grew and became a
force in the Russian American community. All of a sud-
den my name was known in Russia.
“It was flabbergasting.
“And I began to make money, for the first time in
my life.”
After that, the station continued to flourish; the
Golub brothers sold it, and then bought it back again.
Everything was fine — and in fact it was during that
time that Rabbi Golub hired Janet Weiss of Mahwah,
who, he said, “is a fantastic person,” and who seems
to be at the station’s heart. “We built the staff,” he said.
“We are a wonderful and lovely family.”
And then, once again, everything changed. “The
internet caught up with us,” Rabbi Golub said. “It
caught up with everyone. All of a sudden, people
could go online, or get channels for free, or for much
less money.
“And so we started losing money, and then we went
downhill, and we couldn’t stop it.”
What next?
“All I did was answer the phone,” Rabbi Golub said.
“The phone rang, and I answered it,” as he had when
Peter Straus first offered him a job at WMCA. “A guy
named Brad Hammer calls me. There was a door
there, and I opened it.
“He wanted to create a Jewish channel — the first
one — but he couldn’t do it alone,” Rabbi Golub con-
tinued. “He asked me to partner with him.
“At the time, all of Jewish television was in one of
two forms. You either bought time on a cable system
or you got public access time, which was free. In either
case, it was of very low quality and only for niche
audiences.
“But Brad Hammer got a cable system to say that it
would offer a Jewish channel to its viewers. So we cre-
ated Shalom TV in 2004, and in 2005 it premiered on
Comcast’s video on demand channel.
“But video on demand is problematic. You can’t do
live programming. You can’t do news. You don’t have
a channel number. And a lot of people — the majority
of Jews — never knew it existed. So I decided to move
from video on demand to live television.
“From the day I started L’Chayim in 1979, I had a
dream that I would establish the first Jewish channel in
America, but I gave that dream up,” Rabbi Golub said.
“It was too expensive. And then Brad Hammer came
and he changed the way I looked at it. And I said yes,
let’s go for it.”
The Jewish Broadcast Network began small. “And
then we had a big break,” Rabbi Golub said. “Cablevi-
sion called me and said they would launch Channel
138.” He changed the name from Shalom TV to JBN,

28 Jewish standard JUne 8, 2018

 Cover Story
Sandi M. Malkin, LL C
“on the public broadcasting model.
“And JBS has slowly made progress. We are now in
more than 40 million homes.”
Interior Designer
He’s hoping to get in more homes, be picked up (former interior designer of model
by more networks, and he thinks that there is a good
chance that will happen, although now he waxes mys-
rooms for NY’s #1 Dept. Store)
terious about the whole thing. But “as important as
the whole country is, the greater New York area still is
the center of American Jewish life,” he said. And the For a totally new look using
station always is available online, at jbstv.org.
The channel’s programming is mainly in English, your furniture or starting anew.
although it often plays movies, which tend to be
in Hebrew, with subtitles; nothing in Hebrew is not
subtitled. Staging also available
What’s the channel like? “Imagine PBS if it were Jew-
ish-themed,” Rabbi Golub said. “Then you’d have the 973-535-9192
idea. Every day, we have English-language news from
Israel. It tends to be center-right, because that’s where
the Israeli people tend to be. We don’t produce it; we
get it from Israel.
“Our own programming is very centrist, and very
pro-Israel. We celebrated Israel’s 70th birthday with
a four-hour live telecast. As an example of our range,
on that program we had Rick Jacobs” — the rabbi who
heads the Reform movement — “Jeremy Ben-Ami”
— the head of the left-wing American organization J
Street — “Morton Klein” — the head of the right-wing
Organization of America — “Abe Foxman” — the for-
mer head of the Anti-Defamation League — “Jerry
Silverman” — soon-to-be-former head of the Jewish
Federations of North America — “Brooke Goldstein”
— the journalist who headlines public radio’s “On the
Media” — “Israel consul general Dani Dayan, Ruth
Wisse” of Harvard, the writer “Francine Klagsbrun,
Alan Solow,” the former president of the Conference of
Major American Jewish Organizations. “It’s the entire
spectrum of the Jewish community. It’s a huge range
— but it’s all pro-Israel.
“JBS isn’t religious, but it is inclusive and eclectic,”
Rabbi Golub continued. “We produce a weekly Tal-
mud series with the fabulous Orthodox Rabbi Morde-
chai Becker. That’s produced in this studio right here,
in Fort Lee. And also we have shows from a non-Ortho-
dox perspective.”
The channel produces five or six hours of new mate-
rial a day, he said; the rest is reruns or from other places;
it includes such shows as broadcasts from lectures at the
92nd Street Y. “We give people front-row seats at some
of the most wonderful talks.” Another program, “From
the Aleph Bet,” teaches beginning Hebrew, so “people
who never were comfortable picking up a siddur now
can read the prayer book,” Rabbi Golub said. “It’s the
single most successful program we have.
“We are the only channel in American television
with Jewish studies and Jewish children’s program-
ming,” he continued. “And we are the only channel to
show services live. We show services from Central Syn-
agogue in Manhattan. JBS gives elderly homebound
Jews a connection back into Jewish life.
“We have created a sense of Jewish community for
Jews who don’t have access to it in any other way,”
he said. “It’s community for Jews who live on the
periphery. Who live in Nashville, or in Austin, or in
Napa Valley.
“We touch both the periphery and the base,” Rabbi
Golub concluded. He quoted Rabbi Avi Weiss, who
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Jewish Standard JUNE 8, 2018 29

Jewish World

David Friedman tells the media to shut their mouths. Why?

RON KAMPEAS

WASHINGTON — David Friedman, the

U.S. ambassador to Israel, waded into the
debate over media coverage of Israel with
a pointed request to journalists.
Reporters should “just keep your
mouths shut until you figure it out,” he was
quoted as saying at a conference launching
a new Jerusalem bureau for MediaLine, a
Middle East news service.
“Because otherwise, all you’re doing is
creating impressions that have no basis in
fact,” Friedman said. “They fit a narrative.
They fit an opinion. They fit an agenda.
But it’s not reporting, because it’s not
based on hard, factual analysis.”
Friedman was referring to reporting on
Israel’s efforts to repel Palestinian protest-
ers who were attempting to breach the
fence separating Israel and the Gaza Strip.
Israeli troops have killed more than 100
Palestinians in the rioting, which has been
taking place weekly for two months.
Like many clashes between Israelis and
Palestinians, the latest ones led to accusa-
tions by Israel and its supporters that the
media had portrayed Israel as dispropor-
tionately aggressive and the Palestinians as
innocent victims.
Friedman said he was addressing his
remarks to “my friends in the United
States and one Israeli newspaper I’ve
been known to criticize here,” according to
Haaretz, a newspaper he recently accused U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman speaks at the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on May 14, 2018. 
of lacking “decency.”  LIOR MIZRAHI/GETTY IMAGES

Friedman complained that jour-

nalists are not quoting experts about
armed conflict.
“It would seem to me that in a journalis-
tic environment where nine out of 10 arti-
cles that are written about the Gaza con-
flict are critical of Israel, you’d think that
some journalists would take the time and
go and meet with experts and try to under-
stand what could have been done differ-
ently or better before they criticize,” The
Times of Israel quoted the ambassador as
saying. “And I just haven’t seen it.”
Friedman did not provide examples or
They fit a narrative. They fit an
substantiate the 9-1 bias, nor does he say —
at least not in what’s quoted — whether he
was referring to breaking news, analysis,
or opinion writing.
But if his main complaint is that report-
ers did not do the legwork in telling the
story right, it is not apparent from much
of the mainstream reporting of the clashes.
This New York Times story from April 5,
timed for the eve of the second of Friday
encounters, is typical of the paper’s cover-
age. (I’ve chosen the Times for examples of
U.S. reporting because it still sets the tone
for much “serious” or mainstream U.S.
coverage, particularly in foreign reporting,
where the Times retains a formidable reti-
nue of correspondents. It is also the bête
noire of media watchdog groups that claim
the media is biased against Israel.)
The Times story quotes officials from
Israel and Hamas, as well as Palestinians,
to describe the events of the previous Fri-
day. It also quotes experts in the laws of
military engagement: B’Tselem, the Israeli
human rights group, arguing against the
use of live fire, and veterans of the Israeli
army’s legal corps explaining why it may
be necessary.
The writers of the story, David M. Hal-
bfinger and Iyad Abuheweila, seem to
do exactly what Friedman is asking: seek
could have been done differently or bet-
ter” is discussed at length, with substantial
quotes from experts who come to differ-
ent conclusions.
Similarly, on May 14 and 15, the day of
and the day after the deadliest violence
— coinciding with the opening of the U.S.
embassy in Jerusalem — the Times does
not get deep into analysis, but it does
quote a range of assessments of the vio-
lence, which resulted in the killing of some
60 Palestinians.
In the frequently updated story on May
14, the Times’ reporting team endeavors to
bring the big picture into focus. A segment
addresses the reporting that an infant girl
was killed by tear gas, and notes impor-
tant caveats from the Israeli and Palestin-

opinion. They fit an agenda. But it’s out experts on engagement. To be sure,
B’Tselem often is highly critical of Israel
not reporting, because it’s not and often is at odds with the settler move-
ian side. It made clear that the Palestinian
protests were not peaceful, describing
Hamas officials who urged martyrdom —

based on hard, factual analysis. ment, of which Friedman was an active

supporter. But the question of “what
the purpose of the demonstrations was to
“draw the map of return in blood,” says

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one — and falsely told protesters that the
fence had been breached so they might
press forward.
The reporting makes clear that the
Gaza protests were about claiming land
in Israel as much as they were about the
embassy opening, and quotes an anon-
ymous but “well-informed Middle East-
ern government official” as saying that
Hamas had hoped to kidnap an Israeli.
On those two days, the Times quoted
assessments by B’Tselem and Doctors
Without Borders that the Israeli use of
live fire was unjustified. It also quoted
the Israeli army as saying that at least
24 of the dead were “documented”
terrorists and that there were at least
three instances in which armed terror-
ists had attempted to infiltrate under
cover of the protests.
The Times also published close-ups on
both sides: of a young Palestinian pro-
tester driven to the fence in part because
he despaired of his future in the poverty-
stricken strip, and of Israeli communi-
ties living under a regimen of fear, with
a focus on a kindergarten shelled before
preschoolers had arrived.
Still, Friedman is not alone — cer-
tainly among advocates for Israel — in
the belief that the coverage of the Gaza
clashes was skewed. Camera, the pro-
Israel media watchdog, has objected to
the use of the term “protesters” by the
Times, the Washington Post, and oth-
ers to describe the Palestinians at the
border, suggesting “terrorists” would
be more appropriate.
Camera also criticizes mainstream
media for “uncritically” quoting casualty
claims made by the Hamas-controlled
Palestinian Health Ministry, although it
doesn’t say where the casualty numbers
Make a Party
are in dispute. And in the same breath
that it criticizes the media for underre-
porting the prevalence of Palestinians
armed with explosives, firearms, knives,
out of Chocolate
and Molotov cocktails, it notes that NPR
interviewed a 19-year-old Gazan who
said “We want to burn Jews.”
Two stories in particular suggest why
the media and a government official
like Friedman might view their roles
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The Israeli side, as the media reported,
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Reporters covering their deaths
noted that Israeli officials, including
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have not presented any evidence that
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official. They noted that he had been
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receive funds from the U.S. Agency for
International Development.
In both instances, and in reporting on
the question of the use of live fire, jour-
nalists saw it as their role to query and
quote officials on both sides, but to take
nothing on faith. By contrast, Haaretz
quoted Friedman as saying that from
“speaking to people in the military in
the State of Israel, the United States, and
other countries whose confidentiality I’ll
maintain,” he concluded that less lethal
means were not available to Israel dur-
ing the protests.
In both
instances, and in
reporting on the
question of the
use of live fire,
journalists saw
it as their role
to query and
quote officials
on both sides,
but to take
nothing on faith.
With whom did Friedman speak? He
doesn’t say. Reporters may have spo-
ken to the very same experts, but the
Enter to Win a
journalistic reflex would be to be skep-
tical. Israeli reporters, for example, still
$25 Gift Certificate
remember assurances by Golda Meir’s to
government that Syrian and Egyptian
troops did not pose an immediate
threat; that was days before the 1973
Yom Kippur War. And just 15 years ago,
a credulous American journalistic com-
munity heeded batteries of “experts”
and government officials who either
misled the public about Iraq or got it
utterly wrong.
Haaretz may irk Friedman for its left-
wing slant, but if Israel’s claim that it 260 Grand Ave · Englewood · 201-568-2288
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East means anything, it is that it allows
a free press to challenge the govern-
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ment and question its military’s tactics.
Such freedom might even lead to oppo-
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from all entries received by June 25, 2018.
site conclusions.
An analysis by Haaretz’s Ilene Prusher Name _________________________________________________________________
(who is, full disclosure, a friend) won-
dered why Israel did not deploy “a Street _________________________________________________________________
myriad of other methods of riot contain-
ment that are used worldwide and gen-
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erally don’t result in scores of deaths.”
The same newspaper’s Amos Harel,
Phone _________________________________________________________________
meanwhile, laid the blame for the killing
squarely at the feet of Hamas. If Harel
*Email ________________________________________________________________
Mail to: Jewish Standard, 1086 Teaneck Road, Suite 2F, Teaneck, NJ 07666
blamed the Israeli government, it was for
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or fax to: 201-833-4959 by June 25, 2018.
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JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018 31
Jewish World
3 Jewish media moguls dish the dirt
— and defer to Donald Trump’s wishes
RON KAMPEAS
H
arvey Levin runs the gossip
industry giant TMZ. The Daily
Beast reported this week that in
2016, just before the presidential
election, Levin did something unusual: Hear-
ing that there was an incriminating video of
Republican nominee Donald Trump in an ele-
vator, he alerted Trump instead of his readers.
In a media landscape where Jewish leader-
ship once was a signifier of a liberal outlook
— think the Washington Post, the New York
Times, and CBS — at least three media moguls
are known for their twin passions for dishing
the dirt and for deferring to the Donald. They
also get props for a more traditional media
role — public service journalism.
Mogul: Harvey Levin
Vehicle: TMZ
Trump connection: Predates the election
to Trump’s days as the celebrity host of the
reality TV series “The Apprentice.” Accord-
ing to the Daily Beast, Trump and Levin
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Harvey Levin speaks at the REELZ 2015
Winter Television Critics Association
press tour in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 13,
2015. FREDERICK M. BROWN/GETTY IMAGES
saw a mutually beneficial relationship — the
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clickable insights to TMZ, telling the site
in 2009 that Kanye West was “disgust-
ing” for interrupting Taylor Swift while
she was accepting an award. (These
days, Trump and Kanye are tight.)
Trump love: In addition to possibly
helping to bury the apocryphal video
of Trump doing no one knows what
in an elevator, TMZ intensified its pro-
Trump coverage after the revelation,
as the election neared, of a real tape
of Trump bragging that he sexually
assaulted women.
Jewish connection: In July 2006, less
than a year into TMZ’s existence, Levin
doggedly uncovered evidence of Mel Gib-
son’s anti-Semitic rant at a Jewish police
officer, despite warnings that it could
ruin his business. (That in turn led to the
memorable 2010 allegation by Gibson’s
ex-girlfriend that the actor and director
subsequently said of Levin: “I want Jew
blood on my hands,” and that he wanted
Levin “taken to the desert, stripped
naked, kneecapped and left in the heat.”)
Shoulda won the Pulitzer: In 2014, TMZ
posted video of Baltimore Ravens running
back Ray Rice dragging his unconscious
fiancée, Janay Palmer, out of an Atlan-
tic City casino elevator. That launched
a national dialogue about athletes and
spousal abuse. (Palmer and Rice now are
married, and charges were dropped after
Rice agreed to counseling.)
Mogul: David J. Pecker
Vehicle: American
Media, publisher of
National Enquirer
Trump connection: Pecker has consid-
ered Trump a friend since they met on
the New York social scene in the 1990s.
two have been close since at least 2003,
when Pecker joined Trump’s flagship
Florida golf club, Mar-a-Lago.
Trump love: In 2016, during the cam-
paign, American Media paid a Playboy
model, Karen McDougal, for the rights
to her story, including her claim of an
affair she had with Trump in 2006-07
after the birth of his son with his current
wife, Melania. Pecker quashed the story,
instead running McDougal’s fitness
advice in its publications. In his New
Yorker interview, Pecker denied this
was “catch and kill,” the term for paying
and then silencing a source to protect a
friend. But he did say that, um, he was
silencing McDougal to protect a friend.
“Once she’s part of the company, then
on the outside she can’t be bashing Trump
and American Media,” Pecker said.
How are Trump and American Media
the same thing, interviewer Jeffrey
Toobin asked.
David Pecker at the Shape France
magazine cocktail launch at Hotel
Talleyrand in Paris on Jan. 19, 2012.
 FRANCOIS DURAND/GETTY IMAGES
“To me it is,” Pecker replied. “The
guy’s a personal friend of mine.”
(McDougal sued to be released from
the contract, settled, and now is speak-
ing freely.)
It may be a profitable friendship.
Earlier this year, the New York Times
reported that Pecker was trading on his
relationship to seek business opportu-
nities in Saudi Arabia. During the presi-
dential campaign, the Enquirer fired
relentlessly at Trump’s rivals in the pri-
maries (notably insinuating, without
any basis, that Ted Cruz’s father played
a role in the assassination of John F. Ken-
nedy) and at the Democratic nominee,
Hillary Clinton. (“Hillary: 6 months to
live!” That was in September 2015.) The
Enquirer’s first-ever presidential elec-
tion endorsement was for Trump.
Jewish connection: Pecker likes to
talk about his hardscrabble upbringing
in the Bronx.
“My father was a bricklayer,” he told
Fortune in 2004. “It was unusual being
in that industry because most of the
bricklayers are Italian. Being Jewish, he
had to learn to speak perfect Italian.”
In 1997, when Pecker was directing the
somewhat tonier Hachette house of pub-
lications, the American Jewish Commit-
tee gave him an award. He received the
award from the late John F. Kennedy Jr.,
whose George magazine Pecker helped
to launch.
Shoulda won the Pulitzer: Not just
shoulda — coulda. In 2010, the Pulitzer
Prize board accepted the Enquirer’s sub-
mission for its dogged coverage of allega-
tions that 2008 presidential candidate
John Edwards had fathered a child with a
woman who was not his wife. The main-
stream media ignored the allegations for
months — until the Enquirer produced the
goods, derailing Edwards’ political future.
 Jewish World

MAZAL TOV TO OUR GRADUATES!

WE ARE DEEPLY PROUD OF YOUR RELIGIOUS GROWTH,
INTELLECTUAL ACHIEVEMENT, AND
Sheldon Adelson is at the Republican Jewish Co- PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT OVER THE LAST FOUR YEARS.
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in Las Vegas on March 29, 2014.
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Mogul: Sheldon Adelson

Vehicles: Las Vegas Review-Journal
and Israel Hayom
Trump connection: Trump and Adelson have had
a relationship of mutual respect since 2005, when
Trump opened a Trump International hotel and
casino in Las Vegas, Adelson’s stomping ground.
Adelson held back from backing a candidate during
the 2016 primaries, but by May, once it was clear that
Trump was the nominee, the casino magnate force-

fully endorsed him — a shot across the bow to con-
servative Never Trumpers who were contemplating
voting for Clinton or for a third party. Adelson was a
major donor to Trump’s inauguration, earning a seat
on the dais for him and his wife, Miriam.
Trump love: The Las Vegas Review-Journal has sus-
tained a serious, non-tabloid level of coverage since
Adelson’s secret purchase of the newspaper in 2015,
although there have been questions about whether
the newspaper has pulled back in its coverage of Adel-
son’s business dealings. That seriousness lent heft to
its endorsement of Trump in the 2016 election — it was
virtually the only major daily to do so. Under Adel-
son’s watch, the paper also hired the relentless Trump
booster Wayne Allyn Root as a columnist.
Israel Hayom’s coverage of Trump has been ador-
ing, with a columnist comparing Trump to John F.
Kennedy for his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s
capital. The day the embassy opened, May 14, Mir-
iam Adelson ran a column on the front page of both
newspapers saying that Trump “has re-enshrined the
United States as the standard-bearer of moral clarity
and courage in a world that too often feels adrift.”
Jewish connection: Adelson, one of the world’s
richest Jewish men, perhaps also is the most gen-
erous giver to Jewish and medical causes. His ben-
eficiaries include Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust
memorial; the Israeli American Council, and Birth-
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JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018 33

Editorial
SummerStage and the Folksbiene
M for Jews? It’s
ost of us first heard of
Daniel Kahn right after
the great poet and singer
Leonard Cohen died in
November 2016.
We saw a YouTube video of Kahn, sit-
ting quietly, almost unmoving, wearing
a white T-shirt, a vest, a cap, and a watch
— for some reason, maybe because the
whole thing is so unembellished, the
watch is noticeable — singing Leonard
Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in Yiddish.
Even to those of us who don’t under-
stand Yiddish, even to some of us (and
this group absolutely does not include
me) who found the song so oversung
as to have become hackneyed, the
Yiddish version, in its simplicity and
beauty, in its unsparing unblinking
beauty, is magnetically compelling.
Last summer, Mr. Kahn — an Ameri-
can who now lives in Berlin — came
back to New York to perform in the
Folksbiene’s “Amerike — The Golden
Land.” He sang “Romania,” another
song that many people declare to be
pure schmaltz (those people abso-
lutely do not include me) in a way that
turned chicken fat into purest gold. It
was impossible not to watch him, and
it was impossible not to love it.
This summer, Mr. Kahn will be back in
New York, where he will be Perchik in
the Folksbiene’s upcoming Yiddish ver-
sion of “Fiddler on the Roof,” but before
that he will receive the Mlotek Prize for
Yiddish Continuity at this year’s Sum-
merStage Yiddish Under the Stars.
It’s an extraordinary experience, Yid-
dish Under the Stars. You sit outside in
Central Park watching the light fade and
the stars present themselves; if you’re
lucky the summer air is soft (we won’t
think about what happens if you’re not
lucky) and the sounds are so very ines-
capably and exuberantly and passion-
ately Jewish.
This summer’s performance, set for
Wednesday, June 13, at 7, is the fourth
year in this incarnation, the Folksbi-
ene’s artistic director, Zalmen Mlotek
of Teaneck, said. But it’s the 50th anni-
versary of the very first such outdoors
performance. “The original impetus
Jewish Editor
Joanne Palmer
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34 Jewish Standard JUNE 8, 2018
Last year’s SummerStage audience watched the sun go down and
Folksbiene’s stars come out in Central Park.
came from my father,” Zalmen said; his
father, Joseph, and his mother, Chana,
were towering figures in the worlds of
Yiddish language and music. “This year
happens to be my father’s centenary,”
Zalmen added.
Fifty years later, in 1968, the perfor-
mance — at the band shell in Central
Park —drew 25,000 people. That’s a
huge crowd, then and now. Many of
them were Holocaust survivors; “then
they were people maybe at most in
their 60s, not octogenarians and nona-
genarians, as they are today,” Zalmen
said. “Also there were younger people.
I was there, and so were my mother,
my aunt, and my grandparents, sitting
in the fourth row.”
And so were such luminaries as John
V. Lindsay, then New York City’s dash-
ing, glamorous mayor. So, as both per-
formers and audience members, were
the stars of the Yiddish stage. They had
expected a crowd, but not as big as
what they had. “How could they have
expected that?” Zalmen asked.
The concerts were annual for many
years. Eventually they moved to Dam-
rosch Park at Lincoln Center, a smaller
space but still quintessentially New
York. “Many years ago” — it was in the
early 1990s — “we did one there and got
the idea to invite Itzhak Perlman,” Zal-
men said. “We didn’t publicize it, so no
one officially knew, but somehow word
Correspondents
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got out. The place was packed, with
6,000 people. It was a major event.
“So Perlman sits down and starts to
play Yiddish music, and he loved it so
much that he was motivated to do ‘In
the Fiddler’s House’ — the recording and
the film. It all came from that moment.”
Since then, there have been many
versions of the festival; it moved
to SummerStage four years ago. “I
decided that I wanted to try to attract
the more religious Yiddish-speaking
crowd, the crowd that won’t go to
the theater because of kol isha” — the
prohibition against men listening to a
woman’s voice raised in song — “but
they might come to a concert if there
were only men performing. So for two
years, we had only men, and because I
got major stars from the chasidic world,
it was packed with that crowd.
“But after the second year I started to
get grumblings from the broader Yid-
dish community, asking me how about
getting some women, so last year we
had a woman sing, and this year I
decided to mix it up completely.
“In addition to the fantastic Frank Lon-
don” — that’s the klezmer trumpet player
who is a major force behind the revival
of klezmer in the last few decades, and
who is marvelous in just about every way
— “and Dan Kahn and Andy Statman, we
will have people like Basya Schechter of
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Truth regardless of consequences
Is Trump good
an easy yes
T
his week I debated my good friend Bret
Stephens of the New York Times on the
question of Trump and the Jews.
Bret, one of the finest men I know in jour-
nalism and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, has been
very critical of Trump. That began during the cam-
paign, when he was at the Wall Street Journal. He and
his family are frequent guests at our Shabbat table. So
I suggested to Bret that we
bring our fascinating dis-
cussions about the presi-
dent to a public audience.
Bret feels — and I can’t
do full justice to his criti-
cisms, which are far bet-
ter expressed in his own
words — that President
Trump has sent dog whis-
tles that have fostered Rabbi
racism and even anti- Shmuley
Semitism, that Trump has Boteach
behaved and continues to
behave in a manner that
is corrosive to the presidency, and particularly that
Trump’s policies on immigration are immoral and anti-
thetical to American values of welcoming immigrants.
Because he was born in Mexico City, Bret is especially
passionate about his opposition to Trump’s wall and
what he sees as demonization of Mexican immigrants,
who come to America for economic opportunity and
have no history as terrorists.
There can be no question that the Jewish people must
be extremely sensitive on immigration and always be
strong and vocal advocates for rescuing those in harm’s
way. I am now reading a new book called “Rescue Board,”
about the War Refugee Board and how it was set up in
1944 largely as a response — by moral men in the Trea-
sury Department — to the anti-Semitic policies of Breck-
enridge Long, who headed the State Department’s visa
division and kept so many Jews out of America — Jews
who later died in Hitler’s ovens.
Immigration is one of the most important moral
issues of our time and deserves an entirely separate
column, which I will, God willing, write.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the founder of the World
Values Network and the author of 31 books, including
his most recent, “The Israel Warrior.” Follow him on
Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
Founder
Morris J. Janoff (1911–1987)
Editor Emeritus
Meyer Pesin (1901–1989)
City Editor
Mort Cornin (1915–1984)
Editorial Consultant
Max Milians (1908-2005)
Secretary
Ceil Wolf (1914-2008)
Editor Emerita
Rebecca Kaplan Boroson
 Opinion

I told Bret that Trump has exceeded Unlike Christianity, which gives us
all of our expectations on Israel. Prior to Jesus Christ, a perfect man-god, a divine E visas treaty would aid
Trump and Nikki Haley, the United States’ being, as an example by which to live
ambassador to the United Nations, the and emulate, there is not a single perfect both Israel and U.S.

D
U.N.’s principal purpose, it seemed, was person in the Bible. From Abraham, who
to use Israel as a punching bag for global messes up with Ishmael; to Isaac, who espite some recent authorizing E-2 investor visas.
prejudices and biases against the Jew- does the same with Esau; to Jacob, who changes to the U.S. In 2012, President Obama
ish state. No president before Trump favors Joseph; to Moses, who hits the employment-based signed legislation to pass the
stopped it. But this one has. And it has rock, to David and Bathsheba, our Bible immigration sys- E-2 investor visa for Israel, but
led to global repercussions, with nations is filled with great but flawed men, none tem, there have been some visa issues arose about reciprocity.
now thinking twice before they unfairly of whom attain perfection. categories that the administra- For reciprocity to exist
t slam Israel for fabricated human rights The reason? Whereas Christianity tion has yet to address. between Israel and the United
abuses, lest they fall afoul of the most defines righteousness as perfection, Juda- One such category is the E States, Israel had to create its
powerful nation on earth. ism defines righteousness through strug- visa. Although the United States own parallel visa program, so
- On Jerusalem, every president since gle. The special man or woman is he or she has E-2 visa agreements with Michael J. U.S. citizens would have equal
Clinton has promised to move the who battles their own nature to do good. more than 70 countries, includ- Wildes access to invest in Israel. Ear-
- embassy, including a phenomenal friend In addition, whereas Christianity puts ing Azerbaijan, Congo, Iran, lier this year, the U.S. Depart-
of Israel named George W. Bush. None personal salvation — the question of Pakistan, and Suriname, we do ment of State suggested that
has kept his word, save for Trump. And whether or not you’re going to heaven — not yet have one with Israel. That is puzzling, the E-2 program would be available for Israe-
the move is not merely symbolic. Rather, as its highest ideal, Judaism puts world considering our longstanding political and lis by October 2017. Yet when it came time to
the heart and soul of the Jewish people is redemption — the question of how much strategic alliances with Israel. implement the program, the United States
tied to Jerusalem, and recognition of Jeru- you have contributed to the community The E visa category includes treaty trad- was unsatisfied with Israel’s latest version of
salem as the eternal capital of the Jewish — before personal perfection. The main ers (E-1) and treaty investors (E-2), who come the B-5 visa program, which is the (E-1) treaty
people is de facto recognition of the his- question in Judaism is not: Are you per- to the United States either under a Treaty of trader visa equivalent for U.S. citizens. The
tory and national claims of our people. sonally pious or righteous? but rather: Friendship, Commerce and Navigation, or U.S. returned the regulations to the Knes-
On Iran, President Obama negoti- Have you left the world in better shape a bilateral investment treaty between the set — the legislative branch of the Israeli
ated with a regime even while it called than how you found it? United States and foreign nation of which government — with comments to be consid-
for the annihilation of the Jewish people That’s why Judaism always has extolled the treaty trader or investor is a citizen or ered before the bilateral agreement can be
throughout the negotiations. It may seen the virtue of those who contribute national. implemented.
incredible that the leader of the free to the public good even with their flawed Since 1815, the United States has entered One likely reason why Israel has delayed
world can legitimize a government that characters. Ha’maaseeh hoo haikar — it is into these bilateral trade agreements, which implementing the B-5 is a fear that its
openly incites genocide against the Jew- action that is most important. This does allow citizens from 80 nations to secure visas wealthy citizens might abandon the coun-
ish people, just 70 years after the Holo- not mean that character is not impor- based on the establishment of businesses in try, investing funds and creating jobs in
caust. But Obama went beyond nego- tant — and certainly Judaism demands the U.S. The E-1 visa allows a treaty national the United States to the detriment of Israel
t tiations and rewarded that government of us that we strive for moral excellence. who already has established a thriving busi- and its citizens. The facts, however, do not
- with $150 billion dollars, with which they Rather, it means that character is subor- ness in his or her home country, which support this.
. sowed further murder and mayhem dinate to world improvement. engages in substantial trade with the United Between 2010 and 2015, Israel invested
y across the Middle East. With one stroke Harry Truman, we now know, States, to travel here to further facilitate trade more than $150 billion in the United States
of a pen, Trump ended the dishonor expressed incredibly painful anti-Semitic between the U.S. and his or her business According to AIPAC — the American Israel
, of the Iran deal, and made it clear that comments in his personal diaries, calling abroad. The E-1 does not require the treaty Public Affairs Committee — Israel consis-
nations threatening the incineration of Jews the cruelest people he has met. Yet national to make a substantial investment tently is among the top 20 suppliers of direct
Israel will not be tolerated. he recognized the state of Israel within 12 and long-term economic commitment to the investments into the U.S., and invested more
t The same is true of Trump’s defense of minutes of David Ben Gurion’s declara- United States, but to engage in trade. The E-2 than $25.1 billion in 2015 alone. Alongside
Israel in the wake of the Gaza riots — which tion of statehood, and that is what counts. visa, on the other hand, requires the treaty the substantial monetary investments, the
I witnessed with my own eyes from about Richard Nixon’s recorded conver- national to invest a substantial amount of his cultural exchange between the United States
” half a mile from the border fence — where sations are littered with anti-Semitic or her money into the United States to buy and Israel has led to the expansion of busi-
Trump and Nikki Haley again had Israel’s remarks. But when Israel was fighting an existing business or create a new business. nesses in both countries. Components criti-
- back at the U.N., while the rest of the world for its very survival during the 1973 Yom Both the E-1 and E-2 visas play essential cal to leading American high-tech products
- condemned Israel for stopping terrorists Kippur War, he ordered the rearmament roles in our economy, because they foster often are invented and designed in Israel,
a from entering its domain and murdering of Israel and helped to save the coun- substantial and reciprocal trade between the making these American companies competi-
its farmers and residents. try from destruction. And that is what United States and another country, or enable tive and more profitable globally. Cisco, Intel,
None of this even begins to address counts. substantial investment by foreign nationals Motorola, Applied Materials, and HP are just
other undertakings by Trump toward the With Trump, there is no such sugges- into the U.S. economy. More than 52,000 a few examples of U.S. companies that ben-
Jewish community, like the pardoning of tion that he is personally anti-Semitic and E visas were issued in 2016, enabling these efit from these strong ties between the U.S.
Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin, whose the very suggestion would be ludicrous. investors and traders to serve as drivers of and Israel. United States companies have
sentence six former attorneys general, He supported a beloved child’s conver- the economy and overall job growth. But in established two-thirds of the more than 300
both Republican and Democrat, had said sion to Judaism, he has three Orthodox spite of the visas’ success and ever-growing foreign-invested research and development
had been remarkably unfair and unjust. and observant Jewish grandchildren, popularity, both members of Congress and centers in Israel, while Israel represents the
To be sure, there have been failures who attend Jewish day school, and he has foreign governments are resistant to expand- second-largest source of foreign listings on
as well. Trump should have spoken out populated his administration with some ing the E-1 and E-2 visa categories to other the NASDAQ — more than Indian, Japanese,
strongly and clearly against the neo- of the most pro-Israel public officials in countries. and South Korean firms combined.
Nazis in Charlottesville last summer. Not modern history, like Jason Greenblatt, One such example of this reluctance is the In terms of job growth, the New Eng-
because neo-Nazis are in any way, in our David Friedman, Nikki Haley, Mike Pom- long-awaited E-2 visa for Israeli citizens. land Israel Business Council shows that
time, the same threat as Islamic terrorism peo, Steve Mnuchin, and John Bolton. While Israel and the United States have a Israeli-founded businesses have gener-
to Israel and the Jewish people. But rather Our president may be an imperfect man, bilateral treaty that allows Israeli citizens to ated an estimated 9,000 jobs in Massa-
in deference to the memory of the six mil- and his twitter feed can at times be incen- enter the U.S. with E-1 treaty trader status, chusetts alone, and indirectly supported
lion and to make morally clear that Nazis diary. But to the question of whether he since 1954, Israel still does not have a treaty See Visas page 36
are the incarnation of evil and are the most has advanced the credibility and security
wretched and vile people on earth. of Israel, has shown that he is an ally who
The opinions expressed in this section are those of the authors, not necessarily those of
And what about character? I addressed has Israel’s back, and is prepared to stand
the newspaper’s editors, publishers, or other staffers. We welcome letters to the editor.
the issue from a Jewish and biblical val- with the Jewish people in world forums,
ues perspective. the answer must be a resounding yes. Send them to jstandardletters@gmail.com.

Jewish Standard JUNE 8, 2018 35

Opinion

The old assumptions just don’t work anymore

Post-Oslo accords, it’s time for a new paradigm for Israel and its Palestinian neighbors

L
ast Sunday, New York
came alive to cele-
brate a modern mir-
acle, the 70th anni-
versary of Israel’s rebirth. What
impossible odds that were over-
come to arrive at this day!
Land that had been barren,
arid, and considered uninhab-
itable has been transformed, Laura Fein
making Israel a leader in agri-
culture and exporter of pro-
duce and water. Desperate Jewish refugees from Europe,
Africa, and the Middle East became scientists and soldiers.
War after war was won against enemies far more power-
ful than Israel, and traits nurtured by conflict launched an
ethos of innovation and enviable economic growth.
Once isolated and with few friends, Israel has entered
diplomatic and economic relationships around the world,
formed enduring partnerships with former enemies, and
has developed channels with Arab and African nations
that once swore its destruction.
Studies show that despite enduring challenges, Israe-
lis are happier and are having more children than nearly
any one else anywhere in the West. Embracing constant
change while remaining rooted to ancient history, Israel’s
70 years give much cause for celebration.
This positive attitude toward change now must be
applied to Israel’s reliable source of sorrow, the enduring
war with Palestinian Arabs. This problem, born of Israel’s
success in fighting off attempts to destroy it, remains a
threat to the safety of Israel’s citizens as well as its political
and public relations.
Thankfully, the state of war that was once a pan-Arab
position has changed. Excepting Iran and its proxies,
most of Israel’s Arab neighbors have resigned themselves
to Israel’s existence — and this resignation has been the
key to peace. Explicitly or not, they recognize that the
Jews are here to stay, and they have shifted their attention
and resources to more pressing concerns. This includes
the Iranian threat, which has led the Saudis and others
to explore cooperation with Israel in their own interest.
Contrast this with Fatah and Hamas. As leaders of both
have made clear in every possible way, their intention to
rid the world of the Jewish state has not abated. While
painful to acknowledge, denying this truth will not get us
closer to peace. Violent anti-Semitism motivates violent
attacks, and all discussion, much less compromise, has
been decidedly rejected. They now refuse to negotiate
altogether, which is surprising given that they have consis-
tently won compromises just to come to the table. This fall
will mark 25 years since Israel entered the Oslo Accords,
which set the framework for negotiation that remains to
this day.
It’s time for a new paradigm.
A striking feature of Jewish discussion around the U.S.
embassy move and the violence and rockets from Gaza
was the insistence on preserving the two-state “solution.”
Even when defending Israel’s actions, articles from many
centrist and liberal voices incorporated hand-wringing,
virtue-signaling, and pledging allegiance to what they
believe is the “only” “true” answer. Opposition to settle-
ment building as an “obstacle to peace” persists, despite
such opposition’s inherently anti-Semitic basis in the idea
that a future Palestinian state would need to be delivered
free of Jews. Astonishingly, many American Jewish orga-
nizations hesitated to support the Jerusalem embassy
move, and will not fund basic needs for Jewish communi-
ties in Judea and Samaria, or even bring visitors there, lest
the land available to become another Arab state be even
slightly diminished.
The idea that Israel must just try harder, must take
“bold steps for peace,” continues to permeate conversa-
tions of pro-Israel elites, sucking the life out of any discus-
sion of other possible options and painting alternatives as
morally compromised. Instead, Israel’s supporters should
shed the persistent compulsion to support a policy that
has failed to produce peace despite decades of time,
intense creativity, loads of cash, and exhaustive effort. The
satire site the Mideast Beast summed it up in its headline,
“Liberal American Jewish Groups: No Room in the Peace
Process for New Ideas,” accompanied by a photo of Arafat,
Rabin, and Peres holding their Nobel peace prizes. What
a joke indeed.
Nearly 100 years ago, Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky
wrote in his essay “The Iron Wall” that “We cannot offer
any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in
return for Palestine…because they are not a rabble, but a
living people. And when a living people yields in matters
of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer
any hope of getting rid of us.”
His words are as true today as they were in the early
years of Zionism. The Palestinians believe their home is
all of Israel, “from the river to the sea,” not a hodgepodge
of territory patched together from Gaza and a chunk of
terrain between the 1949 armistice line and the Jordan
River. If their aim were political independence, Palestinian
Arabs might have pursued many opportunities. Rather,
both their words and deeds demonstrate their enduring
belief that they can achieve their larger objective.
Holding firm to the parameters of past peace efforts
does nothing to dispel these false hopes. Diplomacy has
become just another means to achieve Israel’s destruc-
tion. Like gamblers using house money, both Hamas and
Fatah get to keep past wins while holding out for a better
hand, refusing to recognize Israel’s right to exist, insisting
on an Arab “right of return,” and using violence to seek
additional concessions. Thirteen years ago Israel bowed
to U.S., U.N., and internal pressure to withdraw from Gaza
for the sake of peace. Do we need more than terror tun-
nels, organized border attacks, hundreds of rockets, and
world condemnation for acting in self-defense to prove
this policy leads in the wrong direction?
Declaring the era of Oslo over and done, without rush-
ing to replace it with anything new, would do more to
improve prospects for peace than any additional com-
promises Israel could offer. The world has changed
much in a quarter century, and Israel has too. Let’s wel-
come a free flow of ideas, including options that may
use means other than statehood to bring a better life to
Palestinian Arabs, who have for too long been exploited
by their own leaders. Then wait patiently while Israel’s
opponents resign themselves to living alongside a Jew-
ish State. If it takes another seventy years, Israel will be
ready for them.
Laura Fein is an attorney, writer, and consultant. She lives
in Teaneck with her husband and five daughters. Reach her
at Laura.E.Fein@gmail.com.

SummerStage
from page 34
Pharaoh’s Daughter, who is at Romemu” —
the New Age synagogue on the Upper West
Side — “and Eleanor Reissa and Magda Fish-
man. These are all powerhouses, these
women. They are amazing performers.
“And then we decided to be really differ-
ent, and to get Jackie Hoffman, who is play-
ing Yenta, to emcee.”
Is it different to play a concert outside?
I know that it feels different, like sitting in
velvet, if you can imagine velvet streaked
with airplanes. It is different, Zalmen con-
firmed. “It influences our choices,” he
said. “We know that people listen differ-
ently outside, because there is so much
more to take in then there is when you’re
in a concert hall. You have to grab peo-
ple with something more dramatic. With
something very dramatic.” You don’t have
to be louder or faster, necessarily, he said,
but you do have to be broader, in ways
that might be grotesque in a small space.
And also, he added, the audience can par-
ticipate more. People can dance or sing
along; there is more space and somehow
more freedom as well.
Last year’s concert was exhilarating.
All those elements that Zalmen men-
tioned — the space, the light turning to
twilight turning to darkness, the sense
of being all together, freed by commu-
nity — they all work.
Come to Summerstage for Yiddish
Under the Stars!
The performance is free; the line
starts at 72nd Street and Fifth Avenue,
and the doors open at 6 for the 7 o’clock
performance. For more information, go
to www.nytf.org. —JP
Visas
from page 35
an additional 18,000 jobs. These Israeli
companies represent nearly 4 percent of
the state’s entire GDP.
Even without the E-2, both Israel and
the United States benefit from each oth-
er’s financial influences. We can only
imagine the substantial benefits both
countries would experience if a recip-
rocal bilateral investment treaty were
formalized. E-2 visas represent a mech-
anism by which new companies are cre-
ated in the United States, and in order
for those companies to function and
prosper, there must be job creation for
Americans. Even a small business, such
as an ice cream shop or fitness center,
must prove it will create benefit to the
local economy by creating jobs.
Given that the spirit of these visas is to
generate and increase economic pros-
perity between the two countries, and
the end result of the visas being the gen-
eration of new jobs, the E treaties are
extremely beneficial to both national and
international markets. As the months
continue, our hope is the administra-
tions of both countries will recognize the
substantial benefits that bilateral invest-
ments offer, and formalize such a treaty,
which will enable U.S. and Israeli citizens
to invest in each other’s countries.
Michael J. Wildes, a Democratic former
mayor of Englewood, will be on the ballot
for that position in November He is the
managing partner of Wildes and Weinberg,
PC, specializing in immigration law, and
a former federal prosecutor. The firm’s
website is www.wildeslaw.com.

36 Jewish Standard JUNE 8, 2018


‘Nakba,’ ‘Naksa’ . . . nowhere
W
hen it comes to the Palestinian
“original sin” theory of Israel’s cre-
ation, there are two key milestones:
the flight of approximately 750,000
Arab refugees during the 1948 War of Independence
and the 1967 conquest of eastern Jerusalem, the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip during the Six-Day War.
The events of 1948 are known in Arabic as the nakba
(“catastrophe”) and the events of 1967 are called the
naksa (“setback”).
This week, with the 51st anniversary of the Six-Day
War upon us, Palestinians will mark “Naksa Day” on
June 5 with protests and demonstrations — and it will
be interesting to see whether any new wave of pro-
tests fizzles out in much the same way as those on the
Israel-Gaza border in recent weeks, which were pre-
sented as a commemoration of the events of 1948. It
also will be interesting to see whether Hamas, Islamic
Jihad, and allied Islamist groups will use the occasion
to fire another barrage of missiles at Israel.
It’s increasingly clear to everyone that neither of
these strategies is working for the Palestinians. Com-
pare the international reaction to Gaza in 2018 to that of
summer 2014, when Israel took military
action to end the daily missile launches
from Gaza, and that the Palestinians simi-
larly described as an all-on war, designed
deliberately to kill and maim civilians.
Four years on, especially among Euro-
pean governments, there is much greater
recognition that Hamas uses Gazans as
human shields and far less lecturing of
Israeli leaders about the moral perils of
a “disproportionate response.” As for the Ben Cohen
expected convulsion of international pro-
tests, there really hasn’t been one so far.
Instead, the Palestinians are confronted with a
region that no longer places them front and center,
as well as an impatient international community, less
willing to indulge Palestinian tales of Israel’s inherent Palestinians have to become Zionists, or that they
brutality. In her speech to the U.N. Security Council
emergency meeting on the Palestinian missile attacks
on Israel — called by the United States — U.S. Ambassa-
dor to the United Nations Nikki Haley openly declared
that the time had come for the Palestinians to con-
sider alternative leadership that can deliver a peace
strate�y. Haley, significantly to my mind, made no
distinction between the Palestinian Authority in the
West Bank and the Hamas rulers of Gaza, puncturing
yet another prevailing myth, that the former is dra-
matically more moderate than the latter.
This is where the question of the naksa and the
associated nakba comes into sharp focus. Both con-
cepts are built around the logic that Israel is the eter- leads the Arab states in establishing diplomatic rela-
nal enemy. That is why Israel’s creation was a “catas-
trophe.” But what precisely was the “setback”?
According to the Institute of Palestine Studies, it
was “a misfortune that pointed up the need for a new
strate�y for confronting Israel and redeeming Pales-
tine.” The immediate source of this misfortune was
identified as the Arab states, which had submerged
the Palestinian plight into the snake-oil diplomacy
of the Arab League and its front organization, the
original version of the PLO. Sure enough, after Isra-
el’s overwhelming victory in 1967, Yasser Arafat and
his Fatah comrades, including Mahmoud Abbas, set
about “Palestinianizing” the struggle against Israel,
winning the hearts of the international left and estab-
lishing themselves as allies of the Soviet bloc.
Opinion
Palestinians march during a protest to mark the
70th anniversary of the nakba (“catastrophe”),
the term used to mark the events leading to
Israel’s founding in 1948, in the West Bank city
of Bethlehem on May 15, 2018.
WISAM HASHLAMOUN/FLASH90
But just as the Arab League never
recognized Israel’s legitimacy, nor did
the PLO, which was transformed into
an independent organization after the
war. The “setback,” then, was prin-
cipally that Israel continued exist-
ing, even flourishing, after the Arab
attempt in 1967 to eliminate it.
So perhaps the time has come to go
even further than Ambassador Haley
and suggest to the Palestinians that
for the sake of the generation that will
mark the centenary of Israel’s birth in 2048, they
abandon the discourse of the nakba and naksa
altogether. This does not mean, of course, that the
should overlook those disputes with Israel where
they can maximize material or territorial gains for
themselves — as opposed to chipping away at Israel’s
status as a member of international society.
It’s tempting, particularly as we watch Abbas
emerge from yet another extended stay in the hospi-
tal, to dismiss Haley’s plea for new Palestinian lead-
ership as hopelessly unrealistic. Some might con-
tend that a Palestinian civil war after Abbas departs
the scene is more likely than the emergence of a sec-
ular-minded, pro-Western peace party. Much also
depends on the regional environment — whether
Iran is rolled back in Syria, whether Saudi Arabia
tions with Israel, whether Arab states assume full
operational responsibility for stability in the region
in concert with the United States and Russia.
At the moment, the most likely scenario is more
of the same, even if everything else in the region
shifts: namely, the collective insistence of the Pales-
tinian leadership that Israel must be brought to its
knees to atone for the events of 1948 and then 1967.
Ben Cohen writes a weekly column for JNS on Jewish
affairs and Middle Eastern politics. His work has
been published in Commentary, the New York Post,
Haaretz, the Wall Street Journal, and many other
publications.
Letters
Advice to the college-bound
It was heartbreaking to read the letter by Chloe Schreiber, “For
college should I stay inside the bubble?” (May 25). That a student
must consider the fact that she is an Orthodox Jew or has posi-
tive feelings for Israel that may affect her physical, emotional, or
academic well-being in a school should be a non-starter.
My advice to you and your parents would be to choose a
school that will satisfy your needs academically, will get you
where you want to be upon graduation, and will not break you
financially. Your safety is also paramount, and this should be
the responsibility of the institution you will attend. It will also
be your responsibility to make sure the school is doing the job
they are required to be doing.
Prepare yourself for battle, not to go looking for a fight but to
be ready if one is thrust upon you. Start associating with pro-
Israel groups you agree with, attending meetings and work-
shops. Be familiar with the student handbook and any another
material containing the rules and regulations of the school you
will attend. Keep a detailed journal of what is going on in class-
rooms or on school property to have a record of what has hap-
pened to you or others where you feel discrimination or bias has
occurred. Too many places of higher education have abdicated
their responsibilities to govern their schools to mobs.
If you are at a lecture that has been prevented from taking
place due to the disruption by others, you should document it
with pictures of the disruptors, faculty in attendance, and any
security personnel and detailed notes. The media, Jewish orga-
nizations, and the school administration must be contacted.
Your parents must support you in any actions that should be
taken. “The squeaky wheel gets the oil.” If follow-up is not con-
tinued until the action you want is taken, things may never be
corrected. Lawsuits may be the final action that should be taken.
Jewish organizations should have a group of lawyers available
to press for the protection of the rights and obligations of our
community on campuses and any other site where our interests
must be defended. Too often they don’t.
Do not search for a “Jewish bubble” for protection. Unfortu-
nately within our own community there are those raising a “Jew-
ish umbrella” to stand under while they attack the interests of
those they claim to be part of.
Good luck in your choice of school. Good preparation will
often make life a lot easier.
howard J. cohn
New Milford
‘Gaza Kaddish’ deserves derision
The response of a London Jewish taxi driver to the “Gaza Kad-
dish” was effective and appropriate (“Gaza victims’ kaddish,”
June 1). This was a normal response to such an obscene and vile
display. Jews who would not say kaddish for their own dead,
let alone for Israelis, loudly recited the prayer for the dead for
50 eliminated terrorists hell-bent on slaughtering Jews. Sadly,
self-hating Jews are a phenomenon that has been around for a
long time. These are Jews who are uncomfortable with us being
anything other than the doormat of history.
As long as we are subjugated and servile, the extreme left-
wing is happy. Their problem always starts when Jews raise
themselves up in freedom and defense. The fact that the
extreme left-wing ideolo�y afflicting Jews marches noisily to
its place on the ash heap of history is not important; however,
they actively undermine their fellow Jews in Israel and abroad.
They confuse our allies and aid our enemies. They engage in
actions and discourse far outside the realm of possibly accept-
able. Indeed, the far left-wing Meretz party supported this dis-
gusting display and their writings often appear in the pages of
this very paper! The shock expressed by the promoters of the
“Gaza Kaddish” over the backlash to their grandstanding is
ridiculous, given that their intent was to offend and set them-
selves apart from the Jewish people. They deserve whatever
their fate may be.
scott david lippe, M.d.
Fair Lawn
Jewish standard JUne 8, 2018 37
D’var Torah
Sh’lach L’cha: From the grasshopper to the angel

I
n this week’s portion, Sh’lach L’cha,
we meet the wandering Israelites
in a place that feels all too familiar.
The people are in the wilderness,
getting closer to the Promised Land, their
intended destination. God has instructed
Moses to send one person from each of the
ancestral tribes into the land of Canaan,
Israel, to learn more about the physical
land and the people who live there.
Upon their return, ten of the scouts
report that the land is indeed flowing with
milk and honey, but that the inhabitants
are strong and powerful and the Israelites
will surely be devoured if they enter this
new place. They proclaim at the end of
their report: “Compared to those we saw,
we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves.
So, too, we must have looked to them.”
Caleb and Joshua, the remaining two
scouts, offer a counter narrative, assuring
the Israelites that with God’s help, they
will surely succeed in creating this new
home for their people.
This majority report is one with which
so many of us can empathize. Think of
any time you have had to start something
new. It can be scary to move, to begin a
new job, to have to make new friends,
to start life again after the loss of a loved
one. There are moments when we take
a look at what was before us and say, “I
can’t do it.” We feel small as
we face the task ahead. We
feel, as the scouts did, like
grasshoppers.
The question our portion
presents is how we move
forward though fear. From
fear, that on the surface,
seems perfectly reasonable
given what the scouts saw Rabbi Rachel
in Canaan after their jour- Steiner
ney, to the “can-do” attitude Barnert Temple,
Franklin Lakes,
of Joshua and Caleb. These Reform
minority voices do not dis-
pute the facts that the cur-
rent inhabitants of Canaan are strong and
the battle will be tough, but they come to
the opposite conclusion: even though the
task ahead may be challenging, we are
up to the challenge and we will be able
to succeed.
Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Kotzk offers
insight into this distinction between the
factually correct report of the ten nay-
sayers and the affirmative assurance
of Joshua and Caleb. “What the scouts
reported was factually correct, but it was
not the truth. The truth is not necessar-
ily as things appear, but stems from the
depths of the heart, from the sources
of one’s faith. Truth and faith go hand
in hand, and a person does not acquire
truth easily and by a super-
ficial glance.” Here we learn
that a full truth takes into
consideration both the facts
as they appear and a sense
of knowing that we are part
of something bigger, a part-
nership. Perhaps the scouts
had forgotten that it was
God who would be leading
them into this new chap-
ter. Perhaps they underes-
timated the strength found
within their community to
overcome even the greatest
obstacles. When we take time to cultivate
the roots of our relationships, we find
that we can weather much more than we
could on our own.
The larger community of Israelites is
scared by reports of the ten scouts and cry
bitterly to God and to Moses. Our portion
records that God’s punishment for these
people, except for Caleb and Joshua, is
that they, themselves, will never enter
Israel. Instead, it will be the next genera-
tion who sees the promise fulfilled. We
may wonder why God reacted so strongly
in this moment. Perhaps it is, as the rabbi
of Kotzk teaches, that the people seemed
to forget about God, and God’s prom-
ise to get them to the Promised Land.
Or, perhaps God’s punishment is such
because of the way our midrash imagines
God’s response to the people. In Num-
bers Rabbah we read: “God says, I take no
objection to your saying, ‘we looked like
grasshoppers in our own eyes’ but I take
offense when you say, ‘so we must have
looked to them.’ Could you possibly know
how I made you appear in their eyes? Per-
haps you appeared to them as angels.’”
If we are lucky, we will continue to
find ourselves embarking on new adven-
tures. We are all well aware that these
new opportunities often come along with
associated risks. We may feel afraid. But
it is precisely in this moment of vulner-
ability that we realize that what lies ahead
matters to us; we are fearful because we
want to succeed. In these moments, let us
reach out — to God, to our family, to our
friends — to those with whom we are con-
nected and who remind us that we are not
alone. Then we can move from feeling like
the small grasshoppers to the angels, the
messengers and connectors of our Jew-
ish tradition.
May this week bring us the confidence
to confront that about which we are afraid.
May we seek out those who support us.
And may we remember that we can be
angels for one another, living proof of our
sacred connections.

Hope
FROM PAGE 12
its emotion, and also so convinced by its detail, that they decided to
work toward establishing the award.
By coincidence, the first-place winner was a young Israeli pianist,
Bracha Bdil. Second place went to an Englishwoman, Rose Miranda
Hall, and the third prize when to an Austrian, Otto Wanke.
Ms. Bdil’s “teacher came with her,” Ms. Lerner said. “He is in his
90s. He was in the Vilna ghetto with our uncle, and he knew him.
Our uncle held a music contest in the ghetto, and this man, the music
teacher, won. He was 11 years old then.”
Next, there was the concert, where the Bavarian Philharmonic
played the pieces that Bernstein had led 70 years ago. “A brilliant
young Israeli pianist, Guy Mintus” — 26 years old, exciting, experi-
mental, up-and-coming — “played his own version of ‘Rhapsody in
Blue,’ which was one of Bernstein’s favorite pieces, and which Bern-
stein played at the original concert,” Ms. Lerner said. “It was so good.
It was so touching. It was so moving. It was so fabulous. He got such a
rousing ovation. Grown men were crying.”
The commemoration also included an exhibition about the family.
And it ended with a celebration of Israel at 70. “It was so beautiful — at
least what we understood of it,” Ms. Lerner said, a bit ruefully. “A lot
of it was in German.” But it ended in the universal language — music —
that had brought them there. “It ended with Hatikvah,” she said. And
of course hatikvah means hope.
From left, Dr. Cliff Salm, Abe Gurko, Rita Lerner, Michael Bernstein, and Vivian Reisman.
Mr. Bernstein is Leonard Bernstein’s nephew.

38 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018


Say hi to everyone
— it won’t kill you
BANJI GANCHROW
T
hough I have been writing
for the Standard only for 15
months, I have been writing
this column for more than
five years. Never in my wildest dreams
did I think that this would happen — that
people would read it, that I would still munity and it amazes me how the nic-
be writing it. Never. But what continues est, friendliest people are the exception
to amaze me is when certain people let
me know that they read my column. For
example, we were at a meal a few weeks
ago and I asked one of the other guests
why he was being so
quiet and he responded,
“because I don’t want to
read about it next week.” I
think he was joking when
he said it, and I always
(usually) ask permission
before I write a column
about things that were
discussed.
Two weeks ago, this Banji
same person told me that Ganchrow
he had read a piece writ-
ten by Rabbi Lord Jona-
than Sacks, and that it would be a good
topic for a column. I followed up. The
kind individual sent me a copy of the
d’var Torah, and, indeed, he was cor-
rect. Which was a good thing, because
after writing more than 200 columns,
sometimes I do need good suggestions.
The other good thing was that my very
religious sons were thrilled that I was
reading something that wasn’t on Face-
book…but that is for another column.
So this piece by Rabbi Lord Jonathan
Sacks was titled “Lifting Heads,” and it special.
was about the parsha Naso. From what
I understood from this piece, the word
“Naso” is a verb whose meaning is to
“lift the head.” Now let’s keep in mind
that the person who sent this to me is
way smarter than I am (as are most peo-
ple; he is also way thinner than I am, as deal to say hello? Okay, people, and you
are most people — sorry, you know I am
all about the self-deprecating humor).
He probably understood all of the his-
torical and biblical references that were people God intended us to be.
made, but the simpler meaning was
what I totally got.
According to Rabbi Sacks, “What mat-
ters in the Torah is not how we see our- the back after that, so be it. It’s all about
selves, but how we see and treat and
behave toward others.” This line was
equally incredible: “The world is not
short of self-important people. What it
is short of is those who make other peo- to combine humor and Torah this week.
ple feel important.” How true is that?
When we lift our heads, it should be to
make others feel special and important
The Frazzled
Housewife
— making eye contact with a delivery
man, with a janitor, with anyone you
pass on the street or at Votee Park.
When you walk to shul, don’t ignore the
person walking past you, whether you
know them or not. Make eye contact,
say hello, wish them a good Shabbos.
Sometimes I think about this com-
to the rule and not the rule. (Except,
unfortunately, when you are dying, are
dead, or it is Purim. Again, fodder for
another column.)
Another theme in Naso
is that there is a census
taken of the Jewish people
— and people should never
be made to feel like just a
number. No one should be
taken for granted. Every-
one has the ability to make
someone else feel unique.
It really isn’t so hard to
do. Unless, of course, you
don’t like people, but out of
respect to the person who
sent this to me, I am going
to try to turn over a new leaf. I usually
am good about saying hello to every-
one. The people who work at the super-
market — I even know most of their first
names. And when you are really nice to
them, they will open a lane just for you!
See, it pays to be nice. But the real chal-
lenge, the one where you see someone
who you have a history with, and not a
good one, that is the real test of lifting
one’s head. The ability to put your feel-
ings aside and make that person feel
Arggg….I can do it, I know I can!
Like at the Salute to Israel Day parade
— how many people did you see that you
rolled your eyes and walked in another
direction? (Wait, was I the only one who
did that?) What would have been the big
know who I am talking to — time to start
anew. Time to heed the words of Rabbi
Lord Sacks and start being the type of
Lift your head, look into another per-
son’s eyes, and make them feel impor-
tant. And if you need to pat yourself on
baby steps. I have faith that we can all
get there. Or at least some of us….
Banji Ganchrow of Teaneck attempted
Please let her know how she did. And
thank you to the person who started
this all.
“SERPENTS OF SCRIPTURE”
BY YONI & ARIELLA GLATT, KOSHERCROSSWORDS@GMAIL.COM
DIFFICULTY LEVEL: MANAGEABLE
Across
1. Friday letters that precede “F”
4. Does nothing
9. Notable Dead Sea company
14. “Tell ___ About It” (Joel hit)
15. Not level
16. Former Israeli prime minister
17. Rock sub-genre
18. Kind of ray
19. CBS series that, oddly, was filmed in
L.A.
20. Giant swimmers around Samuel’s
mom?
23. Singer India. or painter Aroch
24. Priority for charities
28. Joseph’s hooded father?
32. Almodovar and Martinez
33. Funnel-shaped
36. Actress Fisher in “The Great Gatsby”
37. Ruth’s squeezing husband?
43. Summit
44. Trial’s partner
45. French president Jacques, 1995-
2007
48. Poisonous grandfather of Moses?
53. Island capital whose name means
“sheltered bay”
56. 100 mg, say
57. King who might pose a threat to 20,
28, 37, and 57-Across?
61. “Ariel” poet Sylvia
64. Really enjoy a piece of babka
65. Asher of literature
66. Yemen’s capital
67. 18th Hebrew letter
68. Gaza to Jericho dir.
69. Ark groupings
70. Loads and loads
71. Jewish Federation of Greater ___
Moines
The solution to last week’s
puzzle is on page 47.
Crossword
Down
1. 1984 Leon Uris novel
2. Commentary on the Mishna
3. Like many a “Twilight Zone” ending
4. Tibetan monk or “Why?”
5. Baruch follower
6. “From A to ___” (multivitamin ad line)
7. Rock’s John
8. “Iron Man” villain Obadiah
9. Where to meet Pac-Man?
10. Like some Orthodox Jews
11. Biblical queen mother: II Kings 18:2
12. Diesel of “Boiler Room”
13. “___ Dream Will Do” (song from
“Joseph...”)
21. Opposite of paleo-
22. Airport sched. abbr.
25. While lead-in
26. Most recent “Star Wars” film
27. Russian ruler, once
29. Email option, for short
30. Joey, for short
31. Writer Frank
34. Hebron’s home: Abbr.
35. Letters under shift, on many comps
37. “Goldberg Variations” composer
38. Shmona, to Pablo
39. Former dictator Idi
40. Worst possible, as a review
41. Fish eggs
42. Mr. Berlin, for short
46. Greetings in 53-Across
47. ___-de-sac
49. Words not often heard under a
chuppah
50. Combined, as assets
51. Strict Sabbath observer of antiquity
52. “John Wick” star
54. ___ bet (owes money)
55. Amherst school, briefly
58. Shape of a football field, in Australia
59. Lymph gland
60. Got big
61. Nintendo DS competitor
62. Shohei Ohtani’s team, on the score-
board
63. “___ ledodi, v’dodi li”
JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018 39
 Arts & Culture
‘Strictly
Unorthodox’
Frum British comedian
Ashley Blaker talks about his life
CURT SCHLEIER
F
unny, Ashley Blaker doesn’t look
like a stand-up comedian. But he
does look Jewish. The black hat,
the black suit, the tzitzit — they’re
all sort of give-aways.
all
Yet there he is at the Jerry Orbach The-
ater in midtown Manhattan, performing his
one-person show, “Strictly Unorthodox,”
doing what Jews do pretty well: telling jokes
and whining.
Judaism is hard, he says. Not like the Hare
Krishnas, where you just have to learn
two-word prayers: Hare Krishna, Hare
Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare.
Judaism should be like that, he
adds: “Noodle kugel, noodle kugel,
noodle, noodle, kugel kugel.”
Blaker is a baal teshuva who grew
up in Manchester, England, in what
he describes as a traditional British
Jewish home. It “is very different
from America,” he said in a recent
phone interview. “In the UK, the vast
middle ground [of Jewry] is what you
[in America] would call Orthodox.
They are affiliated with an Orthodox
shul and go on Shabbas morning — but
in the afternoon they go to the shop-
ping mall or watch TV.”
He grew up in a home that kept
kosher but attended a secular school.
And, yes, he was the class clown. “I
used to do 40-minute stand-up shows
at school in the lunch break,” he said.
Blaker, 43, started working the British
comedy circuit when he was in his late
teens. He became more observant in his
late 20s, “because I’m bad at saying ‘no’
to people.”
He and his wife joined a local syna-
gogue, where they were Shabbas morn-
ing regulars. After a while, the rabbi, using
his ingrained rabbi skills, approached the
couple and asked, “What are you doing this
afternoon? We’re struggling for numbers in
the afternoon. Can you come?”
“He obviously saw he had someone
hooked,” Blaker remembers. “Then Saturday
afternoons became Sundays and pretty soon
the rest of the week.”
Why? “I must have felt there was some-
thing I was missing in my life. Nothing hap-
pens without a reason.”
Ironically, the change in Blaker’s life
40 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018
provided fodder for his comedy. “I was on
the circuit, but didn’t have anything to talk
about,” he said. “In a weird way, I had to
become observant to become a comedian.
It gave me material.” (Interestingly, asked if
his parents were more upset about his career
choice or his becoming frum, he answered
“the latter.”)
So in his routine, Blaker talks about the
restrictions his faith imposes on him. He
cannot listen to the recordings of the group
Bread during Passover. He has to wait six
hours before ingesting dairy after listening
to Meatloaf. And, most important, he wishes
the Beatles had recorded “I Don’t Want to
Hold Your Hand.” The gyrations he goes
through to avoid shaking a woman’s hand
are one of the most amusing segments of his
show, which is a longer version of the act he
brought to New York last November.
He brags that he is one Jew who never cov-
eted his neighbors’ oxen.
Not surprisingly, nearly all the men in a
recent appreciative audience (with whom
he endlessly kibbutzes) wore kippas and
included a Chabad rebbe from Randolph, in
town to celebrate his birthday. But Blaker
often performs before non-Jewish crowds. It
just takes a little more explaining, he says.
“For non-Jewish audiences, I use a lot of
my material from ‘Strictly Unorthodox.’ But
I do first the same things I did when I came
to America— translate the Queen’s English
to something Americans understand. I have
to explain things like on the Sabbath we’re
not allowed to turn on lights. Sometimes the
explanation is as funny as the routine.”
Blaker worked at the BBC, which, as he
points out in his show, many Jews consider
virulently anti-Zionist. But he claims that he
hasn’t experienced any anti-Semitism during
his time there or while on the road. In fact,
the network commissioned a short radio
series from him: “Ashley Blaker’s Goyish
Guide to Judaism.”
He’ll perform “Ashley Blaker: Observant
Jew” for most of August at the Edinburg
Fringe Festival.
So for the moment, at least, he is hot.
“There seems to be demand,” he says. “I think
I fill a hole in the market. It’s like when you
hit a streak at the tables in Las Vegas. You
keep playing.”
Ashley Blaker will keep playing “Strictly
Unorthodox” at the Jerry Orbach Theater
through June 28.

The Tribe at the Tonys: 2018 edition
T
he Tony Awards, given for excel-
lence in the Broadway theater,
will be presented on Sunday,
June 10. It will be shown live on
CBS, starting at 8 p.m. The Tonys are being
hosted by Josh Groban and Sara Bareilles.
BETTE MIDLER, 72, is among the sched-
uled guest stars.
The number of nominated plays and
musicals was expanded this year. All the
Jewish Tony nominees are associated
with a nominated work, so I’ll mention
the nominated directors, actors, writers,
and composers in the context of the nomi-
nated shows they are associated with. I
also highlight one performer who wasn’t
nominated. The technical category nomi-
nees are omitted.
None of the nominated original plays
have a Jewish playwright. The original best
musical category includes “The Band’s
Visit,” which is based on the hit 2007
Israeli film of the same name directed
and written by Israeli ERAN KOLIRIN,
45. It’s a charming tale of how an Egyp-
tian ceremonial police band accidentally
gets stranded overnight in a small Israeli
village in the Negev desert. “Band” com-
poser DAVID YAZBEK, 57, is nominated
for best score (lyrics and music) of a musi-
cal. His most famous works include the
scores for “The Full Monty” (2000) and
“Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” (2005).
ARI’EL STACHEL, 27, a native of
Berkeley, California, is nominated for
best featured actor in a musical (play-
ing Haled, an Egyptian band member
in “Band”). Stachel’s father was born in
Israel, the son of Yemeni Jewish immi-
grants. His father met his Ashkenazi
American mother on a kibbutz. “Band”
is a great breakthrough role for Satchel.
In recent months, Stachel has
recounted in interviews how his
swarthy Yemeni Jewish look (and
exotic background) left “every-
one” confused as to “what he
was” (sometimes even him). One
of his best high school friends, he
said, was African-American, and the
friend’s mother treated him as “one
of the family.” (Stachel could pass as
Hispanic, Arab, or African-American).
The musical’s Tony-nominated
book (script) writer is ITAMAR
MOSES.. Like Stachel, he is a Berke-
ley native. The son of Israeli immi-
grants, Moses was inspired to go
into playwriting after seeing
TONY KUSHNER’s “Angels
in America.” Moses, 41, has
written a number of dramatic
plays, some of which have
been staged by leading regional repertory
companies.
“Frozen,” another best musical nomi-
nee, co-stars CAISSIE LEVY, 37, as Elsa,
the role created by IDINA MENZEL, 45,
in the original “Frozen” film (2013). This
is a great breakthrough role for Levy, even
though she is not a Tony nominee. Levy
is a Canadian who went to Camp Ramah.
Another Camp Ramah (New England)
veteran, ETHAN SLATER, 25, is nomi-
nated for best leading actor in a musical
(“SpongeBob SquarePants”). “SquareBob”
is nominated in the best original musical
category. Nice to note: Slater recently said
he met his fiancée at Camp Ramah. The
director of “SquareBob,” TINA LANDAU,
56, is Tony-nominated for best director of
a musical.
Landau’s parents, EDIE
LANDAU, now 90, and
LANDAU
the late ELY LANDAU,
were leading film and
TV producers. They
produced many good
films, including “The
C h o s e n” a n d “ T h e
P aw n b ro ke r.” E d i e ’s
brother was legendary NBA
referee MENDY RUDOLPH.
“Prince of Broadway” also
is nominated for best origi-
nal musical. It showcases the
career of legendary Broad-
way director/producer
HAROLD PRINCE PRINCE, 90.
Prince directed the show
himself. His many hits
include “Fiddler on the
Roof.” He produced the
original 1964 produc-
tion. Prince was born and raised in north-
ern New Jersey.
“Angels in America,” written by Kush-
ner, 61, is nominated for best play revival.
“Angels” co-star ANDREW GARFIELD,
34, is nominated for a best actor in a play
Tony. (He plays the non-Jewish “Angels”
character Prior Walter, while a non-Jewish
actor plays Walter’s Jewish lover, Louis
Ironstone.)
Garfield, you may recall, was nominated
for the 2017 best actor Oscar for his perfor-
mance in “Hacksaw Ridge.”
Other plays nominated for best revival
are “Children of a Lesser God” by MARK
MEDOFF, 78; “Lobby Hero” by KEN-
NETH LONERGAN, 55; and “Travesties”
by TOM STOPPARD, 80. “Children” won
the best play Tony in 1980 and Lonergan
Arts & Culture
won the best original screenplay Oscar last
year for “Manchester by the Sea” (2016).
As I’ve noted before, Lonergan’s mother
was Jewish, and he was raised by his
mother and his Jewish stepfather.
Stoppard’s son, EDMUND STOPPARD,
43, is a moderately successful British actor.
American audiences got to see him play-
ing HANS ALBERT EINSTEIN, the son
of ALBERT EINSTEIN, in the first season
(2017) of the National Geographic series
“Genius.” Hans was a very good engi-
neer, but he was “no Einstein.” Likewise,
Edmund can’t be classed with his father
in terms of critical acclaim. (Edmund’s
mother was Jewish — the only one of Tom’s
three wives who was.)
PATRICK MARBER, 53, a Brit like Tom
Stoppard, is nominated for best director of
a play (“Travesties”). He is better known
as a writer, and as a writer, he is almost a
household name in Britain. He was Oscar-
nominated for his script for “Notes of a
Scandal” (2006). His play “Closer” was
turned into a hit MIKE NICHOLS’ film in
2004 (which Marber also wrote). In a 2015
interview with the Jewish Chronicle, a UK
paper, he said: “My whole life has a Jewish
flavor. I’m a Jew. I think of myself as a Jew
first and an Englishman second.”
All three nominees for the Tony for
best musical, revival, were written or co-
written by tribe members: “Carousel” by
RICHARD RODGERS and Oscar Ham-
merstein II; “My Fair Lady” by ALAN
LERNER and FREDERICK LOEWE, and
“Once On This Island” by Stephen Flaherty
and LYNN AHRENS, 69. JONATHAN
TUNICK, 80, the director of “Carousel,” is
nominated for best director of a musical.
NATE BLOOM
JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018 41
Calendar is at Congregation
Friday  Beth Aaron, 950 Queen
Anne Road, Teaneck.
June 8 www. lamdeinu.org or
lamdeinu@aol.com.
Shabbat in Fort Lee:
Author Dr. David G.
Dalin is the scholar-in-
residence at the JCC of
Fort Lee/Congregation
Gesher Shalom
throughout Shabbat.
Tonight’s talk, at 5 p.m.,
is “Jewish Justices of the
Supreme Court,” followed
by dinner at 6, services,
and a talk at 7:15, “Icon
of Evil: Hitler’s Mufti Rabbi Meeka Simerly
and the Rise of Radical
Islam.” During Shabbat Lunch and learn in
morning services at Wayne: Rabbi Meeka
9:30 a.m., Dr. Dalin will Simerly of Temple
ask “Was Pius the XII Beth Tikvah in Wayne
Hitler’s Pope?” and at discusses “The Power of
1 p.m., he will focus on Speech” at the Wayne
“The Presidents of the YMCA during Lunch and
United States and the Learn, noon. The Wayne
Jews.” 1449 Anderson Y is a branch of the
Ave. Dinner reservations, Metropolitan YMCA of
(201) 947-1735. the Oranges, a partner of
the YM-YWHA of North
Saturday  The Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey hosts
Jersey. 1 Pike Drive.

june 9 june www.wayneymca.org.

“Celebrate Israel @ 70 — Israel in the Park,” a celebration for the
10 whole family that includes food trucks, craft tables, ice cream, a
photo booth, and giveaways, from 2 to 5 p.m.; the Maccabeats
will perform at 3. 50 Eisenhower Drive. Pre-register and be entered in
a raffle for an Apple Watch, SodaStream, and more. (201) 820-3900 or
JFNNJ.org/Israel70.

(201) 837-2795 or Rinat. Baseball Research, the and levels, with yoga
org. National Baseball Hall instructors Alison Miller, Monday  Andrew Getraer
Music in Paterson: The of Fame and Museum, Robert Hoon, Zasha
Clifton Community and the Vintage Base Delvalle and Justeen june 11 Combatting BDS
Band returns to the Ball Association. The Nason; 9-10:30 a.m. in Englewood:
Lambert Castle Concert program is sponsored Opening meditation by Congregation
Series with “Music at by the men’s club. MaryBeth Sigler. All levels Ahavath Torah’s
the Castle: A Welcome (201) 836-6210 or www. welcome. Participants Israel Engagement
to Summer,” at Lambert bethaaron.org. should bring a mat, Committee presents
Castle, 5 p.m. with a June towel, and water bottle “Critical Conversations
10 rain date. 3 Valley
Road. (973) 247-0085 or
Sunday  and wear sunscreen.
Raffles. 411 E. Clinton Ave.
On Campus: Rutgers
Hillel Combats anti-
lambertcastle.org. june 10 (201) 408-1477 or htal@ Semitism,” 8:30 p.m.
jccotp.org. Panelists include Rutgers
Shabbat in Teaneck: Mose Hirsch Solomon, Hillel executive director,
Rabbi Dr. Michael nicknamed the Rabbi Book discussion in Andrew Getraer, Rutgers
Shmidman discusses of Swat Teaneck: The Jewish Sara Wolkenfeld students, and other
“The Messiah, Messianic Center of Teaneck hosts professionals. 240 Broad
Age, and Olam Haba” Talking about baseball the Leaves of Faith Book Minhags and marriage: Ave. (201) 568-1315.
at Congregation Rinat in Teaneck: Mark Club with a discussion Lamdeinu offers a
Yisrael, 6:50 p.m., of stories from Dara
as part of the shul’s
Sommer talks about the
“Boychicks of Summer: Horn’s “Eternal Life,”
discussion, “Yours,
Mine & Ours: Minhag & Thursday 
“Rambam and Moreh Jewish Aspects of Yoga in Tenafly: The
8 p.m. 70 Sterling Place. Marriage,” led by Sara june 14
Nevuchim: Innovation Baseball,” at 7 p.m. at (201) 833-0515. Tillinger Wolkenfeld,
and Controversy” Kaplen JCC on the
Congregation Beth 10:30 a.m. Lamdeinu, Funny Jewish guys:
shiurim in memory of Palisades hosts the
Aaron in Teaneck. Mr. a center for Jewish Dumont historian Dick
Rabbi Ozer Glickman. annual Yoga on the
Sommer is a member of learning founded by its Burnon gives a lecture,
389 W. Englewood Ave. Green for all ages
the Society for American dean, Rachel Friedman, “Those Funny Jewish

42 Jewish Standard JUNE 8, 2018


Guys,” about lives
and times of Jewish
comedians Henny
Youngman, Milton Berle,
George Segal, and Gene
Wilder, for people 60+,
at the Fair Lawn Senior
Center, 1 p.m. Excerpts
from “The Producers” will
be shown. 11-05 Gardiner
Road. Liz, (201) 796-1191
or srcenter@fairlawn.org.
Blood drive in Teaneck:
on the Palisades.
At 6:30 p.m., he will
discuss “The Courage
to Change.” On Shabbat
morning at 11, his sermon
will be “The Legacy of
the Lubavitcher Rebbe
— The Infinite Value of
the Individual Jew.” At
8 p.m., during seudah
sh’lishit, he will talk
about “The Passion of
Judaism — Does Passion
Lead to Practice or
Calendar
Services of Northern
New Jersey sponsors
JFCSNNJ Wheels for
Meals — Ride to Fight
Hunger, beginning and
ending at the Jewish
Home at Rockleigh. This
year also features a 2.4-
mile hike. The Jewish
Standard is among the
sponsors. Beginners
welcome. (201) 837-9090
or RidetoFightHunger.
com.

Photos courtesy JCCOTP

Congregation Rinat
Yisrael holds a blood
drive with New Jersey
Blood Services, a
division of New York
Blood Center, 2-8 p.m.
389 W. Englewood Ave.
(800) 933-2566 or www.
nybloodcenter.org.
Friday  and Cantor Julie Staple,
June 15
Rabbi Moshe Bryski
Shabbat in Tenafly:
Rabbi Moshe Bryski,
executive director
and spiritual leader of
Chabad of the Conejo
in Agoura Hills, Calif., is
the guest speaker at a
shabbaton at Lubavitch
Vice Versa?” 11 Harold
St. Dinner reservations,
(201) 871-1152 or www.
chabadlubavitch.org/
shabbaton.
Shabbat in Closter:
Temple Beth El holds
family services led by
Rabbi David S. Widzer
honoring Rabbi Beth
Kramer-Mazer, and
offering a send-off
for summer overnight
campers, 6:45 p.m. 221
Schraalenburgh Road.
(201) 768-5112.
Shabbat in Teaneck:
Temple Emeth offers
musical services with
the Temple Emeth Band,
Cantor Ellen Tilem, and
Rabbi Steven Sirbu,
8 p.m. 1666 Windsor
Road. (201) 833-1322 or
www.Emeth.org.
Sunday  Center, 12:30 p.m. 682
june 17
Charity bike ride: Jewish
Family & Children’s
Singles
Wednesday 
june 20
Seniors meet in
Orangeburg: Singles
65+ from the JCC JCC in Tenafly schedules
Rockland meet for dinner
at Hogan’s Diner in
two of its annual concerts
Orangeburg, N.Y., 6 p.m.
Individual checks. 17 The Kaplen JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly holds its 19th annual Sandra O. Gold
Dutch Hill Road. Gene, Founder’s Day Concert on Thursday, June 14, at 6:30 p.m. This year, the annual
(845) 356-5525. celebration will feature the Thurnauer School of Music’s student ensembles.
The Shirah Community Chorus, below, performs the annual Bernie and Ruth
Thursday  Weinflash z”l Memorial Concert. It will celebrate Israel @ 70 with special guests
june 21 Cantors Ronit Wolff Hanan and David Perper on Sunday, June 17 at 7.
For tickets, go to jccotp.org/Thurnauer.
Widows and widowers
meet: Movin’ On, a
monthly luncheon
group for widows and
widowers, meets at
the Glen Rock Jewish
Harristown Road. $5 for
lunch. (201) 652-6624 or
email arbgr@aol.com.

’80s Rock fest in Englewood

A WCBS FM 101.1’80s Rock Celebration concert, head-
lined by pop singer Belinda Carlisle and starring ABC,
Modern English, Tony Lewis of the Outfield, and
tenj

Limahl, is set for Saturday, July 14, at 7:30 p.m. It is

Film to screen in Franklin Lakes
Blythe Danner, Joe Mantegna, and David
Lascher star in “A Call to Remember,”
which will be shown on Sunday, June 10,
at 2 p.m., at Temple Emanuel of North Jer-
sey. The R-rated film is about two Holo-
caust survivors struggling with the trauma
they lived through and its effect on their
American-born sons.
program in March, requested by the Chil-
dren of Holocaust Survivors of the Jewish
Family and Children’s Services of North-
ern New Jersey. Everyone is welcome;
there will be ice cream and popcorn.
Reservations are not required.
For more information, go to tenjfl.org or
call (201) 560-0200.
sponsored by bergenPAC and John Scher/Metropoli-
tan Entertainment.
Belinda Carlisle was the lead vocalist for the ground-
breaking all-female band the Go-Go’s. The group came
out of the California punk scene in the late 1970s with
hits like “We Got The Beat,” “Our Lips Are Sealed,”
“Vacation,” and “Head Over Heels.” Carlisle left the
Go-Go’s to pursue a solo career and flourished with
chart-toppers like “Heaven On Earth,” “I Get Weak,”
and “Circle In The Sand.” Belinda Carlisle
Tickets are available at www.ticketmaster.com  Courtesy bergenPAC

This screening is a repeat of the shul’s or through the box office at www.bergenpac.org or
(201) 227-1030.

Jewish Standard JUNE 8, 2018 43

Jewish World
Pro-Israel activist dates far-left celebrity
and the Dutch go bananas
CNAAN LIPHSHIZ
AMSTERDAM — Like many young intellec-
tual couples their age, Anne Fleur Dekker
and Paul van der Bas enjoy going on walks
together, dining out, discussing art, and
attending cultural events.
A Dutch couple in their 20s, they have
different dress styles — he has a clean-cut
look and tends to wear suits, she has a
nose ring and favors ripped jeans — but at
first glance they seem like a good match.
Both are articulate, ambitious, intelligent,
and good-looking. They apparently are
deeply in love with each other.
But Dekker and van der Bas are not like
other couples.
For one thing, Dekker, who is Jewish,
probably is the best-known far-left activist
in the Netherlands, and has expressed sup-
port for the movement to boycott Israel.
And Van der Bas, who is not Jewish, is a
longtime employee of Holland’s leading
pro-Israel lobbying group and a member
of an anti-immigration party that many on
the left call racist and far right.
In Holland’s polarized society, the cou-
ple’s Romeo and Juliet story is grabbing
headlines in the national media. It is seen
as a sign of love’s ability to transcend even
the deepest ideological divisions. But it
also has exposed them to vicious attacks
by extremists who see their relationship
as betrayal.
“We disagree on many things, but we
have a lot in common. We like arts, we care
about social issues, we’re both doers,” van
der Bas, who works as a policy adviser for
the Center for Information and Documen-
tation on Israel, or CIDI, said. “We don’t
constantly talk politics. We do all the stuff
that normal couples do.”
Of course, most normal couples in the
Netherlands aren’t on the front cover of
Metro, the country’s second-largest cir-
culation daily, as Dekker and Van der Bas
were last month. The headline on the
cover read “Love between Left and Right.”
Last month, their affair also was profiled
by the country’s fourth-largest newspaper,
the highbrow daily Volkskrant.
Above all, though, when they go public
most couples don’t inspire such torrents
of hate messages on Twitter that their rela-
tionship becomes one of the country’s top
10 trending topics, as happened to Dekker
and Van der Bas in April.
Part of the intense interest is because
“we’re living in a polarized society with an
us vs. them mentality,” said Van der Bas,
25, a member of the rightest party called
Forum for Democracy. “I believe that 20
years ago, two young people falling in love
from opposite ends of the political spec-
trum wouldn’t have been so unusual.”
While that may be true, the 24-year-old
44 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018
Paul van der Bas and Anne Fleur Dekker have been attacked by extremists since
they went public with their romance.
Dekker isn’t just a left-wing activist. Over
the last year, she has become not only a
prominent member of far-left circles,
but their poster child. Volkskrant called
her “the pet enemy of right-wing Nether-
lands.” The GeenStijl news site labeled her
“Holland’s best-known Twitter hooligan”
and “the radical granddaughter of Pol Pot
and Naomi Klein,” the Canadian activist.
She earned her stripes in left-wing cir-
cles in 2017, after inviting her 23,000 Twit-
ter followers to join her and “throw 500
stones” at Geert Wilders, the leader of the
far-right Party for Freedom. “I think it’s an
honorable action,” she added.
The tweet referenced a far-right sup-
porter’s call on Twitter to stone mosques.
But it was widely seen as a call for violence
against a politician who is under constant
police protection because of countless
death threats made against him for his
anti-Islam rhetoric.
Wilders, whose party is the country’s
second largest, filed a police complaint
last year, charging Dekker with incite-
ment to violence. That unleashed thou-
sands of death threats against her from his
supporters. Police advised Dekker to go
underground for a few weeks because of
the threats, making her a prime time news
item and a star in radical left-wing circles.
“I grew up with the notion that the Neth-
erlands was a safe place. Suddenly that
appeared not to be the case; a wake-up
call,” Dekker told Volkskrant.
COURTESY OF ANNE FLEUR DEKKER
An only child whose parents went bank-
rupt in 2008 and divorced, Dekker said she
recently was diagnosed as suffering from
post-traumatic stress disorder because
of the upheavals in her life after tweeting
about Wilders. She also told Volksgrant
that she was the victim of date rape in 2013.
Dekker said her mother “suffered ter-
ribly” because of the threats. And her
father, whom Dekker had not seen in
two years, since has cut off all communi-
cations with her.
Through the ordeal, she grew closer to
van der Bas, with whom she had had con-
tact on a WhatsApp group for young opin-
ion shapers from across the political spec-
trum. They fell in love in April. Dekker told
Volkskrant that that she was “doing very
badly all of a sudden, and he was an enor-
mous source of support.”
She has written on Twitter that she is
“so in love it should be illegal.” She also
wrote in April: “I have never been able to
feel so free and myself in a relationship.”
But getting there took some adjusting,
she acknowledged. “I was attracted to him
but found it difficult to admit it, also to
myself,” Dekker told Volkskrant. “Because
here was a Forum for Democracy member,
and an active one at that, who knew [Thi-
erry] Baudet a bit,” she said, referring to
the party’s leader. “It felt forbidden.”
Months earlier, Dekker and van der
Bas were exchanging barbs in the media.
Dekker had been invited to speak at a
commemoration of World War II vic-
tims. Dekker made waves at the event as
an occasional supporter of the Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions movement
against Israel — last year she tweeted “I do
as much BDS as possible” — and for say-
ing that Dutch Jewry’s main watchdog on
anti-Semitism had no place at a Holocaust
commemoration ceremony.
Van der Bas told the PowNed right-
wing news site in November that Dekker’s
ignorance, as he described it, means she
should stay on Twitter instead of “abusing
a memorial ceremony.”
But Israel “is not a big issue” for Dekker,
said van der Bas, who adopted Israel’s
cause as a student and once dated an
Israeli. “I don’t know if I could be with
someone who hated Israel,” he added.
Dekker has said she no longer subscribes
to the BDS movement.
Now the couple post joint greetings
on Twitter. Van der Bas accompanied
Dekker to a Labor Day parade on May 1.
She accompanied him later that month to
a book launch by Baudet, the right-wing
politician.
But coming out as van der Bas’ girlfriend
last month exposed Dekker to new waves
of hatred — this time from the left, where
many felt that she was a traitor for sleeping
with the enemy, she told Volkskrant. She
said about three-quarters of her former
friends and acquaintances have turned
their backs on her over the past year.
“Now I’m getting threats from people
who used to be my crowd,” she told Volk-
skrant. Last month, she added, two “far-
left activists” confronted her on her door-
step “and told me what they think of me. It
may sound strange, but it feels worse than
when I was attacked by the far right.”
Arzu Aslan, a well-known female activ-
ist against what she describes as racism,
wrote on Twitter that Dekker “was turned
because she’s getting right-wing” sex. (“So
sexist,” Dekker, a feminist, told Volkskrant
about that tweet. “Why wouldn’t I be able
to determine my own convictions?”)
Amid the changes in her life, Dekker
remains a left-winger, she told the daily.
But she left the Green Left party, where
she had been a leading figure in Hilver-
sum, near Amsterdam. And she spoke out
against anti-Semitic discourse by support-
ers of far-left groups. The International
Socialists and Committee 21 groups said
she was no longer welcome at their event
because of those remarks.
“The extreme left has an anti-Semitism
problem, but this cannot be mentioned,”
Dekker said.
In April, the couple took a selfie and
posted it on Twitter. Its caption read “Have
fun hating. We’re happy together.”
JTA WIRE SERVICE
 Obituaries Jack Birnberg
We are deeply saddened to share
with you that Jack Birnberg, beloved
husband of Louise Birnberg, passed
Allan Lamstein Funeral Planning Simplified
away on June 2, 2018.
Allan Monroe Lamstein, 84, of Oradell died June 2. Jack was a committed BergenJewishChapel.com
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he is survived by his wife of 55 years, Susan, daughters, NJ. He established his own charitable foundation
Joanne, Cathy Lamstein-Reiss (Michael Reiss), and
nearly 50 years ago which provided extensive support
Johanna, and grandsons Brandon and Joshua Reiss and
Landon Jacob Lamstein.
to well over 100 charities. As a businessman, he was The Christopher Family
known as the Executive Decision Maker. He managed
Donations can be sent to Lindsay Elisabeth Merker
a variety of private and public companies, was a serving the Jewish community
Fund of the Jewish Board, jewishboard.org/merkerfund,
or the Alzheimer’s Association. Arrangements were
federally appointed bankruptcy trustee, and consulted since 1900
Paterson Monument Co.
by Gutterman and Musicant Jewish Funeral Directors,
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four grandchildren. to Jessica, Sidney, Max, Marlee, Jonah, and Lila.
Arrangements were by Eden Memorial Chapels, The funeral was held on Tuesday, the 5th of Robert Schoem’s Menorah Chapel, Inc
Fort Lee. June, at Barnert Temple in Franklin Lakes, NJ. For Jewish Funeral Directors
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JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018 45

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We come to you ❖ Free Appraisals 3:30/4-5:30 PM will be considered as well..
tylerantiquesny@aol.com Shommer
Call Us! Shabbas Bldg/Perm Subs also. Bach degree pref in Educ
201-894-4770 201-861-7770 ❖ 201-951-6224
or related field or Alt route, 2+ yrs elem or hs
classrm teaching exp. Email resume bhykop@
Shomer Shabbos www.aadsa726@yahoo.com gmail.com or fax 973-778-5697

46 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018

 Classified

Solution to last week’s puzzle. This week’s puzzle is

on page 39.

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Real Estate & Business
One William launches in downtown Englewood
with luxury rental residences and modern amenities
Downtown Englewood, known for its burgeoning cultural,
shopping, and entertainment offerings and prime access to
New York City, is getting a major residential upgrade with
the launch of One William, a new luxury rental community
in the heart of the walkable town center.
Offering a collection of one- and two-bedroom residences
and a full suite of indoor and outdoor amenities, One Wil-
liam combines modern living spaces with an exciting
48 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018
cosmopolitan atmosphere.
“Englewood and this location in particular have every-
thing we look for when scouting new development settings,”
said Jonathan Schwartz, a partner at BNE Real Estate Group,
which is developing One William along with partner Sterling
Properties. “There’s a real downtown vibrancy here that we
believe is only growing stronger. We’re delighted to now add
a modern residential component to the mix.”
Rooftop swimming pool at One William.
Located at 1 William Street, just off of W. Palisade Ave-
nue, One William features 185 well-appointed rental res-
idences throughout the five-story building, some with
private balconies and terraces. Monthly rents currently
start at $2,350. Immediate occupancy is available.
Community amenities include a rooftop pool ter-
race with a swimming pool, lounge seating, a fire pit,
private barbecue stations with dining areas, an out-
door bar with TV, and an expansive lawn area for
relaxation. A landscaped courtyard has an additional
lawn area, outdoor gaming spaces, lounge seating, and
a community garden.
Residents will also enjoy a private fitness center, a
children’s playroom, a Wi-Fi lounge with work stations
and conference rooms, and a club room with lounge
seating, a poker table, shuffleboard, and an indoor/
outdoor bar. A separate lobby level lounge includes a
coffee bar, billiards, seating areas, and a bar.
The smoke-free, pet-friendly community also offers
a 24/7 concierge, package acceptance, bicycle storage,
and onsite parking.
Nearby attractions include the Bergen Performing
Arts Center, Mackay Park, and the Palisades Inter-
state Park. For commuters, Routes 4, 80, and 9W; the
New Jersey Turnpike, the Palisades Parkway and the
George Washington Bridge are all less than 10 minutes
away. The NJ Transit 166 bus route stops three blocks
away from One William and provides a 45-minute
commute to Port Authority.
For more information on One William and to
arrange a private tour, visit RentOneWilliam.com or
call (201) 871-2171.
Valley Health System
offers diabetics
a support group
Valley Health System is now offering a free support
group to anyone with diabetes who is 18 and older.
The group will meet on the fourth Thursday of every
month from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Dorothy B. Kraft
Center, 15 Essex Road, Paramus.
Group members can meet and share with others
who have similar issues. They will be able to develop
a better understanding of diabetes and learn more
about their condition. The next meeting is scheduled
on June 28.
Family members are welcome. Registration is not
necessary.
For more information email Mary Kirchmeier at
mkirchm@valleyhealth.com or call her at (201) 291-
6213. Information about other diabetes programs
available at Valley Health System and directions to
the Dorothy B. Kraft Center can be found at www.
ValleyHealth.com.
 Real Estate & Business
Provident Bank Foundation awards grant TM

to bergenPAC’s special needs program

bergenPAC has announce that The Provident Bank
Foundation (PBF) chose it as one of the recipients of its
first cycle 2018 major grants, which totaled more than
$200,000 for projects and programs across New Jersey Voices in Harmony
and Pennsylvania.
Major grants provide between $5,000 and $25,000 fulfills an integral
in funding and support for organizations that have part of our mission to
identified an immediate need in the community and
the individuals they serve. make the performing
bergenPAC was awarded $20,000 to support its arts accessible to TEANECK $1,400,000
Majestic Manor on oversized property w/attention to detail &
Voices in Harmony special needs program at The Feli-
cian School, Children’s Therapy Center, Banyan School, everyone in the design, granite MEIK w/high end appliances, 7BRs, 4.5Bths,
fin bsmnt w/rec rm, attached gar, patio/shed, convenient to all.
Deron School of NJ’s Montclair Campus, Chapel Hill community. TENAFLY
ALPINE/CLOSTER
Orna RIVER VALE
Jackson, TENAFLY
Sales Associate CRESSKILL
201-376-1389
Academy, and ECLC of New Jersey’s Chatham Campus.
201-768-6868 201-666-0777 201-894-1234 201-871-0800
894-1234
Voices in Harmony is designed to instruct students with in the community,” said Dominic Roncace, bergenPAC
special needs in the performing arts. The students then president and CEO. “This generous funding from Provi-
come together on the main stage in bergenPAC for a spe- dent Bank Foundation enables us to further enrich the
cial performance in front of their families and friends.
“Voices in Harmony fulfills an integral part of our mis-
lives of our current students, and to expand the program
to new students, so they all can develop the self-confi-
OPEN HOUSES
sion to make the performing arts accessible to everyone dence to explore the world through music and dance.” SUNDAY, JUNE 10
t TEANECK t

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MLO #6706 201-970-4118 Cell
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JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018 49
Real Estate & Business

New Jersey State Fair is coming to

SELLING YOUR HOME? MetLife Stadium from June 21 to July 8
State Fair Meadowlands will take place
at MetLife Stadium from June 21 to July
8. Spread out over 35 acres plus park-
ing, this amusement oasis will delight
fun seekers of all ages while not burst-
ing anyone’s budget.
“This year we have more free enter-
tainment than ever before,” State Fair
Vice President Al Dorso Jr. said. “Not
only are family favorites like the Sea
Lion Splash, Belmont’s Festival of
Magic and the Racing Pigs returning,
we’re unveiling all-new shows includ-
ing Extreme Illusions & Escapes Show,
the largest assortment of epic illusions
and spine tingling escapes, and Cycle
Circus Live, the largest FMX freestyle
entertainment show of its kind in the
world today. Plus we’re celebrating our
country’s independence with a ginor-
mous bang both on July 3 and 4 with
spectacular fireworks shows!”
Call Susan Laskin Today
The Fairgrounds will feature hun-
To Make Your Next Move A Successful One!
dreds of heart-pounding rides and
BergenCountyRealEstateSource.com Cell: 201-615-5353 attractions for all ages including the
©2018 Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. Coldwell Banker is a registered trademark licensed to Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. largest Kiddie Land in New Jersey.
An Equal Opportunity Company. Equal Housing Opportunity. Owned and Operated by NRT LLC.
Comic book, pop culture, and aviation
enthusiasts alike can go airborne in
NVE-3524 Revise Rate Spring Mortgage Ad 5x6.5_NVE-3518 5/16/18 2:49 PM Page 1 one of the most famous helicopters of
all time: N3079G, the original Batcop-
ter from the 1960s Batman TV series
and Batman movie. For a more relax-
ing flying experience, soar over the
Mortgage rates and options are blooming at NVE Bank. Fairgrounds on the family favorite Sky
Ride. While gliding from one end of the
midway to the other, everyone can rest
their feet and marvel at New York City’s
15-YEAR
MORTGAGE iconic skyline.
7-YEAR 25-YEAR
MORTGAGE For a more down-to-earth experi-
MORTGAGE
ence, fairgoers can meander through
3.875% the midway where they can experience
3.500 % Rate
4.375% a wide variety of attractions ranging
3.935%
Rate Rate
luxury items such as hot tubs and out-
door furniture.
Spanning 18 days, State Fair Mead-
owlands will be open on weeknights
from 6 p.m. to midnight, Fridays from
6 p.m. to 1 a.m., Saturdays from 2 p.m.
to 1 a.m. and Sundays from 2 p.m. to 12
a.m. Parking costs $5 and tickets can be
purchased at the MetLife Stadium Box
Office located at the MetLife Main Gate.
Unlimited Ride Hand Stamps are avail-
able every night, except Friday, June 22.
Additionally, there will be a plethora of
bargain nights and special events:
• Preview Night (Thursday, June 21, 6
p.m. tomidnight.) Gate admission tickets
are $8 and Unlimited Ride Hand Stamps
are $22 for all ages; parking is $5.
• Kids Go Free Night (Tuesday, June
26, 5 p.m. to midnight.) Gate admis-
sion is free for ages 12 and younger
and a Child Unlimited Hand Stamp is
$20. Admission for 13 & Older is $11 and
there is a Combo Admission/Unlimited
Ride Hand Stamp Ticket for $30. Park-
ing is free.
• Cheap, Cheap Night (Monday, July
2, 5 p.m. to midnight.) Gate admission
for all ages costs $5; An Unlimited Ride
Hand Stamp is available for $25 for all
ages; parking is free
• Fireworks — Tuesday, July 3 (4 p.m.
to 1 a.m.) and Wednesday, July 4 (2 p.m.
to 1 a.m.) Celebrate summer fun and
patriotic pride with breathtaking fire-
works displays that can be seen any-
where on the Fairgrounds for just the
cost of admission; parking is $5
• Patron Appreciation Night (Sunday,
July 8, 2 p.m. to midnight.) First 1000
attendees will receive a special draw-

3.611% from having their face painted or pos-
APR*
APR* 4.430% APR* ing for a cartoon caricature to loads of
shopping. Everybody will find plenty
of vendors including jewelry, spa relax-
ation accessories, cell phone acces-
sories, sunglasses, body art, mirrors,
LED apparel, clothing for all ages, and
Make your arrangements today!
Finding the right mortgage to fit your needs should be quick, easy and
string backpack, Parking is $5
Pricing information and customiza-
tion options (e.g. Fast Passes, Unlim-
ited Ride Hand Stamps) can be found
at http://njfair.com/tickets/www.njfair.
com/tickets.

Jimmy J
J
painless — exactly what you’ll find when you work with our Mortgage
Specialist at NVE. Plus, our decision makers are local — providing a 88
1

7 2018
smooth and hassle-free process from start to finish.

Call today at 201-816-2800, ext. 1233,

or apply online at nvebank.com
the Junk Man
NMLS #733094
RESIDENTIAL & COMMERCIAL
*APR = Annual Percentage Rate. APR is accurate as of 5/15/18 and may vary based on loan amounts. Loans
WE CLEAN OUT:
are for 1-4 family New Jersey owner-occupied properties only. Rates and terms are subject to change without Basements •Baseme
Attics • Garages • Fire Damage
notice. The 7-year loan at the stated APR would have 84 monthly payments of $13.44 per thousand borrowed
based on a 20% down payment or equity for loan amounts up to $750,000. The 15-year loan at the stated
Construction Debris • Hoarding Specialists
Constru
APR would have 180 monthly payments of $7.33 per thousand borrowed based on a 20% down payment or
WE RECYCLE
CALL
equity for loan amounts up to $750,000. The 25-year loan at the stated APR would have 300 monthly
payments of $5.49 per thousand borrowed based on a 20% down payment or equity for loan amounts up to
$500,000. Payments do not include amounts for taxes and insurance premiums, if applicable. The actual CALL TODAY FOR A FREE ESTIMATE
201-66•1845-600-5941
201-661-4940 - 4940 2
payment obligation will be greater. Property insurance is required. Other rates and terms are available.
Subject to credit approval.

Bergenfield I Closter I Cresskill I Englewood I Hillsdale I Leonia I New Milford I Teaneck I Tenafly
We do not transport solid or hazardous waste
We d

50 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018

 Making your real estate dreams come true
Ruth Miron-Schleider
Broker/Owner is our passion and our mission!
ENGLEWOOD ENGLEWOOD ENGLEWOOD ENGLEWOOD
CO UN J J SP
NT DER SO UST SO UST TO ECT
RA LD LD W AC
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CT OU LA
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!

543 RIDGELAND TERRACE 411 CUMBERLAND STREET 139 MAPLE STREET 34 SUTTON PLACE $1,018,000

ENGLEWOOD ENGLEWOOD ENGLEWOOD ENGLEWOOD

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TENAFLY TENAFLY TENAFLY TENAFLY

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Call us today for your complimentary consultation!

Office: 201.266.8555 Mobile: 201.906.6024
ruth@mironproperties.com
www.MironProperties.com JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018 51
 CLASS OF 2018

E PA R E .
WE PR
B R AT E .
YO U C R
ELE
E R YO U
US CAT LET PA RTY
UAT IO N
GR A D

CAKES, COOKIES, SUSHI, DELI & FRUIT PLATTERS

CONGR ATS!
F RO M T H E C E DA R M A R K ET FA M I LY

52 JEWISH STANDARD JUNE 8, 2018