The secret of potato latkes
Excerpted from “Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family” (Workman, 2007).
Chanukah(Hebrew for “dedication”) is all about the oil. In 165 B.C.E., against great odds, Judah Maccabee and his tiny band of soldiers defeated Antiochus and the Syrian-Greek army. Wishing to rededicate the Temple, they found only enough oil to last one day. As every Jewish school child knows, that tiny flask of oil miraculously lasted eight days. But who knew it would set off a frying frenzy that would last for centuries!
Jews of Eastern European descent (Ashkenazim) commemorate the holiday with latkes. But who says potato pancakes are the only fritters fit to fry? Israelis celebrate Chanukah with sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts), and every Jewish community the world over sets oil to bubbling to fry a traditional pastry.
Another lesser-known Chanukah tradition involves the story from the apocrypha of Judith, a beautiful Jewish widow, who was asked to dine with the enemy general Holofernes. She plied him with cheese to make him thirsty for wine, and when he fell into a drunken stupor, she beheaded him with his own sword. Because her bravery is said to have inspired the Maccabees, some communities remember Judith by eating cheese during this holiday.
Lighting the candles, I am transported to the Chanukahs of my youth. For the Rabinowitz cousins, raised together practically as siblings, our childhood was the New York version of the movie, “Avalon” (without the fire, thankfully). Our parents were so close, we were always together: cousins Carole and Phyllis, Joyce and Marvin, Bonnie and Jackie, my brother, Gary and I, and of course cousin Marilyn, who luxuriated for nine years as the only grandchild before the rest of us appeared. Ellen and Leslie, Ronald and Linda, our Atlanta cousins, made occasional appearances to round out the festivities. Uncle Al, in his gold slippers and yachting cap, would regale us wide-eyed kids about his submarine, and the identical twins, Uncle Morris from Atlanta and Uncle Lou from New York, would exchange their jackets, scaring their daughters, who suddenly saw two daddies. There were so many of us that Papa Harry even put a board in the children's table. The highlight, of course, was our Chanukah party. The pile of latkes! The mountain of presents! The noise! The excitement! The squabbles! Then when we cousins started producing the great-grandchildren, Aunt Sally's basement bulged with four generations of Rabinowitzes, each bringing gifts for all the others.
I have noticed through the years that there is a tendency among latke illuminati to view with disdain those who blend. “Oh, no,” they tsk-tsk when they see my recipe, just a touch of feigned sympathy in their eyes. “I use a food processor. I like texture.” Texture? You want texture? I'll give you texture. Use my splat! method and you'll get all the texture you want with these crunchy babies.
They're all crispy outsides, with practically no insides. My family hovers over the pan to fight over the thinnest ones, which are so full of holes you can practically see through them. Cathy Thomas, food editor of The Orange County Register, called them “crunchy wonders” and “crispy-brown snowflakes” … but I don't like to brag.
Judy Bart Kancigor's Crispy, Crunchy Latkes
2 pounds baking potatoes
2 large eggs
1/2 medium-size onion, coarsely chopped
1/2 medium-size firm apple, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher (coarse) salt, or to taste
1/8 teaspoon white pepper
1 teaspoon baking powder (see Notes)
1/4 to 1/2 cup all-purpose flour or matzah meal
Peanut or canola oil, for frying
Applesauce and/or sour cream, for serving
1. Peel the potatoes and cut them into 1-inch cubes. To keep them white and release some of the starch, submerge them in a bowl of water while you're preparing the remaining ingredients.
2. Place the eggs in a blender. Add the onion, apple, salt, white pepper and baking powder. Drain the potatoes and squeeze them dry in paper towels. Add enough of the potatoes to fill the blender (all 2 pounds may not fit). Turn on the blender, and pushing down on the sides with a rubber spatula (careful you don't blend the spatula — there is no rubber in this recipe), blend until the potatoes just move around. Add the remaining potatoes as you're blending, but do not overprocess or make it too smooth. The texture should resemble applesauce. (This takes about 6 seconds in my Osterizer.)
3. Transfer the batter to a large bowl and add the flour. The batter should be flowing, but not too thin.
4. Now for the real secret of my very crisp latkes: Pour enough oil into a large skillet to coat the bottom. Heat the oil over medium-high heat until it is quite hot but not smoking. Use a serving spoon to scoop up the batter (about 2 tablespoons per scoop), hold the spoon about 8 inches above the pan, and spill it all at once. Splat! Remove your hand quickly so you don't burn yourself.
(Like tennis, it's all in the wrist.) The batter will splatter, forming holes … the better to hold the sour cream or applesauce. Repeat with as many as will fit in the skillet without crowding. Cook until browned, about 1 minute. Then flip them over and cook the other side for 1 minute.
5. Drain the latkes well on paper towels, and keep them warm while you cook the remainder, adding more oil as needed.
6. Serve immediately, with applesauce and/or sour cream.
Notes: If you want to make the batter ahead, to cook later or the next day, prepare it through Step 2 (do not add the flour), and pour the mixture into a tight-fitting glass jar (do not use plastic ware). Tap the jar on the counter to release any air bubbles, cover the batter well with a thick layer of flour, and refrigerate for up to 24 hours. When you are ready to use it, remove and discard the flour with the black layer that has formed beneath it. Transfer the batter to a large bowl, stir in the flour, and proceed with Step 4 using fresh flour.
Makes about 3 dozen latkes.
The secret of potato latkes Read More »
In search of . . . Chanukah gelt
My family didn’t do Chanukah presents.
Each year, as winter barraged us in Brooklyn — mean, wet sleet, mounds of blackened snow — Chanukah snuck in, to warm our homes. Twenty-five years ago, the American holiday marketing blitz had hardly begun: There were still quiet moments between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the Jewish and non-Jewish holidays were not yet inextricably intertwined. No one insisted on pareve holiday displays and “season’s” greetings, not in our neighborhood, anyway.
Flatbush, or at least the basic 30-block radius in which everyone I knew lived, twinkled only sporadically with Christmas lights. On my block, there were only two non-Jewish families, and that was probably indicative of the entire neighborhood, where Christmas was the exception, not the rule.
Which is why the lack of Chanukah presents at our house really bugged. “I’m very much against giving out Chanukah presents,” my father insists to this day, as he did then. The idea of giving Chanukah presents was a custom co-opted from the non-Jews, and “you’re not allowed to go in the ways of the goyim,” he says.
But to my mind, presents and Christmas had nothing to do with each other, nothing at all. All my friends got Chanukah presents. The lucky ones got one for each night, and the luckier ones said they didn’t need presents because they already had everything they wanted (a Zen concept that was as foreign to me as Christmas itself). Most people I knew among our Modern Orthodox friends, though not among my ultra-Orthodox cousins from my dad’s side, snagged one really cool gift for Chanukah: a bike, a pogo stick, a doll.
We got zip.
Not to say that ours was a particularly deprived childhood; nor were our Jewish holidays lacking either. On Chanukah, we went to my grandmother’s for a family gathering with homemade latkes (mashed, not shredded), and at home we had a mail-order doughnut machine which made all our sufganiyot — no matter what we found in the pantry to fill them with — delectable, even as they stained our paper plates with grease.
If this sounds like a Sholem Aleichem tale, let me say that after the candles dissolved, we’d run upstairs to watch TV or finish our homework or go back to beating each other up, or whatever it is siblings did in the age before the Internet, video games and IM. But for that hour, an hour when we were no doubt forced to stay downstairs and interact, we’d sit in the living room near the glow of our myriad menorahs and make attempts to play dreidel.
My father wanted us to play, to spin the top inscribed with the letters of the miracle “Nes Gadol Haya Sham,” (A great miracle happened there) — and for that he’d give us gelt.
Yiddish for money, gelt, he explained, is the real Chanukah custom: Throughout the ages, coins have been distributed to children to play a gambling game during the Festival of Lights.
And today, with the Hallmarkization of the holidays, as Christmas and Chanukah have been blended into a “season” with similar customs (except for tree vs. menorah), gelt remains a distinctive, if kitchy Chanukah custom. Except instead of money, it’s been immortalized in chocolate: Gold-foil-encased coins wrapped in net bags that are so ubiquitous they have come to represent the holidays.
But what is the real origin of gelt? Is it, as my father claimed, really a long-held Jewish custom? And how did gelt evolve from money to chocolate? And why does the chocolate taste so waxy? If gelt is here to stay — if it’s going to really represent the Jews like mistletoe and holly do the Christians — are there any better options than the molten coins of our childhood?
These are some of the questions I had as I set out on my journey in search of gelt.
Before the chocolate, came the coins.
But what does money have to do with Chanukah, a holiday celebrating a military victory — and to a lesser extent, the miracle of the Temple oil lasting eight days?
The Encyclopedia Judaica had no entry.
Type in “gelt,” “Chanukah” and even “origins” on the Internet, and what you’ll get are hundreds of sites selling chocolate coins, Chanukah gifts and a number of sources on the subject that can be categorized into a few reasons behind the gelt.
- The Greeks made a decree against learning Torah, so Jews gave their children coins to play games with to make it seem like no learning occurred. After the Hellenization of the Jews, it was necessary to give gelt to incentivize the children to learn.
- According to Jewish law, the light of the menorah should only be used to commemorate the miracle of the oil (where one day of Temple oil lasted eight). As an example of forbidden activities, the Shuchan Aruch, or Code of Jewish Law, used counting money. That’s why they gave out money — to remind people not to count it.
- Jews must light one candle per night — even if they’re poor, the Talmud says. During this time, the community gave charity so that people would have money for candles without begging.
- Chanukah time was a bonus time for Jewish teachers — especially teachers who would travel to remote villages to promote Jewish education. Students would also receive money for studying hard, some suggest, and the name “Chanukah,” which means dedication, also shares a root with the word, “chinuch,” which means education.
- There is a connection of coins to the Macabbean victory. Two decades after the victory, their descendants minted coins to celebrate their independence. Also, the American Israel Numismatic Association suggests Maccabee leaders took spoils of war — including coins, usually used to pay mercenaries. “On the first celebration of Chanukah in Jerusalem, and during the ceremonies of re-dedicating the Temple, large amounts of these coins were given to the soldiers, the widows and orphans of the war dead (see II Maccabees 8:28) and perhaps to the general population, who had been overtaxed by the Syrians for many years,” the Web site states. “If this theory for the origins of Chanukah gelt seems far-fetched, consider the tradition of eating latkes (potato pancakes) in the Diaspora and donuts in Israel as a part of the holiday festivities. These food items are fried in oil, and this is, supposedly, an allusion to the oil that miraculously burned for eight days.”
Indeed, the latkes and doughnut customs do seem far-fetched, but their origins are for another story. This one is about gelt, about chocolate coins (or it’s meant to be, anyway).
“This tradition is decidedly European in origin, probably dating from the late 18th and early 19th century, when Jews figured prominently in chocolate manufacturing,” Tina Wasserman wrote in Reform Judaism Magazine in 2005. “Fashioning coins out of chocolate would have allowed poor children to take pleasure in the growing Jewish tradition of receiving gelt at Chanukah time.”
Gerrit Verburg, whose Michigan company imports the Fort Knox Chocolate Coins from Holland, says the Dutch company — Pieterman Chocoladewerken — has been making holiday chocolate coins for 100 years. “The coins in Holland are not for Christmas or Chanukah, but St. Nicholas on Dec. 5,” Verburg said.
Others suggest it was a post-World War II invention, coinciding with Chanukah’s rising to the challenge of Christmas. That’s what Jewish historian Jonathan Sarna, co-author of “The History of the Jewish People: Tradition and Change” (2006), surmises. Gelt, he says, because it was a Yiddish term, surely goes back to Europe. Gifts, he added, were virtually unknown for Chanukah. “Indeed, Jews used to give presents on Purim, not on Chanukah. The shift takes place at the turn of century — it’s clearly in response to Christmas,” he said (Go Dad!)
Chanukah chocolate, he thinks, was also co-opted. “If you ever look at the [chocolate], the Maccabee was very fat. Who ever saw such a fat warrior? The same company used the same candy for Macabbees and Santa Claus. This was a way of taking the chocolate mold for Santa Claus, repacking it as a Maccabee, and presto! You could sell it for both holidays.”
The keeper of the secret must be the chocolatemakers themselves.
But you try calling Brooklyn-based Kosher candy companies and asking to speak to their media department.
“Our whaa?,” the receptionist cackled when I tried. I could almost hear her cracking her gum in the background as I was shuffled around from number to number. In the end, after finally speaking to real people at the major Kosher candy companies — Paskez, Liebers, Manischewitz (yes, they make coins too) — it turns out most of them import their chocolate coins from Israel. There are two major purveyors of candy coins in the Holy Land: Elite (owned by Strauss) and Carmit (recently purchased by Cadbury).
And, no surprise: Brooklyn media relations are nothing compared to Israeli attitude. Weeks of midnight phone calls to both companies were directed and re-directed to Yael and Yifat and Steve (you’d think someone with such a rational American name might return a call), with an air of secretiveness worthy of Israeli espionage, not chocolate coins.
Turns out, Elite has been making the chocolate coins since the 1960s, primarily for export to England (Marks and Spencer), France, the United States and even Australia, Elite’s public relations firm said in an e-mail. “The packaging of the chocolate is traditional, reminiscent of the times that people went around with a bundle of coins in a small bag.” Elite’s milk chocolate coins are 28 percent cacao, and their dark is 40 percent.
These were the coins of our youth.
We gobbled them up like paupers, while the grownups ate latkes and applesauce — which were fine, for sure, but not as good as gelt. Gelt is candy! Gelt is fun! The netting around the bags was just weak enough that you could tear it apart like the Hulk, freeing half a dozen coins of different sizes. They were wrapped in gold (and later silver, for dark chocolate) foil that you needed sharp fingernails to pry open — unless you were the type of rascal that popped the coin into your mouth whole, squishing the chocolate out between the foil and chewing it up like a Twinkies wrapper. But if you did do that (and admit it, you have done it once or twice), then you couldn’t spend the rest of the night smoothing out the designs on the foil until it shined like real gold.
Who knew from taste back then? Ours was a less refined food era, before $8 chocolate bars, 80 percent cacao chocolates, food blogs, lactose intolerance and nut allergies (some coins are made at plants with nuts nearby, which is why Paskesz now imports a nut-factory-free version from Holland, a secondary producer to Israel).
Ah, the bliss of ignorance.
It was only after we grew up a bit — when we’d tasted other types of chocolate from countries around the world — that we realized those coins are, well, waxy. Granted, some of gelt coins were old, maybe saved by our moms from the year before or flown in from Israel months in advance, often lending them a white, chalky sheen, which is never a good thing when it comes to chocolate.
We grew up, but our gelt stayed the same … until now.
Over the last 10 years, as food and eating have been elevated to art forms, chocolatiers and confectioners have contributed their own fine fare to the chocolate coin mix (almost all certified Kosher). Big-name brands like Godiva, as well as small, private labels, are making chocolate coins special for Chanukah. They use finer fats, better milk, more cocoa and they wait till “the night before Chanukah” to produce them.
“We start with a very high grade of premium chocolate, temper it,” says Barbara Berg from Madelaine Gourmet Chocolates, referring to the controlled cooling of melted chocolate that promotes the formation of small, stable fat crystals in the finished product. “Agitation, temperature and time affect it,” she said.
Gourmet chocolatiers are almost changing a Chanukah custom. Gelt, they promise, can be good.
Now the final step in this investigation is to taste them.
We are like kids in a candy store.
Actually, I am standing with a gaggle of kids in a candy store, Munchies on Pico Boulevard. The on-site spinning of fresh cotton candy almost distracts us from our mission: to find all the chocolate gelt we can here in this store. It’s not an easy task (nor, perhaps a smart one, having to tell four children who are not my own “no” at every pixie stick, candy corn, gumball and marzipan [ugh] their little hands alight upon. I quickly rush them out.)
Onto the kitchen table we spill our loot like Veruca Salt, hoarding a floor of Willy Wonka’s factory: giant fist-size gold coins, coins in a pirate’s chest, coins in a large dollar-bill box, SpongeBob coins and your regular red-net bag coins. There are coins in gold- and red- and green-colored foil (which we conclude are not gelt at all), and coins in fancy mesh bags that fingers can’t poke holes in, no matter how hard they try.
According to thenibble.com, a great food- finds Web site, one examines five things in an “organoleptic” (relating to perception by a sensory organ) exploration of chocolate: appearance, snap, aroma, mouth feel and taste.
Ours is not an organoleptic tasting. We — an unscientific group of five children, ranging from age 3 to 11, and a couple of adults — are ready to gorge on chocolate. Thankfully, most of us have seen “Ratatouille,” so we know how important our mission is: to discern whether one chocolate coin is different from another. (Although, that sounds like a Passover question. The Chanukah question might be, can one chocolate coin last eight days?)
We arrange 10 chocolate plates of gelt around the table, with milk and water to clear palates and a plate for the used foil in the middle.
“It’s pretty good.” (Paskesz from Holland)
“Smooth and a little bumpy.” (SpongeBob Square Pants, Holland)
“Soapy.” (Carmit White Chocolate)
“Crunchy. Thick.” (Giant Chocolate Elite Badatz coins)
“Not Gelt.” (Lake Champlain gold, red and green coins)
“Loopy.” (Sees)
“Corkscrew.” (Carmit Milk)
“Wavy.” (Madelaine)
“Brown.” (All of them)
OK, so I never said we were scientists. But the kids weren’t clueless: Wavy meant it had layers of taste, flavors that revealed themselves only gradually. Corkscrew meant pasty. Loopy might have meant it made you go crazy or “bazoinkas,” as one kid does after she eats too much chocolate.
As for fun, SpongeBob was a favorite, as was the giant dollar-bill box. The large gold coins were grabbers, and the Madelaines had the nicest wrapping. Godiva had the best overall packaging.
Amy Klein reads this story on NPR’s Morning Edition. Click here to listen.
In the end, the last chocolatiers standing reviewed the finest ones (incidentally, giving them the same rating as the Washington Post foodies).
Sees is the best, in my opinion — a creamy, smooth confection that coats the tongue. Godiva — well, Godiva is silky, like Godiva. The chocolate is good and the bags are pretty. Madelaines are light, with mild notes of cinnamon.
But for me, there is still something about those Elite coins. No, it wasn’t exactly the taste, because they’re still waxier than the gourmet chocolates. But the notes extend long after swallowing, so they aren’t just chocolate anymore. They are gelt: They capture the memory of Chanukahs past, when the colored candles melted brightly in our front window as we four children sat nearby, trying to play dreidel for gelt, nary a Chanukah gift in sight.
In search of . . . Chanukah gelt Read More »
Letter from France: An incendiary TV news report’s truthfulness is on trial
Something unusual happened in the small 11th Appeals courtroom of Paris on Nov. 14. The footage used for a September 2000 report by French TV on the death of
Mohammad al Dura in the Gaza Strip was screened and examined by a judge in a slander trial against an Internet site that had claimed the Al Dura report was forged.
Charles Enderlin, the veteran correspondent of French public television in the Middle East and author of the report, described to the judge every segment of the footage filmed by his cameraman at the Netzarim junction, while Enderlin was in Ramallah. The journalist maintained that his report was genuine and accused the Internet site, Media-Ratings, of slander, but, for the first time since the events of September 2000, the French news agency, AFP, concluded that something was wrong with Enderlin’s report.
“The [edited] TV report ends with an image of the boy laying still, leading the viewer to believe that the boy was killed in the shooting, but in the unreleased footage screened in court, we could see in the following seconds the boy moving his arm,” read the AFP story, adding that this did not exclude the possibility that the boy died later.
AFP added that Enderlin refused to answer its questions after the hearing.
The trial, attended by no major French media except for the AFP correspondent, might shed new light on the Al Dura affair and on media coverage in general.
During the first few years, French television succeeded in avoiding major criticism regarding the Al Dura report and Enderlin’s firm statement accusing Israeli soldiers of killing the young boy, but in 2004 the course of events changed when two renowned journalists began investigating the case.
Senior French editors Denis Jeambar and Daniel Leconte were alerted by former Le Monde journalist Luc Rosenzweig on possible misreporting by Enderlin, and they requested to view the footage. Jeambar and Leconte published a story criticizing Enderlin’s work in January 2005. It pointed out some troubling details, such as the staged battle scenes filmed by Talal Abu Rahma in the first part of the footage, the lack of evidence proving Enderlin’s claim that the bullets were shot from the Israeli position and other major details, such as the lack of blood on the victims, although Enderlin said the Al Duras had been hit by bullets.
Enderlin declared that he had edited the images to avoid showing the boy’s last minutes of agony. But in the footage, there was no trace of these images. However, Enderlin’s theory stood as unquestionable reality, and Abu Rahma’s images weren’t questioned or analyzed.
Jeambar and Leconte called on French TV to launch its own internal inquiry, citing a lack of journalistic standards, but did not share the theory of a possible staging of Al Dura’s death.
Five years after the incident, Arlette Chabot, French public TV’s new head news editor, told Jewish radio and the Paris Herald Tribune that “no one knew who shot at Muhammad al Dura,” but she maintained that accusing Enderlin of forgery was pure slander and confirmed the case against Media-Ratings’ owner Philippe Karsenty.
Was public French TV trying to shake off growing criticism from senior journalists by suing a small Internet site for defamation?
The hearing was probably not the result it was aiming for.
The trial against Karsenty, which French TV expected to win easily, turned unexpectedly into a first public re-examination of the TV report, when the judge demanded to view the footage before ruling whether the accused was guilty of slander.
This strategy might pull Enderlin even farther down. Jeambar and Leconte criticized a possible lack of journalist deontology, but Karsenty’s charges denouncing an alleged forged report pushes Enderlin to a rougher spot.
Furthermore, only 18 minutes were provided by Enderlin, when Abu Rahma claimed originally to have filmed 27.
For Karsenty and others, this has become a far-reaching battle.
“The Al Dura report has had terrible consequences, causing hatred against Israel, Jews and the West,” Karsenty told me. “It generated violence and terror when it became a symbol throughout the world and was invoked in the killing of Daniel Pearl, among other tragedies. This fabricated symbol, represented on stamps, graffiti and even monuments, could sink in and generate profound hatred for several generations. We have to repair the damage now, before it’s too late.”
The trial will resume on Feb. 27.
Soldiers in the Park
The mayor of Paris surprised me today.
Let’s face it, like every other resident of our capital, I’ve gotten used to complaining over just about every little detail that could annoy our beautiful and privileged life. A Parisian cannot visualize life without his five-week yearly vacation, without his regular three-day weekends, etc., and the more he gets used to his privileges, the more he gets annoyed by anything that could disturb his quiet life.
In the very same way, we all desire that our city hall would understand and endorse our political views, even when they don’t concern the city or even our country.
It seems that our mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, has become a true gymnast in the diplomatic sport of pleasing various lobbies based in our district.
Delanoe is a communications pro who knows how to address crowds and who would love to become the next resident of the Elysee presidential palace.
Although I have no intention of campaigning for the mayor, I cannot reasonably ignore the way he managed the campaign for the liberation of the three abducted Israeli soldiers these past few months.
The mayor launched in the summer of 2006 a solidarity campaign in favor of civilians in Lebanon and in Israel. When he received the families of the three abducted soldiers, Gilad Shalit, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, he promised to hang their pictures in the city and call for their quick liberation, just as he did for French-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt and for various journalists detained in Iraq.
All of those who heard Delanoe smiled and thought that the pictures would never see the light of day, and that if they were hung, it would be in some dark corner of an abandoned neighborhood in the outskirts of Paris. However, Delanoe instructed that the poster be placed in the beautiful Bercy Park, more specifically in the Yitzhak Rabin Garden, which is a leisure area for thousands of Parisians.
Letter from France: An incendiary TV news report’s truthfulness is on trial Read More »
No Teddy Bears’ Picnic in Sudan for English teacher
These are the same Arab Muslims that kill and torture African Muslim citizens of their country because of race.
Where’s the Islamic court that will try those crimes?
No Teddy Bears’ Picnic in Sudan for English teacher Read More »
Leven has a special bond with the Jews of Iran
If you ask your average Iranian Jew in the U.S., Europe or Iran who Hubert Leven is, they wouldn’t have a clue. However, his family’s generosity to the Jews of Iran more than a century ago significantly transformed the fabric of our once isolated community. At the turn of the 20th century when Iran’s Jews lived in extreme poverty and persecution by the Muslim majority, the
Alliance Israelite Universelle” (AIU), an educational non-profit organization his great-grandfather helped establish schools through out Iran. This valuable education Iranian Jews obtained helped them lift themselves up and out of their ghettos. They were able to reconnect with Judaism, they found hope that they were not alone and there were other Jews in the world who cared about their well being. The ripple effect of the AIU can still be felt today in the Iranian Jewish community in the U.S., which is by far one of the most prosperous and successful Jewish communities in North America.
Fortunately, Leven has been able to reconnect with our community in Los Angeles as his new non-profit organization is seeking to help the less fortunate in Israel. This week my piece in L.A. Jewish Journal gives some insight into his meeting and the following is an excerpt of my interview with Leven:
Can you share with us a little about your great-grandfather and the work of those who helped established the AIU?
My great-grandfather’s Narcisse Leven was part of a group of seven who established the AIU in 1860 and also served as their President. This group of founders were very much influenced by the liberal and humanistic ideals of the 1848 French Revolution one of the achievements of this revolution was the abolition of slavery in the French colonies. Adolphe Cremieux, one of the founding members of AIU served as Minister of Justice and gave French citizenship to all the Jews of Algeria. The AIU also provided a platform for French Ashkenazi Jews to reach out to their Sephardic brothers who did not benefit from the Enlightenment which advanced civilization in general and to the French Jews in particular. The Hebrew name of AIU in Israel is Kol Israel Haverim or “all Jews are friends/brothers”.
Why has your family had such a dedication to Jewish philanthropic work?
Narcisse Leven was not wealthy, he gave his time, competence and dedication to the cause. He also transmitted a sense of responsibility and duty towards to his son Georges and who in turn passed it on to his children. Philanthropy is to a large extent an element of culture, a way of life and if you are immersed in it from an early age, it becomes almost genetic. Gustave Leven, my father’s younger brother made a significant fortune and wholeheartedly believed that it would be put to much better use if invested in the future of the Jewish people rather than in making a few wealthy heirs—a philosophy that I fully share. Because of Gustave’s philosophy our family has been privileged to establish the Rashi Foundation and continued its extensive support to AIU.
Are you aware of the extent to which the AIU’s schools have substantially benefited Iranian Jewry?
Of course I am aware and proud. And especially when you remember what the AIU did in Iran, Morocco, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, etc. Let alone those in central Europe and Russia by allowing thousands to flee the pogroms for the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Argentina, etc.
The remainder of my interview with Leven can be found at the: Iranian Jewish Chronicle Magazine.
Leven has a special bond with the Jews of Iran Read More »
Christian Science Monitor gets “Zero Degree Turn” story wrong!
The Christian Science Monitor in its article today regarding the Iranian Television Series “Zero Degree Turn” became the latest U.S. publication to inaccurately report on this fictional drama on Iranian state-run television with the Holocaust as its back drop. The show has been hailed by reporters at the AP, Wall Street Journal, and NPR as sympathetic to the issue of Holocaust—a supposed change of rhetoric coming from Iran in light of the anti-Semitic comments spewed by Iran’s president in the last few years. But as a responsible journalist who has covered this story before, I’m here to say that these news media outlets have totally been inaccurate in their coverage of this TV program!
To the contrary, my own accurate article last month in the L.A. Jewish Journal revealed that “Zero Degree Turn” in no way sends a positive message about the Shoah or Jews. It is clear that the AP, Wall Street Journal, NPR and other reputable news outlets failed to properly review and translate the program with the help of experts. My investigation of the new Iranian program revealed that “Zero Degree Turn” is nothing more than the same old anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda put out by the Iranian government. The following is the truth indicated in my article about this TV show that the Monitor and AP failed to pick up on:
“This TV program lists in its credits a man named Abdollah Shabazi, who was an ideological strategist for the Iranian government, and he gave this idea to make this propaganda film to show that Iranians are ‘good with the Jews,’” said Bijan Khalili, a Los Angeles-based Iranian Jewish activist and Persian-language book publisher. “But in reality, this man is the author of many anti-Semitic and anti-Bahai [Persian-language] books.”
“One of the objectives of this program is to show that Jews are corrupt, because they are shown as both giving bribes and accepting bribes,” Khalili said. “The story includes a character called Homayoun Talab, an Iranian diplomat, who accepts bribes in order to provide false papers to Jews.”
Talab, Khalili said, is loosely based on Abdol Hossein Sardari, Iranian ambassador to German-controlled France during World War II, who forestalled the deportation of 200 Iranian Jews living in Paris at the time.
Fariborz Mokhtari, a professor of Eastern studies at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., recently completed a book on Sardari’s life. He said “Zero Degree Turn” egregiously misrepresents Sardari, who never accepted money for giving Jews in France Iranian passports.
“Sardari was duty-bound to look after the interests of Iranians. Whether they were Zoroastrian, Christian, Jewish or Muslim was not very important to him,” said Mokhtari, who is Muslim and has been researching Sardari since 2002. “As he was quoted having told his inquiring nephew, ‘It was his duty to his country and to God.’”
Khalili also said that other episodes of “Zero Degree Turn” make repeated references to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which are historically out of place, because the issue was not prevalent in the 1940s. Likewise the Jewish characters in the series are shown in a poor light, because they speak an improper form of the Persian language, as compared to the Muslim characters, Khalili said.
“We have a responsibility as Iranian Jews living outside of Iran to reveal to the rest of the world how anti-Israel and anti-Semitic the Iranian government is through this program and others like it,” Khalili said.
Shame on the Monitor’s editors and shame on the reporter Scott Peterson for failing to do better research to expose the REAL TRUTH about “Zero Degree Turn”. Instead, Peterson and the Monitor in this story continued to spread the one-sided propaganda feed to them by the Iranian government concerning this show! Supposedly the Iranian leaders are now “good people” after producing this show that does not deny the Holocaust. What a bunch of hog wash! When articles like these fail to expose the “spin” put out by Iran’s radical leaders this is a discredit to journalism and in a way helps the Iranian regime continue to help cover up their President’s anti-Semitic comments about the Holocaust. While reporters in Iran cannot freely cover the news in Iran without being imprisoned, tortured or executed by the regime’s leaders, U.S. and western journalists have a duty to expose the truth of what is going on in Iran and not helping to cover it up.
If you don’t believe me about the anti-Semitic nature of “Zero Degree Turn”, just view this clip accurately translated by The Middle East Media Research Institute!
The Christian Science Monitor and other news media outlets have a responsibility to retract their articles about “Zero Degree Turn” and issue apologizes to their readers for not giving the full truth regarding this show!
Christian Science Monitor gets “Zero Degree Turn” story wrong! Read More »
The Jewish Service Heard Round the World
I received an email today from the American Jewish Committee announcing the launch of their YouTube network about a month ago. Ok, so everyone has their own YouTube channel already – that’s not ground-breaking news. But, I did think the email was blogworthy because of one particularly moving video they highlighted, “Live From Germany: The Jewish Service Heard Round the World.”
Produced by NBC with the cooperation of the AJC, this video is about a historical Jewish service held on German soil on October 26, 1944 led by Rabbi Sidney Lefkowitz, an army chaplain. The touching religious ceremony was broadcast on the radio for the world to hear, declaring that Hitler and the Nazi regime did not succeed in their goal of wiping out the Jewish spirit. Here is that video:
Muslim rumors hurt Obama
The Forward reported this month that presidential candidates and major Muslim American organizations were keeping each other at arms’ length. Today, The Washington Post says questions about Islam keep dogging Barack Obama, who, in fact, is a member of an ultra-liberal Christian church.
In his speeches and often on the Internet, the part of Sen. Barack Obama’s biography that gets the most attention is not his race but his connections to the Muslim world.
Since declaring his candidacy for president in February, Obama, a member of a congregation of the United Church of Christ in Chicago, has had to address assertions that he is a Muslim or that he had received training in Islam in Indonesia, where he lived from ages 6 to 10. While his father was an atheist and his mother did not practice religion, Obama’s stepfather did occasionally attend services at a mosque there.
Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a “Muslim plant” in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn in earlier this year.
In campaign appearances, Obama regularly mentions his time living and attending school in Indonesia, and the fact that his paternal grandfather, a Kenyan farmer, was a Muslim. Obama invokes these facts as part of his case that he is prepared to handle foreign policy, despite having been in the Senate for only three years, and that he would literally bring a new face to parts of the world where the United States is not popular.
The son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, Obama was born and spent much of his childhood in Hawaii, and he talks more about his multicultural background than he does about the possibility of being the first African American president, in marked contrast to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who mentions in most of her stump speeches the prospect of her becoming the first woman to serve as president.
“A lot of my knowledge about foreign affairs is not what I just studied in school. It’s actually having the knowledge of how ordinary people in these other countries live,” he said earlier this month in Clarion, Iowa.
“The day I’m inaugurated, I think this country looks at itself differently, but the world also looks at America differently,” he told another Iowa crowd. “Because I’ve got a grandmother who lives in a little village in Africa without running water or electricity; because I grew up for part of my formative years in Southeast Asia in the largest Muslim country on Earth.”
While considerable attention during the campaign has focused on the anti-Mormon feelings aroused by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R), polls have also shown rising hostility toward Muslims in politics. It is not clear whether that negative sentiment will affect someone who has lived in a Muslim country but does not practice Islam.
Muslim rumors hurt Obama Read More »
Why one UCLA soldier went to war
Lt. Mark Daily was the first UCLA alum to be killed in Iraq. (A plaque was recently hung in his honor in front of the Student Activities Center off of Bruin Plaza.) His death touched thousands upon thousands not simply because he was young and it was tragic, but because of the writings he left behind and a story in the LA Times that was e-mailed around the world.
One recipient was Christopher Hitchens, the atheist superstar and author who Daily credited with convincing him of the moral imperative of the war. In this month’s Vanity Fair, Hitchens describes feeling ill upon learning this and seeking out Daily’s family to clear his conscience.
In his brilliant book What Is History?, Professor E. H. Carr asked about ultimate causation. Take the case of a man who drinks a bit too much, gets behind the wheel of a car with defective brakes, drives it round a blind corner, and hits another man, who is crossing the road to buy cigarettes. Who is the one responsible? The man who had one drink too many, the lax inspector of brakes, the local authorities who didn’t straighten out a dangerous bend, or the smoker who chose to dash across the road to satisfy his bad habit? So, was Mark Daily killed by the Ba’thist and bin Ladenist riffraff who place bombs where they will do the most harm? Or by the Rumsfeld doctrine, which sent American soldiers to Iraq in insufficient numbers and with inadequate equipment? Or by the Bush administration, which thought Iraq would be easily pacified? Or by the previous Bush administration, which left Saddam Hussein in power in 1991 and fatally postponed the time of reckoning?
These grand, overarching questions cannot obscure, at least for me, the plain fact that Mark Daily felt himself to be morally committed. I discovered this in his life story and in his surviving writings. Again, not to romanticize him overmuch, but this is the boy who would not let others be bullied in school, who stuck up for his younger siblings, who was briefly a vegetarian and Green Party member because he couldn’t stand cruelty to animals or to the environment, a student who loudly defended Native American rights and who challenged a MySpace neo-Nazi in an online debate in which the swastika-displaying antagonist finally admitted that he needed to rethink things. If I give the impression of a slight nerd here I do an injustice. Everything that Mark wrote was imbued with a great spirit of humor and tough-mindedness. Here’s an excerpt from his “Why I Joined” statement:
Anyone who knew me before I joined knows that I am quite aware and at times sympathetic to the arguments against the war in Iraq. If you think the only way a person could bring themselves to volunteer for this war is through sheer desperation or blind obedience then consider me the exception (though there are countless like me).⦠Consider that there are 19 year old soldiers from the Midwest who have never touched a college campus or a protest who have done more to uphold the universal legitimacy of representative government and individual rights by placing themselves between Iraqi voting lines and homicidal religious fanatics.
Why one UCLA soldier went to war Read More »