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April 24, 2013

Doheny Meats buyer Shlomo Rechnitz on business, philanthropy

Leave a Comment / California, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News /

Fifteen years ago, Shlomo Rechnitz co-founded TwinMed, a wholesaler of medical supplies serving nursing homes. Since then, Rechnitz has founded, or bought, and grown a number of other businesses, including Brius Healthcare, now the largest operator of nursing homes in California. 

Along the way, Rechnitz, 41, also became a major philanthropist, giving away millions of dollars  — to Jewish charities and also directly to people in need. On more than one occasion he’s come to the aid of a major Orthodox organization, offering gifts or loans in times of crisis. 

It was a combination of these two attributes — business expertise and an expansive view of philanthropy — that led Rechnitz to buy Doheny Glatt Kosher Meat Market, the scandal-ridden Los Angeles kosher meat distributor and retailer that closed its doors last month. 

“The Rabbinical Council of California [RCC] approached me and said, ‘Shlomo, could this be one of your charity things?’ ” Rechnitz recalled in an interview with the Journal earlier this month. “Kosher meat is expensive enough.”

Rechnitz took less than a week to close the deal with Doheny’s former owner, Mike Engelman, who was caught on video bringing unidentified meat products into his store at a time when the RCC’s supervisor had left the scene. Then he only held onto the purchase agreement for about a week before arranging to transfer it to a third party, David Kagan, the owner of the glatt kosher retailer Western Kosher, which also does some distribution to local businesses. Doheny Meats hadn’t reopened as of press time earlier this week, and Kagan declined to be interviewed for this article, saying then that the deal had not yet been finalized. 

“I love the rush of a deal. It’s like a coke addiction,” Rechnitz, said, a tall glass of caffeine-free Coca-Cola on the coffee table in front of him. “Not that I know what coke addiction is.” 

Whether he’s in the hunt to acquire a new long-term care facility — through Brius, Rechnitz owns 62 across the state — or some other business or property, he enjoys the challenge of outsmarting, outbidding or outmaneuvering the competition. 

“That is salesmanship,” said Rechnitz, a native Angeleno who said he inherited a peddler’s instinct from his grandfather, who sold women’s apparel, and his father, a closeout salesman. “You’re selling your business, you’re selling your service. You’re telling them why you should be the one that should be chosen.”

In his first big venture, Rechnitz and his twin brother, Steve, founded TwinMed, which offered nursing homes the ability to buy supplies not on an item-by-item basis — ordering this many boxes of latex gloves or that many cases of gauze — but by paying TwinMed a set daily rate for all supplies for each patient in their care. 

This “per patient day” system helped TwinMed grow to become one of the largest distributors of medical supplies to nursing homes in the country, and has attracted attention and accolades within the business world. 

In each of the past two years, the brothers have presented their business as a case study for students in the MBA program at Stanford, and, in 2011, Ernst & Young named Steve Rechnitz “Entrepreneur of the Year” in the health care category.

The Rechnitz twins have some clear business advantages. They can stand in for one another in a way that only identical twins can; their employees, associates and even their 5-year-old sons occasionally get them confused. 

And the Rechnitzes are, in a word, big. 

“It never hurts when you have two 6-foot-8, 300-plus-pound people walking into your office and strongly suggesting that you buy their product,” Steve Rechnitz said in accepting the entrepreneur award in 2011.

“His business is a front for his charity. Because he lives his charity.” — Rabbi Chaim Cunin, CEO of Chabad of California

Steve is the active CEO of TwinMed, while Shlomo has moved into other businesses. He started by buying nursing homes and then began to get involved in businesses that nursing homes contract to, including a pharmacy, a pest control firm and an ambulance company. 

Shlomo Rechnitz pursues similarly varied interests in his philanthropic work. 

Within Orthodox circles, he is almost always called by his first and middle names, Shlomo Yehuda, and he has become known for his aid to prominent nonprofits at times of crisis. 

In November 2011, when the head of the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem died suddenly, leaving the 7,500-student institution $15 million in debt, Rechnitz, who had spent nearly five years studying there, donated $5 million. Others followed, Rechnitz said, and Mir’s debt was paid in full within three months. 

In December of that year, Rechnitz purchased a creditor’s note against Chabad of California’s headquarters in Westwood for $2.35 million, helping the organization avoid foreclosure. Rechnitz, who also donates to Chabad in more conventional ways, said he still holds the note, adding that he’s hoping to be paid back “one day.” 

And after Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on the East Coast, Rechnitz gave $1 million to aid in the rebuilding of Orthodox Jewish day schools and to assist the families whose children attend those schools. 

“His business is a front for his charity,” said Rabbi Chaim Cunin, CEO of Chabad of California, who went to school with Rechnitz for a few years when they were boys growing up in Los Angeles. “Because he lives his charity.” 

Many people seek Rechnitz’s help these days. Over the course of an hour-long conversation, his cellphone rang a dozen times and three people knocked on his door. 

Rechnitz hasn’t maintained an office for many years, preferring to do business either from his home or over the phone while driving around the neighborhood around La Brea Avenue, so it’s possible those calls were business-related. But it’s equally plausible that Rechnitz was ignoring, temporarily, people soliciting his assistance. 

Rechnitz calls himself “a nondenominational giver”  and said that at times he reaches out to those who aren’t coming to him. Last year, Diana Aulger, a pregnant woman in Texas, decided to have her doctors induce labor so that her husband, Mark, who was dying of cancer, could meet their child. Mark got to hold their daughter, Savannah, for 45 minutes before he died. 

Rechnitz saw the story online and sent Aulger a check for $20,000. 

He also sends $10,000 checks to the families of police officers who are shot while on duty in Southern California. Those gifts are inspired in part by an urge to assist individuals who put themselves into harm’s way for the public good, but Rechnitz said he’s also driven by another motive. 

“I don’t think that [non-Jews] should ever look back at the Jewish people and say, ‘You only care about your own,’ ” he said. 

Doheny Meats buyer Shlomo Rechnitz on business, philanthropy Read More »

Calendar Picks and Clicks: April 27–May 3, 2013

Leave a Comment / California, News, Picks and Clicks, What's Happening /

[Click here for a Lag B'Omer events calendar]

SUN APRIL 28

AMERICAN FRIENDS OF HEBREW UNIVERSITY FORUM

American Friends of Hebrew University’s Los Angeles Regional Annual Leadership Education Forum features leading Hebrew University faculty and alumni as well as local leaders from the fields of academic and political affairs, security and intelligence, and medical science. Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong delivers the keynote lecture, “Buying Time Against Cancer.” Other speakers include professor Asher Cohen, rector of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Jewish Journal Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Rob Eshman; Ambassador Carmi Gillon, vice president of external relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Nicholas Goldberg, The New York Times editorial pages editor; and former CIA Director Michael Hayden. Sun. 8:30 a.m. $125. Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. (310) 843-3100. afhu.org.

“LEARNING OVER LOS ANGELES”

Faculty from American Jewish University’s (AJU) Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies host a day of community building and learning. Workshops include “Seeing Yourself as a Sacred Vessel: The Paradox of Overflowing Emptiness,” “… the One Who Loves: Poems That Can Change Our Lives” and “Eros and Thanatos in the Beit Midrash: A Rabbinic Tragedy in Three Acts.” Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson delivers the keynote lecture, “Conservative Judaism: The Passion and Possibility of Dynamic Tradition.” Continental breakfast and barbecue lunch served. Sun. 10 a.m.-2 p.m. $90 (general), $20 (students). American Jewish University, 15600 Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles. (310) 440-1211. ziegler.aju.edu/forms/frlearningoverla.aspx

“CONVERSATIONS AND TOOLS TO FIND BALANCE”

Jewish Women’s Conference and National Council of Jewish Women/Los Angeles present this workshop on life transitions. Quarter-life crisis sessions including dealing with post-school transitions and job searching skills; sandwich generation sessions cover balancing aging parents, parenting, careers and more; and third chapter sessions include coping with challenges and finding opportunities later in life. Sun. 10 a.m.-2 p.m. $15 (breakfast and lunch included). NCJW/LA Council House, 543 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles. (323) 852-8536. jwcsc.org/lifetransitions.

2013 ISRAEL EXPO

Celebrate Israel’s 65th birthday with The Jewish Federation and Family Services of Orange County and thousands of Southern California residents. The Expo features shopping, games and rides, live music, Israeli cuisine, theater and a “Kidotopia” space with crafts, performances and activities for children. SpaceIL, Israel’s entrant in the international Google Lunar X-Prize, a global race to land an unmanned spacecraft on the moon, appears at the Israel Innovation Showcase. Sun. 1-6 p.m. Free. Samueli Jewish Campus, 1 Federation Way, Irvine. (949) 435-3484. israelexpo.org.

“A NIGHT TO HONOR ISRAEL”

Christians United for Israel’s evening of celebration and solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people features the Rev. John Hagee, founder and senior pastor of nondenominational megachurch Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas; Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; and Israeli music sensation Dudu Fisher. Sun. 6 p.m. (doors), 6:30 p.m. (show). $18-$24. Saban Theatre, 8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. (323) 655-0111. canyonclub.net.

MON APRIL 29 

“GOSPEL FUSION: GERSHWIN AND BEYOND” 

L.A. Jewish Symphony founding conductor Noreen Green directs this celebration of the historic and contemporary connections between African-American and Jewish music. Participants include singer-songwriter Karen Hart; members of the L.A. Jewish Symphony; the University of La Verne Choir, under the direction of James Calhoun; pianist Grace Zhao; Kol HaEmek; Cantor Paul Buch of Temple Beth Israel and the Reed Gratz Trio. Mon. 8 p.m. $20. University of La Verne, Ann and Steve Morgan Auditorium, 1950 Third St., La Verne. (909) 593-3511, ext. 4696. gospelfusion.eventbrite.com. 

Calendar Picks and Clicks: April 27–May 3, 2013 Read More »

Eating with an eco-conscience

Leave a Comment / California, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News /

A small group gathered in the sanctuary of Temple Isaiah on April 11 to do what Jews do best: talk about food and then eat some. 

The occasion was a panel convened by Netiya, a Jewish network dedicated to advancing urban agriculture in religious institutions, nonprofits and schools across Los Angeles. The crowd had come to share and discuss best practices for creating change in the food systems at their churches, mosques, synagogues and schools as part of “Just Food: The 411 on Food Procurement for Your Synagogue.”

Devorah Brous, founding executive director of Netiya, introduced the group and its mission, which is to act as a resource for faith-based institutions all over the city attempting to rethink their food purchasing policies and create garden sites on their campuses. She was particularly excited about the interfaith group that had convened for the event, which included representatives from several local mosques. 

Sue Miller, a lay leader at Leo Baeck Temple who started the synagogue’s Green Team, kicked off the event with a slideshow about the Sustainable Shabbat she created at the congregation. She described the program as a “shop and drop”: An e-mail goes out weekly to a list of some 30 volunteers who sign up to purchase local, organic produce from a farmers market, and they drop it off at Leo Baeck before Shabbat services on Fridays. The temple staff then prepares it and sets it out with locally made hummus for worshippers to snack on, so that alongside cheese and cookies there is an eco-conscious and healthy option to offer.

“We consider this a kind of mindfulness practice,” Miller said of her efforts to green the temple’s food program, which also has included a campaign to make all paper goods on the premises recyclable or compostable. “We start every meal by blessing our food, so the first question we asked ourselves was: Is our food worthy of being blessed?” 

She’s led Leo Baeck’s Green Team in a holistic attempt to narrow the gap among Torah, belief and action, encouraging congregants to make connections between what’s on the dinner table and issues like water pollution and labor rights. 

Bill Shpall, the executive director of Temple Israel of Hollywood, offered another perspective. After tasting the food being served to nursery and day school students at the congregation, he decided that anything he wouldn’t serve to his own children — much less eat himself — had no place at his temple. He empowered a committee to taste test their way through the offerings of a number of caterers, and though taste was the deciding factor, the option they chose was, happily enough, also a vendor invested in sustainable, organic food. 

The program wasn’t without pushback, mostly on the financial side; where previously the school had made money on the lunch program, Temple Israel now only breaks even, he said. It’s worth it, though, Shpall explained, to have twice as many kids eating and enjoying the school’s improved hot lunches as a result of the change — and knowing that the food the temple provides is thoughtfully and ethically sourced. 

“It proved that you can move away from the cheapest option and still be crazy successful,” he said.  

There’s also an attitude switch that came with the lunch change, he added. The temple started hosting catered Friday night dinners once a month, with food from the same vendor. The janitorial staff also now uses a biodegradable cleaning product instead of a variety of environmentally destructive options.

Temple Isaiah’s Rabbi Joel Nickerson recently convened a committee that spent more than a year examining food and Judaism from the ground up, starting with the biblical laws of kashrut and working its way to modern issues of food justice. The committee then sent a survey to the entire congregation to help create an updated and cohesive food policy for the temple. The survey garnered some interesting and impassioned responses, he said.

“People hold synagogues to a higher standard,” Nickerson said. “We’re working on balancing choice with the values of our tradition and making sure people know that, whatever we decide, it’s not a judgment on their personal practices.”

Each of the panelists remarked on the difficulty of making choices for a large and diverse group, especially about something as personal as what to eat. All of the institutions represented were Reform, and though some require kosher-style food be prepared and served on the premises, none require that those vendors be certified kosher.

Paula Daniels, a senior adviser to L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, wrapped up the event by bringing in a citywide perspective. She discussed the fruits of her work with the Los Angeles Food Policy Council. Among its efforts, the council has put together a “good food” procurement policy for organizations looking to green their food sourcing. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) already has signed on and is aiming to source 15 percent of its food locally.

One of Daniels’ ultimate goals is to create initiatives that will get produce into corner stores and create regional food hubs around Los Angeles, leveraging the massive buying power of purchasers like LAUSD to create economies of scale that will make organic food cheaper for consumers all over the city. 

“Los Angeles’ problems come in threes,” Daniels said. “West Los Angeles has three times as many supermarkets as South Los Angeles, which has three times as much poverty and three times the rate of obesity and diabetes.” 

While farmers markets have created access to fresh, local, healthy food for consumers in wealthier parts of the city, they can be prohibitively expensive; one of Daniels’ goals is to ensure access to a broader swath of the community.

The final words of the evening came from Got Kosher? owner Alain Cohen, who grew up in a restaurant family in France. He discussed the issue of sustainability from a provider’s perspective, emphasizing how difficult it can be to get high-quality organic product that also is kosher. 

Cohen is proud, though, to be living the laws of his faith: “Kosher is a decision, not a duty,” he said. This statement echoed a sentiment shared by all of the panelists — that while the strict laws of kashrut represent part of Jewish tradition and history, there is more to think about in the modern food world than milk, meat, pork and shellfish.

After the panel concluded, the crowd — an interfaith, intergenerational mix of people from all over the city — munched on vegetables, hummus and challah from Got Kosher?, which has ethical sourcing policies in place, and chatted about what’s been done and all that’s left to do. The Belgian chocolate pretzel challah was a particular favorite, a perfect example of the kind of food the panelists had been praising all evening long: something thoughtfully sourced and carefully made, ethical in its origin and very good to eat.

Eating with an eco-conscience Read More »

Letters to the Editor: JFS, Jackie Robinson, Doheny Meats

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor, News, Opinion /

Twice Wounded

How terribly unfortunate that a Jewish communal professional who has done more than anyone else to raise awareness about domestic violence and abuse of all kinds, and whose efforts have revolutionized the way these topics are dealt with within a segment of the Jewish community previously underserved, should be smeared in this way (“JFS Denies Sheltering Abuser,” April 19). As your article reported, the allegations against Debbie Fox were based on sloppy, sensationalistic reporting. The scandal here is that such a consummate professional should have to defend herself against such mudslinging, which, while it may sell newspapers [in Australia], has done damage to the very agencies and individuals who work so hard to protect the vulnerable in our community.

Miriam Caiden
Los Angeles

Revisionist History?

Dennis Prager (Letters, April 19) cites Yehuda Bauer’s statement — “Nowhere in Christian thought or in Christian history was there ever a plan to kill the Jewish people” — to back his own argument that “no mainstream Christian institution or theology called for the extermination of the Jews” (“Lessons of the Holocaust,” April 12).  But Jews in the Rhineland who were in the way of the rampaging First Crusade in 1096 would not have drawn any comfort that there was no “plan” to kill Jews at that time. For those Jews who refused to convert to Christianity, the effects were the same as if there had been a plan.

I believe that if Prager had lived closer in time to the Crusades and to the Spanish Inquisition, he would not have made the argument he has developed. I also feel that we should be careful before using the present-day Holocaust as a standard for our historical miseries.   

Barry H. Steiner
Political Science Professor
California State University, Long Beach

School Reform: The New New Deal?

Raphael J. Sonenshein aptly focuses on how school “reform” proposals — favored by the Obama administration as well as by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa — divide centrist Democrats from their traditional teacher-union allies (“The Ultimate School Test, April 19). The above-named politicians also favor cuts to Social Security (via the chained Consumer Price Index), as does Rep. Nancy Pelosi.  

This anti-New Deal trend began with the Clinton administration, which deregulated banks and the telecommunication industry, implemented anti-union free trade agreements and even sponsored measures favoring financial derivatives, to cite but a few examples.

The New Deal, and now public education and other domestic “entitlements,” are no longer sacrosanct with mainstream, or even liberal, Democrats. Will Franklin Delano Roosevelt soon be rolling in his grave? 

Gene Rothman
Culver City

Jackie Robinson Piece a Home Run

As a Dodger fan from when they first moved to L.A. from Brooklyn, I read with great interest professor Michael Berenbaum’s piece (“Jackie and the Jews,” April 12). The professor’s piece could only have been enhanced if he had mentioned that Detroit Tiger — and late Pittsburgh Pirate — slugger “Hammerin’ Hank” Greenberg, a New York Jew, was one of only two players on opposing teams to welcome Jackie Robinson into professional baseball. 

Marc Yablonka
Burbank

Doheny Meats Scandal Far-Reaching

As someone outside of the Los Angeles area, my only thought is: Would I be able to trust anything that the RCC has certified? At present, I would say no (“Doheny Meats Might Change Hands, Again,” April 19). Please remember that Doheny’s “Glatt Kosher” certification was still present even after the RCC knew that not all items that were sold should have had this certification. Also, at the meeting between Mike Engelman and the RCC, the only other person was Shlomo Rechnitz. This looks like the RCC already knew about Doheny’s actions and had been trying to find someone to buy Doheny.

David Sibert
via jewishjournal.com

From Israel, With Gratitude

Thank you, Shmuel Rosner! As always, you present the message we need to hear (“Seven Thoughts for Yom HaAtzmaut,” April 19). As a nine-month new immigrant to Israel, we are so blessed to witness Israel’s continuing miracle. The Memorial Day and Independence Day observances and celebrations in Israel are inspiring. Our neighbors and neighborhood of Baka, German Colony, Old Katamon in Jerusalem is so beautiful. People from every nation and background, all types of synagogues and community institutions. What a blessing. Happy 65th anniversary of her independence to Israel!

Rabbi Gershon Weissman
via jewishjournal.com

Letters to the Editor: JFS, Jackie Robinson, Doheny Meats Read More »

From CicLAvia to Cedars Sinai: In sorrow and joy

Leave a Comment / Opinion, Rob Eshman /

To the woman who confronted me last Sunday at the Celebrate Israel Festival, ranting that airplane vapor trails are actually toxic secret government gasses:  You complain that journalists don’t take you seriously. They might, if you didn’t walk around wearing large posters of airplane vapor trails.

To the man who attacked me for not being outraged that some festival vendors weren’t kosher: My lack of outrage wasn’t because, as you said, I “don’t really care about Judaism.” I just pointed out that there were plenty of kosher options for people who wanted them.

To the woman who yelled at me about the Palestinians: For the millionth time, just because we don’t agree doesn’t mean I’m anti-Israel. I’m not even anti-you. Yet.

Ah, community.

Sunday, April 21, reminded us that you can’t live without your community, even if, sometimes, you wish you could.

In the morning, just a block from my house, the CicLAvia ride closed down Venice Boulevard from downtown to the beach. The massive sea of bicyclists — an estimated 150,000 people took part — proves that CicLAvia is a genius idea that taps into a deep Los Angeles yearning for connection. 

But it was also just so … crowded. The jam-up made me wonder two things: Isn’t there a way to create serious, substantial bike lanes (and bike shares) around Los Angeles all year round, so we can spread the enthusiasm out a bit? And: Can’t they close down Venice Boulevard just for me?

I’d planned my Sunday to go to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, on the USC campus, and then to Rancho Park, site of this year’s Celebrate Israel Festival, and then to Cedars-Sinai, where I was moderating a panel discussion on “Healing and Spirituality.” Having a traffic-free Venice Boulevard all to myself would have been like having my own heliport.

But I managed (passing on the Festival of Books, as I’d gone there the day before). At the Celebrate Israel Festival, I noticed attendance was down from last year. Maybe because of lingering fears over the Boston Marathon bombing, was one theory. Maybe because there were so many other things going on that day: CicLAvia, the Long Beach Grand Prix, the Festival of Books, the Lakers game. Maybe because the whole festival needs to be reinvented.

Whatever the reasons, it’s too bad more people didn’t show up. Once a year, it’s a good idea to bring together in one place as much as possible of our vast, unruly, cantankerous, diverse and colorful L.A. Zion, if only so each one of us can reconfirm that our particular synagogue, or political viewpoint, or level of observance, is the best — and that all those other Jews are probably nuts. 

The Israeli music blares, and, yes, there are all the types: men dripping gold chains down their chests, women in Chanel screaming Farsi into cell phones, Chasidic families all in black, earnest middle-aged women pushing brochures about eternal Jerusalem and Latino Jewish men strutting about with this sticker on their lapels: “I Tied My Tefillin Today.” It’s easy to think, “Who are these people? And — what does all this have to do with me?”

I stayed for a couple of hours at the Jewish Journal booth. The man who each year complains that we don’t print all his letters came by to complain that we don’t print all his letters. Another man said he looked for me at the Jewish Journal booth at the L.A. Times Book Festival, but I wasn’t there. “I’m glad you’re here!” he said — then proceeded to attack me over our story exposing a kosher meat scandal. That someone would drive 40 minutes to insult me felt like a compliment. 

Sure, most people who came by thanked us for putting out the Journal. So why is it that the complaints are what stick?

I let them linger on my thick skin as I drove to Cedars-Sinai to lead a panel discussion as part of the “Wisdom and Wellness” week of learning sponsored by the hospital and the Kalsman Institute at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. There was an overflow crowd in Cedars’ Harvey Morse Auditorium, come to hear Rabbis Ed Feinstein, Abner Weiss, Naomi Levy and Laura Geller discuss the Jewish path to healing.

The entire discussion is online — you can find the link at jewishjournal.com — and well worth listening to.  You’ll find the rabbis made one point over and over, in different ways: Healing so often begins with, and depends upon, community.

We mustn’t face illness alone; we need to be there for one another. Knowing others care — just bringing a roasted chicken to their door, in Rabbi Feinstein’s memorable example — is a way of showing that they matter, that their life matters.

Yes, it was a long, tiring, fulfilling, exasperating, funny and teary day.  In other words, a day in community. We might fantasize about having Venice Boulevard all to ourselves, but would that really make us happy?

“Here lies the very essence of our way of life,” Elie Weisel once wrote. “Every person must share in the life of others, and not leave them to themselves, either in sorrow or in joy.”

Click here for more on the Celebrate Israel Festival

From CicLAvia to Cedars Sinai: In sorrow and joy Read More »

Building a Spirit of ‘Sacred Disagreement’ on Israel

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Judaism, Mobile, Mobile Sections, News, Opinion /

In rabbinic circles, one increasingly hears sentiments like, “I’m not going to get fired for my politics on gun control or health care, but I could get fired for just about anything I say about Israel.” Rabbi Scott Perlo has coined this the “Death by Israel Sermon.” Across the country, our communal discourse on Israel has grown so ugly that many have stopped caring and engaging at all.

I work with institutions and leaders across the country to build open, constructive communication across political divides on Israel. I’d like to share three patterns that prevail in the current American Jewish conversation about Israel, why it should urgently concern us and what we can do about it.

The first and most common pattern is avoidance. Dodging the “Death by Israel Sermon” is just one example. Most Jewish social justice organizations have explicit policies to avoid Israel. It seems every week another institution bans Israel from its listserv. Even what presents as apathy among millennials is often a mask for avoidance: “Oh, that nasty conversation? Who wants to go there?”

The second pattern is open antagonism: vilification, ad hominem attacks, quoting each other out of context, impugning motives, distorting each other’s posi-tions to reckless caricatures.

The third could be called “avoidance 2.0” and refers to the widespread tendency to con-gre-gat-e, conference- and talk exclu-sively to those with whom we agree. We splinter into self-affirming nuclei of our respec-tive orga-ni-za-tions, each of them morally supe-rior and self-certain, talk-ing past one another, and now and then col-lid-ing in frus-tra-tion and hos-til-ity. Rival camps rally and take pride in the num-bers of those who are with them, while dismissing those who aren’t as dan-ger-ous, igno-rant, mali-cious or loony.

These dynamics are hardly unique to us as Jews. Consider the toxicity of the abortion conversation. In such entrenched social conflict, informal interactions across lines of disagreement grow rare, intensifying the ease with which we can malign and demonize our ideological counterparts. Adversaries harden against each other’s genuine integrity and concerns, dismissing each other in categorical and one-dimensional terms. Voices of nuance and uncertainty get trampled. Hostility and silence become the only perceived options for engagement.

These patterns are enormously costly and debilitating. We’re unraveling relationships and institutions, corroding community, and generating cynicism, distrust and fear. We’re alienating potential allies and turning people off, particularly younger generations of Jews. We’re engendering fatigue and burnout among activists of all stripes as well as the broader public. We’re obstructing and distracting from genuine problem solving and drowning out creative thinking. Resources that should be used to negotiate intelligent ways forward are instead used to attack or simply fight for the chance to be heard.

A dominant strand of Jewish tradition directs us to a more productive way, one that would replace these counterproductive patterns with mahloket l’shem shamayim, “sacred disagreement,” that is no less passionate and yet is generative rather than destructive.

Rabbinic sources — trying to account for radically divergent interpretations of Torah — present revelation as multivocal and contradictory in its very DNA: “One voice divided into seven voices and these into 70 languages” (Exodus Rabba 28:6). “Just as a hammer [stroke] scatters many sparks, so a single scriptural passage yields many senses” (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 34a). “The scroll of the Torah is [written] without vowels, in order to enable man to interpret it however he wishes … as the consonants without the vowels bear several interpretations, and [may be] divided into several sparks” (Bahya ben Asher, “Commentary on the Torah,” Numbers 11:15).

Embrace of intellectual heterogeneity is written into our very blueprint for meaning and truth. This does not mean that every perspective is deemed equally convincing or valid. Rival exegetes in our tradition compete over the relative persuasiveness of their readings. But this theology does demand of us intellectual humility — embrace of our limitations and uncertainty, recognition that truth cannot be known through only one voice but rather only through rigorous search and deliberation.

The Talmud lives out this theology in its idiosyncratic format. Each page presents a record of argument, often without resolution. The Talmud’s structure similarly implies that the best way forward will not be discerned through single-mindedness or conflict avoidance, but only through investigating our differences proactively. The rabbis don’t just tolerate disagreement, or agree to disagree. They lean into their differences rather than tiptoeing around them, quieting them, or seeking to overcome them in search of facile common ground. They recognize that legal decisions must be rendered as an operative necessity. But they treat their disagreements as signposts to something that matters and needs to be thought through deeply, as springboards to greater intelligence.

Of course, not all disagreements are created equal. The paradigm for mahloket l’shem shamayim is presented in the Mishnah and later commentary through the disputes between Hillel and Shammai, as contrasted with Korah’s rebellion (Mishnah Pirkei Avot 5:17). Numerous commentaries try to tease out what distinguishes Hillel and Shammai from Korah, and cluster around two principles: the dispute’s method and its purpose. Hillel and Shammai exemplify a constructive method of argument: sustaining connection even in the face of profound disagreement. Goes another interpretation, Hillel and Shammai differ from Korah in their objective, that is pursuit of truth rather than power or victory. Even if they lose, they win, for they don’t hold their views out of stubborn attachment to them or ambition for dominance, but in collaborative pursuit of knowledge and wisdom.

How can we restore such a spirit of “sacred disagreement” to our communal conversation about Israel?

In recent years, a few pioneering organizations, institutions and leaders have spawned efforts to model and teach generative engagement across our differences on Israel. Individual synagogues and campus Hillels have hosted rounds of study, dialogue and inquiry. Citywide initiatives in San Francisco and elsewhere — and national efforts, like Jewish Council for Public Affairs’ Campaign for Civility — have produced resources, models and lessons learned that must be built on across the country. I have been honored to be involved with several of these efforts, working alongside partners and colleagues to replace the false choice of hostility versus silence with curiosity and mutual learning in the face of our most passionately held differences.

If we are to create an infrastructure of community resilience through times of crisis, as well as strategies for prevention and reconciliation, what is now a trickle of such initiatives must become a torrent. We must make our commitment to “sacred disagreement” as widespread as we have made our commitment to social justice. We need wide-scale communal investment at national and local levels, training rabbis, funders, lay leaders, rising leaders and seasoned professionals in the art of heavenly dispute. We need programs at every level that actively build relationships and support meaningful communication across lines of distrust, aversion and dismissal.

A community’s destiny does not rise and fall based on how it handles its times of harmony and consensus, but on how it responds to its moments of greatest discord and disagreement. We are now in such a moment on Israel. How we meet this challenge will impact the Jewish people for generations to come.

Rabbi Melissa Weintraub is a member of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America faculty, the founding director of Encounter, and an independent Israel engagement consultant, educator, facilitator and trainer.

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Marianne Williamson’s religious revolution

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I was supposed to be in the middle of a very deep, earthly, heavenly, kabbalistically guided meditation last Shabbat when the Kingslayer from “Game of Thrones” invaded my higher consciousness.

It was an odd, even disturbing connection to make in the middle of the second annual “Seeds of Peace” conference, a multifaith meditation and social justice event held at the All Saints Church in Pasadena, where nearly 500 fellow spiritualists had gathered to eat gluten-free paprika brownies and let the tenacious and timeless (and ageless) best-selling spiritual guru Marianne Williamson stir their sensitive souls. So why, exactly, the nefarious warrior played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau on “Thrones” felt invited to this silky setting was perhaps best explained by my meditation guide, the Israeli mystic Gilla Nissan, who said, “We are here to reconcile contradictions.” 

When I first entered the event through the church courtyard, it was almost too easy to be fooled by its frou-frou fripperies: men and women roaming about in full religious regalia; booths touting exotic, energetic jewelry and spiritual journey books of every stripe; Zen-like healers performing what looked like public exorcisms while a group of drummers banged out beats for a blissed-out crowd. There were a stunning 19 options for morning meditation, including Japanese Shumei philosophy, Lotus Sutra chanting, Raja yoga and color science. But while cosmic consciousness is a venerated ideal, this multifaith mash-up wasn’t only about pathways to private heaven; it was about fusing piety and politics and bringing heaven down to earth. This was no place for “Om, blah blah blah blah …” as Williamson put it, but rather, a more defiant “Om, really?”

Battle-ready in her spear-like red stilettoes, Williamson served as the bridge between meditative rapture and political outrage. She urged the crowd to crusade against corruptive forces, naming corporate special interests as the most odious. She decried empire, aristocracy and the average American citizen’s lack of legal proficiency, oft quoting Franklin, Lincoln and Kennedy to prove her own political pomps. “Too many are undisturbed,” she said, that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the suspected perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombings, “was not read his Miranda rights” upon arrest. “That is not just for him, it’s about all of us,” she declaimed to uproarious applause. 

A fiery, didactic orator, Williamson did not disguise her disdain for the spiritually self-centered. “An enlightened state of consciousness is not the endgame of the spiritual journey,” she said. “The whole point is not to dwell in some light and let darkness fend for itself. We’re here to be a light,” she said, transparently channeling her inner Jew.

“We cannot ignore the political realities that confront us now,” she railed. “We need to be politically savvy if we’re serious about transforming the country.”

Enter the Kingslayer, and a bold and bitter truth that HBO’s “Game of Thrones” expresses so entertainingly: In the pursuit of power — and power is necessary in politics — the ruthless and unscrupulous tend to rule the roost, and the nice and the noble get their heads chopped off. The Kingslayer didn’t usher his family dynasty to the throne armed with holy dispensation; he won it with the sword he used to slay the reigning king. It’s a troubling truth. But the vortex of history, like the kabbalistic view of the Tree of Life, is fraught with the tension of opposites: good and evil, light and dark, love and indifference, boundlessness and boundaries. All are forever in conflict in the world and in the soul.

As Nietzsche wrote, “Everything becomes and recurs eternally — escape is impossible! … The idea of recurrence as a selective principle [is] in the service of strength (and barbarism!).”

Good begets good, violence begets violence and so on. Even the Kingslayer had to confront his enduring attachment to the sword when comeuppance finally came and his hand was cut off. Despairing of his fate (“I was that hand,” he groans), a female companion derides his resignation: “You have a taste, one taste, of the real world where people have important things taken from them, and you whine and cry and quit.”

As Williamson likes to say, “Cynicism is just an excuse for not helping.”

I asked filmmaker and journalist Ruth Broyde-Sharone, the organizer of “Seeds of Peace” and a member of the Southern California Committee for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, how she found the will to unite so many differing, often divided groups in common purpose. “Well, it happened when I was in college” — at Northwestern, outside Chicago — “and I was asked to leave housing because I was Jewish,” Broyde-Sharone said. “I never quite got over that moment. I didn’t even walk when I graduated because I was hurt by what happened.”

But she didn’t whine or cry or quit; she became “a self-appointed peacemaker” and joined the campus human relations council. With “so many areas where injustice prevailed” Broyde-Sharone has spent the next three decades doing interfaith work. She even wrote the book, “Minefields and Miracles: Why God and Allah Need to Talk.”

For her, the spiritual and the political are inseparable, even if at times irreconcilable. She dares to imagine a world where no single religion rules but where common religious values are heirs to any throne. 

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Don’t ruin Robinson’s Arch

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I have mixed emotions about Natan Sharansky’s proposed agreement to expand the public space at the Western Wall to include the currently secluded area known as Robinson’s Arch.

As a lifelong Conservative Jew, I applaud any plan that seeks to treat egalitarian worshipers and women’s prayer groups as full members of the Jewish people deserving of a place to pray at Judaism’s holiest site. But I worry that in the zeal to achieve equality, Reform and Conservative Jews are about to shut the door on a unique spiritual experience.

I had never heard of Robinson’s Arch until the summer of 2010, when I joined one day with a few dozen other students and faculty from The Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem to convene the morning minyan there. 

Only that morning did I learn that Robinson’s Arch was a secluded location, an archaeological site at the southern part of the Western Wall, two stories below the main area on the other side of a tall (really tall) and thick (really thick) wall (the Mughrabi Bridge that leads up to the mosques atop the Temple Mount). And I also learned that under a court-mandated agreement with the Israeli government, groups affiliated with Masorti — the worldwide arm of the Conservative movement — had been holding egalitarian prayer services there for nearly a decade.

It was so removed from the main plaza that one might have thought it was miles away. Less developed and commoditized, the multilevel area was a secluded, quiet place, where one didn’t hear the buzz from the main plan area, one that wasn’t a bustling tourist destination. 

Frankly, I think Masorti got the better part of the deal. It’s visually stunning. In addition to the massive retaining walls, there are huge boulders placed there that look like they were thrown down to the street outside the Temple during the destruction in 70 C.E. One can see charring on some of them from the burning that took place after the sacking. These were likely uncovered during the excavations in the Archeological Park, where Robinson’s Arch is located.

The emotional and spiritual experience I had that morning took me by surprise.

Later that summer, and because being there had evoked such emotion, I eagerly joined a group of about 30 people from The Conservative Yeshiva who went to Robinson’s Arch on the night of Tisha B’Av for the reading of Eicha (Lamentations), as we commemorated the destruction of the two Temples and other national tragedies endured by the Jewish people. The site is as beautiful at night as it is during the quiet of the morning. The entire area was filled with hundreds of non-Orthodox Jews — a few teen groups but mostly adults and families. 

After the main part of the evening service, we sat down on the stone pavement and low walls; a different person led the reading of each of the five chapters. Everyone else followed along or chanted quietly with the leader. One could have heard a pin drop. It was awesome, sitting on stones just next to the structure about whose destruction we were reading. 

Just after, as is traditional, we sang a long kinah with a beautiful melody, and as we rose as one to finish the evening service — literally just then — the minaret above us on the Temple Mount called the Muslims to prayer. It’s really loud if you are standing just under the mosque, but we didn’t miss a beat of our prayers. It was another powerful reminder that this structure we were facing, this very wall, was at Mount Zion in Jerusalem and nowhere else in the world. The minaret call seemed out of place, yet strangely not out of place. If only these two cultures could blend so well in the rest of daily life. 

One would never have known of the noisy area on the other side of the high, dense wall where dozens of Eicha readings were taking place. That’s how separate it is.

Separate but equal is an American construct, and one that in the racist context of Jim Crow was understandably rejected more than half a century ago in the United States. But Jerusalem and the Temple Mount are not in America, and the opportunity to pray in seclusion at Robinson’s Arch is not the same as being relegated to a dilapidated, underfunded public school in Little Rock.

So, yes, the Sharansky plan should be cheered for providing 24/7/365 access to the Robinson’s Arch area, ending the entrance fee and creating a more accessible entrance via the main plaza security gates. But there are also disturbing reports that the plan will involve the creation of a raised platform that will put egalitarian groups on the same level as worshipers in the main area — above instead of amid the archeological remains at the site. This would be a terrible mistake. The area should be preserved, not expanded or further developed, so that Robinson’s Arch will continue to retain its serene and spiritual nature for the foreseeable future.

Sometimes separate is not only equal, it’s better. 

Anne Mintz is a researcher and archivist who consulted in the creation of the JTA Jewish News Archive.

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New Israeli study explains coral’s pulsation

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This story originally appeared on themedialine.org.

Do you find yourself dragging; craving a nap in the late afternoon? You're not alone. Soft coral beneath the waters near the southern Israeli resort city of Eilat does the same thing.

A new study by scientists from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Technion, Israel's institute of technology, discovered that a soft coral called Heteroxenia, found in the reefs off Eilat, pulsates continually except for a period of one-half-hour just before sunset. The study does not answer the napping question, but the scientists do have a theory.

“During the day the coral uses the photosynthesis to generate its food, and during the night it goes through respiration like other animals,” Uri Shavit, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Technion in Haifa told The Media Line. “Just before sunset when the level of oxygen is very high it can take a rest without harming its metabolism.”

What the study, funded by Israel's National Science Foundation, was trying to discover was why, unlike all other species of coral, the Heteroxenia pulsates incessantly, using up valuable energy. The reason, they found, is that the level of photosynthesis, which transforms sunlight into chemical energy, is between five and eight times greater with the movement than without it.

“Corals, which are animals, are important for the ecosystem because they live in symbiosis with algae,” Maya Kremien, a graduate student at Hebrew University who worked on the study told The Media Line. “The pulsation creates the optimal conditions for the photosynthesis of the algae.”

The study appears in the current issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States (PNAS). Kremien worked on the project for four years, developing an underwater measuring device called a particle imaging velocimeter (PIV) which measures the flow of water around the coral.

“By taking hundreds of thousands of images with the PIV, we basically have velocity vector maps,” Shavit said. “We found that the coral pulsates almost 24-hours a day. It's very beautiful. You can sit and watch it for hours.”

The study comes amid concern that the coral reef in Eilat, which is one of the most diverse in the world, has been gradually degrading. Of the nine miles of Israeli coastline along the Red Sea, less than one mile has been designated as a nature preserve. The development of the city of Eilat, sewage outflow and industrial installations have all taken a toll on the coral reefs.

In a previous study, the same group of Israeli scientists found that the motion of water is needed to increase the flow of oxygen away from the corals. This time they found that the pulsation means the coral will not be filtering the same water each time. In addition, each polyp, or coral flower, pulsates at a different rate.

The research could have some practical applications as well, in engineering or medicine.

“We are not there yet but there are a lot of interesting questions that could lead to practical use,” Shavit said. “Nature is very smart through evolution and people mimic nature in other fields. We learned to fly from birds, and to swim from fish.”

They are not sure what people can learn from coral, but they are sure it will be valuable.

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