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Jewish Journal

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August 14, 2013

High Holy Days: What’s NEXT for Birthright

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High Holiday map screenshot. Courtesy of NEXT.

On Aug. 5, the Birthright Israel alumni organization NEXT launched its 2013 High Holy Days initiative. It features an interactive, nationwide map of services and events — including learning opportunities, dinners and break-the-fasts — as well as a first-time offering of resources and small subsidies for people willing to host Rosh Hashanah meals and Yom Kippur break-the-fasts. 

“Taglit-Birthright participants have returned from their summer trips — joining the hundreds of thousands of alumni from past years — with a personal connection to Judaism, Israel and the Jewish people. Now is the time to build on that connection and help make Jewish opportunities and communities more accessible,” Morlie Levin, CEO of NEXT, said in a statement. 

“We’ve found that Birthright Israel alumni are particularly interested in celebrating holidays with their friends, and the High Holy Days initiative offers them the opportunity to both create these experiences themselves and connect to community events they find meaningful.”

Based around the idea that there are ways to keep participants of Taglit-Birthright’s free 10-day trips to Israel interested in Judaism and the Jewish state after they return home, NEXT helps connect alumni through events, subsidized Shabbat meals and other programs. The organization has an alumni community of more than 300,000 individuals, according to its Web site.

While the High Holy Days map is in its third year, it has some new features this time. For example, it now allows users to filter events based on their preferences, whether they are seeking services that are egalitarian; LGBT-friendly; interfaith-friendly; English-heavy; or Reform, Orthodox or Conservative. 

As of press time, several Los Angeles-area congregations — including Nashuva, Stephen S. Wise Temple, IKAR and Congregation Shir Chadash in Lakewood, Calif. — have listed their services on the map. More are expected to join during the two weeks leading up to the holidays.

The NEXT map was produced by San Francisco- and New York-based 10x Management, a talent agency that represents freelance programmers and other technology professionals. The map relies on GPS technology and enables users to tweet and share on Facebook which events they plan to attend.

As with the online map, NEXT also designed the meal subsidy program, the other part of the 2013 initiative, to encourage alumni and young professionals to participate in and engage with the most important holidays of the year.

Hosts will be reimbursed up to $10 per guest for up to 16 guests, and NEXT has made resource materials available on its Web site to help enrich the experience. These include recipes, dinner ideas, holiday videos and much more.

The program was inspired by the longstanding NEXT Shabbat program, which covers the cost of Shabbat meals — a host simply provides receipts and photos as proof that they hosted one.

“We understand one of the most effective ways toward a deeper understanding of Jewish learning is to have the opportunity to [sit around a dinner table] with a large circle of friends,” Levin said.

For more information on the High Holy Days initiative, including the interactive map and the subsidy program, visit birthrightisraelnext.org/highholidays.

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Childhood abuse victims name Mendel Tevel as alleged abuser

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Sitting with his back hunched, his wife by his side and a kippah on his head, a 23-year-old bearded Orthodox man nervously told a gathering of parents at a private residence near Pico-Robertson that a young man named Mendel Tevel had sexually abused him when he was 14. Tevel now lives in Los Angeles and is believed to have worked in recent months at JEM, a Jewish youth center in Beverly Hills.

The alleged victim did not tell the group his name and demanded that all cell phones be placed in a separate room — and although he told the Journal his full name, because of the sensitivity of the subject he asked that it be withheld from this story. This was his first public accounting of his alleged abuse, talking to about 40 community members on the evening of Aug. 5. As people trickled into the home of David and Etty Abehsera, he began his story:

When he was a 14-year-old student — in around 2004 — at the since-closed Shterns Yeshiva in upstate New York, Tevel, then a mentor at the school, initiated what was at first a friendly relationship with the speaker. Tevel, who is now about 30, was around 21 years old at the time.

At first, the man alleged, Tevel offered simply to be the student’s exercise partner. But eventually, he said, Tevel came up with extreme ways to motivate him to work out harder, including repeatedly whipping him with a metal coat hanger, which he said lacerated his skin and caused bleeding.

He claimed that as the relationship grew, Tevel would crawl into bed with him at night, inappropriately massage him, and rub his clothed body against the boy’s. He claimed Tevel also bent him over and spanked him when he refused to immerse himself in what was sometimes a very cold outdoor mikveh (ritual bath). These incidents occurred multiple times, the speaker said.

“He wasn’t exactly trying to hide the fact that he had an erection at the time,” the alleged victim told the gathering, describing his incidents with Tevel in the mikveh.

“I was a very naïve 14-year-old, but something just didn’t feel right, so I cut off ties with him.”

Because these acts occurred in New York, where the statute of limitations for charging someone with sexual abuse expires when the victim turns 23, the State of New York would not be able to press charges against Tevel based on this man’s testimony alone. The man said he currently lives in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights but on the night he spoke he was in Los Angeles on vacation.

Following this accounting, three more people alleging to be victims of Tevel shared their stories with the Journal via telephone from Brooklyn, where Tevel was born and raised, and where he lived before he moved to Los Angeles in 2012. All of the alleged victims interviewed by phone, when asked, told the Journal they do not know personally any other people who say they’ve been abused by Tevel. The instances described by those who spoke with the Journal took place as early as around 1995 and as recently as around 2004.

Tevel himself did not respond to multiple phone calls to his personal cell phone, nor to voicemails, text messages and e-mails from the Journal over several days. Searches of both civil and criminal public records did not reveal any convictions, or any closed or pending charges against Tevel in either New York or California.

Two local residents, both of whom asked that their names not be made public, identified Tevel as recently working at the JEM Center. One said that Tevel and his wife, Bracha, were directing JEM’s Hebrew High School Program as recently as one month ago. On the Web site jewishcommunitywatch.org, Tevel is labeled as the “counselor/director of JEM center.”

Another person confirmed seeing Tevel at a farbrengen (a Chasidic celebratory gathering) on Monday, Dec. 3, 2012, at JEM. The gathering included both adults and children. 

On the morning of Aug. 13, just before press time, Rabbi Hertzel Illulian, director and founder of the JEM Center, answered one of many phone calls made by the Journal to him over a period of three days. Illulian said he was not able to immediately comment because he was dealing with a recent death in the community. 

Illulian’s daughter, Bracha, married Tevel in 2012. Bracha also did not respond to multiple attempts to reach her.

The accounts from the four alleged victims who spoke with the Journal provided vivid details of both sexual and physical abuse. Two of the alleged cases occurred in Brooklyn, N.Y. The other two occurred at Machane Menachem, a since-closed Chabad-Lubavitch sleepaway camp in Lackawaxen, Penn., where two former staff members have confirmed that Tevel worked in 2001. 

All four of the alleged victims currently live in Brooklyn, and each asked that their names not be made public.

One alleged victim, now 25, who spoke to the Journal on the phone from Brooklyn, described an incident indicating that Tevel’s abuse might have begun at a very early age. The 25-year-old said that when he was 6 or 7 years old, his family lived near Tevel’s family in Brooklyn.

The alleged victim said that Tevel, then 11 or 12, would go to the basement of his home multiple times per week with him, lock the door, tie him down, remove some or all of his clothing, and whip him (he does not remember with what).

“One thing I do remember very clearly is that it was very painful, and saying ‘Ow’ a lot of times,” the 25-year-old told the Journal.

“I had just a T-shirt on and socks,” he continued. “Of course, pants and any sort of underwear, that was gone.” He said that this continued for several months.

The alleged victim, who was raised an observant Jew, said he has since attended therapy for years, on and off. It was not until he was 19 or 20 that he opened up to his therapist about the incidents. He said that he is no longer particularly observant. 

A third alleged victim said that when he was 11, likely in 2001, he was a camper at Machane Menachem. Now 23, he said that Tevel, who was likely about 18 at the time, was a counselor at the camp, and worked closely with the campers.

“I was on my [bunk’s] front porch and he called me to the side of the pool,” the alleged victim said during a phone interview with the Journal. “He started smacking me on my bum with a pingpong paddle.”

He said that although “he didn’t make much of it in the beginning,” when Tevel began smacking him harder and tried to pull down his pants, he asked Tevel, “What are you doing?” Tevel’s response, according to the alleged victim, was that he “brushed the whole thing off.” No further incidents followed. 

A fourth alleged victim who spoke with the Journal is currently 21 years old. He said that when he was about 9 and Tevel was about 18, he was a first-time camper at Machane Menachem. One day, he alleged, Tevel brought him into a sports equipment room. 

As another person watched the door, the 21-year-old man claimed, Tevel bent him over his lap and smacked him on the rear with a pingpong paddle. He then pulled down his bathing suit and continued smacking him.

This alleged victim, who is also no longer observant, said that when he grew up, he would become very anxious when he would occasionally see Tevel walking in the streets of Crown Heights.

According to Pennsylvania law, both of the alleged victims from the sleepaway camp would be able to press charges, should they choose to do so, until they turn 50.

Allegations of sexual abuse by Tevel first became public in October 2012, when Meyer Seewald, the New York-based 24-year-old founder of Jewish Community Watch (JCW), posted about him on the Web site’s “Wall Of Shame,” after multiple alleged victims came to Seewald to accuse Tevel of sexual abuse.

JCW, which regularly publicizes information about suspected sexual abusers within the Jewish community — mostly in Crown Heights, where Seewald lives — currently lists 40 people on its Wall Of Shame. The Journal confirmed that neither Seewald nor JCW has ever been sued for libel or defamation regarding its publicizing of accused abusers. 

That review process includes personal interviews with multiple alleged victims and what appears to be a thorough investigation process. Following that, JCW will only post a suspect if its board unanimously agrees that the person is a child predator. JCW has a database of about 200 suspected predators that it is still investigating.

In one instance, JCW posted the name and a photo of a man, Daniel Granovetter, on its Web site after he was mistakenly charged by New York authorities with abuse when a student accused him, only to later retract the accusation. 

The authorities dropped the charges, and JCW removed Granovetter from its Web site, but the damage to his reputation had been done. 

In June, though, Granovetter penned an op-ed on chabadinfo.com commending JCW for its work, saying that Seewald should continue to post the names of people charged with abuse in order to protect children who could become victims in the time between the arrest and possible conviction.

Seewald claimed to have spoken with at least four more people alleging to have been victims of Tevel, but none of them would speak with the Journal. 

Refusal to go public with sexual abuse accusations, Seewald believes, is a common problem in the Orthodox community.

Seewald, who was at the Aug. 5 gathering, said that in his two years of running JCW and speaking with hundreds of victims, not one had ever told his or her story publicly to so many people.

Ben Forer, a local Orthodox Jew who is also a district attorney for Los Angeles County, wrote a public letter praising JCW’s “impeccable review process before exposing any predators.” (In speaking with the Journal, Forer said he was speaking only as a concerned community member, and not in any way on behalf of the district attorney’s office.) Rabbi Avraham Zajac, a local Orthodox rabbi, also said he respects JCW’s process. “I trust the methodology of Jewish Community Watch,” Zajac said. “The biggest thing is keeping our children safe.”

Forer was at the Aug. 5 gathering; he said that from his experience, “people don’t want to believe” allegations of sexual abuse.

“Families come out in support, in every community, in support of the predator, no matter what the evidence is,” said Forer, who currently specializes in technology-related crimes but has previously prosecuted sexual abuse cases.

In 2012, not long after Tevel’s arrival in Los Angeles, a local Orthodox Jew, Danny Fishman, briefly met Tevel on Shabbat morning at a local synagogue. Fishman said he did not know at the time about the allegations against Tevel. 

“I met him,” Fishman told the Journal. “He came across as personable and charming.”

Tevel has also been known to occasionally attend other synagogues in Hancock Park and Pico-Robertson.

A statement posted late last week on JEM’s Web site addressing the recent controversy surrounding Tevel did not mention him or any of the specific allegations against him, but stated that “JEM Center wishes to reassure the community that every precaution has been taken to resolve the concerns and bring this matter to a closure.”

The statement continued: “The local authorities have been contacted and are thoroughly investigating all issues that have been raised (and if needed action will be taken).”

JEM has surveillance cameras in all areas of its building, the statement continued, and no rooms or offices in the building are allowed to be locked.

Lt. Lincoln Hoshino of the Beverly Hills Police Department confirmed on Aug. 13 that it is conducting an investigation involving the JEM Center. He declined to say whether Tevel is involved in the investigation. 

Toward the end of the alleged victim’s account on Aug. 5, the former Shterns Yeshiva student explained why he came forward.

“It actually did take a lot for me to come out here and speak,” he said. But when he heard that Tevel is working around children in Los Angeles, he felt he had an obligation to do something.

“He [Tevel] has damaged a lot of people,” the man alleged. “He cannot be around schools; he cannot be around the community.”

With anger in his voice, he expressed his frustration with what he sees as the Orthodox community’s preference to not bring such cases into public light.

“Keeping it close-knit is not going to help,” the alleged victim asserted, his voice rising. “Keeping it close-knit is what the Jewish community has done for years.”

If you have concerns about possible instances of abuse in your community, you can e-mail us at abusetips@jewishjournal.com. Tipsters’ names will be treated with confidentiality, as requested.

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Orpheum Theatre: Polished to perfection

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On the nights when he works an event held at the Orpheum Theatre, Steve Needleman — who owns the venerable theater at Ninth Street and Broadway — says he often is mistaken for a security guard.

“I’m wearing an Orpheum shirt, and I’m walking up and down with a radio,” Needleman explains, “and I’m telling people to get their feet off my seats.”

The pronoun and the pride of ownership are entirely fitting. Every square inch of the 87-year-old Orpheum — from the rugs to the light fixtures to the sound systems to the Wurlitzer organ to, yes, those soft-backed seats — is a reflection of Needleman’s family and of his civic legacy, and not simply because in 2001 he spent $3.5 million to renovate the venue. Where some of the other old movie houses on Broadway have fallen into serious disrepair and are no longer operational, the Orpheum has prevailed and lives to boast a busy lineup of concerts, pageants and movies. 

Needleman’s father, Jack, a well-known downtown businessman and philanthropist, bought the building more than 40 years ago. The theater was already leased to the Corwin family, operators of the Metropolitan Theatres Corp., who ran it for more than 65 years. In 2001, when the lease ran out, Steve Needleman undertook the renovation and took over the theater’s operation. 

The Orpheum’s facelift, which included the conversion of adjacent Fashion District space to apartments, was a transformation Jack Needleman had dreamed of but never lived to see. Bruce Corwin, who passed many an hour at the Orpheum with his own father, Sherrill Corwin, was delighted with the theater’s upgrade.

From the vintage neon on the marquee to the marble, dark woods and rococo chandeliers, the 2,000-seat theater is a grand dame of a building that is also a hugely functional performance space. 

“Steve did a wonderful job,” says Bruce Corwin, the current CEO of Metropolitan Theatres. “The theater has a great history, and I just want to see it continue forever.”

History, indeed. In the 1930s and ‘40s, during its days as a vaudeville house, the Orpheum hosted every performer who played the Los Angeles circuit: The Marx Brothers, Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen. Lena Horne set an Orpheum record, playing 26 weeks. According to Corwin, 28 cents bought a patron eight vaudeville acts and two movies.

Orpheum lore has it that Nat King Cole drew lines around the block for his stint at the theater. When Cole sought to double his $25-per-week fee, the Corwins let him move on and brought in the Will Mastin Trio, which included two adult performers and a singing and tap dancing 4-year-old boy. Sherrill Corwin thought that youngster might have a future, but as a hoofer.

“My dad told the kid, ‘You’re a great dancer, but don’t try to sing,’ ” Bruce Corwin recalls. “That kid’s name was Sammy Davis Jr.”

Despite having one of the oldest Wurlitzer organs on the West Coast, the Orpheum was never a silent movie house during the silent movie era. But the organ comes out on regular occasions, such as accompanying silent films during the annual Last Remaining Seats classic film series sponsored by the Los Angeles Conservancy. 

The arrival of television basically signaled the end of vaudeville, and the Orpheum started bringing in rock ’n’ roll acts while continuing as a movie house. It was among the first in the nation to offer first-run Spanish-language films or films with Spanish subtitles as well as blaxploitation films such as “Shaft,” according to Corwin. 

By the mid 1980s, surrounded by a clientele that did not always treat it kindly, the Orpheum was showing its age. Ed Kelsey, who took tickets during Last Remaining Seats screenings and picked up some extra money working film or TV shoots, became one of the founding members of the Friends of the Orpheum Theatre that formed in 1989. Looking to preserve and spruce up the theater, the Friends put on shows, replaced burnt-out light bulbs in the chandeliers and cleaned up the graffiti that appeared at the end of every weekend.  

Kelsey, now the Orpheum’s general manager and a board member of the League of Historic American Theatres, recalls the nearly wall-to-wall mass of clutter that would get stashed backstage because nobody ever threw anything out, as well as the bank of stand-up video game machines that lined the lobby, leaving scratches in the marble walls. 

 “Steve’s dad would always say, ‘Someday we’re going to renovate this theater, and you’re going to be part of it,’ ” Kelsey says. “There were years when we just dreamed something nice would happen to this theater, but it seemed like an impossible dream.”

Steve Needleman, who in his youth worked backstage at Beverly Hills High School, made that dream a reality. He saw in the Orpheum the opportunity to preserve an important part of the city’s cultural fabric. 

“I am not artistic in any way,” he says. “But the renovation gave me a kind of paint-by-the-numbers way to do something special and do it financially within reason. With Ed’s expertise, we spent my money pretty wisely and were able to bring something back to L.A.”

 In the 21st century, since the Orpheum’s rebirth, the theater has lured countless classic musical acts to the stage, from the Beach Boys to Lady Gaga and Yoko Ono. There have been more than concerts, too. Needleman has taken a fan’s delight in seeing the auditions for “So You Think You Can Dance” and the early seasons of “American Idol.” His backstage “fun wall” has photographs of the owner with stars who have graced the Orpheum stage.

The lineup is eclectic. A musical pageant for the Bais Yaakov School for Girls will bring in one kind of crowd while a Widespread Panic concert will entice a very different clientele. Upcoming performers include funnyman Dane Cook, guitarist Jack Johnson and the 1980s band Simple Minds. The Best in Drag Show, benefiting Aid for AIDS, is a spectacle not to be missed, Needleman says. 

The theater’s bread and butter comes about when it is featured in TV, commercial or film work, playing an old Hollywood movie house, a town hall or even Carnegie Hall in such projects as “The Artist,” “Dreamgirls,” “Alvin and the Chipmunks” and “Spider-Man.”

Running the theater as he does — “old school,” with a small staff and with an emphasis on personal rather than corporate interaction — Needleman has little time to show off his theater to film or architecture students. During its historic theater tours, the L.A. Conservancy is occasionally permitted to take people through the lobby and into the theater itself, but only when a staff member happens to be available. 

But really, the most exciting way to experience the Orpheum is — naturally — as a member of the audience. 

“It’s hard to overstate how fabulous that space is,” says Annie Laskey, program manager of L.A. Conservancy. “It’s an incredible space with an incredible story.”

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‘Resistance’ was not futile

Leave a Comment / Books, Culture, Entertainment /

As one of the very few reviewers who found fault with Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List,” I once wrote that I would have preferred a film based on “Defiance,” Nechama Tec’s brilliant study of the Bielski partisans, which shows Jews not as the passive beneficiaries of a Nazi factory owner’s largess, but as active resisters who picked up a gun and fought back. And, in 2009, director Edward Zwick came to the same conclusion in his own movie, also titled “Defiance.”

Now, Tec, a professor emerita of sociology at the University of Connecticut, revisits the subject of Jewish resistance to Nazi Germany in “Resistance: How Jews and Christians Fought Against the Nazis and Became Heroes of the Holocaust” (Oxford University Press, $27.95).

Tec explains that while certain inevitable questions asked by her audiences made her feel “uncomfortable and even resentful,” the same questions have been asked as often by Jews as by non-Jews ever since the Holocaust came to worldwide attention, most notably: “Why didn’t the Jews strike back at their oppressors?”

As someone who knows the history of Jewish resistance in all of its detail, Tec muses that “these troubling questions might have been fueled by ignorance.” So, she takes it upon herself to explain the truth in “Resistance,” a study of the unique circumstances in which the victims of the Holocaust found themselves and the courageous ways in which they did, in fact, fight back.

“Has anyone seen an army without arms?” asked Luchan Dobroszycki, a survivor of the Lodz ghetto and Auschwitz. “An army scattered over 200 isolated ghettoes? An army of infants, old people, the sick?” To which Tec stirringly answers: “This book seeks to answer this question with a resounding yes.”

She traces the charge of “complicity in their own destruction” to Bruno Bettelheim, a survivor of Dachau and Buchenwald, who famously complained that the Frank family “could have provided themselves with a gun or two, had they wished” and “shot down at least one or two of the ‘green police’ who came for them.” Hannah Arendt reinforced the same harsh view in “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” in which she blamed Jewish community leaders who had been pressed into service in the notorious Judenrat for facilitating the Final Solution. 

To rebut these allegations, Tec showcases the varieties of Jewish resistance.  A young Polish Jew named Ephraim Bleichman, for example, stripped the Star of David from his sleeve and escaped into the countryside: “From the beginning I knew that I wouldn’t let them kill me,” Bleichman told Tec, “and that I would not submit.” He eventually found his way to a band of 100 or so like-minded Jewish partisans, who possessed only two guns and no ammunitions. Soon, they had acquired a small arsenal and taught themselves how to use the weapons: “I personally didn’t know how to hold a gun, let alone how to use it,” Bleichman recalls. “But the minute we had weapons, we became much braver.”

Resistance necessarily took a different form in the ghettoes, where the Nazis gathered and held their Jewish captives before shipping them off to the death camps. Here, it turned out that women were bettered equipped than men to resist: “Women’s traditional roles as caregivers, housekeepers, and cooks remained essential,” explains Tec. “Deprivation and hunger made those who could procure and skillfully handle food particularly valuable. Thus, in the ghetto, unobtrusively yet consistently, women contributed significantly to survival.”

Some acts of resistance had nothing at all to do with weaponry. Emmanuel Ringelbaum, for example, organized the so-called Oneg Shabbat project in the Warsaw Ghetto, a communal effort to gather and preserve a record of the crimes that were being committed against the Jewish victims. “They were racing against time,” Tec writes. “At this stage, unable to protect the Jewish people, they concentrated on saving Jewish history.  This was their act of resistance.”

Tec shows us that the most famous Jewish resisters of all — the ghetto fighters in Warsaw and elsewhere — made a conscious decision to send a message to the world, and to history, through the manner of their death. Escape and survival were beside the point, although they certainly wanted to extract a price in blood from their murderers. “We do not wish to save our lives,” declared Jurek Wilner, one of the ghetto fighters. “None of us will come out of this alive. We only want to save the honor of mankind.”  Writes Tec in one heartbreaking line: “It was a shame that Ringelbaum was not there to witness this transformation.”

Even in the heart of darkness — the death camps — Jewish resistance was alive.  Jewish women who were assigned to slave labor in the munitions factory at Auschwitz/Birkenau, including the heroic Roza Robota, managed to steal small quantities of gunpowder and smuggle it out under the false bottom of a specially fashioned “menashke,” a tin soup bowl. Their comrades in the men’s camp fashioned the explosives into the bombs used to blow up Crematoria IV, while others used hammers, axes and stones as weapons against their Nazi guards.

To her credit, Tec digs deeply into this incident and acknowledges that a terrible fate was visited upon actual and suspected participants in the revolt.  One of the moral quandaries of would-be resisters, in fact, was the sure knowledge that every act of resistance would bring down bloodthirsty reprisals by the Germans against innocent men, women and children. Yet we cannot help but thrill at the otherwise heartbreaking scene of the public hanging of Robota and her fellow resisters on Jan. 6, 1945. “The executions themselves happened under a cover of sullen silence,” Tec writes. “Only once was this utter silence broken — by Roza Robota’s cry of ‘Nekama!’ — ‘Revenge.’ ”

Jonathan Kirsch, author and publishing attorney, is the book editor of The Jewish Journal. His latest book is “The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan: A Boy Avenger, a Nazi Diplomat, and a Murder in Paris” (W.W. Norton/Liveright), published in 2013 to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Kirsch can be reached at books@jewishjournal.com.

‘Resistance’ was not futile Read More »

Beauty and The Beast

Leave a Comment / Funerals, Lead Story, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News, Science & Technology /

By Dean Steinberg

Heidi Klum and Seal. Donald Trump and his model wife. Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony. Hugh Heffner and any wife he's ever had, including the current one.  Have I got your attention? I knew I had to stick in the celebrity names, now you’re interested.

But shall we go in a different direction.  At first glance the title perhaps conjures up images of these public figures, or better yet memories of the classic tale of a super vain prince transformed into a hideous man, forced to look at his values and interpretation of love. Whether we were exposed to the story through the book or film, it is hard not to reflect on one's own perspective regarding how we interpret inner and outer beauty.
     
This piece however, will be about the beauty and the beast both within me, and Disney, if you’re reading, I am open to negotiations for the sequel, “B and the B part Deux”. Like a supernova, so fantastic and beautiful to see, but also containing the power to destroy a solar system, I have these parts as well. I will explain in a situation that anyone who drives in LA should be able to understand.  My recent move to the valley has also moved me into a new traffic sphere, getting to LA to work in the morning. Just when I had fully mastered the art of getting around LA without driving my car into a wall out of frustration and impatience, I up and move to the valley, setting myself up for a brand spanking new set of frustrations and intolerance in my morning commute. A more suburban, family friendly type of inconsiderate driver if-you-will, and this is where the driving version of my internal Beauty and the Beast first showed himself to me.  I am making it my mission, and my life’s work, for the time being anyway, to figure out the best route from Sherman Oaks to Culver City, without having to leave at 5:00 in the morning. I'm doing ok but the occasional nasty, insensitive, selfish beast will interrupt my life’s work as if their job is more important than mine. What I've noticed, is that after this sociopath cuts me off, I now make it my new life’s goal to get his/her attention and let them know how dangerous, destructive, and downright hurtful they have treated me. I always, inevitably, get one of three reactions.

1. A wave of apology, when accompanied by a mouthing of sorry, to go along with the wave, it is even better.

2. Complete lack of acknowledgment of any wrongdoing, in fact a lack of awareness that I even exist or was almost just annihilated by them. Hands firmly on the wheel, 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock, looking straight ahead as if they are the most focused, efficient driver on the road. Either that, or they are tripping on mushrooms and they think they are in one of those drive-through safaris, and so want to find the tiger trails.

3. The obligatory middle finger, nasty look, sometimes accompanied by the mouthing of F#%K You.
Enter Beauty OR the Beast!  If I receive reaction number 1 from the other driver, Mazeltov, “I'm sorry too”, flies from my mouth. We could be best buddies, I want to hug them, kiss them, buy them a steak at Mortons, and clear Beauty shines from every pore in my body and soul. If I get reaction 2, not so much beauty from me, perhaps retaliation, but there will be no hugs or medium rare steaks. Reaction 3…..and here comes the beast, as easily as I would embrace you with reaction 1, just as easily I could speed up, get in front of you, slam on the breaks, rip you out of your ridiculous Range Rover, or BMW, and kill you with my bare hands. The beast has awakened and he wants blood.

So these reactions from me got me thinking. So vast are they in difference from such tiny insignificant (are they) gestures. From one, I have a new bff, from the other, I go to prison, and in prison I believe reaction 3 comes up a lot more.

So that’s my spin on the classic, timeless story. If we do make the sequel, maybe the other drivers can be dwarfs, or mermaids, or some shit like that.

Beauty and The Beast Read More »

Antwerp Charedi schools forced to choose between censorship and subsidies

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New government regulations are threatening the pedagogical autonomy of Antwerp’s Charedi Orthodox schools and sowing division between hardliners and moderates over whether to bring the community’s school system into conformity with secular educational standards.

Earlier this summer, the Flemish government issued decrees that would force both state-funded and private Jewish schools to teach mandatory curriculums that include evolutionary biology, human reproduction and other subjects considered taboo by Antwerp’s 18,000 Charedi Jews.

Beginning this year, schools that refuse to comply stand to lose hundreds of thousands of euros in annual subsidies. Even private Jewish schools that don’t receive such public funding will be forced, beginning in September, to test their children on mandatory subjects. Two failures would lead to enrollment in a state-recognized school.

“For us, the new regulations could mean exile,” said Menachem, a father of eight from Antwerp and a member of the Satmar hasidic sect. “I will send my children to England. It’s tough, but it’s better than having their minds polluted.”

For decades, Antwerp’s large Orthodox community could count on Belgian authorities not to interfere with the dozens of Jewish schools that dot the Flemish capital. But motivated in part by disproportionate poverty rates among Charedi Jews in the city, the government is cracking down on an educational system that critics say does not prepare its graduates for economic success.

Figures show that 25 percent of Flemish Charedim live below the poverty line, compared to less than 10 percent of the general population. Recent surveys have found that only 8.6 percent of Charedi school graduates pursue higher education, compared to the national average of about 50 percent, according to Claude Marinower, Antwerp’s deputy mayor and alderman for education.

“Young Charedim find it harder to find work at a time when the economy is declining and as Charedi diamond traders face stronger competition from Indian traders on Antwerp’s diamond exchange,” Marinower said. “Thus we see more poverty among Charedim.”

For nearly a half-century after World War II, Antwerp Jews mostly did not need to acquire the kind of education that would lead to successful employment. Jobs in the city’s lucrative and insular diamond trade were well paid and relatively easy to come by with minimal training.

Many of the jobs have since been shipped abroad, however, while foreign businessmen have intruded on an industry in which Jews once held a commanding position. Some in Antwerp have been warning for years that the community must adapt to a changed reality. But in Charedi schools, little has been done to prepare students for a wider array of potential jobs.

Hilde Wynen, who taught for 11 years in Antwerp’s oldest and largest Jewish school, the state-funded Jesode Hatorah, said she was instructed to avoid any mention of subjects like HIV, prehistoric times or ancient Egypt. Wynen also was required to censor words such as “love” and “boyfriend” from textbooks, which sometimes would lose up to 25 percent of their original content after she had gone through them with a black marker.

Censorship “meant my graduates were simply not prepared to integrate into the Belgian society,” said Wynen, who left Jesode Hatorah in 2011 to work for the Flemish education ministry.

In 2012, government auditors found that Jesode Hatorah, which has 800 students, failed to meet minimum educational standards due in part to its censorship of educational materials. The school was instructed repeatedly to correct the deficiencies, and when it failed to do so, the government began proceedings to strip the school of the subsidies that keep it running.

Jesode Hatorah did not respond to requests for comment.

The problem of religious education is not unique to Belgium. Across crisis-stricken, immigrant-rich Europe, concerns are growing about parochial school systems that fail to prepare students to integrate into the larger society and are feared to be hotbeds of radicalism.

Last month, the education ministry in neighboring Holland announced a plan to forbid home tutoring, which is favored by some very devout Christians, Muslims and Jews. In France, where the principle of public secularism reigns, strict legislation limits state subsidies for religious schools and conditions such subsidies on students’ knowledge of core mandatory subjects that is assessed in yearly state exams.

In Britain, religious schools still enjoy a fair degree of autonomy, but even they are facing “increasing demands by authorities to teach things which are not appropriate about cultural awareness and sexual education,” according to Rabbi Yehuda Brodie, registrar for the Beth Din, or rabbinical court, of Manchester.

While some Flemish Jews are considering sending their children abroad in response, others are hailing the reform as a chance for youngsters to escape rising poverty and perceived radicalization within the Charedi community.

Michael Freilich, editor in chief of the Flemish Jewish monthly Joods Actueel and a graduate of Jesode Hatorah, supports reforming the Charedi education system but says it needs to be pursued with caution, lest it backfire.

“Censorship in schools interferes with education and needs to be checked,” Freilich told JTA. “The trick is to reform the system without alienating parents. The education ministry needs to show flexibility. There is no sense in imposing sexual education on 12-year-old Charedi children. History lessons are another matter.”

But Henry Rosenberg, a prominent Jewish lawyer who has lobbied for years for greater government regulation, believes it is up to Jewish parents — not the ministry — to lead the reform.

“It will be a disaster if Jesode Hatorah is shut down because there are few alternatives,” said Rosenberg, who is not Charedi. “It is time for a Jewish Spring of sorts.”

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Who Israel released

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

Just after midnight yesterday, 26 Palestinian prisoners were released by Israel as part of a confidence-building measure aimed at bolstering renewed Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations.

Per Israel’s Government Press Office, the following is a list of the prisoners and their crimes. Virtually all were directly involved in the murders of Israeli, and the majority were serving life sentences.

Fayez Khur: Aged 51, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On May 10, 1983, he murdered Menahem Dadon in the Gaza Strip, and was involved in the murder of Salomon Abukasis in the Gaza Strip on February 14, 1983. Sentenced to life imprisonment.

Salah Mugdad: Aged 47, a Fatah activist from Kfar Bracha in Samaria in the West Bank. On June 14, 1993, he murdered Israel Tenenbaum, a guard at the Sirens Hotel in Netanya. Sentenced to life imprisonment, which was then commuted to a 32-year sentence.

Samir Na’neesh: Aged 46, a Fatah activist from Nablus in the West Bank. On February 14, 1989 he murdered a soldier, Binyamin Meisner, by throwing a building block at him in the Kasbah in Nablus. Sentenced to life imprisonment.

Yusef Irshaid: Aged 45, a Fatah activist from Jenin in the West Bank. On June 15, 1992, he took part in the murder of a Druze Israeli citizen, Mufid Cana’an. In the years 1991-92 he took part in the murder of three Palestinians suspected of collaboration with Israel. He also planned a car bomb attack in Afula and made attempts to kidnap a soldier. Sentenced to five life imprisonments.

Mustafa al-Haj: Aged 45, a Fatah activist from Brukin in the West Bank. On June 17, 1989, he stabbed Steven Frederick Rosenfeld to death with a knife close to Ariel. Sentenced to life imprisonment.

Salameh Musleh: Aged 44, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On May 20, 1991, he took part in the murder of Reuven David in Petach Tikva, when he and his accomplice beat him to death. Sentenced to life imprisonment, which was then commuted to a 30-year sentence.

Atiyeh abu Musa: Aged 42, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On March 29, 1993, he murdered Isaac Rotenberg with an axe on a building site in Bat Yam. Sentenced to life imprisonment.

Salah Mukled: Aged 40, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On March 29, 1993, he stabbed Yeshayahu Deutsch to death with a knife in the hothouses of Kfar Yam. In that same year, he also carried out shooting attacks. Sentenced to life imprisonment.

Mohemed Sawalha: Aged 40, a Fatah activist from the village of Azmut in West Bank. On December 2, 1990, he took part in a stabbing on a bus in Ramat Gan, in which Baruch Heisler was murdered and three other passengers were injured. Sentenced to life imprisonment.

Atef Sha’ath: Aged 49, a Popular Front activist from the Gaza Strip. He collaborated in the murder of Simcha Levy on March 12, 1993. Sentenced to 29 years imprisonment.

Yusef Abed al-Al: Aged 42, a Popular Front activist from the Gaza Strip. On April 18, 1993, he took part in the murder of Ian Feinberg in the Gaza Strip. On July 3, 1993, he murdered a Palestinian who was suspected of collaboration. Sentenced to 22 years imprisonment.

Midhat Barbakh: Aged 38, a Popular Front and Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On January 21, 1994, he stabbed his employer, Moshe Beker, a citrus grower from Rishon Letzion, killing him. Sentenced to life imprisonment.

Ali Rai: Aged 56, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On January 21, 1994, he murdered Morris Eizenstat in Kfar Saba. Sentenced to life imprisonment.

Mohamed Nashbat: Aged 52, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On September 20, 1990, he took part in the stoning and lynch of a soldier, Amnon Pomerantz, in al Burej in the Gaza Strip. Sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.

Samir Murtaji: Aged 42, a Hamas activist from the Gaza Strip. In the years 1993-94, he murdered four Palestinians who were suspected of collaboration. He was also involved in kidnapping other Palestinians suspected of collaboration. Sentenced to 20 years imprisonment.

Hosni Sawalha: Aged 39, a Fatah activist from Azmut, a village in the West Bank. He took part in a stabbing on a bus in Ramat Gan on December 2, 1990, in which Baruch Heisler was murdered and three other passengers were injured. Sentenced to life imprisonment.

Faraj Rimahi: Aged 48, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. Murdered Avraham Kinsler on June 6, 1992 and planned to murder more Israeli citizens. Sentenced to life imprisonment.

Ala Eddin Abu Sitteh: Aged 43, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On December 31, 1993, he took part in the murder of Haim Weizman and David Dadi in Ramle. After stabbing them both to death with knives, the murderers desecrated their victims’ bodies. Sentenced to two life imprisonments.

Ayman Abu Sitteh: Aged 42, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On December 31, 1993, he took part in the murder of Haim Weizman and David Dadi in Ramle. After stabbing them both to death with knives, the murderers desecrated their victims’ bodies. Sentenced to two life imprisonments.

Esmat Mansour: Aged 36, a Democratic Front activist from Deir Jarir, a village in the West Bank. On October 29, 1993, he aided the terrorist cell that murdered Haim Mizrahi in a chicken farm in Beit El. He led the murderers to a hiding place behind the chicken coops, brought rope to tie up the victim and helped them load the dead body into the trunk of the car. Sentenced to 22 years imprisonment.

Khaled Asakreh: Aged 41, a Fatah activist from Rafida, a village in the West Bank. On April 29, 1991, he murdered Annie Ley, a French tourist in Bethlehem. Sentenced to life imprisonment.

Nihad Jundiyeh: Aged 40, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On July 14 1989, he took part in the murder of Zalman Shlein in Gan Yavne. During questioning, he admitted to planning two more attacks that were not carried out: a stabbing in Gan Yavne and forcing a bus off a cliff. Sentenced to 25.5 years imprisonment.

Mohamed Hamdiyeh: Aged 41, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On July 14, 1989 he took part in the murder of Zalman Shlein in Gan Yavne. Sentenced to 25.5 years imprisonment.

Jamil Abed al-Nabi: Aged 50, a Hamas activist from the Hebron area in the West Bank. He was involved in planning and carrying out the shooting in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron that occurred on October 25, 1992. In the attack, an IDF soldier, Shmuel Gersh, was killed and another soldier wounded. Sentenced to 21 years imprisonment.

Taher Zaboud: an Islamic Jihad activist from Silat al Harithiya, a village in the West Bank. He took part in a shooting that occurred on September 22, 1992 near the settlement Gadish. He was also involved in an unsuccessful attempt to murder a police officer in Umm al-Fahm. Sentenced to 21 years imprisonment.

Borhan Sabiah: Aged 42, a Fatah activist from Rai, a village in the West Bank. He was convicted of murdering six suspected collaborators. Sentenced to six life imprisonments.

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17 Yemeni Jews secretly airlifted to Israel

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Seventeen Yemeni Jews were airlifted to Israel in a covert operation.

Four of the Jews were flown directly from Yemen to Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport on Wednesday, Haaretz reported. The rest were taken clandestinely from Buenos Aires after being smuggled to the Argentinian capital by a group of Satmar hasidim in August 2011, living in the Satmar community there. The Satmars have been involved in smuggling Jews out of Yemen for several years, according to Haaretz.

Several of the Yemenis reunited with family members in Israel.

The operation — a coordinated effort among the Jewish Agency and the Israeli ministries for the interior, foreign affairs and immigration absorption — was prompted by growing concern for the safety of the Jews in Yemen, according to the Jewish Agency. Anti-Semitic violence has been a growing problem since the 2011 ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The airlift brings to 45 the number of Yemeni Jews who have been brought to Israel this year and 151 since 2009.

Fewer than 90 Jews remain in Yemen, with about half of them living in a guarded structure in the capital, Sa’ana, Haaretz reported.

The 17 Yemeni Jews will be housed in Jewish Agency immigration absorption centers in southern Israel.

Some 49,000 Yemeni Jews were brought to the nascent State of Israel in Operation Magic Carpet in 1949-50.

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Israeli Arabs protest in Tel Aviv over Egypt violence

Leave a Comment / Israel /

Dozens of Israeli Arabs protested in front of the Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv following clashes in Egypt between government security forces and protesters backing deposed President Mohamed Morsi.

At least 149 protesters affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood were killed and more than 1,400 injured throughout Egypt on Wednesday after government security forces raided two major sit-in protests in Cairo early in the morning.

Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and pro-reform leader, resigned in protest over the violence.

Following the raids, the Egyptian government, led by interim President Adly Mansou, declared a monthlong state of emergency. A nighttime curfew has been imposed on Cairo and other areas of the country.

The protesters in Tel Aviv were joined by Knesset member Ibrahim Tzartzur of the Arab Ra’am-Ta’al party.

“Our message is simple: We are here to condemn the attacks and the Egyptian coup in general,” Tzartzur told Ynet. “We are protesting against the bloodshed of those who protested quietly.”

A Jerusalem-based cameraman for Sky News, Mick Deane, 61, was killed in the violence.

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Israelis and Palestinians launch talks in Jerusalem

Leave a Comment / Israel /

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators launched renewed peace talks in Jerusalem under a media blackout.

Following a three-year freeze, the talks began Wednesday night and were expected to last several hours. There will be no photo opportunities or statements before or after the meeting.

The Israeli negotiators are Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and the prime minister’s representative, attorney Isaac Molho. The Palestinian negotiators are Saeb Erekat and Dr. Mohammed Shtayyeh, a senior Fatah official. It was not known if President Obama’s peace envoy, Martin Indyk, was present.

The meeting comes less than a day after Israel released 26 Palestinian prisoners and returned them to the Gaza Strip and West Bank. A total of 104 Palestinian prisoners is set to be released at intervals, pending progress in the talks, which have a nine-month timetable leading to a peace agreement.

It also comes days after Israel approved the construction of hundreds of apartment units in West Bank settlements and eastern Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Ynet reported before the talks started that Israel has agreed to turn over to the Palestinians the bodies of terrorists who were killed and buried in Israel. Dozens of bodies will be transferred, Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh confirmed to Ynet.

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