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Jewish Journal

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September 4, 2013

Arabs on Temple Mount arrested after throwing rocks at Jews there

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

At least seven Arab worshipers on the Temple Mount were arrested following clashes that included throwing rocks at Jewish visitors to the holy site.

Israeli police made the arrests on Wednesday morning following reports of masked men throwing rocks at Jews visiting the site in advance of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Consequently, police prevented several buses of Arab worshipers from making their way to the Temple Mount, believing they intended to incite violence, according to reports.

The violence came a day after the arrest of Islamic Movement leader Sheikh Raed Salah, who last week called on Muslims to prevent the “dangerous mass invasion into Al Aksa” with their bodies.

The Al Aksa Mosque is situated on the Temple Mount in the place where Jews believe the holy of holies of the First and Second Temples was located.

On a visit to the Temple Mount on Wednesday morning, Israel’s Housing and Construction Minister Uri Ariel said, “The Temple Mount is the holiest place for the Jewish people and must be open for prayer at every hour to every Jew.”

Ariel, of the Jewish Home party, said he “plans to continue to go up [to the Mount] and strengthen the State of Israel’s sovereignty in the site.”

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High Holy Days food: How sweet it is

Leave a Comment / Food, Holidays /

Honey adds special touch to Jewish New Year

Brownies

Honey Chocolate Fudge Bars. Photos by Dan Kacvinski. Food coordinated by Judy Zeidler

The use of honey for Rosh Hashanah symbolizes a sweet year and dates back to biblical times, when refined sugar was unknown. Its sweetness adds a distinctive flavor to a variety of dishes in addition to dessert: It can be used as a glaze for everything from carrots to broiled chicken, adds a special flavor to salad dressing and can even be used in fish recipes. Or you can simply dip sliced apples in it.

When fermented, honey produces a sweet wine called mead.

Many different types of honey are now available. Examples are lavender, chestnut, orange blossom, sage, avocado and wildflower. They can be found in most food stores or from venders at farmers markets.

Cooking with honey as a sweetener is not difficult, and you may want to substitute it for sugar in your favorite recipes. This can be done without any drastic change in the ingredients. I find that cakes and cookies made with honey seem to stay fresh longer, too.

When we gather at home for Rosh Hashanah or break the fast on Yom Kippur, we often surprise our family with some new dishes. One of these new dishes this year will include eggplant. The eggplant is sliced, soaked in milk overnight and then fried in a small amount of oil. The consistency becomes similar to a soufflé and, when drizzled with honey, it is awesome.

In the last few months, carrots of all descriptions seem to be the “in” vegetable on the menus of many restaurants. This year, I am including a recipe for Honey-Roasted Carrots to serve during the holiday.

A fresh fruit salad enhanced with honey and orange juice can be prepared in advance. It makes a perfect first course when family and friends arrive home from the Rosh Hashanah service.

For chocolate lovers, serve Honey Chocolate Fudge Bars, and don’t forget to include Sesame-Honey Thins, a family favorite. You may not want to overdo the taste of honey in every dish, but select several of these recipes for your Rosh Hashanah menu, and save the rest for Yom Kippur. 

From our family to yours, we wish you “Shanah tovah” — a very healthy and happy New Year!

FRIED EGGPLANT WITH HONEY AND ROSEMARY

∗ 1 medium eggplant
∗ 2 cups whole milk
∗ 1/2 cup vegetable oil
∗ 1 cup all-purpose flour
∗ Kosher salt to taste
∗ 1/4 cup honey
∗ 1 sprig fresh rosemary, chopped

A day before serving, cut the tops and bottoms off the eggplant, and peel with a vegetable peeler or knife. Slice the eggplant into rounds that are 1/2-inch thick. You should get about 12 slices from 1 medium-sized eggplant. Place eggplant slices into a large container or bowl with enough milk to cover. You will likely have to weigh the eggplant down with a plate to keep it submerged in the milk. Soak overnight in the refrigerator.

In a large frying pan, heat vegetable oil to about 350 F or until a drop of water sizzles. Remove eggplant slices from milk, dredge them in the flour, and tap off excess flour. Drop carefully into hot oil in a single layer (don’t crowd the pan) and fry until golden brown, about 2-3 minutes. Flip the eggplant slices during cooking for even browning. Repeat until all slices have been browned. 

Sprinkle each eggplant slice with a pinch of kosher salt as it comes out of the pan. Drain on wire rack. Drizzle some honey onto each eggplant slice while it’s on the wire rack. Top slices with chopped rosemary. Serve immediately.

Makes 4 servings. 

HONEY-ROASTED CARROTS

Carrots

Honey-Roasted Carrots

∗ 8 carrots, peeled
∗ 3 tablespoons olive oil
∗ 1/4 cup honey
∗ Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 F

Place whole carrots in a baking dish; drizzle with olive oil. Mix until carrots are completely coated with oil. Pour honey over carrots, season to taste with salt and pepper, and mix until evenly coated.

Bake until just tender, or to desired doneness, about 40 minutes.

Makes 4 servings.

FRESH FRUIT SALAD WITH HONEY-ORANGE DRESSING 

Honey-Orange Dressing (recipe follows)

∗ 1 apple, cored and diced
∗ 1 banana, peeled and sliced
∗ 1 avocado, peeled and sliced
∗ 1 orange, peeled and diced
∗ Juice from 1 lemon
∗ Romaine lettuce leaves
∗ 1/2 cup pomegranate seeds 

Prepare the Honey-Orange Dressing; set aside.

In a large bowl, toss apple, banana, avocado and diced orange with lemon juice to prevent the fruit from turning brown. Add dressing and stir gently. Serve on a bed of lettuce leaves, sprinkled with pomegranate seeds.

Makes 4 servings. 


HONEY-ORANGE DRESSING

∗ 1/3 cup honey
∗ 1/4 cup orange juice
∗ 1/4 cup olive oil or canola oil
∗ 1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
∗ 1/4 teaspoon salt
∗ 1/4 teaspoon prepared mustard

Combine all ingredients in a jar with a tight-fitting lid. Cover and shake well.

Makes about 1 cup.

HONEY CHOCOLATE FUDGE BARS

∗ 1/2 cup unsalted margarine
∗ 1/2 cup finely ground walnuts
∗ 4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
∗ 4 eggs
∗ 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
∗ 1 cup sugar
∗ 1 cup honey
∗ 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour
∗ 1/2 teaspoon salt
∗ 1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
∗ 1/2 cup diced candied orange peel or candied ginger

Preheat oven to 325 F. 

Melt 1/4 cup margarine and brush it onto bottom and sides of a 9-inch-square cake pan. Sprinkle with finely ground walnuts. Set pan aside.

Place chocolate and remaining 1/4 cup margarine in the top of a double boiler over hot water on medium heat or in a heavy saucepan over low heat, stirring occasionally until melted and smooth. Remove from heat and set aside. (Chocolate and margarine may also be melted in microwave oven.)

In bowl of an electric mixer, beat eggs with vanilla and sugar until very pale and thick. Gradually add honey, then the chocolate-butter mixture, and mix well. Add flour and salt, scraping bowl with a rubber spatula and beating only until each addition is incorporated. Stir in coarsely chopped walnuts and candied orange peel.

Turn into prepared pan; smooth the top. Bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out just barely clean and dry. Cool in pan on a rack until cake reaches room temperature.

Using a metal spatula, loosen cake from sides and bottom of pan. Invert onto a rack, cover with a cake platter, and invert the cake right-side up. Before serving, transfer to a cutting board; brush with additional honey. Cut the cake into quarters and then cut each quarter in half.

Makes 16 bars.

SESAME-HONEY THINS

∗ 3/4 cup unsalted margarine, cut into pieces
∗ 1 1/3 cups dark brown sugar, finely packed
∗ 1/3 cup honey
∗ 1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract
∗ 1 egg
∗ 1/2 cup sesame seeds
∗ 1 cup flour
∗ 1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 F.

In large bowl of an electric mixer, cream the margarine. Add brown sugar, honey and vanilla; beat until light and fluffy. Blend in egg and sesame seeds. Add flour and salt; beat until smooth. 

Spoon marble-size mounds of dough 2 inches apart onto a foil-lined baking sheet or a silicone baking mat. Bake 5 minutes or until cookies begin to brown around the edges. Cool on baking sheet. When cookies harden, remove from baking sheet.

Makes about 8 dozen.

Judy Zeidler is a food consultant and author of “Italy Cooks” (Mostarda Press, 2011). Her Web site is JudyZeidler.com.

High Holy Days food: How sweet it is Read More »

A kosher kitchen compromise

Leave a Comment / Food /

My boyfriend of four years and I finally decided to move in together. But there was one problem: What to do about the kitchen.

Dov was raised in a Conservative Jewish household in Los Angeles where milk and meat never mixed. I grew up in a Reform home in New York where chicken kebabs were marinated in yogurt and saffron. When we spent our weekends apartment hunting in Manhattan, we looked not at the brownstones before us but stood stuck on the sidewalk debating whether our new kitchen would include my great-grandmother’s Descoware Dutch oven.

“Well, the pot is not kosher because it’s been passed down through non-kosher homes,” Dov said.

“Does it matter?” I argued. “It belonged to my great-grandmother. I’ll store it in a separate area of our kitchen.”

“But then our kitchen wouldn’t be kosher,” he said sadly.

I had imagined that moving in with my boyfriend might include the delightfully self-indulgent arguments from romantic comedies. I pictured purging outfits from my closet to make room for “his stuff” and paring down the nine perfume bottles that adorned my vanity. But I found the one boyfriend who wanted me to clean out my kitchen cabinets.

Before I met Dov in my mid-20s, my interaction with kosher food was limited to Hebrew National all-beef hot dogs. My Iranian mother, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, converted to Judaism when she married my dad. My parents spent their weekends shimmying past one another in the kitchen as herbs and beef sauteed on one burner and rice steamed on another. Although we mostly ate Persian food, my parents could cook anything.

Sure, we ate traditional Jewish foods around the holidays, but my feelings toward those dishes were somewhat similar to the way Nora Ephron described her tzimmes recipe: the medley of sweet potatoes, carrots and dried fruit “is delicious with a pork roast.” In our home, tzimmes was served alongside roast beef and Yorkshire pudding during our traditional Christmas Eve dinner with our longtime Jewish friends.

I had started cooking as a teenager, making chicken cutlets stuffed with prosciutto and spinach-and-meat-and-cheese lasagna. Giada De Laurentiis and Mario Batali were like my surrogate Italian aunt and uncle, and I browned and broiled my way enthusiastically through their Food Network shows.

But when I met Dov, I realized that even though our interests aligned on nearly everything, I lamented that he would never be able to try my specialty — chicken parmesan.

“Well, you can make it with non-dairy cheese,” he said brightly.

Milk and meat lived so harmoniously in my kitchen — and my stomach — that the thought of separating the two rattled my belief system more than I would have anticipated. Could  I embrace kashrut for Dov? After all, he knew that I would never be one to keep Shabbat, so he’d altered his lifestyle from keeping the tradition. He also moved to New York City to be with me, despite his love for living in California. So maybe I could bend, too.  There was a chance I might even enjoy it.

No such luck. A year into our relationship, I roasted my first-ever chicken — a kosher one — in my inaugural attempt into treating meat and milk like separate lovers. I turned to Ina Garten’s perfect roast chicken recipe for guidance. I followed the directions so closely that without thinking twice, I threw a half stick of butter on the stove to melt. I stood over my beautifully stuffed kosher chicken holding a spoonful of culinary liquid gold.  Then I saw the flying cow image on the Horizon Organic butter wrapper and I panicked: Until that moment, I’d never considered butter dairy, but a class unto itself, like tofu. Separating these two food groups felt deeply unnatural; it was like seasoning a dish with just salt and not pepper.

Still, despite those disasters, Dov still wanted to share a home with separate sets of everything — pots, pans, plates and silverware. I understood that kashrut was key to Dov’s Judaism. But eating kebabs with rice and yogurt was key to mine. Granted, I didn’t have the Talmud behind me, but I had the “Barefoot Contessa Cookbook.” And even though keeping kosher was consistent throughout generations of Dov’s family, why didn’t the recipes and cookware that were passed down through my family — major aspects of my heritage as a multicultural Jew — carry the same weight?

So we did what most stubborn 20-somethings would do: We compromised on a “kosher-ish” kitchen. No separate sets of dishware, and my great-grandmother’s Dutch oven would be grandfathered into our new home. We would use glass plates (a kosher get-out-of-jail-free card, if you will, as they don’t “absorb” meat or dairy). No shrimp or pork in the house, which I could accept, since these are the only forbidden foods I admire but am particularly unskilled at preparing.

But it was still the fundamental request that made me almost lose my appetite.

“Could we please avoid mixing meat and dairy?” Dov asked. “I’m just too uncomfortable combining the two. Could we keep all the recipes that have been in your family that don’t combine meat and milk, since there are so many?”

I fell in love with Dov for reasons that had little to do with religion. He was brilliant, thoughtful and a stellar guitar player who already traded in his rock star aspirations for law school applications by the time we met. But I also admired his respect for tradition. If I cooked yogurt-marinated kebabs in our shared kitchen, he wouldn’t eat them.  I wasn’t moving in with my boyfriend to eat dinner alone.

Regardless, I found it tremendously difficult to hold myself to the standard that I was expecting of Dov.

“He can live with one set of glass dishes, but I need to round out the flavors in my Bolognese sauce with two tablespoons of butter,” I thought to myself, simultaneously committed to my rationale and yet embarrassed by my childish obstinance.

“We can try,” I said. And as we unpacked all our stuff — my nine perfume bottles spread out untouched across the vanity, our new glass dishes in the kitchen next to my great-grandmother’s Dutch oven — I understood that it was compromise, not kashrut, that we would have to work on: to be less like the families we came from and more like the family we would create together.

A kosher kitchen compromise Read More »

The Fall

Leave a Comment / Judaism /

An excellent corrective to Luther's relentless sexism is another BBC show, The Fall, which premiered in May of this year and is now available in its entirely on Netflix. It could be just another routine procedural: the plot concerns a serial killer who stalks and strangles young, single women and the detective (played by the always stunning Gillian Anderson) who's trying to catch him. But The Fall is up to something smarter than that: in the second episode scenes of the killer, Paul, choking a victim are intercut with a sex scene between Anderson's Stella Gibson and a young Irish cop. It's a short sequence, quiet, like many of The Fall's scenes are. But it explicitly connects the two women's bodies, and the ways they can interact with men's bodies, the way we can watch them do it. It explicitly suggests that our voyeuristic pleasure in the sex is just as suspect as our horror at the killing, that in both cases what we're objectifying women in ways that should make us feel uncomfortable. 

Later there's another, similar intercut: the same woman's dead body, which has stiffened and set into the pose Paul left it in, being lifted onto the table for an autopsy as Paul washes his young daughter's hair in the bath. The contrast between the dead woman's white, lifeless body and the little girl's mobile one, the presence of Paul's hands in one scene and their absence in the other, are not creepy or chilling but haunting. The Fall's pleasures are not cathartic; they are attenuated, meditative. The camera follows its characters tightly while they move around rooms. There is often no soundtrack, so the small sounds of life are isolated and revealed: the difference between the ways shoes sound on pavement, on cobblestones, walking down hallways.

The most remarkable thing that The Fall does, though, is to show us women in the world. The victim is female, but so is the detective who investigates her death, and so is one of the cops who first finds her body. The pathologist is a woman. Sarah, the victim, has a sister. We see Paul's wife at work in a maternity ward. Each of these women gets her own long, lovely scenes, her own quiet space in which to see things, to react, to walk through her piece of the story. It's a strange thing to call a show about a serial killer comforting but in some way it is: it's so rare to see women so carefully considered on screen, allowed diversity of opinion and profession and activity, that I find myself quieting along with it. Each of these women has a whole actual story; she is fully realized beyond the parameters of her interaction in Paul's destructive narrative. It's worth watching; I'd highly recommend it. 

The Fall Read More »

An encore tour of Jewish-designed buildings

Leave a Comment / California, Is Featured? /

Los Angeles’ Jewish architects built palaces and shrines, and temples, too, and not just the kind you pray in. Downtown, many of these structures still stand, and are close enough together that you can easily stop by and pay homage.

In the 1920s, if you wanted to sink into your seat at a downtown movie palace and see the historic premiere of Al Jolson’s “The Jazz Singer,” or catch an evening of vaudeville, Los Angeles’ early Jewish architects had you covered.

S. Charles Lee designed hundreds of movie palaces throughout the Southland. Samuel Tilden Norton created the Greek Theatre, and he with another Jewish architect, A.M. Edelman, along with David C. Allison helped design Wilshire Boulevard Temple, where Norton had been a trustee. Edelman, working with another Jewish architect, G. Albert Lansburgh, as well as John C. Austin, came up with the plans for the Shrine Auditorium.

Note: Both Allison and Austin were not Jewish. 

Putting up buildings in the early decades of the 20th century, and creating work for Jewish architects were the Hellman brothers, Herman and Isaias, who both were fans of another Jewish architect, Alfred F. Rosenheim.

Alan Michelson, developer of the Pacific Coast Architecture Database, said he was surprised during his research by the number of Jewish architects he found for many of the earlier buildings in Los Angeles. “It was fairly open to people of different persuasions,” he said recently from his office in Seattle, where he is the Built Environments librarian at the University of Washington.

“Early on, Jews looked to their own,” he said, explaining the connection between structures like downtown’s Hellman Building and Hamburger’s Department Store, both of which were owned and designed by Jews. In other growing businesses there was a similar affinity. “The film business was a mecca for Jewish designers,” he said.

Nonetheless, Jews ,like other minorities in architecture, “had their struggles and paid their dues,” said Michelson, who holds a doctorate in architectural history and attended UCLA as an undergraduate.

Indeed, buildings designed by Jewish architects are not just history. Today, the buildings constructed in the early decades of the 20th century, many of them protected with historic designations, have found a variety of reuses amid an evolving urban scene.

In an easy downtown walk — between one and two hours — you can revisit a few of them.

842 S. Broadway — Begin the tour by visiting The Orpheum Theatre, which opened in 1926 and was designed by G. Albert Lansburgh, a San Francisco architect who, in addition to Oakland’s Sinai Temple, also designed the El Capitan and the Wiltern theaters in Los Angeles. In the days of vaudeville, both Judy Garland and Jack Benny performed here. The theater, which features a Beaux Arts façade, is still used for concerts and screenings as well as a broadcast of “America’s Got Talent,” has an opulent, restored interior, complete with a Mighty Wurlitzer organ. Check out the neon sign on the roof.

802 S. Broadway   (southeast corner of Broadway and Eighth Street) — The Tower Theater, which opened in 1927, was designed by S. Charles Lee (born Simeon Levi in Chicago in 1899).

According to the Los Angeles Conservancy, the Tower, Lee’s first theater, was where the creative designer was challenged “to fit 900 seats and ground floor retail onto a tiny corner lot.”

Perhaps best known among his movie houses are the Alex Theatre in Glendale and the Bruin Theatre in Westwood. Lee’s approach to theater design — that the show starts at the sidewalk — begins here.

Staring through the gated front windows, where you can see the lobby and staircase, I was startled to see someone inside. My curiosity getting the better of me, I walked along the side of the theater and, finding a side door propped open, slipped inside.

A film crew was readying for a shoot — many of the mostly closed Broadway theaters are used for filming — and they hardly seemed to notice as I walked around. The floor-level seats had been removed, but above and extending far back into the darkness, the balcony seats remained. Up front, in the lobby, I looked up and saw the wonderful semi-circular stained-glass window — which, from outside, you can make out by its shape.

801 S. Broadway (across from the Tower Theater) — Stop for a second and take in the enormous Beaux Arts structure erected in 1906 from a design by Alfred F. Rosenheim. Originally, Hamburger’s Department Store, the building takes up most of the block, and at one point even had a theater on the fifth floor. Eventually it became a flagship store for May Co., which I remember visiting as a child with my grandparents.

615 S. Broadway — Built in 1931, the Los Angeles Theater and adjoining building was designed by Lee and S. Tilden Norton (the S. stands for Samuel). The theater has a French baroque design that features a cry room for babies and a glassed-in smoking room. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Walking to the next stop, we spotted a shop selling kosher wine from the Golan Heights, and in the window of an appliance store on Spring Street, we found a kitschy metal sculpture of a Chasid. A snack and souvenir of our journey? Or were they a sign that Jews are returning to the streets of our tour?

354 S. Spring St. (northeast corner of Spring and Fourth streets) — The Hellman Building was constructed in 1903 on the former site of the one-story home of Herman W. Hellman and his wife, Ida. According to a piece in the Los Angeles Times, Hellman hired St. Louis architect Alfred F. Rosenheim, an MIT graduate, to come to Los Angeles to design the building, featuring “new steel construction, stained glass and marble.” Walk around to the Fourth Street entrance (Hellman’s and Rosenheim’s names are carved in stone on the corner), and you can see the remaining staircase. Most recently a Banco Popular, the building is now undergoing conversion to apartments.

401 S. Main (southwest corner of Fourth and Main streets) — What a solid place to keep your money. Isaias W. Hellman was not an architect in the formal sense; he was a builder. Built in 1904, the Farmers and Merchants Bank Building, designed in the Classical Revival style by the firm of Morgan and Walls, was an imposing “temple of finance.”

Writer Frances Dinkelspiel, Hellman’s great-great granddaughter, in her book “Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California,” recounts how Hellman went from “being a poor immigrant to being one of the wealthiest and most powerful men of the West.” She also relates how Hellman led the building of Wilshire Boulevard Temple and donated the land for the University of Southern California.

After we finished peering through the front window, where you can see much of the original interior — that day it was also home to an art exhibit — we noticed a sign across the street advertising a sports fitness studio offering “Krav Maga,” the martial art system developed in Israel.

Speaking with Jarret Waldman, the owner of Krav Maga studio Unyted Fitness, who as it turns out originally was an architecture major, I asked if he knew that he had moved his workout studio into a “Jewish neighborhood.”  “Not really, I’m just finding out about it,” the black belt told me. Yet, since opening, he noted, “There is a great vibe here,” he said.

An encore tour of Jewish-designed buildings Read More »

U.S. counterintelligence targets Israel with Iran and China, secret budget reveals

Leave a Comment / News, Worldwide /

The $52.6 billion “black budget” for fiscal 2013 for the 16 U.S. spy agencies was obtained by The Washington Post from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, the newspaper reported on Aug. 29.

The budget summary, formally known as the Congressional Budget Justification for the National Intelligence Program, revealed that counterintelligence operations “are strategically focused against [the] priority targets of China, Russia, Iran, Cuba and Israel,” according to The Washington Post.

Snowden, who has been granted temporary asylum in Russia, was a former technical contractor for the National Security Agency and employee of the Central Intelligence Agency who revealed the existence of mass surveillance programs by the United States and Britain against their own citizens and citizens of other countries.

The budget summary also revealed that the CIA and NSA became more aggressive in efforts to hack into the computer networks of other countries to steal information or to sabotage the computer systems of enemy countries.

It also showed that the NSA planned to investigate at least 4,000 personnel with high security clearance suspected of compromising sensitive information. In addition, terrorism is shown in the budget to be considered the most serious threat to U.S. national security.

U.S. counterintelligence targets Israel with Iran and China, secret budget reveals Read More »

Nigerians charged with planning attacks on Israeli targets

Leave a Comment / News, Worldwide /

Two Nigerian citizens were charged in their country with working for an Iranian terror cell to plan attacks on Israeli targets.

The men, who were arrested in February by Nigeria’s secret police, were accused in the charge sheet unveiled Wednesday in federal court of being members of a “high profile terrorist network,” Reuters reported.

The suspects are accused of working to provide information to their Iranian handlers about locations frequented by Israelis and Americans.

They are identified as Abdullahi Mustapha Berende and Saheed Oluremi Adewumi. A third uncharged and unnamed suspect also was arrested in February.

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Year in Review: Highlights of 5773

Leave a Comment / United States /

From wars and elections to scandals and triumphs, here’s a look back at the highlights of the Jewish year 5773.

September 2012

Sept. 19: Islamists throw a homemade grenade into a Jewish supermarket near Paris, injuring one. The incident is part of a major increase in attacks on Jews in France in 2012.

October 2012

Arlen Spector

Oct. 14: Arlen Specter, the longtime moderate Jewish Republican senator from Pennsylvania whose surprise late-life party switch back to the Democrats helped pass President Barack Obama’s health care reforms, dies at 82 following a long struggle with cancer. During his time in the Senate, Specter offered himself as a broker for Syria‑Israel peace talks and led efforts to condition aid to the Palestinian Authority on its peace process performance.

Oct. 15: Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley, American economists with ties to Israeli universities, win the Nobel Prize for economics.

The Israeli Knesset votes to dissolve, sending Israel to new elections for the first time since 2009.

Oct. 17: Jewish groups pull out of a national interfaith meeting meant to bolster relations between Jews and Christians following a letter by Protestant leaders to Congress calling for an investigation into United States aid to Israel.

Women of the Wall leader Anat Hoffman is arrested at the Western Wall and ordered to stay away from the site for 30 days after attempting to lead a women’s prayer group at the holy site in violation of Kotel rules. The incident, which is witnessed by dozens of American participants in town for the centennial celebration of the women’s Zionist group Hadassah, stokes outrage among liberal American Jewish groups.

Oct. 22: Hurricane Sandy hits the East Coast, killing more than 100 and causing an estimated $50 billion in damages. The populous Jewish areas of New York and New Jersey see extreme damage, and a Jewish man and woman are killed by a falling tree in Brooklyn. Synagogues and Jewish organizations nationwide join efforts to raise money to help victims of the superstorm.

Mitt Romney, left, and Barack Obama

Oct. 25: Israel, a heated issue throughout the U.S. presidential campaign, is mentioned 31 times by Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney at the final presidential debate, which was devoted to foreign policy and held in Boca Raton, Fla. Both candidates sought to score points on the issue, but actual policy differences seemed to be in short supply.

With a charter flight of some 240 Ethiopian immigrants, the Israeli government launches what it says is the final stage of mass immigration from Ethiopia to Israel. The following summer, the Jewish Agency announces that the last Ethiopian aliyah flight will take place in August 2013.

November 2012

Nov. 11: Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center opens to great fanfare.

Nov. 6: Obama is re-elected, with exit polls giving the incumbent about 68 percent of the Jewish vote — down from the estimated 74 to 78 percent in 2008. Many of the campaign battles between Jewish surrogates were fought over Middle East issues, but surveys suggested that like most other voters, American Jews were most concerned with economic issues.

Nov. 7: Major League Baseball player Delmon Young pleads guilty to misdemeanor charges related to an incident in New York in which the Detroit Tigers’ designated hitter yells anti‑Semitic slurs at a group of tourists talking to a homeless panhandler wearing a yarmulke. Young is sentenced in Manhattan Criminal Court to 10 days of community service and ordered to participate in a mandatory restorative justice program run by the Museum of Tolerance in New York.

Nov. 14: After days of stepped-up rocket attacks from Gaza, Israel launches Operation Pillar of Defense with a missile strike that kills the head of Hamas’ military wing in Gaza, Ahmed Jabari. In all, six Israelis and an estimated 149 to 177 Palestinians are killed during the weeklong exchange of fire. Egypt helps broker the cease-fire between the two sides.

A constitutional court in Poland bans shechitah, ritual slaughter, along with Muslim ritual slaughter. An effort in July to overturn the ban fails.

Mohamed Morsi

Nov. 27: The decision by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi to grant himself near-absolute powers dismays U.S. and Israeli observers just days after Morsi is lauded for helping broker a Hamas-Israel cease-fire. Morsi backtracks in December, but the move helps stoke popular discontent in Egypt with the country’s first democratically elected president.

Nov. 28: The United Nations General Assembly votes 138 to 9, with 41 abstentions, to recognize Palestine as a state. Passage of the resolution, which does not have the force of law, prompts condemnations from the United States and warnings of possible penalties, but none are invoked. Israel responds with its own dire warnings and announces new settlement constriction in the West Bank. Over the course of months, the change in status in the U.N. proves largely irrelevant.

December 2012

Dec. 4: After months of occasional cross-border fire on the Golan Heights, including errant Syrian and rebel shells landing in Israel, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says the Syrian government is violating a 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel by deploying military equipment and troops over the cease-fire line.

Ahmed Ferhani, 27, an Algerian immigrant living in New York, pleads guilty to planning to blow up synagogues in New York City.

Dec. 10: In a case that ignites passions in the Charedi Orthodox community in Brooklyn, Satmar Chasid Nechemya Weberman, an unlicensed therapist, is found guilty of 59 counts of sexual abuse. Days later, a Chasidic assailant throws bleach in the face of a community rabbi, Nuchem Rosenberg, who advocates for victims of sex abuse. In January, Weberman is sentenced to 103 years in prison.

Dec. 12: German lawmakers pass a bill enshrining the right to ritual circumcision but regulating how circumcisions are to be conducted. The law displaces a ban on Jewish ritual circumcision imposed by a court in Cologne in June.

Dec. 13: Yeshiva University President Richard Joel apologizes for alleged instances of sexual misconduct and harassment by two former faculty members — Rabbis George Finkelstein and Macy Gordon — at the university’s high school more than two decades earlier.

Dec. 14: Numerous Jewish groups call for stricter gun control regulations after a gunman kills 20 first‑graders and six adults in Newtown, Conn. The youngest victim is a 6-year-old Jewish boy, Noah Pozner.

Dec. 18: Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, the leader of one of London’s largest congregations and a former chief rabbi of Ireland, is named Britain’s chief rabbi-designate. This fall he is to succeed Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who has served in the post since 1991.

A Paris court orders Twitter to monitor and disclose the identities of users from France who posted anti-Semitic comments online, including Holocaust denials. Twitter later appeals the decision but loses, and the U.S.-based company complies with the demand in July.

January 2013

Jan. 4: Video emerges from 2010 of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi — then a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood — calling Jews “bloodsuckers” and “descendants of apes and pigs.” Morsi tells U.S. senators that he gets bad press because “certain forces” control the media.

Jan. 10: Obama nominates Jacob Lew, his chief of staff and an Orthodox Jew who frequently serves as an intermediary with Jewish groups, to be secretary of the Treasury Department.

Jan. 18: Data released from a 2011 survey of New York-area Jews shows that two-thirds of the rise in New York’s Jewish population over the previous decade occurred in two Charedi Orthodox communities in Brooklyn — a sign that Orthodox Jews will constitute a growing share of America’s Jewish population.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September 2012.

Jan. 22: Benjamin Netanyahu wins re-election as Israel’s prime minister, but his Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu faction suffers significant losses at the polls, falling to 31 seats. The big winners are two newcomer parties: Yair Lapid’s centrist, domestic-focused Yesh Atid, which comes in second with 19 Knesset seats, and Naftali Bennett’s nationalist Jewish Home, which wins 12 seats. Both later opt to join Netanyahu’s coalition government, which takes nearly two months to assemble.

Jan. 29: Iran and Argentina sign an agreement to form an independent commission to investigate the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people and was blamed on Iran. Argentinian and American Jews denounce the agreement as a farce. Iran’s parliament has yet to sign off on the pact.

Jan. 30: Amid concerns that Syrian President Bashar Assad may be transferring chemical weapons to Hezbollah, Israeli planes bomb a Syrian weapons transport on the Lebanese border. It is one of several Israeli strikes in Syrian territory during the year.

February 2013

Ed Koch

Feb. 1: Ed Koch, the pugnacious former New York City mayor whose political imprimatur was eagerly sought by Republicans and Democrats, dies at 88 of congestive heart failure. At his funeral, a cast of political luminaries remembers him as a friend of Israel and the Jewish people.

Feb. 5: Bulgaria affirms that Hezbollah was behind the attack in Burgas in July 2012 that killed six people, including five Israelis. The finding adds to pressure on the European Union to recognize Hezbollah as a terrorist entity. After concerns are expressed in the ensuing months that Bulgarian officials are backing away from their assertions, Bulgaria’s foreign minister reassures Israel on the attack’s one-year anniversary that Bulgaria still holds Hezbollah responsible.

Feb. 12: The Australian Broadcasting Corp. identifies a man known as “Prisoner X,” who hanged himself in a maximum-security Israeli prison in 2010, as Australian-Israeli citizen Ben Zygier. Zygier is said to have worked for the Mossad.

Feb. 21: A British court convicts three British Muslims of plotting to carry out terrorist attacks in the country, including on Jewish targets.

March 2013

March 4: Vice President Joe Biden tells thousands of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) activists meeting in Washington that Obama is “not bluffing” when he says he will stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

March 8: The U.S. State Department cancels plans to honor Egyptian human rights activist Samira Ibrahim after opponents note that anti‑Jewish tweets were posted on her Twitter account.

Doheny Glatt Kosher Meat Market

March 12: Mike Engelman, the owner of Doheny Glatt Kosher Meat Market in Los Angeles, is videotaped directing his employees to unload boxes of meat from his car while the store’s kosher supervisor is absent. The footage leads the Rabbinical Council of California to revoke the shop’s kosher certification the day before Passover, leaving many kosher consumers in the lurch.

March 20: Obama makes his first visit to Israel since taking office in 2008. In a speech upon arrival at the airport, Obama says the United States is Israel’s “strongest ally and greatest friend.” His trip receives widespread praise from Jewish groups.

March 22: Following prodding by Obama, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Netanyahu agree to resume normal ties after Israel apologizes for the deaths of nine Turks in 2010 during a clash with Israeli commandos aboard the Mavi Marmara, a ship attempting to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Erdogan later balks, saying normalization will not take place until Israel fulfills its obligations under the agreement.

Berlin’s Jewish Museum provokes controversy with its “Jew in a Box” exhibit (formally titled “The Whole Truth”), in which Jews spend a shift sitting in a glass box and answering questions from visitors.

March 28: A Lebanese-Swedish citizen is convicted in Cyprus on charges of spying on Israeli tourists for Hezbollah. The closely watched trial is a sign of Hezbollah’s expansion of terrorist activities into Europe and fuels calls for European Union countries to designate Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

April 2013

April 10: Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority prime minister who was lauded for his technocratic approach toward state building in the West Bank, resigns. He is replaced in June by university president Rami Hamdallah, who announces after two weeks on the job that he is quitting.

French Chief Rabbi Gilles Bernheim

April 11: French Chief Rabbi Gilles Bernheim resigns following revelations that he plagiarized the work of others in his books and claimed unearned academic titles.

April 12: After being asked by Israel’s prime minister to come up with a solution to the Women of the Wall controversy, Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky proposes that the Robinson’s Arch area of the Western Wall be expanded and renovated to allow for egalitarian prayer there at any time. Reaction to his proposal is mixed.

April 15: Rabbi Michael Broyde, a prominent legal scholar in the Modern Orthodox community and professor at Emory University, is forced to step down from a leading religious court after admitting that he systematically used a fake identity in scholarly journals. The admission followed a report by The Jewish Channel exposing the ruse.

April 19: The Museum of the History of Polish Jews opens in Warsaw.

April 24: Bret Stephens, a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post and now deputy editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal, wins the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

April 23: The Jewish Museum of Casablanca reopens following a major renovation funded by the Moroccan government. The renovation is part of a broad effort led by Morocco’s king to restore Jewish heritage sites in the country, including an ancient synagogue in Fez and dozens of former Jewish schools.

May 2013

May 13: Following complaints from pro‑Israel groups, the Newseum in Washington cancels a planned honor for two slain Palestinian cameramen employed by a Hamas affiliate.

Eric Garcetti

May 22: Eric Garcetti, a veteran L.A. city councilman, becomes the city’s first elected Jewish mayor. With his victory, America’s three largest cities boast Jewish mayors.

The Claims Conference is embroiled in controversy after the public learns that officials at the organization failed to adequately follow up on allegations of fraud in 2001, missing an early chance to stop what turned into a $57 million scheme. The disclosure comes during the trial of the scheme’s mastermind, Semen Domnitser, who is found guilty. In July, the Claims Conference board agrees to some outside input in formulating plans for its future but votes to re-lect its embattled chairman, Julius Berman, who oversaw a botched probe in 2001 into the allegations.

Arvind Mahankali

May 30: A 13‑year‑old Indian‑American boy, Arvind Mahankali, spells the Yiddish‑derived word “knaidel” correctly to win the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee.

June 2013

June 3: U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg dies at age 89 after a long and accomplished career advocating for Jewish issues.

Jun. 10: Yeshivat Maharat, a women’s seminary started by Rabbi Avi Weiss in 2009, graduates its first class of Orthodox women clergy known as maharats.

June 14: The Canadian Jewish News decides to abort a plan announced in April to stop printing the newspaper.

June 21: Israel’s Ashkenazic chief rabbi, Yona Metzger, is arrested on suspicion of fraud and money laundering.

June 26: Liberal Jewish groups hail the Supreme Court decision striking down California’s ban on gay marriage, while Orthodox groups express muted disappointment.

July 2013

July 1: In a letter announcing his retirement, Yeshiva University Chancellor Norman Lamm issues an apology for mishandling sex abuse allegations decades earlier against faculty members at the university’s high school for boys. Days later, several former students file a $380 million lawsuit against the university.

July 5: Three campers at the Goldman Union Camp Institute near Indianapolis are injured, one critically, in a lightning strike. A few days later, a Jewish camp counselor is killed by a falling tree at Camp Tawonga, a Northern California camp located near Yosemite National Park.

Michael Oren

Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, announces he will return to Israel after four years in the position. He is to be replaced by Ron Dermer, a senior adviser to Netanyahu. Both ambassadors are American born.

July 9: Egypt’s army deposes President Mohamed Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected leader. The Obama administration stops short of calling the action a coup, avoiding an automatic cutoff in U.S. aid to Egypt. Morsi had become deeply unpopular among liberal and secular Egyptians but retained deep-rooted support among members of his Muslim Brotherhood.

July 11: Portugal enacts a law of return to make citizenship available to Jewish descendants of Portuguese Sephardic Jews. The move is intended to address the mass expulsion of Jews from Portugal in the 16th century.

July 18: The European Union issues new guidelines prohibiting grants to Israeli entities in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem, prompting an outcry from Israeli officials.

July 22: The European Union designates the military wing of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

July 23: In New York, Jewish mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner admits to engaging in lewd online exchanges after his resignation from Congress amid a sexting scandal in 2011, but he declines to withdraw from the race. Meanwhile, San Diego’s Jewish mayor, Bob Filner, rebuffs calls to resign as he faces a barrage of sexual harassment allegations, including from staffers. Instead, Filner takes a two-week leave of absence to undergo sex therapy. Eventually, he agrees to resign, effective Aug. 30.

July 24: Rabbis David Lau and Yitzchak Yosef, both sons of former Israeli chief rabbis, are elected Israel’s Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbis. Days later, Lau is caught on tape using a derogatory term to describe black basketball players.

19th Maccabiah Games

July 27: The 19th Maccabiah Games open in Israel with a record number of athletes.

July 29: After months of intense shuttle diplomacy by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Israelis and Palestinians restart direct negotiations for the first time in three years.

August 2013

Aug. 13: In a goodwill gesture to accompany renewed peace talks with the Palestinians, Israel releases the first 26 of 104 Palestinian prisoners, including terrorists convicted of murder.

William Rapfogel

Aug. 14: William Rapfogel, the longtime CEO of New York’s Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, is fired and apologizes for misconduct and alleged financial improprieties, including allegedly inflating insurance bills and pocketing the overcharges for himself.

Palestinian prisoners are released in advance of peace talks.

Aug. 19: As Egypt’s military rulers kill hundreds of civilians in a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Israel lobbies behind the scenes against a cut in U.S. aid to Cairo.

Year in Review: Highlights of 5773 Read More »

How to slow down the rush to war: What Obama should do about Syria

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The tragic dilemma we now face is that the murderous Assad regime in Syria should have been overthrown long ago, but the U.S. has no moral standing or credibility to be the agent of that overthrow.  

The U.S. interest in Syria is not perceived by much of the world as a human rights interest. If the U.S. cared about human rights, it would not have armed Saddam Hussein after he gassed the Kurds in Iraq, it would not still be arming the Egyptian military after its coup and murder of thousands, it would not be arming Israel without demanding that Israel end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and create a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel. The U.S., finally, would not have waited until one hundred thousand Syrians were killed to begin contemplating action against Assad. 

Neither can nor should we be indifferent while watching as civilians are systematically murdered. The planet has shrunk to a size where we are in fact responsible for each other’s well-being and we must take that responsibility seriously.

What is needed is different strategic approach, an approach which is grounded in an expanded sense of moral imagination. Instead of trying to right every wrong at the moment, the U.S. should be involved in a global strategy to relieve the huge suffering of people on this planet. 

Slow down the rush to militarism and instead let Obama use this moment to forge a whole new direction for the US’s role in the world. Congress would be wise to hold town hall meetings in every Congressional district to discuss the range of options  before voting to support a military intervention.

In the fierce urgency of the current crisis in Syria, in which the U.N. is blocked from acting decisively because Russia and China will use their vetoes against any action that imperils Assad, President Obama should call a conclave of the world’s other countries, all of them, and let them together decide on what should be done with regard to saving the people of Syria from its rogue regime. The specific use of chemical weapons should be referred to the World Court for possible trial of whoever is responsible for that use in Syria.

Meanwhile, the deliberations of a world conclave should be open to the public, democratic, and not controlled by the United States or other Western powers, or any one group. Let that body decide whether there should be an intervention, and if so, led by whom, with what short term and long-term goals, and what mechanisms to ensure those goals are achieved. This creates a de facto global forum such as the UN should have been, by eliminating the ability of the Great Powers to veto any decisions made by the people of the world. Hopefully, that global forum will come up with non-violent ways to hasten the end of the Assad regime. But if that body decides on an intervention, the Obama Administration should decide if it can bring the U.S. population along with that, in part by conducting public fora throughout the U.S. focused on the call for an intervention issued by the nations of the world participating in that open and democratic meeting. And if the people of the U.S. support it, then the U.S. should be part of that international intervention.

Clumsy? Undoubtedly. Postponing immediate action? Certainly. But this path would  create a precedent precisely because it would slow down the hunger for more violence. It would allow the people of the world to introduce into that global forum the possibility of a different kind of logic in world affairs, a logic based on recognizing our mutual interdependence and mutual responsibility for the well-being of all.

This plan is not perfect, as many will readily point out. The governments of the world often do not actually represent their people, but often only an elite of wealth and power. The killing in Syria would not be stopped while the process went on. However, the Obama administration has all but explicitly said that the symbolic action they will take will not stop the killing either, nor would it overthrow the Assad government.

If President Obama were to use this moment to teach the world and the US about a new direction in dealing with the forces of evil, he could take his place among the great peacemakers of the human race.  

In the fierce urgency of this moment we must look beyond the tired options and rhetoric that have brought us to this place. The options are only limited by the narrow visions of the elite and the powerful. The options are only limited by a discourse and set of assumptions that should have been replaced many decades if not centuries ago. If not now, when?

Aryeh Cohen is Professor of Rabbinic Literature at the American Jewish University and author most recently of Justice in the City.

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun Magazine and chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives (which has developed a detailed plan for a Global Marshall Plan at www.tikkun.org/GMP).  He is the author most recently of Embracing Israel/Palestine.

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The Newsroom: Second season, second thoughts

Leave a Comment / Judaism /

The Newsroom is back again for the first time!

I was hesitant to hop in the saddle for a second go at Newsroom, especially with an already packed schedule of Breaking Bad, Top of the Lake, re-re-watching ” target=”_blank”>Twitter famous. But with only one episode left before the finale and my grievances having gone unrealized so far, it’s safe to assume the time catching up was well spent. These characters are finally growing into their third dimension, and their dialogue is a vehicle for communication instead of that formidable ” target=”_blank”>go ahead for Season 3.

I’ll start with the newcomer, my favorite cowboy from Capitol Hill Jerry Dantana (” target=”_blank”>New Year's huss almost believable. Maybe his Jerry curls masked my judgment, but this interviewee had taken special care to distinctly say, “If, if we used Sarin, this is how.” It was the only aspect of the interview as carefully thought out as his viewing access to March Madness before and during.  How could he think a frantic boy-who-called-libel wouldn’t be waiting in the very near future? Maybe we’ll find some insights in the depositions to come, but we do know the Genoa saga doesn’t end well. Not that we care much about the lawsuit’s outcome, though, since it’s the journey we’re finally invested in. A journey that will now span a third season.

This has been really, really fun to watch.

It’s been nice to see a resemblance of maturation in Mack this season, too. Watching her trip over fewer wires and pop culture references is a welcome change as the Mackenzie McHale, Executive Producer Extraordinaire, promised in The Newsroom’s pilot episode starts to shine through. She busies herself with heart-to-hearts over drinks with Don ( The Newsroom: Second season, second thoughts Read More »