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January 23, 2014

The curious case of criticism

Leave a Comment / Marty Kaplan, Opinion /

What do you say to a friend whose work has been panned by a critic?

Until I actually read it, I was thrilled to see a review of the new book by an author I’ve known since college on the front page of the Arts section of the New York Times, written by the paper’s top daily book critic, Michiko Kakutani.  They even ran a picture of him.  Over his career he’s written novels, short stories and essays; other reviews have acclaimed his literary talent and ambition; he’s won an award that many, including me, would kill for. But when I read this review, I was heartsick. 

I won’t quote it; I don’t want to amplify her voice.  It’s not a hatchet job – she doles out a few passive-aggressive words of approval along the way – but it amounts to: Don’t bother.  It’s (sigh) too uneven, too mawkish, to be worth your time or money.

This has happened over the years to a number of my friends who are writers, filmmakers, performers, artists.  Sometimes I don’t mention it, as though I never saw the review.  Sometimes I talk smack about the reviewer.  She’s jealous!  He’s a hack!  Sometimes I’m a contrarian.  Wow!  The front page!  No one reads actually them.  What counts is the big-gun treatment you got.  And that picture – you look marvelous!

What I want to say – but I don’t, because it risks seeming too abstract at such an emotionally fraught moment for them – is that the whole enterprise of reviewing is so strange.

For a dozen years, I was an executive and then a writer-producer at Disney.  Whenever a movie I was involved with was released, the marketing department would put me on the distribution list for reviews.  Thick packets fastened by industrial-grade staples would hit my desk day after day – hundreds and hundreds of reviews, from some sources I’d heard of and plenty more I never knew existed. 

And whether the movie was commercially successful or a dud, there was one thing I could be sure of.  Any aspect of any film that any critic had singled out for praise would also, inevitably, and just as confidently, be totally trashed by another reviewer.  It didn’t matter whether the films or the critics were highbrow or lowbrow, name brands or nobodies.  The one thing I could count on was that for every critical reaction, there was always an equal and opposite reaction.

You can see that operate in microcosm at the Times, which not only runs daily book reviews, but also publishes a Sunday Book Review.   Since daily and Sunday operate independently, it’s not that rare to find the same book reviewed by both sections. Recently, for example, a new biography of Roger Ailes, Gabriel Sherman’s “The Loudest Voice in the Room,” got a “>Sunday review by Jacob Weisberg, editor-in-chief of the Washington Post’s Slate Group.  The two pieces are matter and anti-matter, though which is which is up for grabs.

Maslin’s opening salvo – her first line – labels the book “disingenuous.”  Indignant at the number of Sherman’s sources who wouldn’t let their names be used, she bemoans “the untrustworthiness” of “this kind of journalism.”  The “frisson of menace” which the people around Ailes exude is “perhaps not enough to explain all those blind items,” because though Ailes may be “very fond of making threats, [i]t’s not clear how much he bothers with follow-through.”  She calls Sherman’s 2011 profile of Ailes in New York Magazine “nasty”; “understandably,” she says, Ailes refused to be interviewed for this “too unauthorized” book, which she writes off as not “thoughtful” enough, “tepid,” “rote,” “a great wasted opportunity.”

Weisberg uses the word “disingenuous,” too, but he applies it to Fox News’ “manufactured indignation” and “victimhood pose,” not to the book.  Fox owner Rupert Murdoch “has always played the outrage game to drive circulation and ratings”; Ailes, “on the other hand, seems to be genuinely seething with resentment, often at his friends as much as his enemies.”  Weisberg says Sherman has produced an “actually fair and balanced, carefully documented biography,” written, “it bears noting, without the cooperation of his subject, who set a new benchmark for biographical obstruction by working with the journalist Zev Chafets to rush a more sympathetic portrayal out first.”  It’s no mystery why many of Sherman’s sources refused to go on the record; Ailes is “a rage-a-holic who can’t control himself.”

Any two reviewers can cite the same evidence to make opposite points.  This doesn’t mean that neither is valuable; it means that criticism is a curious kind of discourse.  We’re long past believing that critics are objective voices articulating timeless truths.  Whether they acknowledge it or not, they’re enmeshed in the politics of their times, their class and their tribes.  Every review is a kind of advocacy – for a canon, a hierarchy, a particular system of distinguishing genius from mediocrity, a ranking of pleasures from base to sublime.  Reviews throw a spotlight on work we might ignore, and they can embed that work in a context and tradition we might only dimly be aware of.  They’re gambits in a continuing cultural conversation, invitations to consider and reconsider, constructions of reality to embrace or dispute.

The problem is that reviews also function as commodities.  They’re monetized by their publishers.  They drive attention and commerce.  They can make or break reputations, open or close doors to distributors, spell the difference between a career and a hobby.  They’re classy gossip, status markers, taste-mongering framed as analysis.  They’re also a bullsh*ter’s best friend.  In an age of information overload, they’re a way to cope; knowing-about may not be as good as knowing, but it’s arguably a step up from being clueless.

Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy reading reviews, and some of them dazzle me with their brilliance.  I just wish they didn’t turn me into a coward when they diss my posse.   

While I was still dithering over what, if anything, to tell my writer friend about Michiko Kakutani, he mentioned her review to me in an email.  So what did I say to him?  Actually, you’ve just read it.  Oh – and you really do look fabulous in that picture.

Marty Kaplan is the “>USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.  Reach him at martyk@jewishjournal.com.

The curious case of criticism Read More »

OK-Kosher wins right to “dot-kosher” domain over competitors’ objection

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Last week, the world got one step closer to the day when web sites can end not just with .com, .net, or .org — but with the suffix “.kosher” as well.

After a fierce and expensive dispute that pitted one major kosher certification company against five of its biggest rivals, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, delegated control over “.kosher,” to OK Kosher Certification, a Brooklyn-based kosher certification agency.

ICANN began accepting applications for new “generic top level domain names” (gTLD) like .kosher in 2012; as of Jan. 21, 2014, the independent international organization had given the go-ahead to 100 such strings of letters, including “.healthy,” “.luxury” and even “.xyz.”

But none of those drew the kind of objection that was raised after OK-Kosher applied in November 2012 to manage the .kosher gTLD. Its five biggest competitors – the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (OU Kosher), STAR-K Kosher Certification, Inc. (STAR-K), Chicago Rabbinical Council (cRc), Kosher Supervision Service, Inc. (Kof-K), and The Kashruth Council of Canada (COR) – together filed a formal complaint with ICANN in March 2013, expressing concern that OK-Kosher might use its control over the .kosher string to attain an unfair competitive advantage in the market for kosher certification services.

On Jan. 14, 2014, an expert working for the International Chamber of Commerce rebuffed their objection, and awarded the right to manage “.kosher” to a subsidiary of OK-Kosher called Kosher Marketing Assets, LLC.

In a 22-page opinion, Luca G. Radicati di Brozolo, a law professor at the Catholic University of Milan, concluded that the OU, which was the named objector, “has not convincingly proven its claim that the Application will impact negatively on itself, the community of [kosher certification organizations] or the broader community of persons or entities with a stake in kosher.”

The OK’s head of public relations, Rabbi Chaim Fogelman, said he was satisfied with the decision, even if he couldn’t or wouldn't say exactly what the OK planned to do with the new gTLD.

“It’s a little bit too early for us to know that yet,” Fogelman said. “We do know that we want to keep it in line with the OK’s mission, kosher without compromise. We want to have it in the spirit of inclusivity and have it open to other people who adhere to the Torah standards of kosher.”

The five competing kosher certifiers fought to stop OK-Kosher from gaining control over .kosher specifically because they were unconvinced that the OK-Kosher would run the gTLD in an open manner. In an interview with the Journal on Jan. 23, Rabbi Moshe Elefant, Chief Operating Officer of OU Kosher made clear that he still had doubts about how OK-Kosher would use the newly delegated gTLD.

“We don’t believe that any one group should have control over the word “kosher,” Elefant said. If one kosher certifying agency has control over which businesses could obtain web addresses ending in .kosher, Elefant said, any business that wanted to have such a presence on the web would be forced to sign up with OK-Kosher.

“I’m not saying that this is what they’re going to do,” Elefant added, “but once they own it, they have a lot of abilities.”

To illustrate just how high each side believed the stakes were in this fight, one need only look at the sums spent. The typical application fee for a single gTLD is $185,000, not including legal fees involved in preparing the application; every year, the manager of a gTLD must also pay a $25,000 renewal fee to ICANN maintain control.

The five competing agencies that joined in objecting to the OK-Kosher’s application, meanwhile, collectively spent around $100,000 on fees to ICANN and their lawyers, according to Elefant. The group could spend more money still, if they choose to appeal the decision. Elefant said on Jan. 23 that he believes they have 14 days to file an appeal, but said the five agencies hadn’t yet agreed about whether or not to do so.

* * *

In late 2012, when news of the OK’s application to take control of .kosher reached Elefant at the OU, it was a surprise.

“We were never informed by the OK of their application,” Elefant said. “We happened to find out – and religious Jews don’t like to use this word – coincidentally.”

Before they took their objection to ICANN, though, the OU, together with the four other competing agencies, approached OK-Kosher. A meeting was held in January 2013 in OK-Kosher’s offices in Crown Heights, to see if some kind of mutually acceptable agreement could be reached.

But if the OU’s preference was for no agency own the gTLD .kosher, OK-Kosher took a markedly different attitude. Fogelman, who serves as editor of OK-Kosher’s in-house magazine Kosher Spirit, said that the .kosher gTLD had “enormous potential to spread kosher and educate about kosher.” Furthermore, Fogelman emphasized that there was a danger to leaving the .kosher gTLD on the table.

“Allowing it to be directed by people who are either not qualified or have ulterior motives for managing .kosher has the potential for great disaster,” Fogelman said.

The meetings between the agencies one year ago failed to result in an agreement.  Fogelman said it was because OK-Kosher’s rival agencies refused to share in the cost of ownership of .kosher; the OU’s Elefant had a different explanation, saying that OK-Kosher had stipulated additional conditions to the agreement, including certain domain names over which OK-Kosher wished to retain control.

“A partnership is a full-fledged partnership,” Elefant said. “Anything less than that is not a partnership.”

There’s a long history of intense rivalry between kosher certifiers in the United States; even so, agencies have always simultaneously competed and cooperated with one another. Today, with food being produced through industrialized processes, a consumer food product may have only one kosher symbol on its package, but it’s likely that the ingredients of which it is made are certified by different agencies. As a matter of course, therefore, these agencies rely on one another’s supervision, even as they compete with one another for client business.

That balance, between competition and cooperation, according to to Timothy Lytton, a professor at Albany Law School, is a delicate one, and this dispute could push that system in one way or another. Lytton, whose book Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrialized Food was published in 2013, said that awarding control over .kosher to OK-Kosher could bring to the certification agency a difficult-to-quantify ancillary benefit, namely, increased internet traffic.

“If that could be translated into greater market control or greater control over public understanding of kosher standards,” Lytton said, “that might push [the American system of kosher certification] in the direction of centralized control.

“On the other hand,” Lytton continued, “it might turn out that this is just another small marketing advantage that one agency has over another, and it really is just part and parcel of the competition between agencies.”

From a purely business standpoint, it’s unclear if any of the gTLDs will turn out to be good investments. One applicant told Quartz recently that taking into account “the cost of lawyers, research, traveling to ICANN conferences, and other administrative expenses,” it cost nearly $1 million the cost to apply for a gTLD.

Andrew Alleman, editor of the web-based trade publication Domain Name Wire, estimated it could take five years to find out whether the investments made in gTLDs were worthwhile.

“We won’t know in a year; it’s a long-run kind of investment,” Alleman said. “We’ll know when some of them fail.”

Assuming that OK-Kosher does retain control over .kosher, it’s an open question of how they’ll ultimately decide to use it. In his decision, the expert adjudicator appeared to rely on assertions made by OK-Kosher that the gTLD will be used in ways that will benefit all kosher certification agencies, “including the OU.”

Speaking to the Journal on Jan. 23, Fogelman suggested that even if OK-Kosher never turned a profit through .kosher, laying claim to the gTLD was the right thing to do.

“This is what we’re here for. We’re in the kosher business and not in the business of kosher – kosher comes first,” Fogelman said. “From a business perspective, it might not be great to have a $25,000 bill from ICANN for something that doesn’t turn out to be a moneymaker.”

“On the other hand,” he said, “this is something that has to be managed responsibly. It is something we have to protect.”

OK-Kosher wins right to “dot-kosher” domain over competitors’ objection Read More »

Moving and Shaking: Tommy Lasorda visits TEBH, Yiddishkayt names new development director

Leave a Comment / California, Moving & Shaking /

Former Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, 86, was the center of attention during Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills’ “Baseball Day” on Jan. 14, and his star power was enough to draw more than 150 attendees. 

A Q-and-A conducted by Ben Platt, national correspondent for Major League Baseball Advanced Media and a Temple Emanuel congregant, was one of many highlights. The event featured a video tribute to Lasorda, a lecture by the baseball icon and, of course, kosher hot dogs. 

“This is my 65th year with the Dodgers, and 64th married,” Lasorda told the crowd, when asked how long he’d been in the game. 

The intergenerational gathering was part of “an ongoing effort [at Emanuel] to connect children, teens, adults and seniors through innovative programs and activities,” according to a synagogue press release.

Yiddishkayt, which describes itself as the “premier Yiddish cultural and education center in Los Angeles,” has named David Levitus, Bend the Arc’s former interim Southern California regional director, as its new director of development.

Robert Adler Peckerar, executive director at Yiddishkayt, expressed confidence that Levitus is the best fit for the organization.

“We have big plans at Yiddishkayt. In the coming years, we’re going to experiment with exciting new forms of local programming in Los Angeles. … David is a key part of this plan to help us grow because of his considerable skills and relationships. He embodies much of what Yiddishkayt means — compassionate, critical engagement with his fellow human beings and the wider world,” Peckerar said.

“I’m thrilled to be joining the Yiddishkayt mishpachah,” Levitus said. “No one else brings the beautiful diversity of Jewish culture to life in quite the same authentic, unexpected and democratic ways. Yiddishkayt never forgets that Jewish history is neither a string of endless tragedies nor a triumphal crescendo to the present.”

Levitus said that Yiddishkayt, which organizes Yiddish-focused theater events, concerts and more, helps Jews in their ongoing search for identity.

“The vitality and variety of the Jewish experience is bursting with lessons for life in a global, multicultural age, and Yiddishkayt shows us exactly where to start looking,” he said.

Peckerar said that Levitus will have many responsibilities. They will include expanding the organization’s Helix Project, which takes college students on three-week-long immersion trips to Europe for visits to destinations that represent “the historical heartlands of Jewish life,” according to the Yiddishkayt Web site.

More than 110 people attended an American Technion Society (ATS) event at the Museum of Tolerance’s Peltz Theater on Jan. 16. The program featured a presentation by Technion-Israel Institute of Technology associate professor Alon Wolf, who discussed robotics innovation used in surgical procedures and search and rescue. He also lectured on advances in osteoarthritis and knee replacement.

Attendees included Jared Hakimi, North American representative at the Technion International School; Diana Stein Judovits, ATS Western regional director; Rena Conner, ATS Southern California chapter president; and Irwin Field, ATS national board member and former Jewish Journal publisher.

ATS is a fundraising partner for the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

Moving and Shaking acknowledges accomplishments by members of the local Jewish community, including people who start new jobs, leave jobs, win awards and more, as well as local events that featured leaders from the Jewish and Israeli communities. Got a tip? E-mail it to ryant@jewishjournal.com.

Moving and Shaking: Tommy Lasorda visits TEBH, Yiddishkayt names new development director Read More »

Sasha Abramsky: Still fighting the war on poverty

Leave a Comment / Culture /

In his new book, “The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives” (Nation Books, $26.99), journalist Sasha Abramsky interviews a couple unable to qualify for Medicaid because of the monetary value of the burial plots they bought to avoid being buried in a pauper’s cemetery one day. Stories like this one, collected during road trips across the United States, highlight the deep economic inequality that still pervades the country 50 years after President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. In his book, released in September, Abramsky, who grew up in London and now lives in Sacramento, introduces readers to the people he calls the “invisible” poor and offers solutions for a second, modern-day War on Poverty.

 

Jewish Journal: Could you summarize the thesis of your book?

Sasha Abramsky: The idea of the book is that there is a huge number of Americans — tens of millions of Americans — who are living in fairly profound poverty, and that poverty is largely invisible to the broader community. It’s a poverty that is caused not by a lack of resources but by a lack of political will to tackle the crisis. It’s a poverty related to the rise of a peculiarly unequal society in the last 30 years. The poorer you are in that society, the less visible you are, the less political voice you have, the less economic security you have, the more vulnerable you are to any shift … in the labor market, in the housing market, in how health care is delivered. The underlying idea is that these lives, these stories, are worth telling, and that we weaken ourselves as a society if we ignore tens of millions of people just because they’re poor.

 

JJ: Has your Jewish background inspired the moral message in your book?

SA: I’m not religious. I come from a secular family. … But I think if you look at Jewish ethics over the centuries, you see a tremendous emphasis on poverty. You see a tremendous emphasis not just on charity, which is a starting point, but on social justice and on exploring some of the consequences of unfair systems. 

 

JJ: Did the interviews you conducted change your thinking about poverty and solutions to the issue?

SA: Yes … what struck me was really the complexity of the story. There are 50 million people, by government measure, who are in poverty in this country. You neither can nor should reduce them to a set of stereotypes. You can’t say this group of people is important for this particular reason and they did this and therefore they’re poor.

 

JJ: How did you decide whom to interview or which interviews to include in the book?

SA: I wanted people who reflected all these broad entry points into poverty. There are tremendous numbers of working poor who either have been bankrupted or their lives have been made incredibly precarious by medical bills. I wanted to talk to people in food-bank lines. I wanted to talk to elderly Americans who’d lost their retirement savings. … I wanted to go all over the country, or as much of the country as I could, given the time limit of the project.

 

JJ: Why is it that we have such a serious issue of poverty 50 years after President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty?

SA: Because, I think, for most of the last 40 years it hasn’t been a priority. It became a priority in the early ’60s and remained something of a national priority until the mid-’70s. The language that emerged in the Victorian period re-emerged in the 1980s — this very, very harsh language that blamed poor people for their own poverty. And when you individualize it like that, you lose the momentum acquired for a national strategy. And I think that’s the way that, for a generation now, we’ve been taught to understand poverty.

 

JJ: Of the solutions you’ve proposed, which ones would you prioritize if you were a political activist?

SA: I propose two things. … One of them is a public works fund that would be very specifically designed to protect employment during economic downturns. … The second thing is a social insurance system for higher education, and it would involve a very small line-item income tax paid by employees and employers, but it would render higher education massively more affordable for most Americans. … Then you can sort of go back in, and there are a whole bunch of smaller things we could do. … We could tax stock trades and bond trades and all the other financial trades that occur. You could use that for financial programs, for job-training programs. You could use it for gas stamp subsidies so rural Americans don’t get into fiscal trouble when gas goes up a dollar a gallon.

 

JJ: If you were a community activist in a poor community, what would you be doing right now?

SA: There are many things. If I were in a community where there were numerous fast-food restaurants, I’d probably be supporting the fast-food strikers who have been going out on strike in recent weeks campaigning for a living wage. If I were in an area of urban blight, I’d probably be pushing for affordable housing. I’d be campaigning against payday lenders, which have some of the most extraordinary interest rates that they charge to poor people because those poor people don’t have access to credit. I’d be working with community credit unions to try to keep foreclosed people in their homes —  and that’s been done in places like Boston and several other cities. As a consumer, I’d be thinking carefully about where I park my dollars.

 

JJ: In your book, you talk about the failure of poverty today in terms of the “weakening of collective institutions” and say that this has to do with democracy. What do you mean by that?

SA: If you completely corrode the notion of shared experience, then you corrode the notions of shared economic obligations. You no longer have an understanding that we pay into a tax base in order to get things like quality education or quality transport or quality housing. And if that happens, it becomes easier to delegitimize any defense in the government. Then you say … taxes are just robbery, public services are unnecessary, the social safety net is dysfunctional. You essentially skew more political access to the top, and a democracy involves everyone having political access.

 

JJ: How do you try to foster a moral response to poverty among the middle class, the upper class and the poor if each group has its own priorities?

SA: I think a lot of it is linguistic. In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson reached into this history of using empathic language, which in some ways is an ethical religious language that had been marshaled in earlier years against slavery, against women’s suffrage, against child labor. If you can work out ways to create overlap in the experience between wealthy and poor Americans, and if you can work out ways to share common stories and aspirations, you open up a lot of doors. 

Sasha Abramsky: Still fighting the war on poverty Read More »

AIPAC’s tough sanctions choice

Leave a Comment / United States /

In previous AIPAC versus White House dustups, the pro-Israel lobbying group’s strategy was to speak softly and let Congress carry the big stick.

But in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s face-off with the Obama administration over new Iran sanctions, congressional support may not be so readily available and keeping a low public profile is proving impossible.

According to congressional insiders and some of the pro-Israel lobbying group’s former senior executives, AIPAC may soon face a tough choice: Stick out the battle over sanctions and potentially face a reputation-damaging defeat, or reach out to the White House and find a way for both sides to save face.

“I don’t believe this is sustainable, the confrontational posture,” said Steve Rosen, a former AIPAC foreign policy chief known for his hawkishness on Iran.

The Obama administration has taken a firm line against the sanctions bill backed by AIPAC, warning that the legislation would harm prospects for achieving a diplomatic solution on the Iranian nuclear issue. Meanwhile, the confrontation has landed AIPAC squarely in the media spotlight and drawn pointed criticism from leading liberal commentators.

AIPAC has been stymied by a critical core of Senate Democrats who have sided with the Obama administration in the fight. While AIPAC’s bid to build a veto-busting majority has reached 59 — eight short of the needed 67 — it has stalled there in part because Democrats have more or less stopped signing on.

Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the bill’s sponsors, rounded up 15 Democrats when the bill was introduced on Dec. 19, just before Congress went on its Christmas recess. Since Congress returned this month, however, they have added just one Democrat, Michael Bennet of Colorado.

AIPAC, however, says its bid to pass sanctions is on track.

“Our top priority is stopping Iran’s nuclear program, and consequently we are very engaged in building support for the Menendez-Kirk bill which now has the bi-partisan co-sponsorship of 59 senators,” AIPAC’s spokesman, Marshall Wittman, wrote in an email to JTA. “This measure would provide our negotiators with critical leverage in their efforts to achieve a peaceful end to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”

But in a recent interview with The New Yorker, President Barack Obama appeared confident that backers of the bill would not reach a veto-proof majority.

“I don’t think a new sanctions bill will reach my desk during this period, but if it did, I would veto it and expect it to be sustained,” Obama said.

A source close to AIPAC said the stall in support for the legislation is due in part to the fact that of 10 committee chairmen opposed to the bill, four are Jewish and have histories of closeness to the pro-Israel community.

Non-Jewish lawmakers tend to take their cues on Israel-related issues from their Jewish colleagues — a common template with lawmakers from other communities — and this is no different, the source said.

AIPAC’s efforts have spurred surprisingly blunt criticism from sources that are more known for caution on such matters. The new director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, Rabbi Jack Moline, earlier this month in an interview accused AIPAC activists of using “strong-arm” tactics on uncommitted senators.

Douglas Bloomfield, who served as AIPAC’s legislative director in the 1980s and is now frequently critical of the group, warned that with most Democrats inclined to back Obama on this issue, the confrontational posture taken by AIPAC could wound its reputation down the road.

“There could be repercussions across the board with a lot of members of Congress the next time they say they want them to go to the barricades,” he said.

AIPAC already is taking some high-profile hits on TV, with liberal commentators accusing the lobby of trying to scuttle a diplomatic settlement with Iran.

“The senators from the great state of Israel are against it,” comedian Jon Stewart said last week on “The Daily Show,” accompanied by a graphic of a map of Israel emblazoned with the AIPAC logo. MSNBC host Chris Hayes said the 16 Democratic senators backing the sanctions bill are “afraid” of AIPAC.

Rosen said that such exposure, while irritating to AIPAC, would not be a factor in getting the lobby to shift course. More serious would be calls from donors to the group who have ties to Democrats. AIPAC’s reputation as having bipartisan support — a critical element of its influence — could be put at risk.

“AIPAC puts a premium on bipartisan consensus and maintaining communication with the White House,” said Rosen, who was fired by AIPAC in 2005 after being investigated in a government leak probe, though the resulting charges were dismissed and he later sued AIPAC unsuccessfully for damages.

Rosen noted AIPAC’s forthcoming policy conference in March; such conferences routinely feature a top administration official — the president or vice president, the secretary of state or defense. At least one of these failing to appear “would be devastating to AIPAC’s image of bipartisanship,” he said.

A way out for the group would be to quietly negotiate a compromise behind the scenes with the White House, Rosen said.

“They don’t want to be seen as backing down,” he said of his former employer, “but the White House is good at helping people backing down without seeming to back down.”

AIPAC’s tough sanctions choice Read More »

The Kosher Bacon Donut

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News, Opinion, Rob Eshman /

Harry Ben-Zvi, the founder and owner of something called The Glazed Donut Bistro, had a problem.  He opened a new donut shop, and as a strongly-identified Jew, he wanted to post a mezuzah, the ritual amulet marking the entrance to a  Jewish home or business, on his door.

The problem was … well, I should let him explain, in an email he sent me a couple of weeks ago.

And yes, that really is a glazed donut bacon sandwich:

Being a proud yet fairly secular Jewish man opening up an artisan donut shop, I found myself facing a religious dilemma.

I wanted to hang a big, beautiful Mezuzah on the front door so everyone would know who owned this great looking shop.

Earning some extra points with the man upstairs couldn't hurt the new venture either.

Problem being, the donut shop is not Kosher…not even close.

Could I still have my Mezuzah? Yes

Should I still have my Mezuzah? On the front door?

As the Maimonides has long since passed to answer this most monumental of questions, I asked my old Rabbi.

The big hearted orthodox Rabbi asked about the shop being open on the Sabbath.

I replied; “This location, these rents, not much choice”

The Rabbi understood.

Ever the faithful solider, the Rabbi moved on to the menu.

“Are the donuts kosher?” asked the Rabbi.

I said no.

“You know, making donuts kosher is easy” the Rabbi followed up .

I smiled and told him; “Not these donuts”.

“What do you mean” asked the Rabbi.

I pointed to a picture of our Maple Bacon Glazed Donut and explained

(I didn't have the heart to mention our Glazed Pulled Pork Donut Sliders).

“So Rabbi, what's the call? Can I put up my Mezuzah on the front door?”

The Rabbi contemplated and thoughtfully replied:

The mitzvah of hanging a Mezuzah on the front door would be nullified the moment a  Jewish patron unwittingly eats treif.

The compromise; Forgo the Mezuzah on the front door and hang a Mezuzah on the office door.

So what is a Jew to do?

It's a free country and I could hang my Mezuzah on the front door…or I could split the baby (or in this case, the donut) in half and temper my Jewish pride with some Judaic humility.

The Mezuzah will go up on my office door, and I will sell maple bacon glazed donuts and pulled pork sliders on the Sabbath.

As I am a G-d fearing man, I hope the big guy upstairs understands.

The Kosher Bacon Donut Read More »

UNESCO postpones Israeli-Jewish history show

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

When UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, abruptly and indefinitely postponed the Jan. 20 opening of an exhibition in Paris on the 3,500-year history of Jews in the land of Israel, Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and co-founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Los-Angeles-based NGO that co-sponsored the exhibit with UNESCO, said he hoped Jews around the world would voice their displeasure with the decision. 

“Hundreds of thousands of letters they deserve,” Hier said on Jan. 17, three days after a representative from the Arab League persuaded UNESCO to put off the exhibition with a last-minute letter of protest. “Otherwise, UNESCO has fully adopted the Arab narrative of the history of the Middle East, and if Jews around the world don’t like that, we have to let them know.” 

In the days that followed, many did just that. Jewish leaders from around the world decried UNESCO’s decision to halt the exhibit, numerous news outlets covered the story, and the United States — even though it had refused to co-sponsor the exhibit one week earlier — called the move “wrong.” And, in a statement released Jan. 21, UNESCO said it was “in discussions with the Simon Wiesenthal Center to finalize the last points and inaugurate the exhibition in the month of June.”

The origin of the exhibit goes back to October 2011, immediately following UNESCO’s decision to admit Palestine as a full member state. UNESCO then worked for two years with the Wiesenthal Center to create the show titled “People, Book, Land —The 3,500-Year Relationship of the Jewish People to the Holy Land.” UNESCO personnel had vetted each of 24 informational panels to be displayed in the exhibition, and it had convened three separate  groups of outside academic expert overseers, who forced a few key changes to the exhibition, including removing the word “Israel” from the show’s title.

The display’s materials already had arrived at UNESCO House in Paris, thousands of invitations to the opening already had been mailed, and many dignitaries and supporters of the Wiesenthal Center already had made travel arrangements when Abdulla Alneaimi, a delegate to UNESCO from the United Arab Emirates, wrote on Jan. 14 to UNESCO, urging the organization to cancel the exhibition. 

“The subject of this exhibition is highly political, though the appearance of the title seems trivial,” wrote Alneaimi, chairman of the Arab group of countries with delegates to UNESCO. “Even more serious, the defense of this theme is one of the reasons used by the opponents of peace in Israel, and the publicity that will accompany and surely follow the exhibit can only cause damage to the ongoing peace negotiations, and the constant efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry, as well as the neutrality and objectivity of UNESCO.”

Hier said he first broached the possibility of UNESCO co-sponsoring an exhibition about the millennia-long Jewish connection to Israel on Oct. 31, 2011, the same day UNESCO granted full membership to Palestine as an official state. Six months later, UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova visited Los Angeles and signed on to the idea of the exhibition. UNESCO agreed to host the exhibition; the Wiesenthal Center committed to fund the entire cost — more than $100,000 — and hired Robert S. Wistrich, a professor of European and Jewish history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, to compose the texts for the displays.  

Three other nations — Israel, Canada and Montenegro — joined as co-sponsors of the exhibit. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, invited the United States to join as an official co-sponsor as well, but in a letter on Jan. 9, 2014, a State Department staff member declined, citing the “sensitive juncture in the ongoing Middle East peace process.” 

Hier called the U.S. decision not to co-sponsor the exhibit “very problematic” and even speculated that, had the United States joined in, UNESCO might not have postponed the exhibit. 

“Had the United States come in as a partner, [UNESCO] would have been frightened,” Hier said. 

In the wake of the controversy, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power called UNESCO’s decision to postpone the exhibit “wrong.”  

“UNESCO is supposed to be fostering discussion and interaction between civil society and member states,” Power told Reuters on Jan. 17, “and organizations such as the Wiesenthal Center have a right to be heard and to contribute to UNESCO’s mission.”

Hier initially called the postponement of the show tantamount to an outright cancellation, but after UNESCO said in a statement on Jan. 17 that it is “committed and actively engaged to working with Member States and partners to hold the exhibition in conditions that promote cooperation and dialogue,” Cooper declared himself willing to “go one more round to find out what it is the problems are.” 

Cooper, who met with UNESCO’s Bokova on Jan. 21, the day the Paris-based agency announced the tentative June date, said the Wiesenthal Center “will only officially react when we have it in writing.”

UNESCO has asserted that some elements of the exhibit hadn’t yet been agreed upon, including “unresolved issues relating to potentially contestable textual and visual historical points, which might be perceived by Member States as endangering the peace process.”

Cooper, who led the exhibit’s development for the Wiesenthal Center and held a press conference on Jan. 20 in Paris decrying UNESCO’s decision to postpone it, told the Journal on Jan. 20 he didn’t know what elements UNESCO was referring to. 

“We don’t have any plans to change the body of that exhibition,” Cooper said from Paris on Jan. 20. “It was already ready to be hung, which means it had been vetted by UNESCO.” 

The exhibit may eventually be mounted at UNESCO House in Paris, but it remains to be seen whether that will blunt the outrage that Jews and Jewish leaders have expressed in recent days at the decision to postpone. Cooper said the Jewish reactions he’s heard have been nearly unanimous. 

“I cannot recall, frankly, since Durban, 2001,” Cooper said, recalling the World Conference Against Racism where delegates to the United Nations likened Zionism to racism, “in which there was a kind of gut-level reaction from Jews all over the world, of different religious and political persuasions, that said, ‘You know what? We’ve just been slapped across the face.’ ”

Hier, as the head of an organization that focuses a great deal of its efforts on memorializing the Holocaust, took care to note that UNESCO will commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Paris later this month.

“They’re excellent at commemorating the Holocaust,” Hier said. “I applaud them for that, but it’s too bad that it stops at that.

“UNESCO prides itself on being a place of education, of culture, of freedom of expression,” Hier continued. “Only one idea is verboten in UNESCO: the idea that the Jews had a 3,500-year relationship with the land of Israel. 

“That? Take that idea somewhere else.”

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Name a Jewish baby on Craigslist — for $20,000

Leave a Comment / Culture /

It’s not every day that you receive an anonymous tip from a man claiming to be selling the naming rights to his newborn daughter.

On Thursday, JTA spoke with the man who claimed responsibility for a Craigslist ad offering the naming rights for his child for a minimum of $20,000.

The ad said:

We are a Jewish family that just gave birth to our 9th daughter. We would like to sell the opportunity to name our daughter to someone else. This is an excellent opportunity for someone who may not have had children, or someone looking to honor a relative etc. Or even to honor someone’s memory that was killed in the Holocuast

In an effort to establish his credibility, the man emailed JTA with a photo of a wristband from the hospital dated Jan. 22, 2014.

Regardless of whether you’re prepared to pay, if you have a name suggestion for the little lady, email babyname@jta.org. We just might publish our favorites in a follow-up blog post.

Here is JTA’s interview with the mystery dad:

I have seen some strange Jewish things on Craigslist before, but this is right up there with the strangest. Is this real?

It is totally real. This is my ninth daughter; we’re out of names basically. We needed the money, and I asked my wife if we could do it. I thought she would turn it down, but she said we could try it.

How did you come up with this idea?

About four or five years ago, I remember hearing in the news that someone else did the same thing. We’re a little rushed; we’d like to name the baby on Saturday. We tried to post it to eBay, but it was a little more complicated than we thought, so we posted it on Craigslist.

When was your baby born?

Yesterday afternoon.

I guess I should have opened with a “mazel tov.”

Thank you.

Does she have any brothers?

Yes, a boy. He was born last year.

What do you do professionally?

I’m a schoolteacher in Lakewood.

What made you wait until now to try this as opposed to, say, daughter No. 7 or No. 8?

We’re out of relatives to name after. For each one, we chose another relative. We thought it might be a nice thing; there might be an elderly person who passed away or someone without any children. Whoever would do this, we would consider them like family.

You mean you plan to stay in touch with the winning bidder afterwards?

We’d stay in touch with her, invite her to the bat mitzvah, wedding, say Kaddish for them after 120 years.

What would you do if you raised the minimum bid of $20,000 you’re asking for?

I would use the funds to support my child.

What’s the most expensive part of raising a child in Lakewood?

Definitely [yeshiva] tuition. And rent.

Aside from your wife, who else knows about this?

I didn’t tell a soul; I’m a little embarrassed

Then why did you choose to reach out to a news agency?

I know you guys do press releases. I’m hoping to get some press releases, maybe somebody out in Florida has someone they’d like to name for.

Aside from this, what’s the most interesting idea you’ve come up with?

I can’t think of a single example. My wife usually nixes everything. I come up with zany ideas from time to time.

Are you secretly pulling for a particular name choice by a sponsor?

We used up all the favorites already. We’re open to all ideas, something unique.

You mention in the ad that you don’t want certain names.

Right — nothing crazy, like “Box.” Preferably something biblical.

What about “Mooshy”? That’s biblical.

I think “Mooshy” would be out. We’re Sephardic, so I’m not sure we would do “Chaya Shprintze” either. But maybe for the right price. (Laughs)

If this doesn’t come through, what would be your next option to fundraise for the new addition in the family?

The truth is I’m not really relying on this. But I’m not really sure. I’m totally dependent on God and I know that He won’t abandon me.

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Conference explores potential for day schools

Leave a Comment / California /

Last weekend’s Ravsak/Pardes Jewish Day School Leadership Conference, “Moving the Needle: Galvanizing Change in Our Day Schools,” focused on ways to transform day schools at a time when external factors such as the economy and demography have negatively affected enrollment. 

Hebrew College President Rabbi Daniel Lehmann, one of three keynote speakers during the Jan. 19-21 event at the Westin Los Angeles Airport Hotel, stressed that day schools are uniquely positioned in communal life to build future Jewish leaders. 

“Jewish day schools are perhaps the only Jewish institution in North America in which the value of general human knowledge and the growth and development of human beings … is so closely linked with Jewish learning and community,” said Lehmann, whose school is located in Massachusetts. 

During a two-hour discussion that kicked off a conference attended by more than 500 board members, educators, administrators, Federation professionals and others, Lehmann explored the needs of the 21st century student. He said that schools must aim to value five qualities — creativity, hybridity, particularity, spirituality and ethical audacity — but that these values must be coupled with an educator’s emphasis on Judaism’s most sacred text.

“Torah, and a community that values creativity and nurtures a strong sense of student advocacy, encouraging learners to take the risk of being creative, will appeal to our generation,” he said.

Showing an appreciation of his forbearers, Lehmann drew on words of leading Jewish thinkers, including civil rights icon Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel; Rabbi David Ellenson, chancellor of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion; the late Rabbi David Hartman, founder of the Shalom Hartman Institute; and former British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

Heschel’s “Israel: Echo of Eternity,” which calls for the “concept of spirituality as an education focus in our schools,” helped form the basis for one of Lehmann’s suggestions: that day schools ought to have a national summit on spirituality. Spirituality is a way, he said, to engage those families surveyed in the recent Pew Research Center’s report, “Portrait of Jewish Americans,” who said that it is a belief in God, not observance, that turns them on.

In other suggestions, he said schools should operate a collaborative Web site and that their Israel programs should go beyond “twinning,” which entails an American school partnering with an Israeli school for learning opportunities.

 “We have to push the envelope to develop hybrid institutions with Israeli institutions … [with] common Web sites, blogs and collaborative communities of learning that will fully integrate our students and Israeli peers,” he said. “That is going to excite our students and parents. And it’s a hybridity that we uniquely can milk.”

Ken Gross, Milken Community Schools’ board vice chair, was one of the many local attendees who filled the first and second floor of the airport-adjacent hotel. He attended a set of sessions titled “Board Leadership Institute,” and said the importance of the board to a day school’s function should not be underestimated.

“I believe we are partnering with other people and together we are, in our small way, creating a better world,” he said. “We’re creating future Jewish leaders, we’re creating knowledgeable Jews who can make the decision when they are adults on how they want to practice.”

One of the discussions he attended was led by executive business consultant Ann Cohen, who did not sugarcoat the extent to which day school board members face challenges. From boards’ relationships with day school staff members to board members’ communication among themselves, Cohen offered tips to the dozens in attendance.

The conference’s main organizer, Ravsak, represents, develops programs for and advocates for approximately 130 schools across North America. Its partner, Pardes, serves as an umbrella organization for progressive Reform day schools.

“This year, when we thought of how to better focus on the needs of our network of schools, we invited Pardes to join us, as a smaller organization, but where the student bodies often feel similar,” said Idana Goldberg, associate director of Ravsak.

Attendees represented day schools from a wide spectrum of denominations.

The event featured more than 75 sessions over three days. Discussion tracts included “Small Schools and a Sustainable Future,” “Design Thinking and Adaptive Leadership,” “Tefillah: New Paradigms,” “Effective Technology, Effective Education,” “New Paradigms for Israel Education” and “Special Needs and the Diverse Classroom.”

For Rabbi Andy Feig, school rabbi at Sinai Akiba Academy, diversity was important. He said that a session focused on LGBT inclusion in schools was one of the highlights for him. 

Other local day schoold represented included New Community Jewish High School (NCJHS) and Wise School (formerly known as Stephen S. Wise Temple Elementary School). One of the event’s presenters, NCJHS head of school Bruce Powell, led a talk titled “Head of School Support and Evaluation: How Do Our Jewish Values Inform This Critical Board Role?” 

Sometimes, conferences like these produce inspiration in unexpected places, he told the Journal.

“I would say 50 percent of the work at a conference like this goes on in the hallways, goes on in-between the sessions,” Powell said. “It’s the bringing together of ideas.”

On Jan. 19, outside the ballroom where Cohen spoke, vendor booths lined a hallway in the hotel lobby. Offerings were aplenty, from samples of custom-made kippot imprinted with school logos on them to famous children’s books translated into Hebrew. 

“That’s Jewish ingenuity,” said Leon Janks, Milken board chairman (and also a board member for TRIBE Media Corp., parent of the Jewish Journal) while at the booth for Klipped Kippahs. 

Janks was talking about the bobby pins sewn into the kippahs’ seams, but, with attendees bustling around him, he could have easily been referring to Ravsak and Pardes’ accomplishment: bringing hundreds of educators  together under one tent.

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Habonim Dror’s path to engagement

Leave a Comment / Judaism /

The Pew Research Center’s study on American Jews, released in early October, triggered much handwringing about the finding that 20 percent — referred to as “Jews of no religion” — see themselves as Jewish because of culture or ancestry, not because of any connection to the religion. 

On the heels of that survey comes another about alumni of Habonim Dror North America (HDNA) that suggests such labels may not tell the whole story. Titled “Building Progressive Zionist Activists: The Long-term Impact of Habonim Dror,” the survey was carried out by Steven M. Cohen, a sociologist at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and Steven Fink, senior methodologist and analyst at Avar Consulting in Rockville, Md. The HDNA survey makes the case that HDNA alumni — many of whom self-identify as nonreligious Jews — are often involved in Jewish organizations, in many cases taking leadership roles, and that they’re also ardent supporters of Israel, boasting a very high rate of aliyah (immigration to Israel). 

Habonim and Dror, both founded many decades ago, are Jewish youth organizations that merged in the early 1980s. The resulting group, HDNA, manages children’s summer camps at seven North American sites as well as community activities all year in locations throughout the United States and Canada. It also runs a workshop program in which young adults spend a year in Israel. 

HDNA is proudly dedicated to Zionism, progressive causes in the United States and dovish policies in Israel. Its Web site avoids mention of denomination and makes it clear that HDNA’s aim is to create leaders dedicated to social justice, equality and peace. 

The December Cohen-Fink study, which was commissioned long before the Pew study results became public, analyzed answers provided by nearly 2,000 “Habos” (HDNA alumni) and compared the results to a 2011 study of New York-area Jews, carving out a segment of the earlier survey that “loosely resemble[s] the Habos.” The HDNA survey answers were compared to those of New York-area Jews born in the United States who were not ultra-Orthodox or Modern Orthodox and who, as youths, attended an overnight Jewish camp. The wording of a number of questions on the two surveys was intentionally replicated as well. 

According to the report, HDNA alums scored about the same as the New York comparison group when it came to synagogue affiliation: 48 to 50 percent. But regarding Jewish engagement, the survey indicates that Habos “outscore the N.Y. comparison group.” When asked if they belong to a “Jewish organization (not a synagogue or JCC),” Habos answered positively 51 percent of the time, compared to 29 percent for the New York group. Similarly, 63 percent of Habos said they participate regularly in a Shabbat meal, compared to 40 percent for the other group, and 39 percent of Habos said they regularly light Shabbat candles, compared to 24 percent. 

The Cohen-Fink study provides many comments by Habos attesting to how and why attending a Habonim Dror camp led to a Jewish identity that’s active and engaged but not necessarily in an affiliated sense. Some, for example, reported that when they were teens, they drifted away from Judaism as a religion but that Habonim Dror camp gave them a chance to experience being Jewish in a different — yet still “positive” — way.

“The Habonim experience informs many of the things I’ve done in my life, whether it was to get involved in the struggle for Soviet Jewry when I was in high school and college, or whether it’s the kind of issues I take on as a public official,” said L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who attended Habonim for eight years, from the age of 10 through high school, mostly at Camp Gilboa in Southern California.

“Habonim is more than a youth group,” Yaroslavsky told the Journal. “It has an agenda: leadership, social justice and Zionism. They’re all about teaching kids self-reliance, debating issues, to question things as they are, to advocate and do things to promote human rights and obviously to promote and defend those values in Israel, as part of Zionism. It’s produced a lot of leaders here in the U.S., and it’s produced a lot of leaders in Israel, a lot of Americans who were part of Habonim and moved to Israel and settled there.”

One of the most striking results of the Cohen-Fink study is the high percentage of Habos who have settled in Israel. Of the 2,000 Habonim Dror alums surveyed, nearly one-quarter of them have made aliyah. Half of those subsequently came back to North America, but half remain in Israel.

Zak Greenwald, a 25-year-old who, as a 10-year-old in 1999, started going to Camp Gilboa, has continued to be a part of HDNA, in one capacity or another. At present,
Greenwald lives in a “communa” in Haifa with other HDNA alumni. 

“Habonim was the central element to my decision to make aliyah,” Greenwald told the Journal. “This was done through questioning many aspects of life in the Diaspora with my good friends from Habonim. We all made aliyah together.”

Habonim and Dror both were founded in the early years of the 20th century, at the same time that kibbutzim were being formed in Israel, and much of HDNA was shaped by the can-do, we’re-all-in-it-together kibbutz model. 

Helen Katz, who identifies herself as an activist, grew up in Los Angeles and still lives here. She was a camper and madrich (counselor) at Habonim during the 1950s and was also deeply influenced by the kibbutz-like nature of the camp. 

“It was a camp held together with spit and string, so if anything broke, we had to deal with it,” Katz said. “We all felt we were really making a contribution, and that was the way we should function in life: taking action rather than being passive and letting everything be done for us. It wasn’t analyzed, it wasn’t expressed in words, it wasn’t prescriptive. It was just done. 

“It was a community of kids that were taken seriously, and we worked together to make the camp work. It’s what made many of us become activists.”

Elizabeth Bar-El, a Habonim camper during the late 1970s, is now a senior planner for the city of Santa Monica and board president of Camp Gilboa. When asked what have been Habonim’s lifelong effects on her, she laughed: “Let’s see … besides kind of everything?”

Like so many other Habos, Bar-El made aliyah and lived in Israel for seven years, coming back to the United States in 1992. 

“You make aliyah and you think, OK, we’re going to raise our kids in Israel, that’s the plan, but then you don’t, you come back, so we put our kids into Habonim Dror instead,” Bar-El said. “And it’s had a huge effect on them.” 

Bar-El said those who attend Habonim usually develop a “very positive” relationship to their Jewishness: For the unaffiliated campers, the camp often becomes their Jewish identity. The Cohen-Fink study buttresses the point that “unaffiliated” does not necessarily mean less Jewish or less Zionist.

Referring to the concerns raised by the Pew study, Dalit Shlapobersky, HDNA Camp Gilboa executive director, told the Journal that many unaffiliated children who attend HDNA camps clearly go on to make “an impact in their Jewish community and are ardent supporters of Israel.”

She added, “It would be interesting for folks to know that ‘Jews of no religion’ are among our most engaged Jewish community members.”

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