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Jewish Journal

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March 16, 2016

Merrick Garland’s Jewish family: Matzah, prayer shawls and Democratic Party politics

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Lead Story, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News, United States /

Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the sudden death last month of Justice Antonin Scalia, is a renowned jurist on the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C., Circuit, a Harvard Law graduate and a Jew.

Garland’s family fled anti-Semitism in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century and he was raised in Chicago in a Conservative Jewish community. His mother, born Shirley Horowitz, was director of volunteer services at Chicago’s Council for Jewish Elderly, according to “>Samuel Rosenman — Lynn’s grandfather — was born in 1896. Samuel Rosenman was a leading Democratic Party figure in the early 20th century and was one of America’s most prominent Jews at the time.

He fought for the U.S. Army in World War I, graduated from Columbia Law School in 1919, became a Democratic representative in the New York State Assembly in the 1920s, served as a justice for the New York Supreme Court from 1936 to 1943, and was a leading advisor and speechwriter for Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. He also edited “The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt,” an invaluable source for historians studying Roosevelt’s New Deal.

A Jewish Telegraphic Agency article from October 1933 portrayed Rosenman’s close relationship with Roosevelt, and described Rosenman as somewhat of a champion for liberal causes in the 1920s while in New York’s legislature for things like renter protection, minimum wage laws and New York’s state park system.

In March 1932, when Roosevelt was New York’s governor, he successfully appointed Rosenman to the state’s Supreme Court and described the act as “cutting off my right arm.”

“During the past three years Mr. Rosenman has been of very intimate and essential help to me personally in the conduct of the administration,” Roosevelt said. “His wide knowledge of the law is combined with a liberal social viewpoint on all problems of modern government.”

Lynn, 55, married Garland at New York’s Harvard Club on Sept. 20, 1987, according to a wedding announcement from The New York Times. She is a graduate of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and at the time worked for a defense contractor in a Virginia suburb outside Washington, D.C.

While Garland has climbed even higher on the judicial ladder than his wife’s grandfather, his odds of reaching the Supreme Court during Obama’s term appear slim. Following Scalia’s death last month at a ranch in Texas, Senate Republicans have vowed they will not hold hearings on any Obama nominee, arguing that the fate of the Supreme Court should be left up to voters in November.

Merrick Garland’s Jewish family: Matzah, prayer shawls and Democratic Party politics Read More »

Talmud after dark: Maggie Anton finds the ribald in Rashi

Leave a Comment / Books, Culture /

Like many seeds for a book, the thought of writing about rabbinic discussions of sex came from an offhand comment made by a stranger. Talmudic scholar and novelist Maggie Anton was speaking to a Hadassah chapter in New Jersey last fall. The audience was entirely women, and she decided to impart some of the funnier commandments and prohibitions related to sex that she had encountered in her studies. The women in the audience were laughing and having a good time, she said, and one stood up and suggested she write “50 Shades of Talmud.”

“In the car, on the way back to where I was staying, I thought, ‘You know, actually, I could do that,’ ” she said.

Anton is the author of the popular series “Rashi’s Daughters,” based on the great medieval talmudic scholar who had three daughters and no sons. Little is known about the girls save for their names (Yocheved, Miriam and Rachel) and that they married their father’s finest students, but it’s believed that they were scholars of Torah and Talmud at a time when women were forbidden to study the sacred texts. Anton’s trilogy imagines what their lives might have been like. 

Anton continued her research into the lives of women in Jewish history by focusing on fourth-century Babylonia, where the Talmud was being created, and the prevalence of sorcery and the occult among rabbinic families. That led to her books “Rav Hisda’s Daughter: Book 1: Apprentice” and “Enchantress: A Novel of Rav Hisda’s Daughter.”

Anton was raised in a secular, socialist household in a heavily Jewish neighborhood in North Hollywood. Her parents didn’t belong to a synagogue, but they spoke Yiddish and enrolled her in one of the kinderschule in the San Fernando Valley run by the Workmen’s Circle.

“I certainly had a Jewish education. I just did not have any kind of religious education,” she said with a laugh.

Her family celebrated Passover and Chanukah, but she never learned why. She learned about Jewish religion by reading the fictional “All-of-a-Kind Family” series of children’s books by Sydney Taylor, about an early 20th-century immigrant Jewish family living in New York’s Lower East Side. 

Those books inspired Anton’s series about Rashi’s daughters. Anton wanted “to do for Rashi’s family what Sydney Taylor had done for the immigrant family, where you’re embedded with the family, and you eat with them, and go to services with them, and you celebrate all the lifecycle events and you celebrate the holidays with them.”

Anton was a voracious reader as a child. One book that changed the direction of her life was Leon Uris’ “Exodus.” Growing up in the 1950s, she rarely heard adults discuss the Holocaust. “Exodus,” which follows Ari Ben Canaan as he helps Jewish refugees escape a British detention camp in Cyprus and arrive in Palestine, celebrated the birth of the new Jewish state and helped Anton develop a newfound pride in being Jewish.

“Reading ‘Exodus’ is when I realized that if I had lived in Europe, my whole family would be dead. That people wanted to kill me just because I was Jewish,” she said. “Being Jewish was suddenly more important to me, even though I wasn’t doing anything about it. It seems silly now, but I vowed, ‘My first son is going to be named Ari,’ after the hero in ‘Exodus.’ I actually told that to guys I was dating. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Years later, she met her husband, David Parkhurst. They married at Temple Akiba in Culver City and had a son together. And true to the vow, they named him Ari. The family moved to Glendale, and for the first time in her life, Anton didn’t live in a Jewish neighborhood.

“We realized that Jews aren’t all over the place. If we want to be part of a Jewish community, I guess we’re going to have to find a synagogue,” she said. The couple befriended Rabbi Ken Weiss and joined a chavurah he had formed. (Weiss died in 2014.) They attended a beginning Hebrew class. Her husband learned to chant Torah and served as a president of Temple Sinai of Glendale.

“I sort of got dragged along a little bit on this, and he was getting much more ahead of me in terms of Jewish education and learning. So in 1992, when I heard about a woman’s Talmud class being taught by Rachel Adler, I signed up for it, partly because I heard she was a great teacher,” she said. “Mostly I was interested because I knew women weren’t supposed to study Talmud. All you have to do is forbid something and it immediately becomes more attractive.”

Anton fell in love with Talmud. Her discovery of Rashi’s daughters and the lives of 11th-century French talmudic scholars led her to write her best-selling trilogy. She spent four years writing the first draft, and didn’t tell her husband or children that she was writing a book until it was finished. Penguin Books published the first book in 2005, which happened to mark Rashi’s 900th yahrzeit.

Talmud continues to be her passion to this day. She retired from her job as a clinical chemist at Kaiser Permanente in 2006 to write full time. “50 Shades of Talmud” is Anton’s first attempt at nonfiction. Mixed in with centuries of rabbinic teachings, Anton finds philosophical treatises, permissions and prohibitions related to marriage, intimacy and sex. Compared to her previous works of fiction, “Fifty Shades of Talmud” is far shorter — just shy of 120 pages — and filled with illustrations, pithy quotations and proverbs. It’s written in a breezy, irreverent tone, without academic jargon. In fact, the introductory section about the origins of the Talmud comes with a warning: “This section contains historical details that may cause boredom, listlessness, or lethargy.”

“My stealth goal in writing all these books is to get more women and more liberal Jews, non-Orthodox Jews, to study Talmud. I mean, Talmud has been the monopoly of Orthodox men for so long,” she said. “But now we have really good English translations. There’s no excuse why a whole lot more Jews shouldn’t be studying Talmud.”

“50 Shades of Talmud” will be released on March 24 (Purim).

Talmud after dark: Maggie Anton finds the ribald in Rashi Read More »

When choosing a sleep-away camp, ask (lots of) questions

Leave a Comment / Camp, Culture /

Sleep-away camp is a rite of passage. In Southern California, we are fortunate to have many wonderful Jewish residential camps to choose from. But how do you choose the camp that is best for your child? 

Seek recommendations from friends, for sure. In many cases, you can even tour camp facilities. During your research, it’s vital to ask the right questions, even the ones that may seem trivial or silly. 

The Journal reached out to officials at a variety of Jewish residential camps from San Diego to the Bay Area who suggested 10 important questions to ask when considering a camp, or simply when looking for reassurance about the one you’ve chosen. 

1. What activities do you offer and does my child get to choose them? 

It’s a basic question, but if you have a child who lives and breathes basketball or photography, you’ll probably want to seek out a program that offers those. And since overnight camp is all about building the independence of a child, how much freedom there is to choose is significant. 

“It’s the opportunity to explore,” said Dan Baer, director of Camp Mountain Chai in Angelus Oaks. “Camps are trending more toward an elective model where campers get to choose. Everybody has a choice built now into the schedule. But every camp’s balance is a little different. Kids love the ability to choose.”

2. What is a typical day like at camp?

Learning the specifics about the daily schedule can go a long way toward determining if a camp’s activities, program and structure are right for a particular child, said Josh Steinharter, director of JCC Maccabi Sports Camp in the Bay Area. Some camps are highly structured with little or no choice for campers, while others are based around free choice and tailored to a camper’s individual needs. This is important, he said, because some campers thrive on structure while others are more comfortable being able to do their own thing. 

3. How are the counselors trained, and where do they come from? 

The return rate of staff and the retention of campers into the staff corps are important.

“Each Jewish camp that I know of uses their counselors and their staff to impart important lessons about how to live, how to relate to a community, and how to be better Jews and people … This happens best when the staff is stable, and has grown up in this type of mission-based community,” explained Doug Lynn, director of Wilshire Boulevard Temple Camps, which runs Camp Hess Kramer and Gindling Hilltop in Malibu.

4. What is the ratio of campers to counselors in each cabin?

Some parents feel that smaller ratios of counselors living with their children is the way to go, as it provides closer supervision and can foster closer connections between campers and counselors. Others, according to Lynn, feel that a smaller ratio is stifling to campers interacting with other campers and that it leads to overbearing supervision. 

5. What kinds of financial aid are available?

It’s no secret that sleep-away camp can be expensive. One Happy Camper, a partnership between the Jewish Foundation for Camp and Jewish communities across North America, offers grants of up to $1,000 to eligible first-time Jewish sleep-away campers. Also, many camps provide significant needs-based scholarship assistance.

6. How can I learn about how my child is doing while at camp? 

It used to be that the only way for parents to find out how their child was doing at camp was through snail mail or by calling the office and requesting an update. But parents, many of who are accustomed to their child being a cell phone call away, are asking for more. 

“Camps are responding to this desire while keeping the special bubble of sleep-away camp intact,” said Josh Levine, director of Camp Alonim in Simi Valley.

As a result, many camps employ photographers whose sole job is to take hundreds of pictures, which then get posted to a website every day for parents and loved ones to see. Some camp directors send out general emails looping parents into the highlights of the day’s activities, and at least one local camp, JCA Shalom, does camper-led morning radio broadcasts that parents can listen to online.

7. How is Judaism defined at your camp and infused into the day? 

When parents are choosing a Jewish camp, they are not doing so based solely on a ropes course or art program, as amazing as those might be. That means it’s important to learn about the Jewish ethos — that secret sauce that defines a camp’s Jewishness, said Ariella Moss Peterseil, associate director of Camp Ramah in California, located in Ojai.

8. What is the level of religiosity at your camp? 

It’s key that a camp reflect a parent’s value system, and religion and level of observance may be part of that. 

“Parents may choose a camp with similar rituals and observance level as in their home for the comfort of the camper and religious priorities of the family,” said Dalit Shlapobersky, executive director of Habonim Dror-Camp Gilboa in Big Bear Lake. “Or a family might prefer for the child to experience a summer at a camp that’s more observant, so that the child develops a stronger control of rituals they might not be practicing at home. Or a family might place as a priority the intellectual, social and emotional growth the programming provides, with a lower priority given to level of observance.”

9. Is your camp accredited by the American Camp Association? 

Yes, there are many good — and beloved — camps that do not have this accreditation. But the 2,400-plus camps throughout the country that do have it have met multiple health, safety and program-quality standards, so it’s definitely a plus. 

10. What makes you different from other camps in the area? 

There are a lot of Jewish camps in the area. They have a lot of similarities, but the camps also do a pretty good job of differentiating themselves, according to Joel Charnick, director of Camp JCA Shalom in Malibu. 

“The best way of ensuring a good match is to ask the camps. They should be able to articulate that pretty well,” he said. “In Southern California, we all know each other very well. We have a very friendly relationship. … So I think we are well equipped to talk about each other and each other’s camps. I still think parents should do their due diligence and call each of the camps they are interested in.”

MORE QUESTIONS:

  • How’s the food? Can you accommodate my picky eater and her allergies? 
  • What happens if my son is homesick, gets sick or bullied, or hurts himself? 
  • What is your camp’s Shabbat experience like? 
  • How do I prepare my child for a first time away from home? 
  • How much time will my child get to spend with siblings and friends in different age groups?

When choosing a sleep-away camp, ask (lots of) questions Read More »

Staff at new Karsh Center will reach out to community

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles /

What would you do if you were a volunteer at a social service center and one of the clients, unable to walk and without his or her own car, asked for a ride home? 

The question was one of many posed to the approximately 150 attendees at a volunteer orientation on March 13 for the new, 7,500-square-foot Karsh Family Social Service Center at Wilshire Boulevard Temple (WBT), a facility opening onto Sixth Street that is part of the expansion of the synagogue’s Koreatown campus. 

The gathering was to prepare prospective volunteers for the April 4 “soft opening” of the Karsh Family Social Service Center, according to Liz Ross, director of the new Karsh Center at WBT.

“You’re not all here this morning for the bagels and lox. You’re here because you want to help,” she said, addressing a group assembled in the historic Reform temple’s Stalford Hall. 

The Karsh Center will provide free or low-cost dental, vision and mental health care, legal and literary assistance and bereavement counseling to the primarily non-Jewish, diverse community in the surrounding Koreatown area and to anyone in need. It represents a joint effort of philanthropic donors, a small Karsh Center staff, volunteers drawn from the temple’s membership and organizational community partners who can help provide professional services.

“I have been spending the last six-plus years, seven years, really envisioning this and taking it from an idea to a reality, so, the fact that the room is full today with 150 volunteers, prospective volunteers, the fact that the facility is built, there is paint on the walls, dental chairs in the dental clinic, I have to pinch myself sometimes,” WBT Rabbi Beaumont Shapiro, who is overseeing the services center alongside Ross, said in an interview Sunday. 

The center’s opening, along with the completion of the parking structure in which the center is housed, marks the realization of the second of WBT’s three-phase restoration and expansion of its Koreatown campus. The second phase also encompassed the renovation of two schools, the Erika J. Glazer Early Childhood Center and Brawerman Elementary School East. 

The first phase was the restoration, completed in 2013, of the temple’s historic Byzantine-Revival sanctuary on Wilshire Boulevard, and the third phase will be the construction of a 55,000-square-foot events complex.

As previously reported, the three-part project is projected to cost the temple more than $160 million. The cost of the Karsh Center was not immediately available.

The official opening of the Karsh Center will take place in the fall, Ross said, adding that the website for the center launches April 1.

The center houses three state-of-the-art dental chairs, an eye-exam room and eyeglasses dispensary, office space for attorneys, a waiting area, multipurpose room, administrative offices and an expanded WBT food pantry. The congregation had for years operated a food pantry out of a garage of the temple.

When Ross asked volunteers how they might respond to a client in need asking for a ride home, congregant Hedy Vanderfluit, drawing on her volunteer experience with the food pantry, said she would turn down the request. 

“I say, ‘no,’ ” she said. “It’s my boundary.”

That answer, according to Ross, was the correct one. The work of the volunteers will be vital toward ensuring the success of the center, but the center will be successful if, and only if, the type of care offered is consistent and professional.

“It’s about being a credible organization,” Ross said.

To that end, 11 social service organizations are partnering with WBT to offer services at the new center, among them the legal services agency Bet Tzedek, Our House — a bereavement support group — and the Korean Health, Education, Information and Research (KHEIR) Center. 

Ross said attracting organizations and volunteers with experience working with diverse populations is important: 52 percent of the Koreatown’s population is Latino; 25 percent is Caucasian; 18 percent is Asian; and 5 percent is African-American.

“Language is an issue, and cultural competency is an issue,” she said in an interview at her office, which is housed at the center.

Shapiro said he expects there to be 1,000 volunteer opportunities every year at the center. Some volunteers, such as Vanderfluit, who has worked as an English as a Second Language (ESL) teaching assistant for more than 20 years, are hoping to help immigrants preparing to take U.S. citizenship exams. 

More than 100 Wilshire Boulevard Temple congregants turned out last weekend for a Karsh Family Social Service Center volunteer orientation. 

Vanderfluit said her volunteering is an expression of her Judaism. 

“[I’m here] to follow what I’m taught through my studies of Torah,” she said in an interview Sunday at WBT. “We all need to serve each other.” 

Others who turned out for the orientation included Maggie Wunsch-Scott, a member of WBT for nearly 25 years.

“God’s not primarily my thing … [so] something like this lets me live my Jewishness,” Wunsch-Scott said.

Rabbi Shapiro, whose role at WBT focuses on social action and interfaith work, said the center is part of WBT’s mission to engage congregants who want to connect with Judaism and their congregation outside religious services. 

“We want to give back; we want to engage in social justice and service work because it makes us feel good, and we want to feel like we are doing something to help mend brokenness we see in our world, and that’s wonderful. But as Jews, it goes so much deeper than that, because as Jews it’s not just about doing it because it makes us feel good — as Jews it’s an obligation we have. 

“It may not be the liturgy of a prayer service that draws us into Jewish life; it may not be Kol Nidre that draws us into Jewish life; it may not be Torah study that draws us into Jewish life, but the opportunity to be of service and to participate in social service work in a Jewish context is just as valid a way to embrace Jewish life,” Shapiro said. “It is an opportunity to bring less affiliated, for lack of better word, Jews into Jewish life and into the synagogue.” 

Staff at new Karsh Center will reach out to community Read More »

Anat Hoffman, local rabbis discuss impact of Western Wall compromise

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles /

At the request of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an Israeli government commission convened to consider how to be inclusive of more forms of Judaism at Jerusalem’s Western Wall — the Kotel — which has long been the domain of the Orthodox. The commission’s report represented, for many, a victory in the decades-long struggle for pluralism, as it recommends the creation of a new, egalitarian prayer plaza adjacent to the current Orthodox one. 

The issue of what pluralism at the Kotel means was the focus of “Separate, but Equal?” a panel event held March 9 at Temple Beth Am, featuring four rabbis from different denominations as well as Anat Hoffman, co-founder of Women of the Wall and executive director of the Reform Movement’s Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), and Israel Consul General David Siegel. It was the first in a new “Crucial Conversations” series, designed by the Jewish Journal to bring together the community for vital discussions addressing contemporary Jewish life and concerns. 

Jewish Journal Executive Editor Susan Freudenheim moderated the event, dedicating the conversation to the memory of Taylor Force, an American graduate student stabbed to death in Tel Aviv that week. 

Offering welcome remarks, Siegel noted that “compromises are never easy, never not messy, never perfect,” but urged Hoffman and the assembled to understand that “we are one people.” He charged the audience to “always be involved in what’s happening in Israel,” and to “never give up.”

“Our vision for the future is a big tent,” Siegel said, to make Israel a place “where every Jew feels at home.”

Hoffman, for many the main draw of the event for her frontline engagement on this issue over the decades, attributed progress on the issue in large part to American Jews. 

“You were willing to stand up and fight … in support of finding a solution for this problem,” Hoffman said. “There must be more than one way to be Jewish in Israel. Zionism is not a spectator sport. You are willing to roll up your sleeves and do something about it.” 

Lauding the decision as “a great achievement,” Hoffman admitted that implementation will be challenging. As an example, she reported two seemingly conflicting remarks by Netanyahu — that he was completely committed to the report and was also giving the rabbis three weeks to identify their reservations. “I can save Netanyahu the three weeks,” Hoffman said. “The words ‘gender equality,’ ‘pluralism’ and ‘egalitarianism’ — that’s the objection.”

Rabbi Daniel Bouskila, director of the Sephardic Educational Center, visits Israel regularly, but admitted that he rarely goes to the Kotel, because “every time I go,” he said, “there’s always some kind of argument or division taking place.” He also challenged Hoffman, saying that the egalitarian area means that “you essentially were relegated to a corner, and told that’s where you can go. … I don’t understand how that’s a victory.” 

Bouskila shared a story about his hero, Sephardic chief rabbi, Rabbi Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel, who had gone to the Kotel to pray on the occasion of his inauguration. “There was no minyan,” Bouskila said. “He was not wearing a tallit, there were women walking right by him and there was no barrier, because that was what the Kotel always was. The Kotel HaMa’aravi (the Western Wall) was never a synagogue,” Bouskila said. “The Kotel should not be a place that reflects denominational divisions,” he said.

Rabbi Pini Dunner, senior rabbi of Young Israel of North Beverly Hills, shared his disappointing Kotel experiences and his realization that the Temple Mount — topped by the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock — is no longer the center of Jewish life. “I don’t think I’m ever going to go to the Kotel again. The Kotel is not the holiest site of Judaism,” he said. “It’s a symbol of our shame and disgrace.” 

“To me, this argument about who can daven where and how is like a divorced couple arguing over teacups,” Dunner said. “I just don’t get it. We should all be getting together and every single day, sit at the Kotel and sing kinot (songs mourning the destruction of Jerusalem). Because despite the fact of how fantastic it is that we have the Kotel and Jerusalem and the State of Israel, we’re not there yet, Mashiach hasn’t come. Let’s not treat it as a tourist site or a synagogue when it is a symbol of the fact that the geulah shleimah (full redemption) is not yet here.”

“There is more than one way to be a Jew,” said Rabbi Laura Geller of Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, “That’s ultimately what this conversation is about and what the struggle of the last 27 years is about.” 

“The Kotel should belong to all Jews,” Geller said. “It’s like the National Mall, but on steroids. No one has the right to tell me that my voice doesn’t belong there. Women ought not to be invisible.” 

Geller admitted that the agreement “is a compromise and no one is happy. We gave up so much. That’s the point. It’s not perfect but it is incredibly important. The level of recognition for non-Orthodox denominations is the story and we need to recognize that.”

Rabbi Adam Kligfeld of Temple Beth Am admitted that in rabbinical school, he didn’t feel the imperative to fight for equality at the Kotel. However, during his year in Israel, a Shavuot experience at the back of the Kotel plaza made clear to him that “I couldn’t be on the outside. … Even if I wouldn’t have claimed this place to wage this particular battle, my Jews were under attack, and I had to be with them.” 

Hoffman noted that the progress was because of American Jews representing “the most effective and large coalition in the history of the State of Israel about an issue of pluralism,” and she urged the crowd to stay involved. 

“If a quarter million Jews wrote the prime minister of Israel, ‘This is important to us, this is a beautiful, new idea, we’d like to have a choice’ — if we all said that loud enough, it will happen,” said Hoffman in her closing remarks. “I really believe it. So, may the best plaza win.”

After the event, audience member Sarah Gorney, 27, who works at Hulu and discovered the event on Facebook, took issue with comments by some of the rabbis that the Kotel doesn’t matter. 

“The fact is, it does matter. It’s an important symbol to many, it’s represented so much more and it’s from a place of privilege that you can minimize it,” she said, referring to the fact that men have had decades of greater access to the Kotel and could therefore more easily dismiss it. 

“As someone without equal right to the Kotel, what I see every time I’m there is the divider, of the men yelling at women and the homogenous population, because I’m a woman,” she said. 

The event was co-sponsored by the Journal and the panelists’ organizations and synagogues: the Israel Religious Action Center, the Israeli Consulate, Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, the Sephardic Educational Center, Young Israel of North Beverly Hills and Temple Beth Am. 

Anat Hoffman, local rabbis discuss impact of Western Wall compromise Read More »

Poem: The casting of lots

Leave a Comment / Culture, Poetry /

Dear Ahasuerus, it is eleven-thirty am and my number is one hundred and eighty-six. I feel the lack of communion striving for a higher purpose in this government assistance office, and it is beyond sadness and feet and the distance of aircraft and tires and inner-tubes on turgid rivers in midsummer with aluminum cans of beer. It’s not just the ones who pick discarded numbers from the floor and say they missed their turn. The flower-selling prepubescent children sniffing glue in paper bags outside the margins of the magazine I’m reading remind me of the laundry I hung up that must be dry by now, filled as they are with warmth and wings and snapping.

This office is a fine line. The wind from the open window rustles the pages of my magazine, pumps the lungs of paper bags, lifts the plastic shopping sacks discarded in the fields, fills the vacant sheets.

When God withdraws, we all must breathe a little harder.

Reprinted with permission, from  Black Lawrence Press.

Marcela Sulak, author of  “Decency” and “Immigrant,” has translated four collections of poetry from Israel, Habsburg Bohemia and Congo-Zaire, and co-edited “Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Literary Genres.” She directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University.

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Why I still hate the Iran deal

Leave a Comment / David Suissa, Mobile, Opinion /

The divisive debate over the Iran nuclear deal, which consumed so much of our energy last year, feels like a distant memory, but my feelings haven’t changed — I still hate the deal. For starters, all I’ve seen to date is an Iranian regime growing more evil and repressive than ever.

One of the big questions surrounding the deal was whether it would empower the evil forces inside Iran, or the moderate forces. So far, it looks like a rout for evil.

In a recent piece on Bloomberg.com titled “Obama’s Plan to Aid Moderates Failed Spectacularly,” Eli Lake outlined how, beginning in January, the regime’s Guardian Council began purging “any candidates who espoused the slightest deviation from the country’s septuagenarian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.”

In a follow-up piece titled “Iran’s Elections Are Magic,” Lake challenged the perception that the reformists beat the hardliners by showing how “thanks to the magic of Iranian politics, many of yesterday’s hardliners are today’s reformists.”

One of the many examples he cited was Kazem Jalali, “one of those hardliners whom President Obama had hoped to marginalize with the Iran nuclear deal” and who “called for sentencing to death the two leaders of the Green Movement.” Well, just like magic, Jalali ran on the list of “reformists.”

On the terror front, it doesn’t look like the invitation into the family of nations has encouraged the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism to moderate its ways.

“The Iranian regime through the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is building a complex terror infrastructure, including sleeper cells that are stockpiling arms, intelligence and operatives, and are ready to act on order, including in Europe and America,” Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said during a recent visit to Cyprus.

Meanwhile, flush with billions in sanctions relief and emboldened by its newfound legitimacy, Iran has been flaunting its ballistic missiles, a move U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power called “provocative and destabilizing.”

Provocative and destabilizing, perhaps, but perfectly legal. According to Emily Landau, senior research fellow at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies, “There’s nothing [in the deal] with regard to ballistic missiles, because the P5+1 conceded on that point as soon as the negotiations began.”

Also, according to Defense News, there’s nothing in U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231 from July 2015 that “expressly proscribes development and testing of the nuclear-capable missiles Tehran launched to much fanfare over two days last week.”

Legal or not, the launching of Iranian missiles encrypted with the phrase “Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth” serves as a sober reminder of who we’re dealing with.

For Iran’s military leadership, the annihilation of Israel is not just a slogan, it’s religion.

It’s always tempting to dismiss such threats as empty bluster from anti-Semitic bullies, but for Iran’s military leadership, the annihilation of Israel is not just a slogan, it’s religion.

Mehdi Khalaji, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and one of the leading scholars in this area, writes that militant messianism and apocalyptic ideas “have a strong following within [Iran’s] Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps” (IRGC) and that an influential group within the IRGC has “responsibility over Iran’s nuclear program.”

Even on the issue of monitoring compliance, we’re starting to smell trouble. ABC News reported that Russia and the West “are now divided on how well the U.N. atomic agency is reporting on whether Tehran is meeting its commitments. Western nations want more details, while Moscow opposes their push.”

According to Olli Heinonen, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) former deputy director, the IAEA’s first report “does not list inventories of nuclear materials and equipment or the status of key sites and facilities. Without detailed reporting, the international community cannot be sure that Iran is upholding its commitments under the nuclear deal.”

Of course, none of this is shocking. Even proponents of the deal acknowledged that the deal was “far from ideal,” but was certainly better than the alternative of going to war.

What none of us knew at the time was that the Pentagon had developed a cyber attack plan that, according to a Feb. 15 New York Times report, “was intended to assure President Barack Obama that he had alternatives to war.” The plan was Stuxnet on steroids: “Crippling Iran’s air defenses, communications systems and key parts of its electrical power grids.”

In other words, the U.S. had a whole new way to pressure the Iranians, short of war, that would have increased its leverage to get a better deal. Tragically, it never used it.

In any event, for the immediate future, we’re stuck with the mediocre deal we’ve got. I hope my pessimism is misplaced and the deal will lead to Iran never getting a nuclear weapon. I hope we’ll catch Iran if and when it cheats. I hope Iran is bluffing about annihilating Israel. I hope the deal buys us precious time to help us figure out how to contain a predatory and evil regime.

But from what I’ve seen so far, I’m not giving evil the benefit of the doubt, and I’m not getting my hopes up too high.

David Suissa is president of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal and can be reached at davids@jewishjournal.com.

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Trump warns of riots, pulls plug on Republican presidential debate

Leave a Comment / Election 2016, United States /

Republican front-runner Donald Trump warned on Wednesday of riots if he is denied the party's presidential nomination and pulled the plug on a scheduled debate among candidates, raising the temperature even more in a heated White House race.

The outspoken New York businessman scored big wins in primaries in Florida, Illinois and North Carolina on Tuesday, bringing him closer to the 1,237 convention delegates he needs to win the nomination.

Trump also claimed victory in Missouri but lost the crucial state of Ohio, and left the door open for those in the party trying to stop him from becoming the Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 election.

Trump might fall short of the majority of delegates required, enabling the party's establishment to put forward another name at the July convention in Cleveland to formally pick its candidate.

In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Trump said the party could not deny him the nomination should he fail to win enough delegates.

“I don't think you can say that we don't get it automatically. I think you'd have riots. I think you'd have riots. I'm representing many, many millions of people.”

While the Republicans were mired deeper in turmoil, Hillary Clinton won victories in at least four states on Tuesday that put her in good shape to defeat U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and win the Democratic Party's nomination.

Republican Party leaders are appalled at Trump's incendiary rhetoric and reject policies such as his vow to deport 11 million illegal immigrants, temporarily ban Muslims from the United States and build a wall along the Mexican border.

The party tried to play down his riot comments, only days after Trump supporters and protesters clashed at a rally for the Republican in Chicago that was later scrapped.

“First of all, I assume he is speaking figuratively. If we go into a convention, whoever gets 1,237 delegates becomes the nominee. It's plain and simple,” Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer told CNN.

Recent outbreaks of violence during protests at Trump rallies have prompted President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and mainstream Republican figures to speak out against the billionaire.

A North Carolina sheriff's office looked into charging Trump or his campaign with “inciting a riot” at a rally in the state last week where a protester was punched, but decided not to proceed.

'VERY GOOD BRAIN”

In comments likely to raise more concern in the Republican establishment about Trump's lack of experience and temperament, the former reality TV show host said he was for the most part his own foreign affairs adviser.

“I'm speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain,” he told MSNBC's “Morning Joe” show. “I know what I'm doing. … My primary consultant is myself.”

Trump's closest national challenger is first-term U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who prides himself in being a grassroots conservative often at odds with Republican leaders.

He too warned of severe reactions against an attempt to stage a so-called brokered convention or contested convention to install a Republican candidate supported by party leaders.

“I think that would be an absolute disaster. I think the people would quite rightly revolt,” Cruz told CNN.

A brokered convention is a complicated process of sequential votes that opens the way for horse trading.

The Republican establishment's bid to stop Trump may have come too late as the field of candidates has dwindled to only three, with Trump, 69, in command ahead of Cruz, 45, and Ohio Governor John Kasich, 63, who won his state's Republican primary on Tuesday.

Growing in confidence, Trump pulled out of a Republican debate scheduled for Monday in Utah, saying it clashed with a speech he plan to give to a pro-Israel group. Debate hosts Fox News then canceled the event.

Senator Marco Rubio quit the White House race after defeat in his home state of Florida, leaving former investment banker Kasich as the last moderate Republican presidential candidate standing.

Trump now needs to win about 55 percent of the roughly 1,100 delegates still up for grabs in state-by-state nominating contests to guarantee the nomination. It is not an insurmountable challenge.

Republican strategist Ron Bonjean said it might be tough for the party to block Trump at the convention.

“A contested convention would be justified if Trump only had around 35 or 40 percent of the delegates locked up. However, if he is very close to getting the majority of delegates, it would be politically difficult for the establishment to try stop him by backroom wheeling and dealing without risking a serious backlash from voters,” said Bonjean. The strategist is not affiliated with any of the candidates.

Given the panic amid party leaders at the likelihood of a Trump nomination, some Republicans have urged U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan to step in.

But Ryan, the country's top elected Republicans and a self-described budget wonk, will not accept a nomination to be a presidential candidate, said his spokeswoman, AshLee Strong.

Party figures are divided about whether to throw their weight behind Trump despite his downsides or to go on trying to halt him. Florida Governor Rick Scott endorsed Trump on Wednesday but another influential Southern governor, South Carolina's Nikki Haley, declared her support for Cruz, the state's Post and Courier newspaper said.

The election season is likely to become more politicized after Obama nominated judge Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court, setting up a showdown with Senate Republicans who have vowed to block any Obama nominee.

On the Democratic side, wins on Tuesday for former Secretary of State Clinton, 68, gave her an almost insurmountable edge over Sanders, 74.

Seeking to become the United States' first woman president, Clinton needs to win only around a third of the Democratic delegates remaining to become her party's nominee.

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Camp Ramah adds ‘bridge year’ for 11th-graders eyeing staff spots

Leave a Comment / Camp, Culture /

Camp Ramah in Ojai, part of the Conservative movement’s group of Ramah camps across North America, will begin offering a program for rising 11th-graders this summer for the first time in its 60-year history. 

The program will be similar to the 11th-grade programs already available at the movement’s eight other overnight camps in the United States and Canada. The Southern California camp is the last of the group to add such a program.

Campers in the Machon program, as it will be known, will lead Maccabiah (color war), take a one-week trip outside of camp, and shadow staff counselors to get an idea of what the job entails should they choose to return as staff members once they graduate from high school. 

“It will be the best of both worlds. It’ll give these older campers their capstone Ramah experience while giving them a taste of what their future could be like when they are on staff by giving them significant and real leadership responsibilities around camp,” Rabbi Joe Menashe, executive director of Camp Ramah in California, said. “That’s new for our camp, and that, more so than the age component, is an even greater impact of the transition from camper to staff.”

The addition of the program is meant to act as a “bridge year,” according to Ariella Moss Peterseil, the camp’s associate director. It will involve an emphasis on self-reflection to improve participants’ skills as leaders and role models. 

The 10th-grade program for rising sophomores was renamed Kochavim (stars) and revamped with a “new cultural identity … and some new programming, including new small-group experiential tiyulim (trips),” Menashe said.

Previously, the Ojai camp had programs for high school students going into their freshman and sophomore years. After that, many teens participated in Ramah’s Israel Seminar, a six-week program in the Jewish state, but they were a year younger than their peers coming from other Ramah camps. That will no longer be the case. 

“This will guarantee a home for every camper at Ramah through their high school years, a similar trajectory with their fellow Ramah campers from across North America, and a staff that is one year older, more mature, and who have had a glimpse of leadership and what it means to be on staff at Ramah in their final camper year,” Peterseil said.

It’s unclear why the 11th-grade program has never been part of the camp at Ojai, which opened in 1956, according to Menashe, who is in his sixth year as executive director. However, one factor that precipitated the change had to do with the fact that the camp, in years past, could not accommodate the large number of rising high school seniors who wanted to return as staff. By adding an 11th-grade program, staff would come from teens about to enter college, and the number of applicants would be expected to fall naturally, Menashe said.

A 2012 vote by the board of directors of Camp Ramah in California allowed Peterseil to spearhead the initiative to add the new edah (age group) after extensive research, including a recommendation from consultants Lauren Applebaum and Nina Lieberman Giladi of American Jewish University, who have backgrounds in Jewish education and nonprofit business management. 

“Ramah needed a more seamless transition from camper to staff that better prepared the emerging adults for their roles, enabled more of our community to remain part of our system for longer, and to provide a camper experience that better honored adolescent sophistication and capabilities,” Menashe said. “There was no single issue that sparked the evaluation, but a clear sense from Ramah leadership that we needed to better understand the situation so that we could make a significant change.” 

The camper cost for the 11th-grade program will be $4,645. Financial aid is available.

Camp Ramah in California is running a capital campaign for an estimated $2.5 million to accommodate the new living area associated with about 80 new campers per 11th-grade session. Menashe said the camp has reached 70 percent of its fundraising goal. 

The camp, which hosts about 1,300 campers over the course of the summer, sits on 100 acres. Revised housing plans currently are in development. 

“The addition of the new Machon will accomplish our goals to retain as many high school students as possible through 12th grade,” said Ellen Brown, a Camp Ramah in California board member and co-chairwoman of the committee to create the new edah. “Studies have indicated that Jewish summer camping provides children and teens a positive, long-term Jewish identity, and in the end, in the midst of all the fun and learning, that is our ultimate goal.”

For those like Noa Getzug, 16, a nine-time camper from de Toledo High School, the change has created an air of excitement.

“Another year at camp means that I get to spend another month with my closest friends, exploring who I am as a person, furthering my Jewish identity and taking advantage of all the experiences camp has to offer,” she said. 

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God and politics in reissue of Yoram Hazony’s ‘Esther’

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Books, Holidays /

The year was 2002, the height of the Second Intifada, which saw hundreds of Israelis die in terror attacks. In search of meaningful Purim reading, businessman Seth Siegel picked up Yoram Hazony’s “The Dawn: Political Teachings of the Book of Esther.” He had read it before, after receiving it as a gift sent to alumni of the Wexner Heritage Program for Jewish lay leaders, but at the time it had made little impact.

“It was like I never read it before,” Siegel told the Journal. “The second time reading it, some years later, at a different political time, I couldn’t put it down.”

In the book, Hazony, an eminent Jewish philosopher and theologian, deconstructs this gripping tale of sex, violence and political intrigue, in which God is not explicitly mentioned, to demonstrate how its happy Jewish ending is the result of brave human, individual action — and not of the mix of hidden divine intervention and coincidence often read into the story. It wasn’t just her good fortune or good looks, for example, that prompted King Ahasuerus to choose Esther as queen. She had studied the inner workings of the Persian court through her politically savvy cousin, Mordecai. Ahasuerus’ insomnia, which prompted him to see Mordecai’s political value, was not a coincidence, but the direct result of Esther’s brilliant maneuvering to ignite the king’s mistrust of his Hitler-like vizier, Haman.

The message of “The Dawn,” as it was originally titled, inspired Siegel to become actively involved in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and eventually to write his own book with the goal of affecting policy. Siegel is currently on tour for his best-selling “Let Their Be Water: Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World.”

“The very essence of the story is that one can remain neutral, and you can keep yourself from having to make moral compromises, but if you want to do something, then you’ll have to step into the political system,” Siegel said.

He’s given out dozens of copies of Hazony’s book to friends and colleagues, including a United States congressman, who later told him the book convinced him not to retire from politics.

While the book is ranked as a classic among prominent Jewish leaders, it has long sat on bookshelves in homes, schools and yeshivas in relative obscurity. Now it’s getting a second chance to achieve popular acclaim thanks to Cambridge University Press, which just released a revised and expanded edition on the occasion of the book’s 20th anniversary, under a new title: “God and Politics in Esther.” Cambridge took it under its wing in the wake of the success of its other Hazony title, “Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture,” a groundbreaking work that spells out the philosophic approach and relevance of Tanakh and which got noticed by Morgan Freeman’s production company, who approached Hazony to be interviewed for Freeman’s National Geographic docuseries “The Story of God,” premiering on April 3. 

“God and Politics in Esther” started as the brainchild of Rabbi Jay Marcus, founder of Yeshivat Reishit, which was then in Jerusalem. Marcus had a vision of bringing the works of “new stars” in Torah to the public through his new publishing venture, Genesis Jerusalem Press. The ideas of the book grew out of Hazony’s personal hevruta (Talmudic study) sessions with colleague Joshua Weinstein, in which he sought to demystify this unique canonical story.

“I didn’t understand what Purim was about,” Hazony told the Jewish Journal via Skype from Jerusalem, where he serves as president of the Herzl Institute, a research institute he founded to encourage renewed study of the Bible, philosophy, politics and Zionism. “Most Jewish holidays are a powerful vehicle for moral and spiritual instruction. All I could see in Purim was costumes, drinking and noise. What was the profound change that Purim is supposed to work in our souls?”

He finished the book in 1993 while on reserve duty on the peak of biblical Mount Ebal in Samaria, between sleeping and guarding a military communications installation. It was there that he hit upon the theology of the Book of Esther: In taking action, humans can partner with God to create what seems to be the miraculous.

“[The Book of Esther] is a call for people to step forward and do things that they don’t know if they can do in order to fix a broken world,” Hazony said.

Rabbi Nathan Laufer, currently director of Israel Programs for the Tikvah Fund, kick-started its word-of-mouth advertising in 1995 when, as head of the Wexner Heritage Program, he ordered 800 copies to distribute to alumni.

“Teasing out the political lessons of the book was not something I’ve seen systematically done,” Laufer said in an interview. Among the lessons he learned was that “power attracts power, and you have to try to go into the public sphere and make a case.” This idea, among others, influenced Laufer’s own book on the Passover haggadah.

Hazony didn’t imagine his Esther commentary would achieve such a personal impact on others, let alone a cult following. 

“It’s really like we did 20 years of preparatory publicity work in order to pave the way for the launch of the book, which is actually happening now for the first time,” Hazony said.

Hazony’s publicist, Suzanne Balaban, shared some of the international “fan mail” Hazony received throughout the book’s pre-Cambridge years, such as from Rabbi Isak Asiel, the rabbi of Belgrade, Serbia, who asked for permission to publish the book under his own Serbo-Croatian translation. 

A teacher at Berkeley taught the book at his political seminars, where “it was received with rapt attention.” A surgeon in Johannesburg wrote: “Purim is my favorite chag — largely because of the messages of ‘The Dawn.’ ” A U.S. Army veteran said “ ‘The Dawn’ had traveled with me on deployments as my pre-Purim reading.” 

Hazony received enthusiastic feedback from Christians as well, such as from Tom Bryson, who read it with a family book club: “From start to finish, we appreciated the insights you provided on what has been for us, evangelical Christians, a fairly enigmatic book of the Bible.”

Bill Weisel is an attorney and immigrant to Israel from Los Angeles who has served as general counsel for four publicly traded Israeli high-tech companies. He has applied the book’s political teachings to law and business, writing: “With the ideas and analytical tools that you so clearly demonstrate in your book, I became more effective at certain aspects of my work. I began to teach and mentor both lawyers and business people about how to navigate each company’s unique decision-making system.”

While Hazony names Esther as the “miracle” of Purim, only one woman’s note appeared in the stack of emails. Miriam Krupka, head of the Tanach Department at the Ramaz School in New York, invited Hazony to speak to her students, saying, “My students and I have spent many a thought-provoking class discussing your perspectives, most particularly on the Book of Esther.”

But then there’s this reporter. I have written two books influenced by “God and Politics in Esther,” and back in 2011, I felt compelled to send a fan letter of my own, saying, “It is an enduring classic, and so amazingly written. Thank you for being such an inspiration.”

God and politics in reissue of Yoram Hazony’s ‘Esther’ Read More »