fbpx

GET HOME DELIVERY! CLICK HERE »

ADVERTISE
pick up locations
HOME DELIVERY
donate

Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

March 16, 2016

New and improved Jewish camps for our gilded age

Leave a Comment / Camp, Culture /

At the oldest Jewish summer camp in New England, you can hike, swim, sail — and now fly through the air with the greatest of ease.

The Camp Modin trapeze center, “the first of its kind in North America,” is a “revolutionary design” with a “state-of-the-art inflatable landing pad,” according to the camp’s website.

The center is just part of a $350,000 expansion the camp completed last year, which also added a 10,000-square-foot, multipurpose outdoor sports arena. The upgrades are the latest in the $12 million or so Modin has spent on new infrastructure over the past two decades, according to Howard Salzberg, who owns and directs the 95-year-old camp in Belgrade, Maine, with his wife, Lisa Wulkan.

“I don’t like to say ‘facilities’ — it’s really about opportunities,” Salzberg said. “Kids want opportunities and parents want to know that you’re reinvesting in your camp.”

Its unique trapeze aside, Modin is not an exception: Jewish summer camps across the country are soaring to new heights, outlaying huge sums for upgraded amenities, specialty programming and even big-name talent. The “luxification” of Jewish camps is not so much a trend as an accepted necessity that cuts across regions and movements.

The trapeze center is one of the new features at Camp Modin in Belgrade, Maine. Photo courtesy of Camp Modin

“The market has changed,” said Len Robinson, CEO of NJY Camps, which serves 6,000 kids each summer in seven camps at two Pennsylvania sites. “Today’s family doesn’t look at camp the same way they did even 10 years ago. What was luxury is now below par.”

At many camps, “sports” doesn’t just mean kickball and soccer — it’s rock climbing, weight training and figure skating. In addition to archery and arts and crafts, electives now include culinary arts, ocean exploration and even robotics and high-tech entrepreneurship.

Climate-controlled cabins are common; private baths have replaced shower houses; security, from cameras to armed guards, is a given. And whereas excursions used to mean backpacks and canoe paddles, campers now sometimes need passports.

“Any quality Jewish camp has to pay attention to improving its physical plant and its program constantly — otherwise, you fall behind,” said Jordan Dale, who has served three decades as executive director of Surprise Lake Camp, a nonprofit camp in Cold Spring, N.Y., that opened in 1902 as a summer escape for Lower East Side tenement kids.

Surprise Lake has “rebuilt or renovated virtually every building on the site” during his tenure, said Dale, adding a $1 million gymnasium and, in time for this summer, a $1 million pool.

“We work very hard to let people who have a historic impression of Surprise Lake understand that it’s light years ahead of where it was when they or their parents went to camp,” he said.

The board of directors has already approved another $240,000 worth of improvements to be completed over the next two years.

Irv Bader, owner-director of Camp Seneca Lake, the upscale Modern Orthodox camp in Honesdale, Pa., he founded 42 years ago, said it’s always been his policy to upgrade every year, whether that means new bunks or basketball courts.

“Everybody knows,” he said, “and they always ask, ‘What are you doing this year?’ ”

Jeremy Fingerman, CEO of the Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC), which provides guidance and grants to more than 150 nonprofit camps in the U.S. and Canada, said families are looking for excellence in three areas: facilities, programming and professional leadership.

“Those camps that are investing in those [areas] are going to continue to win in the marketplace. There’s a lot of momentum in this field right now,” he said.

The momentum has been transformative — Modin’s Salzberg admitted people are surprised to learn his upscale oasis was the inspiration for the rowdy, ramshackle camp depicted in the 2001 cult film “Wet Hot American Summer.”

“That is an absolutely true depiction of many summer camps in the ’80s, especially Jewish ones. Modin was the dumpiest camp in the world, and I loved every minute of it,” said Salzberg, who took over as director in 1991. “But the days of the frumpy, falling-apart camps were coming to an end. We knew that if we didn’t improve the quality, we would not survive.”

Rather than shrink and die, the Jewish camps diversified and found their niche.

“Camps realize they’re not competing with each other because each is very different, and we encourage them to accentuate those differences,” Fingerman said.

Perhaps the most notable development, he said, is the rise in specialty programming. FJC’s Specialty Camp Incubator has helped launch nine new camps since 2010. Two more will open this summer: Ramah Northern California, with a focus on oceanography, performing arts and adventure sports, plus a Los Angeles branch of the popular URJ 6 Points Sports Academy in Greensboro, N.C.

Longstanding institutions have also seized the specialty trend. NJY Camps launched its Total Specialty programming with some recognizable names: Israeli legend Shlomo Glickstein teaches tennis; former major leaguer Ron Blomberg heads the baseball program; Herb Brown, once coach of the NBA’s Detroit Pistons, runs the basketball camp; Olympic gold medalist Lenny Krayzelburg handles swimming.

Robinson also runs science programs in partnership with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, recruited world-class artists from Israel’s Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design to oversee the art program and is investing $100,000 to revamp the kitchens this year for a new culinary institute led by “Kosher by Design” cookbook author Susie Fishbein.

Even overnights away from camp have become something more special, and some push the idea of an excursion to the max. Last year, the 10th-graders at Seneca Lake went to California and Hawaii. 

“The kids got to see a Bruno Mars concert [in California], which was great,” Bader said. He hopes to renew another popular past trip — to China and Thailand.

Some camps are starting to see long-developing strategic plans bear fruit. For example, in Santa Rosa, Calif., URJ Camp Newman is in the latter stages of a $30 million overhaul that has replaced a majority of the housing and added additional conference and reception space, as well as a new health center. The final phase calls for a multipurpose dining hall and performing arts center.

The enhancements, according to executive director Ruben Arquilevich, were “essential”— not just to satisfy camp parents, “who basically said, ‘You need to upgrade your facilities or we’re not sending our kids,’ ” but to bolster the camp’s mission to provide an immersive Jewish experience for as much of the community as possible. (Off-summer retreats currently serve some 4,000 to 5,000 people; the goal is to reach 13,000 annually.)

In Georgia, Ramah Darom is in the midst of a capital campaign that will eventually add a new media arts studio, expanded trails and a black-box theater, as well as the leasing of adjacent agricultural fields as part of a vision to become a farm-to-table camp. Wisconsin’s Camp Herzl just capped off its own $8 million fundraising drive that, among many other improvements, will make the entire facility accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

All of the sprucing up comes at a price for parents: Modin starts at $11,900 for a full seven-week session, with extra options available; Seneca Lake charges $10,175. Nonprofits are only marginally less expensive for campers paying full fees: Six weeks at health-and-wellness-focused Camp Zeke in Lakewood, Pa., runs $7,900, about the same cost for eight weeks at Surprise Lake, which awards more than $1 million in scholarships each year.

Of course, it isn’t just about the facilities; a camp is only as good as the quality of its staff and the cohesiveness of its experience. As Bader said, “It still boils down to the chemistry inside the bunk.”

Yet every director interviewed was more concerned about upgrading the bunks rather than filling them. For-profits and nonprofits alike say they are always looking at the next capital improvement. Salzberg, for example, anticipates reinvesting at least $500,000 every year, whether it’s for new sailboats, an upgraded infirmary or any of a thousand unexpected expenses, such as a recent power outage in the middle of one summer.

“Now there’s a $90,000 campus-wide generator system to make sure that the brisket is always ready on time for Shabbat,” he said. “In my day, we just had flashlights.”

“It’s like the line from Pirkei Avot,” Arquilevich said, laughing. “The work is never complete, but neither can we stop pursuing it.”

New and improved Jewish camps for our gilded age Read More »

Sex in the Talmud uncovered in different ‘Shades’

Leave a Comment / Books, Culture /

According to a pious tradition, the unmarried men in a yeshivah were asked to leave the study hall whenever the rabbi began to teach one of the passages of the Talmud that frankly address the subject of sex, an act known in talmudic usage as “the mitzvah act.” Now, thanks to a rollicking but also illuminating new book by novelist Maggie Anton, we can all find out what the bachelors were missing. 

In “Fifty Shades of Talmud: What the First Rabbis Had to Say About You-Know-What” (Banot Press), Anton draws on her own deep knowledge of Jewish history and writing, as well as her sly sense of humor, to open our eyes to “texts that sound more like they belong in a locker room than in a seminary.” The irony that suffuses her book is spoken aloud: “[A]ccording to the Torah … a Jewish man is both obligated to have sex, under certain circumstances, and forbidden to have sex, under other circumstances,” she explains. “This means the talmudic rabbis had to use their prodigious intellects to determine those precise circumstances — how, when, where, with whom?”

Of course, this is hardly the first time that Anton has pushed the envelope on matters of gender in Jewish tradition. She is beloved by her many readers for the award-winning novels in the “Rashi’s Daughters” trilogy and, more recently, the “Rav Hisda’s Daughter” series, both of which extract the mostly hidden female offspring of ancient Jewish sages from obscurity and bring them fully and dramatically to life on the printed page.

Anton, following the advice of Rashi to always begin a lesson with a joke, “because students will learn better when they are laughing,” opens “Fifty Shades of Talmud” with what happens to be my single favorite Jewish joke of all time. (The punchline of the joke, at least as I tell it, is: “It might lead to dancing.”) And, she explains, not without another moment of humor, that the Talmud, which began in distant antiquity, remains the foundational document of Rabbinic Judaism to this day: “Even those Jews who don’t do Judaism,” she cracks, “it’s Rabbinic Judaism they don’t do.”

True to her mission as a historical novelist, Anton offers a woman’s take on what has been a mostly male enterprise. The divine commandment to “be fruitful and multiply,” she points out, was understood by the Talmudic sages as an obligation imposed on men only. “[T]he Sages not only let the woman off the hook, but they also recommended ways for her to avoid pregnancy (some of which probably worked).” At the same time, she quotes a saying that honors the woman’s experience of sex: “Why does the Talmud call marital relations the holy deed? Because if done well, the wife cries ‘Oh God’ many times.”

She also points out that the Talmud can be almost prudish when it comes to sex. No word exists in the Talmud for “penis,” she writes, and the rabbis instead euphemistically used names of other body parts. “As you can imagine, this can lead to passages that actually denote limbs, feet, or legs sounding quite salacious.” When it comes to female genitalia, however, they confined themselves to the Hebrew phrase “Ha makom,” which literally means “that place.” Here, too, Anton is quick to point that “since Ha Makom is one of many names for God, this can lend an unholy connotation to some holiday texts.” 

Anton’s high-spirited text is ornamented with lovely line drawings by Richard Sheppard that manage to remain mostly, if not wholly, chaste while, at the same time, delivering a ribald message. And Sheppard both captures and enhances the spirit and the substance of Anton’s text: “Better stand back,” Adam tells Eve in the caption to one drawing at a moment before they have realized their nakedness, “I’m not sure how big this thing gets.”

Jonathan Kirsch, book editor of the Jewish Journal, is the author of “The Harlot by the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible.”

Sex in the Talmud uncovered in different ‘Shades’ Read More »

Ultra-Orthodox leaders dial up Western Wall rhetoric

Leave a Comment / Israel /

In the weeks since Israel’s government agreed to create a new, egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, ultra-Orthodox leaders and media have dialed up their opposition, threatening to derail what initially seemed a done deal.

Prominent rabbis and Charedi news outlets have unleashed a stream of heated rhetoric since the prime minister’s Cabinet approved the Jan. 31 compromise, a seeming blindside to the leadership of the two ultra-Orthodox parties in the ruling coalition that threatens to stall the decision.

In recent days, the political balance that paved the way for the compromise appears to be slipping.

Women of the Wall supporter Tzvi Kahn warns Charedi Jews outside the women’s section of the Western Wall on Rosh Hodesh, March 11, that they risk being part of his prayer quorum by standing too close.

Last week, members of United Torah Judaism, an Ashkenazi-affiliated party, threatened to quit the ruling coalition in part because of the proposed prayer space. And on Monday, Aryeh Deri, chairman of the Sephardic-affiliated Shas party, repeated that threat, telling Israel’s Channel 2, “We will not sit in a government that recognizes reforms — not with respect to the Western Wall, not with respect to marriage, not with respect to divorce.” A defection from either party would deprive Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of a majority in the parliament. 

Before that, a key deadline passed when Religious Services Minister David Azoulay refused to sign regulations for the establishment of the new prayer space, which were supposed to have been ratified 30 days after the deal was struck.

Throughout ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of Jerusalem, posters are calling on residents to “Come together to prepare for war,” saying the egalitarian prayer space would “increase the power of Satan.” And Shlomo Amar, the Sephardic chief rabbi of Jerusalem, who previously served as the country’s chief Sephardic rabbi, ruled that adding a mixed-gender prayer space is “no less serious than giving [the Western Wall] up for destruction.”

The heightened tension was palpable on the morning of March 11, as members of the activist group Women of the Wall gathered at the holy site for their regular Rosh Hodesh services, ringing in the Hebrew month of Adar.

One of the main proponents of the new prayer space, Women of the Wall is continuing to hold prayer services in the current women’s section of the Kotel (the Hebrew name for the Western Wall), with many women laying tefillin, donning prayer shawls and singing — all forbidden to women under strict Orthodox tradition. 

As a few dozen women chanted prayers at the early Friday morning service, Orthodox onlookers attempted to disrupt the service by hurling insults and blowing high-pitched whistles, which were quickly confiscated by police.

One protester held a white umbrella with slogans written in marker, including, “Bitterly protesting the desecration of God” and “Deceivers and destroyers get out.”

“It’s not easy to feel that feeling of holiness — we come to pray — with all this abuse,” Lesley Sachs, executive director of Women of the Wall, said in an interview in the Western Wall plaza after services concluded.

Under the proposed compromise, Sachs’ group, along with representatives from the Reform and Conservative movements, would help administrate a mixed-gender prayer space in an area adjacent to the south of the existing Western Wall plaza that is currently part of an archaeological park. The existing site would be designated for Orthodox prayer.

The prime minister’s Cabinet approved the deal by a 15-5 vote on Jan. 31, with nay votes from the ministers of the two ultra-Orthodox parties in the governing coalition.

The decision, if it takes effect, would break the religious monopoly on the Western Wall held by the Western Wall Heritage Foundation under the stewardship of Charedi Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch.

The Western Wall Heritage Foundation did not respond to an emailed request for comment. But in a March 14 letter, Rabinovitch urged Charedi Knesset members to block the compromise, writing that those pushing for the new prayer space “are seeking to tear the Wall and the people of Israel into pieces,” Haaretz reported.

Although the two Charedi parties in Netanyahu’s Cabinet objected to the plan, their dissent seemed unlikely to derail the compromise or threaten the governing coalition. So by not protesting beyond a nay vote, Shas and United Torah Judaism actually gave the plan “a silent nod of approval,” said Uri Regev, a Reform rabbi and the president of Hiddush, an Israeli religious freedom and equality organization.

Charedi politicians count on the coalition to protect their core issues, such as budget allocations and exemption from the military draft, and appeared willing to sacrifice on the Western Wall in order to focus on their larger concerns.

“They have to make noises because that’s what’s expected of them,” Regev said, adding that, until recently, most observers believed they were bluffing.

But on Feb. 11, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that non-Orthodox conversion programs could access government-funded ritual baths, or mikvot. Coming on the heels of the Western Wall compromise, the ruling was seen as a blow for Charedi religious interests, helping to foment a backlash.

Coupled with brewing divides between religious and political leadership in both parties and the mikveh issue, the Cabinet decision “generated much greater heat and conflict than the Charedi politicians assumed,” Regev said.

In addition to strongly worded editorials in Charedi newspapers, posters went up in some ultra-Orthodox areas with the headline, “Western Wall to be desecrated and destroyed.” 

The posters, with large, black-and-white blocks of text, warn, “The Reform movement intends to sink its claws into the wall of Jerusalem.”

Quoting several rabbinical authorities, they call the new prayer space “unthinkable.”

“This monster is worse than all the secular people we know, because through these actions, they bring chaos into the world and increase the power of Satan, God forbid,” the posters read, quoting Tzvi Pesach Frank, a former chief rabbi of Jerusalem.

In bold print, the posters also quote the late Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in a stark call to action: “We must come together as an un-breachable wall against our enemies who are coming to insert reforms into every area of the religion.”

 Declamatory posters, called “pashkvilim,” play a significant role in Charedi communities, which tend to be hesitant about using the Internet and television as means of mass communication.

Outside the Charedi enclaves, where colors and pictures are more acceptable on public notices, glossy, red-and-black fliers sounded a similar tone, exhorting the community to “Fight for the holiness of the Western Wall!”

A spokesperson for the Chief Rabbinate of Israel declined to comment on the posters, instead referring to a February ruling by the Chief Rabbinate Council that held the compromise was illegal because the council had not been consulted, calling on the Israeli government to halt progress on the new site. (That ruling was also printed on posters around Jerusalem.)

Sachs blamed the posters and other similar means of incitement for the increased abuse at the Rosh Hodesh service compared with previous gatherings in recent months.

“This is the reason that there should be another plaza in the south of the Kotel — so that everybody can pray according to their way,” she said, gesturing toward the women’s section where the service had just concluded.  

Shira Pruce, public relations director for Women of the Wall, vowed the group would continue to hold services in the women’s section of the Western Wall plaza until the egalitarian site opens.

For the March 11 service, group members managed to smuggle a Torah scroll into the prayer site, only the seventh time they’ve been able to do so, according to Pruce.

Rabinovitch, the rabbi in charge of Israel’s holy sites, has forbidden any visitor from bringing a Torah scroll into the vicinity of the Western Wall, effectively restricting their use to the men’s section, where many are already available to the public.

By pledging not to relent, Women of the Wall essentially poses a choice to the Orthodox leadership: Continue to tolerate the group’s presence at the current site, however begrudgingly, or allow for the establishment of a new prayer space.

Felice Gross, an Orthodox Jewish real estate executive from New York who visited the wall at the same time as the Rosh Hodesh service, said the planned mixed-gender prayer space would constitute a “desecration of the wall.” But nonetheless, she said the Women of the Wall services disrupted the brief time she had to pray there.

So, while she does not approve of the Cabinet deal, Gross conceded, “If I don’t have to hear them, it would be better.”

But many Charedi leaders see the Western Wall compromise as a slippery slope that will lead to sweeping gains for the non-Orthodox community.

In an editorial shortly after the deal was struck, the ultra-Orthodox newspaper Hamodia wrote of the Conservative and Reform movements, “They will not rest until they have dug their claws into and totally distort every facet of religious life in Israel.”

The debate over the Western Wall also carries a larger significance for those on the other side.

Regev, the religious equality advocate, called the Charedi stance “a position that says, ‘What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine as well,’ ” and fears surrendering to that view represents a disquieting step toward theocracy.

And so, a landmark compromise has now devolved instead into a bone of contention. 

Wearing a Women of the Wall baseball cap and standing outside the women’s section during Rosh Hodesh services, Oded Earon was clear about where the battle lines were drawn.

“It’s a question of whether [the Wall] belongs to the Charedis or the entire nation of Israel,” he said. “And I’m part of the nation of Israel.”

Ultra-Orthodox leaders dial up Western Wall rhetoric Read More »

Two hate crimes in Los Angeles spur strong Jewish response

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles /

Two hate crime incidents involving spray-painted, anti-Semitic graffiti occurred within the span of less than a week earlier this month — one at Adat Shalom and the other at Pacific Palisades Charter High School. 

On March 9, synagogue leaders at Adat Shalom, a West Los Angeles Conservative congregation, discovered the word “Nazi” spray-painted in two places on the synagogue’s exterior walls. 

And on March 13, the discovery of graffiti disparaging Jews as well as Blacks, Asians, Hispanics and gays at Palisades Charter High School and on adjacent city property shook up the local community to such a degree that hundreds of people responded on March 14 in protest. 

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has identified a suspect in its investigation of the first incident, although no arrest had been made as of press time, according to LAPD Det. Robyn Salazar. Meanwhile, police have arrested two teenage Palisades Charter High School students believed to be responsible for the tagging at the school and surrounding area, according to Los Angeles School Police Department (LASDP) Sgt. Cheron Bartee. LAPD declined to provide the name of either suspect.

The arrest of the teenager — whom police declined to name — followed a peaceful demonstration at the school that drew hundreds of participants, said Bartee, who is Jewish. She described Monday’s protest, which was covered in various media outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, as “300 peaceful protestors voicing their concerns about racism.”

Bartee said there is the possibility that more arrests in connection with the Palisades incident will follow. 

“[The suspect] admitted to spray-painting these racial slurs at night. And he claims there are two additional suspects outstanding,” she said. 

The vandalism, Bartee said, “had stuff against Jews, Black and Hispanic people,” as well as Asians and the LGBT community.

Matt Davidson, executive director at Kehillat Israel, a Reconstructionist synagogue located about a half-mile from the school, said the temple alerted its community about what took place at the school via a mass email with the subject line: “No tolerance for hate.” The synagogue, in response to the incident, increased its security, he said. 

“We’re just going to be extra vigilant, making sure we’re secure and safe here, like we always are,” he said. 

Kehillat Israel board of trustees member Laurie Haller was involved with an effort to clean up the spray-painted words in the Palisades, according to Davidson. 

“We sent [the email] out yesterday morning,” Davidson said. “I was hesitant at first because I didn’t want to create more [concern]. I want to make sure our congregation feels safe and secure, and I didn’t want to be alarmist, but we wanted to commend Laurie for being quick to act and make the statement that there is no tolerance for that.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), meanwhile, was notified of both incidents, according to its regional director, Amanda Susskind. She praised the response of law enforcement with regards to both incidents, and she said the ADL is planning to offer educational resources to students at Pacific Palisades in response to what took place there. 

“One of the short-term responses seems to be a rally,” Susskind said, referring to the demonstration that unfolded Monday at the school. “In the longer term, we will be providing resources for training — resources and assembly programs.”

Bartee, who has been working with LASDP for 17 years, said she is disappointed by what occurred in the Palisades and hopes it was caused not by hate but by immaturity. 

“It’s never nice to see these kinds of things. Unfortunately, with this, I think a lot of times the kids are just being immature and stupid and aren’t meaning to be this hateful. I think it’s just being stupid and immature,” the LASDP sergeant said. “I’m hoping.” 

Adat Shalom Rabbinic Intern Nolan Lebovitz, who is the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, said the incident at Adat Shalom reinforced the fact that anti-Semitism still exists, even in unexpected places.

“As a grandchild of four survivors of the Shoah, it is shocking and horrifying to see the word ‘Nazi’ painted on the walls of our beloved Adat Shalom Synagogue. At the same time, it is a reminder that hate in general, and anti-Semitism in particular, is still a reality — even in West L.A. in 2016,” Lebovitz said in an email. “I am proud to say that the Jewish People is stronger than graffiti, our Torah is more powerful than hate. I invite the entire Jewish community to join with Adat Shalom and live their Judaism proudly in defiance of such hatred.”

The graffiti at both locations has since been cleaned up. 

“We wanted to get rid of it,” Adat Shalom President Liz Bar-El said, “and move on.”

Two hate crimes in Los Angeles spur strong Jewish response Read More »

How to Make Hamantaschen Favors From Paper Plates

Leave a Comment / Culture, Home /

A Purim celebration wouldn’t be complete without hamantashen, and every celebration needs party favors. So, here’s a hamantashen-shaped party favor made from paper plates, which you can fill with candy, toys — and more hamantashen. The whole family can join in the fun of putting them together.

What you’ll need:

Paper plates
Watercolor paint, markers or crayons
Pen
Stapler
Tissue paper

1. Paint the back of the paper plate

The back of the paper plate will be visible and needs to resemble hamantashen, so we want to paint it a golden-cookie color. I used watercolor because I like how easily it covers the surface — and how quickly it dries — but you also can use colored markers or crayons.

2. Mark 3 points on the plate

Turn the plate over so the top side is facing up. With a pen, mark three points equally spaced on the rim of the plate. My paper plates, which I bought at the 99 Cents Only Store, were colored on the top side, but you can also use all-white ones.

3. Staple at the 3 points

Pinch the plate with your fingers at each of the three marked spots and then staple the edges of the plate together to form the three points, like a hamantashen. Place the staples about 2 inches from the points of the triangle. The farther you staple from the point, the smaller the opening.

4. Fill with tissue paper

Scrunch up some colorful tissue paper and place it inside the opening as the “filling” of the hamantashen. The tissue paper will also help prop up any goodies you add as your favors. Use a variety of colors for your paper plates and tissue paper for an even more festive celebration. And save a cookie for me.

Jonathan Fong is the author of “Walls That Wow,” “Flowers That Wow” and “Parties That Wow,” and host of “Style With a Smile” on YouTube. You can see more of his do-it-yourself projects at jonathanfongstyle.com.

How to Make Hamantaschen Favors From Paper Plates Read More »

Jerry Seinfeld sells 17 cars for $22M

Leave a Comment / Culture /

Jerry Seinfeld sold 17 collectible cars at auction for more than $22 million.

The Jewish comedian’s cars – 15 Porsches and two Volkswagens – brought in $22,244,500 this weekend, according to the Los Angeles Times. A 1955 Porsche 55 Spyder alone went for more than $5 million.

Seinfeld is known to be a car aficionado. In his web series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” — which featured President Barack Obama in December — he goes out to eat with a well-known comedian in a vintage car.

Gooding & Co. estimated the auction would actually bring in $10 million more than it did, Jalopnik said.

The “Seinfeld” star and co-creator showed up at the auction house to promote the sale.

Seinfeld had previously said he loved owning the cars and would have held onto them in an ideal world.

“[T]he reason I wanted to bid these cars farewell in this way is really just to see the look of excitement on the faces of the next owners who I know will be out of their minds with joy that they are going to get to experience them,” he said in February statement.

Seinfeld only failed to sell one car at the auction, a non-drivable Carrera GT concept car, one of two in the word, which didn’t reach its minimum $1.5 million minimum asking price.

Jerry Seinfeld sells 17 cars for $22M Read More »

Point: What work must be done on our college campuses?

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

Over the past few days, I have done a great deal of soul-searching, and would like to share with you some of my feelings and in a public way reintroduce myself to you. 

I will start by saying my interview with Haaretz was a mistake. Haaretz ran a headline that distorted what I was saying and enraged many readers, and the article missed the context of my comments. Combating the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has been and continues to be a priority of mine and of our Federation. We work closely with our partners on college campuses, at City Hall, in Sacramento and across our city and country to do this critical work. We have and will always support a strong and safe Israel.

My interview never intended to criticize the government of the State of Israel. Rather, I was asking that this newly public government initiative consider that our campus leaders know our campuses and our students and their challenges best.

I talk to my colleagues a great deal about “context,” and clearly “context” was missing from my interview. I rarely make our very important work about me, but the results of this interview have done exactly that. This has become about me, and clearly without context the concerns that I tried to express have become lost by many.

I took this job more than 6 1/2 years ago because I am deeply committed to Israel and the Jewish community. I believe that from my first interview, the leadership of our Federation saw that commitment and also saw that I am passionate and that I have a voice. I have loved and supported Israel and been a highly committed Jew my entire life. Permit me to tell you a little about myself so I can put my personal commitment in context.

My father died unexpectedly before my fifth birthday, and my very strong mother moved us to be closer to my grandparents. Until I graduated from high school, we lived as the only Jewish family in a rough housing project outside of Boston. My grandparents were immigrants from Russia and Hungary. They were religious, so I had an Orthodox upbringing. As you can imagine, I was not a popular kid in my neighborhood. I experienced anti-Semitism in a very real way almost every day of my adolescence, and not long after my bar mitzvah, three older kids dug a hole and buried me alive. I laid there screaming for many hours until finally someone heard me and saved my life.

My rabbi thought that I needed to find a new way to feel good about the Judaism that had become so challenging for me to express, and so I received a scholarship from the Boston Federation. I was accepted on a Jewish Agency-sponsored high school trip to Israel. On the trip, I realized that not only did the community take care of me, but the Jewish Agency softened the rules and allowed me to participate even though I was a year younger than the required age.

My first trip to Israel changed my life. For the entire summer, I felt free as a Jew, and for the first time in my life I felt like I was home. One morning, four of the hundreds of kids from around the world were chosen to have breakfast with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. I had never felt chosen before and was overwhelmed by being selected. As we were leaving our breakfast, I felt an arm pulling me away from the group. It was him. He looked at me and said, “Take care of Israel for me.”

Several years later, I was a college student at Syracuse University. I, like many of my friends, was focusing on everything but Judaism. I tried Hillel but just couldn’t connect. As a film student, I learned about a nearly completed documentary, “The Palestinian,” produced and narrated by actress Vanessa Redgrave. It was 1978 and I felt like I needed to do something, so I started a group called Israel on Campus. With a dozen students, we began an organization that set up student-led picketing of the film on campuses across the country.

There are many who believe this was the first pro-Israel advocacy effort on college campuses.

In 1984, I found a way to combine my media experience and my love for Israel and became the head of the Jewish Television Network (JTN) and JTN Productions. I created hundreds of hours of television and web content seen by millions of Jews and non-Jews around the world. During the summer of the Second Intifada, I lived in Israel, spending weeks with families whose lives were shattered by suicide bombings, and produced a powerful documentary, “No Safe Place.” I also produced the PBS series “The Jewish Americans” and the film “Worse Than War,” which put an exclamation mark on “never again” by documenting genocide in our time.

Six years ago when I began here at Federation, I made combatting BDS both a local and a national priority. I am proud of my leadership role in the creation of the Israel Action Network, a national grass-roots initiative. I’m equally proud of the work my staff is doing locally, especially at UCLA after the incident last spring, engaging and empowering the students on that campus to be leaders.

So now that you know me and my “context” a little better, you understand how this work is deeply personal to me.

I have found it very challenging to be a Jewish leader and have a voice during this increasingly polarizing time. I understand the issues now surrounding my recent Haaretz interview and take full responsibility for the concerns it has raised.

I know that both those who have commended me and those who have challenged me share a deep love for and commitment to Israel and the Jewish people.

For me, the last paragraph was what I truly want us to grapple with. It relates to an ongoing conversation I am having with my 22-year-old daughter, a recent college graduate. She, like me, loves Israel, but she does not feel considered or heard, and worse, she, like thousands of her contemporaries, feels alienated.

We need to take a step back and look at the whole campus picture as we do our anti-BDS work. There have been great successes on college campuses led by highly impactful organizations even as the battles rage on. What will we accomplish if we don’t prioritize our young people and their individual and collective Jewish journeys? Can’t the growing number of organizations doing this work sit together and look at how we can consider those young people as we do this work in a more collaborative, strategic way?

I never intended to criticize any advocacy organization or minimize the challenges posed by the incendiary BDS movement. I believe we can bring our young people closer to us and to Israel if we do a better job of listening to them and considering engaging their Jewish journeys with Israel as a key component, but not the only component. We can bring them closer to us and truly ensure Israel and our Jewish community’s future.

I continue to be committed to this work. Thank you for your understanding and continued support. 

Jay Sanderson is president and CEO of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

Point: What work must be done on our college campuses? Read More »

For Angelenos considering aliyah, there’s a fair for that

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles /

Alan Greenstadt, a 69-year-old former CEO with experience in aerospace, defense and telecommunications, has been thinking about making aliyah for three or four years now.

He has concerns — like how to find work in Israel that he really enjoys — but resolving such worries wasn’t what he found most helpful about the March 13 Spring Aliyah Fair put on by aliyah organization Nefesh B’Nefesh at the InterContinental Los Angeles in Century City.

“[The fair] has been helpful to me not because I’m getting answers to questions I already had, but because I’m getting questions I didn’t know I had,” he said after a session titled “Building Your Career in Israel.” “Part of this process is learning what you don’t know.”

The fair attracted about 250 young adults, parents with children, middle-aged Jews and retirees. Some wanted to learn more about the realities of life in Israel; others already were planning the move and wanted to get a head start on finding a moving company, submitting resumes and a host of other to-do items. 

Inside an entire wing of the hotel’s main floor, there were seminars on job hunting in Israel, government benefits, higher education, the Israeli military and health care. More than a dozen companies and groups offered insurance advice, shipping and logistics needs, financial consulting and more.

“It’s been a great day. I’ve got many brochures and a lot of notes, a lot of contacts,” said Baruch Howard, who retired four years ago as a general contractor and now lives in Long Beach with his wife. They are hoping to start anew in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Talpiot by the end of the year. 

In the “Building Your Career in Israel” session with Israeli job-search expert Rachel Berger, Howard asked about the demand for handymen and learned that he may want to form a corporation in order to limit his personal liability.

Berger, who helps find jobs for immigrants, walked through several examples of people with unique sets of circumstances who were looking for work. She said one person, for instance, who is a real estate analyst had to go to an ulpan to learn Hebrew before he could work. Another woman, Berger said, found a job in social media relatively quickly because she spoke Hebrew and English.

“It was a position that she did not believe she had the ability to gain … but because she had the skills of [being fluently] bilingual, and she could also write in English, it worked to her advantage,” Berger said. “So start learning Hebrew!”

The 60 or so people sitting in on that session, most of them middle-aged and seniors, asked very specific questions about their own situations. One woman said she was offered a job but was alarmed by the difference in gross (pre-tax) and net (after-tax) income. A man was curious about Israel’s mandatory retirement age of 67. Berger explained that thaecutoff applies only to government employees and public education employees.

As the session ran past its scheduled end time due to so many people peppering Berger with questions, one woman exclaimed, “It just seems that there are two Israels: the one that you guys handle and then the one that exists.”

“There are 50 Israels!” Berger said. “There aren’t two Israels; there are 50 Israels. It depends where you get a job.”

A spokesman for Nefesh B’Nefesh said that last year the group brought about 3,800 olim (people who make aliyah) from North America, and it anticipates similar figures for this year.

Robin Silver, a freelance writer who lives in Orange County, said she’s considered aliyah on and off for years and that she’s in the middle of the aliyah process with Nefesh B’Nefesh. Two of her children are already in Israel — one lives in Jerusalem and the other is in the army. Silver said she would want to live in Ra’anana, a heavily Anglo city north of Tel Aviv. 

She said the information she got at the fair on shipping things to Israel was particularly useful and joked that the event was surprisingly orderly.

“It’s been very organized, actually, which is very impressive for Israel.”

For Angelenos considering aliyah, there’s a fair for that Read More »

Counterpoint: What work must be done on our college campuses?

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

Jay Sanderson, president and chief executive officer of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, fears Israel’s government is “stoking the flames” with heavy-handed counterattacks against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses. Judy Maltz wrote in Haaretz, as “it is unusual” for Jewish Federation officials to criticize Israel’s government publicly, Sanderson knew his comments might “get me in trouble.”

I’m fine with Sanderson criticizing Israel; it will survive. He’s right that fighting the boycott demands subtlety — although he shouldn’t blame Israel for all those kaffiyeh-clad, terrorist-enabling, sanctimonious Israel-bashers demonizing the democratic Jewish state. And I reject Sanderson’s other claims, that, “In my generation, Israel may have been the first driver of Jewish identity. … But it’s not going to be anymore in the same way. Israel’s too complicated.” Sanderson’s data are incorrect, his ideology misguided and his solutions wrongheaded. As today’s greatest Jewish peoplehood project, Israel remains one of the Jewish world’s most exciting, inspiring phenomena, presenting a more dynamic, three-dimensional, 24/7 version of living, breathing Judaism than the pale suburban careerist ancestor worship peddled in too many American Jewish homes — and often rejected.

True, Jews often overreact to BDS, exaggerating its importance. Tens of thousands of Jewish students visit Israel via Birthright Israel annually, but 20 Jewish kids yelling about BDS terrifies us. And let’s face it, student politics is to serious governance as Cheez Whiz is to real food.  

As a result, having the government of Israel — or the Federations — fighting campus BDS risks backfiring. Students, especially thin-skinned, politically correct, striving, student-government types, resent adult intrusions. If Jewish students need help, let’s coach them quietly. Jewish students should build coalitions and lobby independently, championing academic freedom, defending their dignity and denouncing a movement that targets Israel obsessively, disproportionately, following leaders who traffic in anti-Semitic images and seek Israel’s destruction.

Here’s where Sanderson lost me. He asserts: “The vast majority of Jewish students … about 75 percent … are ‘disinterested and disconnected’ from Israel.” He fears partisan screaming about Israel alienates this “soft middle.”

His “75 percent” figure seems plucked out of thin air. It ignores the Israel Experience phenomenon, the hundreds of thousands of Jewish students who have bonded with Israel, happily.

Sanderson then builds a non-Zionist house of cards on this faulty foundation. He confuses all-Israel-advocacy-all-the-time, which often doesn’t work, with positive Israel experiences that do. And he denies Israel’s centrality in modern Jewish identity-building. Deeming Israel “too complicated,” he wants “to connect these students to Jewish life and then find a meaningful way to engage them with Israel. In other words, first feel good about your Jewish self and then learn about Israel.”

The Cohen Center at Brandeis University’s recent report, “Anti-Semitism on the College Campus,” uncovered an epidemic of campus Jew hatred, with nearly three-quarters of Jewish students experiencing some hostility last year. Yet — thank you, BDS — support for Israel increased. One-third “report feeling ‘very much’ connected to Israel. Another third report feeling ‘somewhat’ connected.” These figures reflect a 16-year trend, whereby 20-somethings connect to Israel more than 30-somethings, thanks to the Birthright bounce.

Israel experiences transform Jewish lives by fostering Identity Zionism, not Israel advocacy. The positive 24/7 Jewish communal life in Israel with “no strings attached” invites young Jews to launch their own Jewish journeys. There are no dictates regarding where to go, simply a “Welcome Home” sign encouraging the once-alienated and those who already feel at home Jewishly to explore.

During high school in Israel, backpacking there, Birthright, Masa, young non-Orthodox millennials, increasingly skeptical about God, connect with their tradition through Jewish peoplehood. They meet a dynamic Israeli Judaism they missed at home. They also appreciate encountering the real, multidimensional, often less-politicized Israel that’s invisible on their Facebook feeds.

By contrast, Sanderson’s labeling Israel as “too complicated” is doubly offensive. It internalizes our oppressors’ contempt. Israel bashers have spent decades trying to make Israel “too complicated,” making Israel all about Palestinians, making Zionism all about occupation. You can criticize Israel’s actions. And yes, some American Jews see Israel only through this Palestinian prism. But I reject it categorically as a distorted educational launch pad. I won’t give our enemies this undeserved victory.

Second, pardon my bluntness, but I smell American Jewish triumphalism’s sanctimonious perfume. Despite its strengths, one could equally call American Jewry, er, “complicated.” Intermarriage is so ubiquitous that it’s not politically correct to call it a problem anymore. The Pew study shows a Jewish identity rooted in — sorry, Hollywood friends — Borscht Belt jokes, toadying ghetto wisecracks and Holocaust angst. The institutional landscape is dotted with hulking, garishly decorated cathedrals empty Shabbat after Shabbat, filled three times a year by the overdressed, underwhelmed masses for High Holy Days that leave many feeling low, drowning in superficiality, materialism, competitiveness and spiritual emptiness. And our ignorance is vast. Despite all our advanced secular degrees, our first-grade Jewish educations make us unable to distinguish Maimonides from Nahmanides, or a dayan, a judge, from the Dayan named Moshe.

Of course, we don’t only define American Jewry by its failures, just like we shouldn’t only define Israel by its shortcomings. Our kids are lucky. They can synthesize the best of both Jewish communities, tempered by liberal Western insights.

Zionism never entailed simply state-building. It always sought to build a new Jew by renegotiating a new, invigorated relationship with our heritage, our people, our land and the world, steeped in strength, dignity and pride.

Beware: Much of this rhetoric, on all sides, risks objectifying our kids. Fellow Jews are neither cattle to herd in particular ideological directions nor tribal trophies to collect. We should engage one another as humans and Jews. And all, young and old, should be owners, not consumers, shaping our own birthrights.  

Ideally, we would all have our minds sharpened, our hearts enlarged, our souls stretched, our lives made more moral and meaningful by serious encounters with our people — both spiritually, meaning our Jewish heritage in all its multidimensionality, and practically, meaning Jewish friends, relatives, teachers, heroes, from Los Angeles to Kiryat Malachi, Israel’s City of Angels.

Paralleling Sanderson, I hope my pushback doesn’t “get me in trouble.” I thank him for triggering what we need: a robust, respectful debate about who we are, who our kids are, and where we are going. I look forward to continuing this in the spirit of our ancestors, who built a Talmud on disputations and question marks, not just exhortations and exclamation points. 

Gil Troy is professor of history at McGill University and the author of the recently published “The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s.” Other books include the award-winning “Moynihan’s Moment: America’s Fight against Zionism as Racism” and the best-selling “Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity, and the Challenges of Today.” He is the voluntary chair of the Birthright Israel education committee. All the views expressed here are his own.

Counterpoint: What work must be done on our college campuses? Read More »

Ari Emanuel’s Jewish soul

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

On Sunday night, Ari Emanuel got onstage in front of 500 Jews and did something cinematic and shocking: He turned to his brother Zeke and said, “I love you” — three times — and very nearly cried.

The emotional display was miles apart from the pervasive mythos about Ari, Hollywood’s most famous talent agent, which goes something like this:

“We all know Ari Emanuel is an a–hole,” Hollywood blogger Nikki Finke once wrote with characteristic bluntness. She was being nice.

The music mega-manager Irving Azoff once called Emanuel a “psychopath” and asked his assistant to block Emanuel from ever emailing him again. At a 2013 technology conference, a Fortune magazine editor referred to Emanuel as a “lunatic,” prompting Emanuel’s WME (now WME | IMG) partner Patrick Whitesell to chuckle and defend his “tenacity.”

In Hollywood, the adjectives used to describe Ari are endless: “ruthless,” “brash,” “hotheaded,” “aggressive” — only Tad Friend, writing in The New Yorker, saw fit to compliment the legendary agent as “savvy.”

Most of what the public believes about Emanuel was shaped by the Ari Gold character on the HBO series “Entourage,” in which Jeremy Piven plays an agent based on Emanuel. Piven’s Gold is a puerile, narcissistic industry type prone to tirades, temper tantrums and curse words.

“Most people know Ari from ‘Entourage,’ and they think that that’s Ari,” Emanuel’s longtime client, writer Aaron Sorkin, told me in 2008. “While Ari does speak fast and is in no way cowardly when he’s talking to you, he’s not a cardboard cutout. He’s not a stereotypical central casting agent. He’s massively smart and genuinely a good guy — that’s why clients don’t leave him. You’re not going to find anybody who used to be a client of Ari’s.”

But to colleagues and underlings, Emanuel is known for sending dismissive “one- or two-word only email messages,” as Finke put it. And a friend of mine who used to work for WME, the talent agency he heads, told me that young female assistants took great pains to dress stylishly for work, because if Emanuel even looked at you, it was a good day. 

But what if most of what we think we know about Emanuel is misguided? A mere shade in a multifarious self. People are often more complicated and interesting than their reputations, so what if I told you Emanuel can also be loving, sensitive, even soulful?

On Sunday night, everyone present at American Jewish World Service’s (AJWS) 30th anniversary gala witnessed a surprising twist in the Ari Emanuel mythos when he took to the podium to honor his brother Ezekiel “Zeke” Emanuel and revealed his softer side with a touching and emotional tribute.

“As I’m looking through my notes, I realize the chutzpah of AJWS,” Ari Emanuel began, “they have written a speech for me, about my brother.

“Only Jews!” he said, wryly.

The Emanuel brothers are three of the most famous Jews in America today, each one a major figure in his field. Zeke, the oldest, is chair of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania and considered one of the country’s foremost authorities on health care — he is often referred to as the architect of President Barack Obama’s landmark health care legislation. Rahm, the middle child, is mayor of Chicago and Obama’s former chief of staff. Ari is the youngest and a major figure in Hollywood. “Of the three brothers, Rahm is the most famous, Ari is the richest, and Zeke, over time, will probably be the most important,” Elisabeth Bumiller wrote in 1997 in The New York Times. (The Emanuels also have an adopted sister, Shoshana, who their father took in after she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy.) 

At Sunday’s event, Ari was playful and funny, telling Zeke that the speech AJWS prepared for him wasn’t “horrible.” “They talk about our parents; the importance of love and education; about you failing calculus and still getting into Harvard; how we [referring to himself and Rahm] had to live up to your grades…,” Ari said, adding that it was “all true.” 

But then he went off script, addressing the audience with more personal comments.

“Our father was an Israeli, he was a pediatrician, [and] our mother was an activist,” he said. “Zeke followed in both of their footsteps.” 

Patriarch Benjamin Emanuel was born in Jerusalem and later became a member of the Irgun, the militant Zionist organization that preceded the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). So it made sense when Zeke later joked that Ari left him bloodied “almost every night” as a child. Their mother, Marsha, however, was a crusading civil rights activist who taught them to care for the oppressed. 

“Our parents believed in justice and equality,” Ari said, “[that] no matter how much money you made, you treat people well and you lift people up.”

For a family so well known for its hot-blooded, Israeli-inspired toughness, Ari revealed a childhood shaped by religious values. “[Zeke] is loving; he’s forceful; he’s a thoughtful doctor; he’s a great dad and he’s a believer like my mother,” Ari said.

It became clear that Ari sees his older brother as a role model, someone who, far from the flashing lights of Hollywood, is trying to make the world better. “[When] we talk, I say, ‘Why do you do what you do?’ ” Ari said. “And [Zeke] always talks about wanting to make a difference in the world, and wanting to help people.” 

Deep down, beneath the surface bellicosity of brothers, is a deep humanity that expresses itself in love, loyalty and a sense of mission.

“As Jews, the most important thing — [which] you just heard from the president — is helping one person,” Emanuel said, referring to an earlier video address by President Obama, who spoke of the talmudic idea that to save one life is to save a world.

Toward the end of his speech, Ari took off his glasses and turned away from the teleprompter. He looked over at his brother, who was standing next to the stage.

“I wrote [Zeke] an email the other day saying how proud I was of him, because of the health care bill,” Ari said, choking up. “I know that was an emotional time for him, and my brother [Rahm], and I don’t think [health care legislation] could have happened without my brother [Zeke].

“So I love you very much,” he concluded. “That’s the only reason I’m here, because I do really, really love you. So thank you everybody for honoring my brother.”

So that’s Ari Emanuel, an agent with soul. 

Ari Emanuel’s Jewish soul Read More »