Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on July 6, 2017

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban delivers a speech during the 14th Plenary Assembly of the World Jewish Congress in Budapest May 5, 2013. (photo credit:LASZLO BALOGH/REUTERS)

BUDAPEST - Hungarian Jews said on Thursday Prime Minister Viktor Orban's billboard campaign against migration and foreign influence, using the image of US financier George Soros, was a proxy for antisemitism.

They urged the nationalist Orban to halt the campaign. "Please make sure this bad dream ends as soon as possible," Andras Heisler, chairman of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Federations (Mazsihisz), said in an emailed statement.

Orban's spokesman said the campaign had nothing to do with antisemitism but rather sought only to counter what he called Soros's attempts to unduly change immigration policies in Hungary.

Orban has locked horns with fellow European Union members in the west of the bloc over his opposition to immigration and liberal values and has criticized Soros a major supporter of democracy and human rights causes in increasingly sharp tones.

Orban, who faces elections next year, long proclaimed zero tolerance for antisemitism though has more recently risked angering Israel and Jews with remarks apparently meant to court far right voters.

His government has conducted a "national consultation" on issues of foreign influence and mass immigration, asking people if they were open to allowing either. Voters who responded rejected both and Orban launched a massive follow-up campaign.

The campaign focuses on Soros, 86, a Hungarian Jew who emigrated after World War Two, made a fortune in the United States and has long been heavily involved with groups promoting liberal democratic and open-border values in post-Communist eastern Europe, a cause at odds with Orban's world view.

Billboards around Hungary and full-page ads in media across the central European country depict Soros grinning contentedly against a blue background with the inscription: "Don't let George Soros have the last laugh."

Some Soros billboards have been defaced with the words "stinking Jew" in magic marker. Around 100,000 Jews live in Hungary.

IMAGERY FROM WORLD WAR TWO

"This campaign, while not openly antisemitic, clearly has the potential to ignite uncontrolled emotions, including antisemitism," the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Congregations (Mazsihisz) said in an emailed statement.

The campaign uses "imagery that evokes memories of the Nazi posters during the Second World War showing 'the laughing Jew'," Human Rights Watch campaigner Lydia Gall told Reuters. "The campaign encourages antisemitism."

Soros, who rarely addresses personal attacks against him, was not immediately available for comment through a spokesman.

Soros has called Orban's rule a "mafia regime" and has funded groups in Hungary that promote democratic transparency, human rights and a positive approach to immigration.

Orban's government fortified Hungary's southern border in 2015 against a large influx of migrants from the Middle East and Africa into the EU that year and has rejected a quota scheme agreed by EU leaders to distribute migrants among member states.

Heisler said Orban was using Soros as a scapegoat and that carried serious risks.

"Graffiti has appeared on the posters on the streets of Budapest and other cities reminding us of a dark era in Hungary's history, but the invisible social damage is probably already worse than that," Heisler wrote.

Government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said Orban met with Jewish organizations on Thursday and told them the billboard campaign was only calling attention to what he said was Soros's undue interference in Budapest's migration policies.

"The campaign has nothing to do with the heritage of George Soros or anyone else," Kovacs said.

Orban, who expects a visit from Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu later this month, said last week he expected confrontations over antisemitism.

"Let us be vigilant: our opponents use the antisemitism card. We reject that," he told an event of his Fidesz party.

"Those who charge us with antisemitism bring tens of thousands of antisemites into Europe through migration. So our migrant policies serve the interests of European Jewish communities even if they don't stand up for their own interests, and quietly tolerate the unfair attacks that Hungarians receive as they protect them too."

Share on facebook

See the original post:

Hungarian Jews ask PM Orban to end 'bad dream' of antisemitism - The Jerusalem Post

Category: Jewish Heritage Month | Comments Off on Hungarian Jews ask PM Orban to end ‘bad dream’ of antisemitism – The Jerusalem Post
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 6, 2017

Passion fuels success and, in the case of Nathan Litz, that success is Sriracha Granada, a spicy-sweet green hot sauce he created in his home kitchen. This delicious condiment is now distributed nationwide. You can find it locally in grocery stores and on the tables of many of our towns great restaurants.

Litz, 29, grew up in Clayton, became a bar mitzvah at Temple Israel and graduated from Clayton High School. While in college, he worked at several local restaurants. More than the cooking experience, these restaurants gave him insights into how to run a business.

Litz, the lead network engineer at the Advanced Technology Center at World Wide Technology, credits his mother, Tracey Elbein, for helping him cultivate an adventurous palette and an appreciation for spicy food.

She is a great cook, he said, and an even better baker.

Elbein said: From the time Nathan was 3 years old, he favored adult food over typical kid food. Hed eat cut-up raw vegetables as long as he could dip them into some type of sauce. When we ate in restaurants, I allowed him to order whatever he wanted with the understanding that he had to eat it. He soon developed a sophisticated palate.

She did most of her familys cooking over the weekends. Quite often, her son would be by her side.

Id give him measuring tools, and hed help me measure out ingredients, Elbein said. Soon he was helping mix stuff and reading recipes. Hed ask questions about what I was cooking or baking, and wed talk about what happened scientifically such as why the cake rose in the pan and talk about different spices and herbs. Hes always had a good nose for herbs and spices and an innate sense of what smelled or tasted good.

As a teenager, Litz got hooked on the original Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce, a recipe that some have attributed to a woman living in Si Racha, Thailand. A Vietnamese immigrant to California adapted that recipe, started his own business and now makes that ubiquitous sauce with the rooster on the bottle.

Litz squirted that sauce on everything. Eventually, it inspired him to create his own version. His, he decided, would be free of chemical preservatives, and artificial flavors and colors. He saw this as a challenge, and never intended it to go into commercial production.

That process began six years ago. Litz researched the original Sriracha sauce and learned everything there was to know about hot peppers. Soon, he started growing hot peppers. For perspective, he tasted every hot sauce he could get his hands on. He found some too vinegary, others with a gnawing raw pepper flavor and some that simply lacked depth.

I wanted my sauce to really taste like an amalgamation of the different ingredients rather than any single one, he said.

Litz prepared at least 20 versions of his hot sauce, experimenting primarily with green jalapeos and green Thai bird peppers. He filled his Vitamix blender with varying amounts of the unseeded peppers, garlic, vinegar, salt and sugar, processed the ingredients and sampled the result. Each batch tasted just a little different.

Once he was satisfied with the combination of flavors, Litz cooked his sauce in a large pot on the stove, poured it into mason jars, and ate it: straight, as a dip with chips, or mixed into some of his favorite foods, such as fried rice and eggs. Family and friends were eager to help out with the testing, too, and their feedback was unanimous: Bottle the stuff.

Litz took their advice. He went online, bought a 50-pack of 12 oz. plastic bottles, and cooked a huge batch of his sauce. He sold those bottles to friends and friends of friends. Over a couple of years, the size of the batches grew. He began keeping track of the numbers and recording his costs.

Before long, the pot he had been using wasnt big enough; nor was his Vitamix blender. Litz invested in an 80-quart pot and a three-quart Robot Coupe commercial food processor with a chute. The chute allowed him to grind the peppers and shoot them straight into the pot in a single process. Once all of the remaining ingredients were in the pot, he used a commercial immersion blender to blend all of the raw ingredients together. Then he cooked it.

Keep in mind that all of this was taking place in his home kitchen. I asked him how he was able to process the nearly 80 quarts of sauce he made at one time.

I dumped the whole pots worth into an Igloo cooler and let the mixture cool, he explained. The next day, I hoisted the cooler onto the counter, opened the spout, and filled bottles one at a time. I lined the bottles up on my left, and to the left of them, I lined up special caps with liners on the inside. One Igloo-full made enough sauce to fill 100 bottles.

Litz called his sauce Sriracha Granada because it was explosive and spicy. A gifted graphic designer, he went on to create a label for the bottles, similar to the one now used commercially.

Once the bottles were ready, he loaded them into milk crates and drove around town delivering Granada Sriracha to friends and family members who bought it. Along with his girlfriend, Caitlin Stayduhar, who has been in this venture from the start, they set up a booth at the Loop Ice Carnival in 2014. Passersby were encouraged to sample the sauce for free. In just 90 minutes they sold more than 100 bottles of Sriracha Granada.

That was when I realized I needed a private label/co-packer, one that could provide manufacturing scale to a little guy like me, Litz said.

He did some research and found a private label manufacturer in Chicago. He toured the plant and handed over his recipe for testing. Soon thereafter, the manufacturer mailed a sample of the sauce to Litz, along with the list of ingredients and their preparation process to make the recipe work for commercial production.

I was so excited when the sauce arrived, Litz said. It looked great and was the perfect color. Unfortunately, it tasted disgusting. It was way too garlicky!

Thus began nearly two years of sampling the sauce until it was just right. The first official production was in mid-September 2016. The initial production: 3,500 bottles (500 gallons).

Months before commercial production began, Litz realized that he would need a lot more customers than his loyal friends and family. So he began driving the sauce around St. Louis, dropping off sample bottles at restaurants that he liked. He also created a website and began marketing Sriracha Granada online.

Fast forward to today:

You can purchase the sauce at Luckys Markets, more than 30 area Shop & Save stores, Larder and Cupboard in Maplewood, Parkers Table, Local Harvest, Wine and Cheese Place in Clayton and Creve Coeur, and Edibles and Essentials on Hampton. You can also order the sauce online from Litzs website, srirachagranada.com.

In addition to the restaurants that carry his sauce, he and Stayduhar have booths at the Tower Grove and Edwardsville farmers markets once a month. There also are collaborations with Vincent Van Doughnut for a breakfast sandwich, multiple sandwiches with Hi-Pointe Drive-in, daily specials with Sugarfire Smoke House, and the Jamaican Jerk Chicken sandwich at the Gramophone in the Grove neighborhood.

Sriracha Granada is also the heat behind the pizza called Sweet Heat Pizza at Zza Pizza + Salad on Skinker Boulevard near Washington University.

While Litz hasnt quit his day job, which he genuinely enjoys, he is hoping to grow his business.

Right now, the majority of my business is wholesale, he said. Every penny I make goes back into production. In other words, Im not making money at it. My dream is that one day I can pursue this as my thing, something I created, from the sauce to the label.

Litz markets Sriracha Granada under his company name, Sunrise Foods. He is in the process of developing other sauces. His mission is to bring healthier versions of popular sauces and condiments to the market.

His father, Rob Litz, who is the incoming board president at Temple Israel, said: Nate has been very organized and strategic in rolling out Sriracha Granada. He researched everything, including production, bottle type, labels, marketing, accounting, obtaining a trademark, as well as selling to distributors, grocery stores, restaurants and at farmers markets.I am confident he will continue to have great success with Sriracha Granada. I could not be more proud of him.

My husband, Mike, and I are hot sauce fans, and Sriracha Granada is right up there with the best of them. Its the perfect condiment: just a faint touch of sweetness with a good, well-balanced, hot pepper kick. It can be enjoyed as a dip; as a condiment for eggs, burgers and sushi; and is great mixed into mayonnaise or Greek yogurt as a spread for salmon burgers or fried fish.

In addition to using it as a condiment, I have found that it works well incorporated into soups, stew and sauces. Here is one of my favorite recipes for a cold cucumber bean soup, perfect on a hot summer day. If you like heat (spice, not temperature) simply add more Sriracha Granada.

Margi Lenga Kahn is the mother of five and grandmother of five. A cooking instructor at the Kitchen Conservatory, she is working on a project to preserve the stories and recipes of heritage cooks. She welcomes your comments and suggestions at margikahn@gmail.com.

Read the original post:

Clayton native re-engineers Sriracha sauce - St. Louis Jewish Light

Category: Jewish Heritage Month | Comments Off on Clayton native re-engineers Sriracha sauce – St. Louis Jewish Light
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 6, 2017

This is the second of a series of posts on the history and lives of Jews in New Zealand. The first can be found here.

Samuel A. Levy was almost certainly terrified as he sat across from Patara Raukatauri on February 25, 1865, the latter being a member of the infamous and supposedly violent Pai Marire cult. Indeed, Raukatauris men would in the subsequent days hang a priest and eat his eyes at an altar, but Levy would be spared the gruesome fate for a crucial reason: He was Jewish.

How is it that a Mori raiding party seemingly intent on killing English settlers would spare a man because of his faith? To understand this event and the multitude of colonial connections between Jews and Aotearoa, New Zealands indigenous people we must begin with the arrival of Christian missionaries in 1814.

The missionaries, from a number of different Anglican sects, struggled in the first years to convey their cultural and spiritual understandings to Mori people, let alone actually convert them. As Bronwyn Elsmore writes in Like Them That Dream: The Mori and the Old Testament, In reply to [Rev. John Butlers] statement that God was angry with all men who had many wives, the chief replied, Our God is not angry with us, and your God does not live in New Zealand.

There was, however, one concept that the missionaries succeeded in transferring. Elsmore writes, In the very early period of Mori-missionary contact, the theory was advanced among several of the prominent church authorities that the Hebrew and Mori languages had much in common.

Samuel Marsden, one of the premier missionaries in New Zealand and Australia, wrote of the Mori in 1819 that I am inclined to think that they have sprung from some dispersed Jews, at some period or other and have by some means got into the island from Asia. These notions gained currency among the missionaries, and ultimately, according to Elsmore, the theory of the New Zealanders having some link with the people of Israel was commonly believed at the time.

Mori thus quickly came to believe this as well, after they were introduced to the Hebrews through the teachings of the missionaries. By 1846, some Mori were considering themselves members of the lost tribe of Israel. Others followed the Old Testament to the word, punishing cursing and adultery with stoning, etc. Mori culture places a heavy emphasis on genealogy, or Whakapapa, and thus many Mori readily accepted an extension of their inheritance.

There were other connections that the Mori drew as well. Noting the habit of some Mori tribes to engage in cannibalism, and given the fact that the Te Reo Mori translation of the description of the Tribe of Benjamin foretold that members shall eat the dead body in the morning, a Mori man named John Williams concluded that Mori were the descendants of Benjamin. Mori also identified their atua, or god, Hema, with Shem son of Noah.

Furthermore, as Elsmore writes, the content of the Old Testament also had more points of familiarity with tradition that did the New. The focus on the genealogy of the Israelites lined up with Mori interest in Whakapapa. The Psalms could be related to Mori traditions of waiata and mteatea , or songs and chants. (Indeed, my girlfriend, of Mori descent, remarked on this latter similarity at my brothers bar mitzvah many years ago).

Jesus Christ, a man who had been killed and was no warrior, had no mana, or power, in the eyes of the Mori. In the early 1830s a European talking to a [Mori priest] said the priest dismissed the Christian God as too quiet, too lazy, and so no good for the Mori. He didnt kill people so his mana was small. On the other hand, the atua [or Mori gods] had great power and could kill easily. The God of the Old Testament, too, was at times a vengeful and violent entity, and thus invested with much greater mana.

However, in order to understand what for many Mori was the most convincing evidence of their connection to the ancient Israelites and thus contemporary Jews we must understand the context in which Mori lived in the 19th century. By the time the Old Testament was fully translated into the Mori language, a foundational 1840 treaty between Mori and the British Crown had already been sundered in dozens of ways. Mori found themselves - and particularly their land - under attack from means both cunning (predatory loans) and outright violent (military or vigilante attacks by the British). The land wars in Taranaki that raged through the 1860s were the most famous and devastating of these latter cases.

Elsmore notes that it is no wonder that the biblical accounts of the Israelites, with their troubled history, caught the full imagination of the Mori. Indeed, it was not long before a full-fledged movement, identifying Mori with Jews, came into being. Te Ua Haumene Horopapera Tuwhakararo, inspired by the Israelites of his heritage, founded the Pai Marire movement as a nonviolent but spiritual way of opposing European colonization. Pai Marire, in Te Reo Mori, means good and peaceful.

Born in the early 1820s, Te Ua served for many years in the clergy of the Wesleyan missionary sect. He studied the Christian Bible enthusiastically, dedicating himself to the Scriptures. Although a minister at the outbreak of the Taranaki wars, he was also a supporter of the anti-colonial Mori king, and bore arms during fighting in 1861. In September 1862, Te Ua claimed, the angel Gabriel spoke to him and instructed him to aid the passage of Europeans shipwrecked in Mori territory. Te Ua helped broker a deal, and thus the Pai Marire ideology of peace began to spread.

For two years, Pai Marire was adopted by Mori with every intention of keeping the fragile peace with their European neighbors - neighbors who by now outnumbered them. In 1864, however, three attacks on Europeans - including the ambush of a military patrol and a raid on a village - shattered the Pai Marire reputation. Although Te Ua condemned these violations, the Pai Marire movement was remade as a violent cult in the European imaginary.

By mid-May, according to historian Paul Clark, of the three prophets who had seemed to be leading the new religion, Te Ua alone remained, pre-eminent and unchallenged and enunciating the hopes for peace and Mori unity that he had first spoken of over a year before. He attempted to regain control of his movement by proselytizing to the Mori king, Tawhiao, who later converted to Pai Marire. In the same time period, he wrote letters to the other two religious leaders and signed them, from Te Ua Jew Te Uea. In a different letter, he concluded, Enough from Te Ua, a peacable Jew.

The Pai Marire, like other Mori, identified with the struggle of the Jews. In Ua Rongopai, somewhat of a guide for the movement, Te Ua writes, Return and go home in peace, for the Lord has spoken to me twice and urged that his people, his forsaken, naked, separated and half-standing flock, return as did Abraham of Israel. They celebrated the Sabbath on Saturday instead of Sunday, and called their priests Te Tiu (the Jew). Although Pai Marire was not by any means Judaism, it still drew heavily from it, and at its height had 10,000 followers some 10 percent of the remaining Mori population.

In 1865, after gaining the favor of the King and the fearsome Waikato Mori, Te Ua dispatched missionaries to New Zealands East Coast, to spread his faith there. The leader of this band of missionaries, Patara Raukatauri, was a former administrator with a prominent brow and proud visage. He accepted Te Uas instruction to act carefully around Europeans, for the latter did not want to have murder committed. Raukatauris subordinate Kereopa te Rau, however, had other ideas. Patara talked him down from killing a Roman Catholic priest along their voyage. He would not be so successful in the future.

The arrival of the Pai Marire in the town of Opotiki proved a crucial turning point for the movement. Patara Raukatauri, discovering that a Jew lived in Opotiki, invited himself over for tea at the house of the aforementioned Samuel Levy. According to Levys diary for the day, Patara explained to a man who had heard only of Pai Marire murder that he was very glad I was a Jew, he being very fond of them, giving as his reason that the Jews were once a grand people, but were now reduced to a very small one through the persecutions they had gone through, the Maoris believing themselves to be undergoing the same.

But all was not to go well, this peaceful evening aside. Carl Sylvius Volckner was a Protestant missionary Opotiki who worked to convert the Whakatohea Mori there. They viewed him as a friend and ally, and despite the occasional anti-Crown raids by the Whakatohea, the priest and Mori got along well. In the same town, the Catholic Father Garavel tended to another group of Mori. In 1863, Volckner accused Garavel of aided Waikato Mori rebels, and Garavel was recalled to the capital of Auckland. In response, Garavel accused Volckner truthfully of relaying information about his parishioners to the colonial Governor.

The arrival of the Pai Marire appears to have acted as a catalyst for the Whakatohea. Patara left town for a month, according to Levy, and while he was gone Kereopa whipped the local Mori parishioners into a frenzy. When Volckner returned from Auckland (presumably reporting to the Governor once again), the Pai Marire for the Whakatohea were by then devout converts captured him and executed him for his crimes.

After this, the Europeans themselves whipped into a frenzy by the exaggerated reports of Levy and others demonized the Pai Marire. In April of the same year, Governor Grey launched a campaign of repression against them, arresting four hundred and imprisoning them on the Chatham Islands. Te Ua and Patara were themselves captured in a similar raid, though they were later pardoned and released. The Mori king Tawhiao eventually abandoned Pai Marire, and the bloodshed throughout New Zealand resumed as Mori struggled against British colonization.

The legacy of Pai Marire was long. One of the prisoners in the Chathams, Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, would later found a new peaceful religion based on Pai Marire. The non-violent movement created by Te Whiti o Rongomai a movement that would serve as a model for Gandhi and other peace advocates at Parihaka in the 1880s also drew from Pai Marire mythology and practice.

I wrote in my previous article for the Forward that Jews were vital to the creation of the State of New Zealand. Likewise, Jewish history and belief meshed with Mori culture on a spiritual level as well as a practical one, and ultimately instigated major events throughout the nineteenth century. Just as the Jews recovered from the persecutions we faced, the Mori continue to fight for their rights and freedoms, receiving reparations and settlements from the New Zealand government and participating in radical and non-violent politics politics that may very well have Pai Marire and Judaism at their roots.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

Follow this link:

The Secret Jewish History Of A Violent New Zealand Cult - Forward

Category: Jewish Heritage Month | Comments Off on The Secret Jewish History Of A Violent New Zealand Cult – Forward
Tags:

Posted By richards on July 6, 2017

The contest, which began Monday and lasts an entire week, has received entries from 1,614 Iranian and foreign participants from 74 countries. Four Americans participated in the contest, and two received special recognition for their work.

One of those men was American Robert Jones Clayton, whose cartoon showedtwo separate copies ofTIMEmagazine,in the years in which Adolf Hitler (1938) and Donald Trump (2016) were their nominated person of the year.It is a great honor, Trump tells Hitler, to which Hitler replies Ja.

Another American entrant,Ed Wexler, portrays Trump running away from a snowball with the communist logo, a reference to his unproven connections to Russia.

Eventual winnerHadi Asadi, who won $1,500 for his cartoon depicting Trump wearing a coat made from dollar bills with his hair on fire while dribbling on a pile of books, told the Associated Press he wanted to show Trumps money-mindedness and war monger nature.

I wanted to show Trump while trampling symbols of culture, he said.

The events director, Ali-Asghar Jafar, told the Iranian state-run PressTVthat the exhibition sought to highlight U.S. hostility towards Iran. Today, the US is moving against Muslim countries, especially Iran, he said. It was difficult to prove US brutality in the past, but Trumps presence has made it easy.

Today, the US is moving against Muslim countries, especially Iran, he said. It was difficult to prove US brutality in the past, but Trumps presence has made it easy.

Another event organizer, Masuod Shojai Tabatabaei, said thecontest aimed to highlight Trumps flaws by displaying satirical paintings on themes such as sexism, immigration, and attitudes towards the media.

The ism in Trumpism is a reference to racism and Nazism, said Tabatabaei. Many believe his remarks are similar to Hitler. He has had a bad attitude towards the media and refugees.

Last year, Tabatabaei organized his thirdHolocaust denial cartoon contestcompetition, which he claimed was not anti-Semitic but aimed at highlighting Western double standards towards criticism of Islam.

We have never been after denying the Holocaust or ridiculing its victims, Masuod Shojai Tabatabaei said at the time. If you find a single design that ridicules victims or denies, we are ready to close the exhibition. Jews who lost their lives in the Holocaust were subject to oppression by Nazis.

Depictions of Muhammed, who Muslims revere as a prophet, are still forbidden in Iran under Islamic blasphemy law, which can result in the death penalty. In March this year, a 21-year-old man was sentenced to deathfor insultingIslam through messages he sent online.

You can follow Ben Kewon Facebook, on Twitter at@ben_kew,oremail him at bkew@breitbart.com

P.S. DO YOU WANT MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE DELIVERED RIGHT TO YOUR INBOX?SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY BREITBART NEWSLETTER.

View post:

Iranians Replace Holocaust Denial Cartoon Contest with Trump ... - Breitbart News

Category: Holocaust Denial | Comments Off on Iranians Replace Holocaust Denial Cartoon Contest with Trump … – Breitbart News
Tags:

Posted By simmons on July 6, 2017

Menashe is a rarity among American indies: a foreign-language film set in the middle of urban New York City (technically, Borough Park, Brooklyn). Apart from a few lines of English, and a few more in Spanish, the vast majority of the dialogue is in Yiddish, as spoken by the Orthodox Jewish community the movie depicts. Naturally, language alone will be a limiting factor in this deserving dramas ability to find an audience, but it enhances the authenticity of documentary director Joshua Z Weinsteins narrative debut, which invites audiences into the insular world of Hasidic New York via a character they wont soon forget, memorably embodied by first-timer Menashe Lustig.

Like nearly the entire cast, Lustig has never acted professionally, bringing an awkwardness to the role that makes Menashe all the more endearing a necessary quality in a film that questions whether the character is fit to be a single father in a culture that strictly insists that children be raised in dual-parent households (how quickly we forget that the same pressures were applied to non-Jews, too, a few decades earlier). That means as a young widower, Menashe must remarry immediately, or else agree to surrender custody of his young son Rieven (Ruben Niborski) to his more stable brother-in-law Eizik (Yoel Weisshaus) the solution suggested by the Ruv (his neighborhood rabbi, played with near-Solomonic wisdom by Meyer Schwartz).

What Menashe wants is the right to raise Rieven himself, but thats not so simple in a community that makes and enforces its own laws. However, instead of challenging the institution the way celebrated Israeli divorce drama Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem did a few years earlier Menashe surprisingly seems to agree with the assumption that the rule was created with the childs best interests in mind, depicting its protagonist as a disheveled screw-up, incapable to keeping even a baby chicken alive.

This may in fact be a fair representation (on an awkward first date, an eager-to-remarry widow complains about Hasidic men, Your mothers spoil you, then wives take over), but it defies the liberal slant of most ethnographic religious films, which typically argue for individuality and personal freedom (the subtext of John Turturros Fading Gigolo, set on the periphery of the same world). Rather than suggesting that the Hasidim must adapt to Menashe, the film offers its protagonist a more realistic choice: He must either agree to conform or leave the culture to which he somewhat defiantly belongs.

True to his roots as a nonfiction filmmaker, for he has no personal ties to the Brooklyn Hassidim Weinstein constructs this neorealist portrait as a series of seemingly unscripted fly-on-the-wall scenes, outlined in such a way as to reveal the situation, while resisting the impulse to spoon-feed much-needed exposition. Governed by strict rules that are hardly intuitive to non-Jews, Menashe observes many (as when he complains to his boss about selling unwashed lettuce at the grocery where he works), but also proves defiant in arbitrary ways (as when he refuses to wear the traditional black coat and hat, inexplicably dressing like a slob instead, with his undershirt on the outside).

Menashe is a mix of contradictions: He ritualistically washes, but lives in squalor, drenched in flop sweat, offering his son cake and soda for breakfast. His apartment clearly lacks a womans touch which is basically the Ruvs point in pushing him in that direction. And yet, as depicted, marriage is a depressing, often loveless contract. At one point, Menashe confesses to feeling relief when his own wife passed away, and hes clearly in no hurry to reenter another such arrangement (although one could hardly argue that hes better off alone).

The movie depicts a series of frustrating incidents in which the character struggles to demonstrate some sense of responsibility, convincing no one not the Ruv, not his boss, and most heart-breaking of all, not his son, who actually calls Eizik to rescue him at one point. Perhaps there are viewers out there who see a hapless single father like this and instinctively want to marry him as-is (in one scene, Menashe asks a neighbor for a kugel recipe, and you can practically feel the movie implying a matchmaking opportunity with her pregnant teenage daughter), but that doesnt mean we dont care about the character. And though the fate of his journey isnt terribly well communicated, its a privilege to have observed Menashes world from the inside.

Reviewed at Beverly Hills screening room, June 26, 2017. (In Sundance, Berlin, Karlovy Vary film festivals.) Running time: 81 MIN.

An A24 release and presentation of a Shtick Film production. Producers: Alex Lipschultz, Traci Carlson, Joshua Z Weinstein, Daniel Finkelman, Yoni Brook. Executive producers: Adam Margules, Danelle Eliav, Chris Columbus, Eleanor Columbus. Co-executive producers: Johnny Mae, David Hansen. Co-producers: Royce Brown, Melanie Zoey Weinstein, Nancy Medford, David Medford, Gal Greenspan, Maya Fischer.

Director: Joshua Z Weinstein. Screenplay: Weinstein, Alex Lipschultz, Musa Syeed. Camera (color): Yoni Brook, Joshua Z Weinstein. Editor: Scott Cummings. Music: Aaron Martin, Dag Rosenqvist.

Menashe Lustig, Ruben Niborski, Yoel Weisshaus, Meyer Schwartz. (Yiddish, English, Spanish dialogue)

Read more:

Film Review: 'Menashe' - Variety

Category: Hasidic | Comments Off on Film Review: ‘Menashe’ – Variety
Tags:

Posted By simmons on July 6, 2017

One of the two candidates who will take part in the second round of Labor Party primaries, Amir Peretz, gives a speech. Posted July 5, 2017.(photo byTwitter/fathomjournal)

Author:Mazal Mualem Posted July 6, 2017

The enthusiastic response to the fact that the two candidates who will take part in the second round of Labor Party primaries on July 10are from Mizrahi originsdoes an injustice to Knesset members Amir Peretz and Avi Gabai. It ensures that the old debate over ethnic issues remains within the boundaries of an outdated political discourse and diminishes the candidates' achievements.

TranslatorDanny Wool

It is no coincidence that Shas Party Chairman Aryeh Deriwas quick to jump on the Mizrahi bandwagon. He responded to the two candidates' victory with this festive tweet: "Forget about politics and political blocs. The very fact that the Labor Party, the party that continues the legacy of [the predominantly Ashkenazi] Mapai party, elected Peretz and Gabai tells us that weve made significant headway on the Mizrahi issue."

Deri heads an ultra-Orthodox Mizrahi party. He was the foremost campaigner to bring ethnic discrimination to the forefront of the political discourse. He did it for the past three decades, and he continues to do it today. Without that festering sense of victimhood, Shas would lose the very reason for its existence. When Deri congratulates the Ashkenazi Labor Party, he is bringing the ethnic demon to the forefront again and perpetuating it.

Deri should have been more precise. Gabaiand Peretz were not the first Mizrahim chosen to lead the Labor Party. Late Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer, who was born in Iraq, did it in the early 2000s. Peretz, who was born in Morocco, already headed the party in 2005after defeating late President Shimon Peres, one of the most powerful icons of the Ashkenazi Mapai establishment.

So what actually happened now? Gabai and Peretz were able to defeat the Ashkenazi candidatestwo(ousted Labor Party head Isaac Herzog and Knesset member Omer Bar-Lev) of whom were Mapai "princes" and the reason they won was not their Mizrahi origins. Peretz won because he is planted deeply within the party establishment. He has political, diplomaticand security experience as a former defense minister (2006-2007). As for Gabai, he was the "hot new item," the freshest product on the shelf. At 50, he is a relatively young candidatewho has already succeeded financially. During their campaigns, both men claimed that they knew how to attract new communities of voters from the periphery or in other words, Mizrahi Likud voters. But at the same time, that was not their ticket to the second round of primaries. The candidates they faced were simply less impressive and less able to win mass support. As for Herzog, the current party chairman who was deposed, he paid the price for his feeble performance as chairman of the opposition.

Neither Peretz nor Gabaihave any need to wave about their Mizrahi identity. It is evident in their very names, which were never changed to Hebrewin their bios, and even in the culture that they bring with them. Gabai didn't need to be photographed with his Moroccan mother singing in the polling station during the primaries in an attempt to send an unspoken message to "new communities of voters." He should not be branded as a "the fresh and young Mizrahi" against Peretz, something he himself hints at privately according to political sources.

Gabai deserves to be assessed on the basis of his talents and skills. Voters should ask whether he is capable of leading the State of Israel and making decisions concerning matters that he was never anywhere near handling. In contrast, Peretz is far more experienced, but he already ran for the office of prime minister and failed.

Now more than ever, with two Mizrahi candidates competing for the leadership of the most Ashkenazi party in Israel's history, any excessive focus or promotion of their ethnic origins whether by them or by the people surrounding them, whether overtly or covertly will only end up harming them. It might diminish their abilities to attract Likud supporters, and it belittles them when, in fact, they have many more abilities than that.

Apart from ultra-Orthodox Shas supporters, Mizrahim do not constitute a homogeneous communitydriven by a herd mentality. Anyone who treats their votes like that will only end up distancing them.

From a symbolic perspective, the election of Peretz and Gabai is a very interesting development. The 2017 model of the Labor Party is the current incarnation of the historically Ashkenazi Mapai party. The ethnic vote was an open secret in the Labor Party, particularly in its strongholds in the kibbutzim and in cities along the central coastwhere there is an Ashkenazi majority. Peretz himself is proof of this. When he was elected head of the Labor Party in 2005, he lost several seats, which in language less than politically correctcould be described as "white/Ashkenazi voters." These voters were replaced by new"Mizrahi" supporters from the development towns. At the time, Peretz had the good sense not to talk about that explicitly. The same is true of former Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz, a member of Israel's Persian community. He also got caught in the ethnic obstaclewhen he headed Kadima (2012-2013), a party that had a hardcore Mapai base. This "white tribe" had a hard time voting for himdespite his talents and skills.

Ever since the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, the Labor Party has been unable to find an identity. It has changed leaders, forged new alliancesand appointed inexperienced candidates as its leaders, like they did in 2013when they elected Shelly Yachimovich to head the party. Time after time, Labor suffered disappointment and defeat at the ballot box.

The ethnic issue is not the key to Labor becoming an alternative to the Likud, and it must not be allowed to become that. The party will be judged by the ability of the person who leads it to convince the public that he has a path of his own andcan be trustedwhen it comes to security matters. Mizrahim vote for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu precisely for that reasonand because the Likud has been able to provide them with a home that meets their emotional and cultural needs not because of Netanyahu's ethnic origins. Former primeministers of the Likud, such as Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharonand Netanyahu, were all perceived as strong leaders. People believed that they could be trusted to handle Israel's most complex security and diplomatic affairs.

That is why any candidate with the ambition and pretension to head the government of Israel will not focus attention on his ethnic origins. In the case of Mizrahi politicians, however, the temptation to do so is strong. By promoting their ethnic origins, they hope to evoke an emotional and cultural reaction among voters they want to attract. Nevertheless, Israelis have proven time and again that when they elect a prime minister, they still consider security matters the most important gauge in making their decision.

Gabai and Peretz are looking ahead to the next electionand presenting themselves as viable opponents to Netanyahu. The unspoken message of each candidate that they know how to attract Likud supporters because of their ethnic origins only serves to belittle them. Some things never need to be said or even insinuated. If they are true, they simply happen.

Gabai and Peretz must explain to the public why they are better candidates than Netanyahu or head of the centrist Yesh Atid Party Yair Lapid to lead Israel in these turbulent times in a changing Middle East, when negotiations with the Palestinians are at a standstill. And they have to prove that they can do a better job handling the Israeli economy.

Read More: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/07/israel-labor-party-left-primaries-gabai-peretz-mizrahi-media.html

Read more here:

Israeli Labor candidates missing their mark in primaries - Al-Monitor

Category: Ashkenazi | Comments Off on Israeli Labor candidates missing their mark in primaries – Al-Monitor
Tags:

Posted By simmons on July 6, 2017

Yemenite Jews 311. (photo credit:REUTERS)

In light of the renewed investigation into the fate of immigrant children who went missing in the 1950s, Likud MK Nurit Koren has proposed legislation that would allow the graves of deceased minors suspected of being one of the missing kids to be dug up.

The bill is on the Ministerial Committee for Legislations agenda for Sunday.

Koren is chairwoman of a Knesset committee on the renewed efforts to find out what happened to the children, most of whom were Yemenite. In 2016, the state declassified its archival material on the topic, but the issue continues to generate interest. Families found documents they had never seen before, but many also found contradictory information, or details that are different from those listed on the graves in which they were told their relatives were interred.

Two weeks ago, hundreds of people protested in Jerusalem, claiming that the Yemenite immigrant children were systematically taken without their parents consent and given to Ashkenazi families.

The bills stated purpose is to allow the investigation of the truth about the death and burial place of minors from Yemen, the East and Balkans whose death notices were given to their families in the years 1948- 1970 without allowing them to identify and bury them.

Should the measure pass, courts would be able to allow deceased minors to be exhumed in order to collect genetic material and find out whether the body belongs to a relative of the person initiating the process.

The request to the court must be submitted by someone claiming to be a relative of someone whose case was brought up by one of the three state investigations into the matter, and the court has to find that there is a reasonable possibility that the claim is true.

Share on facebook

Go here to see the original:

Will minors' graves be dug up in search for missing Yemenite children? - The Jerusalem Post

Category: Ashkenazi | Comments Off on Will minors’ graves be dug up in search for missing Yemenite children? – The Jerusalem Post
Tags:

Posted By simmons on July 6, 2017

Photo Credit: Daniel Retter

When you arrive after a five-hour flight from New York to Panama City, you cant help but admire the ultra-modern airport. Although the lines are lengthy, the personnel are all very pleasant, and after 30-45 minutes you clear immigration and customs.

The first concern for the frum Jewish visitor is proximity to all things Jewish. This includes a daily minyan, kosher food, and a Shabbos experience. Of course, the Panama Canal and the Casco Viejo (the old City of Panama) are must-sees, and youll find the overall ambience and shopping opportunities superb.

We discovered that Panama is home to approximately 12,000 Jews and that there are two frum Jewish communities Sephardi (by far the larger) and Ashkenazi. These communities live side by side and cooperate fully to ensure that frum Jewish life is maintained at a high standard. The threats of assimilation and intermarriage are practically non-existent, mainly due to extreme family and peer pressure.

To understand Jewish Panama, we need to be aware of historical Jewish migration patterns. In the 1850s, Spanish and Portuguese Jews immigrated to Panama from the Dutch West Indies. Originally Orthodox, their descendants turned Reform.

In the late 1880s, Syrian Jews from Aleppo trickled into Panama to escape the Ottoman Empire. In the 1920s, after the opening of the Panama Canal and the end of World War I, which resulted in the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, Syrian Jews (mainly from Aleppo) arrived en masse to Panama.

By 1933, Syrian Jews had founded the Shevet Achim community, which today functions as an umbrella organization responsible for maintaining the strict observance of Orthodoxy. Its legendary rabbi, Zion Levy, zl, who passed away in 2008, enforced Orthodoxy with a firm but loving hand.

Ashkenazi immigration began in the 1930s, comprising mostly Romanian and German Jews. Polish refugees arrived during the war, but unlike the Sephardim who considered Panama home, Ashkenazim viewed the country as a stepping stone northward to Mexico, the U.S., or Canada. Those who remained are mostly Modern Orthodox, with Rabbi Aaron Laine, a Chabad musmach, leading this congregation since 1994.

Recently, due to political and economic turmoil in Latin America, many Jews have immigrated to Panama from Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela.

The structure of the community is quite controlled. Shevet Achim oversees practically every facet of Jewish life, including the hiring of Sephardic rabbanim authorized to perform gittin and milah. There is a combined Sephardi and Ashkenazi community board called Consejo Comunitario (General Central Committee), which deals with matters of concern to both communities. Geirus is not performed in Panama; all conversion cases are sent to America or Israel.

There are five Orthodox schools, with a combined enrollment of 2,300 students; a kollel, Emet LeYaakov, supported by the Sephardic community; and a Bais Yaakov with grades 1-12.

It is important for tourists to understand the layout of the Jewish community two areas in Panama City that are walking distance from each other. The newly developed area is called Punta Pacifica. We stayed there at the luxurious, although very reasonably priced, Trump Hotel.

Pacifica has a Sephardi shul (a 5-7-minute walk from the hotel), Bet Max ve Sara, named after one of the earliest Syrian Jewish immigrants to Panama, which has a minyan three times a day. The rav, Rabbi Abraham Farjoun, gives shiurim between Minchah and Maariv and theres a daily Gemara shiur for laymen and college students.

The other major Jewish area is called Punta Paitilla. It has an eruv and two major shuls Beth El (Ashkenazi) and Ahavat Sion (Sephardi), which features eight separate minyanim.

We attended Beth El on Friday night. It seats 500 men and women and is simply awesome in its grandeur. There were about 200 men and children, and 20 women, at davening. The aforementioned Rabbi Laine gives multiple shiurim. We joined him for dinner Friday night, accompanied by visitors from Teaneck, New Jersey, and a local couple.

The shul is a community center, featuring a mikveh, dining and simcha halls, and a sukkah. There were, roughly, 150 men and children and a few women at Shacharis, although the weekly community Kiddush/lunch drew many more.

For Minchah-Shalosh Seudos-Maariv we went to the Ahavat Sion (Sephardi) shul and community center, which is both magnificent and spacious. Rabbi David Perets, who studied in Ner Israel, Kol Torah, and Ponevez, arrived in Panama two years ago after serving as rabbi for seventeen years in Venezuela, leads the congregation.

The shul has seating for 1,200 men and women. At Minchah there were easily 500 men and children and 100 women. Shalosh Seudos was attended by nearly a thousand men and women, and the rav delivered a drasha for 45 minutes.

The Trump Hotel is a three-minute walk from Darna, a kosher bakery and dairy restaurant, and, as mentioned earlier, a seven-minute walk from shul. There is a fast-food meat restaurant called Hillel (a 3-minute Uber ride), a kosher grocery store, and an elegant meat restaurant named Lula. All are highly recommended and under Shevet Achim supervision.

The Jews who live here have no desire to emigrate to the U.S. Business is booming, schools are thriving, and the Jews live peacefully and safely among their Christian and Muslim neighbors.

Read more:

Panama: An Oasis Of Torah Judaism In Central America - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com

Category: Ashkenazi | Comments Off on Panama: An Oasis Of Torah Judaism In Central America – The Jewish Press – JewishPress.com
Tags:

Posted By simmons on July 6, 2017

Israel's Environment Minister Amir Peretz (L) is surrounded by journalists during the 18th ordinary meeting of contracting parties to the Barcelona convention and its protocols, Istanbul, Turkey, Dec. 5, 2013.(photo byOZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty Images)

Author:Mazal Mualem Posted July 5, 2017

The winds of change blowing through the Labor Party can be deceptive, even though Knesset members Amir Peretz and Avi Gabai just advanced to the second round in the party's leadership primaries. Regardless of whether the party members elect Gabai, a political novice, who only joined the party eight months ago, or a more experienced politician such as Peretz, who once served as defense minister, neither of them will be the dark horse of the next election. Assuming that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is, once again, the Likud's candidate for prime minister in the next election, there is no reason for him to worry about the Labor's turnabout.

TranslatorDanny Wool

First of all, the party failed to recruit a new candidate with real public and security standing, such as former Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, to defeat the right and win power. Furthermore, there already is a large and powerful centrist party (Yesh Atid) headed by Yair Lapid, who has proved his mettle as a fairly talented survivor. Given these conditions, Peretz or Gabai will have to transform the Labor Party into the largest platform in the center-left bloc, and this is no simple task.

In 2002, Amram Mitzna, a major general in the reserves, took the party by storm. Yet he walked away from the January 2003 election with just 19 seats. At the time, 15 seats in the center-left bloc preferred the centrist Shinui Party, headed by Tommy Lapid. In the ensuing elections, the Labor Party failed to take power again and again. It fell into a deep crisis of identity, set off in search of itself, and lost entire communities of voters along the way. When it brought back former Prime Minister Ehud Barak as leader in 2009, it actually reached the lowest point in its entire history, winning just 13 seats. In contrast, Tzipi Livni of the centrist Kadima Party (now defunct) overwhelmed the center-left bloc by winning 28 of its seats.

Shelly Yachimovich also failed to prove herself to be the party's savior in 2013, even though she offered a refreshing new brand. In that election, a new centrist party (Yesh Atid) headed by Tommy Lapid's son Yair swept up 19 seats. In the last election, in 2015, Isaac Herzog as the Labor Party leader and a strategic merger with Livni was not enough either. Even though Lapid's party showed some decline, it still managed to win 11 of the center-left bloc's seats.

In other words, as long as it is not clear who the leader of the camp opposing the right really is and the sum of its votes divided between two dominant parties, the chances for a center-left turnover are reduced considerably.

Peretz and Gabai will face off in the next round of voting for the Labor's leadership July 10. This will be followed by the big battle that will take place within the center-left bloc. The one person who will apparently benefit from this will be the leader of the right, Netanyahu. He will stand off to the side to watch the squabbling in the opposing camp in a process, which long earned itself the moniker, "the cannibalism of the center-left." Several parties will be competing for the same restricted pool of voters, without being able to unite around a single candidate.

The Labor primaries created quite a few headlines and interesting political moments due to the large number of candidates and Erel Margalit's particularly aggressive campaign. In the end, the miracle that the current head of the party, Herzog, had been hoping for never happened. He was deposed as leader of the party and the opposition. But that should come as no surprise, considering the party's longstanding tradition of removing its chair after failing to win an election.

As far as party members were concerned, Herzog lost not only at the ballot box in the 2015 elections but also in his opposition gamesmanship against Lapid. His flirtation with Netanyahu over the possibility of joining the government was both long and damaging and ultimately proved lethal, with opinion polls indicating that Labor could shrink to as few as 11-13 seats. Meanwhile, Lapid's centrist platform steered clear of the left. It gained momentum as he crisscrossed the country and set off to distant continents as a stalwart opponent of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.

Polls showed the Labor Party's seats switching allegiance to Lapid like two connected containers of fluid. As one empties the other one fills up, but the volume remains the same. The climax came several months ago, when Lapid surpassed Netanyahu and the Likud in the polls and was named the head of country's largest party in terms of voter preferences at the moment. Lapid has declined in the polls since, but as an outstanding campaigner, who heads a well-organized party with a network that extends across the entire country, and as someone who can appeal to the soft right at a time when the country is trending right, Lapid remains the most relevant player facing Netanyahu.

Nevertheless, both Gabai and Peretz claim that they know how to expand their base by winning the support of Likud voters. Peretz, who was born in Morocco and lives in the periphery southern town of Sderot, already proved he could do that as head of the Labor Party in the 2006 election, by bringing in new voters from the periphery. Meanwhile, Gabai boasts that he is the "new thing." As the son of Moroccan immigrants and as a person who grew up in a periphery town and made good, he claims that he can win the support of the periphery even better than Peretz.

In the Labor's history, the fact that two Mizrahim (of Middle Eastern origin) are competing over the leadership position signifies that internal changes are taking place in a party that is still searching for its identity. But the fact that two Mizrahim now stand at the head of the predominantly Ashkenazi Mapai Party (mother party of Labor) is not the main point here. It is, of course, symbolic and indicative of a new spirit in the party. On the other hand, considering Mizrahi voters as monolithic is a mistake, and even rather patronizing.

In the next election, with the public asked to decide between alternatives to lead the country, the decisive factor will be security. The Mizrahi issue does not have what it takes to stand alone. Gabai will have to prove that despite his very limited experience in politics and his lack of experience in dealing with national issues, he could still head a country such as Israel. But how, in fact, is he really better than Lapid or Netanyahu? Being Mizrahi is not a viable claim. Peretz, on the other hand, will have to convince the public that he deserves a second chance. His advantage is that he has proven experience at the national level. The fact that he is Mizrahi is not the main point for him either.

Regardless of which of these two men is elected, the winner will first have to compete against Lapid in a kind of undeclared primary, which will inevitably be expressed in their respective poll numbers. If he is elected, Gabai will be unable to serve as leader of the opposition because he is not a member of Knesset. This presents a new political situation, which could hurt him.

The situation within the party will become much clearer by July 10. The various Knesset members, including those who competed for the leadership, will form their own alliances. If elected, Gabai would have the role of opposition chairperson to trade, and he might even offer it to Herzog or Yachimovich. "Netanyahu has reason to be worried," Peretz said the day after he finished first in the vote, with 32.7% to Gabai's 27.1%. However, it is actually Peretz who has cause for worry. As interesting as it may be, the fight over the Labor leadership did not shake up a thing, whether Netanyahu's grip on power or the political system at large.

Read More: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/07/israel-labor-primaries-gabai-peretz-netanyahu-elections-leff.html

Read more:

Israeli Labor's new leaders must rebrand party - Al-Monitor

Category: Ashkenazi | Comments Off on Israeli Labor’s new leaders must rebrand party – Al-Monitor
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 6, 2017

by Lori Silberman Brauner NJJN Staff Writer

July 6, 2017

Only a few months ago, I was standing on the womens balcony of my Orthodox Sephardi synagogue, not so different than the one depicted in the popular Israeli film by the same name. And just like a scene in The Womens Balcony, the women excitedly threw candy during a bar mitzvah ceremony.

At the time I remember asking myself, How did I get here? Even though I had not yet heard of the film, I realized how far I had come from my roots as an Ashkenazi Jew who grew up in a Reform household.

But looking back, I can appreciate how my background, while perhaps not the conventional path to my current lifestyle, was for me, at least, a logical progression. Growing up at Temple Emanu-El in Livingston, a Reform congregation known for its commitment to tikkun olam, social action, under Rabbi Peter Kasdan and (the late) Cantor Louis Davidson, I absorbed the lesson that Judaisms focus is not only on prayer or ritual it is nothing less than a drive to make the world a better place through fighting, for example as advocated by Kasdan, migrant farm workers in the southwest. That women are of equal value to men, and have a role in the synagogue. And that the revival of the Hebrew language wasnt designed to sound like our Eastern European ancestors, but as a modern, thriving tongue pronounced similarly to how Sephardim speak Hebrew (read: Shabbat shalom, not Gut Shabbos.)

I had the chance to reflect on my upbringing when I learned that the temple where I grew up and had my bat mitzvah was closing its doors for good. It held its final Friday night service this past Shabbat, on June 30. The membership officially voted to merge with (in reality, to be absorbed by) Temple Sinai in Summit, though some, including my parents, are choosing to join other congregations closer to their homes.

Its unfortunate, and Im sad for the congregants who were committed to Emanu-El until the end. And while I consider myself much more observant than I was as a bat mitzvah student, Ive come to understand that the core values of the synagogue have had a much stronger impact on me than I realized.

For one, I remain committed to improving the world, as corny as that sounds. As a journalist who believes in the motto taught in journalism school, that our role is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, I try to do that in my writing, pursuing stories for NJJN and other publications that strive to make a difference in the public realm.

I also hold strong views about the role of women in Judaism. While many believe that Orthodoxy treats women as inferior to men, I have found, for the most part, that they are well respected by their spouses and the community, and are encouraged to attain high levels of both Jewish and secular education. And while many Orthodox women are content to have limited ritual roles in the synagogue, others seek fulfillment by taking on further religious obligations. Having grown up encouraged to read Torah and having chanted my bat mitzvah portion, Behaalotecha, I take pride in participating in an (Ashkenazi) Orthodox womens prayer service every Simchat Torah and receive an aliyah to the Torah; I also attend conferences of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA).

Then there is the issue of modern, spoken Hebrew. To this day, I have trouble following along, and even wince at times, when listening to the pronunciation of prayers in Ashkenazi Orthodox synagogues (i.e., Toirah for Torah, and mitzvos for mitzvot). I have also sent my children to an educationally progressive Modern Orthodox day school in which Hebrew immersion is one of its priorities, as Jews should not only understand the meaning of the prayers they read, but be able to converse in our historical language.

So while it was no short journey from Emanu-El to the womens balcony, its an experience I am most grateful for. And yes, Rabbi Kasdan and Cantor Davidson, your teachings have provided a foundation that helped set my lifes course; after all, you cannot know where you are headed without appreciating where youve been.

Back to top

Back to top

Link:

Exit Ramp: Looking back and inward as a temple closes its doors - New Jersey Jewish News

Category: Ashkenazi | Comments Off on Exit Ramp: Looking back and inward as a temple closes its doors – New Jersey Jewish News
Tags: