OpinionPost&The Jewish

Volume 77, Number 11 • August 10, 2011 • 10 Av 5771www.jewishpostopinion.com

I had planned to conduct a video interview with world No. 24 Shahar Peerin a nice, quiet media tent at the inauguralCiti Open in College Park, Maryland. Thelighting didn’t quite do justice to Israel’shighest ranked tennis player ever so wehad to stroll outside and have the chatthere – smack in the middle of the throngof fans that quickly surrounded us.

It’s hard enough to do a good interviewin private, let alone courtside … especiallywhen you’re trying to penetrate the shieldthat pro athletes naturally thrust betweenthemselves and pesky reporters. Thewhole point of World Tennis Magazine’s“The Changeover” is to capture glimpsesof a player’s humanity.

The result?Peer didn’t just let her guard down: She

opened her mind and her heart. She’s a24-year-old tennis star on the rise butshe’s also a woman with a lot to say aboutwhat matters in life.

She even turned the tables on me.It’s normally my job to put profile subjects

at ease so I can extract the best stuff fromthem but I was a little nervous interviewingPeer on camera in public. I was afraid I wasgoing to flub the pronunciation of hername or the questions I intended to ask.Peer looked me straight in the eyes,though, and made it clear she stood readyto have a real conversation and that I wasin good hands with her.

Peer quickly revealed how much someof her school teachers still mean to hertoday. Faster than she puts away a volley,she also put her livelihood of pro tennis inastonishing perspective.

“Tennis is very important,” she said. “Igive everything to tennis, but there areother things except tennis and you need tobe smart and to know other things thanonly hitting the ball.”

We h a d a l r e a d yestablished a connectionjust one minute intothe conversation.

Out of the corners ofmy eyes, I saw thecrowd around usincrease, leaning inand hanging on herevery word. Somethingspecial was unfolding.This was not just a star talking about backhands and breakpoint opportunities:The fans were getting to know Peer as aperson right along with me.

The moment was right to bring up aconversation I knew would be impossibleto cover and exit in the brief time we hadtogether but I had to serve it up.

I asked her about her trip to theAuschwitz concentration camp with herHolocaust-survivor grandmother, YulianaEckstein, and her mom in April of 2010.She led “The March of the Living” – anannual walk between the Auschwitz andBirkenau extermination camps. Hergrandmother’s parents were sent to thegas chambers at Auschwitz.

Peer spoke gently about what that tripmeant, sharing a story that’s best viewed onthe video rather than quoted here. Sufficeit to say I was spellbound. So was the crowd.

The challenge for me at that momentwas to figure out a way to transition fromsomething so depressing to a questionthat might extract life lessons we as people can learn from what Peer said. Iasked her why she has been so willing touse her celebrity status to take on majorworld issues when so many athletes areafraid to do so. It was Peer, after all, whoforced the United Arab Emirates to reverseits policy of not allowing Israeli athletes toplay within its borders.

Shahar Peer: “A little girlfrom a small country”makes global difference

Shahar Peer, Israel’s highest ranked tennis player ever – No. 24 in theworld. Photo © by Won-ok Kim, courtesy of World Tennis Magazine.

Again, the power of her words are best viewed directly but her concludingthought gave me goose bumps. Sheresponded in the context of making a difference in Middle Eastern relations.

“If I can as a little girl from a small country do something for that and helpthe Jewish and Arabs kind of be togetherand understand each other – and be ableto know that we are all human beings –that is very important for me.”

I probably should have ended the interviewright there but my brain was too busy tryingto absorb the magnitude of what she justsaid. I was also contrasting the person I wasinterviewing with her persona on the court.

Moments before the interview, I hadwitnessed her physical power. She poundedground strokes so her hard in her first CitiOpen match against Japan’s Ryoko Fudathat I could have sworn I heard the ballsactually yelp. And forget about trying tohit a winner past her: She made the 27feet from sideline to sideline look as smallas a croquet wicket. Peer on that day wasinvincible and invulnerable.

Yet there she was with me a short timelater revealing her tenderness and femininity.

I asked her a final question about herpractice of only allowing herself a dessertonce a week while I tried to come up withmy exit line. She said something about ice

BY CHRISTOPHER LANCETTE

(see Lancette, page 5)

plants so they grow upward instead offalling over. I also thought about my laborsuch as watering them twice a day sincewe have had very little rain.

If I would have simply bought the tomatoes, it would have cost me less intime and money. However, I would havemissed the joy of seeing a tiny limp plantbecome bigger and stronger every day.Watching little yellow flowers turn intotiny green balls that gradually grow biggerand turn red was priceless. Also imaginehow fresh and tasty they are added to asalad right after being picked.

With the herbs I made a delicious pestosauce by blending together in a foodprocessor: 3 packed cups of basil, 3/4 of acup packed parsley, 1/2 cup walnuts, 2large garlic cloves and 1/2 cup olive oil. Itwas really scrumptious over pasta andsteamed vegetables.

I was honored to be able to listen toanother event that frequently takes placeduring the summer. This was not exactlythe same as watching plants grow but nottotally different. I was not able to attendthe wedding of the daughter of goodfriends Tony and Lori Dreskin inCleveland, but I was able to hear it onSkype. I had known the couple before they had children and the bride since she was born. I attended her Bat Mitzvahand saw how beautiful, talented, andaccomplished she grew to be.

I was not able to see the ceremony but Isaw a photo of the room where it was heldbefore the ceremony started. I saw seatedpeople waiting in anticipation. Everyonewas dressed nicely and the room lookedso festive. Even the chairs looked as if theywere all dressed up.

The following are my thoughts as I listened. This simcha was taking placebecause of the love between two people.Although it was the reason for the event, Iam not referring to the bride and groom.The love began way before that. The twopeople I mean are her parents. Theirstrong love for each other is what createdthis bride.

Even before she was born, they wereconscientiously committed to making alife for her (and later a second daughter)that would be the best possible life thatthey could offer. I don’t know the bride’sgrandparents very well and never knewher great-grandparents but I assume thatwas the case going all the way back.

On her wedding day, this bride standsunder the chuppah as the link between allthose whose love brought her into beingand all that will be created by the lovebetween her and her husband. May thislegacy of love continue as long as they liveand infinitely after. Mazel Tov to ArielDreskin and Matt Wellman!

Jennie Cohen, August 10, 2011 AAAA

I am very grateful to all those who have contributed to the newspaper with their suggestions, comments, and donations. I ask for donations so that I will be able to continue to print and mailthe issues to those who do not have accessto or do not know how to use a computer.A check can be mailed to our address asseen in the box on page 18 or we canreceive credit card payments on our website on the Subscribe page under thedonation button.

I have received four letters from incarcerated Jewish men from Florida,Texas, and Indiana thanking me for sending the newspaper to them. Onecommented that the reason he likes thisnewspaper is because it covers all the different branches of Judaism. Anothersaid that their Jewish population is smalland the other Jewish inmates all look forward to reading the newspaper becausethey do not receive a lot of current materialon Judaism.

A few readers commented that they likesports news so I have included more ofthat in this issue. Also an inspiring storycame from a long-time reader in NewYork. He had married a Catholic womanfrom Ireland and therefore not a lot of religious observance took place in theirhousehold when his son was growing up.He got an unexpected surprise when hisson converted to Judaism while in college.

While editing Batya Medad’s column onpage 10, I commiserated with her aboutthe hot weather they have been having. InIndianapolis we have either tied or brokenthe record for the most days in a row of 90degrees or higher.

How one views the weather at anygiven time or place can be relative. Forexample, when I was interviewing peoplewho attended the ALEPH Kallah inRedlands, Calif., the first person I talked towas Eliyahu Eckelberg from Phoenix.He said the weather at the Kallah wasespecially nice. Of course, it was tendegrees cooler than what he was used to. Then I talked to Marcia Brooks from Berkeley. She did not speak enthusiastically about the weather there. It was more than 10 degrees hotterthan what she was accustomed to.

To make the most of this unusually hotsummer, I decided to attempt growingsomething edible. I planted two cherrytomato plants and three different herbs –basil, parsley, and thyme. Recently I waspondering if it had been cost effective. Ithought about how much I spent on theplants, the potting soil for the herbs, and awire cone to place around the tomato

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 2

Editorial Inside this IssueChristopher Lancette .....................CoverEditorial.....................................................2On This Day .............................................2Rabbi Benzion Cohen

(Chassidic Rabbi).....................................3Jews’ News................................................3Rabbi Jon Adland

(Shabbat Shalom).....................................4Rabbi David Wolpe

(Celebrating Shabbat)..............................4Amy Hirshberg Lederman

(Jewish Educator) ....................................5Rabbi Sandy Sasso..................................6Rabbi Avi Shafran

(An Observant Eye) ................................6Howard W. Karsh

(Jewish America) .....................................7Rabbi Irwin Wiener

(Wiener’s Wisdom)..................................8Sybil Kaplan

(Seen on the Israel Scene)........................9Batya Medad

(Musings from Shiloh) ..........................10Ted Roberts

(Spoonful of Humor) .............................11Sybil Kaplan

(My Kosher Kitchen) .............................12Jewish Sports Hall of Fame Inductees

(Jews in Sports) .....................................13Rabbi Elliot B. Gertel

(Media Watch).......................................14The Seed of Abraham

(Jewish Theater).....................................16Morton Gold

(As I Heard It).......................................16Avi and Adele

(Confidentially Yours) ...........................17Rabbi Israel Zoberman

(Book Review)........................................18Dr. Morton I. Teicher

(Book Reviews) ......................................19Marvin J. Migdol ...................................20

On this date inJewish history

On August 10, 1854

Zacharias Frankel became the president of the Jewish

Theological Seminary of Breslau,a new rabbinical school that he helped establish.

~ From The Jewish Book of Days published byHugh Lauter Levin Associates, Inc., New York.

j i

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 3

j i

Visiting Vancouver Part 2In my last column I wrote about our

adventures in Vancouver, and a veryimportant lesson that I learned. Here ischapter two.

Four days after the Rebbe’s birthday isPesach, the time of our freedom. This yearwe made the seder with my sister-in-lawand her family in Vancouver. We were veryfar from home, but our hosts made us feelvery much at home. And most important,we felt true freedom.

What happened the first Pesach, 3,300years ago? We left Egypt. For 130 years wehad been slaves to Pharaoh. On that daywe left Egypt and became free men. Weexperienced freedom. But what freedomdo we experience when we celebrate Pesachnow? Almost all of us live in a free world.Twenty years ago the iron curtain fell.

Chassidus teaches us about a modernday Pharaoh, and all of us are enslaved tohim. He is none other than our yetzer hara,our evil influence. How does he enslaveus? He is very clever and sneaky, and hasany number of disguises. He knows ourweaknesses and takes advantage of them.

Some of us are slaves to money. The evilinfluence tells us “Just think how happyyou would be if you had a million dollars.”We work like a slave for 20 years and makea million dollars. Did we find happiness?Not a chance. Then the evil influence says“What is a million dollars today? If you had5 million for sure you would be happy.”

Some of us are slaves to pride. We enjoyfeeling superior. The evil influence is anexpert at showing how wonderful we areand how terrible everyone else is. Then hemagnifies their “crimes”and tells us to getangry at them and hate them. He ruins ourrelationships and makes our life a misery.

Some of us are slaves to modernity. Theevil influence tells us that religion and beliefin Hashem is just primitive superstitions.Our grandparents needed them but wedon’t. Of course it is possible to be a good and helpful person and thus have asomewhat decent life without Torah. Butwe will lose the really precious things.Having a good marriage is virtuallyimpossible without Torah. And how canyou be close to our Father in Heaven if youdon’t believe in Him?

Is there any hope? Yes, Baruch Hashem.Just like Moses took us out of Egypt, so inevery generation there are Jewish leaderswho can help us to overcome our evilinfluence. The Lubavitcher Rebbe and hisfollowers have helped many millions to

lead better and happier lives. Do you wanta taste of real freedom? Visit your localChabad House. If there isn’t one in yourcommunity, there probably is one in thenext town.

Note: Even if you do join Lubavitch, youwill still have an evil influence. However,he will no longer be the boss. Instead ofsitting on the throne and ruling your life,he will be hiding out on the sidelines,waiting for a chance to ambush you. Inaddition, it is possible to gradually winover our evil influence, and teach him towant good things.

During the past few months my ownevil influence has been working over time.We have been involved in a building project accompanied by a lot of problems,arguments and aggravations. The evilinfluence succeeded to put all kinds of badthoughts into my mind. My quality of lifeindex went down a few percentage points.

As I wrote in my previous column, Irealized that I had stopped loving certainindividuals. I started to love them andbegan to feel much better.

Then along came Pesach. Pesach is thetime of our freedom, and if we observePesach properly, we go free. Our fatherswere freed then from Pharaoh, and webecome free from the modern dayPharaoh, our evil influence.

In general, Shabbos and holidays are ataste of the world to come, a taste ofMoshiach, a time of spirituality and holiness.We want Moshiach now! When Moshiachcomes we will finally be completely free.There will be no more wars, and no evilinfluence to enslave us. We are now veryclose to Moshiach, and this Pesach I reallyfelt it. I was free. My evil influence basicallydisappeared for the whole week. It waswonderful. It was great. It was amazing.

You can share this feeling. Go to yournearest Chabad House. Learn how toovercome your evil influence and do moremitzvahs to bring Moshiach now!

Rabbi Cohen lives in K’far Chabad, Israel. He can be reached by email at bzcohen@orange.net.il. AAAA

BY RABBI BENZION COHEN

Chassidic Rabbi Jews’ NewsURJ Biennial Dec. 14–18Washington D.C.

NEW YORK – Online registration is officially open for the Union for ReformJudaism’s 2011 North American Biennial.TheURJ Biennial brings together nearly 5,000people from hundreds of congregations.Reform Jewish lay leaders and professionals,youth, congregants, and clergy, are invitedto learn, pray, share ideas, and make decisions

(see News, page 4)

about the policies of the Reform Movement.The Biennial will take place Dec. 14–18,

2011 at the Gaylord Hotel and ConventionCenter in the greater Washington, DCarea, and is expected to draw thousands ofReform Jews from across North Americaand the world.

Visit the URJ Biennial website http://urjbiennial.zerista.com for more information.AAAA

Proposed ban on circumcision removedfrom San Fran. ballot

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 29, 2011 – Inresponse to yesterday’s ruling by aCalifornia judge, ordering that a proposedban on circumcision be removed from theSan Francisco ballot, Rabbi David Saperstein,Director of the Religious Action Center,issued the following statement:

We welcome yesterday’s ruling removinga proposed ban on circumcision from theballot in San Francisco. We know, as theCourt recognized yesterday, that the banwould have violated the free exercise ofreligion, a right afforded to all Americansin the Constitution. We further welcomeJudge Loretta M. Giorgi’s ruling that “theevidence presented is overwhelminglypersuasive that circumcision is a widelypracticed medical procedure.”

As Jews, the tradition of circumcision isessential as our longest standing ritual,symbolizing the covenant between Godand Abraham. As Americans, circumcisionrepresents free exercise of religion andparental choice, rights on which we areunwilling to compromise.

The Union for Reform Judaism has long affirmed the rite of circumcision,most recently in a June resolution passedby our Board of Trustees stating a clearopposition to this and other similar ballotmeasures. We welcome Judge Giorgi’s ruling, and vow to oppose similar measures in the future with the samevigor our people have fought to defendour rights as Jews for millennia. AAAA

Seeking heroesNEW YORK, July 18, 2011 – The New

York Board of Rabbis has been asked toassist the Jewish Partisans EducationalFoundation (JPEF) in identifying Jewishpartisans and their families residing in themetropolitan area. It is JPEF’s intention topay tribute to these courageous individualsat a benefit in New York City on Nov. 7, 2011.

These partisans resisted by fightingagainst the Nazis and their collaborators,destroying thousands of trains and convoys;

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 4give tzedakkah to help Jews and non-Jews.I wear a kippah when I pray, but not all the time. We observe and live our Jewishlives in a way that affirms who we are and connects us with our past and ourcommunity of the present.

Traditional Jews who strive to adhere toevery detail of observance are blessed aswell. Those who are shomeir (observe)Shabbat and shomeir Kashrut are connectedto wonderful traditions.

It is those who cross over the line ofobservance into the realm of superiority,who believe that their way is the only way,and try to impose their will on othersbecause if observance of Jewish law isn’tdone “correctly”then the Jewish world willnever be right. Let’s be fair, fanatics are onthe opposite side as well. There are Jewswho vehemently reject Jewish law andthink that any person who participates atany level of observance is misguided.Theiranti-religious attitude is as troubling tome as those who think their way is theonly way. Often it is fanatics who causereligious conflicts because they are rightand others are wrong. It may be internalconflicts or, as we’ve seen all too often,external conflicts that leave others shakingtheir heads at the nature of religion at all.

Religious fanaticism blocks out the realities of the world they actually live in.Religion helps build a community, but I truly believe that everyone’s religiousexperience is very personal. Since my ordination in 1982, congregants haveapproached me in casual conversation toshare with me where they are on the religious spectrum. This rainbow of beliefsand practices is a challenge, but also thebeauty in the communities I have led.

At any Erev Shabbat service there arethose who think about God, observance,or community a bit differently. This allowsus to be fans roaring our approval at different moments and different times,but it tempers anyone from becoming afanatic. Unlike the fans of a football game,Jewish fans get to participate as well and itis our participation that makes for ameaningful and moderate community.

When you light your Shabbat candles,light one for the opportunity we all have to be a part of this great ongoingexperiment called Judaism. Light the othercandle as a reminder that Judaism isn’tmonolithic, but made up of many waysand many parts that only lets the candleburn more brightly.

P.S. A shout out to Rabbi Marci Bloch,who worked with me in Indianapolis from2003–2005, as she is got married Sunday.

Rabbi Adland has been leading Reformcongregations for more than 25 years inLexington, Ky., and Indianapolis, Ind., andcurrently at Temple Israel in Canton, Ohio.He may be reached at j.adland @gmail.com. AAAA

ShabbatShalomBY RABBI JON ADLAND

Pirke Avot 1:13 – Hillel used to say: Hewho aggrandizes his name, loses his name.He who does not increase his knowledge,decreases it. He who learns not, forfeits hislife. He who makes unworthy use of thecrown (of the Torah) shall pass away.

August 5, 2011, D’varim(Deuteronomy 1:1–3:22) 5 Av 5771

It is Hall of Fame time in Canton, Ohio.For the uninitiated, that is the Pro FootballHall of Fame where football players whoexcelled in this game are honored andenshrined into immortality. I like sportsand it is wonderful to praise those whowere great at the game, but in the end,and this may be heresy, it is only a game.For these men, Sunday was their pulpit(okay now we can add in Thursday,Saturday, and Monday) and we were thecongregation. For those of us who cared,we would spend the three plus hourscheering, moaning, going to the fridge atcommercials, and then discussing the outcome of this clash of titans during thenext week until the next game. Fans canbe passionate. I follow my teams, hopethey win, but get over it if they don’t. It iswhen fan turns into fanatical that I worry.When someone’s whole life is consumedby the events of a team or when nothingelse matters but whether this team wins orloses, then I start to be concerned.

Religion is not too different. For themost part, the fan is you and me. BeingJewish is a part of who we are. We joyouslycelebrate the holidays. Life cycle eventsare appropriately filled with reverence andjoy, or in the case of death with love,tender care, and grieving. We value theethics of living a Jewish life and worktoward Tikkun Olam, the healing andrepair of a broken world. We do so whilecontinuing to live as part of a multi-cultural, multi-religious world. My concernis with those who move from being a fanand participant in Jewish life into thefanatical where the religion is consumingand who is right is limited to those whothink the same way.

I have no issue with observance. As aReform Jew, I choose to participate asdeeply and fully as is meaningful anduplifting in my life. Sandy and I lightShabbat candles every week when it is ourtime to do so. We chant Kiddush. We putup a sukkah. We prepare our home forPesach as we think it should be done. We

most importantly, they saved thousands oflives. After the war, they had children andgrandchildren – giving the world a livingtestament of those experiences.

JPEF (www.jewishpartisans.org) is the onlyorganization in the world solely focusedon bringing the history and life lessons ofthe Jewish partisans to educational andcultural institutions across the globe.Every major Holocaust organization in thecountry relies on JPEF’s work.

We are asking for your help in findingthese heroes. If you are aware of partisansand/or their families in your synagogueand/or community, please contact the NYBRoffice at info@nybr.org or 212-983-3521,or JPEF executive director Mitchell Braff atmitch@jewishpartisans.org or 415-563-2244.

Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vicepresident and Rabbi Bernhard Rosenberg. AAAA

Jewish Federation ofGreater D.C. electsStuart S. Kurlander

The Jewish Federationof Greater Washington(JFGW), a large non-profitwhich last year raised anddistributed $28 millionlocally, in Israel and in 70 countries around the

NEWS(continued from page 3)

BY RABBI DAVID WOLPE

Some of us are like the coyote in oldroad runner cartoons, forever careeningoff the cliff. So long as his feet keep moving, he stays suspended in mid-air.The moment he looks down and sees nofoundation under him, he falls. Do we runso quickly because we fear falling? OnShabbat, stop. Build the foundation beneathyour feet, and then move forward again.

Creating peace outside ourselves canhelp still the turbulence within. Let theflickering Shabbat candles remind you:The Hebrew word for spirit is “ruah,”meaning breath. Breathe. Let go of theanger and abrasiveness that undercutscalm. For a moment stop striving, arranging,perfecting and being discouraged. Godmade this day. Celebrate, appreciate andpraise. Shabbat Shalom.

Rabbi Wolpe is the senior rabbi of TempleSinai in Los Angeles and author of severalbooks including Why Faith Matters. AAAA

Celebrating Shabbat

j i

(see News, page 5)

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 5It’s so easy, so very human, to judge

another person, whether it’s a friend,family member or someone we barelyknow. The critical judge that lives withineach of us creates a story, often not basedin fact but in our own sense of reality. Thatstory greatly influences how we relate tothe person and becomes the lens throughwhich we view him or her. Dumb Debbie.Arrogant Alice. Pretentious Peter. Ourassessments are like sound bites; mini-definitions that categorize others but limit our ability to be in an authenticrelationship with them.

These unfair assessments and judgmentsinterfere with our ability to know andappreciate the real person who is sittingacross the table from us, whether thattable is in a classroom, boardroom or dining room. Once we conclude that afriend spends too much money (on thingswe don’t value) or that a co-worker is after our job, all of the conversations andinteractions we have with him or her willtend to validate our assessment. If mymother had not learned about Debbie’simpending news about her kidneys, shewould still think of her as dumb Debbiethe next week at bridge and most likelyfind her conversations boring or dull.

We spend more time checking out andverifying the characteristics of a new car orkitchen appliance than we do the qualitiesof another human being. So how can we stop ourselves from jumping into judgments? How can stay open to otherswithout limiting who they are in our minds?

The Torah commands us to: “love your neighbor as yourself.” This isexplained in the Ethics of the Fathers as a commandment of restraint: “What ishateful to you, do not do to others.”In essence, the Golden Rule in Judaismcommands us to refrain from doing toothers what we don’t want them to do to us.

Applying this rule to our tendency to judgeothers makes perfect sense. If I don’t wantothers to make unfair judgments about methen I must avoid doing that myself. If I don’twant my friends to judge me based on whoI was five or even two years ago, then Ihave to be open to who they are and howthey might have changed over time. To dootherwise denies a fundamental truth abouthuman nature: that we are continuallygrowing, changing and for many of us,striving to become the person we want to be.

I found another answer to this problemin yoga class when my teacher asked us tolet go of all judgments for the hour wewere on the mat. For just one hour wewere to suspend our critical judge. Wewere to relinquish all judgments of howbadly we thought we looked in eagle posture or how wobbly we felt in standingtree pose. We also were told not to judgeothers whom we thought were doing it

“better”or “worse”than we. Seemed like asimple request until I tried it. Ten minutesinto class, I realized just how very hard it is.

We can quiet our judging mind only ifwe stay aware of our tendency to do it andthen make an effort to stop. Sometimeswe will succeed and when we do, we mayfind that our assessments were really barriers to intimacy; obstacles to havingtrue friendship and understanding. That iswhy the sagely words written by RabbiHillel over 2,000 years ago still hold truetoday: “Do not judge another person untilyou have reached his place.”

Lederman lives in Tucson. Visit her website at amyhirshberglederman.com. AAAA

JewishEducatorBY AMY HIRSHBERG LEDERMAN

Unfair judgmentscloud our vision andlimit our relationships

“I’m ashamed of myself” she whispered into the phone.

“Oh hi Mom, good to hear your voice,”I responded. My mother has a tendency to begin our phone calls in the middle of a conversation she started before dialingmy number.

“I played bridge today,” she continued,“and was stuck with a real dud for a partner. Dumb-as-a-door-nail Debbie –absolutely no personality.”

Let it be known: My mother has a tendency to judge people by outwardappearances and first impressions. True,we all make assessments of others basedon how they look, dress, talk, even eat, buther tendency to assess others – quickly –has always been a problem for me.

“So what happened, Mom?” I asked,knowing that whatever it was, it wasbound to be a good topic for dinner conversation with my husband.

“We played bridge and just like Ithought – she was terrible. Didn’t concentrate on the game, kept lookingaround the room as if she couldn’t wait togo home. I kept reminding her that it washer turn. But after the game, a woman atthe next table came up to her and askedhow she was doing. She answered so quietly I could barely hear.”

“Not so good,” Debbie whispered. “I’mwaiting to hear from the doctor – aboutmy kidneys. They aren’t working right andI may need dialysis.”

My Mom was shocked. It had neveroccurred to her that her “dud of a partner”might have been preoccupied with such afrightening thought. And she was ashamed– of herself and how quickly she had misjudged the situation and Debbie herself.

Mom got up and went over to Debbieand put her hand on her shoulder.

“I’m going to think of you all weekendand hope that you get good news,” shesaid. Debbie thanked her and then, beganto cry. It was the end of a mis-judgmentand the beginning of a friendship.

On Monday, Mom called Debbie andlearned that she wouldn’t need dialysisafter all. Mom hung up, but not beforetelling her that she looked forward to seeing her again soon. And she meant it.

cream but I got lost in her deep browneyes and sweet smile. I was so transfixedby her gaze that I actually forgot my ownname as I tried to sign off the interview. Ihad to switch in mid-breath from whatshould have been “For World TennisMagazine, I’m Chris Lancette”to a simple“Thank you so much for joining us.”

No one has ever made me forget my name.I stood there after we wrapped and

watched Peer field another interview, abasic one about the win over the Japanesequalifier. The WTA’s “Strong is Beautiful”campaign came to my mind as she spoke.

If you define strength not just by physical prowess but by character, Ithought, Shahar Peer just may be the most beautiful woman in tennis.

Christopher Lancette is a Washington,D.C.-area freelance writer. He can be reached by email through is blog at http://dcreflections.typepad.com. (Reprinted with permisssion of the World Tennis Magazine,http://www.worldtennismagazine.com. AAAA

LANCETTE(continued from Cover)

j i

world, elected Stuart S. Kurlander as its new president. Mr. Kurlander, a local philanthropist, community leaderand lawyer will oversee The JewishFederation’s Executive Committee andBoard of Directors as well as partner withChief Executive Officer, Steven A. Rakitt,to lead The Federation. Mr. Kurlander’sleadership journey began in his childhoodhome of Indianapolis, Ind.“Growing up ina small town, we were expected to beactive, informed, engaged and charitablemembers of our community. I have a longand rewarding leadership journey to thisposition and I am honored to serve aspresident of The Jewish Federation. I lookforward to all we will accomplish together.”AAAA

NEWS(continued from page 4)

j i

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 6

In a July 16 column in The New YorkTimes, Charles Blow calls attention to areport of the Bureau of Labor Statisticsstating that half of the top 30 occupationsexpected to see the largest job growth inthe next few years are low-paying.

Among those occupations are home careand health aides and child care workers.In 2008, child care workers earned onaverage less than $20,000 a year and homehealth aides earned less than $10 an hour.

If you listen carefully to political,educational and religious speeches, youmight think otherwise.

There is universal agreement that quality preschool education is crucial forlong-term success in school. The earlierthe intervention, the more aggressive thehead start our toddlers receive, the greaterthe likelihood of academic achievement.The long term benefits are indisputable.

At the other end of the age spectrum,concern for the increasing number of elderly in our country has generated discussions about our responsibility as asociety to care for our aging populationand ensure their human dignity.

On the one hand, we speak eloquentlyabout the high value with which we holdthe most vulnerable among us. On theother hand, low remuneration for thosewho serve the very young and the oldbelies the words we speak.

On the one hand, we are quick to quotesacred sources to bolster our political ideologies.

On the other hand, we ignore thosesame sources when they don’t support thebudgets we propose.

Would that those who seek deep cuts inSocial Security and Medicare rememberedthe pleadings of the Psalmist:

“Cast us not away when we are old.When our strength is gone do not abandonus.”(Psalm 71:9)

The ancient rabbis imagined what activities occupied God’s days. They comment: “Since the destruction of theTemple, God has devoted a quarter of hisday to teaching children.”(Talmud)

Would that those who are quick to cuteducation budgets, divert funding frompublic schools through charters andvouchers, remembered that teaching theyoung is a divine undertaking.

In our society, however, neither of thesecommitments seems to be a priority.

We can ill afford to ignore the bookendsof life, the early and latter years. The proposed cuts in the recent budget talks in education, social security and Medicarewould hurt the young and the old the most.

There is no doubt that science, technology,engineering and mathematics, professionsthat are increasing and deservedly wellpaid, are crucial for our future. Withoutgrowth and innovation in these fields we will lose our competitive edge in theglobal economy.

But there is likewise no doubt that if wedo not invest in our youngest children, wewill have fewer people qualified to enterthose professions on which our futuredepends. And in the end, what happens to moral fabric in a society so focused on ignoring the aging process that it abandons its elderly?

The late Sen. Hubert Humphrey onceremarked: “The moral test of governmentis how that government treats those whoare in the dawn of life, the children; thosewho are in the twilight of life, the elderly;those who are in the shadows of life, thesick, the needy and the handicapped.”

The test is still the same.The question is,who among us has the courage to pass it?

Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso and her husband Rabbi Dennis C. Sasso have been senior rabbis at Congregation Beth-ElZedeck in Indianapolis since 1977.Reprinted with permission from theIndianapolis Star July 26, 2011. AAAA

How we treat young, elderly will illuminate our valuesBY RABBI SANDY EISENBERG SASSO

An ObservantEyeBY RABBI AVI SHAFRAN

Hearing voicesThe words of fellow citizens merit our attention

So many tears shed, so many wordsspoken, so many hearts twisted tight overthe weeks, now, since the horrific,confounding, harrowing murder of LeibyKletzky, a”h. With that distance of days,though – while we all still ache, andalways will, over the loss – somethingsomewhat peripheral to the tragedydeserves to be considered, somethingthat’s easily overlooked but shouldn’t be.

How the non-Jewish world reacted.The Atlantic’s senior editor, Ta-Nehisi

Coates, an African-American who writesabout popular culture and social issues,lamented on his blog how he imaginesLeiby’s parents “will spend much of theirlives questioning themselves. I am so sorry

about that, mostly because I don’t thinkthey did a single thing wrong.

“My heart goes out to the Kletzky family.Truly, I am so very sorry for their loss.”

And, in a flash of raw emotion, he added a “P.S.” ultimatum: “Please don’t be stupid in comments. An immediate ban will come down on you, if you can’t becivilized about this.”

Agron Belica, a Muslim author, singer,and songwriter, wrote a song, “BrooklynBoy,” in memory of Leiby. “Whatever ourfaith—Jew, Muslim, Christian, etc.,” heexplained,“we share their mourning. Maytheir faith strengthen [the family] in theirsorrow and anguish.”

Reports are that, at the time of Leiby’sdisappearance and the discovery of hismurder, Twitter chirped incessantly andsadly with tweets about the tragedy frompeople from all ethnicities and walks oflife. One under-140-character message,cited by The New York Times as speakingfor many others, came from Erica Hill, anetwork news co-anchor; it was stark andto the point: “Heartbroken,”she wrote,“forfamily of Leiby Kletzky.”

From kidnapping victim ElizabethSmart’s father Ed (“Our hearts are justbroken for this family”) to Irish writerMike Farragher (“You cry along with thelive coverage of the rabbi’s bullhornspeech outside the temple that night, hisvoice breaking as he struggles to come togrips with savagery so deep…”) to newsbroadcaster Bill Ritter (“I was honored topay my respects” at the Kletzky shivahouse and “honored that [the Kletzkys]welcomed me in”), citizens of all sorts felt compelled to join in the collectiveJewish mourning.

(It’s wrenching to write, but the reactionof some Jews in the polluted realm ofBlogistan, was, to put it mildly, lessimpressive. They sought to exploit thedeath of an innocent child, amazingly, topromote their rabid anti-rabbonim agenda.And a writer for the New York Jewish Week, whose beat seems to be negativeportrayals of religious Jews, resorted toanonymous sources to insinuate thatBrooklyn’s Shomrim patrol group works atcross purposes with the police. The wordsof Yeshayahu 49:17 come sadly to mind.)

A cynic might dismiss the non-Jews’sentiments as less than really meaningful;after all, it would take quite a callous soulto not feel badly about the murder of aninnocent child. But we too soon forgethow things once were elsewhere not terribly long ago, when the deaths ofinnocent Jewish children were notmourned but sought (as they still are insome parts of the Middle East).

No, the feelings of our neighbors arereal, and mean much, especially when seen

j i

(see Shafran, page 7)

real thieves know how to mask the units, and the bells only go off when some unsuspecting senior citizen has agarment that she paid for, but where themechanism was not removed.

It is easy to point out the problems,what are the solutions?

We have to become an active part ofchange. We need to start out by changingourselves. We have to spend the time todetermine what we are doing in our dailylives to change our lives for the better, andwhat we can do to make a difference. I cantell you from my own experience, mostpeople start out by thinking about how to change the world. It is almost alwaysfrustrating and ineffective.

We have to look at everything. How arewe working toward our own potential? Itis not a small order. If we want to changethe world, we have to try to be a positiveagent for change. We have to examine our relationships and maximize them,being a better son or daughter, a betterhusband or wife, father or mother, friend,community member. Are you beginning tounderstand why we need an army? Wewere hoping we could push a button, takea pill, or write a check.

If we can get by that first effort, we willmove into the next ones with a greaterunderstanding of what we have to do. Wehave to look at how we live and what welive for. We have to consider our healthand the health of our families. When you fight a war – and we need to fight awar – you can’t go in unfit, mentally orphysically. And the pain of coming to gripswith ourselves can hurt as much as whatwe feel after a demanding workout. Tobegin to make a difference, we have to be the best person that we can.

The list will present itself. The opportunities will present themselves.The calendar will remind us that every day counts.

We have to integrate our values, letthem shine out, and do what it takes tolive them.

If we want to end world hunger, weneed to look for an opportunity to contribute to an organization that is making a difference. The important ingredient is to support your values.

You have to share them. You have toinvolve your family, because the only values you can transmit are the ones they see. Before you can influence them tolive their values, they need to see you as aliving model.

It requires changing, slowly changing.You have to determine how to work to liverather than working to live. You have tolook at your priorities.You have to give toget.The hardest point is giving up what wewant, what we need and becoming a giver.

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 7

JewishAmericaBY HOWARD W. KARSH

Change must comefrom within

MILWAUKEE, WISC., JULY 18, 2011 – Thislast week, the hearts and minds of the collected Jewish world were shaken withthe brutal murder of an eight-year-old boy in New York City. And then, there was the aftershock, when we were to learnthat the perpetrator was a Jew, as well.All of us were observers. None of us were participating in the search, in theapprehension, and now in the longprocess of the law. We have no way of displacing our grief. We don’t know whatto ask for, how we can prevent futuretragedies. But we might feel better if welament together.

What kind of a world do we live in?Simple, one part advances in technicaldevices, gadgets and quality of physicallife, the other part a decline in values,morals, and ethics. Why do things like thishappen? We do not know. How can wetolerate them? I suppose that in someway, we don’t. Each insult to everythingwe believe in, changes the very nature ofour view of the world. Did we recoverfrom the assassination of Prime MinisterRabin, Martin Luther King, John F.Kennedy, and Bobby Kennedy? Whathappens to our souls when we know,somewhere in our consciousness thatevery day, children die of malnutrition,families are displaced or die in wars orbattles. Lives being changed by drugs anddrug wars. Our media, the part that is notinvolved with sensationalism, is filled withthe misery of existence.

The family of this eight-year-old felt relatively safe, safe enough, with care, tolet him walk 3 blocks home from daycamp, in a neighborhood they knew andthat was filled with people who lookedlike they look. They were wrong in theirassumptions.

In Israel, everywhere we went, everywindow is barred, every door has multiplelocks; every car has electronic theft systems, and the whole country, it seemsis armed. The buses we took in Jerusalemwere filled with soldiers carrying rifles,and regular people carrying guns. Even ifwe didn’t talk about it, it was part of thelandscape. At home, in every store, everyitem of value has theft protectors somewhere in the garment. A clerk, whotalked with me about it, mused that the

j i

(see Karsh, page 8)

The world we live in didn’t go into anose dive when we weren’t looking. Therehas always been decline, right from thetime of the Garden of Eden, with Adamand Eve struggling to figure out how toright their personal wrong.

But if we are going to save ourselves, ourfamilies, our communities and beyond, wehave to emotionally sign up to serve as awarrior for something better.

1. Help rebuild families. Devote yourselfto the raising of children, grandchildren,making sure that they are growing up withvalues. Don’t eliminate the idea of shame asa factor of honesty.

2. Reconsider how you live. Does the needfor things, cause a lack of parenting, of beinga husband to his wife, a wife to her husband.

3. Try to raise your children, rather thanfarming out the work.

4. Do not assume that schools are responsible alone, for giving your childrenvalues.

5. Create positive experiences with faith.Don’t tell them, show them.

6. Make Shabbos a part of your life. Sitdown with your family and celebrate family.

SHAFRAN(continued from page 6)

through the eyes of history. Then-mayor of New York City Ed Koch, leading the Ukrainian Day parade one year, toldits grand marshal: “You know, if this werethe old country this wouldn’t be a parade,it would be a pogrom. I wouldn’t be walking down

Fifth Avenue; I would be running…andyou would be running after me.” It was a darkly humorous comment from afamously outspoken politician. But it harbored more than the usual joke’s element of truth.

How would the average European non-Jew a century ago have reacted to the murder of a Jewish child? Would hehave reacted at all? And if the murdererturned out to be a Jew? That reaction isn’thard to imagine.

There are no guarantees that the present augurs the future. But the broadand heartfelt societal reaction to our community’s recent tragedy shouldremind us that if we Jews have to remainin a state of galus (exile), those of us inAmerica are fortunate to be awaitingMashiach in a malchus shel chessed a“dominion of kindness,” many of whosecitizens well reflect that fact.

© 2011 AMI MAGAZINERabbi Shafran is an editor at large

and columnist for Ami Magazine.Communications to: rabbishafran@amimagazine.org. AAAA

7. Do not come to believe that saving theworld can happen until you save yourselfand your family.

8. Live with values. Talk about values.9. Take life seriously, yours and everyone

else’s.10. Do not tolerate abuse, verbal, physical

or emotional. If you see it, do something tostop it.

11. Take responsibility for your school, foryour community.

12. Understand that we cannot be anisland unto ourselves. If there is hunger, wemust work to eliminate it.

13. Understand that as your life is divine,so is the life of every person on earth.

14. Don’t confuse understanding the right to abortion with coming to believe it is right.

15. Do not come to believe that there issomething good about people being able to doanything that they come to believe is good.That is an insane view of freedom.

But first and foremost, until that daycomes when we begin to see a betterworld, value your family. Accept theresponsibility to give them the tools theyneed to survive.

If a small child who is lost, understandsthat it is important to tell someone that he is lost, then looks for someone to callhis parents, it is a lesson well taught.Unfortunately trust cannot be trustedwithout experience.

This eight-year-old had the right togrow and live. No mistake in judgmentjustifies what occurred, but this is theworld we live in, and we must defend ourselves and our families against chance.

There is no blame in this child’s death.No child should have met this end. But inthe world we live in, there cannot be anexpectation of things not happening. Thatis simply how it will be until we worktogether to change it.

The saddest fact is that if it were ouruniversal purpose to bring a better life toeveryone on earth, we could do it. It isonly the absence of this will that allowssuch crime against humanity.

It is not G-d’s will. It is rather our lack ofunderstanding about the kind of worldthat we could create with the correct useof freedom of choice.

Recently I began writing for our localpaper, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Themost interesting part, up to this point, hasbeen the interchange. Every article bringscomments. I am asking you to share yourthoughts. We live in the same small world,see the same things, and suffer what ishappening to the quality of our lives.

If you have something to share, pleasebegin by sharing it with me, and I will try

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 8and parachuted into enemy hands. He wascaptured and spent 6 years in a communistVietnamese prison. He survived the ordealand now lectures on lessons learned fromthat experience.

One day, when Plumb and his wife weresitting in a restaurant, a man at anothertable came up and said, “You’re Plumb! Youflew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraftcarrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!”“How in the world did you know that?”asked Plumb. “I packed your parachute,” theman replied. Plumb gasped in surprise andgratitude. The man pumped his hand andsaid, “I guess it worked!” Plumb assuredhim, “It sure did. If your chute hadn’tworked, I wouldn’t be here today.”

Plumb couldn’t sleep that night, thinkingabout the man. Plumb says, “I kept wonderingwhat he might have looked like in a Navyuniform: a white hat, a bib in the back, andbell-bottom trousers. I wonder how manytimes I might have seen him and not evensaid, Good morning, how are you? Or anything because you see, I was a fighterpilot and he was just a sailor.” Plumbthought of the many hours the sailor hadspent on a long wooden table in the bowls of the ship, carefully weaving the shroudsand folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn’t know.

Now, Plumb asks his audience, “Who’spacking your parachute?”

Everyone has someone who provideswhat they need to make it through theday. Plumb also pointed out that he needed many kinds of parachutes whenhis plane was shot down over enemy territory – he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional parachute, and his spiritualparachute. He called on all these supports before reaching safety.

Sometimes in the daily challenges that life give us, we miss what is reallyimportant. We may fail to say hello,please, or thank you, congratulate someone on something wonderful thathas happened to them, give a compliment, or just something nice for no reason. Maybe we even ignore peoplebecause they are different.

As the weeks and months progress,recognize people who pack your parachute.Most importantly remember the One whopacks all our parachutes both in times ofsadness and in times of gladness.

Life is a blessing with all of its trials andtribulation, and yes sometimes it is difficult to say thank you, but we need to try. I really believe we will all feel something different and wonderful.

Rabbi Irwin Wiener is spiritual leader ofthe Sun Lakes Jewish Congregation nearPhoenix, Ariz. He welcomes comments atravyitz@cox.net. AAAA

Wiener’sWisdomBY RABBI IRWIN WIENER, D.D.

Sometimes it’s so difficult to say thank you!

In God’s Little Acre, a compilation ofinspirational stories, there is one narrativethat caught my eye because it speaks tothe problems we have communicatingwith each other, and in turn with God. It isespecially difficult when we have to say,“I’m sorry,”but I believe just as embarrassingto say,“Thank you.” Perhaps it is becausesaying thank you indicates indebtednessand we are reluctant to be beholden to someone.

Regardless, it is part of human relationshipsand important primarily due to the factthat we tend to forget to say kind things,or are too busy. There is so much to begrateful for, especially as we begin to enterthe season of forgiveness and gratitude.Our tradition teaches that even as wemourn a loved one, we end that grief witha prayer called “Kaddish.”It is not a prayerof sorrow but rather an affirmation of ourunderstanding of life.

When darkness envelops us, we tend toconcentrate on the loss and not remindourselves of the goodness of life and the“Thank you”we owe God for sharing thatlife with us. It is so hard to say thank youwhen our pain seems to be too much tobear. But then, if we study the words, weget a clearer insight into birth and deathand all that is in-between.

Thinking about this as we approach atime in our lives giving us the opportunityto step back and rejuvenate. Unfortunatelywe tend to wait for a prescribed time to begrateful and at the same time be regretful.And that is why the approaching season isso vital.

Perhaps the following story, taken fromGod’s Little Acre, will expand on thesethoughts:

Charles Plumb, a U.S. Naval Academygraduate, was a jet pilot in Vietnam. After75 combat missions, his plane was destroyedby a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected

KARSH(continued from page 7)

j ito share the best of it wherever I can.

Howard W. Karsh lives and writes inMilwaukee, Wisc., and can be reached athkarsh@gmail.com. He has recently beennamed as a community columnist for theMilwaukee Journal-Sentinel. AAAA

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 9works to represent and improve the socio-economic situation of Bedouin women living in Israel.

We were ushered into a large tent wherewe sat on couches with pillows to hear the general manager, Khadra ElSaneh.Another Bedouin woman sat nearby onthe floor weaving a large rug. We wereserved hot sweet tea in small glasses and,later,Turkish coffee in small demitasse cups.

Mrs. ElSaneh is 39 years old, has fourchildren and finished high school. Herfather was from the Negev and moved toRamleh (near Lod and Ben GurionAirport), where he married and whereKhadra was born. The family returned tothe Negev in 1994 and Khadra married atthe age of 22.

Mrs. ElSaneh explained that 80% ofBedouin women are illiterate, so when theprogram was started, the women leaderswent to the clans to get the approval of theclan leaders and the sheikhs and gaintheir trust. In the beginning, the men didnot take them seriously, laughed at themand wouldn’t let the women go out towork. Gradually, that changed and at firstthe women came together socially.Then theidea of working at home and becomingbusinesses was begun. Bedouin womensoon recognized education was a goodtool, and the women leaders began to givethe women a chance to learn to read andwrite as well as to learn about areas ofhealth, education, family and their rights.

Today there are 12 teachers who teachthe 70 women from the age of 17 to 60,currently attending. First, they learn toread and write.Then they work to improvethe language skills of the women inHebrew, Arabic and English; the womenlearn how to use a computer, how to domarketing and public relations andaccounting; how to do record writing and

evaluation as they work in these skills at home. To date, 1,400 women have“graduated” from this center. There is noresistance from the husbands in generaland there are now two groups of men who have realized how the changes helpthem. Forty percent of the women are in situations with more than one wife inthe household.

The women receive the traditionalground loom and pure local sheep wool(purchased from Negev shepherdesses) intheir homes which they spin, dye, twinand weave; they choose the designs andare paid for their work.

Recently, six Bedouin women from thecenter went to the States – Santa Fe, NewMexico; Washington, D.C. and New York –to show their handiwork.

In another room, a woman sat on thefloor sewing together a large carpet. Themain show room has rugs, pillows, wallhangings, evening bags and coin pursesfor sale.

Another Bedouin speaker was AmaElsana Al Hajooj, director of the NegevInstitute for Strategies of Peace andDevelopment. She is a 38-year-oldBedouin, married and mother of twins,who told of growing up the fifth girl out of13 siblings in a patriarchal community andtraditional family. She chose to challengethe system as a Palestinian Bedouin citizenof Israel. She received a BA in social workfrom Ben-Gurion University and aMasters from McGill University. Today,she works in community developmentand women empowerment programs.

She explained that Bedouin is a way oflife, not a nationality or citizenship, andthey are 10% of the Arab population ofIsrael, between 182,000–200,000 in theNegev. Another 60,000 Bedouin live in thenorth of Israel.

The Bedouin are a community in transition“from our way of life to a new way of life.”

In the 1960s, Israel decided to settleBedouin in seven towns. In addition, thereare others which are unrecognized villages.

The first schools in the recognized villages were started in the 1970s. Theywere attended mostly by the daughters ofthe Sheiks; some tribes did not send theirgirls to school. Now some send girls toItaly or the U.S. to become doctors orlawyers. There are 1300 Bedouin womenstudents at Ben Gurion University andfour colleges. Three years ago, the firstBedouin woman became a doctor; thereare 10 Bedouin women lawyers; threeBedouin women have completed PhDs;five more Bedouin women are workingtoward PhDs.

Still, 87% of the Bedouin women areunemployed.

After a lunch of machlouba (chicken

When I lived in Israel in the 1970s andvisited the Jerusalem Arab market frequently, I started to buy and collectArab embroidery. I would have liked tohave collected Jewish embroidery but withthe exception of exceptionally expensivehandiwork sold at the Maskit stores,founded by Ruth Dayan, most Jewishwomen were not continuing this art.

With each piece I bought, I asked thehistory and, at one point, many years later, I had the pieces framed, along withtheir histories. Most were done byBedouin women.

When Media Central, a support servicesfor foreign journalists, offered a tour forthe foreign press on “Bedouin Women inthe Negev,”Barry and I were quick to signup, despite the predicted temperatures inthe high 90s and higher.

By 9 a.m. we were on our way out ofdowntown Jerusalem by bus with journalistsfrom South America, Japan, China, andNorway.At 10:30, we arrived in the northernNegev town of Lakiya, a short distancenorthwest of Beersheba, capital of theNegev. Founded in 1992 specifically forBedouin, Lakiya has a population of 13,000.

The Lakiya Negev Bedouin Weavingproject was started in 1991. Today, it issponsored by Sidreh, a not-for-profitorganization, to empower Bedouinwomen to channel their skills into cottageindustries. Established in 1998, Sidreh

Seen on theIsrael SceneBY SYBIL KAPLAN

Bedouin women

(see Kaplan/Israel, page 10)Khadra ElSaneh (L) conducts a workshop on Bedouin weaving. Photos by Barry A. Kaplan/Jerusalem.

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 10‘Robinson’s Arch’, was built in it, by way ofwhich people entered the Temple Mount.Apparently, the high official was walkingin the Jerusalem street in the vicinity ofRobinson’s Arch and lost the gold bell thatfell from his garment into the drainagechannel beneath the road.

We know from sources that the highpriests, who served in the Temple, used tohang a gold bell from the fringes of theirrobe. Thus, for example, in the ‘Tetzaveh’Torah portion, in the Book of Exodus,there is a description of the high priestAaron’s robe: “All of blue... it shall have abinding of woven work... And upon theskirts of it thou shalt make pomegranatesof blue, and of purple, and of scarlet,round about the skirts thereof; and bells ofgold between them round about.” It isimpossible to know for certain if the belldid indeed belong to one of the highpriests; however, the possibility shouldnot be entirely discounted.

July 26Now I finally understand the reason

why gold is so valuable. Think about howold this bell is.

July 30 – What happened to the weather? It’s too hot! It’s much too hot! I can’t

take the heat! Yes, I’m back to feeling the heat, suffering from the heat. Yes, it’stoo hot!

Sorry for the rant.And, yes, I know that in a few months

I’ll be kvetching about the cold. Why can’tI just bottle the summer heat for winterand the winter cold for summer?

July 31 – 40 years! According to the Jewish calendar, exactly

40 years and a couple of hours ago Ibecame a mother. I didn’t write “for thefirst time,”because once a mother, alwaysa mother.

With the birth of my first child, my lifechanged forever. All I had ever wanted tobe was a mother. I had never planned anyother profession. I expected my husbandto provide all the financial resources wewould need, just like my own father did.That part of my dream was a mistake, andwe’ll always suffer for that, unless one ofus manages to write a great book, bestseller, to provide us with a comfortableincome for the rest of our lives.

This may not be “pc” in this modernworld, but I still think that there’s nothingmore important than being a mother.What’s the point of going through pregnancy and birth to give your child toothers for raising and education? No, I’mnot promoting “home-schooling.” Myfirst-born and I used to prepare for myparent-teacher conferences. I knew whatto say and ask each teacher. By the time

my younger ones were in school, I was areal professional...mother. Yes, being aparent is a profession.

One of the things that made me want toleave teaching was that the parentsweren’t playing their role properly. I eventried to get the school to invite the parentsof remedial students for special parent-teacher get-togethers, so they’d learn howto help their children. After sitting aloneat my desk for hours waiting for parentswho didn’t come to talk to me, I knew that Iwas wasting my time. I didn’t even receivephone calls from parents who received

Musingsfrom ShilohBY BATYA MEDAD

July 24 – Rare gold bell discovered inexcavations in Jerusalem

The bell was apparently sewn to thegarment worn by a high official inJerusalem at the end of the Second Templeperiod (communicated by the IsraelAntiquities Authority).

A rare gold bell with a small loop at itsend was discovered during an archaeologicalexcavation in the drainage channel thatbegins in the Shiloah Pool and continuesfrom the City of David to the JerusalemArchaeological Garden, near the WesternWall. The excavations are being conductedat the site on behalf of the IsraelAntiquities Authority, in cooperation withthe Nature and Parks Authority andunderwritten by Ir David Foundation.

According to the excavation directors,archaeologists Eli Shukron and ProfessorRonny Reich of Haifa University,“It seemsthe bell was sewn on the garment worn bya high official in Jerusalem at the end ofthe Second Temple period (first centuryCE). The bell was exposed insideJerusalem’s main drainage channel at thattime, among the layers of earth that hadaccumulated along the bottom of it. Thisdrainage channel was built and hewn thelength of the Western Wall of the TempleMount, on the bottom of the slopedescending to the Tyropoeon Valley. Thisdrainage channel conveyed rainwaterfrom different parts of the city, by way ofthe City of David and the Shiloah Pool, toNahal Kidron.

The main street of the Jerusalem is inthe region of the excavation, above thedrainage channel. This road ascendedfrom the Shiloah Pool in the City of Davidand an interchange, known today as

From an ancientgolden bell tomodern musakka

and rice) and Israeli salad, while sitting onthe floor on cushions at a low table, wetraveled from Lakiya, north, 40 minutes, toAchva College where we met MerriMinushkin from Brooklyn, N.Y., director ofpublic relations and resource developmentand two women Bedouin students.

The college has 4,000 students (80%female) with tracks for people over 30,new immigrants such as Ethiopians whohave a special mentoring program andBedouin. In the special track for Bedouin,there is written and spoken Arabic,Hebrew and English. Approximately15–20% of the students at Achva are Araband Bedouin; 2% are men.

Manar Abu Riash is 20 years old, originallyfrom Ramleh, married to someone shemet during summer courses at Tel AvivUniversity and lives in the Bedouin townof Rahat. She majors in Middle EasternStudies and history of the Jewish people.Her father is a social worker; her mother isan executive secretary at a health clinicand she has two sisters and a brother. Shewould like to continue studying to becomea social worker because of the need forbasic changes in the foundations ofBedouin society.

Tagreed Atagqa is 23 years old, studyingHebrew literature and language and alsolives in Rahat. She is divorced, has a two-year-old son and is engaged. She hasthree sisters and three brothers. She drivesher own car with a car pool from Rahat.When she graduates, she wants to teachHebrew literature and be a youth groupyouth leader and educate the new generation.

The whole encounter with the twowomen in Lakiya and the two Bedouinstudents is an eye-opening experience of asignificant minority in Israel.

Sybil Kaplan is the “Creating a Stir” columnist forthe Jerusalem Post; a food writer and lecturer; leaderof “Shuk Walks” in Machaneh Yehudah; presenteron RustyMikeRadio.com with “Shuk Shopping;” andcompiler/editor of eight kosher cookbooks. AAAA

KAPLAN/ISRAEL(continued from page 9)

(see Medad, page 11)

j i

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 11

Spoonful of HumorBY TED ROBERTS

My new Jewishfood channel

I was watching the food channel lastnight. I don’t know why the network hadn’t filtered out Jewish viewers. Afterall, the pork resources of the world arefinite, you know. But no harm done.Naturally, I looked away since they weremaking a pork roast. Not a respectable,rectangular brisket – not a voluptuous hen– not a happily bubbly kugel, but a lumpy,bumpy pork roast. A pork shoulder easilyidentifiable as the limb of a mud-coatedanimal that in his previous life used to runaround grunting in the farmyard. In fact,my vivid imagination pictured Jews – foodobsessed Jews – from all over Americaeither clicking the remote or turning theireyes away. Jews, champion eaters of theworld, and some smart alecky ad agency isoffering forbidden fruit.

Ugh! Why not pickled pig knuckles?But as I sank deeper and deeper into myrevulsion – BAM! – as Emeril says, theculinary idea of the century hit me. Youspend $100,000 a minute displayingEmeril, Rachael, and Martha. And a roast-loving Jewish viewer covers his facewith his hands. At least that’s what myrabbi told me to do. Don’t look – not veryeffective marketing. But then the lightbulb over my head exploded! The moststupendous merchandising idea of thedecade. The best idea since Joseph wentinto the dream interpretation business.My best personal idea since I conceived of cat food spiked with birth controlchemicals. (Don’t worry, cats can’t read!I’m talking birth suppression chemicalsseeded in the cat food. Get it? No need forexpensive feline surgery.)

My new idea! A Jewish food channel!Bring culinary civilization to the wildernessof Arkansas, Kansas, Idaho, and so forth.Backwoods hideouts and rural enclaveswhere natives shamelessly make sandwichesof bologna and white bread – then theygrease them up with mayonnaise. They’dfaint at the sight of a cinnamon bagel.

Why should only Northeasterners and afew émigrés in Florida salivate over a bowlof stuffed kishke, rolled cabbage, choppedliver? Tell the world! We cured Polio, didn’twe? Split the atom, right? And practicallysingle-handedly introduced a hesitantworld to monotheism. Why shouldn’t ourfellow planetarians eat rugelach instead of (see Roberts, page 12)

dull, doughy biscuits? And if there’s a golfchannel, a ping pong channel, an Albaniansoccer channel, a mountain climbingchannel, why not a Jewish cooking channel?

Furthermore – once my channel wasestablished – ANYBODY could watch –even non-Jews, even my Southern friendswho know of no fish except the bottom-feeding catfish. The first big show wouldbe two hours of devotion to Gefilte catfish(and they’re really hard to catch). And yes,I would reveal my bubbe’s secret – a culinary concept called “over-raisining”.One stuffed cabbage – one cup of raisins.Her second secret,“skip the rice and heavyon chopped meat” – that, I’d save for the second show. But again, as to the audience, there’d be none of those filters –like we block kids from watching underwear commercials or worse, the typical bedroom programming. Even anti-Semites could watch as long as theydidn’t take notes! How long would it taketo convert them around once they electronically viewed a bubbling, goldenyellow kugel on a 332-inch screen?

And just to be ecumenical, occasionallywe’d do Hungarian Goulash or SouthernFried Chicken or Irish Stew – in the earlymorning hours when all good Jews arespreading chopped liver on rye as a latenight snack or dreaming of the same.Oh, and that white bread in the grocerystore – also banned. There would only be one prohibition! We know far betterthan that. Never would we use thatorange American cheese that my

letters that their sons were failing English.A parent’s role is to be an advocate for each

child. That doesn’t mean to blindly supporteverything your child does. It’s to help yourchild and the “system” get along.

I’ve learned an awful lot in the past 40years. In some ways being a mother isnothing like I had expected, and in someways it has been even more wonderfulthan my dreams. My five children are allvery different. I love all five equally. It’shard to believe that I’ve been a mother for40 years. In my mind, I’m just a teenager...

August 5 – Working on Friday Yes, today I have to go to work. I guess

that one of the reasons I’m not enthusedby the idea that Sunday’s are being proposed as a “day off” is because I knowthat it’ll just be another shopping day, likeit is in the states now. So the poorschlubbs working low wages in stores willhave more complicated lives.

My kids are all grown, so I don’t have to

figure out what to do with them whenthere isn’t school. Most of us working inYafiz are either older or younger than thatstage. One of the hard-working full-timeworkers is a single-mother who had totake her kids in the other day. Salary doesnot cover the expense of a babysitter.

Yesterday I didn’t get all the cookingdone. I was tired, ok, and lazy. I onlylooked for guests this week for Shabbatlunch. Friday night, we eat so late, and I’llneed the sleep.

August 7 – Musakka, however youspell it and make it, it’s a hit!

Since musakka isn’t an English word, itcan be spelled all different ways. And itcan also be prepared innumerable ways.I’m pretty new to cooking/baking it, butconsider me an enthusiastic convert. Thisone just has a layer of light green squash (Ithink they call it Mexican squash inArizona,) a layer of eggplant, thenchopped (ground) turkey or chicken flavored with tomato paste, an egg, onionsand spices, and on top is another layer of eggplant as you can see. I dribbled a bitof oil on that top layer, because I didn’twant it to dry out in the oven. I baked ituncovered, then covered in a hot ovenuntil it “seemed”done.

A great advantage of musakka is that it’s baked and served in the same pan. Italso includes both vegetables and animalprotein. You can make it “meatier” ormore “vegetarian,” low fat. For a very simple meal, just serve with a fresh salad.Since I eat a high proportion of vegetablesat each meal, I served it with another vegetable dish plus the salad. (That’s howI’ve kept the weight off, since I lost over 30pounds – 15 kilo – a couple of years ago.)

Batya Medad is a veteran American olah,immigrant in Israel. She and her husbandmade aliyah in 1970 and have been in Shilohsince 1981. She’s a wife, mother, grandmother,EFL Teacher, writer and photographer.Besides her articles and photographs we’ve been featuring in this publication for a number of years, Batya is very involvedin the international cyber community as a Jewish blogger. She has two active blogs, http://shilohmusings.blogspot.comand http://me-ander.blogspot.com, besideshaving established the Kosher CookingCarnival; details on me-ander. You can contact her at shilohmuse@yahoo.com. AAAA

MEDAD(continued from page 10)

j i

Clos de Gat is in the JerusalemMountains on Kibbutz Harel and produces 50,000 bottles annually.

Chateau Golan, on Moshav Eliad on theGolan Heights, produces 60,000 bottles ayear. Pelter, on Moshav Ein Zivan in theGolan Heights, produces 80,000 bottles a year.

Carmel, the flagship winery of Israel in Rison Letzion and Zichron Ya’akov, isthe largest wine producer in the country,producing more than 6.5 million bottles of kosher wine annually. Galil Mountain,on Kibbutz Yiron in the Upper Galilee,produces one million kosher bottles annually.

Wines judged 90–95 are exceptional inevery way; those 96–100 are truly greatwines. In this volume only one wineearned 96 points – Yarden 2006 from the Golan Heights Winery, kosher. Oneearned 95 points – Special Reserve 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon from MargalitWinery. Nine earned a score of 94 pointsand 20 earned a score of 93 points.

Rogov’s Guide to World Kosher Winescategories wines as dry red and white,champagne and sparkling, rose anddessert wines and lists those from:Australia and New Zealand, Austria,Cyprus, France, Italy, Portugal, SouthAfrica, Argentina, and Chile.

After an introduction and overview, thereare essays on kosher wine, kosher vintage2000–2009, drinking habits, scoring andwine language. The afterword includes aguide to tasting wines, glossary and wineries.

While a number of the wines scored inthe low 90s, exceptional in every way, theonly wines to receive a 94 were NapaValley 2006, Cabernet Sauvignon fromCovenant Winery in California; andHerzog Winery’s Napa Valley 2006Generation VIII, to Kalon, wineries inCalifornia and New York. In the scoring95–100, truly great wines, the only winelisted was Hagafen Winery’s Prix Melange,Napa Valley 2004 in California.

Anyone interested in wines and especiallythe growing wine industry of Israel willfind these volumes and treasured gift.Madrich Rogov l’Yayinot Yisrael, the Hebrewedition, is also now available.

French Fish in Mushroom Sauce(4 servings)1/2 can mushroom soup1/3 can milk4 pieces filet fish2 Tbsp. chopped scallions1 1/2 Tbsp. margarine or butter pieces1/2 cup white wine or vermouth3 Tbsp. margarine or butter2 1/2 Tbsp. flour1/2 cup whipping cream1/4 tsp. lemon juicesliced mushrooms1/4 cup grated Swiss cheese1 Tbsp. margarine or butter pieces

Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine mushroom soup and milk in a saucepanand heat. Arrange fish in a butter bakingdish. Pour mushroom soup on top. Addscallions and 1 1/2 Tbsp. butter or margarine pieces. Add wine. Bake in oven 8–10 minutes. Melt 3 Tbsp. butter ormargarine in a saucepan. Blend in flour.Add 1/2 cup fish liquid and whippingcream. Bring to a boil, add lemon juice.Spoon on top of fish. Add a few slicedmushrooms. Sprinkle cheese on top. Dotwith margarine or butter pieces. Bake 20minutes. Broil top to brown.

For this meat dish, try a red cabernetsauvignon, Merlo or cabernet-shiraz blend.

Swiss Steak (4 servings)1–1 1/2 pounds beef steak1/8 cup flour1/2 tsp paprikaoil1/2 chopped onion1 crushed garlic clove1 1/2 tsp. flour1/3 cup beef broth1 Tbsp. dry white wine1/4 tsp. Worcestershire sauce1 Tbsp. tomato sauce1/8 cup chopped green pepper1/8 tsp. oregano

Preheat oven to 350°F. Place flour andpaprika in a plastic bag. Coat meat. Heatoil in a frying pan. Brown meat 1-1/2 minutes on each side. Place in a greasedbaking dish. Add onion and garlic to drippings and cook a few minutes. Blendin flour, beef broth, wine, Worcestershiresauce, and tomato sauce. Add green pepper and oregano. Pour over steak. Bakein oven 50–60 minutes. Serve over noodles.

Sybil Kaplan is a journalist, food writer,compiler and editor of nine kosher cookbooks,and feature writer. AAAA

My KosherKitchenBY SYBIL KAPLAN

Guide to Israeli andworld kosher wines

Rogov’s Guides 2011. By Daniel Rogov.The Toby Press. 2-volume set. 500 pp.$29.95.

Daniel Rogov isIsrael’s top winecritic and the onlyfull-time wine critic in Israel aswell as an experton popular worldkosher wines forthe past 30 years. This year, this 7th edition of the Guide to Israel Winesand 2nd edition of Guide to World KosherWines is an attractive two-volume set,enclosed in a fuchsia-pink box with thesilhouette of a man smelling a wine glass.

The comprehensive, definitive Guide to Israeli Wines is a guide for selecting and storing Israeli wines as well as a compendium of Israel wineries and wines, classified according to a stringentform of scoring.

After a history of wines in Israel,the current and future state of wine production is discussed followed bygrape-growing regions, grape varieties,vintage reports from 1976–2009, questionsof kashrut and information on drinkinghabits. In the afterword is a guide to tasting wines, information about scoring, wine bottles, a glossary of wineterminology and contact information onthe 161 wineries listed.

According to Rogov, the ten best wineproducers are: Golan Heights, Yatir,Margalit, Castel, Clos de Gat, Flam,Chateau Golan, Pelter, Carmel and Galil Moutain.

Golan Heights released their first winesin 1984 and is located in Katzrin in theGolan Heights where it produces six million bottles of kosher wine a yearunder Yarden, Gamla and Golan labels.

Yatir is a kosher boutique winery, ownedby Carmel and is located near Tel Arad inthe Judean Hills and produces 150,000bottles a year. Margalit was one of theearly boutique wineries founded in 1989and now located near Hadera where itproduces between 17,000 and 21,000 bottles annually. Castel is located onMoshav Ramat Raziel in the JerusalemMountains and produces 100,000 bottlesof kosher wine annually.

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 12

Southern friends – sprinkle over salad. NotGorgonzola, not Blue, not even Swiss,which is also sinful. But American cheese!

Ted Roberts, a Rockower Award winner, is a syndicated Jewish columnist who looksat Jewish life with rare wit and insight.When he’s not writing, Ted worships at Etz Chayim Synagogue in Huntsville, Ala.,where for 25 years he has served as bar mitzvah teacher. His inspiration is hispatient wife, Shirley. Check out his Web site:www.wonderwordworks.com. Blogsite:www.scribblerontheroof.typepad.com. Hiscollected works The Scribbler on The Roofcan be bought at Amazon.com or lulu.com/content/127641. AAAA

ROBERTS(continued from page 11)

j i

Tennis: Ilana Kloss, theWorld’s No. 1 rankedwomen’s tennis Doublesplayer in 1976, won theU.S. Open, U.S. ClayCourts , Br i t i sh HardCourts , I ta l ian Open,German Open, Hilton Head Open, andFrench Open Mixed Doubles crowns. In1991, the South African succeeded BillyJean King as Executive Director of WorldTeam Tennis (WTT), and was named itsCEO/Commissioner in 2001.

Read more about each of these honoreesat: www.JewishSports.net.

Lifetime achievement honorees: Moshe Theumim and Bob Levy

The IJSHOF’s Lifetime Achievementhonors were bestowed upon Israel’sMoshe Theumim in 2010, andPhiladelphian Robert Levy in 2011.

Theumim, chairman ofthe Board of Israel’sGITAM/BBDO and thePorter Novelli Company,was presented his Awardat a special luncheon in hishonor at Wingate Institute,this past December.

Bob Levy, chairman ofDRT Industries, Inc., ands u c c e s s f u l c h a i r o f the Philadelphia SportsCongress, is a name synonymous with sports inthe City of Independence.An elected member of the University ofPennsylvania Tennis Hall of Fame, hechaired the U.S. Maccabiah tennis teamsin 1977, 1981, 1985, 1989, and was honorary chair of the 1993 team.

The Robert P. Levy Stable is a highlysuccessful thoroughbred racing andbreeding venture that includes fourEclipse Awards and a Belmont Stakeschampion. Levy chairs the Board ofAtlantic City Racing Association, and is along time director of the ThoroughbredRacing Association.

In 1953, Bob founded and organized theLittle Quakers football team, an age andweight group of young All Stars that, tothis day, maintain a reputation as one ofthe finest boys teams in America. Hismany honors include recognition by theNational Football Foundation and Hall ofFame, and he is recipient of the John B.Kelly Award for “unselfishly contributingdirectly to extending the future of ouryouth through the medium of sports”.

Moshe Theumim, in 1997, led a group ofIsraeli businessmen who purchased thefoundering Hapoel Tel-Aviv Soccer Cluband managed it to 1998 and 1999 IsraelNational Cup championships.

World Championships medalists.Handball: Fred Lewis is a six-time

National Handball Four-Wall SinglesChampion, and 3-timeNat iona l Three-Wal lSingles Champion – allbetween 1972 and 1981.H e w a s t h e 1 9 7 0 s“Handball player of theDecade,”and inducted intothe sport’s Hall of Fame in 1993.

Horse Racing: Bobby Frankel receivedthoroughbred horse racing’s EclipseAward (for “Outstanding Trainer”) fivetimes, including four yearsin a row: 2001–2003.During his career heamassed 3,654 1st placevictories and $227,947,775career earn ings . The second-winningest trainerin racing history was elected to theMuseum of Racing Hall of Fame in 1995.

Ice Hockey: Alfred Kuchevskywas one of the top Russian ice hockeydefensive stars of the1950s. His Soviet teamswon an Olympic goldmedal in 1956 and bronzein 1960, as well as twogolds, two silvers and abronze at the 1954 thru1960 World Championships. He wasinducted to the Soviet/Russian Hall of Fame

Judo: Yael Arad, in 1992, earned thefirst-ever Olympic medalwon by an Israeli – a silvermedal in the Judo half-middleweight (61kg) eventat the Barcelona Games.Internat iona l ly, Arad captured seven gold, eightsilver and nine bronze medals.

Rena Kenokogi, Brooklyn-born RustyGlickman, is considered “the mother ofwomen’s judo.”In 1980 she organized thefirst Women’s World JudoChampionships, and wasr e s p o n s i b l e f o r t h e inclusion of women’s judoas an Olympics event(debuted at the 1988Games). Rena was inductedinto the Internat ionalWomen’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1984.

Media: Leonard Koppett is the onlysports journalist elected to both the baseball andbasketball halls of fame –the J.G. Taylor SpinkAward (baseball) in 1992,and Curt Gowdy MediaAward (basketbal l ) in1994. Koppett was a reporter and columnistfor the New York Herald Tribune, NY Post,and New York Times. He authored 16books on sports.

Jews in SportsJewish Sports Hall of Fame elects twelve

Eight men and four women have beenelected to the International Jewish SportsHall of Fame (IJSHOF) since their 2009 induction ceremonies in Israel. Thefollowing are those who were honored in2010 and 2011. They join the more than330 world-class athletes, sportsmen, andsportswomen who have been recognizedby the IJSHOF since 1979.

Baseball: Sid Gordon,a 13-year Major Leaguepower-hitting infielder-outfielder with the NYGiants, Pittsburgh Piratesand Boston Braves. Thetwo-time NL All Star hit25 or more home-run five consecutiveseasons (1948-52), and was ranked amongthe League’s top ten slugging averages.

Billiards: Michael Sigel was pocketbilliard’s most dominant player in the1980s, winning 10 World Championshipsand six U.S. Open titles.Sigel amassed 38 straightpool and 9-Ball titles during the decade. Hewon his first World title in1976 and last in 1992, andranked No. 2 in the Worldwhen he retired.

Boxing: Max Baerwas World HeavyweightBoxing Champion 1934–1935. Ring Magazinenamed the Boxing Hall ofFamer #22 on its list of the“100 Greatest Punchers ofAll-Time.”He scored 52 KOs in 83 bouts.

“Dutch Sam” SamuelElias – “The Terrible Jew,”is regarded as the greatestsmall man in bare-knucklesring history. The London-born 5’6”/135 lbs. son ofDutch parents fought hisfirst match in 1801, and had more than100 fights, with only one loss – his lastone. Sam was inducted into theInternational Boxing Hall of Fame in 1997.

Figure Skating: Ellen Burka, theHolland-born concentrationcamp survivor, whoseunique figure skatingt r a i n i n g t e c h n i q u e s a n d g r o u n d b r e a k i n g choreography produced 26 Canadian Olympic and

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 13

(see Jews in Sports, page 14)

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 14

War II. Naturally, I expected a Holocausttheme, as there is already a genre of TVdrama about artworks stolen from Jewishfamilies by the murderous Nazis. There is also a tremendous body of literature on this.

Surprisingly, the script by Chris Downeydid not mention Jews at all. The victimhere is Charles Lawson, an octogenarianAfrican American man, affectingly playedby Danny Glover, and Aldis Hodge (as ayounger man in flashbacks), who knowssomething about a stolen Van Gogh painting and is being pursued by a viciousBillionaires Club who are desperate to find the treasure, valued at $100 million.

In 1944, we learn, Lawson saved his platoon, battling Nazis in France, from aGerman sniper. He found a priceless Van Gogh painting on the person of thelone German shooter. While decidingwhat to do about the painting, the youngsoldier was told that the Bronze Medalwill be given to a white person in thesquadron because Uncle Sam does notgive credit for such things to Negroes.That rendered him rather unwilling toturn over the painting.

Through beautifully acted flashbacks,we learn that Charles enlisted in the firstplace because he had learned French fromDorothy Ross (Beth Riesgraf), a childhoodfriend who became the organist at theskating rink in his home town, a blondbeauty who was the daughter of the locallumber baron. The latter was not abovehaving his hirelings threaten and beatCharles when word got out that the twoyoung people were falling in love and

victims will get to see his face and to knowthat “he didn’t get away with it.”

A colleague who happens to be African American tries to understand herdetermination to see this man punished.He wants to know, “Who [better,whom] did you lose?” He asks if it was a great-grandparent or someone fightingoverseas. She waits to frame her reply forher elderly Nazi war criminal patient: “Ididn’t lose anyone. I’m not Jewish. I’m notCatholic. I’m not gay. I’m not crippled. I’mnot a gypsy. I think that my ancestorsactually came over on the Mayflower orsomething. My father’s on the board of thebiggest hospital in Boston.”

It is here that she indicates that herfather pulled strings for her “as if killingthat kid never even happened.” She saysthat she could have run away, but came toSouth America to face her consequences,not to hide, and that she paid for her mistake. Obviously, she expects the dyingNazi to do the same, even if his day ofreckoning is indeed but a day.

Even in her vehemence, however,Minard is gentle with the local childrenwho ask about their teacher. When theyask what’s wrong with him and when he’scoming back, she answers that he has atooth infection and will be fine. WritersJenna Bans and Christine Boylan obviouslybelieve that it is to Minard’s credit to protecther patient’s reputation from the childrenin this way. I won’t quibble with that.

What bothers me is the moral equivalencyheld up here. Minard (and the writers?)employ the Nazi’s story to tell the Minardstory. We assume, however, that the doctorhas killed accidentally. Is this Nazi alongwith most other Nazis to be assumed tohave acted in circumstances beyond theircontrol, if they were young when they wentinto Hitler’s service? Are they to be regardedas not knowing what they were doing?

LeverageThe TNT Network’s amusing thriller,

Leverage, about a band of adept deceiverswho outwit criminals and other malefactors(a fine cast led by actor Timothy Hutton of Ordinary People fame) announced anepisode about art stolen during World

MediaWatchBY RABBI ELLIOT B. GERTEL

WWII-era themesThe short-lived series, Off the Map,

dealt early on with the topic of Nazi warcriminals. The program followed, amongother doctors, Mina Minard, (MamieGummer) who was starting her careeranew in a clinic in South America afterhaving been responsible for the death of ayoung man while working at a largeAmerican urban hospital. The show wasabout her efforts to redeem herself, ifindeed her error was not beyond her control.

At the beginning of an episode titled,“On the Mean Streets of San Miguel,”wemeet an elderly patient who looksremarkably like Ralph Waite (of Walton’sfame), who indeed portrays the Nazi. Welearn that this man is an 86-year-oldbeloved teacher of small children who issuffering from oral cancer.

For some reason, the man feels compelledto confess to Minard. He volunteers that heis from Hungary and “made bad choices.”“I’ve lived a long life, I am ready to go,”heconfides.”He adds: “Take my teeth. I’ve gotgold fillings in my teeth. Take them. AndI’ve got jewelry, gold jewelry. Take themall. It’s not mine. I took it….from them.I’ve done bad things.”

Dr. Minard is determined to do themath. “You said you came here fromHungary 64 years ago? That’s 1942. Whatis your real name?”He announces himselfas Karl Gustav Wolf, SS.”Minard tells hercolleague, “He’s a Nazi.” Wolf does notdeny it. He admits to being a guard in aconcentration camp.

A colleague, already pegging Minard asover-zealous, says that Wolf was 16 yearsof age “when he signed up,” and that he“didn’t even know what he was doing.”Inthis village, Wolf is known as “Abuelito,”abeloved grandfather figure who saved thelife of at least one native child by carryingthis pupil to the clinic.

Minard makes it clear that she wantsWolf to live so that he can go on trial.This puts a new spin on the physician’scommitment to keeping a patient alive.She says: “He doesn’t get to die todaywhen they’re coming for him tomorrow.He had a great life. He’s been hiding outin paradise for 60 years. One more day andhe gets the judgment that he deserves. I’mnot going to let him suffer, but I am goingto give him one more day.”She insists onperforming a procedure on him to preventasphyxiation so that the families of his (see Gertel, page 15)

They expanded the Club’s professionalactivities to include a comprehensive program directed at employing soccer as atool for social change.The program includedseveral hundred soccer/futbol schools in lowsocio-economic neighborhoods, serving20,000 children in all sectors of Israel –including new immigrants, Arabs andDruze, those with special needs, boardingschools, and sheltered workshops for at-risk youths.

Moshe has been editor of Darban,Israel’s national student newspaper, andwas editor of Yediot Ha’achronot, Israel’sleading daily newspaper.

A Chair for Communications in his namewas established at Tel Aviv University,recognizing his contributions to the communications and media sector of Israel.

Bob Levy will receive his LifetimeAward at a special luncheon in his honorlater this year. AAAA

JEWS IN SPORTS(continued from page 13)

j i

Off the Map – (L-R) Ed Begley Jr., MamieGummer, Dru Nabarrete, Ralph Waite,and Mikealani Perales. © ABC Television.

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 15

WEINSTEIN (5.125") x 10.25"

JEWISH POST AND OPINION, THE

WED: 8/10

ALL.SRK-A1.0810.JPOEMAIL

AM AM ES ES

Soundtrack Available On Milan RecordsFrom the best-selling novel Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Available wherever books are sold

UncoverTheSecretInTheMost AcclaimedThrillerOfTheYear

“ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST FILMS!”L E O N A R D M A LT I N , M A LT I N O N M O V I E S

“AN ABSORBING MYSTERY.”OW E N G L E I B E R M A N , E N T E RTA I N M E N T W E E K LY

“WILL KEEP YOU ONTHE EDGE OF YOUR SEAT.”

R E X R E E D, T H E N EW YO R K O B S E RV E R

“A GRIPPING, INTRICATE FILM.”K A R E N D U R B I N , E L L E M AG A Z I N E

K R I S T I N S C OT T T H O M A S A I DA N Q U I N N

EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENTSTARTS FRIDAY, AUGUST 12

WWW.SARAHSKEYMOVIE.COM FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK

ARTWORK©2011 THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

© 2010 - HUGO PRODUCTIONS - STUDIO 37 -TF1 DROITS AUDIOVISUEL - FRANCE2 CINÉMA

THEMATIC MATERIAL INCLUDING DISTURBINGSITUATIONS INVOLVING THE HOLOCAUST

planning, at Charles’s urging, to run awaytogether to France.

Yet Dorothy is unable to leave her familyand her town, despite her love for Charles.In time she marries and has a daughter.She passes away after her husband, only acouple of years before Charles, tired andill, returns to his home town to find thatthere are unscrupulous individualssearching for the painting and for him. Welearn that Charles had given the paintingto Dorothy for safe keeping, and he findscomfort in learning that she had beenloyal to him in her own way, though theynever saw each other again after his onebrief visit upon returning from war.

The episode is touching, and rightlyraises concerns and issues regarding thetreatment of blacks who served theircountry in World War II. The writer makesa point of saying that the German soldierhad saved the painting from a fire in a French museum. This is certainly a legitimate scenario. Not every accountabout stolen art has to be Holocaust-related. Jews do not have a copyright onbeing discriminated against. Indeed, mostJews regard it as a solemn obligation to tellthe story of the Holocaust in order toensure that bigotry and discrimination arefought and overcome.

But in view of the existing genre of dramas on stolen Holocaust art or jewelry,there is something in-your-face in thisepisode that suggests: “This is not thestory that you expect. The victim is not theone you expect.”

Is that simply the impression of onewho has followed Holocaust dramas, or is the writer himself uncertain of his message? After all, he suggests at onepoint that the painting was among confiscated artworks placed in that museum. (So a German soldier rescues apainting from an Ally-bombed Germanmuseum and takes it to war with him inFrance?) Would it have made a differencehad the masterpiece been identified ashaving been in that museum for manyyears before Hitler’s rise to power? Is theabsence of such a clarification tantamountto pitting suffering against suffering anddiscrimination against discrimination?

Rabbi Gertel has been spiritual leader ofConservative Congregation Rodfei Zedeksince 1988. A native of Springfield, Mass.,he attended Columbia University and JewishTheological Seminary. He is the author oftwo books, What Jews Know aboutSalvation and Over the Top Judaism:Precedents and Trends in the Depiction ofJewish Beliefs and Observances in Filmand Television. He has been media critic forThe Jewish Post & Opinion since 1979. AAAA

GERTEL(continued from page 14)

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 16

The Seed ofAbraham finds itsroots at the Fringe Sometimes all it takes is a leap of faith

Love is a battlefield. From JeromeAvenue to Jerusalem, two brothers withbig dreams for the stage and the belovedgirl upstairs confront their own personalconflicts in The Seed of Abraham, a newmusical coming to The New YorkInternational Fringe Festival Aug. 14–25.

Written by playwright Bob Zaslow withmusic and lyrics by Kenny Karen, The Seedof Abraham takes its audience back to theyear 1967. In Israel, guns blaze, bombs fall,and a young nation fights for its life during the Six Day War. In the Bronx, threeyoung people fight for their dreams.Benjamin (Barry DeBois), a promisingsinger, Abie (Caleb Teicher), a talenteddancer, and Leah (Joey Ama Dio), a budding journalist, defy their parents’wishes and now find themselves on thebrink of success. But when war breaks outin the Holy Land, loyalties are tested, andtheir fates hang in the balance forcingthem to decide: do they answer to themselves, to their families – or to God?

As they sing the opening song,“The OldBronx Cheer,” the lights and movementtelegraph something unmistakable – thisis going to be one old-fashioned,Broadway-type show. Using rear screenprojection for backgrounds, audiences will

Jewish Theater

(L-R) Joey Ama Dio (Leah), Barry DeBois(Ben), and Caleb Teicher (Abie).

get the feeling for locations like MorrisAvenue, the 92nd Street Y, a synagogueand the city of Jerusalem.

“I originally decided to write this showbecause I wanted to find a way to shareKenny Karen’s beautiful songs with a larger audience,”says Zaslow, who added,“I heard his CD, Choir Boy, and listened toit over and over again. Eventually, a vaguestory formulated out of the air, with aboutsix or so songs from the CD as the core ofthe story. Then, as the story grew and tookon a life of its own, I asked Kenny to writesome original songs where I thought dialogue couldn’t do the job as well as asong could.” Karen hopped on board.“Bob’s genuine enthusiasm was the catalyst for our joining forces,”says Karen.“The song ‘Jerusalem Is Mine’ was my initial foray into contemporary Judaic songwriting. Although it has been sung bymany recording and concert artists overthe years, my son Caleb offers his interpretation as Abie in the show. It’s as if the baton has been passed to a new generation. I’m very proud.”

In addition to DeBois, Ama Dio andTeicher (who is also the show’sChoreographer), Sally Burtenshaw directsa talented cast that includes DeniseDeMirjian (Miriam), Walt Frasier(Mailman/Nightclub Owner/Speaker),Jonathan Kline* (Morrie), John AnthonyLopez (Joshua), Ricky Alan Saunders(Chorus, U/S to Benjamin and Abie) andAmy Beth Williams (Frieda).

The production team includes ShelbyTaylor Love (Stage Manager), LauraBremen (Lighting Designer), Phillip Rudy(Sound Designer), Catherine Siracusa(Costume Designer), Carolyn Emery(ACR), Lisa Marie Maher (ASM) and BenHoughton (Assistant Musical Director).Executive Producer for The Seed ofAbraham is Marni LaRose.

All performances are at The BleeckerStreet Theatre in New York City. Ticketscan be purchased by calling 866-468-7619or online through www.fringenyc.org. Formore information on the show visit:www.seedofabrahamamusical.com. AAAA

(L-R) Barry DeBois (Ben) and Joey Ama Dio(Leah). Photo Credits: Marni LaRose.

As I Heard ItREVIEWED BY MORTON GOLD

Jewish music “light”The Cantors Assembly in conjunction with

the United Synagogue of ConservativeJudaism has issued a two CD set, Volume10 of The Spirit Series under the heading“The Spirit of Shalom”, Voices of theConservative Movement. This column willbe devoted to the first of the two CD’s.

With regards tothe texts selected,all deal with theyearning for peace,between Israel andits Arab neighbors,and for all peopleeverywhere. I havenothing but praise for this concept. I dohave a problem with the musical part of thefirst CD. (I haven’t yet listened to the 2nd.)

Musically speaking, for the majority ofthe selections, the approach is simplistic,and while entertaining, designed toappeal to the musically unsophisticated.The style is American popular music, light.With few exceptions, either with regardsto performance or content, the selectionsare lightweight, more suitable as encoresrather than the main course selections.

With the exception of Numbers 3 and 5,selections one through seven have more incommon with each other than significantdifferences between them. I am not referringto the performances or the performershere. While the voices of the soloists are light, the singing is good and thearrangements are professional.

What turned me off is the music itself.While these selections may, of course beperformed in the synagogue or temple, theysuggest a program designed for an audienceof teens following the service in the social hall.

This genre may currently be in vogueespecially in California, but if these selectionsare what the Conservative Movement nowpurports to be Jewish music, then theword “light”ought to be added to the title.

The committee of cantors that selectedthese pieces is all learned and experiencedhazzanim. My observations have nothingto do with them personally or collectivelybut rather with the compositions selectedfor this CD. The booklet with the CD’s isexcellent and a good guide to the texts whichis often more appealing than the music.

Selection No. 1, “Shir Shalom” uses children’s voices and has a “catchy” tune.Selection No. 2,“Oseh Shalom”has a phrase

(see Gold, page 17)

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 17

On dating stalkersDear Avi and Adele,

I’m a 28 year old male who contactedonline a 24 year old woman a few weeks ago.We went out once, and I liked her alright,but I don’t want to pursue things further,and I told her so (unlike most men!) in thenicest way possible. Well, she has proceededto contact me at work, online, at home, hasfound me on Facebook, and keeps trying toreach me. Seems pretty immature if you askme. What can I do to make the stalking stop?~ Should I be Scared?

Dear Scared,Wowsers, you have what some might

call a Class 5 Clinger. The problem isn’tyou and the problem isn’t really your littlesticky-like-glue girl…the problem comesfrom her experience with so many men outthere who have tread this path before you.

Think about it: she’s gone on countlessother first dates. These dates have eitherprogressed to a second date or have notgone further. Most guys don’t have theconfidence (or decency) to be clear withtheir Ms. Not Right, so they’ll usually saythings like “I had a great time” or “I’ll callyou”or whatever other line works to wrapup the date and get them out the door. Butin her experience, more times than not,the guy doesn’t mean what he says. Whichbodes poorly for you: if you said that youdon’t want things to move forward, whyshould she believe you? None of her otherguys meant what they said, after all!

So she’s not going to let it go, becauseshe thinks there’s no logic in listening towhat you say. In this case, action is thebest reaction to her behavior. Hide yourFacebook profile from her entirely (eithermake yourself un-searchable for a monthor add her to your block list). Remove herfrom any of your chat accounts or makeyourself invisible when you’re online. Setup a filter on your email that sends all hermessages straight to the trash. Onceyou’ve done all that, send her the “FinalEmail,”which should read something like“Dear Gertie, I have received your emails,texts and messages. I do not wish to pursuea relationship or friendship with you and askthat you stop contacting me. Be well. – Avi.”

Abrupt? Sure. Direct? You bet. But sheneeds to hear you clearly. There’s no needto be scared of this behavior, but if youdon’t take action you’re tacitly encouragingher to continue.

BY AVI & ADELE

ConfidentiallyYours

On hosting out-of-town suitorsDear Avi and Adele,

I’m a 33 year old woman who recently metsomeone on J-date who lives out of town.He’s 37. We met in Chicago – where neitherof us are from – so that we could meet onneutral ground and went on two datesthroughout the weekend. We had a reallygood time and I’m really excited to say thatnow he’s coming to visit me. Challenge is:Where should he stay? While I’ve enjoyedgetting to know him for the past few months,both on the phone and in person, I’m notsure it’s really appropriate to have him staywith me, even though we are both old enoughto be mature about the situation. Should hestay with me (I do have a guestroom) or in ahotel? ~“Chai-ly” Hospitable

Dear Chai-ly,Are you feeling like a lady of a certain

generation? Are you looking to us to setyour moral code? That’s never a good idea,since we all know that Adele has few (ifany) standards!

We’re not certain where your hesitationis coming from, although we recognizethat it’s cloaked in what you’re alluding toas some sort of morality. Who says what isappropriate or not appropriate for twovery adult individuals? We’re sure notgoing to weigh in on that!

But we will say that what’s probablymost important at this juncture is that youfigure out what you really want out of thisvisit. Do you want a lot of one-on-onetime? Then have him stay over! Do youwant to still keep up the pretense of dating as if you both lived in the samecity? Then book him a room at the Hilton.You already have the answer you need;you’re just not asking the right question.

Supporting a long-distance relationship istough and visits can be even tougher if you’rehoping for a marathon of togetherness. Asyou make your decision, consider howmuch time you want to yourself, what sortof out-of-the-house activities you’ll enjoyand if there are certain things you want todo together-but-separate. (Adele takes allof her long-distance-loves to the opera, notbecause she enjoys it or even understandsit, but because she’s able to put her attentionaway from the guy while still sitting nextto him.)

In the end, it wouldn’t hurt you to have a hotel room at your service and if he doesn’t end up using it, more power to you!

To submit questions to ConfidentiallyYours: Avi and Adele, please email aa@letmypeoplegrow.org. For additional Jewishcontent, please go to www.letmypeoplegrow.org. AAAA

repeated (I lost count) but has a lovelydescant well sung by an unidentified soprano.No. 3,“Live in Peace Together” is a modaltune in the style of Middle Eastern music,with drums. It really does belong in thiscollection. In No. 4,“Hinei BaShalom”thetext is more appealing than the music.

No. 5, “Eggad”, has a real voice (LeonLisak), an arresting melodic line with anorchestra yet. This sort of thing might givefolks ideas! No. 6 is “Uf’ros Aleinu”. Theopening phrase could be sung in Temple Isuppose. After that, welcome to Carnival.No. 7 is “Sha’alu Sh’lom Y’rushalayim. Notmuch difference in style or performancebetween No. 6 and No. 7. Take your pick. No. 8 is “Prophecy of Peace”. Okay,if one really wants to have a popular orAmerican commercial style of music, let itbe of original quality as this one is. SamGlaser made a really fine arrangementwhich enhances the beauty of this selection.

No.9, “Sim Shalom” has pop style butwith a Latin accent. Still, this one is verywell done. However, change the text and onewould never know that this is an exampleof Jewish music. No.10 is “Shalom Rav”(Klepper). In this case familiarity does notbreed contempt. On the contrary, I havenothing but admiration for a work that isnow several decades old.This classic work hasaged very well. It is very well performed.No. 11 is “Sim Shalom”. This very kosherpiece is Jewish because, simply put, it is. It doesnot attempt to be some kind of cultural hybrid.It is what it is and it is performed very well.

No. 12 is “One Light, One Sun”. This isa musically lightweight work with asequence type of melody. However, it isvery well performed. No. 13 is “YihyuL’ratzon”with music by Charles Davidson.It is well that the concluding work on thisCD is by a serious composer of synagoguemusic. I find it strange however that of thetwo significant compositions on this CD ofmusic under the aegis of the ConservativeMovement, two are by composers whoseachievements are under the auspices ofthe Reform movement!

To conclude, all of the pieces selected forthis CD are well performed. My taste maynot coincide with yours.You may very wellactually like the compositions I did not. Ifso, that is your right. However, I must callthem as I hear them. It was not my intentionto offend the committee who selected theseworks. If left to me, I would have omittedmore than one of their choices. In the fullness of time I will turn my attention tothe second of CD’s in Volume 10. Shalom.

Dr. Gold is a prize winning composer,conductor and has been involved with Jewishmusic all his life. He may be reached at:drmorton gold@yahoo.com. AAAA

GOLD(continued from page 16)

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 18their familiar home in face of the experienced difficulties of being on therun with fellow refugees. Guy, Hannah’sheroic and resourceful boyfriend whojoined the Belgium Resistance, had a special connection to the Altenbergs.His mom was at one time Dr. Altenberg’sgirlfriend and his father saved the doctorduring WWI while fighting ironically onthe German side.

We learn of the discrimination, socialisolation and hostility faced by theAltenbergs despite the doctor’s kindnessto all, and even Lucy, Hanna’s best friend,turning on her. One morning they foundon their front door an unmistakable message and warning,“Jews go away”. Inthe knick of time, before round-up anddeportation, Guy takes them into hidingwith its loss of basic comforts, but thatproved to be only a temporary shelterfrom an obsessive enemy pursuing them.Upon separation from Hanna, Guy’s parting words to his beloved and equallydedicated friend whose life he saved more than once,“till I see you again”(thebook’s title), would in time be fulfilledupon liberation from Auschwitz.Following a terrifying ordeal only Hannahand her sister Birna survived, withHannah even witnessing the hanging ofher brother Bernard.

The incarceration in Auschwitz’s unmitigated darkness of evil began withthe infamous Selection Process thatSylvia, the older, experienced and devotedPolish Jewish inmate who took Hannahunder her loving and protective wings,describes with dark humor,“the SelectionProcess is the Nazi version of Yom Kippur,because this is the Day of Atonement for alot of us and Madov and Mengele areGod.”(p. 254).

Sylvia, a rabbi’s daughter, used to be auniversity professor of Math and Physics,speaking five languages. A caught escapeefrom Birknau, her motherly reaching outto support Hannah and Birna gave, nodoubt, purpose and meaning to her ownthreatened life, thus helping Sylvia survive, as we are reminded of Dr. ViktorFrankl. He is the famous survivor and psychiatrist, who established the School of Logotherapy. That is therapy throughfinding meaning in one’s life, irrespectiveof the circumstances.

Hannah is sadistically forced to fightwith other women and the losing partyeach time is to die. In stark literary realismwe are exposed to the unbridled bestialityof those running the death camp, and thepainful dehumanization of the manyinnocent victims prior to their indescribabledeath. In the midst of the hopeless existence at Auschwitz, a ray of sunshineemerges with the perhaps unlikelyromance between Birna and Major Eric,

the “Good German”, who is no less than the stepson of evil incarnateCommandant Schmidt, whose wife, Eric’smother, is equally barbaric. Interestingly,Sylvia came to the conclusion that all the Nazis are to be condemned but not all the Germans.

A serious novel on Auschwitz is obviously a unique challenge, with theauthor’s moral obligation to remain faithful to what Auschwitz was and alwaysrepresent, yet allowing an author artisticlicense of creative freedom. That said,Robert Friedman develops an intriguingplot while succeeding in maintaining areasonable balance. A sequel to thisrevealing book is in the works along witha screen play.

Guy’s letter that Hannah safeguarded ather own mortal risk is surely in the spiritof Anne Frank as well as the other Anne,Anne Altenhaus Friedman, “the enemycan break my bones but they can’t breakmy spirit. Although there is death allaround us, I have a strong will to live so Ican hold you once more and never let yougo. With my parents gone and hope fadingfast I have a million reasons to die, but onereason to live, so I can see you again. Till I see you again…”(p.1).

The author’s maternal grandparents,Isaac and Pepi Altenhaus, on the way toAuschwitz where they perished, were ableto throw out of the train a last message totheir daughters Anne and Mina who wereordered to an orphanage where they survived in spite of close calls. The sistersreceived their parents parting words at thewar’s end from a family friend to whom itwas addressed. The note which waspicked up by an unknown person and wassent to the address on it, assured the twogirls not to worry for their parents weremerely being relocated to a labor camp.One wonders if the parents really believedit themselves or sought to allay theirdaughters’fears. The historical note is nowfound in the United States HolocaustMemorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Rabbi Dr. Isreal Zoberman is the spiritualleader of Congregation Beth Chaverim inVirginia Beach, Va. He is the son of PolishHolocaust survivors, spending his earlychildhood in the Germany’s WetzlarDisplaced Persons Camp (1947–1949). AAAA

BookReviewREVIEWED BY RABBI ISRAEL ZOBERMAN

Till We Meet Again. By Robert D.Friedman. Dominion Press. 2010. Pp. 486.

The Tidewater community, the Jewishand general ones, surely lovingly remembersand even reveres the memory of our ownAnne Altenhaus Friedman who till heruntimely passing was such a vital force forgood through her active participation andpublic speaking as a member of theremarkable Holocaust Commission of theUnited Jewish Federation of Tidewater.A Holocaust survivor from Antwerp,Belgium, along with her sister Mina, Anneleft an indelible mark on all who knewher, retaining her beauty and nobility,dignity and courage till the very end as shestruggled with a terminal illness.

Her son, budding author Robert D.Friedman, provesto be a true literarytalent as he payshomage to his surviving momand aunt, and allwho perished inthe consumingShoah, in a largetome that is anirrestible read.The fictional novelwith roots in AnneAltenhaus Friedman’s family’s trying sagaduring WWII, takes us to the bittersweetjourney of the book’s protagonist, 16-year-old Hannah Altenberg, who along withher younger sister and twin brothers livedcomfortable, carefree lives, even privilegedones in a loving upper middle class Jewishhome with their physician father and doting mother, not realizing that all thatwould radically change.

With the German invasion of Belgiumand the capital Antwerp’s occupation onMay 10, 1940, the state of the Jewish population gradually deteriorated withmany leaving for America and othersincluding Hannah’s family and particularlyher father, hesitating about such a drasticmove while falsely hoping that their situation would stabilize. Dr. Altenbergwas leery about giving up his medicalpractice and later on would admit to histragic mistake. Though once escaping theAltenberg’s made another costly error injudgment when they chose to return to

A serious novel on Auschwitz

The JewishPost&Opinion

1427 W. 86th St. #281Indianapolis, IN 46260email: jpostopinion@gmail.comphone and fax: (317) 405-8084website: www.jewishpostopinion.com

under the name of Giovanni Rossi. Theyare visiting Julian Isherwood, a London artdealer, to discuss restoration of a painting,suspected to be by Titian, just after theylearn that terrorist bombs have explodedin Paris and Copenhagen killing 65 people.Isherwood is a volunteer aide to Mossadwith the task of helping to maintainAllon’s cover as an art restorer, a skill atwhich he is most adept. After completingthe business with Isherwood, Allon andhis wife are walking through CoventGarden en route to lunch when Allonspots a man he suspects of being a suicidebomber. He is prevented from shootingthe man by two London policemen whoare alarmed by seeing a gun about to befired in Covent Garden. The bomb goesoff, killing 18 people and critically injuringmany others. Allon is quickly releasedfrom custody by Scotland Yard, presumablyat the insistence of British intelligencewhich is aware of his true identity.

Allon and Chiara return to Cornwallwhere he is visited by the head of Israel’sintelligence service who asks Allon to goto Washington to meet with the CIAwhich believes it knows who is behind thethree bombings. Silva is so up-to-date inhis writing that he indicates his awarenessof the recent killing of Osama Bin Ladenin Pakistan by describing the latest terrorist as “the new Bin Laden.” He is portrayed as Rashid, an American-bornMuslim cleric, living in Yemen. Rashid ismodeled on Anwar al-Awlaki, an imamborn in New Mexico and educated in theUnited States. He is a dangerous al-Qaedaleader who is on the CIA target list for assassination.

The narrative, which has been relativelystraight-forward up to this point, nowbecomes intriguingly complex. A numberof characters are introduced, including a large Mossad team and Sarah Bancroft,an art historian and CIA agent who hasworked with Allon in the past. The mostinteresting individual is Nadia, a verywealthy Arab heiress who was at the scenesome years ago when Allon killed herfather. A complicated scheme is developedthat involves persuading Nadia to participate in an intricate plot designed tooust Rashid. We learn more about him andhis colleagues.

After several shifts of scene, the excitingand tense action finally moves to Dubaiand Saudi Arabia. What ensues there willkeep readers glued to the pages of thebook in order to learn the final outcome.The usual upshot of “good guys” winningand “bad guys”losing is far too simplistic aresult for Silva. He provides a satisfactory-unsatisfactory termination that demonstratesonce again his masterful control of the spythriller genre.

be the only way to consider J Street’sviews because Ben-Ami’s spirited challenge to the status quo has resulted inhis occasionally being blocked fromspeaking at some synagogues and Jewishorganizations.

The opening chapters of the bookdescribe Ben-Ami’s forbears, who werepart of the First Aliyah, immigrants whocame to Palestine from Russia in the1880s. He discusses the pioneering days,as experienced by his great-grandparentsand he tells about the involvements of hisparents and grandparents. Oddly enoughin view of Ben-Ami’s progressive views,his father was a right-wing follower ofVladimir Jabotinsky and a member ofIrgun. He was sent to the United States in1939 where he was a member of “theBergson group,” charged with combatingthe prevailing anti-Zionist views and with raising funds to support Jewishimmigration to Palestine. He remained inthe United States, serving in the Americanarmy during World War II and settling on New York’s West Side where Ben-Amiwas born.

The book contains a detailed account ofhow J Street was founded and the originof its name but, most of all, it focuses onlucidly and comprehensively presentingBen-Ami’s perspective on what should bethe up-to-date attitude of American Jewstowards the Israeli-Palestinian strife.

This is a welcome and valuable additionto the debate about the role of AmericanJews, demonstrating forthrightly thatthere is a perspective other than the onethat has been dominant for so long. Thestance presented here energeticallyattempts to refute the idea that the Israeli-Palestinian situation is a problem withouta solution.

Eleventh novel is electrifying thriller

Portrait of a Spy. By Daniel Silva. NewYork: Harper Collins, 2011. 456 Pages.$26.99.

This electrifyingthriller by DanielSilva is hiseleventh novel featuring GabrielAllon. First intro-duced in 2000 inThe Kill Artist, thisappealing and dar-ing Mossad agenthides his identityby working as anart restorer. Here, he takes on one of hismost challenging assignments.

Allon is living with his wife, Chiara, atthe edge of the cliffs in Cornwall, England

Another role forAmerican Jews in the Israeli-Palestinianconflict

A New Voice for Israel. By Jeremy Ben-Ami. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,2011. 256 Pages. $26.

It is an Americanmyth that every problem has asolution. Neitherthe history of theworld nor thebelief systems ofother societiessubstantiate thisnotion. Our failedefforts to help the Israelis and the Palestiniansresolve their intractable differences sadlydemonstrate the delusional nature of this dogma.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, author of this powerfuland persuasive presentation, robustlyrejects the notion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is beyond unraveling.He translated his sincere and earnest conviction into action by establishing JStreet in 2008. That increasingly forcefuland effective organization provides freshleadership to the American Jewish community by earnestly advocating a revitalized two-state solution to theIsraeli-Palestinian conflict. Ben-Ami repudiates the view of older AmericanJewish organizations that automaticallyecho the posture of the Israeli governmentregardless of whether or not it is dominatedby right-wing politicians who are dubiousabout the prospects of peace with thePalestinians. Up to now, these entrenchedgroups have successfully influencedAmerican foreign policy regarding theIsraeli-Palestinian conflict.

J Street offers a rousing alternative perspective, urging impressively that theUnited States should persuade Israel togive up the land required for thePalestinians to have their own state. Itconclusively argues that this will both disentangle the clash and insure a Jewishmajority in a democratic Israel.

Since this a condensed oversimplificationof J Street’s position, readers are stronglyurged to get hold of this clearly written bookin order to reach their own conclusion. Ina few communities, reading the book may

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 19

Book ReviewsREVIEWED BY MORTON I. TEICHER

(see Teicher, page 20)

that she was “ashamed of my parents, ofpoverty, and ugly clothing and furniture.”

Howe did well in her English studies atcollege; she was elected to Phi Beta Kappaand encouraged to pursue graduate education. After a year at Smith Collegewhere, among other things, she learned“about being a Jew in a land populated by Gentiles,” she entered the doctoral program at the University of Wisconsin,having made the move to the mid-Westbecause she had married a man who wasa graduate student at the University ofChicago. When he dropped out, she wentwith him to New York, having completedthe requirements for the Ph.D., save forthe dissertation. She found a job atHofstra and, cryptically, she mentions her divorce and her marriage to a Hofstracolleague who went to work in Baltimore.She was employed there by GoucherCollege, beginning in 1960. During hereleven years at Goucher, she started toteach women’s studies and also, afterspending a month during the FreedomSummer of 1964 in a Jackson, MississippiFreedom School, she included racism inher courses.

Maintaining the pattern of elliptical references to her husbands, Howe writesbriefly that she divorced her third husband and re-married in 1966. Thismarriage lasted 20 years, finally endingpartly because Howe was more and moreinvolved in the women’s movement andthe Feminist Press. In 1971, she became aprofessor at Old Westbury, a new LongIsland campus in the State University ofNew York system, where she transferredthe Feminist Press that she had started in Baltimore.

Most of the rest of the book describesher constant international travel on behalfof the Feminist Press, including accountsof her encouraging many women writersand then working to obtain grants to support them and to subsidize publication.The problems of administering and fundinga publishing house are explored. A notableomission from the narrative is the baremention of her attending the 1985 UNconference on women in Nairobi withoutsaying anything about the hateful effortsthere to condemn Zionism and Israel.

Howe decided to forego a chronologicalpresentation in favor of one organized bytopic. The result is some repetition andchoppiness. Nevertheless, her candidlyforthright account provides biographicaldata alongside of a valuable history of howthe women’s movement began.

Dr. Morton I. Teicher has been a frequentvisitor to Israel since 1963. He helped toestablish the School of Social Work at BarIlan University. In 1975, he served as a visiting professor in Jerusalem and he laterco-authored a book on Project Renewal. AAAA

August 10, 2011 The Jewish Post & Opinion 20

Women’s movement andFeminist Press founder

A Life in Motion. By Florence Howe.New York: The Feminist Press, 2011. 586Pages. $24.95.

Early in her appropriately named memoir, Florence Howe describes hersubway ride from her Brooklyn home to Hunter College High School inManhattan, a tripshe continued tomake for sevenyears as she completed herthree high schoolyears and her fouryears at HunterCollege. She hasbeen traveling eversince both in theUnited States andoverseas. This book exhaustively recountsher many trips after she helped to start the women’smovement and became the founder of theFeminist Press.

By contrast, she refers tersely to her fourhusbands and “several lovers in between,”identifying the husbands only by one initial and not naming the lovers. Shedevotes somewhat more detail to her ownfamily, especially her troubled relationshipwith her mother, an unhappy woman who eventually developed Alzheimer’sDisease. Howe felt closer to her maternalgrandparents, her “Baba and Zaida,” withwhom she spoke Yiddish. Her grandfatheralso taught her Hebrew. Howe’s fatherwas an uneducated taxi driver and gambler who eventually killed himself, asdid her younger brother. She sadly writes

TEICHER(continued from page 19)

j i

It’s Friday, 6:10 p.m. in Tel Aviv and theEl Al Boeing 738 airplane is taking off.Taking off for where? Minsk, of course,and it will land at 9 p.m., with a BusinessClass if you so desire. Minsk – wheretoday Jews constitute about one-half ofone percent of the population? That’sright, pad’ner. There’s also a flight onTuesdays. The fare is $407 round trip.Kosher food? Of course!

The U.S. Migdol family was among themany who originated in Minsk, now Belarusand formerly Russia and occasionallyPoland. In 2009 it had a population of 1.8 million.You may have never heard of itbut it’s the capital and largest city inBelarus. (See photos at: http://www.minskcityguide.net/photo-gallery/minsk-down-town-photos/.)

The earliest references to the city date tothe 11th century (1067). In 1242 it becamea part of Lithuania. It was annexed fromPoland by Russia in 1793. It has a warmsummer climate but on January 17, 1940the record low was -40°F. The record highis 95°F.

The city’s founding is believed to beSept. 2, 1067. It went back and forthbetween Poland and Russia. By 1790, it hada population of 7,000 and most residentswere Jews and Poles. It became a railroadlink between Moscow and Warsaw.

During WWI, Minsk was a battle-frontcity. At the time of WWII Minsk was oneof the largest Nazi-run ghettos, housingover 100,000 Jews.

At the 1897 census, Jews were thelargest ethnic group in Minsk, constituting47,500 out of 91,000 people. Jews were52%, Russians 25% and Poles 11%.

Very few Jews survived the Holocaust.By 1959 the Jewish population there was3.4% Jews. By 1999 the Jewish populationdwindled to .6% of the Minsk population.The Jewish population peaked in the early1970s at 50,000, but some estimated that it was more than double that amount.Mass-scale emigration to Israel, the U.S.and even Germany took away many.Thereare about 10,000 Jews in Minsk today.

Amazingly, Yiddish remained a majorlanguage in Minsk until the 20th century.Most speak Russian today. English is themost popular international language.

Between 30–50% of Minsk’s peoplepractice no organized religion. Of thosewho recognize a religion, 70% are RussianOrthodox, 15-20% Roman Catholic and5% Protestants. There are few Jews or

A look at MinskHome of my ancestors

BY MARVIN J. MIGDOL

Muslims practicing their religion in anorganized fashion.

Bribes and stealing of mobile phonesare among the most common of crimes.That reminds me, what does Minsk havein common with Dallas, Texas? LeeHarvey Oswald was a resident of Minskfor 30 months in the late 1950s–early1960s. He was sent there to work in a fac-tory and defecting from the U.S. to theSoviet Union.

Do you know the favorite song of theRussian food inspector? It was dinnertimein Russia So-Ve-Et.

Well, now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have avodka!

Marvin Migdol is a Dallas-based writerwho has written for the P-O for 46 years.Contact him at fmmigdol@gmail.com. AAAA