Jewish Standard, December 30, 2016

MEET FORT LEES RABBI ILAN ACOCA page 6
AN AFTERNOON OF JAZZ AND JEWS page 8

BIOGRAPHER OF A CHIEF RABBI COMING TO TEANECK page 10
A YIDDISH GOD OF VENGEANCE WORTH SEEING page 33
DECEMBER 30, 2016

VOL. LXXXVI NO. 13 $1.00
NORTH JERSEY
85
2016
THEJEWISHSTANDARD.COM
Evoking
memories
Fair Lawn native
Eliezer Sobel creates
picture books to engage
his mother and others
with Alzheimers page 22
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2 JEWISH STANDARD DECEMBER 30, 2016
Page 3
Shmuley Boteach
hits the big time
We knew him when he was just
a reality television star, Kosher Sex
guru, Englewood zoning board
plaintiff, Republican congressional
candidate, and columnist for the
Jewish Standard.
More recently, Rabbi Shmuley
Boteach has embraced social media,
with 240,000 followers and 41,000
tweets on his @RabbiShmuley Twitter
account.
He also has embraced the incoming
Trump administration.
Rabbi Boteach recently posted
a picture of himself standing with
incoming White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, who previously
boasted of helping turn Breitbarts
website into a platform for the altright white supremacist movement.
Bannon seemed decidedly ill at ease

in posing with the rabbi, his left hand
clenched tightly into a fist, but he
smiled for the camera.
Shmuley wasnt the only one who
liked the picture.
On the other the end of the political spectrum, the liberal group Truah:
The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights
made the picture into a social media
post of its own, juxtaposing it with
a picture of a Jewish anti-Bannon
protest and captioning it: Not your
rabbi? Stand with ours.
Its like they say: You know youve
made the big time when your enemies are fundraising with your face.
So congratulations, Shmuley! Were
proud to say we knew you when.
LARRY YUDELSON
Spinagogue makes dreidel

a major league affair
You had a little dreidel. You made it out of
clay. And dreidel you did play.
But face it: Your handmade dreidel just doesnt
cut it in todays competitive gaming environment.
Fortunately, dreidel lovers everywhere can
progress to the big leagues with Spinagogue,

which turns dreidel into a multiple-player game
with multiple rules, multiple game board inserts,
and an arena of its own.
The Spinagogue, now on Kickstarter, is a
wooden magen david: The inner hexagon is the spinning
arena, and the outer triangles
are where the players stash their
gelt. The game includes six plastic dreidels, a digital timer, and a
rule book featuring many games.
Sure, theres classic dreidel,
but theres also Spinnings a
dreidel version of baseball. Gimmel is a hit, hei is a ball, nun a
strike, and shin is out. Or you can
try to spin your dreidel to the
most valuable target.
At $39, the Spinagogue costs
more than a dreidels worth of
clay, but its a small price to pay
to prove that youre spry and
ready when it comes to spinning
LARRY YUDELSON
Chanukah tops.
CONTENTS
Candlelighting: Friday, December 30 4:19 p.m.

Shabbat ends: Saturday, December 31, 5:24 p.m.
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call 201-837-8818 or bit.ly/jsubscribe
NOSHES ...............................................................4
BRIEFLY LOCAL ..............................................14
COVER STORY ................................................ 22
OPINION ........................................................... 26
DVAR TORAH........................................... 32
ARTS & CULTURE .......................................... 33
CALENDAR ......................................................34
CROSSWORD PUZZLE ................................ 35
OBITUARIES .................................................... 37
CLASSIFIEDS .................................................. 38
GALLERY ..........................................................40
REAL ESTATE...................................................41
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JEWISH STANDARD DECEMBER 30, 2016 3
Noshes
Yiddish word farkakt perfectly

encapsulates the year 2016
Headline of column by New York Daily News writer Gersh Kuntzman
UMPTEETH AMITYVILLE:
If for nothing else,

go see Jennifer J.
I am not a great fan
of the Amityville
movies and wasnt
going to write about the
seventeenth (!) film in
the series until I saw that
JENNIFER JASON
LEIGH, 54, has a starring
role. The new film is
Amityville: The Awakening and it has a pretty
familiar Amityville plot
line. A teenage girl, Bella,
and her mother (Leigh)
move into a new house,
but when strange stuff
happens, Bella suspects
that her mother has
moved the family into
the infamous Amityville
house.
This isnt a prestigious
role for Leigh, and shes
probably doing it for the
gelt. But shes a real pro
and she proved in her
Oscar-nominated role in
The Hateful Eight (2015)
that she could play anything, including a very evil
woman. If the Amityville
script gives her half a
chance, shell make the
movie worth a look. (This
film opens January 6. I
am writing about it early
because my next column
will be about the Golden
Globe awards).
Its been a long time
since I noted that Leighs
father was VIC MORROW, best known for
starring in the 60s TV
show Combat!. He
died in 1982, at 53, in a
helicopter accident while
filming Twilight Zone:
the Movie. Her mother,
BARBRA TURNER, died

in April, at 79. She guest
starred on a lot of TV
shows in the 50s and
60s and made an occasional acting appearance
thereafter. But Turner is
best known as a successful screenwriter. Among
her critical hits were
Company (2003) and
Georgia Rules (1995),
which co-starred Leigh
and MARE WINNINGHAM, now 57.
I thought I knew a
lot about ALBERT
EINSTEIN (18791955), having read a
couple of biographies
and seen a lot of documentaries. But an
anecdote I never heard
before made me smile,
and I think a smile is a
good thing to start the
New Year with.
I just stumbled on a
1991 American Masters
Einstein documentary. It
began by showing that
Einstein was human and
had a sense of humor.
Almost the first scene
was newsreel footage
of Einstein joking with
reporters. This was followed by an interview
with Dutch-born physicist
ABRAHAM PAIS (19182000). Pais knew Einstein
very well and related this:
He loved Jewish jokes.
I told him many [Jewish
jokes] and the thing I wish
most is that I had a record
in which I captured Einsteins laughter when he
heard a good Jewish joke.
Jennifer Jason Leigh
Vic Morrow
Mare Winningham
Abraham Pais
Sofia Black DElia
Henry Heimlich
His laugh sounded like

the sound of a contented seal. A very strange
sound.
I just love the image of
the greatest intellect of
the 20th century laughing uproariously at the
same jokes Ive loved and
that amused the ordinary
Jews who flocked to
the Borscht Belt during
Einsteins lifetime. We all
may not get relativity,
but the whole tribe gets
a good Jewish joke.
The Mick, a new
comedy series,
premieres on Fox
on January 1 at 8 p.m.
The second episode will
air Jan. 3 at its normal
time Tuesdays at 8.
Mick stars Katlin Olsson
as Mickey, a middle-aged
hustler always looking
for an easy life. Her
dreams are answered
when she is named
guardian of her sisters
three children and gets
to live in their palatial
home (her sister and her
billionaire brother-in-law
have fled the country to
escape fraud charges).
Mickeys dream has one
catch: Shes required to
Want to read more noshes? Visit facebook.com/jewishstandard
4 JEWISH
30, 2016
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Sofia has described herself as Jewish.
The inventor of the

Heimlich maneuver,
Dr. HENRY HEIMLICH, died on December
17 at 96. Here are some
details not in most obits.
The son of immigrants,
Heimlich became a
thoracic surgeon and in
1969 became head of
surgery at Cincinnatis
Jewish Hospital. In 1951,
he married JANE
MURRAY, a dancer who
was the daughter of
famous dancers ARTHUR
and KATHRYN MURRAY.
(Their original last names
were Teichman and
Kornfelder, respectively.)
The Heimlichs had two
sons and two daughters.
Jane, who was born in
Jersey City, died in 2011
at 86. A Cincinnati friend,
who was friends with
one of the Heimlich
daughters, tells me that
the doctor and his wife
were very nice people.
(Religious they werent.)
Fun fact: ANSON
WILLIAMS (Potsie on
Happy Days) is widely
reported to be Dr.
Heimlichs nephew. In a
2014 memoir, Williams
said they are actually
second cousins, but are
very close, and he called
Dr. Heimlich Uncle
Henry. Williams got Dr.
Heimlich on the Merv
Griffin Show in 1974 and
the doctor demonstrated
his maneuver. That was a
huge boost to public
awareness of the techN.B.
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Local
Meet Rabbi Ilan Acoca
New Sephardic rabbi in Fort Lee via Vancouver and Montreal talks about his background
JOANNE PALMER
ost of us know where some of our grandparents came from. Some of us even know
where our great-grandparents came from.
But most of them came from Europe, and
the war destroyed records, uprooted cemeteries, demolished memories.
Rabbi Ilan Acoca of the Sephardic Congregation of Fort
Lee, on the other hand, can trace his ancestry back at least
to 1492, when the Jews were expelled from Spain. Many
of those Jews, including his ancestors, went to Morocco,
married within the community there, and created a thriving society; their descendants stayed until 1967. Israels
Six-Day War was that year, however, and the fallout in
Morocco prompted many Jews, including Rabbi Acocas
parents, to leave.
Meyer and Simy Abecassis Acoca went first to France
and then to Israel; their son, Ilan, was born in Bat Yam
in 1970.
I grew up in a very traditional Sephardic home, Rabbi
Acoca said. It was very traditional but not necessarily 100
percent observant, which was very common in the Sephardic world. Ilan went to elementary school in Israel and
started high school there, but when he was about to enter
ninth grade, the call of the Moroccan diaspora became too
strong for his parents to ignore.
There was and still is a very large Moroccan community in Montreal, and Meyer Acoca had many relatives
siblings, cousins, uncles, and aunts, Rabbi Acoca said
there. So the family moved to Canada.
One reason that the Moroccan Jewish community
in Montreal is so big is that Montreal, like Morocco, is
French-speaking. We spoke mainly French at home,
Rabbi Acoca said. But my grandmother, who had a lot of
influence on me, spoke only Arabic, so I also speak Moroccan Arabic.
He was changed by his new home. I went to a Sephardic high school and lived in Montreal in a big Sephardic
community mainly Moroccan and that opened up the
Sephardic world to me, Rabbi Acoca said; he somehow
understood and was moved by the richness and beauty of
his tradition in ways that he did not and was not in Israel.
He and a bunch of his friends became more observant,
inspired to continue to explore, to look into Jewish texts,
to learn. Eventually, he and his friends left the Sephardic
high school for a more observant Lithuanian-style Ashkenazi yeshiva; Rabbi Acoca continued to study there well
past high school. I even learned how to speak Yiddish,
Who: Rabbi Ilan Acoca
What: Will talk about The Sages of the Past:
Visionaries of the Future
When: On Tuesday, January 3, at 8 p.m.
Where: At Ben Porat Yosef, 243 Frisch Court,
Paramus
Why: To talk about the Sephardic world, its
message, and its messages relevance today
For whom: The community is invited
For more information: Call the school at
(201) 845-5007
Rabbi Ilan Acoca of the Sephardic Congregation of

Fort Lee will discuss the Sephardic world during a
program at Ben Porat Yosef in Paramus.
he said. There was a class that I really wanted to take, and
the rabbi who taught it gave the class in Yiddish. So we had
no choice but to learn Yiddish.
He speaks five languages in all, he said French,
Hebrew, Yiddish, Arabic, and English.
Around this time, Rabbi Acoca decided that he should
get married. Through a matchmaker, he met Dina Delmar,
who is my bashert, my soul mate, he said. The two were
engaged two weeks after we met, and after about five
months we got married, Rabbi Acoca said. That was in
1996.
Like her husband, Dina Delmar Acoca can trace her
ancestry back through Morocco to the expulsion from
Spain, although thats true for only one side of her family. Her mothers side is Ashkenazic. But her family name,
Delmar, which literally means of the sea in Spanish, tells
the world that many of its members were sailors. Around
the turn of the last century, there is a history in my wifes
family of two brothers. One went to Spanish Morocco.
That was Delmar. The other went to French Morocco,
where people also spoke Arabic. He became Lebhar of
the sea in in Arabic.
Rabbi Acoca was ordained by the rabbinical institution
Yeshiva Gedola Beth Hamidrash Lhoraa in Montreal, soon
after he and Dina married; he also earned a bachelors
degree from the Universite de Montreal. In 1999, a congregation in Vancouver, Congregation Beth Hamidrash,
which had been looking for a rabbi and rabbanit, offered
him its pulpit, and he accepted.
That was a very important moment in my life, he said.
It was a turning point. I understood that I had a mission. The congregation I served was the only Sephardic
congregation west of Toronto. (We should note that Vancouver, British Columbia, is on Canadas west coast, and
Toronto is just about north of Buffalo. There are more
than 2,000 miles between those two Canadian cities.)
Our mission was to make sure that the Sephardic congregation in Vancouver would continue to thrive and
grow, Rabbi Acoca said.
Unlike the Sephardic community in Montreal, which
includes people from all over but is predominantly Moroccan, the Vancouver community was extremely diverse,
Rabbi Acoca said. They came from the four corners of the
world. From Iraq, Algeria, Yemen, Morocco, Tunisia, and
Iran. There were some Askhenazim as well, looking for the
warmth and heimische feeling we had. They felt part of it.
I was exposed to so many rich traditions, and I was
open to listening to all of them, to find out what its all
about.
There are many differences between different parts of
the Sephardic world, he said; in fact, even the definition
of Sephardic is elastic. It generally means all Jews who are
not Askhenazi or Italian (who form their own category).
Although the word Sepharad means Spain, and Sephardic Jews generally trace their ancestry through that
country, the term Sephardic usually includes Jews from
the Edut Mizrach the Middle Eastern communities that
never made it to the Iberian Peninsula in the first place.
There are divisions even between Sephardic Jews in
one country, Rabbi Acoca said. In Morocco, there are
two communities. One is people like me, whose ancestors were expelled from Spain. The other community
was there from before the destruction of the First Temple
in Jerusalem. They are the toshavim, the residents. My
community is called the megorashim. The exiles. There
was not much intermarriage between the two groups, he
added.
In my ketuba, its written that we will have a home
cminyan Castilla. Like the community of Castille. Of
Spain.
One of the most obvious ways that the differences
between different Sephardic traditions are manifest is
in their music, Rabbi Acoca said, and thats extremely
important in our liturgy. And outside the liturgy as well.
If you go to the Middle East, you will find one type of
music the instruments sometimes will be the same, but
the sound will be completely different, he said. North
African Jews were influenced by Andaluca Spains
southernmost province, and its heart during its Muslim
period. And there is some historic proof that Andalucian
music was influenced by Jews, who traveled so much. You
can hear the music of ancient Andalucia in Morocco and
Algeria. But if you go to the Middle East, its an entirely
different influence. You could have the same song and the
same words but it will sound completely different.
Also, obviously, Jews are all about food, and the food is
different. Sometimes the spices can be the same, but the
type of food isnt.
And then there are the customs specific to various
Sephardic communities. One of the main traditions of
Moroccan Jews is the mimouna, at the end of Pesach,
Rabbi Acoca said. We open our homes and let everyone
come in. Its the idea of faith mimouna comes from the
Hebrew word emunah, which means faith. We had faith
in God who took us out of Egypt. We mark that at the
Local
Rabbi Ilan Acoca greets former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Rabbi Acoca served a Vancouver congregation for 17 years.
beginning of Pesach with the seders, and
we end it with mimouna. More faith.
Another particularly Moroccan custom
is putting lettuce or green herbs on the
table. Thats because were changing seasons, and were going into the summer,
Rabbi Acoca said. We are wishing each
other a green summer, full of freshness

and newness.
After 17 years, Ilan and Dina Acoca
decided that theyd met all the challenges
theyd be likely to encounter in Vancouver,
and that it was time to look for something
new. Also, and not incidentally, we were
on the West Coast, and all our family was

on the East Coast. We wanted to get closer
to them.
Through a friend at Yeshiva University, Rabbi Acoca who is a member of
the Rabbinical Council of America, the
group for Orthodox rabbis heard about
the job opening in Fort Lee, pursued it,
was offered it, and took it. At the same
time, he was offered the position of rav
mechanech basically rabbi in residence
at Ben Porat Yosef in Paramus. So as
of the beginning of this school year, My
job is inspiring the kids, making sure that
the Sephardic part of the school is alive,
and supporting the staff in any way that
I can, he said.
Rabbi Acoca also has just published
a book, The Sephardic Book of Why,
which is a direct outgrowth of all the
questions about Sephardic tradition hes
been asked. A few years ago, I was at a
wedding not officiating but as a guest
and I saw that the officiating rabbi,
who was Chabad, had a book, a guide
for Chabad rabbis. Many years ago,
the RCA came out with a rabbis guide.
So I thought of doing that. But on second thought, and after consulting with
friends, he realized that a book aimed
just at Sephardic rabbis would be entering a very small market. Why confine it
to rabbis? Why not write for the whole
Jewish world?
So he did.
He did a great deal of research; given the
constraints of time and space, he couldnt
include every one of the many thousands
of customs there are. Instead, he gives a
general overview.
Still, he said, the most important message hed like to give is that we are one
nation. We can agree to disagree, but at
the end, the bottom line is that we have to
respect each other.
We each have to keep our own traditions, according to our own ancestry, but
it is also important for us to be one nation.
Im writing about these customs not to
define us, but to understand each other
better. Thats what its all about.
And, he added, there is some mixing.
His own children he has six of them; the
oldest is in Israel, the second oldest finishing high school in Vancouver, the next
three at Ben Porat Yosef, the youngest not
quite old enough for it have one Ashkenazi grandparent. On Friday night, we
had matzah ball soup and Moroccan fish,
Rabbi Acoca said.
A bright, beautiful future

for the land & people of
Israel. Get involved.
jnf.org
800.JNF.0099
Local
Kosher Jazz
Local musician reinterprets familiar melodies with his own riffs
LOIS GOLDRICH
ts not everyone who listens to Dayenu at the seder table and automatically reinvents it as a jazz tune, even,
perhaps, as a jazz mambo. But thats
exactly what happens when Matt Chertkoff
of Hasbrouck Heights hears a catchy tune
at the seder, or in shul, or for that matter
practically anywhere else.
Sometimes I sit there and whatever
music I hear, I hear it in a different way,
said Mr. Chertkoff, who will showcase his
melodies on January 10 at the JCC of Fort
Lee/Congregation Gesher Shalom. Mr.
Chertkoff, who is a member of the congregation, said that he enjoys bringing different musical genres to the synagogue.
A program of the shuls CSI Scholar
Fund, Kosher Jazz a narrated concert
featuring Mr. Chertkoff and a four-piece
combo, including piano, drums, bass, and
guitar will demonstrate how Yiddish
songs, pop tunes that speak to the Jewish
experience, and religious melodies morph
easily into the jazz medium, he said. (The
scholar fund is named for Congregation
Sons of Israel, a synagogue in Leonia that
merged with Gesher Shalom in 2011.)
Ive loved music since I was a kid, Mr.
Chertkoff said. There are so many beautiful melodies in shul, and my parents sang
on family trips. When I hear a melody I
like, I hear it in my head in a more sophisticated, jazz-like version. He always wanted
to be a professional guitarist, he added,
so he studied at the University of Miami,
which, he said, has a particularly good jazz
conservatory. I stayed there and played
Who: Matt Chertkoff and his four-piece
combo will present
What: Kosher Jazz, a narrated
concert
When: On January 10 at 1 p.m.
Where: The JCC of Fort Lee/Congregation Gesher Shalom, 1449 Anderson
Ave., Fort Lee
Cost: Free and open to the public
Information: Call (201) 947-1735
Matt Chertkoff, left, at the Blue Note in Manhattan, with vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater and tuba player Clark Gaylon.
professionally, and then I moved here.
All music is connected, he continued.
He pointed to Hava Nagila, a melody
whose authorship is unknown and whose
tune is borrowed from another song. All
music is influenced by other music. People
put their own stamp on it. It develops over
time. When he hears a catchy melody, I
start humming it and then reinterpret it
when I get home. Its a natural process.
Mr. Chertkoff said he plays with a lot of
different groups, and even the membership of his own group changes. It makes
it interesting, he said, noting that the
changes necessarily bring different influences. For example, having played a few
times with Joshua Nelson who sings Jewish songs in a gospel style and who Mr.
Chertkoff brought to the Fort Lee synagogue he has adopted aspects of Mr. Nelsons style and may use one of his songs at
the January 10 concert.
That concert, he said, will include songs,
their history, and an explanation of how
were changing them, our approach.
Styles may include mambo, samba, gospel, fast waltz, uptempo, ballad, or a New
Orleans beat. Theyll be based on tunes
people will recognize, he said. Well
explain their origins, who wrote them,
and how theyve done it. Otherwise, he
said, people wont understand the way
hes changed them himself .

In jazz, he said, you are the composer,
using the language of riffs. It will be a very
neat concert because were covering religious songs and secular songs, some from
Israel. There will also be Broadway tunes.
And there wont be just one or two beats.
Well use a vast variety of styles. It will be
different and refreshing.
Mr. Chertkoff was born in Livingston,
grew up in Ridgewood, and lives with his
wife, Hemma, and their daughter, Kayla,
2 . He said that his daughter sings and
dances to the music he plays, but he
cant guarantee that shell choose music
as a profession.
Hoping 2017 brings peace, prosperity

and positivity to all!
Wishing you a happy New Year from
Jewish Family and Childrens Services of Northern New Jersey
Now located in Teaneck, Fair Lawn and Wayne, New Jersey. For more information please call 201-837-9090
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Local
Concentrating on Kook
Rabbis biographer, Yehudah Mirsky, to speak in Teaneck
LARRY YUDELSON
ou can learn the bare basics of

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kooks
life just from reading the jacket
of Yehudah Mirskys biography,
Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution,
published in 2014 by Yale University Press.
Born in 1865. Died in 1935. First chief
rabbi of Jewish Palestine and founder of religious Zionism. Profoundly original thinker.
Here are the basics of Yehudah Mirskys
biography: Born in 1961 and raised in a modern Orthodox home in Manhattans Upper
West Side. Undergraduate degree from
Yeshiva College, where his father, a rabbi,
also was an English professor and dean.
Earned a law degree from Yale and went to
Washington, first working as a congressional aide and then in the State Department
during the Clinton administration. Earned
a doctorate in religion at Harvard and then
made aliyah; his initial focus on learning
Arabic and studying politics shifted into a
dissertation on Rabbi Kook, which focused
on the rabbis early years, before Kook
moved to Israel. And then his academic
interest in Rav Kook as Rabbi Kook is
known became the seed of the popular
biography in Yale University Press Jewish
Lives series, and his academic career moved
him back to the United States. He now lives
in Brookline, Mass.; hes a professor of Jewish and Israel studies at Brandeis. And he is
revising his dissertation into another book.
Dr. Mirsky will be in Teaneck next weekend, speaking at Davar, along with his wife,
Tamar Biala, an Israeli scholar who has
edited two Hebrew anthologies of original midrashim by Israeli women. (The
time when the two will speak has not been
announced yet. For information, go to
davar.com.)
Dr. Mirsky insists that his wife is the
smarter and more interesting of the two of
them, but she was out of the country the
day of our interview.
Dr. Mirsky first encountered Rav Kooks
work when he was in Israel, studying at
Yeshivat Har Etzion. It was a different world
from America in many ways and it turned
out that Dr. Mirsky needed a different religious hero than Yeshiva Universitys Rav,
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.
He found that hero in Rav Kook, who, as
Dr. Mirsky wrote recently, told you that
your very stirrings for justice beyond the
law, for beauty, for longing and religion
without answers; your wanting to keep faith
with your doubts and confusions; your seeing yourself not just as Jewish but as human;
your desire to see God not as rejecting but
as coming out of the travails of your own
soul that all that was itself what made you
a good Jew.
It was a perspective that stayed with Dr.
Yehudah Mirsky probes the philosophy of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook in

his award-winning biography.
Mirsky in the decades that followed his time
at Har Etzion.
I felt very Kookian in the State Department, Dr. Mirsky said in a recent interview.
For Rav Kook, working for a universalist
kind of ethics is not at all contradictory to
being a religious Jew. In the State Department, youre trying to advance a certain
ethical ideal you think is good for all mankind. I felt that very strongly when I was
there.
Dr. Mirsky recalled a story from his time
at yeshiva in Israel.
Menachem Begin was taking in all these
boat people 360 Vietnamese refugees to
whom the prime minister gave Israeli citizenship as his first act on assuming office.
Someone in the yeshiva was collecting money for them. Some of the teachers
were upset that they were collecting for
these Buddhists. Rabbi Lichtenstein the
co-head of the yeshiva, and Rabbi Soloveitchiks son-in-law said that even if nobody
else cared about the boat people, who else
but bnei Torah Torah students should
care about people who are suffering.
Whats so sad in contemporary Orthodoxy is that this a revelation, he said. Rav
Kook decried that. Theres a passage that I
always come back to, that he wrote in 1920
or so, that modernity has divided everything into separate camps. I think thats
very true.
Dr. Mirsky is the sort of professor who
thinks, and writes, about the nature of
modernity and about political camps, about
divisions in American political life and
within his own religious community.
Dr. Mirsky said that religious Zionism
the world of Rav Kook and modern
Orthodoxy the world of Rabbi Soloveitchik are two different entities. American Jews regularly blur the lines, because
theyre living in both, but theyre different
movements, responding to different challenges, with different traditions and cultural
heroes. One of the things going on with my
book is Im introducing American readers

to a lot of the history, concepts, culture,
and sensibilities of some basic issues in
religious Zionism.
He credits Yeshiva Har Etzions coleader, Rabbi Yehudah Amital, for introducing him to Rav Kook. He was an
apostle of Rav Kook in his own way.
All the things you think make you a
bad Jew like learning Torah but being
interested in other things theyre a
part of you, Dr. Mirsky said. Rav Kook
says thats what make you a good Jew, if
you do it authentically and are willing
to live your commitments.
In formulating religious Zionism,
Rav Kook broke with most other
Orthodox rabbis, who saw nothing but evil
in the early Zionist pioneers, with their
atheism, their Sabbath desecration, and
their belief that their labor rather than God
would save the Jewish people.
A central aspect of his tolerance was
that the people he disagreed with, who he
made a very concerted effort to honor and
respect, were people who werent just saying things but living out their commitments,
including commitments to Jewish physical
and cultural survival, Dr. Mirsky said.
Thats a larger point worth remembering. If we look at pre-Holocaust Jewish arguments over Zionism in all their
permutations, the arguments are incredibly bitter. One thing all the different sides
share is they are all profoundly committed to Jewish survival. The discussions and
arguments about Israel from some quarters nowadays dont have that flavor. The
arguments from the far left, or arguments
from the far right they are so dismissive
of everyone who disagrees with them that
there is some absence of a sense of clal Yisrael, Jewish peoplehood, as well.
One important difference between rabbis Soloveitchik and Kook is their mode of
expression. Rabbi Soloveitchik communicated in public lectures, Talmud classrooms, and carefully crafted and polished
writings. Rabbi Kook kept a spiritual diary,
and his most popular published works
were extracted and edited from those diaries by students.
Its such a rarity to have mystical diaries
in the Jewish tradition, Dr. Mirsky said.
Maybe because the tradition is so commentarial. He was trying to register what
was going through his mind. He started
keeping them in the 1890s, the decade
before he immigrated to Palestine in 1904.
He was always a very feeling person.
The death of his first wife in 1888 was very
consequential for him. It was something of
a chastening experience. It made him more
introspective.
Now that we have his diaries closer to
their original form, its incredible to see
what a good job his editors did, what a

sprawling mass of texts they had facing
them, from which they were able to wrest
some kind of order and structure and procession of ideas, he said.
It sometimes strikes me as ironic that
here I am in my mid-50s, still trying to figure out what Rav Kook was thinking when
he was 26, Dr. Mirsky said.
For the biography, which won the Choice
Award and was runner-up for the Sami Rohr
Prize for Jewish Literature, Dr. Mirsky summarized Rabbi Kooks first 39 years in the
Russian provinces that are now Lithuania
and Latvia in 20 pages. The dissertation,
which is devoted to that period of Rabbi
Kooks life, clocked in at 420 pages.
Almost no one had paid sustained scholarly attention to Rav Kook before he came
on aliyah, Dr. Mirsky said. For people who
are interested in Zionism, the life before
eretz Yisrael is less compelling. Indeed, his
later, mature writings are incomparably
more stirring and dramatic and audacious.
A lot of his early writings were in print but
no one was bothering to read them. A book
I found immensely helpful for organizing
the larger idea was Sources of the Self: The
Making of the Modern Identity by Harvard
philosopher Charles Taylor.
Taylor traces the movement from a sort
of rationalist and enlightenment mindset to
the modern mindset that is distinguished
by expressivism and subjectivity, by people
finding the truth within themselves. As I
was reading more and more of Rav Kooks
early writings, I could see he was living out
this paradigm.
The big change in his thought when he
came to the land of Israel is in the direction of ones relationship with God. In the
early period it is top-down. Theres a sort
of divine truth that is outside of oneself. As
he moves forward its from the bottom up.
It becomes a divine truth that is within oneself, within a collective self, within people
and society, that is seeking to be expressed.
Its a subtle shift but very powerful. It makes
More than
395,000 likes.
for a more immanent religious experience. It enables
a theology of culture, where things like arts and building concrete social political institutions are how God is
working through the world, the working out of a desire
of something greater than oneself.
Its very radical, he said.
Dr. Mirsky believes that a biographical fact key to
understanding Rav Kook is that he was born into what
constituted a mixed marriage among Orthodox Russian
Jews in the 19th century.
His mother was from a family of Chabad chasidim.
His father was from a family of mitnagdim, opponents
of the chasidim. Maintaining that duality, and dualities
in general, is central to his whole life. At every step of
the way he is the person of the holy and the secular,
the structure and the anti-structure, the sage and the
prophet. He has deep sympathy to new currents and is
very traditional in other ways. He develops this complex
dialectical way of looking at the world.
I think he first develops the dialectic as a way to
think about himself, how he is drawn simultaneously to
talmudic legal study and to more mythic and theological
Anger is driving
people more than
ideology and more
than their interests.
Rav Kook is all about
trying to conquer
your anger.
passages. He is helped here by the kabbalah. Kabbalahs
mutifaceted divinity becomes for him the world of differences, a world tied to the deep underlying world of
sefirot, which contend with each other but hold each
other in balance.
So what concrete messages should we take from Rav
Kook right now?
Were living in an age of anger, Dr. Mirsky said.
Anger is driving people more than ideology and more
than their interests. Rav Kook is all about trying to conquer your anger.
Rav Kook said that anger is a sign of emptiness.
Whenever theres a group full of anger, you know that
internally they have nothing.
Theres a difference between a rage against injustice
and anger thats simply a hatred of other groups. I can
understand that someone who has been genuinely victimized is angry, but does he want to take his anger out
on something, or does he try to build something?
Part of whats so powerful about Rav Kook is that he
placed himself in the middle of incredibly stormy controversies, between religionists and secularists, between
right-wing Zionists and left-wing Zionists. I dont know
how he had the courage. The charedim fought him. A lot
of the secular Zionists resented him. But he placed himself
into this. He worked on the assumption that these people
arent evil, that there are things that are motiving them,
and maybe there are ways one can think this through. He
has a lot of faith in God.
Its something people should think about. When
youre posting on Facebook or when youre tweeting, its
a word youre sending out and it should be meaningful.
It should be trying to help, whether to provide direct
immediate aid and comfort to someone or just to advance
ideas in a constructive way.
Like us on
Facebook.
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(former interior designer of model

rooms for NYs #1 Dept. Store)
For a totally new look using

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A N NUA L DAY O F B I G I D E A S
M O N DAY, J A N UA R Y 2 , 2 0 1 7
9 : 3 0 A M - 1 2 : 3 0 PM
KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY:

DR. LEAH KNAPP
Clinical Psychologist and Ma'ayanot Teacher
LO N E LY M A N O F FA I T H:
OPPORTUNITIES & LIMITATIONS
IN THE QUEST TO CONNECT
Wi t h a d d i t i o n a l l e c t u re s b y m e m b e r s o f o u r
d i s t i n g u i s h e d f a c u l t y, i n c l u d i n g :
Rabbi Donny Besser, It's the Economy,
Tipesh: Does the Torah Endorse an
Economic Model?
Mrs. Enid Goldberg, Hamlet: Shakespeare's
Search for the Perfect King
Ms. Samantha Kur, Becoming Ruth:
An Exploration of the Ideal Convert
Mrs. Orly Nadler, Artificial Intelligence:

A Source of Peril or Promise?
Dr. Sofya Nayer, God is a Mathematician What is His Language?
Dr. Rayzel Yaish, Parenting By Personality:
A Strengths-Based Approach Grounded in
Positive-Psychology Research
This event is generously sponsored by the Brodsky family in loving memory of

Bernice and Bernard Kramer, zl, grandparents of Molly Brodsky, Maayanot Class of 2013.
For information on additional sponsorship opportunities, please contact Pam Ennis, Director of Development, at ennisp@maayanot.org
Maayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls

1650 Palisade Avenue | Teaneck, New Jersey | 07666 | www.maayanot.org
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Local
Jason Dov
Greenblatts
new gig
Teaneck lawyer,
longtime Trump
employee, to work for
the administration
JOANNE PALMER
ason Dov Greenblatt of Teaneck, who
began 2016 as the Trump Organizations chief legal adviser and became
one of two special advisers on the
U.S./Israel relationship for his longtime
boss, Donald J. Trump, this spring, will
enter the new year ready for a new title.
He soon will become the new Trump
administrations special representative
for international negotiations. According to CNN, his primary focuses will be
the Israel-Palestinian peace process, the
American relationship with Cuba, and
trade agreements.
The Trump campaigns other special
adviser on the U.S./Israel relationship was
Daniel Friedman, the controversial lawyer
who Trump has named as the next ambassador to Israel.
Mr. Greenblatt could not talk to the Jewish Standard Im swamped and not
doing interviews, he emailed in response
to a request, suggesting that we try again
later. Thank you for understanding. But
in April, he did talk to us.
As he said in that April 21 interview
with us, Mr. Greenblatt had not known
until Mr. Trump told a press conference
that he was being named as an Israel
adviser. But although he has worked
for the Trump Organization since 1997,
focusing mainly on real estate, he felt
strongly that his lifelong interest in
Israel made him a strong if unconventional choice.
Mr. Greenblatt grew up in Queens; he
went first to an Orthodox elementary
day school and then to MTA, Yeshiva Universitys high school for boys. After high
school, he spent a year in Israel at Yeshivat Har Etzion, then went on to Yeshiva
University, and then to NYU law school.
He began his career at Fried Frank, tried
his hand as an entrepreneur, and then
went back to law.
His work experience has been as a lawyer; he does not have much experience
in foreign policy, and most of his deepest knowledge of Israel comes more from
firsthand experience than anything else.
He augments his knowledge of Israel
with daily email alerts, news from
AIPAC, and a weekly radio program with
Malcolm Hoenlein, the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American
Jewish Organizations, JTA Wire Service
Jason Dov Greenblatt of Teaneck

will help negotiate U.S. policy with
Israel for the Trump administration.
reported in the spring.
Mr. Greenblatts loyalty to Donald
Trump is fierce. Donald is a master
negotiator, and people will want to sit
at a table with him and make transactions, he told us in April. Thats what
he brings to the table. We would be there
for support and ideas, but it is Donald
who has the knowledge, the experience,
the capabilities to sit across the table
from the Palestinians.
The goal would be to get the Palestinians and the Israelis to the table. Of
course the Israelis have tried many
times. But someone like Donald could
get the Palestinians back to the table.
Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Greenblatt
believed that money can settle just about
everything, including the Israeli/Palestinian problem, he told us in April. If you
take out the emotional part of it and the
historical part of it, it is a business transaction. Land is going to be negotiated, water
rights are going to be negotiated, security
issues are going to be negotiated.
So you need to say to them, Listen,
we want to discuss these two issues in this
quarter, and then youll get your check, and
these two issues in this quarter, and then
youll get your check.
At the end of the day, you want to
resolve all the issues. I think it isnt a good
idea to do partial negotiations and then
hope for the best.
Mr. Greenblatt and his wife, psychiatrist
Dr. Naomi Greenblatt, have six children,
including a set of triplets. The family travels
constantly, and they write about it. Dr. and
Mr. Greenblatt have published three travel
books together. All the children who are old
enough join their parents in writing a blog
about traveling as a family.
Although they go around the world,
many of their trips are to Israel.
My philosophy, in both business and
in life, is that bringing people together
and working to unite, rather than
divide, is the strongest path to success,
Mr. Greenblatt is quoted in a statement
released by the Trump campaign. I
truly believe that this approach is one
that can yield results for the United
States in matters all over the world.
upcoming at
Kaplen
JCC on the Palisades
Start the New Year Off Right!

not Just a gym, a family Wellness center
Try us out & get a one-week pass for your entire family.
Individual, family, youth & senior membership options
available.
For details, visit membership, call 201.408.1448 or email
join@jccotp.org and save!
NEw YEAR
New You!
* Valid on new, annual memberships; 1 massage or

personal training session per adults on membership,
maximum 2; through 1/31/17; may not be combined.
join now &
get $100 off &
American Ninja Night @

High Exposure!
Drop your children off for a fun and active trip to High
Exposure! They enjoy a complete American Ninja type
experience while rock climbing, running obstacle courses
and more! Transportation and snack included. Registration
closes Jan 11.
a massage or
personal training
session!*
Grades 2-6 (Ages 8-12), Sat, Jan 14, 6-8:30 pm, $40/$45
Saturday Night Zumba Party

ages 12 +, beginners Welcome
Join our expert team of Zumba instructors including

Cat Veca- Mejia, Lauren Greene, Hila Revah, Jaclyn
Alterwein and Evangelina Bishop and light your
endorphins on fire. Dance to great Latin, Hip- Hop,
and African music.
Sat, Jan, 7, 7:30 pm, 75-min class,
Free & Open to the Community
RSVP preferred.
Visit jccotp.org/saturdaynightzumba
Adults
Music
Begin the New Year with Music

Lessons at Thurnauer!
Fulfill your familys new years resolution by
learning new skills, studying with great faculty
and performing on stage! Home instruction is
no match for our vibrant music community.
Sign up today at jccotp.org/thurnauer or
201.408.1465.
(JCC membership not required.)
Memoirs
kids
Open House
explore your life through Writing
the leonard & syril rubin nursery school
with Ruth Padawer
Come see what were all about! Your little one can learn,
laugh, share and grow at the JCC with our innovative
and child-centered programming that allows children to
explore and understand new concepts in a fun, dynamic
way. Options for toddlers through Kindergarten.
This workshop offers you an opportunity to

preserve your memories and reflect on your past
Along the way, youll gain confidence in your literary
voice and learn valuable writing skills.
All welcome, regardless of writing experience.
8 Mondays, Jan 9-Mar 6, 10 am-12 pm, $185/$225
(no class Feb 20)
For info, call 201.408.1436.

Jan 13, 9:30 am
Call Judy at 201.408.1457.

to register or for more info, visit
jccotp.org or call 201.569.7900.

Kaplen
JCC on the Palisades taub campus | 411 e clinton ave, tenafly, nJ 07670 | 201.569.7900 | jccotp.org
Briefly Local
Presidential
election put
in perspective
Members of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jerseys
Commerce and Professionals division heard Sam Stein,
senior politics editor at the
Huffington Post, discuss the
extremely unusual presidential election. A question and
Larry Weiss, JFNNJs Commerce and Profesanswer session followed. The
sionals chair, left, with Sam Stein. COURTESY JFNNJ
division is for professionals in
the fields of law, accountancy,
banking, real estate, and other areas of
as in Israel. Members network and take
business. It meets to discuss local and
part in social action, educational, and
international issues of importance in
philanthropic activities.
regard to the Jewish community, as well
Zimriyah is live-streamed
The voices of 300 Early Childhood and
Lower School students traversed geographic boundaries through the live
streaming of Solomon Schechter Day
School of Bergen Countys Chanukah
Zimriyah (songfest). More than 400
grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins from Mexico City to Tel Aviv, London
to Los Angeles, viewed the live musical
event, joining hundreds of parents and

friends who attended the annual program. Throughout the year, Schechter
live streams signature events including
ReLiSh (Ruah Lifnei Shabbat) a preShabbat pep rally sharing the content
with a worldwide audience and area
nursing homes.
Dr. Howard and Paula Friedman
Amy and Chanan Vogel
Rinat Yisrael honors community leaders

Congregation Rinat Yisrael will hold its
29th annual dinner on Saturday, January
7, at Congregation Keter Torah in Teaneck.
Amy and Chanan Vogel, Nissan Clark and
Eli Davidovics, and Paula and Dr. Howard
Friedman will be honored.
The evening will include a community
siyum on Tanach. The dinner, one of
Rinats most significant fundraising events,
is critical to maintaining the shuls extensive operations and activities.
Young Leadership awardees Amy and
Chanan Vogel have been active members
of Rinat for more than 10 years and have
been instrumental in building the Rinat
community. They regularly host new and
prospective members in their home. Ms.
Vogel, director of development at Yeshivat
Noam, has served as Welcoming Committee chair for 10 years, and Mr. Vogel is on
the Teaneck Baseball Organization board,
and he coaches. He has been on Rinats
board as an executive board member, the
security committee chair, and the sukkah building coordinator, and he oversaw
the renovation of a shul-owned property.
He also was the 2015 Rinat Cholent CookOff champion.
Nissan Clark and Eli Davidovics will represent Rinats Community Security Service
volunteers when they receive the Sruli
Guttman Service award. Mr. Davidovics,
CSSs co-regional manager for New Jersey,
and Mr. Clark, Rinats CSS team manager,
have been overseeing Rinats CSS group
for five years. The shuls volunteers,
trained by CSS to function as the communitys eyes and ears, maintain a presence
outside the building and in each minyan
on Shabbat mornings and play a crucial
role in Rinats security.
Long-time Rinat members Paula and
Dr. Howard Friedman will receive the
Keter Shem Tov award. Dr. Friedman, a
past president of Maayanot, was Rinats
board vice president and plays a key role
in minyanim and learning opportunities.
He co-founded the 7:30 weekday morning
minyan, started the Thursday night parsha
shiur, and helped expand the offerings in
the beit midrash library. He also coordinated scholar-in-residence programs and
home minyanim for people in need and
serves as gabbai in various minyanim.
For more information, go to www.
rinat.org.
Keep us informed
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Gap-year students
cheer children
at Sanhedria Home
Recently, a group of 25 students in gap-year yeshiva
Torat Shragas Chesed Leadership program put on
an hour-long show for boys in Sanhedria Childrens
Home in Jerusalem. Sanhedria is a rehabilitation
center for boys, from 6 to 15 years old, who were
removed from their homes due to severe physical
or emotional abuse and neglect in early childhood.
Four of the Torat Shraga students are from Englewood: Michael Klein, Stephan Katz, Eli Best, and Tai
Gerszberg.
Eli Best is pictured wearing a red shirt.
Tai Gerszberg
PHOTOS COURTESY TORAT SHRAGA
Chanukah
Englewood congregation prepares
Chanukah gifts for Israeli soldiers
More than 40 people from Congregation Kol HaNeshamah of Englewood
gathered to prepare Chanukah care
packages and greeting cards for lone
soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces.
The packages, which included clothing items, supplies, and candy, were the
shuls way of sending comfort and emotional support to the young soldiers stationed throughout Israel.
Tzvi Weisel, an IDF veteran and former lone soldier, spoke to the group,
describing his feelings of homesickness,
especially during holiday times, and how
much he and his brigade appreciated the
cards and care packages from congregations and Jewish agencies.
According to Rabbi Fred Elias of Kol
HaNeshamah, the lone soldier project
has a special significance to many members of the shul community, as almost
every member has a child, friend, or family member who has served or is serving in the IDF. As Israel has come under
attack both domestically and abroad,
the communitys support of those who
are defending Israel from terrorist and
OVER 1,000 JEWS

FROM OVER 70 COMMUNITIES
WILL GATHER TO HEAR MORE THAN 30 TORAH SCHOLARS
AT ONE MAJOR EVENT
IN THE CITY
SESSIONS ON TORAH, HALACHA, HASHKAFA
AND ISRAEL THROUGHOUT THE DAY
PRESENTED BY THE ORTHODOX UNION
SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 2017
from 8:45 AM to 6:15 PM
Free parking
Indoors at Citi Field

Flushing, NY
Children's Programming available
FEATURED TOPICS
external threats is unwavering.

Debbie Berman, who will deliver the
Chanukah packages and cards personally, organized the program. It will continue yearly around Jewish holidays.
Flaming franks are perfect

for the last nights of Chanukah
Moshe and Tzipporas Relationship

and Marriage
Midrash: Fact Or Fable
Living in the Diaspora Vs. Living in Israel
Are Edited Embryos Kosher? Pre-implantation
diagnosis (PGD) in Jewish law
Women and Torah Transmission: A Case Study
from 19th Century Vilna
Family Planning in Halacha
See all topics on OU.org/city
BETH JANOFF CHANANIE
SPEAKERS INCLUDE
There are still three nights left of Chanukah, and I am sure that meals are getting
trickier to prepare. Abeles & Heymann
and Koshermoms.com shared this clever
recipe with our Jewish Standard readers
for a fun and delicious Chanukah idea.
A & H hot dogs also are available in low
fat and low sodium varieties to make
them a bit healthier.
Rabbi Yochanan
Zweig
Prof. Nechama
Price
Rabbi Dr.
Ari Bergmann
Mrs. Rookie
Billet
Mrs. Michal
Horowitz
Rabbi
Yosef Tzvi Rimon
Mr.
Charlie Harary
Rabbi Hershel
Schachter
Flaming franks edible menorah

2 packages of franks
1 package/roll of frozen puff pastry
dough
1 slightly beaten egg
sesame seeds for topping
ketchup/mustard for flames
cookie sheet with parchment paper
Let the dough thaw slightly on the
counter or in a microwave on its
recommended setting, just enough
to loosen the dough from the plastic
backing. Cut 8 franks in half to use
as the candles. Use another 5 uncut
franks for the base, shamash, and menorah arms.
With a non-serrated knife, slice 1/2
inch strips of the dough. A roll of puff
pastry is about 10 inches wide and a
1/2 inch by 10 inch strip is enough to
wind around one uncut frank. For the
shorter candle franks, use a strip measuring about 1/2 inch by 5 inches.
Take the puff pastry strips, wind
them around the franks at an angle,
and set them down on the parchment
paper so that the loose ends are un-
derneath. This helps keep the dough

in place as it bakes. Repeat this process until you have all eight candles
made, and all five support franks
neatly wound in dough.
Assemble the menorah as shown
in the photo, or in a different Chanukah design. Brush the project with a
slightly beaten egg. Sprinkle sesame
seeds along the top. You can also
use a mixture of sesame, poppy, or
minced onion for an everything bagelstyle topping.
Place in preheated 400 degree
oven for about 15 minutes or until
the puff pastry is dark golden brown.
Using ketchup or a favorite mustard,
squeeze droplets onto the parchment
paper where the flames should be.
Using a toothpick, drag a bit of the
ketchup or mustard into an upward
pointing flame shape.
I recommend that you cook extra
hot dogs for anyone who may want
to eat the menorah before presentation time.
COME FOR ONE - STAY FOR ALL

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Jewish World
With U.S. abstention, Israel again faces

reality of the U.N.s rejection of its settlements
RON KAMPEAS
WASHINGTON Before the unknowns
that a Trump administration will bring to
American Middle East policy, the Obama
administration allowed a bracing reminder
that the international community does not
recognize the validity of Israels presence
in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The U.S. abstention on the U.N. Security
Council vote last week was hardly unprecedented, but neither was it entirely consistent with recent U.S. policy. The Obama
administration did not quite endorse Resolution 2334, but its abstention ensured
that the resolution, reaffirming the illegality of Israeli settlement in lands captured
by Israel in 1967, would be adopted. As
one of the five permanent members of the
15-member council, the U.S. could have
exercised its veto power. Instead, the resolution passed, 14-0.
For 24 years, the United States under
presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush,
and Barack Obama insulated Israel from an
international community that has sought to
exact consequences for its continued presence in disputed lands since 1967. After the
Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, those
three administrations considered the isolation of the Jewish state at the United Nations
to be counterproductive to encouraging
Israel to take bold steps for peace.
The number of Security Council resolutions that Israel opposed dropped significantly during those three presidential eras
and were narrowly focused on limited crises. Israel objected to just three resolutions
adopted by the council during the Clinton
presidency, and six adopted during the
George W. Bush tenure. None of them spoke
directly to the legality of Israels presence
in the West Bank and Jerusalem. In the 25
years before, according to a comprehensive
listing posted by Americans for Peace Now,
Israel objected to 68 council resolutions
that the United States allowed.
But with a couple of notable exceptions
Prime Minister Ariel Sharons pullout
from Gaza and a patch of the West Bank in
2005, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus 2010 settlement freeze Israeli settlement expansion continued unabated
in that period, despite widening cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority. By 2004, George W. Bush had
effectively recognized the large settlement
blocs bordering 1967 Israel as realities on
the ground and suggested that the Palestinians would be compensated for the territory with land swaps.
Obamas apparent message to the world
is that incentives did not work in slowing settlement expansion. With the carrot
wilted, the president reintroduced the stick.
Obama administration officials have said
plainly that the expansion of settlements
Samantha Power, center, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, at the Security Council meeting in New York on December 23.

VOLKAN FURUNCU/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES
absent a peace process led to the decision to abstain. In her explanation of the
abstention, Samantha Power, the U.S.
envoy to the United Nations, listed the
considerations that made the administration hesitate to allow the resolution. Chief
among them were the historic anti-Israel
bias at the United Nations and Palestinian intransigence. But she also noted that
since the Oslo Accords, the settler population has increased by 355,000.
It is precisely our commitment to Israels security that makes the United States
believe that we cannot stand in the way
of this resolution as we seek to preserve
a chance of attaining our long-standing
objective: two states living side by side in
peace and security, she said.
As much as the language in the resolution has stirred cries of unprecedented
in Israel and in some pro-Israel precincts
in the United States, it is broadly consistent with resolutions that the United States
allowed from 1967 at least through the end
of Jimmy Carters presidency in January
1981.
Last weeks resolution reaffirmed that
the establishment by Israel of settlements
in the Palestinian territory occupied since
1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal
validity, and constituted a flagrant violation of international law. Resolution 465,
passed in March 1980 under Carter with
a U.S. vote in favor, determined that all
measures that would change the physical
or demographic character of the occupied
lands, including Jerusalem, have no legal
validity and are a flagrant violation
of the Fourth Geneva Convention. It further called on countries to distinguish
between Israel and the West Bank.
Under the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, the council did
not explicitly reject settlements as illegal,
but referred to earlier resolutions that did
so while continuing to assail the occupation as untenable. Resolution 605, passed
under Reagan with a U.S. abstention in 1987,
recalled Resolution 465 passed under

Carter and said the council was gravely
concerned and alarmed by the deterioration in the territories. Under George H. W.
Bush, Security Council resolutions consistently decried the deteriorating situation
and admonished Israel for its violation of
Geneva conventions.
Critics say that whats new is the call
to distinguish between Israel and the territories, though Resolution 465 calls on
countries not to provide Israel with any
assistance to be used specifically in connection with settlements in the occupied
territories.
The practical consequences of the resolution passed last week seem limited. Its
provisions already exist in the U.N. canon,
and if any harm seems immediately forthcoming, it is in pledges by leading members of the Republican-led Congress to cut
funding to the United Nations in the wake
of its passage.
If there was an unprecedented element to the affair, it was in the response
by Israels leadership and some in the U.S.
pro-Israel community. Relations between
Obama and Netanyahu have never been
smooth, but even critical statements have
been tempered by thanks for enhanced
security assistance and other signals of
friendship.
Not this time. Language reserved for
anonymous attacks or leaks from closeddoor meetings went on the record.
The Obama administration carried
out a disgraceful and anti-Israel trap at
the United Nations, Netanyahu said Saturday at the lighting of the first Chanukah
candle.
Statements by mainstream pro-Israel
groups were relatively temperate the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee
called the abstention particularly regrettable. On the right, the responses were
more unleashed.
Obamas an anti-Semitic Israel hater
sympathizing with radical Islamic
terrorists, said Morton Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, in his first-ever tweet. He likes his
Jewish friends, not the Jewish people.
Netanyahu, who in the weeks before
was boasting to all comers about Israels
expanding relations with India, China,
Russia, and a host of African countries,
launched steps reminiscent of the you
and me against the world era that predated Oslo. He suspended ties with New
Zealand and Senegal, two of the four
nations that reintroduced the resolution
after Egypt pulled it under pressure from
Netanyahu and President-elect Donald
Trump. He summoned ambassadors from
the United States and other Security Council member states with diplomatic ties to
Israel for rebukes on Christmas. And he
canceled a visit by the prime minister of
Ukraine, which supported the resolution.
His government cut off all but security ties
with the Palestinian Authority.
Netanyahu and his ambassador to
Washington, Ron Dermer, said they were
counting on the Trump administration to
reverse course. Dermer said in many interviews that he had evidence that the Obama
administration did not simply abstain but
colluded in framing the resolution, an
accusation strongly denied by administration officials, and for which he presented
no evidence.
Israel now is looking ahead to a new
American order. At the Chanukah ceremony, Netanyahu spoke of our friends
in the incoming administration David
Friedman, Trumps ambassador designate, is an active supporter of the settlement movement and warned that in
this new era, there will be a much higher
price to be paid for harming Israel, and
it will be exacted not only by the United
States, but by Israel.
Will Trump usher in that era? His pronouncements after the resolution were
relentlessly critical, promising in one
tweet that things will be different at the
U.N. after he assumes the presidency and
lamenting in another that the councils
action will make it much harder to negotiate peace. In a third, he said the United
Nations had become a club for people to
get together, talk and have a good time. So
sad!
In total, the statements appeared to
regret the passage of the resolution but
stopped well short of pledging to reverse
its effects.
Trump said early in his campaign that
he wanted to negotiate a peace deal as a
neutral party and that he did not believe
in coming into negotiations with preconditions. One result of the U.S. abstention last
week is to lay the ground for an incoming
administration to pressure Israel to end
JTA WIRE SERVICE
settlements.
Jewish World
7 questions about
the U.N. resolution
AMI EDEN
NEW YORK Emotions are running high
after the Obama administrations decision
to allow the U.N. Security Council to pass a
resolution condemning Israeli settlements.
Here are seven questions aimed at making
sense of what happened, and what it could
mean moving forward.
1. Did Obama just double down on failed
settlements first strategy?
Listening to President Barack Obamas
aides, the decision to allow the U.N. Security Council resolution to pass was a lastgasp move borne out of frustration and
distrust. But in many respects it resembles
the Obama administrations failed opening
maneuver.
Obama took a hot-and-cold approach to
Israel, simultaneously strengthening military and intelligence cooperation while
stepping up criticism of the settlements.
The plan reportedly was to pressure

Netanyahu into accepting a settlement
freeze, which in turn potentially could
lead to meaningful diplomatic gestures
from many Arab states (including Saudi
Arabia) and get the Palestinians to return
to the negotiating table.
Netanyahu eventually accepted a modified 10-month freeze, but the Obama team
either over-promised or were rolled by
Arab interlocutors and the Palestinians. In
one instance, in September 2009, Obama
officials said a number of Arab states
not including Saudi Arabia were ready
to announce overtures to Israel, when
an announcement of building in eastern
Jerusalem scuttled the deal. No meaningful gestures ever emerged from the wider
Arab world, and PA leader Mahmoud
Abbas didnt show up for talks until the
freeze was about to expire and then
promptly insisted on an extension of the
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, arrives at his weekly Cabinet
meeting in Jerusalem on December 25.
DAN BALILTY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
freeze in exchange for their continuation.

Instead of providing a boost to peace
talks, the Obama strategy produced
paralysis. The Palestinians now expect

to be rewarded with Israeli concessions
SEE U.N. RESOLUTION PAGE 19
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Jewish World
U.N. Resolution
FROM PAGE 17
simply for showing up at the negotiating table. And if

they dont get any, apparently they are content to sit
on their hands and wait for the international community to impose a solution.
By letting the resolution pass, the Obama administration essentially has validated that strategy while
boosting right-wing politicians in Israel who now
press Netanyahu to abandon the two-state approach
entirely.
2. Did Netanyahu blow diplomatic gains by Sharon
and Olmert?
Depending on which sources you want to believe,
former Israeli prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud
Olmert translated warm relations with President
George W. Bush into unprecedented U.S. acceptance
of continued, albeit limited, settlement construction
before a final status agreement. Compare that to where
things stand today, and it makes sense to take a look at
Netanyahus approach to the Obama administration.
Two caveats before jumping in: Just what the Bush
administration agreed to regarding settlement construction and how formal those agreements were are
a matter of debate. And lets acknowledge there is little
to suggest that Obama and his aides had any interest
in running with the Bush-Sharon/Olmert framework.
That said, if Netanyahu was serious about securing
the Obama administrations support for the maximal
Israeli view of the Bush-Sharon understandings in
particular the green light on building in certain settlements he had a funny way of showing it.
By all accounts, the Israeli quid in the deal was
the unambiguous endorsement of a Palestinian state
plus the Gaza disengagement and dismantling the
four West Bank settlements. Netanyahu campaigned
against all of the above, and spent his first few months
in office refusing to reaffirm Israels support for Palestinian statehood.
Yes, after a few months in office, Netanyahu
embraced the two-state goal, but by then suspicions
about his true intentions had increased doubts that
were reinforced by Netanyahus assertion during the
2015 campaign that no Palestinian state would be created on his watch.
Another, perhaps more important, shift was Netanyahus abandonment of Sharon and Olmerts strategy
of bending over backward to downplay disagreements
with the White House. If anything, Team Netanyahu
took the opposite approach, from airing public disagreements to disparaging Obama administration officials to playing footsie with Republicans.
However wrong you think Obama was last week
(or during the past eight years), its still worth asking
whether a more cordial and collaborative approach
from Netanyahu would have produced a different
outcome.
3. Why did Egypt back this resolution?
A major Israeli talking point in recent years has been
that regional chaos in the Middle East and Arab fears
of Iran have created a new era of behind-the-scenes
Israeli-Arab cooperation. One consequence of this
new reality, weve been told, is that Arab governments
are much more worried about ISIS and Iran than they
are about the Palestinians.
Yet it was Egypt that first introduced this resolution.
And though Egypt eventually withdrew the resolution,
under pressure from Netanyahu and President-elect
Donald Trump, it ended up voting for the measure
anyway, after four other countries put it up for a vote.
Was Egypts introduction of the resolution and
subsequent yes vote about coordinating with the
Obama administration or addressing domestic audiences? If

the latter, it suggests that Arab leaders are still feeling internal pressure to make progress on the Palestinian front.
4. What does Putin want?
Trump has made clear his eagerness to come to an understanding with Russian President Vladimir Putin on how to
calm the region and defeat ISIS. Obama is on his way out,
but Putin isnt going anywhere, so its worth noting that Russia voted for the resolution (and is a seemingly satisfied partner to the Iran nuclear deal). What emphasis, if any, will
Putin put on Israeli-Palestinian issues when he and Trump
put their heads together about the Middle East?
5. Does Trump want a peace process?
In recent months Trump has consistently stressed a no

daylight-style line regarding his future dealings with Israel.
Its a message that some left-wingers and right-wingers alike
have interpreted as a willingness to let the two-state solution die and to give a green light to Netanyahu to proceed
as he sees fit. But Trump also continues to talk about what
a great accomplishment it would be if he could help broker
an Israeli-Palestinian deal. And in criticizing the U.N. resolution, Trump sounded very much like someone thinking
about the next round of talks, complaining that the move
puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position.
Another sign that the incoming president could be serious
about future talks: His naming of a trusted longtime aide,
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Jewish World
Jason Greenblatt of Teaneck, the chief legal officer for
the Trump Organization, as his administrations special
representative for international negotiations.
6. If this resolution is good for the two-state solution,
why are Hamas and Islamic Jihad so happy?
Among those cheering the resolution are Hamas and
Islamic Jihad, two terrorist groups opposed to a twostate solution not to mention Israels existence.
7. How strong is Jewish opposition to the resolution?
The criticism isnt coming just from the right. Centrist
groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee issued sharp condemnations. The
Israel Policy Forum a staunch advocate of U.S. efforts
to secure a two-state solution came out against the

resolution, citing the U.N.s abysmal record on Israel,
the lack of balance in the resolution itself and the effect
of galvanizing Israeli opponents of a two-state solution.
Yes, several left-wing groups (including New Israel Fund,
J Street, Americans for Peace Now, and Ameinu) voiced
varying levels of support for the resolution. But before
the vote, the Union for Reform Judaism the largest liberal group, and a frequent critic of the Netanyahu government and settlements declared that it stood firmly
against any U.N. resolution that would dictate the way
forward on this complicated issue.
JTA WIRE SERVICE
BRIEFS
First female charedi judge in the U.S. sworn into office

The first female charedi judge in U.S. history, Rachel
Freier, was sworn into office during a recent ceremony
in New York.
Freier, an attorney and mother of six, was elected to
the New York State Civil Court, defeating two opponents
in the September 13 primary election. The swearing-in
ceremony was held at Brooklyn Borough Hall December
22 and attended by her parents, husband, children,

grandchildren, and uncle, former Judge David Schmidt,
who inducted her into the court.
Freier started the all-female volunteer ambulance
corps Ezrat Nashim, where she is a volunteer emergency
medical technician.

JNS.ORG
Israeli High Court postpones Amona outpost eviction

Israels High Court of Justice agreed to postpone the evacuation of the Amona outpost in Samaria one last time,
giving residents a grace period of 45 days until February
8, 2017.
The ruling came after a dramatic day during which the
court rejected residents petition to make the eviction,
originally set for December 25, contingent upon a compromise being reached on the outposts relocation. Eventually, the residents agreed to leave Amona quietly and
without preconditions.
Outposts such as Amona are settlements that did not
receive appropriate administrative authorizations and are
therefore illegal, according to Israeli law.
Explaining its decision to grant the states motion and
postpone the eviction, the court said, There is now a
commitment to leave peacefully, without clashes or opposition.This commitment is unconditional, and therefore
we are going so far as to accede to the request. JNS.ORG
Ukraine summons Israeli envoy after prime minister

is disinvited from a meeting with Netanyahu
Following the cancellation of a meeting between Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ukraine summoned
Israeli Ambassador to Kiev Eli Belotserkovsky in an effort
to clarify the situation.
Netanyahu disinvited Groysman from a planned visit
to Israel because of Ukraines vote in favor of the U.N.
Security Council resolution against Israeli settlements.
An unnamed top diplomatic official in Ukraine said, We
were surprised by the emotional response of officials
and politicians in Israel. Ukraine understands Israels

position, but this is about Ukraines stance regarding the
Middle East, and the reprimand discussion [with Belotserkovsky] led from that to a conversation about strengthening ties and lowering the flames.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said that the cancellation of Prime Minister Groysmans visit [to Israel] is temporary, and its possible that such a visit will take place at
a later stage in the coming year.

JNS.ORG
Proposed legislation would outlaw activities

of anti-IDF organization from the schools
thejewishstandard.com
Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett has introduced

legislation that would ban anti-Israel Defense Forces organizations from giving presentations to Israeli high school
students, Israel Hayom reported.
Bennett decided to turn to legislative means after he
learned that some schools have been ignoring a ministerial directive prohibiting them from inviting representatives of such organizations including Breaking the
Silence, an advocacy group dedicated to exposing alleged
wrongdoings by the Israeli military to speak to classes.
Since the ministerial directive refers only to organizations that undermine the states legitimacy, some school
principals have claimed that it does not apply to Breaking
the Silence speakers. The ministry has taken disciplinary
action against such principals.
Under the provisions of the bill, Israels education minister will have the authority to ban certain individuals or
organizations from an educational facility if the minister
believes they undermine the educational goals of that
institution or engage in an effort to besmirch IDF soldiers.
JNS.ORG
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Cover Story
Seeing
clearly
Fair Lawn author has new, simple idea
for books for Alzheimers patients
JOANNE PALMER
Eliezer Sobel and his mother, Manya Lerner Sobel
22 Jewish standard deCeMBer 30, 2016
liezer Sobel is a very complicated man who has written two

very simple books.
That is not accidental.
Mr. Sobel, who grew up in Fair Lawn
and whose mother still lives there, is a
writer, a depressive with a wild, prototypically baby-boomer-Jewish sense of humor,
heavily influenced by Woody Allen but
deeply original nonetheless. His mother
suffers from Alzheimers, and Mr. Sobel,
using his writers eye and imagination, figured out a way to help her.
His books, the general
Blue Sky White Clouds: A
Book for Memory-Challenged Adults, and

the more specifically targeted LChaim!
Pictures to Evoke Memories of Jewish
Life, are collections of large, brightly colored photographs, with simple captions in
large type underneath them. There is no
story. Each page is self-contained. Even
the caption is not necessary. The delight
is in the picture.
The books were born out of Mr. Sobels
parents needs.
First, meet Max and Manya Lerner Sobel
as they once were. Manya was a German
Holocaust refugee who arrived in New
York in 1939, on the Bremen, the last ship
that Hitler permitted to leave Germany.
She settled in Paterson. Max, who was
Cover Story
born in Manhattan and lived in the Bronx,

moved to Paterson too; thats where the
two met.
Max Sobel fought in the Battle of the
Bulge and came home from World War II
with a Purple Heart. The Sobels moved to
Fair Lawn before their children were born.
They lived there for at least 67 years, Mr.
Sobel said. And they were in the same
house for 59 years.
Manya Sobel was a homemaker. Dr. Max
Sobel, who earned a doctorate in math
education from Columbia and taught at
Montclair State for about 50 years, was
a pre-eminent math educator. He published more than 60 math textbooks, on
every level from kindergarten through
postgraduate, Eliezer said. He was
famous in the field; he lectured
all over the country, his books
were translated into many languages and used internationally.
I had him as a teacher, he
continued. It was weird. We
were using his textbook, and the
verbal problems in the book used
our names. I grew up as Elliot,
and my brother is Harry. The
book would say something like,
If it took Elliot three hours to
mow the lawn
And I got married late, and
before that I was a serial monogamist. So every time a new book
came out, hed have to change the
name of the girlfriends. Karen and
Sharon and
When I finally got married,
it was days after he retired, and
it looked like my wife, Shari
her full name is Shari Cordon
wasnt going to make it into a
verbal problem. But then one of
his publishers asked him to do just
one more edition. He did, and
Sharis in.
About 17 years ago, Manya developed

Alzheimers, which worsened as time
passed. Eliezer and Shari lived in Virginia.
Three years ago, this time of year, we
happened to be in New Jersey for my parents 67th anniversary, Eliezer said. My
Manya was a
German
Holocaust
refugee who
arrived in New
York in 1939, on
the Bremen, the
last ship that
Hitler permitted
to leave
Germany.
father was 90. He was running the household, caring for mom at home, with a staff
of aides.
It was always scary to watch him go
upstairs. He was always teetering off balance, carrying coffee. We begged him
to hold onto the bannister. One day he
decided to carry groceries. The grapes and
yogurt made it into the kitchen, but he fell
backwards and landed on his head. He had
a near-traumatic brain injury. I spent the
night in the ICU.
And suddenly we had two dementia
patients.
At first, his doctors were sure that Max
was about to die. They told us to say our
goodbyes, Eliezer said. He ended up living another three years, including some
good years. He recovered about 75 percent
The pictures in LChaim are designed to evoke memories of Jewish life in

patients with Alzheimers.
Jewish standard deCeMBer 30, 2016 23
Cover Story
of his mind, and he was able to walk with
a walker and someone holding onto his
waist. But he was a constant fall risk he
got kicked out of rehab because they kept
finding him wandering on his own.
Eliezer is a writer, and Shari, who was
running a research lab at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center,
was ready to give up her job, so the couple moved back to Fair Lawn. We ended
up living back in my childhood home, he
said. The bed that I had been in at age 5 I
was back in at age 61.
We lived with them for 10 months,
while we got the systems and the right
aides in place. Then we moved out, but
we never made it home. We have been in
New Jersey ever since. They now live in
Red Bank, in Sharis parents house; her
mother died after suffering from another
form of dementia. Her father, Eliezer
reports, is fine.
Dr. Max Sobel died on November 11.
The book grew out of Eliezers relationship with his mother. He watched her as
she lost her language. My brother, who
is a psychologist, explained that often
people with dementia lose language in
the reverse order that they learned it as
children. Children learn categories. They
classify all things with fur and four legs
as animals; they might call all animals
cats or dogs or cows or lions. And then
they can distinguish a dog from a cat, and
then, at the next level of sophistication,
they can distinguish a collie from a German shepherd.
We noticed that my mother was starting to refer to all mechanical things as
machines. She was able to recognize that
they all were mechanical objects, but she
no longer could differentiate them. And
from there she devolved to word salad,
where it sounded like English, like she had
some thoughts in mind, but it gets out of
kilter about three or four words in.
Shed say something like, Well, I have
the pictures and if someone doesnt come
tomorrow then there is nothing I can do. I
will have to tell someone to fix it and I have
the blue one and the red one.
And she picked up a random piece of
paper from my fathers desk, and she said,
Here it says to call Irv, but I cant really
help these people.
She was still speaking English, and in
phrases, but it didnt have any meaning.
And then the English went, but she still
made sounds. She could speak in gibberish, and I would too, and wed have long
conversations. Wed say, I cant make the
calendalish or Well buy another barospamat or You need to noodle needle the
mendel man and we will bendle bishen.
It was all with a conversational
cadence, and we would go back and forth
as if we understood each other.
And then we assumed that English was
gone.
But then one day I walked into the living room, and she was flipping through the
magazines, looking at the headlines, and
Eliezer Sobel, left, and his brother, Harry, flank their father, Max.
Eliezer and Manya Sobel.
The Sobels had been married nearly 70 years when Max died in November.
reading them out loud. Short ones, but

still. I was floored. I said, Mom could still
read! Id had no idea.
She couldnt read sentences or paragraphs, but she could read three words.
So I figured that I could get a picture book
designed for people with dementia, with
beautiful, realistic photographs and simple captions.
So I went to Barnes & Noble, but there
was nothing. I looked in the childrens section, but my mother had an aversion to
animation and caricatures and cartoons.
She just didnt like it. Thats the style of
design of most childrens books. Also,
most childrens books have story continuity. Following a story was no longer possible for Manya Sobel.
So I looked all over Amazon, and all
over online, and I just couldnt believe it,
but there werent any books.
I called the Alzheimers Association,
and they put me in touch with the chief
Max and Manya on their wedding day.
24 Jewish Standard DECEMBER 30, 2016
Earlier this year, Max holds one of his

two great-grandchildren. This is Talia.
Cover Story
Alzheimers librarian. She was very snooty
at first, and said they had thousands of
books. They were all for caregivers. When
I explained to her what I wanted, she was
silent. I had stumped her.
Eventually he found one book with a similar idea, but the style was cartoonish, and
it was not what he or his mother wanted.
I cant believe that with the epidemic
of Alzheimers, nobodys thought of it yet,
especially since people are struggling to
come up with activities for people with
dementia other than just sitting in front of
TVs in nursing homes. They say they have
activities, but often its people in wheelchairs nodding off while someone else is
standing in front of the room trying desperately to engage them.
So I came up with the idea.
The Jewish book shows a wide range
of people, all busy at identifiable Jewish activities. I was looking for as much
diversity as possible within the Jewish
community, Eliezer said. There are kids,
the elderly, men, women I was definitely
looking for that.
I watched my mother with the first
book. She seemed to zero in on three of
the pictures immediately. One was of an
elderly couple. Shed just stare at it for
minutes, and touch their cheeks.
Now, his mother is farther gone with
Alzheimers. She no longer can decode
photographs enough to gain any meaning from them at all. She no longer can
recognize anything or anyone. But even
as recently as three to six months ago, if I
would stand in front of her long enough,
and look in her eyes, and wave, eventually she would notice that someone was
there, Eliezer said. That moment of
connection was sufficient. But now that
seems to have gone.
Despite the immense sadness of his
mothers long fall into the oblivion of
Alzheimers, there was a sense in which

both she and he gained from it, he said.
Manya had always been tight, clenched,
rigid; she was, after all, a Holocaust refugee. When she developed Alzheimers,
she became looser and all of a sudden
was free to laugh. At first, we didnt recognize this woman, who seemed suddenly free to be herself, Eliezer said. As
someone who had experienced the terror
of Nazism, she raised us with a very usvs.-them mentality. We never had friends
in the house. And then I remember that
one day we went out to eat in a restaurant, and when we realized that she
wasnt with us, we looked back through
the window.
We saw that she was going from table
to table, striking up conversations with
everyone, and they were loving it. She
had been so private, and it changed her
personality.
It made her thinking childish, and often
that means literal. One day, she was outside the bathroom door, and she yelled,
Where is the bathroom? I said, Its
directly to your right. She took me literally. There was a laundry hamper between
her and the door, and she looked through
the hamper, and said, I dont see a bathroom in here.
His father, a mathematician, was very
literal, Eliezer said, so often he was not
able to follow his wifes thoughts. The
first rule of Alzheimers care is to go with
their reality. Dont try to correct them.
We would explain that to my father, and
he would seem to understand, and then
my mother would get off the phone with
her sister and say she couldnt have been
on the phone with her sister because she
didnt have a sister, and my dad couldnt
let it go. Hed explode. And then my
mother would stare at him and wonder
why this man was yelling at her.
Eliezer Sobels novel displays another

aspect of his personality.
From her point of view, he was the

crazy one.
Eliezer, a writer, was more able to let
himself join his mothers new reality. I
called her on the phone, and she was so in
the moment that I would say, Mom, what
are you doing? and she would say, Im sitting here with the phone in my hand. Id
say, Me too, and she would marvel at the
coincidence.
His mother once had been a meticulous
housekeeper, but that went too, as demonstrated by the Case of the Missing Brisket.
We went to the butcher and bought brisket, and then we went to the post office
and ran some other errands, Eliezer said.
We couldnt find the brisket. We called
the butcher, we went back to the post
office, we scoured the car, searched under
the seats. Nothing.
Eventually we found it in my mothers

pocketbook.
One day my brother, who was visiting,
told me, I never thought I would hear
myself utter this sentence, but, are you
ready? Mom just blew her nose on a piece
of salami.
All this was funny, but of course it also
wasnt funny at all. And they werent
funny to Dad, who was losing his partner
of 60 years, Eliezer said.
Funny and not-at-all funny both are
modes to which Mr. Sobel keeps returning. Minyan: Ten Jewish Men in a World
That Is Heartbroken is a semiautobiographical novel of growing up in Fair
Lawn and living in New York as an adult.
Published in 2004, it won a prestigious
Peter Taylor prize from the University of
Tennessee Press.
Reading the novel is like listening to
Eliezer Sobel talk, in that you hear both
the raucous humor sometimes funny,
sometimes insanely second-grade, sometimes both and the deep sadness. His
characters 10 men with intertwined lives
are a parade of almost indistinguishable middle-aged Jewish men, nudniks,
foul-mouthed losers, with almost indistinguishably uber-Jewish names; friends
since childhood, baby boomers to their
core, with comic-book-Jewish parents and
siblings and stories. Also or at least this
is true of the main character, who at least
to some extent is him deeply sad, deeply
yearning, looking for God, looking for
hope, looking for love. But going to make
a series of very dumb sex and bathroom
jokes before admitting it.
To a great extent, the two books for
people with Alzheimers and Minyan
are very clearly the product of the same
mind. It takes a certain twist to be able to
see clearly and head-on. Eliezer Sobel can
do it.
Blue Sky White Clouds, Eliezers first book for people with Alzheimers, is aimed at a general market.
Jewish standard deCeMBer 30, 2016 25
Editorial
Please just end already!
ot Carrie Fisher too!

This year has been a
series of blows; as the end
of the year approaches,
they seem to fall faster and faster.
Carrie Fishers death is symbolic.
She was a smart, funny, honest,
beautiful and battered woman not
battered in the literal sense, but by
fate and family history. Half-Jewish
by ancestry the daughter of Eddie
Fisher, who was Jewish, and Debbie
Reynolds, who is not, and who survives her she seemed to carry the
Jewish genes that predisposed her
toward sardonic humor, blistering
insight, deep compassion, and no
small amount of self-loathing that she
worked to overcome but did not.
So farewell Princess Leia. We
are glad to have shared the earth
with you.
The blow to the community posed
by the United States abstention on
the vote against Israels settlements
is huge. No matter what you think of
the settlements and of course we
understand that the word covers a
wide range of towns and cities and
hilltop fortresses the rejection was
harsh and unwelcome. It will change
the memories many Jews have of
President Barack Obama as he leaves
the White House and the headlines,
and thats a pity. It also seems to have
changed Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, plunging him further into
what we fear might be self-destructive
behavior. Calling in the ambassadors
of the 12 countries some of them
Israels allies on Christmas to yell
at them? Christmas is, after all, a big
deal for Christians. Thats petty and
counterproductive. Burning his relationships with those countries, and
relying on President-elect Donald
Trump to be his white knight, seems
to be imprudent.
The vote also seems to have opened
the floodgates on yet another reservoir of hate who knew exactly how
many such reservoirs there are? They
were so well hidden, and they are so
Jewish
Standard
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Teaneck, NJ 07666
(201) 837-8818
Fax 201-833-4959
Publisher
James L. Janoff
Associate Publisher Emerita
Marcia Garfinkle
KEEPING THE FAITH
very full of toxic waste. We posted a

tweet on our Facebook page from
John Kerry, our secretary of state,
who has failed, like all his predecessors, to come up with a solution to
the Israeli/Palestinian situation. The
tweet was a Chanukah greeting. The
comments were almost entirely bilious loathing, directed at him. It is
extraordinary how loathed this man
is. It is extraordinary how comfortable people are with expressing such
loathing. They are particularly comfortable sending their hateful wishes
anonymously, using the internets
freedom to say things most likely
they wouldnt say were their names
attached to their words.
Its also striking how people who
hate in general cant spell and have
no grasp of grammar. Its something
Ive often wondered does hatred
crowd out spelling, or are the subliterate particularly drawn to crude nastiness? Its a conundrum.
So we understand that there is a
difference between the Jewish new
year and the secular one, but right
now, Achot Ketana Little Sister
a piyyut that we sing as the Jewish
new year ends has been echoing in
my head. Its a lovely, haunting Middle Eastern melody; the words ask for
an end to the curses of this year and
a beginning to the blessings that will
come in the new one.
Its first verse begins:
The little sister: Her prayers
she prepares and proclaims her
praises. Oh God, please, heal now
her ailments. Let the year and its
curses conclude!
And it concludes:
Be strong and rejoice for the
plunder is ended; place hope in the
Rock and keep his covenant. You will
ascend to Zion and he will say: Pave!
Pave her paths. Let the year and its
blessings begin!
So yes, please, let this year of
curses end, and let the new one
include blessings!

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Berlin terror, Trump

rhetoric, and Jewish law
he late December attack on an outTrump first used the Trojan Horse refdoor market in Berlin underscores
erence following the November 2015 terror
one of the reasons why Donald J. attacks in Paris. He has used it many times
Trumps virulently anti-refugee
since. The Berlin attack only adds weight to
rhetoric resonated with so many voters. It
his position.
also offers an opportunity to examine the
That brings us to Jewish law. In this case, if
inner workings of halachah, Jewish law.
Jewish law was the governing law, two competing sets of laws would be at work. A deciAnis Amri, the perpetrator of the Berlin
attack, was an asylum-seeker from Tunisia. sion would have to be made about which one
He left Tunisia after the success of the Janu- is operative.
ary 2011 Jasmine Revolution and headed
The first set of laws has to do with how we
for Italy. There, he and several friends
deal with strangers in our midst. Says Leviticus 19:33-34: When a stranger resides with
torched a migrant center in Sicily. He was
you in your land, you shall not
caught, convicted, and sentenced to four years in prison.
wrong him. The stranger who
While in prison, he was transresides with you shall be to you
ferred six times because of his
as one of your citizens; you
violent behavior, and because
shall love him as yourself, for
of his penchant for fomenting
you were strangers in the land
prison revolts.
of Egypt.
When it came time to decide
That there should be one law
whether to grant Amri asylum,
for residents and aliens is found
the Italians sought to deport
in several places, such as ExoRabbi
dus 12:49, Numbers 9:14, and
him, but Tunisia said it did not
Shammai
Numbers 15:15.
want him back.
Engelmayer
Possibly, Deuteronomy 23:16In 2015, therefore, Amri went
17 offers a very telling law of its
to Germany. He applied for asylum this past April, and was turned down In
own: You shall not turn over to his master
June, because German intelligence had cred- a slave who seeks refuge with you from his
ible information that he had become radical- master. He shall live with you in any place he
ized there, and posed an imminent danger. may choose among the settlements in your
Incredibly, though, he was allowed to roam
midst, wherever he pleases; you must not illfree because he had no travel documents at
treat him.
the time, and Tunisia was slow in respondThe verse refers to a runaway slave, but an
ing to a request for a passport. It arrived on
argument can be made that a person fleeing
the same day Germany launched an interna- from a tyrannical regime given to torture and
tional manhunt for him.
other forms of persecution falls under the
This is the kind of situation Trump railed
banner of a runaway slave.
about on the campaign trail, and has
It is hard to argue, then, that doors should
repeated several times since election day. be closed to such a person.
This is especially true of the influx of refuThat Leviticus 19:34 gives as the reason for
gees from Syria and other Muslim nations. its law for you were strangers in the land of
This is going to be potentially a catastrophe
Egypt also has wider implications, because
for our country, Trump said at one point
it is saying we must take our own history into
about the Syrians. Its from within, it could
account in deciding how we deal with others.
be the all-time great Trojan Horse.
Too often in Jewish history, we were forced
from one land after another, often unable
Shammai Engelmayer is the rabbi of
to find refuge anywhere else. How could we,
Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades in
who were stateless refugees ourselves, deny
Cliffside Park.
refuge to other stateless refugees?
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Opinion
Then again, there were nations that did give Jews
refuge some Muslim countries, for example, after
the expulsion from Spain in 1492. An updated version of the Leviticus verse could end with for you
were strangers in the land of Morocco, for example.
There are other laws, however, that also must be
considered. Uppermost is Exodus 22:1-2: If a thief
is seized while tunneling, and he is beaten to death,
there is no bloodguilt in his case. If the sun has risen
on him, there is bloodguilt in that case.
This law was given at a time when there was no
electricity. The words are sparse, but what they say
is this: If someone broke into a home in the dead
of night and the homeowner killed the intruder, the
homeowner is not guilty of a crime because he could
not know if the intruder had a weapon and was prepared to kill. If the intruder broke in during the daytime, however, killing him is a crime, assuming that
it was clear that he had no weapon.
The bottom line of this law is that if someone is out
to kill you and there is no other way to stop him, he
can be killed before he kills you, if that is the only
If it is not possible to
determine who is a
terrorist and who is a
refugee, better to
keep refugees far
away from you.
way to stop him. By extension, if you are reasonably
certain someone has murderous intent, keep him far
away from you.
A would-be terrorist disguised as a fleeing refugee
fails to qualify here. If it is not possible to determine
who is a terrorist and who is a refugee, better to keep
refugees far away from you.
To determine which set of laws to follow, we must
consider Leviticus 18:5. You shall keep My laws and
My rules, by the pursuit of which man shall live. The
Talmud adds, but not die by them (see the Babylonian Talmud tractate Sanhedrin 74a, for example,
or the Mishnah in BT Makkot 23b). In other words, if
life is threatened, protecting that life trumps almost
everything else.
Protecting the stranger and giving him refuge
could violate this principle.
Deciding which set of laws to follow is not a question that is easily answered. The decision would
depend on how great the threat really is, if that
could be determined with a reasonable degree
of certainty.
The opinions expressed in this section are those of

the authors, not necessarily those
of the newspapers editors, publishers, or other
staffers. We welcome letters to the editor.
Send them to jstandardletters@gmail.com.
Post-truth and post-reason

big data and big dada fight it out
audiences, especially to wealthy backers as opposed to the

s we reach the end of 2016, I find I have mixed
general public. Not to mention the fact that officeholders
feelings about the Word of the Year chosen by
often must withhold information from their constituents.
Oxford Dictionaries: post-truth.
Because Trump seems to say whatever comes into his
Reflecting the Brexit vote in the U.K. as well
head and does not care to be diplomatic in his remarks
as the presidential election campaign in the U.S., the term
or hold back in concern over anyones sensitivities, he is
reflects the disillusionment that many of us feel with political discourse in the 21st century, especially as it is conseen as honest in a way that renders any inconsistencies
ducted via television, the internet, and social media.
in what he says irrelevant. So what if he contradicts himself from one situation to another, if what he says at any
But the advent of post-truth leaves open the question,
given moment is what he truly is thinking, what he truly
what is truth? In one sense, it is the opposite of a lie, and
believes to be true? In this way, Trumps vulgar remarks
this years election campaign has seen more accusations
caught on tape before an Access Hollywood appearance
of lying coming from both sides of the political spectrum
serves as more proof of his honesty, and does not conflict
than I can recall from past political seasons. A lie is a deliberate attempt to mislead, either by knowingly making a
with his statements that he loves women and no one has
false statement, or by withholding information known to
more respect for women than he does, at least as far as his
be true.
fans are concerned.
Over the past half century, two of our presidents have
The kind of honesty Trump represents is associated
gotten in trouble for lying Richard Nixon,
with the ideal of authenticity. For celebrity
who was forced to resign, and Bill Clinton,
logic, authenticity means playing yourself,
who was impeached. Of course, some of
even if you are playing a role. Thats the difference between being an actor, along the
us find that there is a significant difference
lines of Meryl Streep or Dustin Hoffman, or
between Nixon lying to cover up an attempt
being a star, like Arnold Schwarzenegger,
to undermine the democratic process, and
Sylvester Stallone, or Adam Sandler for that
Clinton lying to cover up a personal indiscretion. But both were guilty of failing to live up
matter. What fans often forget is that playing
to the ideal of honesty. Jimmy Carter, on the
yourself is still playing a role, that authenticity on the part of celebrities is still an act.
other hand, campaigned on the promise that
Dr. Lance
Politicians can accuse their opponents
Ill never lie to you. Whatever else might be
Strate
of lying as a way of emphasizing their own
said of him, he tried to tell the American people the truth about the end of postwar prosimage of authenticity, but actually proving
perity. His message was not well received, to
such claims can be very difficult, because
say the least.
they require some evidence that there was an intent to
The apocryphal story of young George Washington
mislead. The Watergate conspirators avoided charges of
admitting to chopping down a cherry tree with the words
perjury by using the phrase to the best of my recollection in conjunction with their testimony. Who can prove
I cannot tell a lie reflects one type of honesty, honesty
that a lie is not the result of a faulty memory rather than a
in confession of sin, wrongdoing, or error. This kind of
deliberate deception?
honesty is very much a part of Jewish religious and ethical tradition, and the Judeo-Christian foundation of the
For similar reasons, journalists rarely accuse anyone of
American republic. It is a practice that our president-elect
lying, instead identifying statements as false. That leaves
seems to avoid more often than not, although it has been
open the question of whether the politicians were simply
in general decline through our culture, in part due to the
mistaken, or in the neologism used by press secretaries,
litigious nature of our society, but also due to a decay in
whether they misspoke. Journalists can, however, report
peoples willingness to take responsibility for their actions.
on the accusations of lying made by some other source.
Abraham Lincoln was known as Honest Abe, reportWhile they may not be able to support the claim that canedly long before he entered the political arena, when
didate A is lying, they can easily show that candidate B
he was a young store clerk and, notably, when he was a
said that candidate A is lying.
lawyer. In this regard, beyond telling the truth, honesty
The important point is that while in one sense lies are
refers more broadly to integrity and trustworthiness;
the opposite of truth, in another sense it is falsity that
beyond lying, dishonesty includes a variety of unethiis truths antonym. The contrast between true and false
cal behaviors, such as cheating. Here too, we can trace
takes us away from the ideal of honesty, and removes the
this ideal back to biblical passages such as can be found
factor of personal belief. Instead, we are asked to objectively consider the logic of the claim, and the evidence
in the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17-27), which includes the
that may support or refute it.
commandment You shall not cheat in measuring length,
This meaning of truth is closely related to the concept
weight, or quantity. You shall have honest balances, honest weights (18:35-36). Accusations of cheating also have
of facticity, hence the Oxford Dictionary definition of postbeen a part of 2016 politics, again directed at both major
truth: relating to or denoting circumstances in which
parties and their candidates.
objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. This
Admittedly, these concepts of honesty are old-fashioned
reflects the commonly held view that facts are statements
and obsolescent in our contemporary culture of celebrity,
that are true, typically having been verified scientifically.
where honestly amounts to self-display and self-promotion. It is the honesty of going on a talk show and talking
But this is based on a misunderstanding of science.
about yourself, or feeding details of your personal life to
A scientific fact is a statement that is open to testing.
the gossip outlets. Donald Trump is seen as honest by his
A statement such as God created the world, cannot be
followers not because he accurately conveys the truth,
tested empirically by any known method, and therefore
but because he says what he thinks, seemingly with little
cannot be considered a scientific fact. That means that it
or no filtering. This stands in stark contrast with the typicannot be tested to see if its true or false. A statement
cal politician, who sends different messages to different
SEE BIG DATA PAGE 29
Opinion
Living and learning in a VUCA world
he VUCA world
Educators, policymakers,
businessmen, and politicians
are talking about the fact that
were living in a VUCA world. Thats a
world that is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex,
and Ambiguous.
As 2016 draws to a close, its clear they
couldnt be more correct. The roller
coaster ride of our election season that
ended with Donald Trumps startling win
was only one of a series of events thats
proven nothing is predictable except the
unpredictable: Brexit was another example, as is the sad and devastating fact of
Bashar al-Assads recapture of Aleppo, and
his continued claim to power.
Though Ive been preoccupied by the
news, scrolling through my Facebook feed,
checking various media outlets, and gathering with friends to process the events
roiling the world, the children and adolescents in my life seem blessedly oblivious.
School continues as usual; students are still
learning about exponents, Lexington and
Concord, what an organelle is, and how to
spot an extended metaphor. The normal is
reassuring, and yet I hear the voice of Tony
Wagner, from the Harvard Graduate School
of Education, talking about our VUCA
world and urging educators to change education to prepare our kids for it.
How would we? One way is to organize the content we teach in ways that
challenge students to develop nuanced
answers. You can have students answer
what happened at Lexington and Concord, or you can have them look at rebellions from myriad historical eras in order
to determine why people rise up against
their rulers and what makes them succeed
or fail. The story of the American Revolution now can be set against the failed
uprising in Syria, and students can process
not only what happened in the past, but
whats happening outside their school and
home walls right now.
Another way to empower students not
only to understand current events, but
to take an active role in grappling with
the problems we face, is to have them do
just that. One of the first topics in a world
Young refugees can plug into

WhatsApp to find out the latest
about their journey.
history class is migration, looking at what

causes people to move from one land to
another. A study of forced and voluntary
migrations throughout history including
those of the Jewish people would yield a
rich understanding of the current refugee
crisis. Better yet, lets challenge students
to come up with their own plans for how
to deal with the Syrian migrant crisis and
have them debate with each other about
which ones they would implement.
As is evident, one of the qualities of a
curriculum based on a VUCA world is
that it doesnt have one correct answer.
It requires students to develop nuanced
ways of thinking about the world, to collaborate with each other to solve world
problems, and to be able to change their
minds when presented with new ideas
they encounter. It gives them the ability not only to understand information
theyve studied, but to be comfortable
handling it and applying it to various situations. Information, then, is dynamic, alive,
kinetic, and school becomes an incubator
for discussing and solving problems the
world faces.
Systems thinking
In an article How Systems Thinking
Applies to Education, Frank Betts discusses the rapid changes weve undergone
in the world in the past 50 years. He charts
the evolution of humankind and societal
progress, showing, for example, that
hunter-gatherer groups lasted for 500,000
years; agricultural societies for 10,000;
and the industrial society from which
were now emerging, for 500 years. Our
current post-industrial society has been
around only for the past 60 years or so. In
that time, schools have not had the time to
undergo the kind of transformation necessary for a post-industrial world, where the
banking model of education, one in which
teachers deposit information into their
students brains, is no longer ideal.
Betts argues that if were to prepare our
students for the world in which we now
live, we have to design a system that is
more open, organic . . . and complex,
one that interacts with constantly changing environments, and that among other
characteristics, lives and deals creatively
with change and welcomes not just tolerates complex and ambiguous situations.
A key conclusion Betts draws from his
analysis of 20th-century models of both
management and education is that were
moving from dictatorial to participative organizational styles. That is, were
moving from hierarchical structures to
more collaborative ones, and so we need
to shift perspective from a one-to-many
toward a many-to-one orientation. In education, this means moving from a model
where one teacher conveys information
to many students to one in which students realize they have many resources
from which to draw information, one of them being the

teacher. There is a saying
floating around on the internet that captures this idea.
My sister, Smadar Goldstein,
also an educator, introduced
me to it. Its Teach like
Google exists.
Tikvah
The fear we educators
Wiener
sometimes feel about letting
our students loose on Google
is that it can be an unreliable
source of information, but if our job moves
from sage on the stage to guide on the
side, we are right there with our students
as they conduct research, showing them
what sites are reliable and how to verify
information using multiple sources. Our job
becomes less about teaching students what
to think, and more about how to think.
Facing the unknown

That seems appropriate: in 1999 the U.S.
Department of Labor released a report
called Future Work Trends and Challenges for Work in the 21st Century. The
report said that 65 percent of elementary
school children will end up in a job that
doesnt yet exist. While that statistic sometimes has been disputed, an unarguable
fact is that many technologies that hadnt
been invented 20 years ago have altered
dramatically the way we live in the world
and interact with each other.
In fact, last weekend, the New York
Times published an article, For Millions
of Immigrants, a Common Language:
WhatsApp, about the role that WhatsApp
has been playing in linking immigrants
across the world, including many who
have made the trek from Syria to other
countries. The app was developed by Jan
Koum, an immigrant from Ukraine who
fled the country with his mother in the
early 1990s, driven out by a wave of antiSemitism. Koum signed part of the $19 billion deal that would sell the app to Facebook in front of the social services agency
where he used to collect food stamps.
Koum knows what it feels like to experience one of those forced migrations that
have taken place throughout history, but
he never could have foreseen the impact
his technology would have on other immigrants. Some have been in the countries to
which they fled for decades, and WhatsApp
has provided them with a way to connect
to relatives in homelands in a highly immediate way, one that feels to immigrants as if
theyre part of the woof and warp of daily
life of their distant family members.
For Syrian and other refugees, the app
has created a cataclysmic shift in the way
people move around the world. A refugee
knows better than anyone else how volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous
life can be, but WhatsApp is providing a
type of safe zone, and not only because
its such a secure cyberspace.

The app enables migrants to
stay connected along their
routes and to contact family members once theyve
reached their destinations. It
also allows those who already
have fled their homelands to
pass along tips and warnings to those just embarking
on the journey. Majd Taby, a
Syrian refugee who has emigrated to the United States
and has photo-documented the plight of
his countrymen, was quoted in the Times
article: What WhatsApp did was demystify the journey.
People would have a group with their
friends, and one of them would make it
to the other side, and send them back a
message telling them what the trip was
like, and sharing photos, Mr. Taby added.
Thats what caused a lot of people to
decide to do it. Theyd seen exactly what
was going to happen on WhatsApp.
Charting a new path

Since the 21st century began, weve been
hearing about disruption, and how the
new millennium will bring about changes
we cant begin to imagine. While we tried
to prepare for some disasters remember
Y2K? the ones that shook and pierced us
9/11, for example, and the slowly unfolding and horrifying tale of the Syrian war
and refugee crisis were ones we werent
ready for at all. In reality, though, preparing for the unexpected is something the
world always has had to do. As Jews, we
know this well: were in the middle of the
Torah portions about the story of Joseph.
Its one of my favorite biblical stories: told
masterfully, with deft use of timing and
dramatic irony and sharp but ultimately
sympathetic insight into what makes the
drama of human affairs so tragic, but also
so redemptive.
The story also illustrates the vagaries of
fate, the fact that at one moment we can
be thrown into a pit and sold into slavery,
vulnerable to the most brutal conditions
of both nature and man, with no control over any aspect of our lives, and the
next we can hold positions of wealth and
power, able to use our influence to alter
the course of world events and to provide
succor to those we care about. Let us learn
from Joseph the Righteous One, as he is
called, who comes to meet his fate with
dignity and an unwavering commitment
to his values and morals and to the notion
that though the world may be uncertain,
our faith in God does not have to be.
Tikvah Wiener of Teaneck is co-founder
and director of the I.D.E.A. Schools
Network and chief academic officer at
Magen David Yeshivah High School in
Brooklyn.
Opinion
What Ive learned about the columnist game
ince this column ends a wonderful

first year of being associated with
the Jewish Standard, I think a bit of
introspection may be in order. Let
me therefore share with you some of what
Ive learned, and am continuing to learn,
from this experience.
Ive learned that there are different types
of readers. Some graciously compliment
me, say they agree with my point, or tell me
that something in an article was particularly
meaningful to them. These readers obviously
were brought up by parents who taught them
that you can always find something nice to
say (cf. Ketubot 17a).
Others never say anything to me, clearly
brought up by parents who taught them that
if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing.
And still others tell me Im wrong, disagree
with what I wrote, or explain how I could
have vastly improved the piece. Clearly, they
were brought up as orphans.
More seriously, while I like the first group
best Im only human Ive learned that in
some ways I actually prefer the third group,
as long as they express themselves civilly, to
the second. You have to care to criticize; otherwise, why bother? That means that something I wrote touched them in some way,
even if not as I intended. But Ive learned that
having some, any, impact on others is one of
the reasons I love to write.
Ive learned about angst. I have a very
close longtime friend who writes a highly
regarded, and deservedly so, weekly column
for another Jewish paper. Hes often told
me that whenever he submits a column he
immediately begins to worry about what he

will write next, or even worse, whether hell
be able to find something to write about next.
I didnt fully understand this until about
my fourth column. Being new to the column
business, I had a few ideas stored up. So at
first, I simply felt satisfaction when I attached
a column to an email to the editor and hit
the send button. But once I had nothing left
in the storage bin, any satisfaction I felt was
almost immediately overwhelmed by the
angst my friend had told me about. Its not
surprising if this still happens to a pro whos
been writing successfully for decades, why
should a newcomer like me get a pass? So
Ive learned that writing a monthly column
means my angst can drag on a week or two
or three until I get an idea and start putting
pen to paper.
Ive learned that walking to shul alone on a
Shabbat morning is a wonderful time to think
about topics, and then to begin to write in my
mind, arranging ideas, phrases, sentences,
and paragraphs, and then adding, deleting,
and moving them about. But I also learned
that for someone like me, who doesnt write
or keyboard (ugh, make that type) on Shabbat, theres a serious downside to this practice. I have to remember hours later when
Shabbat ends (and many hours later on a
summer Shabbat) all those ideas, phrases,
sentences, and paragraphs that sounded just
right to me that long-ago morning. Not so
easy when youre 69.
Ive learned even more about what really
interests me. When I was offered the column, after the editor said there was no
financial payment involved

a share in making me who I
and I thought, and almost
am. I was able give publicity
asked, You mean I dont have
to programs I felt were special, and could even tell a
to pay you anything??, I asked
joke or two (not large ha ha
her what she wanted me to
jokes but ones I hope could
write about. Her answer was
evoke a sweet smile).
both liberating and frightening: Anything you want.
Would I have said a year
So with no guidelines as to
ago that I cared deeply about
Joseph C.
substance, that left it up to me
all of my columns topics? CerKaplan
tainly some, but surely not
to make some general guidelines, like always including
all. But my driving through
some Jewish reference and
the angst to hit upon an idea,
almost always its more than just a reference.
then spending some time Shabbat morning
I also vowed (bli neder, of course) to stay
thinking about it, and finally putting pen
away from partisan politics (which was espeto paper, helped, in some ways, clarify the
cially difficult this past divisive, depressing,
ideas and issues that spoke to my soul.
and frightening election cycle).
Ive learned that columnists think differently. Every time something unusual hapOnce I made those decisions, however, I
pens, every time one of my grandkids says
had to think seriously about what mattered
something particularly brilliant or charming
to me, what I cared about, and what I wanted
or amusing (which is VERY often), every time
others to care about. They didnt have to be
something angers or pleases me more than
big issues; writing about kindness or friendships both old and new turned out to resousual, I immediately think: is that columnnate with many readers (though I perhaps
worthy? (Seinfeld fans, yup.)
use the word many liberally). Sometimes,
Ive learned that I love being stopped at a
though, they could be big, like the nature of
wedding smorgasbord by someone I didnt
debate, discussion, and disagreement in sociknow and being asked if I was that writer for
ety today, or serious Jewish issues like theodthe Jewish newspaper. Made the wedding
icy, faith and doubt, and the role of women
(and month) for me.
in liturgy.
And yes, theres one other thing Ive
I could be personal, writing (twice actulearned: When youve said what you want to
ally) about my 50th elementary school
say, stop.
(yes, elementary) class reunion, or the
bar mitzvah of my twin great-nephews. Or
Joseph C. Kaplan, a regular contributor, has
I could fondly and publically remember
been living in Teaneck and practicing law in
people who were important to me and had
Manhattan for many years.
Big Data
a view that is problematic when it is championed by the left in regard to morality,

and by the right in regard to reality.
Stephen Colbert introduced the term
truthiness to refer to George W. Bushs
reliance on intuition and gut feelings as a
guide to truth, rather than logic, evidence,
or even thoughtful reflection. The word
seems almost quaint now, as it retains at
least a bit of a folksy connection to some
sense of the truth, something less extreme
than post-truth. It is perhaps a reflection of nostalgic longing and disturbance
over contemporary public discourse that
accounts for the revival earlier this year
of the classic television game show To
Tell the Truth, introduced in 1956 by Bob
Stewart, ne Isidore Steinberg of Brooklyn.
But truth long has been a problematic
term, and for many years now we have
been rightfully suspicious of anyone who
lays claim to the truth. The true tragedy we
are witnessing is the decline of rationality.
The prophet Isaiah declared, Come now
and let us reason together (1:18), and it
was the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason,
that gave birth to the American republic.
The democratic basis of our government
was predicated on our ability to engage in

rational discussion and argumentation,
and through competition in the marketplace of ideas, arrive at the truth, or at
least negotiate a compromise between
opposing opinions.
Rationality has been under attack on
two fronts, from the irrationality of an
image culture that emphasizes appearance
and personality rather than sensible language, and from the hyper-rationality of
number-crunching information technologies that leave no room for deliberation or
value other than efficiency and productivity. We are caught between emotional
appeals that leave no room for thoughtful, impartial consideration, and calculations of quantifiable certainties that do not
allow for human evaluation and judgment.
In short, reason is being squeezed out
by the extremes of big data and big dada.
The end of rationality has had an
adverse affect on the state of Israel as
well, as Jewish culture, with its long tradition of talmudic scholarship, emphasizes
reasoned discussion. Israels attempts to
use logic and evidence fare poorly in the
face of its enemies use of images and
FROM PAGE 27
such as The world is approximately

6,000 years old can be tested via scientific method, and has been shown to be
false. But it is still a fact, in the sense of
being a statement open to testing. Ronald
Reagan was notorious for citing facts that
turned out to be false, but no one accused
the former actor of lying.
Actually, according to philosopher Karl
Popper, scientists can never prove anything to be absolutely true, because to do
so would require observing every possible
instance of the phenomenon in question,
past, present, and future. And it only takes
one exception to prove the theory false. In
this sense, science advances by falsification alone, by eliminating error and mistaken notions.
Science cannot give us truth, just tentative explanations that conform to the available evidence, and effective means of predicting outcomes. Science is by far the best
method we have for making such predictions. But absent claims of absolute truth,
science leaves open the door to relativism,
emotional appeals in the international

arena.
Liberals have had more difficulty adjusting to a post-rational world than conservatives, given the liberal bias toward intellectualism. One advantage that liberals
do enjoy is in the use of humor, so look
for comedians to take on leadership positions in the Democratic Party. For this reason, I wouldnt be surprised if Saturday
Night Live alumnus Al Franken, the junior
United States senator from Minnesota, was
the Democratic nominee in 2020.
But the end of reason is not a problem
only for liberals. It is a challenge to liberalism writ large, to our ideals of freedom
and equality. And it makes it all but impossible to follow the commandment found in
Deuteronomy (16:20): Justice, justice, you
shall pursue. How can we pursue justice
in a post-truth, post-rational world?
Dr. Lance Strate of Palisades Park is a
professor of communication and media
studies at Fordham University in the
Bronx, and the president of his synagogue,
Congregation Adas Emuno in Leonia.
Letters
Aakash Dalal apologizes
A day has not passed in the past five years that I have not
thought of the events that unfolded in December 2011
and January 2012 the events that evoked memories of a
sad past for members of the Jewish community in Bergen
County and the events that have forever changed my life
and my way of thinking. Living in solitary confinement in
the Bergen County Jail for these past five years has given
me an opportunity to re-evaluate my short life and the
negative views I held many years ago at the age of 19.
As a teenager, it was wrong of me to think of certain religions and faiths in an unfavorable light. I have grown from
being a childish teenager to an adult and gained a different
perspective and learned to respect, appreciate, and value
the diverse community that we live in especially during
my current incarceration, where I have come to interact
with individuals from many different religions.
The past five years in prison have been a learning experience. I have matured and come to appreciate the value
of human life and freedom. I deeply regret that I face the
prospect of spending the formative years of my life behind
bars and that I may never have the chance to start a family and have children. I realize that I was blessed with the
opportunity to have a higher education and will not have
a chance to complete my college degree and be a working
professional contributing to society.
I also deeply regret that I am no longer in a position to
take care of my parents as they age and as their only child.
They have nobody to depend on after having spent their
life savings to support and defend me.
I have lived m Bergen County my entire life and in 2010
I moved to New Brunswick to attend Rutgers University.
I would return to Lodi, where I grew up, every weekend
to visit my loving mother and father. At Rutgers, I became
friends with numerous members of the Jewish faith,
attended various religious events at the Chabad building
on College Avenue with them, and routinely socialized
with them.
In December 2011 and January 2012, I worked on the
Republican presidential primary campaign of former
U.S. Congressman Ron Paul. I was a student volunteer
for the campaign in New Hampshire. Congressman Ron
Pauls campaign coordinators would make speeches
against Israel and the Jewish faith in an effort to incite
and inflame campaign volunteers, many of who were, like
me, teenagers.
I now understand the rhetoric of Congressman Pauls
staff to be nonsense with no basis in fact.
However, at the age of 19, I was drawn to campaign
because of Congressman Pauls mainstream policies. I
eventually came to learn that anti-Semitism was intertwined with the political positions of Congressman Pauls
campaign. The anti-Semitic and anti-government statements and writings attributed to me in early 2012 were
immature reactions to a politician whose inflammatory
campaign rhetoric would blur the boundaries between
right and wrong. They do not reflect what I hold to be
true today nor do they reflect the values that have been
instilled in me by my family.
This is a sentiment that was relayed to me by an elderly
individual I met in prison. The man was a former attorney and the founder of a Jewish foundation and had
been incarcerated in the same prison unit as me and we
had numerous conversations. He had been aware of the
charges against me and had been following along with
news reports of the case. He explained that his parents
were Holocaust survivors and informed me of the lessons
that he had learned as a result. He also advised me to
reach out to the Jewish community between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur because of his firm belief that the
Jewish people are very reasonable and that they believe in
redemption and forgiveness and to ask for that forgiveness
directly from them.

My mother and father have suffered tremendously as
a result of my time in prison and will continue to suffer
emotionally as their only child remains locked away. I
have been unable to see my grandparents, my aunts,
uncles, cousins, and friends in these past years and I will
unlikely be able to see them any time soon.
My familys suffering has allowed me to empathize with
the congregants of the affected synagogues. Rabbi Neil
Schuman and Patricia Schuman, in particular, and others
have clearly been subjected to emotional pain and trauma
caused by events that never should have occurred. I can
understand their anger and frustration.
Over these past five years in prison, in conditions that
can only be described as torture, I have been repeatedly
assaulted and threatened. My health has deteriorated, but
my heart has healed. I hold no hate or grudges towards
members of any faith. Spending these years behind bars.
I have seen the destruction and pain caused by violent
crimes and have had much time to reflect on the consequences of crime on humanity. I hope that you will give
me an opportunity to contribute to society, complete my
education, and have a family as I truly would cherish the
chance to put my bad choices in my teenage years behind
me and become a productive member of our community.
Aakash Dalal, Hackensack
EDITORS NOTE: In November, the writer was found
guilty of 17 counts, including terrorism, for his role in
masterminding the attacks on Bergen County synagogues
in December 2011 and January 2012. His sentence has not
yet been handed down.
Obamas cloak is off now
When the U.S. abstained in the vote in the U.N. demanding

the end of Israeli settlements in Jerusalem and areas that
were under Jordanian occupation after the 1948 War of Independence, Obama did not rebuke Israel but spit in the
face of Netanyahu, the people of Israel and Jewish people
everywhere.
I was not surprised by his actions, just that he did not vote
for the anti-Israel resolution. He finally took off the cloak hiding his true colors. I wonder how many man hours were
spent finding a quote from a Republican to be used to justify
his actions. It is interesting to remember how Obama negated
the letter sent to the Israelis by President Bush acknowledging that certain areas where Israel had built settlements could
remain in Israeli hands after a treaty was signed.
There are no international laws that can be quoted showing what Israel has been in violation of, when building in the
disputed territories. Read the resolution ending the 1967 war
and you will find it stated that Israel is obligated to withdraw
from territories after bilateral negotiations take place, not
all territories. It was understood that the armistice lines that
had separated the Jewish state from the proposed Arab state
would be moved.
It will be interesting what other anti-Israel actions Obama
will take since there is nothing and no political reason not
to do so. Perhaps by this latest action, Obama has guaranteed that Trump will move the Embassy of the U.S. into the
capital of Israel, Jerusalem. I would also not be surprised if
Netanyahu announces further building in Jerusalem, Judea,
and Samaria.
Howard J. Cohn, New Milford
U.N.s vote is disgraceful
President Obama once again has shown how petty he can be

with the vote at the U.N. condemning Israel for building settlements. Instead of permitting our U.N. representative to use
the veto, he directed her to abstain, thus giving the terrorists
another bullet in their guns.
Israels borders are almost indefensible as they currently
stand. The middle of the country is so narrow an Arab fighter

jet could cross it in a minute or two. Over the years Israel has
been coerced into conceding land in order to placate the socalled Palestinians. On the other hand these people, who lay
claim to a country that never existed, have not been willing to
concede the one thing Israel has asked: The right to be recognized as a nation and to be able to live in peace.
While the countries of the U.N. have never hesitated to pass
resolutions condemning Israel, there is scant recognition of
the never-ending rocket assaults from terror groups. There
is no response to attacks on schools, nurseries and shopping
centers. While the shaheed is a hero to the Palestinians, they
are a nonentity to the U.N.
While Israelis work and develop modern science and
medicine, the Arab schools teach children to hate. They use
military uniforms, hand guns and explosives to children and
school them on mock raids to kill Jews. They strap their children into explosive vests and send them out to be martyrs.
The so-called Palestinians demand East Jerusalem as their
capital. Yet nowhere in their history is there a connection to
the city or any part of it.
Barack Hussein Obama is a disgrace and a coward. He
waited until his term in office only had less than a month
before expiring to commit this cowardly act in the U.N. in
order to avoid continuing criticism. Lack of support for Israel
is not anti-Semitism. But lack of support for our only ally in
that part of the world is insanity. Obama has shown his disregard for both the Jewish people and an ally and has given that
nations enemies fodder to continue to wage war.
Bob Nesoff, New Milford
Hawks and doves at a party
In A tale of two Chanukah parties (December 23), there was

a report of two conflicting Chanukah parties in Washington.
This rancor crystallizes the risky position in which the Jewish
world now finds itself. In one corner are the hawks. In the
other corner are the doves. In between, there is just emptiness, a blank mat upon which a wrestling match is waiting
to break out. Surely, this cannot reflect reality. Surely, there
are moderates who do, or did, occupy the middle ground.
But they are just unwilling to go public now, for fear of being
attacked from both corners. And in the hawk corner lies the
full force of the next American government.
The hawk Chanukah party, conducted by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations,
celebrated the military victory of the Maccabees 2,200 years
ago. But in that celebration lies the seed of forgetfulness. The
Maccabees were insurgents in a civil war. The effect of their
victory was to replace the Seleucid regime of Hellenized Jews
with a new Hasmonean dynasty. Judah and his country bumpkins displaced the ruling city elite. A period of corruption and
civil war (Pharisees vs. Sadducees) resulted. Rome stepped
into the void, and only 200 years later, the Jews were expelled
from their ancestral homelands. Thus began the diaspora,
which was to last two millennia, until the dawn of the 20th
century and Theodore Herzls dream.
The festival of Chanukah today is the result of the interplay of popular need to have lights in a dark season (with
pagan overtones), the echo of a short-lived military victory, and our sages attempts to rationalize observance so
as to not memorialize atrocities committed by Jew against
Jew. And so we bless the lights, not the Maccabees. We
bless Hashem, not the Kohen Gadol. We do not include the
Books of the Maccabees in Tanach. And we sing of Maoz
Tsur, a stronghold of rock that refers to Hashem, and not to
humans. The rabbis crystallized what should be our view of
Chanukah, as Not by Might, but by Right, a paraphrasing
of the prophet Zechariah.
American Jews, represented by the Conference of Presidents, must remember what our sages taught. And then
we must apply these lessons to our own time. It is entirely
SEE LETTERS PAGE 36
Delivered!
2017
Lots to read during

the New Year break
and throughout the year.
Jewish Standard DECEMBER 30, 2016 31
Dvar Torah
Miketz: His brothers keeper
he Joseph story,
chapters 37 through
50 of Genesis, is one
of the great short
stories of human literature.
Parashat Miketz is the physical
center of that tale. It is also the
narrative in which we see this
son of Israel transform himself
Rabbi Neal
into a responsible Jew.
Borovitz
This weeks narrative begins
Rabbi emeritus,
with Josephs personal redempTemple Avodat
tion from an Egyptian prison
Shalom, River Edge,
and his rapid rise to power at
Reform
the Egyptian court. The second
half of the parasha recounts
Josephs reconnection with
the brothers who sold him into slavery. Here is where the
story becomes not only interesting, but to me, extremely
relevant to contemporary Jewish life.
The Torah tells us explicitly that Joseph recognized
his brothers, but they did not know him. Joseph, being
a very human Jew, was caught in a real dilemma. He
wasnt yet willing to reveal his identity and welcome
with open arms these brothers who had betrayed him,
but neither was he able to turn them away in their time
of famine. Joseph answers to the exchange between God
and Cain when Cain responds to Gods inquiry as to the
whereabouts of his brother Abel with a question: Am I
my brothers keeper? Here in action rather than words
Joseph answers Cains retort to God in the affirmative:
Yes, he is his brothers keeper! Yes, even though he
doesnt always like their actions and his children will
form a separate tribe from that of his brothers descendants, Joseph and all the children of Israel from his generation onward will be tied to each other by both a common heritage and a common fate.
Joseph is the prototype for the court Jew of medieval
history and, I suggest, for both the American Jewish
community as a whole and for a pantheon of American

Jews who, like the biblical Joseph, had access to powerful leaders, from Haym Solomon, who helped finance the
Continental Army, to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump
who will be key advisers to President-elect Trump.
There have been many instances over the 240 year history of the United States when our American court Jews
have had the opportunity to intercede on behalf the needs
of the Jewish people. Some have interceded successfully;
others have done so with passion, but failed; while still
others have sought to turn a deaf ear to the plight of their
fellow Jews. All the while, similar to the biblical Joseph,
American Jews who have had the ear of a president, either
as formal members of the administration or as informal
advisers, have not compromised their duty to the president while pleading the cause of the Jewish community.
Examples abound. They include: In 1863, Rabbi Isaac
Mayer Wise was successful in petitioning President Abraham Lincoln to overturn an order of expelling Jews from
occupied territory in the Confederacy that had been
issued by General Grant. In 1917 Justice Louis Brandeis
successfully persuaded President Woodrow Wilson to
encourage the British to issue the Balfour Declaration,
giving international legal legitimacy to the creation of a
Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Juxtaposed to these successes is Rabbi Stephen Wises passionate pleas to President Franklin Roosevelt during the Holocaust. As history
now reveals, the pleas of Rabbi Wise were met with presidential words of concern that were empty of action, until
the plight of European Jewry was sealed.
Examples of American Jews who refused to use their
personal influence on behalf of Jewish brethren are by
their very nature less well known and difficult to document. Without naming names out of respect for their
descendants, there were a number politically influential
American Jews in the 1920s, who out of fear of the rising
level of American anti-Semitism, were generally silent as
the immigration laws of 1921 and 1924 closed the doors
on millions of Eastern Europeans, including Jews, who
were seeking refuge from economic and political turmoil

in Europe.
I did not vote for Donald Trump in large part because
of his positions on immigration, government sponsorship of health and human services, and his stated views
on Americas role on the international stage. Now that he
will in a few weeks become our 45th president, it is the
right and responsibility of every American to trust and
verify the words and actions of the Trump administration. As Americans we have the right to both lobby for
issues of concern and protest against actions with which
we disagree. We also have the responsibility to accept the
results of the election and to give Mr. Trump the respect
due him as our President.
The ancient tribal divisions of Israel were named for 11
of Jacobs sons and two of his grandsons, the descendants
of Joseph. As any reader of the Bible knows, these tribes
did not always get along. They were challenged by both
legitimate differences and, as the rabbis of the Talmud
note, baseless hatred.
In the contemporary world, Israeli and American Jews
are also divided into tribe-like groups, by both differences over religious theology and practice and political preferences, such as Democratic and Republican or
Labor and Likud. Tragically, in addition to these legitimate differences of opinion and ideology, we are also
susceptible to the baseless hatred that our talmudic rabbis claim was the cause of the destruction of the Second
Jewish Commonwealth.
As the new Trump administration takes control next
month I am certain that there will be many issues over
which I will differ with my fellow Jews as well as my fellow Americans of every religion race and ethnicity. My
hope and prayer at this time of Chanukah is that we may
all rededicate ourselves to Josephs understanding of the
answer to the question of Cain and remember that even
though we may not agree with or even like every other
within our community or in our world, we all are responsible for each other.
Opinion
We are all Hezbollah: The mark of shame
n July 2006, Israel fought

a bitter defensive war
against the Lebanese
Islamist organization Hezbollah. The hostilities, which
saw thousands of rockets fired
at Israel by Hezbollah terrorists, as well as the displacement
of nearly 500,000 Israelis from
Ben Cohen
their homes, ended one month
later with a United Nations-brokered cease-fire.
Hezbollah had been chastened temporarily, but the disarmament demanded by the U.N. Security Council never
happened, and the threat it poses has only grown during
the intervening decade. Most recently that has been demonstrated by the terror organizations participation in the atrocities that accompanied the conquest of Aleppo in Syria.
Throughout 2006, the global left adopted Hezbollah as a
cause clbre, embracing the group as the advance guard of
the justified resistance against Zionist aggression. In this
imagining, Hezbollah was depicted as a Middle Eastern equivalent of the plucky leftists who courageously fought the fascist
armies of General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil
War and not as the anti-Semites, homophobes, misogynists,
and fascists that this collection of storm troopers truly are.
Some readers wont need to be reminded of the character of those demonstrations, but for those who dont recall
that long hot summer, here is a flavor of the protest chants
that echoed through the streets of cities around the world
(courtesy of the Anti-Defamation Leagues archive):

July 13, 2006, San FranciscoBlack, Red, Brown, White,
We Support Hezbollahs Fight!
July 19, 2006, Los AngelesLong Live Hezbollah!
August 5, 2006, BostonHezbollah has brought dignity
and valor, a speaker told a rally.
August 5, 2006, LondonWe are Hezbollah Now! (Placards carried by demonstrators.)
August 12, 2006, Washington, D.C.Nasrallah, Nasrallah,
the martyr is the beloved of Allah! (a reference to Hezbollah
leader Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah.)
August 12, 2006, ParisNous Sommes Tous Des Hezbollah! (We Are All Hezbollah!)
There were similar spectacles in other cities, with
SEE COHEN PAGE 41
Arts & Culture

New Yiddish
God of Vengeance
back on the Lower East Side
deal to go through. What Yankel

doesnt know is that Rifkele has
he time is ripe for a new
formed a close friendship with
Yiddish production of
one of the prostitutes in the basement, Manke (Melissa Weisz). Its
Sholem Aschs barrierthe relationship between these
breaking drama God of
two that drew Vogels attention,
Vengeance, and the New Yiddish
and that caused an uproar when
Rep has risen to the task.
A revival of the play, directed by
the original play featured the
Eleanor Reissa, with English superfirst lesbian kiss in New York.
titles, is running at La MaMas First
Rifkele clearly is in love with
Floor Theatre through January 22.
Manke, but Mankes feelings are
The original production of Got fun
more ambiguous. She is planning to leave Yankels house
Nekome premiered in 1907 around
to go work for Shloyme (Luzer
the corner on Second Avenue, where
Twersky), and she has promised
it outraged the contemporary Jewish establishment with its story of
the madam there that she will
a brothel owner who commissions
bring a dear friend with her. Hindel, the madam (Caraid OBrien),
a sefer Torah to help his daughter
brags to her lover Shloyme that a
make a respectable match. The plays
fresh young whore will put them
lesbian subplot caught the attention
over the top.
of playwright Paula Vogel, whose
When Yankel finds out that
own play based on the scandal,
Rifkele has been with Manke, he
Indecent, was a hit off-Broadway
is shattered. He truly believed in
and is making a move to Broadway
the Torahs redemptive powers.
this spring. Thats a lot of hullaballoo
Yankel, portrayed by Shane Baker, listens to his wife and brothel partner, Sarah, played by
How is it possible that his daughfor a turn-of-the-twentieth century
Eleanor Reissa.
PHOTOS BY RONALD L. GLASSMAN
ter has been defiled? As people
melodrama written by a 26-yearin many societies today do, Yanold Asch.
Reissas interpretation of the play
kel sees the chastity of his daughter as the basis of his
subverts the usual focus on social
honor. If she is spoiled, he is undone. Reb Eli and Sarah try
and religious hypocrisy to conto convince him that all is not lost. The prospective groom
centrate on the psychology of the
doesnt know anything and the match still can go through.
tormented brothel owner, Yankel
Yankel, however, is a true believer, and wants nothing to
Tchaptchovitch. A brutal man in
do with this sort of deception. If God did not accept his gift
a brutal business, Yankel (Shane
of the Torah and took revenge for his sin on Rifkele, then
Baker) freely admits his sinfulness,
he is done with God. The desire for vengeance is a human
but believes deeply in the possibilquality and not worthy of the Creator. Yankels black-andity of redemption through the holy
white view of the world contrasts with the more forgiving
act of commissioning a sefer Torah,
attitude taken by Reb Eli, but who is the better Jew? Is
assigning it almost magical properYankel that different from the scrupulous scholar?
ties. He is encouraged in that belief
The acting in the performance I saw was uneven, but
by Reb Eli (David Mandelbaum), a
the leads were all strong. Baker and Reissa are convincing as a couple who seem to share the same goal but ultilocal fixer who is eager to make a
mately have opposite perspectives. Mandelbaum, the New
match between Yankels adolescent
Yiddish Reps artistic director, makes Reb Eli more than
daughter, Rifkele (Shayna Schmidt),
just a sleazy opportunist. OBrien staged her own producand a Talmud scholar. Yankel vows
tion of the play at Show World in 2001.
to support the young man and provide him with everything he needs,
Sholem Asch was a controversial writer throughout
Rifkele, left, played by Shayna Schmidt, forms a close relationship with
including the Torah. Yankels wife
his life, living in his native Poland, Palestine, France, and
prostitute Manke, played by Melissa Weisz.
and business partner, Sarah (Eleathe United States. Later in his career, he published three
nor Reissa), also is excited by the
novels that had to do with the life of Jesus, which caused
people, just like the rest of the merchants in town. Their
idea that she may rise in the towns social circles through
an outcry and accusations of promoting Christianity. His
product happens to be more lucrative, thats all.
her daughters marriage. But Sarah is much less rigid
characters though always had vitality and energy. Like
Of course, Rifkele must remain pure and virginal,
than her husband, and more pragmatic. They have nothYankel, they struggle to find a place for themselves in a
ing to be ashamed of, she tells Yankel. They are business
untouched by the dirty business of the brothel, for this
broken world.
MIRIAM RINN
Calendar
Israeli wine tasting:
Lauren and Greg
Sandler host an Israel
wine tasting for adults,
particularly Temple Beth
Tikvah religious school
parents, at their Wayne
home, 7:30-10:30 p.m.
Tasting led by an expert
from Kedem Winery.
Appetizers and desserts.
Proceeds benefit TBT
religious school and
family programs. Greg,
(201) 704-3768.
Wine and whiskey

in Englewood:
The sisterhood of
Congregation Ahavath
Torah offers a night
of wine and whiskey
tastings by Wine Country
Stores and music by
George Stass, 8 p.m.
Cheeses, appetizers, and
snacks. 240 Broad Ave.
www.ahavathTorah.org/
sisterhoodevents.
In New York
Sunday
JANUARY 1
by National Yiddish
Theatre Folksbiene
at the Museum of
Jewish Heritage
A Living Memorial
to the Holocaust,
2 p.m. 36 Battery Place.
(212) 213-2120 ext. 230 or
www.nytf.org.
Singles
Sunday
JANUARY 8
Zalmen Mlotek
conducting. JODY SOMERS
Yiddish theater songs:
Rediscovered and
restored Yiddish theater
songs by Ellstein,
Goldfaden, Olshanetsky,
Rumshinsky, and
Secundan are featured
in Light Up The Night,
a concert presented
Seniors meet in West

Nyack: Singles 65+
meets for a social bagels
and lox brunch at the
JCC Rockland, 11 a.m. All
are welcome, particularly
if you are from Hudson,
Passaic, Bergen, or
Rockland counties. 450
West Nyack Road. Gene
Arkin, (845) 356-5525.
Sunday
JANUARY 8
New York-based jazz pianist Misha

Piatigorsky performs original jazz
compositions and the music of John
Coltrane and Miles Davis on Sunday,
January 8, at 5 p.m., at the Glen Rock Jewish Center.
Bassist Charlie Dougherty and two GRJC members
saxophonist Jeremy Fishman and drummer Sam
Fishman will join him. The concert will be recorded
and available online. 682 Harristown Road. (201) 6526624 or grjc.org.
JAN.
Friday
DECEMBER 30
Chanukah in
Ridgewood: The public
menorah at Memorial
Park in Van Neste Square
is lit, 4 p.m., and Saturday
at 5:30. (201) 444-9320
or www.synagogue.org.
Shabbat in Closter:
Temple Beth El invites
the community to 101
Menorahs, a familyfriendly Shabbat/
Chanukah service led by
Rabbi David S. Widzer
and Cantor Rica Timman,
6:30 p.m. Chinese food at
5:30 p.m. Bring a menorah
and eight candles. Latkes
after the service. 221
Schraalenburgh Road.
(201) 768-5112 or www.
tbenv.org.
Shabbat in Pearl River,

NY: Beth Am Temple
continues a 30-year
tradition with a group
menorah lighting
during its Shabbat
service with music and
singing, 7 p.m. Bring
a menorah and eight
candles. Oneg features

traditional holiday foods.
60 East Madison Ave.
(845) 735-5858 or www.
bethamtemple.org.
Shabbat in Washington
Township: Temple Beth
Or offers its familyfriendly Chanukah Lots
of Lights Shabbat,
7:30 p.m. Families
are invited to bring
menorahs and candles
to light at the start of the
service. 56 Ridgewood
Road, (201) 664-7422 or
templebethornj.org.
Sunday
JANUARY 1
Competitive latke
eating in Teaneck:
Noahs Ark hosts the
annual latke eating
contest sponsored by
Cedar Lane Management
11:30 a.m., at the
restaurant, 493 Cedar
Lane. To register, be
among the first 10 in
either age group
children up to 17, and
adults 18 and older, at
10:45 that morning;
online at staff@
cedarlane.net; or call
(201) 837-8818, ext. 116.
Contestants under 18
need parental consent.
www.cedarlane.net.
Monday
JANUARY 2
Bnai mitzvah class in
Jersey City: Bnai Jacob
holds a bnai mitzvah
class for children, 5 p.m.
176 West Side Ave. www.
bnaijacobjc.com or
rabbiAaron@gmail.com.
Saturday
Elaine Freed Lindenblatt

Red Apple Rest:
The mens club and
sisterhood of Temple
Beth El of Northern
Valley in Closter host
a brunch and program
on the Red Apple Rest,
9:30 a.m. Author Elaine
Freed Lindenblatt, the
youngest child of Red
Apple Rests founder,
Reuben Freed, discusses
her book, Stop at
the Red Apple. The
landmark restaurant was
on old Route 17 on the
way to the Catskills. 221
Schraalenburgh Road.
(201) 768-5112 or www.
tbenv.org.
Monday
JANUARY 7
JANUARY 9
Zumba in Tenafly:
Memory loss:
The Kaplen JCC on

the Palisades hosts a
Zumba party with exotic
rhythms, high-energy
Latin and international
beats, and easy-to-follow
moves, for everyone 12
and older, led by a team
of skilled, inspirational
JCC Zumba instructors,
7:30-8:45 p.m. 411 East
Clinton Ave. Roberto
Santiago, (201) 408-1481,
www.jccotp.org, or email
rsantiago@jccotp.org.
Alzheimers New Jersey

holds a community
education program,
Understanding Memory
Loss, at a Senior Source
event, 1:30 p.m., at the
Shops at Riverside,
Suite 310, Second
Floor, in Hackensack.
(201) 342-0962 or www.
seniorsourcellc.com.
Detail of one of the books in

Books110Terezin by Irmari Nacht.
Recycled art on display

at Kaplen JCC gallery
Irmari Nacht of Englewood will exhibit artwork in
Again! Recycled Artist Books and Collage, a onewoman show in the Waltuch Gallery at the Kaplen JCC
on the Palisades, from January 4 through 30. A reception will be held on Wednesday, January 18, from 5:30
to 7:30 p.m.
Ms. Nachts work is composed of eight identical recipe books from the Terezin concentration camp, cut
into swirls, spirals, and strips.
Ms. Nacht exhibits internationally and nationally;
her work has been shown in every major museum
in New Jersey and has been featured in solo shows.
She has received two New Jersey State Council on the
Arts Fellowships in sculpture, and a Puffin Foundation
Grant for Who Am I?, an interactive project where
the viewer becomes part of the artwork. The eight
books of In Memorys Kitchen - A Legacy from the
Women of Terezin are copies of original hand-sewn
copybooks of recipes that the starving women of the
concentration camp put together.
For information, call (201) 408-1456 or email
nbachrach@jccotp.org.
Calendar
Latke eating contest on Sunday
Noahs Ark hosts the annual latke eating
contest sponsored by Cedar Lane Management on Sunday, January 1, at 11:30
a.m., at the restaurant, 493 Cedar Lane,
Teaneck.
To register, be among the first 10 in
Crossword
2016 BY DAVID BENKOF
EDITED BY YONI GLATT, KOSHERCROSSWORDS@GMAIL.COM

DIFFICULTY LEVEL: MANAGEABLE
either age group children up to 17, and

adults 18 and older, at 10:45 that morning; do it online at staff@cedarlane.net;
or by calling (201) 837-8818, ext. 116. Contestants younger than 18 need their parents permission to enter.
Across
Kaplen JCC hosts Zumba party

The Kaplen JCC on the Palisades in
Tenafly offers the community a free
75-minute Zumba party on Saturday,
January 7, from 7:30 to 8:45 p.m.
Participants, who must be 12 and
older, will have the chance to dance nonstop for 75-minutes to great Latin, hiphop, African, and Latin music. They will
be led by a team of expert JCC Zumba
instructors, including Cat Veca-mejia,
Lauren Greene, Hilah Reva, Jaclyn Alterwein, and Evangelina Bishop.
Zumba is one of more than 90 complimentary drop-in group exercise classes
that are offered weekly to JCC members.
Group fitness allows people to achieve
their fitness goals with great company
at all times of the day to suit different
needs. Programs are geared for people
of all ages and all fitness and skill levels.
In an effort to encourage people to
engage in more healthful activities, we
always look to feature a wide variety of
fitness options, the JCCs health and
wellness director, Roberto Santiago, said.
Zumba is one great option, because it
not only provides great music and dance
routines that are fun to learn, it is proven
to help maintain cognitive skills. Its also
a great cardio workout, incorporating a
series of higher and lower aerobic intervals throughout the session.
Our goal is to help people find
appealing workouts so they stay motivated. And that is why we offer free,
open-to-the-community events like our

Zumba Fitness Party several times during the year.
The JCC has more than 65,000 feet of
dedicated wellness space, offering yearround health and wellness programs
geared for the entire family, featuring all
the latest in cardio, strength, and exercise equipment, including a state-of-theart dedicated Pilates apparatus training
studio, cycling bikes with advanced Bluetooth technology, the Benjamin Bergen
Youth Fitness Center (offering age-appropriate fitness equipment, training and
drop-in exercise classes for 6- to 13-yearolds), and a luxurious spa center offering
massages, facials, waxing, and more.
This comprehensive, ultra-modern
recreation facility is a place where members can enjoy individualized instruction, all the latest equipment, and a
motivational staff that can assist people
in achieving their fitness goals. There are
also private family changing rooms and
complimentary babysitting is available
to members while they work out.
RSVP at jccotp.org/registered-groupexercise. For information, call Roberto
Santiago at (201) 408-1481 or email him at
rsantiago@jccotp.org.
For more information on health and
wellness at the JCC, go to the JCCs website, www.jccotp.org. Facility tours and
one-week guest passes are available for
the entire family.
1. Dingers, for Braun

7. It corresponds with Kislev: Abbr.
10. Its blowin in the wind, with the
16. ___ BTevet
17. Announcement on El Al: Abbr.
18. Grand ___ Island, location of the Freeport
Hebrew Congregation
19. Golden (and silver) girl of the year
21. Have ___ ___ (Try this cholent)
22. ___ Eisley (where we first meet Harrison
Ford in Star Wars)
23. Charoset ingredient
24. Song sung under many chuppahs
26. Power couple of the year
31. Shackle on Samson
34. Righteous indignations
35. Agricultural mitzvah involving corners
36. Breakout star of the year
39. Early Bryan Singer works
41. Newark based tech. company that had
a kollel
42. DJ/producer Steve who has worked
with Drake
44. Regional Council or a 1948 Operation
45. Freed man of the year
51. The ___ of proof is on the plaintiff:
Talmud (Bava Kamma)
52. ___ Grit (2010 Coen brothers remake)
53. Ken, in Nice
55. Minhag
58. Many Israelis would gladly shake his hand
61. Billionaire Eyal or Idan
62. It showed highlights of 19 & 58-Across
65. Prop for 36-Across notable character
66. Old City headline makers of 2016
71. Fin in Spielbergs Jaws
72. Mel featured on postal stamps with Hank
(Greenberg)
73. Levin or Glass
76. Cool, in Israel
79. Comic great we said goodbye to
this year
82. Jimmy who did the bit Hipster or chasidic
83. Freudian issue
84. Nation that attacked the Jews in the desert
85. Sharon and Dorfman
86. Many a Jewish text, these days?
87. The Maccabees, e.g.
Down
1. ___ Im HaGolan
2. Accords locale
3. He broke the Giant home run record of
72-Across
4. Make like Saul not killing Agag
5. Israeli city with a lot of English speakers
6. Rabbinic study session
7. Bernie Sanders, e.g. (for short)
8. Youngest of Aaron
9. Like Balak, the animal protagonist of
Agnons Only Yesterday
10. Haider al-___ (Iraqs Prime Minister)
11. Path used in several gap year programs

in Israel
12. Tennis star Maria who bought property
in Netanya
13. ...and the bush ___ not consumed (Ex.
3:2)
14. MDA worker
15. The Facts of Life actress
20. 10850 Wilshire Blvd. ___ 400 (address of
MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger)
25. Theyre in this paper
26. Fiddlers tune, perhaps
27. Coach of Da Bears on Michaels SNL
skits
28. Chanukah item
29. Dennings in Thor
30. Dead Sea Spa sounds
31. Like Fishers Leia in Rogue One: Abbr.
32. Alternate spelling to the subject of a
Uris title
33. Palo ___ (where Mark Zuckerberg lives)
37. Info on a Teudat Zehut
38. Miracle sounds, perhaps
39. Naot undersides
40. Computer in a Kubrick classic
43. Bad pass by Marino or Fiedler: Abbr.
44. How I Met ___ Mother (Josh
Radnor show)
46. Where Astins Rudy played football
47. 2016 is one, if you speak Ladino
48. Position for the high priest in the Holy
of Holies
49. A Friend
50. Ben & Jerry, and others
54. Am ___ longer a part of your plans...
(Dylan lyric)
55. Extremely rare red one
56. Craft Duchovny might see on The
X-Files
57. Girls gap year school, for short
59. Michael Shapiros The Jewish 100: A
Ranking of the Most Influential Jews
of ___
60. Abe (Vigoda) in The Godfather
62. Every laffa has two of them?
63. Performance spots for Eyal Golan
64. It can get in the way of Torah reading
67. Prize disproportionately won by Jews
68. Torah and exam
69. If I be wicked, ___ unto me (Job 10:15)
70. Where Israel was in June of 1967?
73. Like one (really) observing Shabbat
74. Billy Wilder output
75. Bezalel and Noah built them
76. Cousin of reggae (Matisyahu has ventured into)
77. Force whose logo has a sword and wings
78. Meas. a zaftig person might want
to lower
80. Moses gets a lot of them from Pharaoh
81. Einstein locale
The solution to last weeks puzzle is

on page 39.
Letters
Letters
FROM PAGE 30
possible that a new Judah Maccabee, a modern American

hammer, has arisen in our midst. The promise of military
conquest is alluring. But Jewish history has proven time
and again that war is not the answer. The Chanukah party
which occurred at the White House, the one attended by
the family of Shimon Peres, is the party of my choice.
Eric Weis, Wayne
A vote for Friedman
David Friedman is an ideal choice for our ambassador to

Israel. Hopefully he will be approved by congress with a
minimal debate and very few negative votes. He has three
very important attributes. First, he has empathy for the
Jewish state and is knowledgeable about the dangers facing it. Second, he has expressed many times his desire that
finally a U.S. president will move our embassy to the true
capital of Israel, namely Jerusalem, with the Knesset and
all the government offices in that city. Third, he is being
vigorously opposed by J Street, with a reputation for not
being pro-Israel.
It is about time that the U. S. acknowledges that Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. This would be
a commitment fulfilled by our government.
Nelson Marans, New York, N.Y.
He likes Friedman, doesnt like rabbis
Mr. Kampeass articles are one-sided and factually

untrue most of the time. His statements regarding Israel
show his leftish bent. 71% of American Jews who voted
for Hillary Clinton is an example of a fictitious statistic.
David Friedmans nomination was received with great
elation by the people of Israel according to all Israeli
news releases. In evaluating American Jews reaction,
what were the sources of his conclusions. The persons quoted were opinions of Hillary voters who never
polled their constituencies but gave personal opinions.
Mr. Friedman has not assumed his post and already negativity from the left. His relations with Israel over the
years illustrate his devotion to his fellow Jews. By quoting those who voted for Hillary Clinton, Mr. Kampeass
bias is apparent. Every article in the Standard under
his byline shows his prejudice toward the very liberal
line. To be fair, why arent articles from the conservative
view found in your publication?
It is also apparent that rabbis are your gods. The reality is that most are hirelings that spout the line of those
who hired them or act like they were Gods emissaries on
earth. We ordinary Jews who bear the stigma of being am
haaretz are ignored, athough some of use are more in
tune with God than they profess to be!
Shel Haas, Fort Lee
In time for Chanukah,

Israel reveals artifact
bearing name of
Hasmonean leaders
Just in time for this years celebration of Chanukah
Decembr 24 to January 1 the Israel Antiquities
Authority announced archaeologists discovery of a
2,100-year-old stone bowl bearing the Hebrew inscription Hyrcanus, which was the name of two of the
leaders of the Chanukah storys Jewish Hasmonean
dynasty.
A fragment of the bowl was unearthed in 2015 during an archaeological excavation at Jerusalems City
of David landmark, but the finding was not revealed
until Thursday. Researchers said the bowl was fashioned from chalk a type of limestone and is one
of the earliest examples of chalk vessels to appear in
Jerusalem.
The name Hyrcanus, IAAs Dr. Doron Ben-Ami and
Bar-Ilan Universitys Professor Esther Eshel said, was
fairly common in the Hasmonean period.
We know of two personages from this period who
had this name: John Hyrcanus, who was the grandson
of Matityahu the Hasmonean and ruled Judea from
135104 BCE, and John Hyrcanus II, who was the son of
Alexander Jannaeus and Salome Alexandra; however,
it is not possible to determine if the bowl belonged
JNS.ORG.
specifically to either of them, they added
Our heartfelt cOndOlences tO

Michael MarOn
ceO & President Of hOly naMe Medical center
and his entire faMily

On the Passing Of
Michaels father
Edward JosEph Maron

dEacon
We at the
Jewish Standard
offer our sympathy
to our friend Michael Maron
of Holy Name Medical Center
on the death of his
May he be reMeMbered
Edward JosEph
Maron
fOr all the gOOd he did in this wOrld.
yOur friends at
beloved father,
Obituaries
Myrna Helfgott
Myrna T. Helfgott, 89, died December 23.

She is survived by her children, Joel,
and Rachel Eastman (Mike); and a granddaughter, Amanda Eastman. Contributions can be sent to the Alzheimers
Association, Planned Parenthood, ACLU,
or Temple Emeth of Teaneck.
Arrangements were by Gutterman
& Musicant Jewish Funeral Directors,
Hackensack.
Claire Strully
Claire Kleinfeld Strully, 93, of Fair Lawn

died December 18. Born in Brooklyn,
she was predeceased by her husband of
62 years, Dr. Vincent, and is survived by
her children, Vincent Strully Jr. (Marylou
Sudders) of Boston, and Maxine Strully of
Fair Lawn.
Donations can be made to the New
England Center for Children, Inc., Southborough, Mass. Arrangements were
by Robert Schoems Menorah Chapel,
Paramus.
Murray Wayne
Murray Wayne, 69, of Coplay, Pa., formerly of Jersey City, died December 25.
He worked in the maintenance department of Fisher Clinical Supplies in Allentown, Pa., and is survived by a sister,
Rachelle Greenblatt of New York City.
Arrangements were by Eden Memorial
Chapels, Fort Lee.
so religion to me is a kind
of moral code and a kind
of history, she said. I try
to do my science in a moral
way, and I believe that ideally, science should be
looked upon as something
that helps us understand
our role in the universe.
According to National
Geographic, Dr. Rubin
fought hard for the equality
of women in astronomy.
She once had attempted
to enroll in a graduate
program in astronomy at
Princeton but was told that
women were not allowed
into it. She also fought for
women to be accepted at
Washingtons exclusive
Cosmos Club.
After earning a bachelors degree in astronomy
Jewish Funeral Directors
Family Owned & managed

Generations of Lasting Service to the Jewish Community
from Vassar College and

then being spurned by
Pr inceton, Dr. Rubin
earned a masters degree
from Cornell and a doctorate from Georgetown.
She would go on join
the Georgetown faculty
and later worked at the
Carnegie Institution in
Washington, D.C.

JTA WIRE SERVICE
A Traditional Jewish Experience

Pre-Planning Specialists Graveside and Chapel Services
Myra Perlman
Myra Shulamit Perlman was
born in Brooklyn, New York on
November 11, 1940. She passed
away in North Bergen, New
Jersey on December 26, 2015 as
the Sabbath touched a full moon.
She was the loving mother of
Michael, Elizabeth, and Daniel
and grandmother of six. Myra
was a nurse with a rebel spirit who lived by her own
terms and to her own mantra - you are what you
think you are. She will live on in all who knew her.
Paid Obituary
Ida Weinberg, ne Rector, 101, of Cranford, formerly of Cranbury and Bayonne,

died December 22.
Born in Boston, she was predeceased by her husband, Albert, in 1992,
and is survived by children, Robert
of Mountainside and Carol Simon of
Boston; three grandchildren, and five
great- grandchildren.
Arrangements were by Eden Memorial
Chapels, Fort Lee.
Robert Schoems Menorah Chapel, Inc
Astronomer Vera Rubin, who helped find

evidence of dark matter, dies at 88 in Princeton
Vera Rubin, an astronomer
whose research helped
find evidence of the existence of dark matter, has
died.
Dr. Rubin died Sunday
night in Princeton. She
was 88.
Though a perennial
favorite for the Nobel
Prize in physics, according to National Geographic
magazine, Dr. Rubin never
received the honor. But
she did receive many other
awards and honors, including a National Medal of Science presented by President Bill Clinton in 1993.
National Geographic
called her a gifted scientist as well as a nurturing
mentor and an inspiration to those still working
their way up the academic
ladder.
VosIzNeis wrote that Dr.
Rubin told the Catholic
EWTN network that my
science and my religion are
separate. Im Jewish, and
Ida Weinberg
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(Hindy Poupko), Sarah (Benjamin Joffe), & Yael
Galena; Dr. Suzanne Pineles (Bernie Crowley) &
Dr. Stacy Pineles. (Dave Bolno); and 7 great-grandchildren. She was predeceased by her amazing
husband of 65 years, Max Lourie.
She was honored by Bayonne UJA, was an
active Temple Emanuel Sisterhood member, and a
lifelong member of Hadassah. A baker-par excellent, extraordinary mahjong player, and winner of
Blackjack tournaments! She will be missed.
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.Teacher Assistant:
Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey in River Edge, N.J.
seeks General Studies assistants for self-contained
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with a possibility of some teaching responsibilities based on
experience and certification. Ideal opportunity for graduates in
the special ed field to benefit from close mentorship
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Send your resume to:
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n 1 The Fair Lawn Jewish Center/CBI held From Stage to Screen, an evening of
Broadway and movie music. Event organizers Andrea and Scott Pass, sitting, joined the
performers and instrumentalists. COURTESY FLJC/CBI
n 2 Temple Beth Tikvah of Waynes Women of Chai group, including Suzanne
Goldensohn, pictured, created needlepoint mezuzahs, donated food to the WIN-Wayne
Interfaith Network, and enjoyed a homemade dessert buffet. COURTESY TBT
n 3 The JCC of Paramus/Congregation Beth Tikvah held its Evening of Fun and
Laughter with comedy headliner Robin Fox at mic. Comedian Doug Adler also
performed. Refreshments included liquors and a pudding bar. COURTESY JCCP/CBT
n 4 Students at the Bergen County High School of Jewish Studies took a trip to the
Funplex in East Hanover for laser tag, arcade games, and go-kart riding. COURTESY BCHSJS
n 5 As part of Temple Beth Or in Washington Townships pre-Chanukah celebration,
teens held a Mitzvah Market to raise funds for organizations including Billys BASEballs,
First Book, Keshet, Midnight Run, New Eyes For The Needy, Ramapo-Bergen Animal
Refuge, and Table to Table. Toddlers made crafts, pictured, in a Holiday Happenings
program, and the sisterhood held a lobby holiday sale to raise funds. COURTESY TBO
n 6 The sisterhood at Temple Beth Sholom in Fair Lawn sponsored its art night at
Painting with a Twist in Glen Rock. COURTESY TBS
Real Estate/Opinion
Wishing you Happiness

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Serving Bergen County since 1985.
Allan Dorfman
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Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special envoy for Syria, holds up a photo of Aleppo while briefing
journalists after a U.N. Security Council emergency meeting on the situation in Syria on December 13.

UN Photo/Amanda Voisard
Cohen
from page 32
participant numbers ranging from the low hundreds to

the tens of thousands. And the principle of solidarity
with Hezbollah persists even now; at this years Al Quds
Day demonstration in London, the We Are All Hezbollah! signs were again out in full force.
So: Who are we?
We Hezbollah, that is revealed our true nature
once more in the combined Russian-Iranian-Syrian regime
onslaught that led to the fall of Aleppo, and the launching
of countless atrocities against the starving, besieged population of that city. Even the normally mealy-mouthed U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry called the assault nothing
short of a massacre.
As with Bosnia, as with Rwanda, as with the ethnic
cleansing of Iraqs Christians and Yazidis by Islamic State
terrorists, the international community led by the
United States has been a pathetic bystander to the carnage in Aleppo. Some of the reports emanating from the
city for example, young girls pleading with their fathers
to kill them before they are raped by militias backing Syrian tyrant President Bashar al-Assad will haunt us for
years to come.
Since Aleppo fell to the Russian-Iranian-Assad-Shiite
militia axis a devilish number of actors, but all of them
are pursuing the same goal of ensuring that Assads dictatorship is re-imposed upon the corpses of Aleppos men,
women, and children the atrocities have proceeded
unabated. Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed Shiite militias, such as the PMU organization from neighboring Iraq,
have been up to their waists in blood.
In one of the most gruesome incidents, a convoy of
20 buses carrying hundreds of evacuees, and accompanied by officials from the Syrian Red Crescent and
International Red Cross, managed to persuade Russian
occupation forces to allow them through their checkpoint. But then the buses arrived at another checkpoint, this one controlled by Hezbollah.
The convoy was halted for 15 minutes, reported
Voice of America, then tanks and Hezbollah militiamen surrounded the convoy, fired indiscriminately in
the air, and expelled the accompanying Red Cross and
Red Crescent workers. The militiamen forced all the

men to get off the buses and confiscated their weapons
and mobile phones.
The VOA report continued, Accompanied by his pregnant wife, a fighter who tried to resist was killed along
with four others. They seized some of the civil defense
cars and ambulances and forced the rest of the convoy
back to the besieged pocket in eastern Aleppo.
We should expect nothing less from these Shia totalitarians, as the prominent French philosopher BernardHenri Lvy aptly described them in a recent interview
with me. Hezbollahs operating codes revolve around
punishment and death. Mercy is a quality that they mock.
For that reason, Hezbollah is no different to the savages
of Islamic State. Both are the Sunni and Shiite sides of an
Islamist coin that wreaks untold suffering on Westerners,
Christians, vulnerable religious minorities, Jews, and in
the largest numbers, Muslims themselves.
But do those who chanted We Are All Hezbollah
understand the nature of the organization they embrace
so heartily? Do they grasp that We Are All Hezbollah
means We Are All Executioners, Rapists, and Child
Murderers? These are not the poorly armed fighters of
the POUM communist political party in Spain, of whom
George Orwell wrote so marvelously in his Spanish Civil
War classic Homage to Catalonia. They are a wellarmed, well-trained force of killers, as we have known
for too many years now. The 1983 bombing of the Marine
barracks in Beirut? It was the work of Hezbollah, in an
operation backed by their paymasters in Iran. The 1994
bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires?
Ditto.
Look upon Aleppo and then imagine, please, what
would happen if Hezbollah was unleashed upon the people of Israel. Sometimes, you need an apocalyptic scenario
to bring you to your senses.
JNS.ORG

Ben Cohen, senior editor of TheTower.org and the Tower
magazine, writes a weekly column for JNS.org on Jewish
affairs and Middle Eastern politics. His work has been
published in Commentary, the New York Post, Haaretz, the
Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.
Happy New Year
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Real Estate & Business

Rocher pays $129 million
for Sabon bath & body products
FEATURED PROPERTIES
Viva Sarah Press
1
2
3
4
Israels natural bath & body products

chain Sabon is being acquired by French
cosmetic maker Groupe Rocher at a
company value of $129 million, according to reports.
Sabon launched in Tel Aviv in 1997 and
has since gone on to be an international
network with 175 retail locations around
the world, in the United States, Israel,
Italy, France, Romania, Japan, Hong
Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, England,
Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Dominican Republic, and Denmark.
Rocher will buy 66 percent of the
Israeli company to strengthen its global
reach. Rochers brands include Yves
Rocher cosmetics and Petit Bateau
underwear.
All Sabon products are manufactured
and packaged in Israel and shipped
worldwide.
Sabon said in a statement that it will be
able to enjoy Rochers internal resources
and the groups strong relationships will
all support the company and maximize
its opportunities for global growth. The
joint objectives that have been set with
our new partners cover a wide range of
areas, including expanding into new markets, continued growth and opening new
stores in existing markets.
Sigal Kotler-Levi and Avi Piatok, Sabons founders, are to continue in their
managerial roles. Rocher reportedly has
an option to buy out the rest of the company later on.

Another recent buyout is Californias
Avery Dennison labeling and packaging firms agreement to acquire Hanita,
a pressure-sensitive materials manufacturer, from Kibbutz Hanita and Tene
Investment Funds for $75 million.
Headquartered in Israel with sales
and distribution facilities in the United
States, Germany, China, and Australia, Hanita develops and manufactures
coated, laminated, and metalized polyester films for a range of industrial and
commercial applications.
In related news, Decembers chilly
weather has brought some hot investments for Israeli companies.
Israeli startup Life On Air has raised
$52 million for its live video chat app
Houseparty, which allows large groups
to participate in live chat if they are
members in the chat group. The financing round was led by Sequoia Capital
with participation from Aleph VC, Comcast Ventures and Greylock Partners.
Lumus, a developer of augmented
reality (AR) wearable displays, recently
completed a $45 million investment
round with an additional $30 million in
funding from top-tier strategic investors
including Quanta and HTC.
Earlier this year, as part of this round,
the Rehovot-based company received
$15 million in financing led by Shanda
Group and Crystal-Optech.
Israel21c.org
577 Sunderland Road, Teaneck $1,100,000 7 Bedrooms 6.5 Bathrooms
Renovated Center Hall Colonial on 130 Deep Property in upscale Strand Section. Gourmet Kitchen with
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559 Churchill Road, Teaneck $659,000 4 Bedrooms 1.5 Bathrooms
SELLING YOUR HOME?
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Contact Debra Botwinick at 201.851.1035 for more information.
1522 Sussex Road, Teaneck $699,000 4 Bedrooms 3.5 Bathrooms
Move right in to this spacious 4 bedroom colonial in the prestigious West Englewood area of Teaneck with a
gracious double door entrance and marble floor entryway. Large open concept kitchen with eat-in area and
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opens to secluded, woodsy backyard. Modern kitchen has newer refrigerator, 2 full sized ovens, 2 sinks,
and 2 dishwashers. Master bathroom, 2 car attached garage and beautiful hardwood floors throughout.
Contact Helene Stein at 201.615.5265 for more information.
350 Vomel Drive, New Milford $499,000 3 Bedrooms 2 Bathrooms
Charming ranch with expansion possibilities in much sought after area. Beautifully renovated, freshly
painted, polished hardwood floors, new shower, new outdoor gas line for grill. Eat in kitchen with new
stainless steel appliances, granite counters. Large, sunny great room with sliding glass doors, skylight,
fireplace and new Mitsubishi ductless heating/AC system.
Contact Esther Schlanger at 201.803.7203 for more information.
740 Washburn Street, Teaneck $699,000 4 Bedrooms 2 Bathrooms
Excellent living room and formal dining room for gracious entertaining. Sliding glass doors to large deck
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Located on upscale cul de sac.
558 Warwick Avenue, Teaneck $1,285,000 5 Bedrooms 3.5 Bathrooms
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basement. 2 car detached garage with loft.
vera-nechama.com 201.692.3700
42 Jewish Standard DECEMBER 30, 2016
Call Susan Laskin Today

To Make Your Next Move A Successful One!
BergenCountyRealEstateSource.com
Cell: 201-615-5353
2016 Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. Coldwell Banker is a registered trademark licensed to Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC.
An Equal Opportunity Company. Equal Housing Opportunity. Owned and Operated by NRT LLC.
Ruth Miron-Schleider
Broker/Owner
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May your Hanukkah be as lovely and bright as the warm glow of candle lights!
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MEET FORT LEES RABBI ILAN ACOCA page 6

AN AFTERNOON OF JAZZ AND JEWS page 8

DECEMBER 30, 2016

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