NORTH JERSEY/ROCKLAND

JANUARY 18, 2019

VOL. LXXXVIII NO. 18 $1.00 88 2019

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2 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019
 Page 3

Groom wins damages

after injuring his foot
breaking the glass
● A Tel Aviv court has awarded a groom NIS
30,000 ($8,000) in damages after he injured

Germans nix sneaky snakey business
● Nice try.
On Christmas eve, a 43-year-old man tried to board
a flight to Israel with a 16-inch boa constrictor stuffed
in his pants.
Security staff at Berlin-Schönefeld Airport noticed a
bulge and realized he “carried something in his pants
that did not belong there,” according to a press re-
lease from German customs.
Security personnel pulled the unnamed man aside
for a search, and the would-be smuggler pulled a
cloth bag containing a live boa from his pants.
There were no customs or other documents that
would allow the snake to travel, inside or outside a
companion’s pants.
Security confiscated the snake and brought to a
reptile rescue station in Brandenburg.
Boas are protected under the Washington Conven-
tion on the Protection of Cities, and their import or
export from the European Union is forbidden without
written approval.
The man will be fined.
German customs officials called the snake “the most
curious find of 2018.”
his foot as he stomped on the glass at the end
of his wedding ceremony last summer.
At the wedding, the guests’ shouted mazal
tovs clashed with the groom’s cries of pain as
a shard of glass penetrated his shoe and cut
his foot.
The man sued the wedding hall, claiming
that he had been given an “unusually thick”
glass to break. He also charged that the hall
did not have a proper first aid kit and had
used wet wipes and a makeshift bandage on
his foot.
The wedding hall countered that it had
given the glass to one of the guests and had
no idea what the guest planned to do with it.
Tel Aviv District Court Judge Yaron Bashan
rejected the defense, saying that the glass
clearly was intended to be used in the cer-
emony.
The groom’s award included NIS 25,000 in
damages and NIS 5,000 in legal costs.
TIMES OF ISRAEL
TIMES OF ISRAEL

CONTENTS
Israel approves first NOSHES ............................................................4
BRIEFLY LOCAL ........................................... 16

Yiddish tour guide in years COVER STORY .............................................. 18

JEWISH WORLD ......................................... 24
CHANGE YOUR LIFE ..................................27
OPINION ........................................................ 42
● Gevalt! tested Charaz and decided
ARTS & CULTURE ........................................47
For the first time in he was fluent enough to be CALENDAR ................................................... 48
many years, Israel’s Tour- awarded the coveted approval. THE FRAZZLED HOUSEWIFE ..................51
ism Ministry has autho- Tourism Minister Yariv Levin CROSSWORD PUZZLE ...............................51
rized a tour guide to met Charaz to hand him his OBITUARIES ..................................................53
conduct official tours in official Yiddish license. CLASSIFIED ADS ........................................ 54
Yiddish. “This is part of a process REAL ESTATE................................................57
Yechiel Charaz, 42, aimed at advancing charedi
PUBLISHER’S STATEMENT: (USPS 275-700 ISN 0021-6747) is pub-
from the ultra-Orthodox tourism and making the Tour- lished weekly on Fridays with an additional edition every October,
city-settlement of Beitar ism Ministry relevant for a huge by the New Jersey Jewish Media Group, 1086 Teaneck Road,
Teaneck, NJ 07666. Periodicals postage paid at Hackensack, NJ
Illit in the West Bank, community that until now was and additional offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to
is a licensed tour guide sidelined and is now getting New Jersey Jewish Media Group, 1086 Teaneck Road, Teaneck, NJ
07666. Subscription price is $30.00 per year. Out-of-state sub-
and the deputy CEO for the attention it deserves,” Levin scriptions are $45.00, Foreign countries subscriptions are $75.00.
a tourism company that said. “Ultra-Orthodox tourism The appearance of an advertisement in The Jewish Standard does
works mainly with mem- brought huge income to Israel not constitute a kashrut endorsement. The publishing of a paid
political advertisement does not constitute an endorsement of
bers of the charedi com- in the past year.” any candidate political party or political position by the newspa-
munity. For years, he has Charaz said he works with per or any employees.

been requesting permis- groups of ultra-Orthodox tour- The Jewish Standard assumes no responsibility to return unso-
licited editorial or graphic materials. All rights in letters and
sion to host guided tours ists from abroad, including unsolicited editorial, and graphic material will be treated as uncon-
in his mother tongue, Yiddish, which is the first language spiritual leaders and even members of the anti-Zionist ditionally assigned for publication and copyright purposes and
subject to JEWISH STANDARD’s unrestricted right to edit and to
for many chasidic Jews. Satmar sect. comment editorially. Nothing may be reprinted in whole or in part
But for at least six years, while ultra-Orthodox tourism “I tell them I am the biggest Zionist and make them love without written permission from the publisher. © 2019

to Israel grew by about 40 percent, the Tourism Ministry
struggled to find someone qualified to test Charaz’s profi-
ciency in the language.
That problem recently was solved when a Tourism
Ministry employee who studied Yiddish in university
Israel,” he said proudly during the ceremony. “I tell them
this is the only place for Jews because it is ours.” Candlelighting:
Charaz, who said he has never traveled outside Israel, ex- Friday, January 18, 4:38 p.m.
pressed hope that others would follow in his footsteps and Shabbat ends:
seek to lead tours in Yiddish. MICHAEL BACHNER/TIMES OF ISRAEL
Saturday, January 19, 5:41 p.m.

JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 3

Noshes
SCI-FI DILEMMA:
‘Passage’ a matter
of life or death
“Passage,” a sci-fi
drama, started on
Fox on January
14. Mark-Paul Gosselaar,
who had a Jewish
grandfather, stars as Brad
Wolgast, a federal agent
tasked with bringing a
young girl named Amy to
a super-secret medical
base where she will be a
test subject for a virus
that has the potential to
end all disease. The
downside is that the virus
could end all life on Earth.
Wolgast bonds with Amy,
becoming her surrogate
father. While trying to
protect her, he becomes
aware of a lot of other
dangerous things going
on at the base. He turns
to his ex-wife, Dr. Lilia
Kyle, for help. Kyle is
played by EMMANUELLE
CHRIQUI, 43 (“Entou-
rage”). (You can see the
pilot, free, online or on
demand). Chriqui, as I
have noted before, was
born in Canada to
Sephardic Jewish parents
originally from Morocco.
Sisters
A friend recently
mentioned two
Jewish actresses I
have not talked about yet
in this column. They are
the sisters ARIELLA
BARER, 20, and LIBE
BARER, 27. Libe is best
known for playing Carly
Bowan in the Amazon
Original series “Sneaky
Pete.” The premise is that
Marius, a conman, is
Want to read more noshes? Visit facebook.com/jewishstandard
4 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019
released from jail. He has
nowhere to go, so he
assumes the identity of a
dead cellmate, Pete.
Because he knows a lot
about Pete’s life, he
convinces Pete’s large
extended family that he is
their long-lost relative.
Ariella plays a very inquisi-
tive cousin of Pete’s. It’s
an important supporting
part. The series was
renewed last fall for a
third season, which will be
streamed later this year.
Libe’s sister, Ariella, is best
known for playing
Gertrude “Gert” Yorkes in
the Hulu series “Marvel’s
Runaways.” The premise is
that six teenagers
(including Gert) from
different backgrounds
team up to fight for good
after discovering that
their parents are super-
villains. The show is a
streaming hit and the
second season of the
series was released
last December.
The sisters were born in
Los Angeles to a Jewish
couple who were born
and grew up in Mexico.
Arielle, quite reasonably,
has described herself as
Jewish and as Latina. It
appears that their ethnic-
ity is a mixture of mostly
Ashkenazi Jews and some
native Mexicans who my
friend believes probably
converted in.
Stand-up
“Howie Mandel
Presents Howie
E L E V A T E
T W O L O C A T IO N S T O S ER V E Y O U B ET T E R - E N G L E W O O D , N J & H A RR IM A N , N Y - B E N Z E L B U S C H . C O M
“WHY would people do that
so close to Tu B’Shevat?”
— Writer Amy Sullivan, recounting her five-
Emmanuelle Chriqui Ariella Barer
Howie Mandel Ben Stiler
Mandel at the Howie SNL can’t ignore. By the
Mandel Comedy Club” way, Ben’s father, JERRY,
premieres on Showtime 91, had a health scare last
on Friday, January 18, at week and was rushed to
9PM. MANDEL, 63, takes the hospital. Last reports
the stage of an Atlantic were that he’s doing well.
City comedy club that
bears his name. It’s his
Something Jewish
first stand-up special in Last week, I tried
20 years. something new. I
Expect to see BEN put “Jewish” into
STILLER, 53, on SNL the Netflix and Amazon
next month. He’s been onsite search engines.
playing lawyer MICHAEL On Netflix, I got about
COHEN, 52, in a number 90 results. Many of the
of SNL sketches. On Feb. films are about the
7, Cohen will testify be- Holocaust. But at least
fore Congress and it will half are about other
be a media circus that aspects of Jewish/Israeli
Y O U R
year-old child’s reaction to seeing Christmas
trees waiting for the garbage men last week.
Libe Barer
Bob Dylan
life. On Amazon, I got an
astonishing 864 results.
The vast majority of
these films/TV series are
free with Prime member-
ship. It’s really an
amazing collection of
just about every aspect
of Jewish life I could
think of, and some that
never occurred to me.
Projects to look
forward to
Netflix has
announced that
Martin Scorsese
will direct a documen-
tary about BOB
California-based Nate Bloom can be reached at
Middleoftheroad1@aol.com
S T A N D A R D S
DYLAN’s Rolling Thun-
der Revue tour. The
Scorsese film will
feature new on-camera
interviews with Dylan. In
1966, Dylan was in a
serious motorcycle
accident and that began
a six-year hiatus in
which he did not tour.
(The accident probably
saved his life by bringing
him up short. He had
been burning the candle
at both ends.) In 1974,
Dylan toured with the
Band, his old backing
group. In 1975, he went
all-out with the Rolling
Thunder Revue. Many
notables joined him on
the tour, including Joan
Baez, Bob’s old flame.
Dylan, now 78, turned
footage of the tour, as
well as staged scenes
and interviews, into a
dramatic movie, “Rey-
naldo and Clara,” in
1978. “Reynaldo” really
didn’t work, but the
real-life “Reynaldo”
footage provides
Scorsese with great
material for his film.
Meanwhile, Luca
Guadagnino, the
director of the hit film
“Call Me by Your Name,”
says he is directing a
film based on Dylan’s
1975 album “Blood on
the Tracks.” The screen-
play is being written by
Richard LaGravense, the
writer of acclaimed films
including “The Fisher
King” and “The Bridges
of Madison County.”
–N.B.
 Jane M.
Clifton, NJ

TH I S I S WHAT
L I V I N G O N L O O K S L I K E.

When Jane was diagnosed with Cervical Cancer, we treated her like a
person, not a diagnosis. When she told us how important having children
was to her, we gave her options, not orders. And when she felt lost and
alone, we gave her a whole community to share her survival.

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JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 5
Local
Learning from our stories
Dr. Jeffrey Rubenstein’s new book examines
talmudic stories as literature and as sources of great wisdom
JOANNE PALMER
A
lthough much of the Talmud
— or at any rate, the part of
the Talmud that most of the
people who study it think of
when they think about the Talmud — is
laws. Halacha.
But those laws are connected by sto-
ries, terse, often gnomic, at times phan-
tasmagorical stories, both compelling
and hard to understand.
Dr. Jeffrey Rubenstein of Englewood —
and also of NYU, where he is the Skirball
professor of Jewish thought and litera-
ture — wants us to think about the sto-
ries; we’ll benefit from their richness,
strangeness, and surprising relevance
to our lives.
He writes about those stories in his
new book, “The Land of Truth: Talmud
Tales, Timeless Teachings”; he’ll talk
about them at Congregation Kol HaNesha-
mah in Englewood next month. (See box).
“There has been a new appreciation
in academic circles of the stories in Tal-
mud,” Dr. Rubenstein said. “Many peo-
ple have grown up with these stories,
or at least they have heard about them
if they have some Jewish education, but
the dominant approach is a biographi-
cal or historical one. People try to read
them to reconstruct the rabbis’ biogra-
phies instead of taking a more literary
approach.”
The traditional way is to use the stories
as hagiography, he said; the more aca- Caption
demic way was to try to construct them
as straightforward life history. Those
approaches are not the same — “the aca-
demic is more critical and historical and
contextual, and the other is more exem-
plary, but they share a sense that the sto-
ries could be biographical,” he said.
But what if you look at them as didac-
tic fiction? As stories rooted in their cul-
ture and expressing that culture’s values?
And understanding that to some extent that culture is our
culture (and of course to another extent it is not).
“Scholars have been doing this for a few decades now,”
Dr. Rubenstein said. “My work has been based on it — to
understand some of the literary processes. To illustrate
the richness of the stories and how they work as literary
text. To popularize the stories.
“I also want to make the argument that the stories are
relevant, that we can learn from them, and that we can
find wisdom in them.”
The traditional approach has been to read quickly
through the stories in search of the law. “In the liberal
Jewish world, people are a little less interested in law
and more in the thought and ethics and concepts and
6 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019
ideas,” he said. “There is a familiarity with some of the
leading stories, but not really a deep knowledge of how to
approach them.
“Part of this is the scholars’ fault. We haven’t got out the
message that these are rich texts that can be understood
by literary analysis, that they have both aesthetic beauty
and meaning.”
The stories are relevant because, Dr. Rubenstein said,
“To the extent that any of us want to find meaning in Jew-
ish tradition and have that tradition inform our lives, one
way to go about it is through the prism of narrative.
“We understand ourselves in a narrative mode. Our
lives have beginnings, middles, and ends. That is the
framework that we use to understand ourselves — our
Dr. Jeffrey Rubenstein
pasts, our presents, and our futures. Nar-
rative structures always have been critical
to our self-understanding.”
So the Talmud’s stories are relevant
because they look at issues with which we
continue to struggle — “eternal problems
of human existence — aging, suffering,
dealing with political power, as well as
mitzvot and prayer. Basically, the stories
look at the human condition.”
Being old does not make the stories irrel-
evant, he said; instead, it’s weeded the col-
lection, and honed and sanded the ones
that remain. “One of the great features of
ancient literature — both Jewish literature
and in general — is that much of it has gone
through a time-tested process,” he said.
“Only the best of it was passed down. Over
the course of the centuries, stories or tra-
ditions that weren’t meaningful or didn’t
provide great insight into the human con-
ditions didn’t persist. They were dropped.
Only the best stories came down to us, so
these are great literary texts. They’re the
tradition’s greatest stories.”
The stories are spare because “the
Talmud was oral, and oral texts are always formulated
very economically, for mnemonic purposes,” Dr. Ruben-
stein continued. “That’s part of what makes them alien
to the modern reader. That’s why modern readers need
either some familiarity with the Talmud or some guide
to understanding the stories’ idioms and conventions.
The writers presupposed that you would know the sig-
nificance of a work or a term or an idiom or a phrase and
also that you’d been able to connect it to another text,
where that phrase is used.
“That’s why it can be difficult to make sense of it,” he
said. “What I was trying to do in this book was to walk the
reader through ways to begin to understand the story, and
how to connect it to both the wide web of other talmudic
 Local

stories and of other Jewish texts, and then
to see what makes it relevant to today.”
As he looks at each issue, Dr. Rubenstein
examines it from a variety of views, includ-
ing modern ones. He tells a story in each
chapter, and then “I tried to analyze it
from multiple perspectives, to read it one
way and then another way,” he said. He’ll
tell it from the point of view of one char-
acter, and then from the other; the story
changes quite a bit that way. In a discus-
sion about taking words absolutely literally
— and the power that can come from such
intentional ignorance, should it have been
done intentionally — he quotes the source
most obvious to anyone who’s been a par-
ent in the last half-century, the inimitable
Amelia Bedelia, Queen of the Literal (but
not literal queen).
“There are many gaps in the stories,”
he said. “Readers are meant to fill in the
gaps. That’s part of the function of oral lit-
erature, to invite interpretation and stimu-
late thought.
“As modern readers, of course, we fill in
the gaps differently.”
Any examples? Take the story of Rav
Asi, whose widowed mother adored him,
to the point where she asked him to find
her a husband as beautiful as her son. “She
was very annoying,” Dr. Rubenstein said.
“He eventually runs away to the land of
Israel from Babylonia to get away from her
— only to hear that she is following him.”
At that point, Rav Asi goes to meet his
mother, but the story “has a tragic ending,
in a certain sense, because she dies before
he can get there, and he has remorse,
although it’s not clear about what.
“It raises questions about taking care of
aging parents, about balancing one’s obli-
gations to oneself and self-fulfillment with
taking care of family members.
“The temptation is to run away from
our problems, but the understanding is
that they follow us.” We can run, but we
can’t hide. That was no less true then than
it is now.
“The family rifts are tragic,” Dr. Ruben-
stein said. “I mention ‘30 Lessons for Liv-
ing,’” — a fairly recent American self-help
book by Karl Pillemer — “and one of the
main lessons there is about how much
regret the elderly feel when they have rifts
in their families. If they could live their
lives over to change one thing, they say, it
would be not to have that fight, not to not
speak to their sister or brother or parent.
“This story brings that forth very eco-
nomically, in a half comic, half tragic way.”
There is also an emphasis on physical
beauty in the Talmud’s stories, Dr. Ruben-
stein said; it’s treated in a sophisticated
way, with an understanding of both peo-
ple’s genuine pull toward the aesthetically
pleasing and the dangers of ascribing deep
meaning to something that is surface-level
by definition.
One area where the Talmud’s wisdom is
not necessarily useful is in its understand-
ing of women. “I don’t think that you can
totally whitewash the unimportant role
that women play in the Talmud without
being false to the text,” Dr. Rubenstein
said. “All premodern societies in the West
were patriarchal, and we still are dealing
with that today. We have made tremen-
dously rapid progress, but this is one of
the struggles that you have when you are
the heir of an ancient tradition. It does
change, but change often comes slowly,
and with a push and pull.
“This was literature produced by men,
and from a male, patriarchal point of view.
But there are women’s voices that come
through. You can see aspects of their resis-
tance, of their pushing back to the best of
their ability.” As in, for example, the wife
whose husband’s requests for chickpeas
are taken literally and met with just two
and then an un-eatable ton of them. (That’s
where Amelia Bedelia comes in.)
That and similar caveats, along with the
reminder that the culture in which the
stories were formed is very old, does not
detract from the stories, Dr. Rubenstein
said.
“There is great beauty there, and
sophisticated narrative artistry,” he said.
“They are not necessarily the easiest
texts to study and appreciate and make
sense of, but I believe they are well worth
the effort.”
Who: Dr. Jeffrey Rubenstein
What: Will talk about “The Land of
Truth: Talmud Tales, Timeless Teaching”
at a Lunch and Learn session
When: On Saturday, February 2, after
services that begin at 9:45 a.m.
Where: At Congregation Kol
HaNeshamah, 133 Engle Street,
Englewood
For information or reservations: Email
rsvp@khnj.org.

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Local
What comes after start-up nation?
Ari Zoldan talks about Israel’s competition
and how it can maintain its high-tech status for FedTalk
ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN
A
ri Zoldan, a Yeshiva University grad-
uate who lives in Rockland Coun-
ty’s Wesley Hills, sat down with the
Dubai royal family a couple of weeks
ago to talk about innovation.
As he does whenever he is invited to speak in
Muslim countries, he told them exactly who they
were dealing with.
“I don’t wear a yarmulke but the first thing
that always comes out of my mouth is that I’m
an Orthodox Jew,” he said. “When I said that to
10 members of the royal family in Dubai, there
was total silence.
“Then the guy next to me kicks me in a cute
way and says to everyone, ‘Hey, we’re like
brothers,’ and I said, ‘Kind of like cousins, but
it’s okay,’ and everyone laughed. That broke
the ice. For three hours we were laughing and
talking, and had a fascinating discussion com-
paring Islam to Judaism.”
Who is Ari Zoldan, and why do Muslim coun- Ari Zoldan is a regular commentator on technology issues.
tries invite him to talk to them?
He is the CEO of Quantum Media Group, a Manhattan-
based global marketing and media company. He appears
regularly on FOX News, CNN, and CNBC to comment on
technology, business, and innovation, and he writes about
those topics as a contributor to the HuffingtonPost.com,
TheStreet.com, IBM.com, and Inc.com. As a speaker for
Israel Bonds across the United States, his specialty is spark-
ing a passion for Israeli innovation.
When he’s invited to Arab countries as a keynote
speaker, or when clients in the Arab world engage Quan-
tum Media as their marketing firm, Mr. Zoldan injects
some of that spark into his discussions about how Israel
came to be an innovation powerhouse.
“My business has many Israeli clients, and they know
this,” he said. “They’re looking to pick my brain. When an
American Jew with Israeli clients is invited to keynote in
Arab countries, it makes for an interesting conversation.”
On January 31 he will explore the other side of the coin
in his talk at the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey.
(See box.) Mr. Zoldan’s topic, “Can Israel Sustain Itself as The
Start-Up Nation?” is part of the federation’s FEDTalk series
focused on Israel.
“When I’m overseas talking to Arab countries it’s more
from an educational standpoint about why Israel is the
‘start-up nation,’ and when I talk to Jewish or Israeli com-
munities the angle of my talk is the innovation threat and the
need for Israel to keep pushing itself,” he said.
Mr. Zoldan’s travels to emerging countries in Africa,
India, Asia, Central America, and the Middle East have
convinced him that Israel cannot afford to rest on its
well-earned innovation laurels.
“I see that there are countries out there innovating at a
very quick pace because they are looking at Israel and say-
ing, “Hey, Israel is in the middle of the desert without natu-
ral resources to speak of, and they’re forced to innovate.
Why can’t we do the same?’
“There is definitely an innovation threat that’s happening,
and Israel will need to double down pretty aggressively to
be able to stay ahead.”
Mr. Zoldan elaborates that bringing new technology
8 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019
Israel has a unique
secret sauce that gave
rise to its innovation
culture and continues
to keep it nourished.
to market is a race that Israelis dare not assume they will
always win.
“If Dubai or Abu Dhabi comes out with a nifty piece of tech-
nology or medical innovation and can grab market share first,
that’s a direct threat to the state of Israel,” he said.
And whereas a few years ago these countries didn’t have
the infrastructure to bring inventions to market, “today they
do, very much so. I’ve been inside their R&D labs and I see
they are doing it.”
However, Mr. Zoldan stresses that Israel has a unique
secret sauce that gave rise to its innovation culture and con-
tinues to keep it nourished. “Taking the religious view that
we are the chosen people out of it, and looking concretely
at why this small country in the middle of nowhere is inno-
vating at such a fast pace, we see three main factors. The
first is the army, where young Israelis are taught persever-
ance, leadership, tactical skills — all the things for leaders to
become great at what they do.”
The second factor, according to Mr. Zoldan, is that the
Israeli government understands the need to invest in the
country’s innovation ecosystem through loans, grants, and
financial incentives. And the third factor is the traditional
Jewish emphasis on education, with an analytical approach
to problem-solving.
“There is a sprinkle of other ingredients in the mix
but those are three things that make Israel’s secret sauce
special,” he said.
Another focus of his talk will be Israel’s symbiotic business
relationship with America. Each country has a strength that
can shore up the other’s weakness, as he sees it.
“No one can wrap a present better than Americans,” he
said. “Our packaging, our branding, our marketing is the
best. We spend $10 on a cup of coffee because we’re brand
junkies. But inside that beautiful fluffy box, there’s not much
there. Our stuff is outsourced to China.
“Israel is the opposite. They’ve got a PR problem and a
communication problem that affects how the outside of the
box looks. But inside is something no one in America can
touch: a golden nugget of intelligence and technology. It’s
just the outside that needs a lot of polishing.”
This is what he has strived to do in his work with Israeli
technology and biotechnology companies over the last 18
years. “As a marketing firm, we build a bridge to the U.S.
and get Israeli companies packaged beautifully to be able
to sell them here.”
Mr. Zoldan said his talk will include some practical sug-
gestions about “what Americans can do to support and
promote Israeli innovation even if they can’t invest, even
if they’re high school or college students. I’ll talk about
different calls to action.
“With social media today, everyone has their own soap-
box, so it’s really easy for someone who has no money to
be able to play a part in it.”
Who: Ari Zoldan
What: A FEDTalk, “Can Israel Sustain Itself as The
Start-Up Nation?”
When: Thursday, January 31, 7:30 to 9 p.m.
Where: Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey, 50
Eisenhower Drive, Paramus
How much: Online registration: $10 at www.jfnnj.org/
calendar/fedtalks2/ (Walk-ins will be accepted but
pre-registration is strongly encouraged)
Also: Sushi tasting and light refreshments.
For more information: (201) 820-3900 or JFNNJ.org
JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 9
Local

Governor signs two security bills

Legislation to protect religious schools passes legislature unanimously in wake of Pittsburgh attack
LARRY YUDELSON

I
t’s not strictly true that the Jewish
community has the Pittsburgh syna-
gogue massacre to thank for the two
laws signed by Governor Phil Mur-
phy last week in a ceremony at Yeshiva
Beis Hillel in Passaic.
That’s because Passaic is the home town
of Gary Schaer, the lead sponsor of one of
the bills and the only Orthodox Jew in the
state legislature.
In fact, both laws — one of them doubles
the amount of money given to non-public
schools for their security needs, the other
extends the scope of state security grants
to non-profit institutions — were referred
to their appropriate State Assembly com-
mittee in the week before an anti-Semitic
white nationalist murdered seven Jews at Governor Phil Murphy signing security bills at Yeshiva Beis Hillel.
the Tree of Life Synagogue on October 27.
But there is no doubt that in the wake of the deadliest maybe.” Additionally, the grant size has been raised to schools in states across the country. The Jewish Federation
attack on a Jewish institution in American history, New $50,000 per institution; it had been just $10,000. The of Northern New Jersey has played a central role in fund-
Jersey’s elected officials wanted to do what they could to new law did not increase the $1 million allocated to the ing the Teach NJ office across the state.
make the Jewish community safer. Both bills passed unani- program in this year’s budget. “In this day and age, security has to be primary for all of
mously in the state Assembly and Senate. By contrast, the school security bill, A-4597, was an our citizens,” Jason Shames said. Mr. Shames is CEO of the
“It was a great day,” Valerie Vainieri Huttle of Engle- unusual supplementary bill that added $11 million to the North Jersey federation. “The work is moral and justified
wood (Assembly D-37) said of the signing. Ms. Huttle was state budget. It raises the amount the state pays to non- and the right thing to do.
one of the co-sponsors of the non-profit security bill, public schools for security needs from the $75 per capita “This is part of our overall effort to work more closely
A-3906, that amended the law about a three-year pilot in the budget signed on July 1 to $150 per student — and with our elected officials,” he added; and the importance
security grant program that was enacted in 2017. That pro- allocated the $11 million to pay for the increase. More than of the issue for the federation reflects the fact that in Ber-
gram was modeled after the federal Homeland Security $400,000 of these additional funds will flow to the Jewish gen County, “about 40 percent of our Jewish K-12 kids go
non-profit grants that have helped many area synagogues day schools of Bergen County. Overall, around 150,000 to private schools.
and Jewish schools fund security upgrades. The state ver- of New Jersey’s schoolchildren attend non-public schools; “We’re very grateful to the governor and other elected
sion sought to complement the federal grants by provid- that is about 10 percent of the state’s student body. officials for seeing the need for security for all of our
ing funds outside the urban areas delineated in the fed- “We’re almost up to parity here,” Ms. Huttle said. Pub- children.”
eral program, and by letting institutions use the grants to lic schools receive more than $200 for each student for Lobbying for the additional school security funding
hire security personnel — something the federal program security. “Keeping our children safe is a number one pri- began in July, after a request for an increase failed to be
doesn’t allow. The law neglected to include grants for ority,” she said. approved through the regular Trenton budget process.
non-personnel expenses. Now, the grants can be used for The school security bill has been a priority of Teach NJ, “Each year we try to get increases on all our line items,”
“target hardening equipment,” Ms. Huttle said. “Cameras, the local division of the Orthodox Union’s political arm, Nathan Lindenbaum said. Mr. Lindenbaum is co-chair of
bollards outside of buildings, cybersecurity programs which has been working to increase funding for religious Teach NJ. Besides the security line item, the state budget
allocates money for technology, textbooks, and school
nurses. But there was no increase in the 2019 budget.
“We were very disappointed,” Mr. Lindenbaum said. “We
decided we were going to continue to press.
“The unfortunate political facts are that Jewish people
died to create the political environment to make this hap-
pen. We doubled down and used the climate as best we
could once it did happen.”
Sam Moed, Teach NJ’s other co-chair, described the
school security funding increase as the group’s “most
significant achievement so far, in raw dollars and from a
political point of view. It built upon three years of efforts,
both in increasing funding year over year and in building
relationships across communities in the non-public sector
and with political leaders.”
Leaders of Catholic and Muslim private schools were at
the Yeshiva Beis Hillel signing. “We were all collaborating,”
Mr. Moed said. “Similarly, within the Jewish community
this has been a very broad coalition across denominations.
That’s been a lot of the power behind its success.
“We’ve been bringing New Jersey’s political leadership
into the non-public schools so they can see the amaz-
ing things that go on. We’ve had events in Jewish day
Students and faculty members at Yeshiva Beis Hillel pose with Governor Phil Murphy. schools, in Catholic schools, a couple in Muslim schools.”

10 Jewish standard JanUarY 18, 2019

 Let us mind your business -
Local we just might see what you are missing
Coming
Steven Morey Greenberg, Esq. next week:
Greenberg & Lanz, LLC
Business Attorneys Bar/Bat
Mr. Moed said Teach NJ also has worked to increase
Please phone us for a free consultation
regarding your business concerns including:
Mitzvah
political activism within the day school community.
“They have become active with the elected officials
Strategic and Succession Planning, Acquisitions/Sales, A supplement
across the state,” he said. “Lay leaders, educational lead- Partnership Disputes and Litigation. to the Jewish
ers, religious leaders, parents, students in school have Standard
Two University Plaza · Hackensack, NJ 07601
made calls and written letters. It has engaged our com-
munities and families and kids in the political process, Phone: (201) 487-7755 · Fax: (201) 487-0087
which is enormously important from the perspective of smg@greenberglanz.com · www.greenberglanz.com
our civic role.
“Give credit to the political leadership in New Jersey.
They have been open to a dialogue around these issues.
They understand the importance of providing secu-
rity, healthcare, technology, etc. to non-public schools.
We never advocate that this is at the expense of public
schools. We want public schools to be fully funded.”
University:
So what’s next for Teach NJ?
“There’s a lot of work to do,” Mr. Moed said. “It’s the Making an Impact
responsibility of states across the country to equitably
fund public and non-public schools in all areas where

Keeping Hospital Patients Safe – The Nano Way

The school security
bill has been a
Millions of people become ill from bacterial infections they contract
in the hospital. In fact, these infections contribute to over 100,000
priority of Teach NJ, preventable deaths each year in the U.S. . Bar-Ilan Professor Aharon
the local division Gedanken, Director of the Maurice Kanbar Laboratory for Nanomaterials,
of the Orthodox has developed a unique method to minimize this health epidemic.
Union’s political arm,
which has been
working to increase
funding for religious
schools in states
across the country.
that’s appropriate. That’s a long journey ahead from
where we’re all starting from. In New Jersey specifi-
cally, a few years ago, if you looked at the areas where
there was funding for public and non-public schools,
there was about $180 per capita for non-public schools
compared to over $500 for public schools. Now there’s
about $320 per student. We’re closing the gap. We abso-
lutely believe there should be parity. We’re also looking
at other opportunities to bring more resources to non-
public schools in areas like STEM.” Prof. Aharon Gedanken
Teach NJ has been reaching out to its supporters,

Gedanken’s Solution:
asking them to thank their elected officials for the
funding increase.
“We want the legislators to know that the commu-
nity is aware of what’s going on. Just as we rail and com-
He is coating bed sheets, pillow cases, curtains, gowns and towels with
plain against them, we will show hakarat hatov” — that’s anti-bacterial nanoparticles that can withstand the stresses of
Hebrew for gratitude — “when the right things happen. repeated hospital laundering and retain their protective qualities. Soon,
It’s very important that the community become more
politically active and aware. In order to win the game we
patients admitted to hospitals will be able to concentrate on getting
have to be in the game. Our community is not playing better – and not worrying about the hospital making them sick.
enough. People don’t communicate with their legisla-
tors enough. People don’t vote enough. We’re still voting
in embarrassingly low percentages. For example, in pre- Tel: 212-906-3900
cincts 10 and 11 in Teaneck, which are heavily Orthodox, 160 East 56th Street
the participation is not what it should be. New York, NY 10022
“I’m not telling people who to vote for. They just Samuel.Konig@afbiu.org
have to vote. The politicians know who votes and AFBIU.org
who doesn’t.”

Jewish Standard JANUARY 18, 2019 11

Local

‘Gabe’s got this’

Community bands together to support 12-year-old with bone cancer
ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN

W
hen two 12-year-old girls
found out that their
mutual childhood friend,
Gabe Patnoi of Demar-
est, was diagnosed with bone cancer, they
decided to sell blue plastic bracelets embla-
zoned with the hashtag #GABEsGotThis.
That’s just one of several ways the greater
community has come out in force to sup-
port the Patnoi family since Gabe, who also
is 12, was diagnosed, in November, with an
illness that demands expensive treatment,
not all of it covered by insurance.
This Saturday night, January 19, the men’s
club of the Patnoi family’s synagogue, Tem-
ple Emanu-El of Closter, will hold the “Com-
munity Night of Togetherness,” featuring
music — a rock band from Temple Sinai in
Tenafly — and comedy — by Joel Chasnoff.
The evening is open to the public. (See box
and also see story on page 18.)
Temple Emanu-El’s president, Fran
Weingast, said that the evening’s proceeds
will benefit the family as well as a general
fund the congregation makes available to
member families facing illness or financial
difficulties.
“The community has rallied around the
Patnoi family,” she said. “This is what we do
frequently; our community has always been
there to help families that need us.”
“I have had the chance to get to know
Gabe really well through the course of this Supporters gather in Closter at one of the initiatives held to support Gabe and his family.  FACEBOOK

illness,” Emanu-El’s senior rabbi, David-Seth

Kirshner, said. “He is a sweet, gentle, good kid who cares Mark Goldstein, whose daughter is a classmate of Gabe’s,
about the things most 12-year-old boys care about, sports rallied his partners in the Section 16H Group, a local philan-
and video games. He’s really worried that this illness will thropy, to raise money for the Patnois in conjunction with
impede his bar mitzvah training, but we have assured him a December fundraising event that already was in the plan-
that it won’t. ning stages. They raised close to $81,000, and even subtract-
“Sadly, we have done this in a different way for so many ing expenses that leaves about $78,000 — some of which
people in the community,” Rabbi Kirshner added soberly. already has gone toward paying Gabe’s medical bills.
“He unfortunately is not the first kid in the community to be “We had this event scheduled, but after Mark asked that
sick and he is not the last. And he wouldn’t be the first adult we make it for the Patnois, it exploded,” Section 16H Group
or the last one, either. As a result we have done all sorts of board member Dr. Brian Wraith of Woodcliff Lake said. “We
program and events — meet-and-greets and special activities probably would have raised $2,000, but the entire Demarest

COURTESY BOKSER AND DARCHE FAMILIES

at Yankees games and other things that contribute to helping
them feel better. This is also a moment of pride for us, that
we can continue to do this for people in our community.”
Many other friends and neighbors of the Patnoi fam-
ily sprang into action as soon as they heard the news of
Gabe’s diagnosis.
What: A Community Night of Togetherness presented
by the Men’s Club of Temple Emanu-El of Closter,
with music by Sinai Sessions Rock Band and standup
comedy by Joel Chasnoff
Why: To benefit the Patnoi family and a Temple Emanu-
El Fund for families facing illness and need
Where: Temple Emanu-El of Closter, 180 Piermont Road
When: January 19, 7:30 p.m.
How much: $90 per person (adults only) including food
and open bar
Reservations: templeemanu-el.com/nightoftogetherness
community really rallied for Gabe and we provided a vehicle
for their desire to be charitable.”
The remaining funds will go toward supporting the family
within the legal parameters of what the nonprofit is permit-
ted to do. One of the expenses they may help with is the cost
of lodging near Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in
Manhattan, where Gabe is being treated with chemother-
apy, radiation, and surgery for a rare form of bone cancer
called Ewing sarcoma.
David Plotkin is another of the family’s neighbors and
friends. He is the chairman of the Max Cure Foundation
of Englewood Cliffs, which funds research for the develop- Brooke Bokser, Emma Darche, and their families
ment of pediatric cancer drug therapies; financially assists sold these bracelets to raise money for Gabe.
low-income, military, and first-responder families battling
cancer in their children, and advocates for legislation ben- the Patnois. Some of the proceeds will be shared with other
efitting children with cancer. families across the country the foundation is supporting.
The foundation is running a crowdfunding campaign The Max Cure Foundation’s crowdfunding page describes
called “NeverGabeUp” (maxcure.rallybound.org/never- Gabe as a preteen who loves hanging out with friends,
gabeup/Donate). Its goal is to raise $50,000, primarily for SEE GABE PAGE 23

12 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019

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Local

How to start an authentic new life

Chani Getter talks about her move
from chasidic Monsey at Teaneck’s Temple Emeth
Joanne Palmer

L
ife is a series of trade-offs.
Yes, that’s a cliché, but like most clichés it’s
rooted in truth.
There is a trade-off, a precarious and often-
shifting balance, between the comfort and security of living
in a tightly knit community and the sacrifice of individuality
and autonomy that life requires.
There also is a trade-off between particularism and uni-
versality, but that comes a little later in this story. Let’s start
with the one about community.
Chani Getter grew up in the Nikolsburger community
in Monsey; it’s an offshoot of the Satmar chasidim, and is
unyieldingly strict in its approach to life and its rejection
of the world outside its boundaries, both physical and
metaphysical.
Ms. Getter will talk about her experiences, and much
more, at Temple Emeth in Teaneck on Sunday. (See box.)
It’s a wonderful life if you fit into it, if your heart beats
and your soul unfolds to its rhythms. But if somehow, for
some reason that you can’t figure out, you feel that it’s not
as much enfolding you as it is suffocating you, then it’s hard
to live there and it’s hard to figure out how to leave.
Ms. Getter, who is 42, grew up in what was then a “very
small community,” she said, so she and other girls were
allowed more access to learning and spirituality than they
would have been later, when the group grew larger, or than Chani Getter in action — clockwise from top, presiding at a wedding, above, putting up a mezuzah, and
they would have been in other chasidic communities. “Both holding a baby at a naming ceremony.  COURTESY CHANI GETTER

men and women were told ‘You both belong to God,’” she
said. “And my family was one boy and four girls. So my
father taught Torah to everyone at the table, so I received a
tremendous sense of entitlement around the Torah.”
Her parents, like most people their age in the community,
were the children of Holocaust survivors. “My mother was
born in a DP camp, and my father was the first in his fam-
ily not to be born in a DP camp; his parents met in a camp
and had two children there, and then they moved here and
had him. All they came with was the clothes on their backs.”
The family had not been Satmar in Europe, but “the Sat-
mar rebbe gave them something they needed,” she said.
They needed a community, a sense of belonging, a sense
of meaning that protected them against the evil that had
stalked their families. Their children felt that as well. “I was
given the gift at a young age of a voice, and the idea that a
voice was to be heard and listened to.” mom you are a nonentity.” Forget the spotlight — no one
But that didn’t last. As they matured, girls were expected sees you; it feels like living in endless shadow.
to silence their voices. “I went on one date for three hours, The final straw, the breaking point — choose your cliché! —
and I was pronounced engaged the next day,” Ms. Getter was when “I started driving a car,” Ms. Getter said. She had
said. Then she was married. She was 18. Soon she became to; she couldn’t stay at home, and she couldn’t afford cabs.
the mother of three children, and she was desperately exists, and then everything just comes tumbling down She and her parents did not speak to each other for eight
unhappy. “Single parents have a really hard time in the com- around you. years, “but it’s been 11 years since we started talking again.
munity,” she said, so she tried to stick it out, but it didn’t “It comes down to your asking yourself ‘Is this what God Time does work miracles.”
work. “My parents were very supportive of my leaving my really wants?’ And then you start thinking ‘This doesn’t Stop for a minute to think about the enormous amount of
ex, and I will forever be grateful to them,” she said. She and work for me, so if it is what God wants, what kind of God courage it takes to face the world, a single woman with three
her children lived with them at first — but their support had would want it?’ small children, educated in Torah but in not much else, for
its limits. “Soon they realized that they couldn’t just marry “To me the big questions were why would God give me a a time penniless and friendless.
me off, and the questions I was asking were not comfortable voice to sing if I wasn’t allowed to sing? And why would God But Ms. Getter is outgoing and resourceful. “There I was,
to them.” give me leadership qualities if I wasn’t going to be allowed a single mother, and I would get invited to people’s houses.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” she said. “I knew to lead?” I was a nebbuch” — a sad sack, a charity case — “and I’d
I was going to leave the marriage, but I didn’t know I was The question of a voice to sing is metaphoric, but it’s also get invited, but I realized that when I invited people over,
going to leave the community. literal, Ms. Getter said. “I love to sing, and in school plays I nobody came. I am not the kind of person who can be only
“I think it happens to a lot of people. When you start was constantly in the spotlight.” It was an all-girls school. receiving, not giving. So I started going to the city, spending
questioning the status quo, you start questioning that which “But then I had to hide who I really was. And as a single Shabbes there with friends.”

14 Jewish Standard JANUARY 18, 2019

 Local

She found the Carlebach synagogue —
modern Orthodox, but also deeply musical
and famously welcoming — on Manhattan’s
Upper West Side. “That was one of the first
places I went,” she said. “There are cha-
sidim who go to Carlebach, so I had known
that it existed.” Remember that this was
before the internet had gained much trac-
tion. She wouldn’t have been able to Google
“friendly Jewish services for single mothers
leaving Monsey.”
“My kids and I were totally accepted,” she
said. “So I started having a day-to-day life in
Rockland County, and a Shabbat and holi-
day life in New York. I would try out differ-
ent synagogues.”
It was a gradual move from chasidic life
through modern Orthodoxy and Conserva-
tive and non-affiliated synagogues to Jewish
Renewal. “I met my partner at Romemu,”
the Renewal synagogue on the Upper West
Side, Ms. Getter said. “We’ve been together
eight and a half years now.” Her children
“changed schools every two years, from
chasidic to yeshivish to modern Orthodox.
We slowly shifted over time.
“It took patience,” she said. “I was figur-
ing out my journey, making mistakes, and
finding people along the way.”
That sounds great, but how did she afford
it? “I am really good with numbers,” Ms.
Getter said. “Seriously good with numbers.
I started doing bookkeeping.” She quickly
realized that most women working in that
field looked for jobs with standard hours,
so she decided that it made most sense to
do piecework, at whatever hours employ-
ers demanded. So she’d work in, say, a law
office on Mondays, a day camp on Tuesday,
and somewhere else on Wednesday; she’s fit
in businesses that needed her once a month
around businesses that claimed her once a
week. Those jobs paid well, she said.
And as if that weren’t enough, she also
worked toward a bachelor’s degree from
Empire State College, a SUNY school that
offers distance learning; she went to class
one night a week and did the rest online. “I
would do my schoolwork at 4 in the morn-
ing,” she said. “My kids say that they would
wake up in the middle of the night and
they’d see me there at my computer, work-
ing.” It was that example, rather than any-
thing she told them, that developed their
own work ethic, she said.
Where did Ms. Getter’s drive and energy
come from? “I was really young then,” she
said. “I was 24; I graduated when I was 29.
I love to learn. Also, it became really clear
to me that if I didn’t, I was going to be poor,
and in a rut. My ex had a really hard time
paying child support. So I realized that
education was the only thing I could do.”
So her degree was in accounting, right?
No. It’s in human development. “Just
because I’m good at numbers, it doesn’t
mean that it’s what I like,” she said. “Every-
one said you should get an accounting
degree and then sit for your CPA, but I said
that there was no way that I would do some-
thing that would bore me, just because I’m
good at it. Everyone said you’d make such
good money, but I was like ‘Yeah. I want to
do something I care about.’”
Ms. Getter got a certificate in coaching;
she’s a life coach, specializing in LGBTQ
issues. Her office is in Hackensack. Now that
her youngest child is in college, she’s gone
back to school; she’ll soon earn her creden-
tials as a social worker.
She also works at Footsteps, the orga-
nization that helps members of chasidic
communities who are looking for a way to
leave those communities and find places for
themselves in the outside world. As hard as
that move was for Ms. Getter, it’s often even
harder for people who have fewer intellec-
tual and emotional resources, and whose
families rejected them even more fully and
permanently. (Footsteps is based in Man-
hattan and it also has an office in Rockland.
Ms. Getter does family justice counseling in
both places.)
“I’d heard about Footsteps, but I didn’t
hear nice things about it,” she said; she
didn’t go to it as a client, but as a caregiver.
“When I left, the people I knew who were
going to Footsteps were doing drugs.” She
was not. “I thought that they were all a
bunch of drunks. But then I realized that
the more people who were going to Foot-
steps, the fewer of them were drunks.” Still,
at first, she stayed away.
But soon her partner, who does not come
from a chasidic background, convinced her
to go. “And as soon as I got there, the exec-
utive director made a beeline to me,” she
said. “She said, ‘Are you Chani Getter? We
See new life page 23
Who: Chani Getter
What: Will talk about “The Process of
Change: Living Your Authentic Life!”
Where: At breakfast at Temple Emeth,
1666 Windsor Road in Teaneck, for its
B’Yachad and Viewpoint groups
When: Sunday, January 20, at 10:30
How much: The talk is free; breakfast
is $8.
Information: (201) 833-1322, www.
emeth.org, or viewpoints@emeth.org.
Information about Chani Getter: www.
chanigetter.com

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Jewish Standard JANUARY 18, 2019 15

Briefly Local

Michael Wildes
sworn in as mayor
of Englewood
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy,
left, stands with Englewood Mayor
Michael Wildes, at Mr. Wildes’
swearing in ceremony at Englewood

PHOTO PROVIDED
City Hall. Mayor Wildes is holding a
copy of his recently published book,

PHOTOS PROVIDED
“Safe Haven in America: Battles to
Open the Golden Door.”

At Tracy Silna Zur’s swearing-in ceremony, from left, are her daughters
Kayla and Logan Zur; her parents, Daniel and Joan Silna; her son, Coby Zur;
Congressman Bill Pascrell, Ms. Zur, and her husband, Bobby Zur.

Tracy Silna Zur

sworn in for
third term as
Freeholder
When Tracy Silna Zur was sworn in
as a Bergen County Freeholder by
Congressman Bill Pascrell on Sunday,
January 7, at One Bergen County Plaza
in Hackensack, Rabbi Dr. David J. Fine
of Temple Israel & JCC in Ridgewood,
gave the invocation. Rabbi David Fine and Tracy Silna Zur

Recipients of the Bergen County section of the National Council of Jewish

Women recently awarded major competitive grants. The recipients, from left, are
Julye Myner, executive director of Center for Hope and Safety; Ruth Seitelman,
the section’s co-president; Amanda Missey, CEO of Bergen Volunteer Medical
Initiative; Dr. Mary Askew, medical director of Youth Consultation Service; and
Bari-Lynne Schwartz, the section’s grant co-chair. NCJW BCS

NCJW BCS awards grants

to three charities
To celebrate its 95th anniversary, the
Bergen County section of the National
Council of Jewish Women recently cre-
ated a major competitive funding oppor-
From left, Sabrina McGirt, the outgoing chair of the Wayne YMCA Board of tunity for its local service partners, who
Managers; incoming chair A. Michael Rubin; and Wayne YMCA executive were each invited to submit proposals for
director Laura Tiedge. PHOTO PROVIDED $50,000 grants that would address the
needs of Bergen County children, young
adults, women, older adults, and families.
A. Michael Rubin is Wayne YMCA chair NCJW BCS announced the three agency
A. Michael Rubin of Wayne has been served on the board of the Jewish Federa- recipients at the organization’s December
elected chair of the board of managers tion of Northern New Jersey, and is a mem- board meeting.
of the Wayne YMCA. Mr. Rubin has been ber of AIPAC. He was a founder and build- Bergen Volunteer Medical Initiative will
president of the board of the YM-YWHA of ing chair of Congregation Shomrei Torah expand medical services and hire a wom-
North Jersey and of Jewish Family and Chil- in Wayne and is president of the Passaic en’s health nurse practitioner for 15 hours
dren’s Service of North Jersey. He also has County Historical Society, which supports per week to work with the working poor,
chaired the Y’s Jewish program committee, the Lambert Castle Museum. many of whom are immigrants. In 2019,
the Women’s Health Initiative Program
will serve 90 new female patients, while
continuing to work with at least 1,000
www.thejewishstandard.com active female patients. The new nurse
practitioner will reduce the wait time for
appointments from five to two weeks.
The Center for Hope and Safety will hire
a career counselor for 24 hours a week
who will assist 60 women who have been
affected by domestic violence. The coun-
selor will provide in-house career counsel-
ing, job readiness skill development, and
link them to local resources. Some funds
will be available for English as a Second
Language and job training classes, as well
as for clothing and transportation costs.
Youth Consultation Service will hire
a full-time art therapist to work with
150 traumatized and abused children at
Kilbarchan and the Holley Center group
homes. Art therapy is a very effective tool
for treating children with complex trauma.
The section’s co-president, Ruth Seitel-
man, said “BCS members’ generous per-
sonal giving contributions throughout the
years are making a difference in the lives of
the children, women, and families we help.”

16 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019

UPCOMING AT KAPLEN JCC on the Palisades

soap
The Soap Myth PA

A READING WITH ED ASNER AND TOVAH FELDSHUH

The critically acclaimed Soap Myth, by Jeff Cohen,
questions how a survivor survives surviving, and asks
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THE KAPLEN FOUNDATION PRESENT
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myth
Includes reserved VIP seating, meet and greet dessert
reception with photo opportunity the
Tickets: jccotp.org/soapmyth, Info: Nina Bachrach at
201.408.1406 or nbachrach@jccotp.org
Preferred $50, priority seating; General $25
Sun, Jan 27, 7 pm

Join the J by January 31 &

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Take a tour of our year-round indoor/outdoor facilities
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THURNAUER CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES PRESENTS

A Musical Celebration of
Black History Month
Sharon Roffman, Violin and Artistic Director
Featuring music by important African-
American and Afro-European composers.
With guest artists Jasmine Wilson, mezzo-
soprano; Doori Na, violin; Melissa Reardon,
viola; Raman Ramakrishnan, cello; Thomas
Sauer, piano.
Sat, Jan 26, 7 pm, $16/$20
Program offered as part of the JCC Patron of the Arts
PA
JCC U-Winter Term PA
KEEP LEARNING
PA
Jan 24 session topics: In the morning
Professor Thorin Tritter will present
What the Holocaust Can Teach Us About
Ethics and in the afternoon Leonard
Bernstein's daughter Jamie will discuss
her recent book, Famous Father Girl:
A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein.
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VISIT jccotp.org
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KAPLEN JCC on the Palisades TAUB CAMPUS | 411 E CLINTON AVE, TENAFLY, NJ 07670 | 201.569.7900 | jccotp.org
JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 17
Cover Story
The Chasnoff family explores
the Indian desert. Joel’s in
the back. Right, dusk falls
in a salt desert in Bolivia.

18 Jewish Standard JANUARY 18, 2019


Around the world
in 11 months
Comedian about to do benefit in Closter
looks back on his time in the IDF,
his family trip, and his choice of home
C
Joanne Palmer
omedians aren’t funny all
the time.
Yeah yeah yeah, the sad
clown.
But there’s far more to it
than that. (The thoughtful clown?)
Good comedians are funny when they
perform, although some of the funniest
of them also are recognizably real, and
their emotional range can be wide. But
there’s no reason to think that comedians
are funny — or only funny — offstage.
Joel Chasnoff can be funny in real life
— you can see for yourself in Closter on
Saturday night, as detailed in the box
on page 12 — but he’s also someone who
thinks and feels and makes decisions that
have real-life consequences.
That’s why Mr. Chasnoff — a Chicago
native, Conservative Jew, Schechter
school graduate, Camp Ramah loyalist,
USYer, and Zionist — decided to join the
IDF as a lone soldier in 1997. His experi-
ences there, told in his book “The 188th
Crybaby Brigade,” detail life in the IDF
and make a start at explaining how a cul-
ture as child- and family-centered as Isra-
el’s also can take high-school graduates
and turn them into a tough and effective
armed force.
Part of it, he said in an interview a few
years ago, was changing; armies, like
people, like the times themselves, change
and adapt to new conditions. The early
IDF was forged in grim history and mem-
ory; by the time he got to it, those mem-
ories were older and the uncertainty
around Israel’s changing place in a chang-
ing world made everything less certain.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had been
assassinated just two years before, and
the divisions that roil the country now
Cover Story
were boiling then.
It was an interesting time to be in the
IDF. “The army was looking for its iden-
tity as I was searching for mine,” he said
at the time.
And then there are the parents. He tells
a story in his book about how a mother-
mandated snack time demanded that the
combat unit — most Americans do not
enlist in combat unit, he said — stop tank
training, and sit in a circle, in their com-
bat gear, to eat chocolate sandwiches. It
made their parents feel better.
Joel was a lone soldier, and that expe-
rience made him sensitive to others in
that position. He’s done work to support
them ever since.
Before he joined the IDF, Joel had
assumed that he of course would make
aliyah. He fell in love, proposed, and
was accepted, and the young couple
planned to marry and live in Israel. But Joel does stand-up in the United States.
Jewish Standard JANUARY 18, 2019 19
Cover Story

complications ensued.
Joel’s mother was not born Jewish. She’d
converted, not for love of Joel’s father —
that came later — but for love of Judaism.
Joel was raised as a committed Jew — hence
the day school, USY, Ramah, and the rest
of it — and joined the IDF out of that com-
mitment. But his mother’s conversion was
done by a Conservative rabbi and beit din,
and that meant that the chief rabbinate
didn’t consider Joel to be Jewish.
Eventually Joel was able to press and
win his case, he and Dorit got married —
not in Israel — and went on to have four
children. But the experience made him
less certain that he wanted to live in Israel.
It also didn’t seem right for his career.
Joel had known just about forever that he
wanted to do standup. “Israel is such a
small country,” he said. “I had to get out
and breathe. I wanted to try acting, and
I knew that comedy-wise I needed some-
thing bigger.”
So the couple moved first to Chicago,
and then to New Rochelle. He was success-
ful; not a huge name, but there are many
Jewish organizations eager for sophisti-
cated, post-Borscht-Belt Jewish comedy.
But in 2015, the six Chasnoffs — Joel,
Dorit, the 5-year-old, the 8-year-old,
Be-ponchoed, sombrebro-topped Joel stands with cowboys at a rodeo in
southern Chile.
and the 15-year-old twins — went off on
a round-the-world adventure, 14 coun-
tries in 11 months. They sold their house,
their cars, and most of their belongings,
updated their passports, made sure their
immunizations were in order, and took off.
They knew their itinerary, but they had
no idea where they’d end up.
“We don’t live anywhere right now,”
Joel said in 2015. “We have no home.
Nowhere to come back to. We are still
deciding where we will go next. We might
Rosh Hashana
was in Cusco,
Peru, and Yom
Kippur was in
La Paz, Bolivia.
Passover was
in Bangkok,
Thailand.
settle in Israel.
“It’s all up in the air.”
The family started in South America,
spending four months in Peru, Argentina,
Brazil, Bolivia, and Chile. Next was south-
ern Africa — Namibia, Botswana, and
South Africa. Then Thailand, Australia,
and Japan. A few times, Joel left the family
to perform in the United States, not only
funding the trip but also “giving me a little
sanity by being in a familiar place,” he said.
They had to fly from continent to conti-
nent, but they did most of the intra-coun-
try travel by bus. “We really loved those

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20 Jewish Standard JANUARY 18, 2019


rides,” he said. “That was the best time
for family bonding. That’s when you
really get close.”
What did they do on that unstruc-
tured, exciting but apparently endlessly
sprawling trip?
“Some days definitely were planned,”
Joel said. “We had an excursion to
Machu Pichu, and to the Taj Mahal, and
some other well-known tourist destina-
tions that really are bucket-list places.
But the majority of the time, though, we
just were hanging out, exploring places
on foot.”
They have a normal family. There
were some squabbles, some centering
on exploring places on foot. “I love to
come to know a place by walking it,”
Joel said. “By eating at local restaurants,
immersing myself in daily life, not doing
anything special.
“The kids get more easily bored. They
were bored by going back to the mar-
ket. They could do it once. I could do it
every day.
“It was a challenge,” he contin-
ued. “How do you keep four children
excited?” Particularly given that the
oldest two are 10 years older than the
youngest. They’re often not interested
in the same things.
He has a tip for parents, in the fairly
unlikely event that they choose to do
what he did. He is strongly against
Joel and a daughter board a bus in Chile.
Cover Story
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Jewish Standard JANUARY 18, 2019 21
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Specials are good until January 27th in Kerala, India, and visited JCCs in Cor- added. That makes it a bit easier. Still,
No returns unseasonable items
doba, Argentina, and in Sydney, Austra- “We would not have moved back to
lia. “And of course there always were Israel with two 15-year-olds if we didn’t
Israelis everywhere,” he added. “For feel okay about it.”
better or worse.” What’s life in Israel like now for a Con-
So what happened after the trip? servative (in Israel, that’s Masorti) Jew?
“Israel was not on our itinerary,” Joel “We always were observant,” he said.
said. “But Dorit needed emergency sur- “I always was an observant Conserva-
gery, and we didn’t know where else to tive Jew. It’s kind of funny, or amazing,
go.” And anyway, Israel was far closer or whatever, but the cliché is so true.”
than New Rochelle. “So we went back Which cliché? The one that the syna-
to Israel for a month. We couldn’t do gogue you don’t go to is Orthodox? No,
nothing with the kids, so we put them in the one about how “in Israel, you just

ONWARD school in Ra’anana,” a place where nei-

ther of them ever had lived before. Then,
feel it.” Being Jewish. “You don’t need
it” — a formal connection — “in the same

ISRAEL when Dorit was ready, they resumed

their trip.
And then?
Jumpstart your career “We had to decide where to put down
Intern in your field of study in Israel roots, and that month in Israel showed
us that it was realistic. That it was pos-
June 6 - July 31, 2019 sible. That we would enjoy it. That it was
a viable option for us.
Apply Today! So now the Chasnoffs live in Ra’anana.
It’s different now, Joel said. “I have dif-
www.onwardisrael.org/NNJ ferent issues now than I had when I left.
Then I was 23 and single. I’d had my fill
Rolling Admissions: November 15, 2018 - March 15, 2019 of my life there, I’d had the experiences
Open to students, ages 19-27, from northern New Jersey. I needed, and I was ready to try some-
thing else.”
There is something almost full-circle
Ethan Behling | EthanB@jfnnj.org | 201-820-3955 about returning to Israel with 15-year-
olds. “I have two kids going into the army
Onward Israel program is operated through a partnership between the next summer,” Joel said. “But I also know
Beacon and Shapira Foundations and other leading philanthropists, that if we went back to the United States,
Masa Israel Journey, The Jewish Agency for Israel, and Jewish Federation we’d have to deal with the whole college
of Northern New Jersey and is organized by Young Judaea. chaos.” (He’s talking about the remark-
ably stressful application process.) “I am
not prepared for it, and I actually don’t
approve of it. And I do like the idea of
civic service.
way.” It’s in the air. You breathe it.
“Our kids only have one day a week
off from school — Sunday — so getting up
early seems extra. You don’t even have
to think about keeping kosher being it’s
so easy it’s not an issue. The calendar
goes by Jewish holidays. And you don’t
have to worry about Jewish identity.”
Still, he said, there are trade-offs.
“I miss the shul community,” he said.
“They are always the most dedicated,
committed, learned souls. They are the
people who really moved me at Camp
Ramah, and at the discussions at our
shul in Pelham after services.” (That was
the Pelham Jewish Center.) “We don’t
have that now, and I miss it. I miss the
Camp Ramah Shabbat Judaism that I
could get at a good Conservative shul in
America but I can’t get here.”
For now, most of Joel Chasnoff ’s
stand-up gigs are in the United States,
but he hopes to grow his career in Israel.
He plans to perform in Hebrew there.
“If you’re in Rome, do comedy for the
Romans,” he said.

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22 Jewish Standard JANUARY 18, 2019
 Local
Gabe
FROM PAGE 12
playing sports and video games, writing poetry,
and being “an amazing big brother to his 9-year-
old sister Jordyn.”
Other friends created a Facebook page under the
hashtag #neverGABEup to publicize additional ways to
support the family and the fight against childhood can-
cer. Among other initiatives by local businesses was a
sale of t-shirts and hoodies sporting the #neverGABEup
logo donated by a friend in the printing business, and
special events at BodyBurn Barre in Tenafly and at
Orange Theory Fitness in Closter.
Brooke Bokser of Closter and Emma Darche of
Tenafly, who have been friends with Gabe since pre-
school, launched their #GABEsGotThis bracelet cam-
paign “to increase awareness and support for the Patnoi
family and Gabe,” Brooke’s mother, Venessa, said.
“By wearing a bracelet, Gabe is always in our thoughts
and prayers.”
The girls will be celebrating becoming bat mitzvah
this spring, Brooke at Temple Emanu-El and Emma at
Temple Sinai.
“We advertised the bracelets by making an Instagram
account in November,” Brooke said. “All the money goes
to Gabe, and we’ve raised a nice amount.”
The $3 bracelets were popular among campers and
counselors at Camp Westmont in the Poconos, where
Gabe is a summer camper. The Demarest Parent
Teacher Organization bought bracelets as holiday gifts
for all the teachers in the borough’s elementary and
middle schools. They’re also sold in the Demarest Deli.
“We had to reorder three times,” Vanessa Bokser said.
“The first 600 sold out immediately. We now have 100
left, and we are selling by request only.”
The Jewish Standard was unable to reach Gabe’s par-
ents, Evan and Bari Patnoi, but the Max Cure Founda-
tion reports: “There has been an unbelievable amount
of love and support in such a short period of time by so
many living in the Demarest, Cresskill, Alpine, Tenafly,
and New York area. The Patnoi family truly appreciates
everyone’s love and support.”
New life
FROM PAGE 15
have to talk.’ They said they were thinking of starting
something in Rockland. So I started to do this work for
Footsteps, and it just kind of expanded.” She works
with parents who have left the chasidic world but have
not been allowed to bring their children with them.
“There’s no legal reason for it,” she said. Her work
with Footsteps basically is triage, assessing people’s
needs and sending them for help. In her private prac-
tice, she offers help. “I get to see people shifting and
growing and coming,” she said.
All of her work is about helping people move toward
authenticity and honesty. “In order to have clean rela-
tionships, we need messy conversations,” she said. “We
have to have them with loved ones, and with ourselves.”
This is where the tension between universalism and
specificity comes in.
Ms. Getter has become an interfaith minister through
the One Spirit Interfaith Seminary. But even in that uni-
versal world, she is deeply, permanently Jewish. “Juda-
ism is my center,” she said. “It is where I come from.”
She officiates at marriages, almost always involving Jews.
“It is where my core is,” she said.
“The rhythms are the rhythms my body is used to. OUR
The words are the words my tongue is used to. But I do 61ST
YEAR
believe that ultimately God is bigger than all religions,
and that we are all looking to find connections.”
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Jewish World

Hillel International investigation finds

BIRTHRIGHT sexual harassment claims against some
donors ‘justified’
WINTER/SPRING
2017 - 2018
SUMMER 2019
[TRIP DATES]
www.nnj2israel.com
ISRAEL Marcy Oster

Hillel International has issued a con-

fidential statement to its professional
TRIPURLGOESHERE.COM
staff and board of directors about
an internal investigation into sexual
Free 10 day trip to Israel harassment allegations against some

Scott Eells/Bloomberg/Getty Images

donors.

GO DISCOVER
Northern New Jersey Community Trip The statement said that the six-month
investigation confirmed the allegations,
for College Students the New York Jewish Week reported in
an article posted on its website on Sun-
Sign up now for your free Birthright Israel gift with Israel Outdoors and day. The Jewish Week said it obtained a
CAMPUS NAME. You’ll get 10 amazing days of new discoveries, friendships, copy of the statement, which was dis-

SIGN UP and adventure. tributed to Hillel staff on Friday.

“In each case, it was found that the
complaints were justified, and that the
with Israel Outdoors
FOR MORE
individuals had been subjected to inap-
propriate comments and/or sugges- Michael Steinhardt in 2012.
www.nnj2israel.com
Contact Name tions by one or more of our donors,”
email@email.com the statement said. “In one case, inves- Steinhardt was a subject of the inves-
Courtesy of Birthright Israel and tigators found that Hillel’s response was tigation stemming from allegations
555.555.5555
Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey not timely, thereby causing additional about inappropriate sexual remarks
tripurlgoeshere.com
harm. It pains us greatly that anyone he made to two female employees. Its
in the Hillel movement could be sub- latest article includes an apology from
May 19-30, 2019
SIGN UP TODAY jected to any form of harassment. We Steinhardt.
or Sign up for summer 2019
have apologized to these respected The newspaper report said that
today
individuals.” Hillel’s outside investigators “have
May 27-June 6, 2019 www.nnj2israel.com
The statement does not name any recommended the adoption of com-
specific individuals. However, in Sep- prehensive changes in Hillel’s poli-
Ethanb@jfnnj.org | 201.820.3955 Choose tember, the Jewish Week reported cies, practices and procedures in
“Northern New Jersey that billionaire philanthropist Michael dealing with claims by employees of
This trip is a gift from Birthright Israel Community Trip” harassment or discrimination.”
Hillel’s statement was issued as a pri-
vate in-house communication to its pro-
fessional staff members in the United
States and around the world, and to
its board of directors, whose members
must sign a code of ethics, according to
the Jewish Week. Hillel does not intend
to release the report.
Steinhardt has donated millions of
dollars to Hillel and is a co-founder of
Birthright Israel, the free 10-day trips to
Israel for young Jewish adults. He also
has funded educational projects of The
Jewish Week, and 70 Faces Media, JTA’s
parent organization, receives support
from the Steinhardt Foundation for
Jewish Life.
Steinhardt provided a statement to
the Jewish Week about the findings.
“If I had been told immediately about
concerns regarding anything I said
at the time, I would have apologized
immediately,” the statement said. “I
only recently learned about this inves-
tigation when Hillel called me about
comments I made several years ago. I
am sorry and deeply regret causing any
embarrassment, discomfort or pain,
which was never my intention.”
The newspaper cited sources close
to the investigation as saying that alle-
gations were made against a very small
number of Hillel’s thousands of donors.
 JTA Wire Service

24 Jewish Standard JANUARY 18, 2019

 Jewish World

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Then Senator Joseph Lieberman and the late
Senator John McCain stand together at the
Munich Security Council in 2010.

Joe Lieberman now

works for the Chinese
telecommunications
giant he once slammed
RON KAMPEAS

WASHINGTON — In 2010, Sen. Joe Lieberman fret-

ted that the Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE
might be spying on Americans.
Nearly a decade later, Lieberman, now a lobby-
ist, is working for ZTE, hoping to alleviate the kind
of concerns he raised as a senator.
The Daily Beast reported that Lieberman, then a
Connecticut Independent, joined three Republican
lawmakers to ask the Obama administration to pro-
vide information on whether Americans were sus-
ceptible to espionage given the aggressive attempts
by ZTE and Huawei, another Chinese company, to
enter the telecommunications market. People,
Performance, Relationships
The revelation comes two weeks after OpenSe-
crets, a tracker of good government, reported that
Lieberman registered as a lobbyist for ZTE.
“We are very concerned that these companies
are being financed by the Chinese government and
L

are potentially subject to significant influence by

NA
be

the Chinese military which may create an oppor- Community oriented…

tunity for manipulation of switches, routers, or
d

personally involved…
IO
ul

software embedded in American telecommunica-

committed to progress…
o

tions networks so that communications can be dis-

sh

well-rounded…
PT

rupted, intercepted, tampered with, or purposely

determined to succeed…
nk

misrouted,” the 2010 letter said.

CE

A spokeswoman for Lieberman’s law firm, extremely professional…

ba

Kasowitz Benson Torres, told OpenSecrets that thoroughly trained…

a

Lieberman was not lobbying per se for ZTE, but

EX

accessible…
at

was instead “conducting a national security assess-

putting banking expertise
h

ment investigation, where he will listen to congres-

W

sional, executive branch, and customer national to work for you…

security concerns, but will not be attempting to KEARNY BANK PEOPLE
influence them nor advocate on ZTE’s behalf.”
“His mission is to listen, assess and then make
recommendations to ZTE on how to address U.S.
national security concerns,” the spokeswoman,
Clarine Nardi Riddle, told OpenSecrets.
Lieberman became the first Jewish nominee on
a major party presidential ticket when Al Gore, the
Democratic nominee, named him as his running
mate in 2000.
 JTA WIRE SERVICE
1-800-273-3406 • kearnybank.com

JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 25

Jewish World

Aly Raisman says she represents Sen. Robert Menendez decries

Americans and Jews when she performs
Molly Tolsky
HOLLYWOOD, Fla.— A letter from a
Holocaust survivor helped Aly Raisman
realize that when she performed, she
was representing her country — but not
only her country.
“I had no idea how much of an impact
it would have on the Jewish community,”
Raisman said, describing her 2012 gold
medal-winning routine, which included
a component set to the music of the Jew-
ish folk song “Hava Nagila.”
“I didn’t realize at the time I was rep-
resenting not only the United States but
the Jewish community,” Raisman told
the Lion of Judah conference, held at a
Florida resort this year. “I received a let-
ter from a Holocaust survivor saying she
never imagined in her life seeing a young
girl performing to ‘Hava Nagila’ in front
of the world and see her win for it.”
The Jewish Federations of North
America organizes the Lion of Judah
conference for Jewish woman leaders.
Raisman has become a face of the
#MeToo movement in the wake of her
testimony against Larry Nassar, the
former U.S. Olympics gymnastics team
physician effectively sentenced to life in
prison for abusing at least 250 women
and one man in various jobs.
In an interview at the conference,
Raisman told Bari Weiss, a New York
Times editor, that the attention has
become overwhelming, including anti-
Semitic attacks on social media.
“A lot of people don’t realize the pres-
sure I feel all the time, and I’ve learned
to take a step back and learn that I can’t
fix everything,” she said. “I had never
experienced anti-Semitism until the past
year, which is really devastating.”
JTA Wire Service
Republicans for using Israel as a wedge
Ron Kampeas
WASHINGTON — Senator Robert Menen-
dez, New Jersey’s senior senator and
one of the most reliable pro-Israel voices
among Democrats, dropped his support
for an Israel-related bill because he said
the Republican leadership is trying to use
it as a wedge issue.
“I don’t like the Majority Leader using
the U.S.-Israel relationship as a political
pawn,” Menendez, the top Democrat on
the Foreign Relations Committee, told Al-
Monitor on Monday, after the third bid
in a week by Republicans to advance the
bill. He had voted to advance the bill twice
before.
Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the
majority leader, has tried to advance
a Middle East mini-omnibus bill that
includes codification of the $38 billion for-
mer President Barack Obama pledged to
Israel over the next 10 years and legislation
that would protect states that pass legisla-
tion banning state business with Israel
boycotters from lawsuits.
McConnell needs 60 votes to advance
the bill, but Democrats have stood in the
way, saying that McConnell first should
move on their proposals to reopen the
government. President Donald Trump has
said he will not consider spending legisla-
tion that would reopen the government
unless it includes $5.7 billion to build a
wall with Mexico. The government shut-
down is in its fourth week.
Most Democrats also oppose the anti-
boycott component of the bill because
they say it infringes on speech freedoms,
but four pro-Israel Democrats who back
the anti-boycott legislation had backed
advancing the measure — until Tuesday.
when Menendez changed his vote. to
“At the end of the day this isn’t about
getting this done; this is about scoring
political points,” Menendez said.
The other three Democrats are Joe Man-
chin of West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema of
Arizona, and Doug Jones of Alabama.
JTA Wire Service

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Do you need
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your life?

Jewish Standard JANUARY 18, 2019 27

Change Your Life

The scientist who can inject ideas into your dreams

Meet Israeli neuroscientist Moran brain encodes the incoming information, and how dreams your sleep quality or your test scores. The first such
Cerf, whose astounding dream and memories can be altered by “speaking to your brain products may be on the market in the next two years,
behind your back.” he estimates.
insights can help us change thinking, This is not science fiction. Thinking more futuristically, Cerf ’s research has
improve performance, and be The commercial applications of Cerf’s dream insights are Hollywood dreaming up new kinds of entertainment.
entertained during sleep already in development for anything from changing nega- “When you watch a VR movie wearing goggles,
tive behaviors to enabling ultimate VR experiences. in the back of your mind you know it is not true. If
ISRAEL21C STAFF “The coolest thing we can do is inject ideas into your you see a dinosaur you can do something about it. In

B
ack in 2010, a chef in New York had a recurring
dream about a fantastic new recipe. But he never
remembered all the details when he woke up. He
contacted Israeli neuroscientist Moran Cerf and
asked if it was possible to record his food dream.
At the time, Cerf wasn’t able to help. Today he probably
could retrieve that dreamy recipe.
“For the first time, we can actually look inside your
dreams and decode the content,” says the associate profes-
sor of business and neuroscience at Northwestern Univer-
sity’s Kellogg School of Management in Chicago.
Cerf studies how thoughts get into the brain, how the
dreams, using sleep as a commodity. We can look at what’s
going on in your brain, interact with your mind at certain
stages of sleep, and change things in your brain that will
make this one-third of your life something we can use,”
says Cerf.
“Of course, it can be used for good or bad. For good, [this
capability] can change behaviors, make you consider differ-
ent thoughts, be more creative. The bad is you can wake up
wanting a Pepsi.”
Hollywood movies in your dreams
Most of the companies working with Cerf aim to create
useful consumer goods that would, for example, improve
dreams, dinosaurs feel as real as they get,” says Cerf.
“Hollywood thinks about creating movies for you in
your dreams so you can go to sleep and have an ulti-
mate VR dream by Spielberg.”
Dating websites are intrigued by the possibility of
offering couples a way to keep dreaming about a good
date after they have both gone home and fallen asleep.
“There is a lot of business interest,” says Cerf.
“Everyone wants to be the first to own the world
of dreams.”
How Cerf knows
what you’re dreaming
Cerf, 41, is one of a handful of scientists who have
picked up the ball on dream research where Sigmund

W elcometotheFamily!
Freud and Carl Jung left it in the early 1900s.
He’s carrying that ball far beyond any boundaries
those psychologists could have imagined.
“Everyone is fascinated with dreams. We think that
they mean a lot. The Bible is full of dreams; cavemen
did drawings of dreams. But we have had very few
advances over the dream studies done by Freud and
Jung,” Cerf says.

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 Change Your Life

“They did a good job mapping dreams
and asking questions about dreams and
trying to tie dreams to behaviors. But
Freud didn’t know that the dream narra-
tive you give when you wake up is colored
by the language of being awake, and you
might be totally wrong about what your
dream was. You put interpretations on it.”
Over the past decade, neuroscientists
gained the ability to look at your brain
while you’re dreaming, extract content,
and see how the dream differs from the
story you tell about it.
Cerf’s lab is one of only a handful in the
world that study human brains from the
inside. His subjects are patients undergo-
ing brain surgery for medical reasons who
agree to have electrodes implanted during
Moran Cerf’s 4 surprising facts about dreams
1. The story we tell about the dreams
we remember may be totally made up
by our brain when we wake up and not
at all true.
2. People in the 1930s described their
dreams in black and white. Only when
movies started having colors did
people start thinking that their dreams
(which they thought of as “movies in
their mind”) were in color.
the surgery.
Via these electrodes, scientists like Cerf
can eavesdrop on individual cells during
any passive or active activity including
thinking, talking, and sleeping.
“If you wake up and forget your dream,
we can say, ‘This is what you dreamed last
night; what does it mean to you?’ We can
actually access this thing. We’re not stuck
anymore,” says Cerf, who was on the 2016
Poets&Quants list of America’s best 40
business professors under 40.
Storyteller, serial inventor
Dreams are only one of the many neurosci-
ence areas Cerf is illuminating.
Cerf studies the brain science of free
will, decision-making, memory storage,
3. We can now not only loosely parse
the content of your dreams but also
“shape” — to an extent — the content
of your dreams.
4. We can change your behavior (make
you like things, not like things, remove
traumatic memories, etc.) while you
sleep.
and attention engagement.
Raised in Tel Aviv, he
has a bachelor’s degree in
physics and a master’s in
philosophy from Tel Aviv
University, and a doctor-
ate in neuroscience from
the California Institute of
Technology (Caltech).
A storytelling champion
and a serial inventor, he
has served as a consul- Neuroscientist Moran
tant for TV shows includ- Cerf. 
ing “Mr. Robot,” “Falling
Water,” and “Limitless.” He teaches an
annual American Film Institute screen-
writing class on science in films.
Cerf has advised companies including
Red Bull, Hershey and Tinder. He travels
the world as a visiting professor and lec-
tures in front of TED, TEDx, PopTech,
DLD, and Talks at Google audiences. He’s
written numerous articles and is a fre-
quent radio and TV interviewee.
As a kid in Tel Aviv, Cerf hacked com-
puter games. In his 20s, he hacked web-
sites for banks to find holes in their
cybersecurity. After earning a doctorate
in neuroscience from the California Insti-
tute of Technology, he began hacking the
human brain.
“I can trace everything
I do now to computer
games like Donkey Kong
that I hacked in the 1980s,”
Cerf says.
ISRAEL21c had a mil-
lion questions for Cerf but
we managed to narrow
them down.
I21c: How can
yo u r re s e a rc h b e n e -
fit education?
PHOTO BY RUBIN MC: I work with a large
company, SS&C, which
builds investment management software.
SS&C has an online Learning Institute to
teach complex stuff to investment manage-
ment professionals. They wanted to know
how to measure if people in a course are
actually learning. So they started a project
with us, financed by big American banks,
to understand how the brain works during
learning and to help kids — as well as trad-
ers — learn how to learn.
As part of our experiment, we had kids
in a class wearing a device on their head
that sends feedback to the teacher on a
screen about their attention. This way she
knows if some of them didn’t get what she
just said and she has to explain it again; or
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JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 29

Change Your Life

Dreams
FROM PAGE 29
if they all got it and she can move on.
We want to find a better interface so teachers in the
future could get immediate feedback on how the informa-
tion landed. We might see better ways to match teachers
and students, forming classrooms by brain alignment rather
than by age or ability.
I21c: How can your research improve decision-making?
MC: With our personality analysis, we can tell you if
your brain makes better choices in the morning/evening,
when you’re alone/with people, hungry/full, for example.
And, generally, we can characterize optimal states for cer-
tain decisions.
We can do that with high fidelity, but it’s super tedious,
so it’s done only in lab settings for now. Theoretically, you’d
have to wear an EEG cap for five days non-stop, from board-
room to bedroom, and give us a diary of all your activities
and choices you made, and which ones you are happy and
unhappy with. We look at the ones you’re happy with and
look at your brain state and pinpoint the conditions when
you make decisions you end up liking. Once the devices
become cheaper and less intrusive, this analysis could
become popular.
We’ve also looked at the brain states of Silicon Valley
investors when making investment choices based on a one-
minute pitch. Our findings can help these investors make
big decisions better.
I have spent lots of time with [renowned Israeli behavioral
economist] Dan Ariely. He and a few others have mapped
the biases that lead people to make mistakes, and suggested
these mistakes are predictable and consistent. Neurosci-
ence says if something is predictable there’s a root to that
in your brain. By mapping your brain regions that govern
those biases perhaps we can help you overcome your flaws
so you can make better decisions.
I21c: Did your upbringing impact your career trajectory?
MC: My mom insisted I go to an art school where I could
study music and ballet. That meant I had to catch
up afterward on my sciences education. But at the
same time, from the age of seven, when I made my
first appearance on a TV show, my unusual education
informed my ability to understand how to communi-
cate complex science ideas on a big stage. Most scien-
tists have a hard time with that.
As a kid of the 1980s, I grew up with computers and
learned English through Quest computer games. If
I couldn’t figure out puzzle solutions I would mail a
letter to the company in Silicon Valley and wait three
weeks for a response.
I got into dialogue groups with people talking
about hacking computers. They used screen names
but I later found out that many of them were known
hackers, including Julian Assange, who would found
WikiLeaks. Being engaged with the hacking commu-
nity shaped my ability to hack computers, which got
me into a military intelligence unit and into my first
career as a hacker. That informs much of my work as
a neuroscientist. I look at problems like a hacker does.
I21c: What did your army experience teach you?
MC: All of a sudden I had more people like me to
interact with, some of them smarter than me. So I
guess I learned about failure. And they taught me that
hacking could be a legitimate thing.
To this day I thank the army for teaching me how
to meet deadlines under pressure and to sleep under
any conditions. In the US, my students often think it’s
impossible to meet a tight deadline. In the army you
don’t have a choice — maybe you won’t sleep for four
days, but the task will get done.
I21c: What would you change in your own brain if
you could?
MC: I speak way too fast, and it’s hard for my stu-
dents. I would love to adjust my meter. On a more
noble level, I would love to be able to increase empa-
thy and understand other people better. I would like
to pick specific people to align my brain with, parents
and friends, to better understand them.
 ISRAEL21C.ORG

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JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 31
Change Your Life

Make space for blessings more time with their children, older family members,
and friends? What else do they want to get rid of, stop
doing, or stop spending money on so they can bring

J
GAYLE M. GRUENBERG, CPO-CD
anuary is National Get Organized Month. Why?
Because one of the most common New Year’s resolu-
tions is to once and for all get organized. Come closer.
Closer. I’m going to let you in on a little secret. There
is no once and for all when it comes to getting organized.
People change over time. Life circumstances change over
time. Our organizing systems have to evolve with us. We are
never stagnant, nor should our organizing systems be.
Getting organized is all about making space for blessings.
It means de-cluttering and systematizing our lives to free
up space in our minds, hearts, calendars, and wallets to
bring in what is most important to us. It means deciding to
eschew what no longer fits our current lifestyle in favor of
that which serves us and our higher good. While that sounds
Dedicated to the Healthy Enrichment of All Seniors
rather lofty, in practical terms it means taking stock of what
is, figuring out what we really want, and letting the rest go. It
doesn’t have to be a radical life overhaul; it could be as sim-
ple as starting with one small thing, like a drawer or shelf.
The feeling we get after going through an area, evaluating it,
deciding on it, and putting it in order is the same as pulling
back the curtains, opening a window, and letting fresh air
into a stale room. The same holds true for our souls. Try it
and tell me if you don’t feel it.
Throughout my 15+ years as a professional organizer, my
clients have told me they want to get organized in order to
do something else, something meaningful to them. What is
that something else? There is a “so they can” aspect under-
lying their desire. Do they really want to create file systems
for the sake of keeping paper? Or do they want to spend
less time on boring and mundane tasks so they can spend
NG MOM
INI
ENT
DEF
into their lives those things that support their core
values?
What would happen if we organize according to our
core values? We would create systems that come natu-
rally to us and are therefore easy to maintain. When
we live our lives according to our core values, deci-
sions are easy. Every decision we make on what to
do, what to acquire or purge, and how we allocate our
money would be based on whether or not it fits our
core values. We set rules for ourselves and evaluate
every decision based on whether or not it fits within
those guidelines. How very freeing!
So how does organizing according to your core val-
ues work?
First, you have to make sure your needs are met.
A well-known model of needs is Maslow’s Hierarchy.
Once we satisfy our body’s basic needs, we can move
on to secure our needs for safety, love and belonging,
esteem, and self-actualization.
Next, you have to figure out what your core values
are. This requires some real thought and mindfulness.
Have you ever stopped to think about your core val-
ues? What are the traits in yourself and others that
you hold most dear? Here are just a few examples of
possible core values:
Ambition. Autonomy. Charity. Cleanliness. Com-
passion. Courage. Courtesy. Diligence. Duty. Equality.
Focus. Follow-through. Honesty. Integrity. Kindness.
Knowledge. Loyalty. Optimism. Perseverance. Reli-
ability. Spirituality. Wisdom.
Then it’s time to address your organizing systems.
Start with one small area, like a drawer.
1. Gather
a. Take everything out of the drawer and put it on a

horizontal surface.
F N b. Clean the drawer.
OU
NDATIO
c. Examine the contents of the drawer.
The Defining Moment Foundation d. Throw away any obvious garbage.
For over 20 years our seminars have empowered seniors to live 2. Sort
a more productive and vibrant life! a. Put everything into logical categories. Put like
with like.
b. Decide what needs to be kept in the drawer
Our Mission is to help them: Contact us to schedule a seminar at your according to its location and use. If things belong else-
where, set them aside for now.
1. Stay in Gratitude. senior center, club, house of worship,
c. This is where core values come into play. What
independent or assisted living facilility.
2. Be Curious. are you telling yourself about your “stuff ?” Whose
voice do you hear in your head? Does every item you
3. Live in the Present. have meet a need or serve a value?
4. Give Back - Volunteer - Share their Wisdom and Contributions. d. Pare down to only what meets a need or serves a
value. Are there too many of a certain category? How
5. Stay Connected - Build Intergenerational Friendships. many do you have to keep? For example, are there ten
scissors in the kitchen “junk” drawer? You could keep
6. Forgive Others and Self Nurture. two and relocate or donate the rest.
7. Connect with Nature and the Outdoors - Adopt a Pet. 3. Contain
a. Put back what belongs in the drawer.
8. Stay Active - Keep Moving. b. Use containers that fit the drawer, and keep
9. Learn to Ask for Help. things in their categories. Now you can easily find
what you need when you need it and return things to
10. Enjoy Hobbies and to Create a Bucket List. their rightful places when you’re done.
c. Label what goes where, with pictures or words,
11. Welcome Technology. so others using the drawer can follow the system.
12. Project a Positive Future and Become a Visionary! d. “A place for everything and everything in its
place.”
Dr. Sharon R. Bernstein Ph.D. 4. Maintain
The Defining Moment Foundation a. Modify the system as you use it. If it’s too compli-
126 Chestnut Street • Englewood, NJ 07631 cated, simplify it.
b. Regularly reevaluate the system according to
SharonRBernstein@definingmomentfoundation.org your needs and values. I call this a “periodic tweak.”
Tel. (201) 871-9567 • www.definingmomentfoundation.org What has changed in your life? Do your systems still

32 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019

 THINKING FLORIDA?
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enjoy, your relationships may become more fulfilling.
What is the basis for those core values? Where did
they come from? Many people follow a certain system
of knowledge and beliefs. Some of those systems are
based on teachings in a written volume. While there
are several tomes that fit the bill, I can speak about
only one — the Torah.
When we know and have a relationship with God, SPECIAL NEW YE AR’S DISCOUNT!
we don’t need quite so many material objects. We
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201-389-0839
Making space for blessings requires a bit of extra
mindfulness. We have to stop, think, and then act.
Take a moment to pause, ask yourself what you’re
doing right now, and notice if it’s something that can
be imbued with more meaning. In Judaism, we have
blessings for everything. For instance, before biting
into an apple, say a blessing over it. The blessing over
an apple thanks God for the fruit of the tree. When we
think about why we do this, we realize that we aren’t
just eating an apple. We are:
1. Stopping our swirling thoughts and focusing them
on the action we are about to take
2. Being grateful that food is available
3. Acknowledging that the food comes from a tree,
a natural source, which in Judaism we believe was cre-
ated by God
4. Gaining awareness that what we are about to eat
is good for us
5. Nourishing our bodies so we can continue to do
things that serve God and make the world a better
place
The same process applies to organizing. When we are Valley Health LifeStyles is a world-class fitness program
faced with a decision of whether or not to bring some-
thing new into our lives or if we should let go of some- designed to help you maintain the healthy lifestyle that’s right for you.
thing we already own or do, we need to stop, think, and Start the new year right – join today!
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and connect their lives to their core values through ValleyHealthLifeStyles.com
being organized. (201) 364-6833, Gayle@LGOrganized.
com, www.LGOrganized.com

JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 33

 Change Your Life

How to chose to live a life of vibrancy

DR. SHARON R. BERNSTEIN a daily basis.
The Defining Moment Foundation In the fall of 1950 a prominent advertising agency on invested wisely and cleverly, always concerned with

T
here exists right now an overarching narrative on
aging.
How did we each age so quickly?
And what path do we choose at this juncture
in time to support us in the collective desire to live a more
vibrant life as we age.
Jo Ann Jenkins, the CEO of AARP, wrote a book entitled
“Disrupt Aging: Living Your Best Life at Every Age.”
Seminars across the country are springing up and inter-
ested participants are lining up to attend any presentation
on aging, its challenges, and its joys.
All of this heightened frenzy is in response to the immedi-
acy of a population that has grown by such astonishing num-
bers that our services and agencies are being challenged on
Madison Ave. in Manhattan coined the phrase “The Golden
Years” for a campaign they were commissioned to com-
plete for a Florida land developer. At the final meeting it
was decided that the name was so perfect in creating excite-
ment for a generation of future baby boomers , they would
retain title to the name and they would seek to find another
tagline for their client. They believed they had successfully
predicted a market trend.
The golden years and it’s inherent implications became the
slogan of my generation and for so many future generations.
The slogan as so many sociologists point out was woefully
inadequate in predicting how our lives really would turn out.
In the past three decades so many seniors were fortunate
enough to carefully plan for retirement and they planned
carefully for the financial security afforded to people who
their retirements.
In the last two decades, however, it was becoming
apparent that something else was emerging.
Although we planned for our finances, we were
bereft of any feelings or direction about how to age
and how to find joy at any age and how to live a life of
vibrancy.
At The Defining Moment Foundation, we have for-
mulated 12 principles for living a life of vibrancy and
joy as we age.
This new movement encompasses living a life of
purpose and includes the practice of conscious elder-
ing as a loving approach to aging.
For more information on The Defining Moment
Foundation, visit definingmomentfoundation.org.

Will new tax laws send

residents from Garden
State to Sunshine State ?
Now that the holiday season has passed, many New
Jersey residents will head south to Florida for some
fun in the sun. The big question is: Will they decide
to purchase a property or, if they already own one,
decide to make Florida their primary residence?
“South Florida may be an enormous beneficiary of
the new tax laws. Many high income earners could
save a fortune declaring residency in Florida,” says Ed
Lepselter of Remax Advantage Plus in Boca Raton.
“The new tax laws limited the deductibility of state
and local taxes, a factor that makes Florida oh-so-
desirable to those in high tax states such as New Jer-
sey,” Lepselter says.
“There are still great buys to be had in the local real
estate market,” he added. “Interest rates have crept
up a bit and if an area has an oversupply of inventory,
a buyer may be able to get a good buy. If you are also
willing to do renovations that will also increase your
buying power.”
The Boca Delray area has many new luxury devel-
opments under construction. The resale market going
inland from the beach area presents many opportuni-
ties in the marketplace.
If you are thinking of relocating, feel free to
call Ed Lepselter at (561) 302-9374 or visit www.

Where engaged living is edandellyhometeam.com to discuss your options.

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JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 35

Change Your Life
A life-changing approach to heartburn relief
I
f you struggle with chronic heart-
burn or acid reflux, a new, break-
through minimally invasive proce-
dure may improve the quality of
your life and possibly free you from long-
term medication use.
Physicians with the Valley Center for
Heartburn, Reflux, and GERD are offer-
ing a new procedure called Transoral Inci-
sionless Fundoplication (TIF) that is per-
formed without abdominal incisions. This
outpatient procedure offers those who suf-
fer from heartburn and gastroesophageal
tt
tt
tt
tt
tt
tt
36 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019
reflux (GERD) a quicker recovery and
improved outcomes than traditional anti-
reflux surgery.
The TIF procedure represents the next
step in the field of minimally invasive sur-
gery for the treatment of GERD. Benefits
include:
• No scars, due to incisionless approach
• Faster recovery, since there is no inter-
nal cutting of the natural anatomy
• Can be revised if required
The TIF procedure is performed through
the mouth without incisions. A surgeon
utilizes the EsophyX device to reconstruct
the valve between the esophagus and the
stomach and restore the body’s natural
protection against reflux.
“Chronic heartburn is more than just
uncomfortable,” said Dr. Robert Korst,
director of thoracic surgery. “The same acid
reflux that sparks heartburn symptoms can
also damage the delicate lining of the esoph-
agus, which can set the stage for a particu-
larly lethal form of esophageal cancer.”
“The TIF procedure bridges the treat-
ment gap between medication and more
Ride program for seniors
needed for the growing number
of older boomers
TRISH MANZO
A
large number of people over
the age of 65 years old are
giving up their own vehicles
when they move into assisted
living communities and looking for
transportation.
Zoom Rides For Seniors has launched
as a ride-hailing service just for seniors
and the aides that assist them, with a
motto of “No Seniors Left Behind!” The
baby boomers are a niche market and a
huge underserved population. Zoom is
taking off quickly with seniors finding it
very easy to call in and book their ride
over the phone.
“We finally have a transportation ser-
vice help make the transition into the
assisted living communities more desir-
able to seniors. Giving them the freedom
to continue being active without the
hassles of having to take the van service
these communities offer,” says Edward
Weiner, director of sales and marketing
for Always Best Care in Hillsdale.
Shopping at my local grocery store
I came across a senior who was asking
people for a ride. As I was exiting the
store she asked me for a ride and said
she would pay me. I immediately felt
an obligation to assist her in her time of
need. While driving her home she men-
tioned to me how hard it was for her to
get a taxi since the cab service no longer
had its hub in town. I told her I was not
aware of this and a light bulb went off in
What’s in your attic?
A Rembrandt was recently found
amongst inherited collectibles owned
by Teaneck brothers. Do you have old
paintings, watches, coins, judaica, jew-
lery, vintage liquor, war paraphernalia,
and other items of interest?
If you wonder about their value,
invasive surgery,” said Dr. Melissa Bagloo,
medical director of the Center for Bariat-
ric Surgery and Weight-Loss Management.
“Because the procedure is performed
entirely through the patient’s mouth, there
are no abdominal incisions and no scars
from the procedure.”
In addition to Drs. Korst and Bagloo, the
Center’s team of physicians includes Dr.
Omar Bellorin-Marin, and Dr. Mark Shap-
iro. To make an appointment with a mem-
ber of the team, please call 1-800-VALLEY
1 (1-800-825-5391).
my head.
My solution was to start a ride service
dedicated to seniors and the aides that
care for them. Seniors have a peace of
mind knowing they can get to their doc-
tor appointments without bothering the
grown kids who have jobs and families
and can’t make the time to schedule a
ride for their parent.
Our drivers are caregivers, who want
to earn a little extra money while kids
are in school or in between jobs. “I
rather work for Zoom than other ride-
share companies because I know I am
helping a senior from the community,”
says Lori from Fair Lawn.
Zoom’s drivers are equipped with
cameras in their cars to provide that
extra protection that other services do
not have. Seniors love the door to door
service, aides love that it’s cheaper than
Uber, and health agencies love that
we can pick up an aide from a senior’s
house, take the aide stationed there,
and drive her to another senior home all
with one booking.
An app is being developed but it seems
that seniors like to call in instead so I am
in no rush to roll it out. Zoom is cur-
rently serving all of Bergen County and
some parts of Passaic and Essex counties
and will expand to other counties in the
near future.
Book an affordable ride by call-
ing the office at (201) 694-0405 or go
online to www.zoomrides.org, for more
information.
Bogota Antiques & Estate Buyers makes
house calls, gives free estimates, and
pays cash on the spot for single items or
entire estates. Call Konrad at (917) 887-
6465 to schedule an appointment. He
will travel anywhere within the tri-state
area.
 Change Your Life

Time for a change

How hiring a professional caregiver can improve everyone’s health

C
hange can be difficult and often
only occurs when the status-
quo becomes untenable. If you
are one of the more than 43
million Americans who provide care to a
loved one, 2019 may be the year to make a
change that will improve your health and
the health of the person you are caring for.
If you are feeling overwhelmed and the
current situation is taking a toll, it may be
time to make a change.
It is well documented that family care-
givers are at an increased risk for psycho-
logical and physical illness. The stress of
caregiving can lead to depression and
other mental health issues, and increases
the risk of a compromised immune sys-
tem. The physical demands of caregiv-
ing, coupled with caregivers’ tendency
to neglect their own needs, often lead to
deteriorating health. One way to protect
your health is to share the caregiving. This
can often be accomplished by hiring a cer-
tified home health aide through an agency.
While the aide’s primary purpose is to
provide care to the frail and elderly, fam-
ily caregivers can also reap the benefits of
having an aide in place.
Hiring an aide reduces both the physi-
cal and emotional tolls of caregiving. Pro-
fessional aides are trained in providing
personal care. You will no longer have to
worry about the physical demands asso-
ciated with moving, dressing and bathing
your loved one. The presence of an aide
also gives the family caregiver the gift of
time. With an aide in place, family care-
givers have opportunities for respite and
have breaks to do things on their own.
This can include exercising, going to the
doctor, attending a meeting for work, or
just enjoying down time. The flexibility to
take care of your own needs along with the
peace of mind of having proper coverage
can reduce your stress level.
Having time to care for oneself improves
mental and physical health of both the
elderly client and the family caregiver. In
addition, families often report improved
relationships with their loved ones when
a professional aide is added to the caregiv-
ing team. Rather than being pre-occupied
with a never-ending to-do list, children
can again visit with their parents, rather
than worrying if lunch has been made or
the laundry has been done. Families can
focus on emotional relationships rather
than care needs. Parent-child boundaries
can also be maintained or restored when
children are not responsible for their par-
ent’s personal care.
It can be challenging for family care-
givers and their care recipients to accept
help, especially in a culture that values
independence and the “can do” spirit.
Suggesting that an aide be hired can be
further complicated by family expecta-
tions and feelings of guilt. Many family
caregivers feel it is their responsibility to
tend to your loved ones’ needs. In real-
ity, however, hiring an aide is likely to
improve your health and the health of
your loved one. The addition of an aide
insures that your needs, as well as the
needs of your family member, are taken
care of. Reducing your stress and improv-
ing your health will improve your abil-
ity to be an effective caregiver and will
increase the chances that you will be able
to provide care this year and beyond.
Change can be difficult and cause feelings
of uneasiness. Ultimately, however, this is
a change that is beneficial to all.
Aveanna Concierge Services, located
in Hackensack, is a CHAP accredited
Health Service Firm and is a member
of the Dementia Care Alliance. Aveanna
Concierge Services, formerly Freedom
Home Healthcare, was founded in 2003
by a group of dedicated and compassion-
ate experts in geriatrics. Aveanna Con-
cierge Services provides care in private
homes, hospitals, and facilities. www.
aveannaconcierge.com/(201) 883-1200.

MIRIAM APARTMENTS at 2014 2015 2016

DAUGHTERS OF MIRIAM CENTER READERS’

CHOICE
READERS’
CHOICE
READERS’
CHOICE

THE GALLEN INSTITUTE

Apartment Features:
• 24 Hour Security
• Beauty/Barber Shop
• Healthcare Counseling
• Housekeeping
• Kosher Dinner Meal
• Rabbi & Synagogue on-site
• Recreational Activities
In a beautiful, suburban setting, experience privacy in your one bedroom apartment with supportive services • Shabbot Elevators
while remaining independent with dignity. Apartments are available to seniors age 62 and over and/or • Social Services
persons with mobility impairments. The Miriam Apartments, located on the 13-acre campus of Daughters of • Transportation Assistance
Miriam Center/The Gallen Institute, are just over five miles from Routes 4 and 17 and directly off the Garden
State Parkway. In addition, we are easily accessible from the NJ Turnpike, Routes 80, 46 and 3 and less than For a tour and/
15 miles from New York City. Independent living at the apartments is just one facet of the continuum of care or application call
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offered at Daughters of Miriam Center. Whatever your needs might be — independent living, rehabilitation, (973) 253-5311
or skilled nursing care — the Center offers it all, in a Jewish environment, in one location. All apartments are unfurnished.
e
e 135 Hazel Street, Clifton, NJ 07011 · (973) 253-5311 · www.daughtersofmiriamcenter.org
Daughters of Miriam Center/The Gallen Institute is a beneficiary agency of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey.

JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 37


 a pt
of  Fily...
(Resident, Lillian Grunfeld with her daughter,
Dir. of Community Relations, Debbie Corwin)
…WHERE OUR RESIDENTS MAINTAIN THE LEVEL OF INDEPENDENCE
THEY DESIRE WHILE RECEIVING THE CARE THEY NEED.
• FAMILY OWNED COMMUNITY
• SPACIOUS, FULLY FURNISHED APARTMENTS
• DAILY LIFESTYLE ACTIVITIES TO ENRICH MIND, BODY & SPIRIT
• RN DIRECTOR OF WELLNESS PROGRAM
• RESPITE PROGRAM AVAILABLE
• LICENSED BY NYSDOH
• CONVENIENTLY LOCATED ON THE ROCKLAND/BERGEN BORDER
Change Your Life
Englewood Health
appoints two new executives
Englewood Health has appointed two new
executives to its leadership ranks, expand-
ing the team dedicated to patient-centered
care, quality, and safety. Vicki Hoffman
has joined Englewood Health as vice pres-
ident of operations and Jamie Ketas has
been appointed vice president of quality.
As vice president of operations, Hoff-
man will have responsibility for many of
Englewood Health’s ancillary and out-
patient services, including The Lefcourt
Family Cancer Treatment and Wellness
Center, laboratory, pharmacy, rehabilita-
THE PROMENADE
AT CHESTNUT RIDGE
tion services, and respiratory care.
“We are very excited to have Vicki join
168 RED SCHOOLHOUSE RD. the team,” says Helene Wolk, senior vice
CHESTNUT RIDGE, NY 10977 president of operations at Englewood
Health. “She is a seasoned healthcare
845-620-0606
leader, who I am confident will make
PROMENADESENIOR.COM an immediate contribution to Engle-
wood Health and to the communities
overseeing a variety of clinical services
including orthopedics, neurosciences,
women’s health, and pediatrics.
As vice president of quality, Ketas
will provide executive oversight of
all inpatient and ambulatory quality
efforts, business intelligence, patient
engagement, care transition teams, and
research operations. A key part of her
role will be to partner with physician
leaders and administrators to coordinate
system-wide activities to improve and
enhance performance, quality patient
care, and customer service.
“Jamie has proven herself an effective
leader and a champion in the relent-
less pursuit of quality,” says Kathleen
Kaminsky, senior vice president patient
care services and chief nursing officer at
Englewood Health. “We are delighted to
promote her to this important role and

Come Fe
O Wm
we serve.” She added, “Vicki’s natural
talent at constructing highly effective
teams and building consensus across a
variety of stakeholders, combined with
VISIT US ON THE WEB AT PROMENADESENIOR.COM her deep experience in healthcare oper-
ations, will enable both the hospital and
the physician practices to continue to
flourish as we evolve to meet the needs
of our communities.”
Hoffman has over 25 years of experi-
ence in healthcare operations and has
worked at some of the region’s top insti-
tutions including Hospital for Special
Surgery and the University of Pittsburgh
Medical Center. She joins Englewood
Health from Stamford Health, where she
was service line director for over 10 years,
know that with her keen clinical and
business acumen, we’ll be able to lever-
age data, research, and best practices
to ensure that the highest quality care
is available for our community. We will
also be able to continue improving popu-
lation health locally.”
Ketas has been a member of the team
at Englewood Health for nearly eight
years, most recently serving as senior
director of research and care transitions,
responsible for all research initiatives as
well as population health. Prior to that
she was director of the hospital’s Clini-
cal Research Center and Institutional
Review Board.

Lester Senior Living offers short-term assisted

Upgrade your career now! living respite stays with full range of services
JFCS will be hosting a series of workshops in 2019.
With winter vacations on the horizon,
many families may be concerned about
their elders when caregivers or family
LinkedIn 101 Workshop: members are away and cannot look in
on their loved ones. Lester Senior Living
in Whippany offers peace of mind with
short-term respite stays, from ten days
to two months, in its distinctive Judy &
Josh Weston Assisted Living Residence.
The respite stays, for seniors who need
Date: Wednesday, January 30th, 7 - 8:30pm some help with the tasks of daily living,
Location: Kaplan JCC on the Palisdes provide a true home away from home and
41 East Clinton Ave, Tenafly, NJ include:
• A fully decorated, well-equipped
apartment
No cost to attend but Pre-Registration is required
• Three meals daily in the communi-
Call Ariel at 201-837-9090 • Email arielb@jfcsnnj.org ty’s elegant dining room
• An assistance alert pendant
Future workshops to include: • Wellness services from the profes-
Interview Coaching, Ramp-up Your Resume, and Dress for Success sional nursing team
• A full range of activities
A pre-stay wellness assessment is
done to ensure that all needs can be
accommodated.
“Respite stays keep older adults safe
and secure under the watchful eye of
professional staff while caregivers take
a much-needed break, and enable our
guests to sample the Lester lifestyle,”
said Administrator Marlene Glass.
Seniors who decide to make their per-
manent home at Lester Senior Living
can convert from respite to permanent
residency based on availability.
The community also offers individual-
ized dementia care in its intimate Mem-
ory Care Suite—including short-term
respite stays there for those who qual-
ify—and independent living in its Marga-
ret & Martin Heller Independent Living
Apartments.
Lester Senior Living is located at 903-
905 Rt. 10 East in Whippany on the Alex
Aidekman Family Jewish Community
Campus. Contact David Rozen, admis-
sions/marketing manager at (973) 929-
2725 for more information.

38 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019

C H I LT O N
MEDICAL CENTER
ONE OF THE SAFEST HOSPITALS IN THE
COUNTRY IS RIGHT HERE IN THE COMMUNITY

“A” is the highest grade given by the Leapfrog Group, an organization dedicated to
patient safety. What’s more, Chilton Medical Center was voted #1 mid-size hospital by
New Jersey doctors three years in a row. Atlantic Health System is proud to bring our
best to the communities we serve.
Source: The Leapfrog Group, a national patient safety group

To learn more visit atlantichealth.org/chilton

JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 39

Change Your Life
•Coin &Stamp Collections
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hat is it about winter that can lead to excess
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Sleep rejuvenates, energizes and replenishes the
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darker days definitely make us sleepier and more seden-
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increasing fat storage. Also, more indoor time may lead to
days per week!
2. Keep the cravings out of the house! Snack on citrus
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3. Discuss taking vitamin D3 with your doctor. Most of us
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up. Skip the noodles and add beans for an extra pro-
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40 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019

 Change Your Life

Sciatica, the more you know!

Personal care that’s built on personal relationships.
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Since 2003, Freedom Home Healthcare has
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Treatment varies depending on the type of profes-
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JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 41

Editorial
Goodbye Dolly
I A
grew up in a house with a living room that had a
record-player in it; a stereo with a long spindle so
you could put more than one album on it at a time,
and when one finished the arm with the needle
would pull back and the little latch at the top of the spin-
dle would retract and the next album piled on top would
fall down. (That was terrible for the albums, but no one
seemed to care. Certainly I didn’t.)
When I got older I would play my own music in my
own room with the door closed, but when I was little the
records we played in the living room were all Great Ameri-
can Songbook stuff, mainly Broadway musicals.
I can’t sing at all, and my mother was even worse; I
could tell that I couldn’t make anything even vaguely
music leave my mouth, but my mother couldn’t even
hear how entirely off she was. She was lucky; she sang
constantly and un-self-consciously. Me, not so much.
But I loved the music. (My mother told us that when
she was a child, in elementary school in the Bronx, she
was told just to move her lips in music class, but not to
allow any sounds to come out. She was to be a silent
singer. But I digress.)
I could appreciate the words, though; all those glorious
rhymes and glamorous images. Cole Porter’s ability to make
syllables do exactly whatever he wanted them to; Noel Cow-
ard’s ability to do the same thing, but backward and in heels.
(No, no, in an English accent.) Lerner and Loewe. Rogers
and Hart. Rogers and Hammerstein. A little later, Stephen
Sondheim. No sweat — that would be far too inelegant — and
so very much magic.
(Also, it was not lost on me that so many of those writers
were Jewish, at least theoretically. They made me so proud.)
I’ve been thinking about that now because Carol Chan-
ning died.
She was 97 years old and a legend, so it seemed like she
would always be around, misting from solid to ethereal
but not vanishing entirely. Not that there was anything
ethereal about Carol Channing. Between her voice and
her eyes and her personality, she was vast, room-filling,
spirit-lifting, indomitability made flesh.
I had thought that there was nothing at all Jewish about
her (except the eternal mystery of where Dolly Gallagher
Levi got the Levi from, and why when Barbra Streisand
played her in the film version her Jewishness, as hinted
at by her accent and shouted by her entire being, was
entirely clear, but again I digress). Except maybe her
strength and ability to overcome and endure.
And then, not until after she died, did I learn that Carol
Channing in fact was Jewish — “part Jewish,” she said, the
daughter of a Jewish mother and a father who she learned
only years later was half African-American. Her first hus-
band was Jewish, and she said that she learned Yiddish from
his grandfather. Who knew? But somehow we knew. —JP
Jewish Editor
Joanne Palmer
Standard Associate Editor
Larry Yudelson
1086 Teaneck Road
Community Editor
Teaneck, NJ 07666
Beth Janoff Chananie
(201) 837-8818
Fax 201-833-4959 About Our Children Editor
Heidi Mae Bratt
Publisher
James L. Janoff
Associate Publisher Emerita
Marcia Garfinkle
thejewishstandard.com
42 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019
TRUTH REGARDLESS OF CONSEQUENCES
Saving sex
ll around us the excuses for male erotic behav- If not, we will have to choose between a world that is
ior are crumbling. We can no longer remain either sexless or corrodes sex into something vulgar.
oblivious to the extent of female anger and Paradoxically, the sexual revolution led to a massive
despair, even as it boils red hot in the culture. decline in sex between married couples. The proliferation
Seventy percent of all divorces today are initiated by of pornography and the rebellion against the supposed
wives. Many of these women may never marry again but rigidity of marriage mark this era as the beginning of inti-
often prefer being alone than remaining with an unroman- macy’s end.
tic and ungrateful husband. Add to those influences the introduction of televi-
Up until recently the husband who looks at porn to the sions, cell phones, and tablets in almost all of our nation’s
neglect of his wife is not at fault since he is “an addict” bedrooms, and we created the greatest threats to sex in
who has zero control. The man who loses (sexual) interest human history. (What kind of sex could compete with Net-
and can’t get aroused was often regarded as faultless, see- flix’s “Narcos” and Amazon’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,”
ing that many a husband claimed to have lost attraction anyway?)
to their wives. And then, the #MeToo movement and the painful sex-
But now we are seeing how women are increasingly ual scandals that riddled the Catholic church put the final
repulsed by male behavior toward the opposite sex, and nails in the coffin of sex. Whatever was left of sex became
disgusted by men who believe that women something ugly, degrading, and bestial.
exist to serve solely as objects of male desire. No longer would sex be seen as an act
Do we really believe that all overexpo- of lovemaking and intimacy. Sex, instead,
sure wrought by the sexual revolution, and became increasingly absent in committed
against which Judaism expressly counseled, relationships, rearing its head only in cases
has not bred contempt? of harassment and sordid manipulation.
Over the last decades I published books Today, sexuality conjures up images of men
of Jewish sexual truths contained in the behaving like pigs —objectifying women in
Torah and Talmud that have made the the workplace, pitching lewd comments
Jewish marriage the envy of the world and and cat calls, even engaging in shameful and
from which society, and especially we men, Rabbi Shmuley criminal assault. These putrid incarnations
have strayed. To dismiss Jewish sexual val- Boteach of human sexuality have seemingly, tragi-
ues as myth is to invite increasing sexual cally, come to define it.
corrosion, alienation, and boredom. In the As for committed, monogamous relation-
1960s we were promised endless sexual gratification. ships based on loving consent, recent studies show that
Will we not at least ask the question of how it culminated one-third of marriages in the United States are almost
instead in #MeToo? entirely platonic. As for the married couples who are still
The reductionist view of sex as merely an agency of doing it, studies show that on average, they have sex less
propagation of the species or the dystopian view of mar- than twice a week, for seven minutes at a time. Marriages
riage as mere social contract bringing about social cohe- today are as bereft of sex as the moon is bereft of cheese.
sion is depressing. This is a material and Darwinian argu- It’s a stunning accomplishment for a single generation
ment that sees in sex at best a recreational, and at worst a to kill off sex. After all, the procreative instinct is the single
purely procreation, function. most compelling impulse known to humankind. To wres-
The Torah views sex as the agency of emotional inti- tle with something that strong — let alone cut its heart out
macy and marriage as the means for erotic connection. — is something we never thought possible. Not that sex is
Women today demand that men finally live up to what completely dead. It still exists, accounting for as much as
Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of their nature.” 15 percent of all internet content — if you call porn sex —
Thirty years of counseling thousands of couples has taught according to some of the more reliable estimates.
me that men and women enter marriage expecting to feel How did we get here? Who allowed it to happen? And
chosen, that they are the one and only. We should be look- how can we ever go back?
ing back to Judaism for the tools, advice, and wisdom to I know that women don’t want sex to be something
make it so rather than offer excuses as to why this is fantasy. dirty and abusive. I know that for all the horror stories
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the author of 33 books, including “Kosher Sex”, “Kosher Adultery,” and, most recently, “Lust
for Love,” co-authored with Pamela Anderson. With his daughter Chana he has just created SensualRevolution.com
and Kosher.Sex. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @Abysmally.
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 Opinion

we’ve been subjected to in the past year,

and for all the sexual degradation that so
many women have experienced at the
hands of men, women still hope for, long
for, and believe in something higher. They
still believe that sex can be about respect,
separating their bodies from their hearts,
so too are women; so we can all copulate The homework conundrum
with no feelings other than the exhilara-
tion of sexual climax. Is homework helpful in elementary school? The data
It was a stupid argument. The male says no. What are schools doing?
body is built with the genitalia on the out-

mutuality, and love. They still long for a
passionate connection with a man who
loves them.
Even we men don’t want to be the
people we’ve seemingly become. We
know there is a higher code built upon
honor, sensitivity, and chivalry. Indeed,
many men still see sex as something to be
shared passionately and exclusively with
one woman — at her invitation and with
mutual commitment and affection. Sex,
these men understand, is a way for hus-
band and wife to coalesce into one another,
becoming “bone of one bone and flesh of
one flesh.”
Can we rescue sex? Can we save marital
intimacy?
In short, the answer is yes. We can get
ourselves out of this downward spiral pre-
cisely because our Judaism offers an illu-
minated path.
In fact, of all the blessings, universal
gifts, and wisdom the Jewish religion has
to offer the world, its view of sex is by far
the most profound. It’s why, as a child of
divorce and despite my own shortcom-
ings, I published the book “Kosher Sex”
20 years ago. The book sold in huge num-
bers and succeeded in countless languages
and cultures because, even a generation
ago, people were looking for sex that was
kosher, appropriate, passionate, intimate,
erotic yet respectful, electrifying yet inti-
mate, romantic yet playful.
The first key idea is that sex is not for
procreation. If sex were just for having kids,
then pregnant women would not love sex.
Indeed, there is not a single nonhuman
mammalian species in which the female
accepts a male once she is impregnated.
If sex were just for offspring, then
post-menopausal women would not
love its ardor. And if sex were just for
genetic reproduction, then there would
be no reason for human males to have a
disproportionately large sexual append-
age — yes, size does matter, but every
human male is adequate — that facili-
tates an intimate face-to-face sexual
relationship that only humans (and
bonobo monkeys) are capable of.
More importantly, the argument that sex
is for procreation abets the misconception
that sex is an animal impulse, particularly
in men, designed to ensure the widest pos-
sible distribution of the male’s gene pool.
It makes men into animals and excuses
the defeatist approach they often assume
in dealing with their urges. It serves as a
pathetic excuse for why men and women
are unfaithful and why monogamy is
defined as unnatural.
But if sex is not about procreation, is it
about recreation? That seems to be what
we tried during the sexual revolution. The
argument went: just as men are capable of
side, enabling men, arguably, to more eas-
ily separate emotions from the sexual act.
Anatomically, men find it easier to treat
sex as something they do to someone else.
But the same experience for a woman is
internal and constitutes a literal sharing of
self. The separation of emotion from the
physical act seems contrary to a woman’s
anatomical construct. Women also seem
to be more sexually mature than men, pre-
ferring sex associated with real connection.
Of all the lies promulgated by the sexual
revolution, the canard that women would
enjoy — in the words of Erica Jong — the
zipless “copulation” (I’m using a euphe-
mism here) is perhaps the greatest lie of all.
In the end, the sexual revolution
allowed feminine sexual wisdom to be
eclipsed by masculine sexual exploitation.
It also went against the grain of Judaism’s
noble attempt to domesticate the male
and inspire him to channel his erotic focus
onto one woman, his wife.
But if the ultimate purpose of sex is
neither procreation nor recreation,
then what is it?
The Bible expresses it more beautifully
than it’s ever been said, right at the begin-
ning of Genesis: “Therefore shall a man
leave his father and leave his mother, he
shall cleave unto his wife. And they shall
become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24)
The purpose of sex is intimacy. Sex is
the sewing together of two halves into
one whole. Sex is the orchestration of
man and woman as bone of one bone
and flesh of one flesh. Sex is the motion
that brings forth such powerful and
deep emotions, so potent that it can
render two separate entities as a single,
unified whole.
That’s why the Kabballah says that
husbands and wives are meant to make
love face to face, their eyes open wide
and lips locked in a kiss. The eyes are
the window to the soul, and with our
mouths we exchange life breaths. Sex,
in which the bodies are intertwined,
enables a three-pronged unity: one
spirit, one soul, one flesh.
In the fusion of two souls together as
one, sex is the ultimate end to loneliness,
a plague that decimates our generation as
people communicate through electronic
devices and husbands and wives allow
their private lives to be overtaken by child-
rearing, mortgages, and stultifying routine.
Likewise, as the Bible says, sex is the high-
est form of knowledge.
We can see now what must be done to
rescue sex: restore its sanctity, regain its
passion, and revive its intimacy. It begins
with respect for its exclusive nature.
The time for male sexual excess is over.
We men have no choice but to become
worthy of our wives.
S
ome say the best part of school
vacations is not family time,
nor extra sleep, or even visiting where students are taught in small
warmer climates. The best part,
according to kids and parents alike, is that ters around the room. But homework is
homework disappears for a full week!
While education has changed dramati-
cally over the last century, one thing has
remained astonishingly the same — the
much-dreaded nightly homework. Kids
hate it! Parents hate it!
The most current research is solidly
against homework, finding no correla-
tion between homework in elementary
school and any improvement in aca-
demic achievement later on. Yet try to
eliminate homework and
suddenly parents are in an
uproar, afraid that their chil-
dren’s academic future will
be undermined. I know this
from firsthand experience,
when, as the principal of a
private school, I instituted a
modified homework policy
in line with the most up-to-
date research. My move was Dr. Tani Foger
met with resistance.
A debate about the ben-
efits and shortcomings of homework
has been ongoing among scholars and
researchers in the world of education.
Based on current studies, the prevail-
ing theory is that there is little benefit
to homework in elementary school and
no positive correlation between having
younger children do some (versus no)
homework, and no correlation between
more (instead of less) homework and any
measure of achievement. Although it is
contrary to what parents may want, the
data raises serious doubts about whether
meaningful learning is enhanced by
homework for most students.
Ignoring the research, many parents
worry that tampering with the tradi-
tional nightly homework routine will
be an unfixable mistake. Yet surpris-
ingly, other educational reforms have
been welcomed with opened arms.
Classrooms, once furnished with ruler-
straight rows of desks and chairs, now
are filled with children seated around
kidney shaped tables. Frontal teaching,
Dr. Tani Foger of Englewood, a school
psychologist and educational consultant,
was the founding principal of Yeshivat
He’Atid. Email her at DrFoger@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed here are those of the authors, not necessarily those of the
newspaper’s editors, publishers, or other staffers. We welcome letters to the editor.
Send them to jstandardletters@gmail.com.
once the gold standard, gradually is
being replaced by the rotational model,
groups that move through learning cen-
still seen as the holy grail and remains
untouchable.
Not all countries hold homework in
such high esteem. In France, President
Francois Hollande banned homework
in 2012. Similarly, there’s no homework
in Finland, the country that boasts the
highest rate of college attendance in
Europe. Even across the United States, a
smattering of schools, whose educators
pay attention to the latest research data,
have banned homework in
favor of allowing kids to be
kids.
Alfie Kohn, the author
of “The Homework Myth,”
writes, “Homework is fre-
quently the source of frus-
tration, exhaustion, family
conflicts, a lack of time for
kids to pursue other inter-
ests and, perhaps most dis-
turbingly, less excitement
about learning. It may be the
greatest single extinguisher of children’s
curiosity.”
To remedy the problem of assign-
ing excessive homework, many schools
require teachers to adhere to the 10-min-
ute per grade homework policy. At first
glance this appears to be a sound and
sensible rule, yet in reality this 10-min-
ute policy does not work for everyone
because 10 minutes of homework for a
strong student can often take up to an
hour or more for a struggling student.
This undermines the value of a seem-
ingly reasonable policy and wreaks
havoc on the family all the same.
I have worked in schools for more
than 30 years and so I have heard end-
less complaints from children and par-
ents about homework — I have heard
that children can’t complete the home-
work without the help of a parent or a
tutor, that it can take all evening to finish
one assignment, that there’s no time for
fun family activities. I’ve seen parents
request an afternoon dose of medica-
tion to help children who have attention
issues maintain focus during evening
hours as they work to complete their
homework assignments.
SEE HOMEWORK PAGE 46

JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 43

Opinion
Opening America’s golden door vs. a wall
M
r. Trump’s wall is, literally, a
divisive issue.
It’s almost impossible to
discuss it without appearing
partisan. But our government has ground
to a halt over this issue, so perhaps it’s time
to discuss the pros and cons of building a
wall on our southern border in a dispas-
sionate, practical way.
On one side of the aisle, Republicans have Michael Wildes
a legitimate grievance — that the United States
has had a difficult time excluding undocu-
mented foreign nationals from entering through its south-
ern border. On the other side of the aisle, Democrats are
perturbed by the fact that this administration has played up
the dangers that undocumented immigrants pose, and that
the administration has written off the benefits that hard-
working, entrepreneurial immigrants bring to our country.
Although some undocumented immigrants who enter
our country are connected to criminal elements, virtually
everyone who has looked at the issue agrees that in fact the
percentage of people crossing our border who end up com-
mitting crimes is lower than the rate of criminality in the
general American population. We also have a porous bor-
der with Canada, but the administration has not mentioned
increasing enforcement there. More importantly, when
it comes to international terrorism, our law enforcement
agencies are looking at our nation’s airports, not at the des- ies report estimates that 44 percent of those living within
ert on our southern border.
Nevertheless, this president was elected in no small part
on the basis of his promise to build a wall on our southern
Optimism anchored in faith
I
wrote in my journal on December
31 with a grand flourish: “Good-bye
2018. Hello 2019.” For good measure,
I added, “And good riddance to 2018!”
Before I put the journal away, on a sud-
den impulse, I flipped back to the first entry,
March 19, 2018. I had just returned from a
three-month sabbatical and wrote with excite-
ment about plans to bring all I had learned to
my work as a synagogue rabbi. And I already Rabbi Paula
was complaining in a good-natured way about Mack Drill
preparations for Passover. I had absolutely no
idea that 11 days later, my life would come to
a screeching halt.
On Friday night, March 30, I made a seder for 35. The
food was delicious, my 8-year-old nephew played God in the
annual play, and I rejoiced in the gathering of family and
friends. I felt open-hearted and grateful for my countless
blessings. I went to sleep that night expecting to be tired
the next morning, to find more matzah crumbs to be swept,
and to get ready to do it all again. But rather than celebrating
at a second seder, that night I was prone on an emergency
room bed, felled by an intense case of what turned out to
be pancreatitis.
Ever the optimist, I expected the nurse to tell me I was
being discharged. Instead, she told me that a lesion had
been detected on my pancreas and I was being admitted
into the hospital. A new reality began.
Over the next nine months, I experienced unexpected ill-
ness, a shocking diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, major sur-
gery, the unexpected death of my brother, a limited ability to
44 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019
border. (He also mentioned something about
the funding — something about Mexico — but
that appears to have fallen through.) At any
rate, Americans have a right to exclude for-
eign nationals from entering this country,
and they have a right to have immigration
laws enforced. So let’s look at whether a wall
would be effective in deterring and reducing
the undocumented immigrant population.
As the president has said, walls work — just
ask Israel. In fact, terrorist attacks in Jerusalem
have been reduced since various barriers and
walls were erected there. Illegal immigration also was signifi-
cantly reduced after about 150 miles of fence along Israel’s
border with Egypt were built. The reduction in immigration
and terrorism has not been attributed exclusively to the bar-
riers, but they certainly appear to have made a difference.
It should be noted that there is a marked difference
between the very real dangers that Israel faces and the
threats that this administration says that undocumented
immigrants pose. In Israel, they have to scrape the blood off
the streets to hold parades. Mercifully, the United States has
been spared from this type of international terrorism since
2001. This doubtlessly is due to the tireless work of our law
enforcement agencies.
Let’s take a closer look at the undocumented immigrant
population in the United States. A Center for Migration Stud-
the United States illegally in 2015 had overstayed their visas.
A report written by Robert Warren, a former director of
the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service’s statistics
fulfill the mitzvah of shiva, the difficult effects
of chemotherapy, and radiation. Suddenly,
I was a person with a life-threatening illness,
who often felt weak, nauseous, and sad.
I know that life is not easy. Faith is a chal-
lenging, ephemeral thing to hold. I have never
accepted that life is about suffering. Despite
the many sorrowful experiences I have shared
with cherished congregants, I believe that life
is in the joy despite the sadness. And though
we struggle with faith, God is always right
there for us, just one request for help away.
Throughout the months of illness and treat-
ment, God felt entirely present to me. My son-in-law, Sagi,
asked me a profound question. He wanted to know if I was
acting strong and optimistic or if I was feeling strong and
optimistic. I explained that the way I was behaving was
because of how I felt — held by family, friends, and commu-
nity, and most of all held by God. Despite how tired, ill, and
sad I often felt, I always felt strong and whole.
As it turned out, the pancreatitis that was so painful (and
inconvenient, happening on the first day of Pesach) also was
my personal miracle. If I had not had such an acute case
of the inflammation that sent “stubborn me” to the Emer-
gency Room after a day of “waiting for it to pass,” the small,
encapsulated tumor at the head of my pancreas would not
have been found.
I will stand by my certainty that I was blessed by God with
a miracle. I will not try to defend this belief theologically
because — I know — it is indefensible. Why should I receive a
miracle and not the patient in the next hospital bed? God is
division, says that 65 percent of people who entered the
country to join other undocumented aliens were visa over-
stays. (These are people who entered the country legally
and then overstayed their welcome.) So about half of the
illegal population in the United States entered legally. Obvi-
ously, a wall on the southern border would not have pre-
vented them from entering and overstaying.
Additionally, our law enforcement agencies have indi-
cated that illegal drugs from the southern hemisphere enter
largely through ports of entry; brought here, for example,
by smugglers who conceal drugs in vehicles. Fentanyl, the
deadly synthetic opioid that is ravaging middle class com-
munities in this country and is responsible for the alarming
increase in deadly drug overdoses, is mostly manufactured
and shipped from China, either directly or through Canada.
A wall would not help.
The most effective deterrent to illegal immigration and
drug smuggling are boots on the ground and technology.
Israel uses a panoply of sensors, unmanned drones, and
officers with experience in human behavior to identify dan-
gerous people at its borders. The United States also employs
technology and personnel effectively — but it has thousands
of unfilled positions with Customs and Border Protection.
Our efforts should be focused in getting experienced staff to
the border to run cameras, sensors, drones and other tech-
nology. All of that technology can cover a greater area, more
effectively, for a significantly reduced cost. This should work
seamlessly and in redundancy with strategically placed bor-
der barriers.
We also have a shortage of immigration judges, and that is
causing cases to stretch for years. Foreign nationals whose
neither cancer nor oncology. It is indefensible. Yet it is true
for me. God granted me a miracle for which I am grateful.
One of the most valuable lessons I learned came from get-
ting very quiet. Only by turning off the noise of the world
could I go below the surface. Only by shutting out social
media, phone calls, and emails could I vanquish the worry
and anxiety. I listened in the quiet I created and heard the
promise in my soul. It is amazing what our souls have to say
when we stop and listen. I was going to get through. I was
strong enough to handle whatever came. I have a lot of work
yet to do.
Today, I am more capable of focusing on what is impor-
tant. I am kinder to myself, recognizing moments where I
push myself beyond reasonable effort and calling a halt to
such perfectionism.
I will not take gifts and blessings for granted. I am grateful
every day. On the last Shabbat of December, I walked with
the Torah procession, shaking hands and embracing my
congregants for the first time since last March. I had tears in
my eyes and an enormous smile on my lips. I felt that I had
completely and truly returned to myself.
Upon consideration, the days and hours from March until
the middle of December feel like the longest, slowest period
of time in my life. It also feels like the time went speeding by.
I had so many blessings along the way: doctors who are
healers, compassionate nurses, the newest chemotherapy
and technology protocols, health insurance, and a loving,
understanding workplace. (I think often of ill people without
any of these essential pieces in place.)
My husband and family, friends, and Orangetown Jewish
Center community provided unstinting support.

cases are scheduled several years out into the future have the
opportunity to get a job, pay taxes, marry, and build other equities
in this country, and that ultimately strengthen their case to remain
here. The longer that an immigration case takes, the more likely
it is that the foreign national will be permitted to stay. An increase
in immigration judges would expedite immigration cases, which
ultimately would reduce the undocumented population.
Lastly, if we are to have a dispassionate, honest conversation
about immigration, we also have to discuss who we should allow
into our country. If a wall must be built, it should include meta-
phorical turnstiles that give us control over who can be admitted.
America still is a beacon on a hill, and we are in a position to select
among the best and the brightest talent from all over the world.
A wall on our southern border may inadvertently turn this talent
away, because it sends the message that America has closed itself
off from the world.
We must maintain an inflow of distinguished immigrants who
bring new ideas and a sense of entrepreneurship to our shores.
If America’s doors had not been open to immigrants, Google and
Apple may not have become the companies that they are today.
We must maintain an image of openness and hospitality in
order to attract top talent, because that is how we remain com-
petitive on the world stage, and that is how we maintain a vig-
orous, innovative economy. A wall may end up deterring these
talented entrepreneurs more than it would stop actual criminals
and terrorists.
Michael Wildes is the mayor of Englewood and the author of “Safe
Haven in America: Battles to Open the Golden Door.” He is a former
federal prosecutor and an adjunct professor at the Benjamin N.
Cardozo School of Law.
My self-care practices of healthy eating, yoga, walking, journal-
ing, and meditation supported and eased the regimen of surgery,
chemotherapy, and radiation.
But nothing was as powerful in my healing process as my faith
in God.
Make no mistake: I am not saying that the seeming success of my
course of treatment and potentially complete healing are the result
of my faith. God did not make me sick and God is not healing me.
I am saying that my optimism, positive energy, gratitude,
and sense of blessing are all a result of my belief in God Who
cares about me. My spiritual life does not remove moments of
fear and despair, but does give me the ability to cope. It buoys
me in optimism.
Spirituality allows me to experience transcendent meaning in
this precious life. For me, it is expressed through my relationship
with God. For you, it might be about nature, family, or community
— whatever beliefs and values give you a sense of meaning and
purpose in life. When we attend to these beliefs, we feel a deep
sense of belonging to something greater than we are.
For me, my spirituality translates into an unshakable trust that
God has plans for me. This idea has carried me through my treat-
ment for cancer. And it will carry me through the months and
years ahead from scan to scan.
Praised are you, Adonai my God, Who has helped me feel safe
and free from undue suffering. Thank you, God for helping me
find moments of joy in the midst of this time of challenge. Amen.
Paula Mack Drill is a rabbi at the Orangetown Jewish Center in
Orangeburg. She also has been a social worker at Daughters of Israel
Geriatric Center and Golda Och Academy, both in West Orange, and
the assistant director of Ramah Day Camp in Nyack.
I’VE BEEN THINKING
The sound of silence
O
n New Year’s Day at about 2
p.m., my wife, Sharon, and
I were sitting in our living
room. She was reading a Rob-
ert Galbraith (a/k/a J.K. Rowling) mystery
and I was working on the Times’ cross-
word puzzle (surprisingly difficult for a
Tuesday though I did complete it). We
also were joined by one of my daughters,
who was working on her computer at our Joseph C.
dining room table. Kaplan
And then I heard it.
So I sighed as I turned to my wife and
daughter and said: “Hear that? Can you hear it? Do you
hear that silence?” And we all did. What we heard was
real and palpable — soft as a lullaby, clear as the young
Joan Baez’s soprano voice. Simon & Garfunkel were
right; there really is a sound of silence.
You see, my Toronto family — daughter, son-in-law,
and three always adorable, usually delightful, and often
rambunctious grandchildren — had the week off from
work and school. So, after a few days in Connecticut
horseback riding, swimming in an indoor pool, playing
ninepins bowling, eating pizza for breakfast (ONLY on
vacation, ONLY!!), and finding other family adventures,
they spent a long weekend visiting with us in Teaneck,
together with my other daughters and son-in-law.
It was a fun-filled few days, with long and boisterous
Shabbat meals, a family hike, lots of book reading by
the older ones and book reading to the youngest, game
playing, going snow tubing (for the younger set — Sha-
ron and I took a pass), picture taking, learning Torah,
and the kids staying up way past bedtime (it was Sav-
ta’s and Grandpa’s house after all) but getting up early
nonetheless and trying, usually unsuccessfully, to be
quiet and let others sleep. And as you (and perhaps Jus-
tice Kagan) might imagine, the weekend was topped off
with a traditional, loud Chinese take-out dinner.
The next morning, after packing, davening, break-
fast, hugs and kisses and then more hugs and kisses,
Toronto piled into their minivan (what else?) for the
long ride home, fortified with lots of treats (remember,
Savta’s and Grandpa’s house) to help pass the seem-
ingly endless hours of driving. Hand waves, laughter,
blown kisses, shouts of goodbye and drive carefully,
some more hugs and kisses (can never be too many
when grandkids are concerned), and as always in the
age of iPhone, some more picture taking, accompanied
the car as it backed out of the driveway, turned toward
Route 4, and disappeared.
And then — silence.
I’m certainly not the only grandparent who’s com-
mented on his grandchildren’s visits by saying “It’s
wonderful when they arrive, it’s wonderful when
they’re here, and it’s wonderful when they leave.” And
it truly is, as long as you know that the cycle soon will
begin again either at your home or theirs — arriving,
staying, leaving, and all of it wonderful.
(There’s one caveat regarding leaving. It would be
ideally wonderful if they were leaving for Englewood
or the Upper West Side or Far Rockaway. Or even Bos-
ton. As I’ve often said, Toronto would be perfect if we
could just move it to Boston.)
I remember the first time I went skiing in college. We Joseph C. Kaplan, a regular columnist, is a long-time
were a bunch of guys and gals, most of us completely
inept on the slopes. But it was a lovely clear winter day
and we had loads of fun, skiing and falling (more fall-
ing than skiing), and a bit of socializing in the lodge (or letters to the editor, the New York Times.
Opinion
maybe more than a bit). But I’ll never for-
get that when we got back to my (read,
my parents’) car and I took off my shoes
to drive, it was pure heaven. Wonderful
arriving, wonderful skiing, and wonder-
ful taking off the big clunky old type ski
boots and driving home in socks.
But that’s not always real life.
Sometimes it’s not always so wonderful.
This past year, my wife and I joined a gym
that we actually use, though not as much
as we should. I almost wrote though not
as much as we like, but that wouldn’t be
true because we don’t really like it. While we know it’s
important and good for us, we don’t really look forward
to going, and doing the exercises and using the machines
isn’t our definition of fun. Wonderful? Well, I guess if
you’re a masochist and like pain perhaps, but we’re not,
so no, not really wonderful at all arriving or being there.
But when the treadmill walking and bike spinning are
over, I rest for a few minutes, take a nice long hot shower,
We can’t make it
better, so we just
muddle through
as best we can,
searching for a
wonderful memory
or two for a moment
of balance.
put on clean clothes, and by the time I’m out of the
locker room I’m feeling pretty good. Wonderful would be
an overstatement, but pretty good is, well, pretty good.
Yet even that’s not always real life. Sometimes there’s
not only no wonderful, there’s not even a dollop of pretty
good. We’re at an age where we hear too often of friends,
family, and acquaintances who have medical issues that
can’t be fixed. Sometimes they’re life changing, other
times life threatening or ending, but it’s not wonderful
and it’s not pretty good — it’s just plain lousy (and you can
substitute the adjective of your choice, which probably
would be my choice if this weren’t a family newspaper).
We don’t have control. We can’t make it better, so
we just muddle through as best we can, searching for
a wonderful memory or two for a moment of balance.
So I guess real life is a conglomeration of all of these;
the completely wonderful, the partially wonderful, the
mixture of crummy and pretty good, and the undiluted
lousy. The trick is to recognize and appreciate those
special times when everything falls into place just right;
when it’s wonderful arriving, wonderful being there,
and even wonderful leaving. When I can sing along
with Louis Armstrong and Israel Kamakawiwo’ole and
think to myself what a wonderful world.
resident of Teaneck. His work also has appeared in
various publications including Sh’ma magazine, the New
York Jewish Week, the Baltimore Jewish Times, and, as
JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 45
Letters
Thank you, Mr. Burstein
Thank you for your wonderful and warm tribute, “Remem-
bering Albert Burstein” (editorial, January 11).
Our own connection to Mr. Burstein was back in 2002. My
husband had just been awarded his first patent and we really
needed advice about starting a business. (Before that, we were
just asking acquaintances for advice, most of whom were very
kind and supportive, while others were, let’s just say, pain-
fully, unhelpful.)
When we met with Mr. Burstein, he described our options.
He was a teacher, without being pedantic, and he was caring
and compassionate. He helped us register as an L.L.C.
We were impressed by his gentle kindheartedness, of
course his brilliance, and the confidence he had in us. As his
clients, we were awed by the depth of his consideration for us
and by his sage advice.
We recognized that we were in the presence of a very intel-
ligent and skilled lawyer and knew he had a long and exem-
plary career in Trenton, but it was his kindness and interest in
us that we like to remember. He knew we were unschooled in
business matters and helped us understand what we needed
to understand. He was there to elevate his clients rather than
stand on the pedestal he actually deserved.
We will miss you very much, Mr. Burstein.
Linda and Stanley Rutta
Englewood
Let’s work together
I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, where the Jewish commu-
nity was small, but in spite of its size it was strong and solid.
We took care of one another. Each person’s individual success
Opinion
Homework
FROM PAGE 43
Why then do we insist that our young children con-
tinue with homework, despite all the latest data? Is it
because we all grew up doing homework and it worked
out well enough for us? Or is it because homework lends
structure to the afterschool hours until parents return
home from work? Or because the alternative is sim-
ply too much iPad, iPhone, screen time (you fill in the
blank), etc.? Or possibly all of the above?
I’m sure we all can agree that the last thing kids want
to do at the end of a long school day is take out their
books and do more schoolwork. Rather, just like adults
at the end of a long day at the office, kids also need to
relax and unwind in the evening.
Unfortunately, when kids spend their afterschool
hours doing homework, they have little time left over for
extracurricular activities — for playing with friends, for
family activities, or for much needed physical exercise
at the end of the long school day. Considering that the
benefits to homework in elementary school are ques-
tionable, the hours and the mental energy that home-
work consumes could be devoted to doing other things
that have much more tangible and productive outcomes.
In this age of technology, when we are all tethered to
smart phones, and far too absorbed with digital informa-
tion, trends, and social media, family time and interper-
sonal activities can provide a welcome balance toward
enhancing a child’s education as much, if not more, than
math problems and writing samples. For example: cook-
ing together, building with Lego, playing board games
and word games (scrabble, banana grams, puzzles),
or other creative adventures all can be educational
46 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019
was our success, and their concerns were our concerns. We
had our differences, but underneath it all we were really one.
It’s with this backdrop in mind that I am so surprised when
one Jewish organization in our Jewish community tries to
compete with another Jewish organization for participants
within the same exact demographic and geographic area for
almost identical programs. To that point, I am struggling to
understand why the JCC of Northern New Jersey has decided
to reopen a competing early childhood center within the same
Pascack Valley community as that of the existing early child-
hood program at Temple Emanuel of the Pascack Valley.
Approximately 3 1/2 years ago the early childhood program
at the YJCC in Washington Township shut its doors abruptly,
just a couple of weeks before the September school open-
ing. That left its parents, students, and teachers stranded.
Almost all the nearby schools were full, and the parents were
frantic. Temple Emanuel of the Pascack Valley did what had
to be done by one Jewish organization for another. Temple
Emanuel hired many of those same teachers, offering continu-
ity and familiar faces for the displaced children and parents.
Temple Emanuel also absorbed those students within their
program by creating new classes and classrooms. It was a very
difficult task to complete within just a few weeks.
But it was the right Jewish thing to do.
The parents had already paid deposits of up to half the
tuition (totaling over $250,000) to the YJCC of Bergen County
(rebranded as the JCC of Northern New Jersey). This money
was not paid back to the families. Temple Emanuel forgave
the parents that school deposit money and only collected the
balance of the yearly tuition monies that were due. This was a
tremendous financial risk for Temple Emanuel.
activities, especially when parents and children engage
in them together.
Here are some homework alternatives that can
enhance a child’s social and emotional intelligence:
1. Cook together — learn math using measurements
2. Go Grocery shopping: read ingredients to help
choose the healthiest products for the best prices,
figure out best deal between sizes of items
3. Read together every night — parents reading aloud to
children, and children reading aloud to parents
4. Visit a museum
5. Go on a hike
6. Volunteer/do community service
7. Photograph interesting buildings or landscapes in
the neighborhood
With information readily available at our fingertips,
research in the techno/computer age is completely dif-
ferent than it was just a few decades ago. Who could
have imagined a spell checker on the computer when
we were growing up? Or a search engine like Google that
can bring up the answer to any question within seconds?
The ease of access to information suggests that home-
work should evolve into something new, thought-pro-
voking, and creative, to meet the needs and challenges
of the 21st century learner.
Just as education has changed and evolved over the
past century to meet the demands of our ever-changing
society, it’s time for homework to do the same. In the
words of John Dewey, the famous educational reformer
and champion of progressive education, “If we teach
today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them
But again, it was the right Jewish thing to do.
Imagine my surprise when I read a long article in the
Jewish Standard saying that the JCC of Northern New
Jersey is opening a new school, in the same location as
before, but now owned by the Bethany Church (“Early
childhood center poised to reopen,” Dec. 27, 2018). I was
told that the JCC of Northern New Jersey solicited “their”
teachers who are now working for Temple Emanuel ,and
tried to get them to switch to the JCC.
And a second surprise this week...the JCC is offering
grants toward the tuition for the first students who apply
to their program. It is hard for any early childhood pro-
gram to compete against that sort of financial assistance.
Is the Jewish world in northern New Jersey just about
business, no matter what the cost to the Jewish organiza-
tions around you, and not about loving kindness towards
those who helped you out in your time of need? Why try
to fracture another Jewish organization? What happened
to Jewish ideals?
My suggestion is that the JCC of Northern New Jersey
should stick to programs that build the community up and
not try to take sister organizations down. I want to ask the
JCC of Northern New Jersey — an organization that I sup-
ported for many years as a member, from its inception
in Bergen County until the end — and any local organiza-
tions supporting their endeavor “What in the world are
you thinking? What kind of an example are you setting for
our ONE community? Are these the Jewish values you will
be teaching the children?”
Simone Wilker
Township of Washington
While education
has changed
dramatically over
the last century, one
thing has remained
astonishingly the same
— the much-dreaded
nightly homework.
of tomorrow.” I’m sure we all can agree that the time
has come to reimagine homework for the technological
world of the 21st century. That’s where our students live.
As a school psychologist, past principal, mother,
and grandmother, I’ve watched countless young chil-
dren struggle with homework assignments that we now
know may not have had the value we attributed to it,
and therefore may not have been necessary. Going for-
ward, let’s pay attention to the recent studies about
when homework begins to be effective, and let’s let that
data inform our decisions.
During vacation time, as throughout the school year,
let’s tell our children to read. According to the data,
reading is the only type of homework that leads to
improved academic achievement in elementary school
age children. So let’s hold off on homework until middle
school, when it will yield the results we are all seeking.

Finally, face to face with the divine text
ARYEH WIENER
O
h, to have been a fly on the wall when Rash-
bam (R. Samuel ben Meir, 1085-1158) went
at it with his grandfather, Rashi (R. Shlomo
ben Yitzhak, 1040-1105, some say 1030-1105)
regarding the plain-sense meaning of biblical passages.
A mini-Renaissance was underway in medieval France,
fueling a desire among non-Jews and Jews alike to inter-
pret the Bible rationally, based on common sense and
internally consistent rules.
Among Babylonian and Spanish scholars, this approach
was old news. But in Ashkenaz, the midrash of the Sages
had long held sway. Grammar and style were all but
ignored in favor of brilliant, perceptive, but non-contex-
tually-based interpretations that played by a whole other
set of rules. These spiritually illuminating interpretations
created a parallel universe full of starkly drawn charac-
ters, deep human insights, and often fanciful narratives
— but left the text’s original intent in the dark.
That is, until Rashi.
Rashi was the innovator. His Torah commentary
attended to many grammatical and stylistic details and
enlisted the Sages’ interpretations in the service of peshat
— the plain sense of the text — when a more straightfor-
ward interpretation seemed elusive, undesirable, or
religiously impossible. Rashi often explicitly rejected
midrashic interpretations as incompatible with the text.
But when all was said and done, his commentary con-
tained mostly midrash. It was Rashbam who picked up
the peshat ball and ran with it, writing Bible commentar-
ies that eschewed entirely the reliance on midrash, even
in the legal sections of the Torah.
Which brings us to Rashbam’s conversation with his
grandfather.
To hear Rashbam tell it, Rashi admitted that had he the
time, he would have to prepare a new edition of his com-
mentary to include “the plain sense meanings that emerge
daily.” It is the spirit of this statement, Rashbam implies,
that drove him to write his own Bible commentaries. And
roughly 950 years later, this same spirit has driven Rabbi
Adin Steinsaltz, the renowned Israeli Orthodox rabbi and
educator, to do the same.
Drawing on his Hebrew Chumash commentary, Rabbi
Steinsaltz now has produced a Chumash with an English
commentary that focuses entirely on the peshat.
Here in the United States, there is no shortage of Eng-
lish Bible translations/commentaries produced by Jew-
ish scholars. Two that spring to mind are Robert Alter’s
recently completed work and the Jewish Study Bible,
which uses the Jewish Publication Society translation and
is edited by Adele Berlin and Marc Brettler. Though secu-
lar or non-denominational, these are commonly used by
many Orthodox Jews who study and teach Tanakh. Ortho-
dox Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s “The Living Torah” is a transla-
tion that also features terse notes based mostly on tradi-
tional commentators.
The Steinsaltz Humash, however, is the first English
Chumash commentary produced for the United States
under Orthodox auspices that aims to clarify the mean-
ing of the text itself, without midrashic embellishment. As
anyone who has studied the Bible knows, there are many
Aryeh Wiener of Teaneck is an advertising creative director
and a lifelong student of the Bible.
Arts & Culture
Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, sitting, and his
son, Rabbi Meni Even-Israel, work together at the
Steinsaltz Center in June 2018. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
gaps — cultural, geographic, linguistic — between the text
and the reader. Rabbi Steinsaltz’s modest but daunting
goal is to provide just enough information to bridge those
gaps, so that the text can speak directly to its audience.
Rabbi Steinsaltz’s main tool for this task is a running
translation interspersed with brief explanations, a tech-
nique he first used in his Hebrew Talmud commentary.
These explanations provide a rationale for a character’s
opaque behavior, connect one verse to another where the
transition is unclear, supply ramifications of an action or
a law, and explain difficult or disputed words or phrases.
Two footnote symbols appear regularly in this running
text: “B” for Background and “D” for Discussion. These
refer the reader to the bottom of the page for informa-
tion about the text’s background (archeological, botanical,
geographical, topographical, or zoological), or a deeper
discussion of the commentary (ethical, halakhic, literary,
spiritual, or purely exegetical). The Discussion engages
traditional commentaries, while the Background uses
modern scientific and archaeological sources.
I really enjoyed using this translation/commentary com-
bination and found it extremely useful for getting a good,
basic grasp of the text quickly and easily. It alone is suf-
ficient reason to own this book. (In fact, were it not for
the fact that this book is a commentary I would have said
“everything else is commentary.”)
What follows are brief impressions of some other features.
1. Rashi included. The text is vocalized, making Rashi
much more than just an afterthought. The font (“Rashi”
script, of course) is beautiful, if a bit precious and small.
2. Introductions everywhere. Each book has a one-
or two-page introduction to its main themes and con-
tent. Each individual section has a helpful two- to
three-sentence preview.
3. Illustrations abound. Next to the commentary itself,
this is the book’s most helpful feature. Color photos shed
light on the size and shape of the manna (round “like cori-
ander”), the Tabernacle and its appurtenances, identifica-
tion of pure and impure animals, the miraculous bloom-
ing of Aaron’s staff, and dozens of other motifs and laws.
Maps illustrate borders and itineraries.
4. Typos/errors. The citation of Rashbam’s comment in
the Introduction reads “Genesis 38:2.” It actually is found
at Genesis 37:2. Alas, in Parashat Bereishit, all 79 source
footnotes found at the back of the Chumash are missing
from the commentary itself.
5. Translation quality. The interspersed commentary
takes much of the burden off the translation. As it turns
out that is a very good thing, because the translation, while
adequate, leaves much to be desired. (While the transla-
tion is based on Rabbi Steinsaltz’s original Hebrew com-
mentary, Rabbi Steinsaltz himself was not directly involved
in the translation process.) The translators’ goal was “to
stay as close as possible to the original Hebrew verses,”
which accounts for some of the awkwardness. But they
could have accomplished this with better choices of Eng-
lish words that avoid unwanted and incorrect connota-
tions. When describing a burglar who tunnels into a home
(Exodus 22:1) there is no reason to use the word “exca-
vate,” which though technically correct conjures up arche-
ological digs and expanding one’s basement. The phrase
“ma’aseh hagadol” in Deuteronomy 11:7, encompassing as
does the Ten Plagues, the Exodus, and the Splitting of the
Sea, deserves a better rendering than “great work,” bet-
ter suited to a teacher’s comments on a homework assign-
ment. And “toldot” in Genesis, which has been translated
variously as begettings, chronicles, descendants, geneal-
ogy, generations, line, lineage, offspring, or story, becomes
“legacy,” a word whose definition matches neither the root
of “toldot” nor any context in which it is used.
To return to the spirit behind the commentary: Here
in the United States, the decidedly charedi ArtScroll Chu-
mash has become the standard in many modern Orthodox
shuls, leaving some shulgoers yearning for a more enlight-
ened alternative. Now, the pursuit of peshat often resists
the automatic acceptance of received interpretation.
Peshat commentators such as Abraham Ibn Ezra and Don
Isaac Abrabanel are viewed suspiciously in some Ortho-
dox circles due to, shall we say, flirtations with the bound-
aries of tradition. Given its exclusive focus on peshat, and
its origin in Israel, where a literary-structural approach
has become popular in religious Zionist Bible study, it is
fair to ask: just how modernishe is the Steinsaltz Humash?
Not very.
If you’ve been waiting for a truly modern Orthodox
Chumash, this is not it. Here’s why:
1. The Chumash is ideologically neutral. It is not a “mod-
ern commentary” and has little to say about the contem-
porary world.
2. There seems to be no mention of modern literary
techniques. One searches in vain for, say, a chiastic struc-
ture or a leitwort.
3. In passages that affect normative halakha, the trans-
lation and commentary depart from the plain sense and
follow the interpretations of the Sages. Two examples:
a. “Bein ha’arbayim” is consistently translated “in the
afternoon,” in keeping with the halakhic window of time
SEE STEINSALTZ PAGE 52
JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 47
Calendar Roman and new chants
arranged by Cynthia
Powell, 7:30 p.m. 1 Engle
Sunday 
St. (201) 568-3035. JANUARY 20
Music in Tenafly: The
Saturday  Thurnauer School of
JANUARY 19 Music at the Kaplen JCC
on the Palisades offers
Shabbat in Emerson: a free student concert,
Congregation B’nai 9:30 a.m. 411 E. Clinton
Israel holds its “Torah Ave. (201) 408-1465.
Town Hall” service as
Children’s program:
part of the Shabbat
The JCC of Paramus/
morning interactive
Congregation Beth
Torah discussion on
Tikvah offers a preschool
the legacies of Rabbi
program on Tu B’Shevat
Dr. Abraham Joshua
for 2- to 4-year-olds
Heschel and Rev. Dr.
with an accompanying
Martin Luther King Jr.,
adult, 9:30 a.m. Monthly
10 a.m. 53 Palisade Ave.
activities include music,
(201) 265-2272 or www.
bouncy house, crafts.
bisrael.com.
The snack is fruit. East
Shabbat in Nanuet: 304 Midland Ave.
After Mincha at (201) 262-7733.
4:30 p.m., the Nanuet
Hebrew Center has a
Tu B’Shevat seder at 5,
Ma’ariv at 5:45, Havdalah
at 6, then a screening
of “Beauty & the Beast”
and karaoke. Pizza,
popcorn, and ice cream.
JAN. The Patron of the Arts and Kaplen foundations at the Kaplen 411 South Little Tor Road.
JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly sponsor a dramatic reading of
27
(845) 708-9181 or www.
Jeff Cohen’s play “The Soap Myth,” starring seven-time Emmy nanuethc.org. Chani Getter
and five-time Golden Globe-award winner Ed Asner and two- Comedy and rock Breakfast in Teaneck:
time Emmy and four-time Tony Award nominee Tovah Feldshuh, at 7 p.m. music fundraiser: The Temple Emeth’s
men’s club of Temple B’Yachad and Viewpoint
The reading, directed by Pam Berlin, will be followed by a moderated Emanu-El in Closter groups co-sponsor a
“talkback” Q & A with the playwright and cast. The program is a tribute to holds a “Comedy & Rock breakfast featuring Chani
International Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed on January 27. Ned Night” with comedian Getter, an ordained One
Joel Chasnoff, music by Spirit Interfaith minister
Eisenberg and Liba Vaynberg also are in the cast. (201) 408-1406, www. the Sinai Sessions Rock who was raised in an
jccotp.org/soapmyth, or nbachrach@jccotp.org. PHOTO COURTESY JCCOTP Band, food, and open ultra-Orthodox home,
bar, for everyone 21 and 10:30 a.m. She will
older, 7 p.m. It celebrates discuss “The Process
Tu B’Shevat with a 950 Preakness Ave. the community and is a of Change: Living
Friday  lively Shabbat service,
including delicious fruits,
(973) 595-6565 or www.
templebethtikvahnj.org.
fundraiser for the Patnoi
family. (201) 750-9997
Your Authentic Life!”
Viewpoints is a shul
JANUARY 18 7:30 p.m. 254 Broad Ave. or www.templeemanu-el. committee that was
(201) 592-1712 or www. Shabbat in Emerson: com/neverGABEup. formed to celebrate
Shabbat in Fair Lawn: adasemuno.org. Congregation B’nai the diversity of the
Rabbi Leiah Moser of Israel invites members Film in Teaneck: Jewish community.
the Reconstructionist Shabbat in Wayne: of all faiths to its annual Temple Emeth’s adult 1666 Windsor
Congregation Beth Israel Rabbi emeritus Israel S. “Freedom Shabbat” education group screens Road. Reservations,
of Ridgewood leads Dresner honors the life of service honoring the lives a Jewish-themed movie, (201) 833-1322.
an informal discussion Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and messages of Rev. 7:30 p.m., as part of its
about the weekly Torah during services at Temple Dr. Martin Luther King “Movies That Matter” Tu B’Shevat in
portion instead of a Beth Tikvah, 7:30 p.m. Jr. and Rabbi Abraham series. Refreshments. Montebello: The
formal service at its Rabbi Dresner was Joshua Heschel, 1666 Windsor Road. Montebello Jewish
Lois and Elliot Roman
monthly “Dessert & active in the civil rights 7:30 p.m. Rabbi Debra PHOTO PROVIDED (201) 833-1322 or emeth. Center’s Sisterhood and
Discussion” at a private struggle and was close Orenstein will lead the org. religious school students
home in Fair Lawn, 7 p.m. to Dr. King. President service; local clergy Shabbat in Tenafly: host a Tu B’Shevat
Reservations to rcbi@ Obama honored Rabbi members will join her. Temple Sinai of Bergen family experience,
syngaogue.org. Dresner at the White Coffee, desserts, and County in Tenafly 11 a.m. 34 Montebello
House in 2013 for informal conversation will offers Shabbat Shirah, Road, Montebello, N.Y.
Shabbat in Leonia: the 50th anniversary follow. 53 Palisade Ave. commemorating the (845) 357-2430 or www.
Congregation Adas celebration of the (201) 265-2272 or www. Song of the Sea, with montebellojc.org.
Emuno celebrates March on Washington. bisrael.com. flutists Lois and Elliot

48 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019


Music in Tenafly: The
Thurnauer School of
Music at the Kaplen
JCC on the Palisades
offers its Teen Town
Jazz Winter Concert,
4 p.m. 411 E. Clinton Ave.
(201) 569-7900.
Tu B’Shevat in
Ridgewood: Rabbi
Leiah Moser of
Reconstructionist
Congregation Beth Israel,
a TI-JCC congregation,
leads a Tu B’Shevat
seder, 4 p.m., at Temple
Israel. 475 Grove St.
(201) 444-9320 or www.
synagogue.org or rcbi@
synagogue.org.
Rabbi Dr. Jill Hammer
Tu B’Shevat in Tenafly:
Temple Sinai of Bergen
County holds a Tu
B’Shevat seder, 5 p.m.
Guest speaker Rabbi
Dr. Jill Hammer will
discuss “Biblical and
Mystical Texts With
Experiential Moments
of Tu B’Shevat.” 1 Engle
St. Dinner reservations,
(201) 568-3035 or
hhans@templesinaibcs.
org.
Monday
JANUARY 21
Rabbi Loren Monosov
and Cantor Alan
Sokoloff
Tu B’Shevat in
Woodcliff Lake: Rabbi
Loren Monosov and
Cantor Alan Sokoloff
lead a Tu B’Shevat seder
with learning, fruits, wine,
and dinner, at Temple
Emanuel of the Pascack
Valley, 7 p.m. 87 Overlook
Drive. Reservations, (201)
391-0801.
Thursday
JANUARY 24
Music in Tenafly: The
Thurnauer School of
Music at the Kaplen
JCC on the Palisades
offers a recital by the
voice department,
6 p.m. 411 E. Clinton Ave.
(201) 569-7900.
Open house/food
tasting in West Orange:
The Wilshire Caterers
and Majestic Glatt
Kosher Caterers host an
open house and food
tasting, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
350 Pleasant Valley
Way. (973) 736-3240 or
(908) 353-2680.
Tax law discussion
Calendar
of the National Council full Torah and haftorah
Sunday of Jewish Women at
Senior Source at the In New York readings, 10 a.m. Kiddush
will follow. 334 East
JANUARY 27 Shops at Riverside, 14th St., between First
second level, in Riverside Saturday and Second avenues.
Square Mall, Hackensack, Underwritten by UJA-
2:30 p.m. Refreshments.
JANUARY 19 Federation of New York’s
(201) 385-4847 or www. Jewish Community
ncjwbcs.org. ASL-interpreted Deaf Interpreter Fund.
Shabbat service: Town (212) 677-0368V, www.
& Village Synagogue
tandv.org, or email Bram
in Manhattan holds at bramweiser@usa.net.
an ASL-interpreted
Shabbat service, with
Book club in Paramus:
Sandy Jonas discusses
Mark T. Sullivan’s
“Beneath a Scarlet
Sky” at the JCC of
Paramus/Congregation
Beth Tikvah, 10 a.m.
Refreshments. East
304 Midland Ave.
(201) 262-7691.
Mitzvah planning/
party showcase
in Park Ridge: The
Jewish Federation of
Northern New Jersey
and the JCC of Northern
New Jersey offer a
workshop, “Making Stephanie Z. Bonder Michael Cohen Jill Tekel
Bar/Bat Mitzvahs More
Meaningful,” at the Park
Ridge Marriott, 11 a.m., Hadassah event to focus on Zionism
followed by a party
Hadassah Northern New Jersey presents Federation of Northern New Jersey’s
showcase, Celebrate!,
there, noon-4 p.m. a panel, “Is Zionism a Dirty Word?” with Paramus office. Jill Tekel, the vice presi-
The bar/bat mitzvah
Michael Cohen, the eastern regional dent of Hadassah’s northern New Jersey
planning program is
presented by Mitzvah director of the Simon Wiesenthal Cen- region, will moderate the discussion.
ter, and Stephanie Z. Bonder, a past team The panel is at 50 Eisenhower Drive in
Market. Participants get
free and early access leader of Hadassah’s national advocacy Paramus. It is free but reservations are
to the Mitzvah Expo.
department. It’s set for Sunday, Janu- required by January 20; email Gblack@
300 Brae Boulevard.
Sign up at JFNNJ. ary 27, at 10 a.m. and will be at Jewish Hadassah.org.
org/mitzvahprogram
or (201) 470-6268 or
CelebrateShowcase.com.

Tu B’Shevat in Fair
Lawn: Bris Avrohom
hosts a women’s evening
celebrating Tu B’Shvat
with a discussion about
the holiday’s mystical
meaning and practical
life lessons, 8 p.m. Exotic
fruits and wines served.
30-02 Fair Lawn Ave.
(201) 791-7200 or www.
jewishfairlawn.org.
Wednesday
JANUARY 23
International Holocaust
Remembrance Day
commemoration: A
Rockland community-
in Montebello: The
Montebello Jewish
Center offers a talk, “Tax
Talk A — Z. Confused
about the new tax law?”
7:30 p.m. 34 Montebello
Road, Montebello, N.Y.
(845) 357-2430 or www.
montebellojc.org.
Friday
JANUARY 25
Women’s study group
in Closter: Rabbi David-
Seth Kirshner leads a
study group at Temple
Emanu-El of Closter,
10:30 am. 180 Piermont
Ave. (201) 750-9997.
Monday
JANUARY 28
Music in Tenafly: The
Thurnauer School of
Music at the Kaplen
JCC on the Palisades
presents the String
Camerata winter concert,
6 p.m. 411 E. Clinton Ave.
(201) 408-1465.
Tuesday
JANUARY 29
Blood drive in Teaneck:
Holy Name Medical
Center holds a blood
drive with New Jersey
Black Box has new show
Black Box Studios and the Black Box 24 to February 10. The theater is at 200
Performing Arts Center present “Signifi- Walraven Drive in Teaneck. For infor-
cant Other” by Joshua Harmon, writer of mation, go to www.BlackBoxPac.com or
“Bad Jews.” The show runs from January call (201) 357-2221.
Illusion
in Englewood
The Bergen Performing Arts
Center presents “The Illusion-
ists Live From Broadway” on
Wednesday, May 8, at 8 p.m.
Audiences will witness stun-
COURTESY BERGENPAC

wide event, “Legacies
of Defiance,” with
members of the Bielski
family, is at the New City
Jewish Center, 7 p.m.
International Holocaust
Remembrance Day
commemorates the
liberation of Auschwitz-
Birkenau. 47 Old
Schoolhouse Road.
(845) 638-9600 or www.
newcityjc.org.
Shabbat in New City:
Temple Beth Sholom
will host members
and the choir of the
Berea Seventh-Day
Adventist Church at a
special MLK Shabbat
service, 7:30 p.m. 228
New Hempstead Road.
(845) 638-0770 or www.
tbsrockland.org.
Blood Services, a ning acts of grand illusion,
division of New York
levitation, mind-reading, and
Blood Center, 1-7 p.m.
718 Teaneck Road. disappearance.
(800) 933-2566 or For information, call (201) 227-
www.nybloodcenter.org. 1030 or go to www.bergenpac.org.
Improving a structure
and lives: Brad Ruder,
president of Brad-Core,
a design, construction
and property
management company,
More than 411,000 likes
Like us on Facebook
will lead “Timely Topics
and Tasty Treats” with a
discussion, “Humanism
in Building,” for the facebook.com/jewishstandard
Bergen County section

JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 49

r Calendar

Rockland group seeks member artists Kaplen JCC registering

The Arts Council of Rockland is seeking on professional intent, quality of work, for JCC University
submissions from member artists who medium, and availability of space. All exhib- The JCC University at
live or work in Rockland County for con- ited works are subject to final approval by the Kaplen JCC on the
sideration in one of three gallery spaces the Arts Council of Rockland; the Office Palisades is accept-
— ACOR Members’ Gallery at Garner Arts of the Rockland County Commissioner of ing enrollment for the
Center, Hidden Treasures Galleries, and Jurors also has to approve work to be dis- three-session winter
the Rockland County Courthouse. played in the courthouse. term. Top professors
Proposals will be reviewed and selected For more information, email Cheryl Baun and experts will dis-
by the ACOR Gallery Committee based at cheryl@artscouncilofrockland.org. cuss topics including
science, literature,
film, economics, psy-
chology, architecture,
and politics, creating
Learn Hebrew in Woodcliff Lake an engaging platform
where people can lis-
The winter semester of Read Hebrew America! at Temple ten and discover, ask Jamie Bernstein  COURTESY JCCOTP

Emanuel of the Pascack Valley in Woodcliff Lake begins questions, get answers,
Sunday, January 20, at 10:15 p.m. Deborah Barcan will lead meet people, and make friends. JCC U
the 10-session class that runs through April 7. takes place on Thursdays with coffee
To register, email Rabbikniaz@tepv.org. and conversation, beginning at 10:30
a.m. Morning presentations run from
10:45 a.m. until noon. Participants buy
or bring lunch to eat during the break;
Deborah Barcan the afternoon presentation is from 12:45
to 2 p.m.
On January 24, the morning topic
will be “What the Holocaust Can Teach
Us about Ethics,” led by Professor Tho-
s rin Tritter. The second session features
- Jamie Bernstein, Leonard Bernstein’s
y daughter, who will give a rare look at her Joys and Challenges of Being a Grandpar-
father on the centennial of his birth. She ent Today,” for the second session.
n will discuss her recent book, “Famous
e Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up
@ Bernstein.” The class is co-sponsored
with the James H. Grossmann Memorial
Jewish Book Month Endowment Fund.
On February 7, SUNY Distinguished
Teaching Professor Tom Grunfeld will
discuss “U.S./China Relations Today.”
The afternoon session is led by Janine
DeFeo, a Whitney Museum teaching fel-
low, who will introduce the Whitney’s
current exhibit, “Andy Warhol: From A
to B and Back Again.”
On February 21, Columbia professor
Sharon Marcus will discuss “The Drama
of Celebrity.” Former editor and author
Jane Isay will discuss her book “Uncon-
ditional Love: A Guide to Navigating the
The first 10 participants to register
for the full JCC U series will receive a
free copy of Jamie Bernstein’s book. For
more information, go to jccotp.org/jccu
or call Kathy Graff at (201) 408-1454.

Make the bar and bat mitzvah

experience more meaningful
The Jewish Federation of Northern New
Jersey and the JCC of Northern New Jer-
sey (formerly the YJCC) host “Engage in
Social Change — Making Bar/Bat Mitz-
vahs More Meaningful,” a free mitzvah
planning workshop with Mitzvah Market
on January 27 at the Park Ridge Marriott.
The workshop will guide participants
through community service project
ideas and highlight additional oppor-
tunities for giving back as part of their
celebration. Examples of ways to give
COURTESY BERGENPAC
the project to you is a key part of a bat
or bar mitzvah. It represents something
that you care about and that you want
to fix in the world,” says Emma Goshin,
who became a bat mitzvah in 2015 at the
Glen Rock Jewish Center.
After the 11 a.m. workshop, partici-
pants will receive free access to the Mitz-
vah Market Showcase, where more than
50 celebration vendors, as well as Mitz-
vah Project organizations, will display
their offerings. The showcase runs from

back include through invitations, party noon to 4 p.m. Participants can pre-reg-
favors, and even table centerpieces. ister online at www.jfnnj.org/mitzvah-
“It is important to find something that program or by calling (201) 470-6268.
you are passionate about. Connecting

Announce your events

We welcome announcements of upcoming events. Announcements are free.
Accompanying photos must be high resolution, jpg files. Send announce-
ments 2 to 3 weeks in advance. Not every release will be published. Include a
daytime telephone number and send to:
pr@jewishmediagroup.com • 201-837-8818 x 110

9 50 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019

 The Frazzled Housewife
Security measures
S
ometime in the late ’70s, I
seem to recall, there was a
rash of bicycle burglaries in my
neighborhood.
Apparently Schwinn three-speed bikes
were in high demand, and the thieves
would look into the garage windows of
unsuspecting, innocent suburbanites to
survey the goods. In the middle of the
night, under the cover of darkness, the
two-wheeled modes of transportation
would mysteriously disappear.
The community was in an uproar.
What were parents supposed to do to
protect their precious children’s bicy-
cles? It was time to take out the black
paint. Yes, that was the
answer. Everyone started
painting their garage door
windows black. That way,
no one could see into the
garage. Back then, this
was the high-tech secu-
rity protocol. If the crimi-
nals couldn’t see into your
garage, they didn’t know
what you had, and then Banji
they couldn’t steal it. It Ganchrow
was genius, and it actually
worked for a while.
I recall when we had a complete alarm
system installed in the house. There was
foil on the windows, motion sensors,
panic buttons hidden in secret locations.
Doors and windows were in different
zones. We were Fort Knox. No one was
breaking in. Of course, we had no idea
how to work the system and I have fond
memories of being sent downstairs to
slam the back door closed and see if the
window sensors were closed. Yes, that
was fun. You couldn’t turn the alarm
on until everything checked out and
if someone forgot they opened a win-
dow, it could take an hour to figure out
which window. Yes, those were truly joy-
ous memories. And then there was the
recurring nightmare of someone break-
ing into my house and me pressing the
panic button and nothing happening. No
one came, even though I kept pressing it.
I still have that nightmare. Oh well.
So what about security these days? I
often find it funny that when I walk at
night, I can always tell who is on vacation
and who is home. And of those folks on
vacation, I can tell who is cheap and who
doesn’t mind spending a little bit extra
on electricity. You see, some houses are
dark. Pitch dark. Not even an outside
light is on. And some houses are lit to the
gills. Every single light is on. Every single have the code.
I often find it funny that
when I walk at night, I can
always tell who is on vacation
and who is home.
Kosher“ACrossword
OK” BY YONI GLATT
KOSHERCROSSWORDS@GMAIL.COM
DIFFICULTY LEVEL: MEDIUM
one. Husband #1 would have a stroke if
he saw that. But then, come 11 p.m., all
lights are off. Apparently, everyone goes
to sleep at 11 p.m.
But now there is a new security instru-
ment in town. I am not sure what it is
called, but we will call it the fancy door-
bell. I first encountered this fancy door-
bell when I had to drop something off at
someone’s house down the block. I ring
the doorbell, and all of a sudden I hear
the home owner talking to me — but he is
on his phone, watching me look all over
the place trying to find exactly where his
voice is coming from. This fancy doorbell
enables you to see from your phone or
computer (I am assuming
you can see this from your
computer as well) who is at
your door, who is walking
in front of your house, in
back of your house, on the
side of your house. It really
is incredible.
A few months ago we
were sitting at a pool with
a couple who was watching
their meat being delivered
to their doorstep on their
phone and they were tell-
Across Down
ing the delivery guys where to leave it,
1. Study spot 1. 1944 Chemistry Nobelist Otto
all while having the delivery guys believe
5. Basic rhyme scheme 2. Last month, perhaps
they were inside their house and they 9. ___ B’Tevet 3. Chocolate ___ cake
just couldn’t come to the door. 14. Entry-level prosecutors: Abbr. 4. Dangerous trip letters
Pretty cool, huh? 15. Journalist Logan 5. What the impatient don’t have
And that brings us to last week. I was 16. “Casa” components 6. Eponymous parsha
17. Closing ceremony 7. Liquor of Mideast
delivering a baby present to, well, a baby,
19. Drive option 8. ‘Phooey!’
and I rang the bell. While I was standing 20. Heston’s org. 9. Simile for weight words
on the porch I was looking around, trying 21. A neighbor of Minn. 10. Hayak on the screen, and others
to get the present out of the bag, probably 22. Pulitzer-winner Shepard 11. Words with mode
talking to myself like I usually do, and just 23. Rabbinic ruling 12. “Batman” villain ___ al Ghul
24. Actress Lyonne 13. Dip for an evening in Av
minding my own business. No one came
28. Alter, as a pet 18. Syrian big shot
to the door so I left the gift in the door. 29. Some Ethiopians 22. “Saucy” dance?
As I walked away from the house, I 30. “Pick ___” (trick phrase) 23. Some fantasy football leagues, for
texted my friend to make sure I had the 32. Cow chow short
right house. And her text back said, “Oh 33. Big name in home security systems 24. Indian breads
34. Chips option 25. Head covering option: Var.
yes, so and so just saw you leave the gift
35. Honey Boo Boo’s real name 26. Negative, verbal contraction
at the door.” They had the fancy doorbell 36. Mimicking bird 27. “I think I need ___ of execution”
and I didn’t even notice it! And if he had 37. Palindromic ruler (Aerosmith lyric)
it, why didn’t he tell me that he wasn’t 38. They might make G-d laugh 28. Request during a throat culture
home? I don’t know. All I do know, is 39. Ragged and worn 29. Gregor was his most famous character
40. Excessive sentimentality 30. As ___ resort
that I would make a very bad criminal if
42. A Reiner 31. “Envious” assassin of Caesar
I didn’t even notice the fancy doorbell. 43. ___ HaMishpacha 32. Kosher (or this guy)
Guess I should just stick to housework 44. Like venison 35. Calm
and writing…. 45. Wily 36. Rare name for a Jewish girl
46. Lipinski of note 38. Compound wagers
47. Theater option 39. A daughter of David
Banji Ganchrow of Teaneck feels very
50. Capital of Yemen 41. Elevated Israeli tourist site
safe; she knows that every one of son #2’s 53. Summer option for many a Jewish 42. Kind of tunnel?
friends has the security code to her house youth 44. Notable Nasser
because they used to set off the alarm so 55. He’s treated like a god in 46. Bite-size Spanish appetizer
often that it was just easier for them to Massachusetts 47. Biblical measurement
56. Org. that could give a G 48. Poet Angelou
57. “I ___ Little Prayer” (1967 hit) 49. Shmooze
58. Homeric works 50. Henderson’s forte, for short
59. Like Saul 51. Legendary Notre Dame coach
60. “Cool”, in somewhat dated slang Parseghian
52. Kvetch
The solution to last week’s puzzle is
on page 55.
53. TV channel based in Nashville
54. African cobra
JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 51
Arts & Culture/Jewish World

Steinsaltz
FROM PAGE 47
for bringing the Passover sacrifice, despite the fact that the
term seems to mean “twilight.”
b. Exodus 22:6-12 discusses the cases of two types of
guardians, one who guards money or articles, the other ani-
mals. According to the plain sense, this distinction explains
why the former is not liable for theft and the latter is. How-
ever, the commentary says that this is not the determining fac-
tor; rather, the Sages taught that in the former case the bailee
is an unpaid guardian, and in the latter, he is paid — although
this is said nowhere in the text.
In both of these examples, the stance of the commentary
is nearly identical to Artscroll — although it must be said that
the presentation of the Steinsaltz Humash in both cases is far
more nuanced and helpful.
4. Even in the realm of narrative peshat, the commentary
is far from edgy. The boldest interpretations of Rashbam
and Ibn Ezra, for example, are not represented.
All of this is, no doubt, by design. As the Introduction
tells us, the Chumash “does not aspire to be revolution-
ary or novel.”
And yet, there’s something extremely untraditional
about this Chumash.
Much like in Rashi and Rashbam’s day, today’s popular
understanding of the Torah, maintained and reinforced by
the weekly reading, is filtered through a midrashic lens. Our
two main sources are “parsha sheets” of divrei Torah distrib-
uted in synagogues and online, and the Artscroll Chumash.
The former aim to inspire the reader. The latter offers almost
exclusively midrashic interpretations of the text, sprinkled
with Mussar and mystical-spiritual ideas.
Consider the following contrast between the Artscroll
Chumash and the Steinsaltz Humash.
In Genesis 28:11, the Torah describes the fleeing Jacob’s
preparing to spend the night at a certain place by taking from
among the local stones and placing it/them under his head.
Artscroll follows the Sages’ and Rashi’s understanding of this
verse: Jacob took several stones, but they began to compete
for the privilege of supporting his saintly head — whereupon
God combined them into one. Hence a later verse that men-
tions “the stone” Jacob had put under his head makes per-
fect sense. Artscroll then goes on to preach 1. a moral lesson
about how humans should strive for the honor of serving a
great person 2. the value of unique individuals — here the 12
tribes, represented by the stones — uniting as a single nation.
All this is worth thinking about, but ignores the common-
sense question: who on Earth uses a stone as a pillow?
Asked of the wrong yeshiva elementary school teacher
or in the wrong school, that question could get a student
kicked out of class. To raise doubts about the patriarch
Jacob’s choice of camping equipment is asking for trouble.
But this is just the type of question for which the Stein-
saltz Humash has an answer. Along with an illustration of an
ancient Mesopotamian carved stone pillow (more of a con-
cave headrest), it explains, “There is evidence of the prac-
tice of resting one’s head on a hard pillow, made from wood
or similar materials, among the ancient Egyptians, Babylo-
nians, and Chinese, as well as other nations.”
There is something refreshingly new and untraditional
about this. Jews have lived with much of the real world of
the Torah unexplained for so long, we seem to have made a
virtue of it. The cryptic and mysterious is somehow holier.
Harnessing “the plain sense meanings that emerge daily,”
Rabbi Steinsaltz has cautiously removed the veil concealing
the Torah and uncovered the unadorned Divine Face of the
text. It is perhaps different than we imagined. But at least
now, we can finally see it for ourselves.
Having achieved its modest goal — and then some —
the Steinsaltz Humash deserves a place on your and your
shul’s shelf next to the ArtScroll. (Who knows? It may
even edge it out.)

5 Jewish things to know about Kamala Harris

RON KAMPEAS
WASHINGTON— Kamala Harris, the
junior senator from California, reportedly
is set to announce her bid for the Demo-
cratic presidential nod.
Harris, 54, is a progressive on most
issues who draws some ire from the left for
her tough-on-crime posture when she was
California’s attorney general. She pleased
Democratic hearts, meanwhile, with her
tough treatment of President Donald
Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee,
Brett Kavanaugh, during his Senate confir-
mation last year.
The daughter of a mother who immi-
grated from India and a father who immi-
grated from Jamaica, Harris has some Jew-
ish nuggets in her history.
She smashed a glass at her wedding
She met her Jewish husband, Doug-
las Emhoff, on a blind date in San Fran-
cisco, arranged by friends. They married
in 2014 — Harris’ sister Maya officiated —
and smashed a glass to honor Emhoff ’s
upbringing. It was her first marriage and
his second — Emhoff has two children
from his first marriage.
You thought Jews can be parochial?
“Most eligible Indian American bachelor-
ette marries fellow lawyer” is how one
Indian American media outlet reported
the story.
Emhoff took the Washington, D.C. bar
exam in 2017 so he could work in the same
city.
Emhoff’s Twitter feed is pretty much “I
love my wife” all the time (take that, Kel-
lyanne and George Conway).
She did the blue box thing
“So having grown up in the Bay Area,
I fondly remember those Jewish national
fund boxes that we would use to collect
donations to plant trees for Israel,” she
said at the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee in 2017. “Years later when I vis-
ited Israel for the first time, I saw the fruits
of that effort and the Israeli ingenuity that
has truly made a desert bloom.”
No mention why Harris was a blue box
girl growing up — and Google was no help.
JTA has put a query into her office.
She’s more AIPAC than J Street
Since being elected in 2016, Harris has
spoken twice at the annual policy confer-
ence of the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee. Her 2018 speech, with the Cal-
ifornia delegation, was off the record (itself
not unusual, although critics of Israel were
unnerved), but she gave a good picture of
where she stands in her 2017 speech. Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol
She’s for two states — so is AIPAC, Hill on Nov. 13, 2018. She is likely to run for president. CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES
although, sometimes less than emphati-
cally — but she doesn’t believe in big-foot- She supported the Iran nuclear deal, attorney general. (Harris reported that in
ing either side. although she was not a senator in 2015 2012 anti-Jewish hate crimes were the most
“I believe that a resolution to this con- when Congress voted on it, and is on the commonplace religion-based hate crime.)
flict cannot be imposed,” she said. “It must record opposing the Boycott, Divestment One of her first successful Senate actions
be agreed upon by the parties themselves.” and Sanctions movement targeting Israel. was to get passed a non-binding Senate
More than half of the Democratic cau- Harris also digs Israel’s Supreme Court resolution that named religious institu-
cus in the Senate gets the endorsement of building. tions as possible targets of hate crimes,
J Street, the Jewish liberal lobbying group “The beauty of the architecture and and urged better hate crime reporting, a
that believes pressure is necessary to start spirit of design left a lasting impression — key demand of Jewish civil rights groups
peace talks. J Street did not endorse Har- the straight lines in the building represent over the years.
ris. Her only association with the group the immutable nature of truth, while the Her big sisters are Jewish
was in November 2017, when she was one curved glass and walls were built to rep- Well, in political terms, anyway. In Octo-
of 17 local and federal politicians on the resent the fluid nature of finding justice,” ber 2016, she got key endorsements from
host committee (i.e., “yes you can stick she told the J. The Jewish News of North- the state’s two Jewish senators — Barbara
my name on the invitation”) of a party ern California in 2016. “The Court, like Boxer, who was retiring and whom Harris
thrown by J Street’s Los Angeles chapter. Israel, is a beautiful home to democracy would replace, and Dianne Feinstein, the
She also met a year ago in her office with and justice in a region where radicalism state’s senior senator. This was important
the group’s director, Jeremy Ben-Ami. and authoritarianism all too often shape because in California’s “jungle primary”
Harris also co-sponsored a Senate resolu- government.” system the two top vote-getters in the pri-
tion in early 2017 that essentially rebuked She’s big on tackling hate crimes maries get on the November ballot even if
the Obama administration for allowing Harris created a hate crimes unit as San they are of the same party. Harris was facing
through a U.S. Security Council resolution Francisco District Attorney and made hate a popular Democrat, Rep. Loretta Sanchez,
condemning Israel’s settlement policies. crimes a focus of her work as the state’s in the general election. JTA WIRE SERVICE

52 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019


Irwin Hirshoren
Irwin Percelay Hirshoren, 86, of Oakland, died
January 8.
A Weequahic High School in Newark gradaute, he
worked in the clothing industry.
He is survived by his wife, Harriet, née Butterfass; a
son, Michael (Marissa); sister, Merle Chinich; and two
grandchildren.
Arrangements were by Robert Schoem’s Menorah
Chapel, Paramus.
Beverly Klotz
Beverly Klotz, née Greenberg, formerly of Teaneck,
died January 4.
Predeceased by her husband, Leonard, and a son,
Stephen; she is survived by children, Jeffrey (Phyllis),
and Nancy Feldman (Barry); twin sister, Eunice Klotz;
brother-in-law, Irving Klotz; and nephews and their
families.
Donations can be made to the Humane Society
or City Meals on Wheels. Arrangements were by
Gutterman and Musicant Jewish Funeral Directors.
Dr. Howie Ritt
Howie Ritt, 67, of Manchester, formerly of Fair Lawn,
died January 10.
A Penn State University and the University of
Pennsylvania dental school graduate, he was a dentist
in Fair Lawn for 39 years.
He is survived by his wife, Patty; sons, Jake (Marissa)
and Marc (Aimee); sister, Janet Chocky; and a
grandson.
Arrangements were by Robert Schoem’s Menorah
Chapel, Paramus.
Dr. Samuel A. Cassell
Retired internist who helped found a
free healthcare center for uninsured,
working poor in Bergen County, NJ,
died peacefully on January 7, 2019, in
Wyckoff, NJ after a 16 month battle
with glioblastoma. He was 87. Born
and raised in New York City, he went to
Brooklyn Tech High School, received
a BA from Cornell University and an
MD from Albany Medical College.
After a residency in Internal Medicine
at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, he married
Carol Margaretten and joined Barnert Hospital and
a private practice, in Paterson. In 1975 he trained
in Fiberoptic Bronchoscopy at Mt. Sinai Hospital
and was a leader in the application of fiber optics
in pulmonary medicine in Passaic and Bergen
Counties. He served as Chief of Staff and Chairman
of the Dept of Medicine at Barnert Hospital, and
as President of the Passaic County Chapter of the
American Heart Association. He was a longtime
clinical instructor at UMDNJ. After retiring from
40 years in private practice and as an attending
physician at Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, Cassell
joined a medical mission to Haiti that enlightened
him to the idea of how medical volunteers could
address the needs of the uninsured, working
class. In 2004, he amassed a collective of doctors,
representatives of local community service agencies,
and local hospitals, and founded a nonprofit
— Paid Obituary —
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Donations can be sent to the Jewish Center of
Teaneck. Arrangements were by Louis Suburban
Chapel, Fair Lawn.
Louise Wexler
Louise Wexler, née Weissman, 82, of Norwood,
formerly of Teaneck, died January 3.
Predeceased by her husband Herbert, she is survived
by children, Randi Wexler (Malcolm Campbell) of
Funeral Planning Simplified
Oregon, and Robert (Amy) of Woodcliff Lake; four BergenJewishChapel.com
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Donations may be made to Beth Am Temple, Pearl 201.261.2900 | 789 Teaneck Road, Teaneck, NJ 07666
River, NY. Arrangements were by Robert Schoem’s
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Obituaries are prepared with
information provided by funeral homes.
Correcting errors is the responsibility of the
funeral home.
organization based on the model Volunteers
in Medicine, a national organization of
free clinics. In December 2009, his vision
came to realization when Bergen Volunteer
Medical Initiative opened in Hackensack.
In 2013 he was recognized at the New
Jersey Governor’s Jefferson Awards for
Public Service for extraordinary service to
his community. In 2014 he was presented
We continue to be Jewish family managed,
with the Jack B. McConnell, MD Award for knowing that caring people provide caring service.
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grandchildren Benjamin and Emily Kopchains,
Frances and Oona Cassell, and many loving cousins,
nieces, nephews and family. Services were on
January 11 at Barnert Temple, Franklin Lakes, NJ.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to BVMI. www.thejewishstandard.com
JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 53
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 Classified

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Jewish standard JanUarY 18, 2019 55
Jewish World

Ryan Braun will pass Hank Greenberg

as the all-time Jewish home run leader
This Jewish fan isn’t excited
SCOTT BARANCIK

B
arring injury, Ryan Braun should surpass Hank
Greenberg this season as baseball’s all-time Jew-
ish home run hitter. The 35-year-old outfielder
and longtime Milwaukee Brewer needs just 10
homers to break the late Detroit Tiger icon’s total of 331.
So, Jewish baseball fans, how do you feel about that?
Chances are — not so good.
Braun never has been a galvanizing force among mem-
bers of the tribe. No accomplishment — not being named
Rookie of the Year in 2007 or being voted the National
League’s Most Valuable Player in 2011 — has earned him
the sort of reverence reserved for Greenberg, a 1956 Hall
of Fame inductee. (Both, however, were nicknamed “The
Hebrew Hammer,” although Greenberg also was known as
“Hammerin’ Hank.”)
And that was before Braun, the son of an Israeli father,
was suspended for 65 games in 2013 for using perfor-
mance-enhancing drugs and then lying about it.
Braun ruined his reputation among his fellow players as
well after he lobbied for their support by calling the man

HARRY HOW/GETTY IMAGES

who collected his drug test urine sample an anti-Semite.
Since then, a number of readers of my website, Jewish
Baseball News, have requested a moratorium on Braun
news. “So embarrassed that
Braun is Jewish,” one wrote
on the site’s Facebook page
last year. “He is a total bum.”
By contrast, Greenberg, Ryan Braun looks before Game 5 of the 2018 National League Championship Series
who died in 1986 at 75, against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium on Oct. 17, 2018.
earned his celestial reputa-
tion by being a true mensch. seasons in the military, at the cost Of course, asterisks could sit next to any of those
He embraced Judaism and of untold statistical achievements achievements, even though he wasn’t suspended until
the Jewish community in and awards. If there’s anyone who 2013, seven years into his career.
ways that Braun never has, should have an asterisk after his Along the way, the California native was identified as
and became a Jewish sports career achievements (something Jewish, and he expressed pride in that — but he also was
icon — and important 20th- fans and writers have suggested quick to admit that he was never too connected to that
century Jewish historical fig- for steroid users like Barry Bonds culture.
ure — in the process. and Roger Clemens), it’s Hank “I am Jewish. It’s something I’m really proud of,” he told
In 1934, amid rising anti- Greenberg — not for his sins but USA Today in 2010. “But I don’t want to make it into some-
MLB PHOTOS VIA GETTY IMAGES

Semitism as well as a rare for his sacrifices. thing more than what it is. I didn’t have a bar mitzvah … I
Tigers pennant drive, Green- The Bronx-raised player, who didn’t celebrate the holidays. It’s a touchy subject because
berg sat out a late-season finished his career with the Pitts- I don’t want to offend anybody, and I don’t want groups
game against the New York burgh Pirates, spoke fondly about claiming me now because I’m having success.”
Yankees to observe Yom Kip- his Jewish identity, too: In his post- Of course, Braun and Greenberg’s legacies were shaped
pur at a Detroit synagogue humously published autobiogra- as well by the different circumstances under which they
(well before Sandy Koufax phy, he famously wrote that “as played. Greenberg played in an era when Jewish immi-
did the same in the 1965 time went by, I came to feel that grants and their children were looking for a hero to coun-
World Series). Hank Greenberg, shown in 1930, played most if I, as a Jew, hit a home run, I was ter anti-Semitism both here and back in Europe. Today’s
In 1938, the New York of his career for the Detroit Tigers. hitting one against Hitler.” Jewish fans turn to Jewish ballplayers out of ethnic affec-
native delivered one of the “I just want to lead my life and tion, not any deep emotional or psychological need.
most transcendent seasons in major-league history, hitting set the example of being a good citizen, live by the Ten Still, until his steroid-driven slide, Braun was as promi-
58 home runs, nearly equaling the single-season record Commandments,” he also said in a 1980 interview. “If that nent a Jewish sports icon as there was, in any professional
then held by the legendary Babe Ruth. sets a good example, I think that’s fine.” league. His fall from grace hurt a little more than usual for
In 1941, at the height of his career — he had just won his On paper, Braun’s stats deserve respect. His rookie sea- many Jewish fans.
second MVP award and led the Tigers to the World Series son showed unusual promise: The first-round draft pick Jews tend to embrace a star who brings credit to the
— Greenberg became one of the first major leaguers to join hit for a .324 average, pounded 34 home runs in just 113 tribe, but they can be fickle: rejecting a celebrity who
the Army. When men his age were honorably discharged, games, and led the National League with a .634 slugging either betrays their love or refuses to love them back.
he re-enlisted. percentage. He has gone on to be a six-time All Star, five- Braun did a little bit of both. JTA WIRE SERVICE

“If there’s any last message to be given to the public,” he time Silver Slugger winner (the best offensive player at a
told the Sporting News at the time, “let it be that I’m going specific position in a given year, as voted by the league’s The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of
to be a good soldier.” coaches and managers) and the Brewers’ all-time fran- the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or
Greenberg would end up spending nearly four full chise home run leader. its parent company, 70 Faces Media.

56 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019

  Real Estate & Business

Kosher pantry opens at Kessler Institute in Saddle Brook

B
ikur Cholim Bergen County
is excited to announce the
establishment of a kosher
pantry at the Kessler Insti-
tute for Rehabilitation located in
Saddle Brook, one of its four hospital
campuses. Kessler Institute for Reha-
bilitation is one of the most recognized
and respected hospitals of its kind in
the U.S. and around the world. It is one
of the nation’s largest inpatient reha-
bilitation hospitals treating more than
6,000 patients each year and is the
highest ranking rehabilitation hospital
in the tri-state area and the only such
hospital of its kind in New Jersey.
Kessler’s physicians, therapists,
rehabilitation nurses and other clini-
cal staff are involved in leading-edge
research that is translated into clinical
practice. The professional staff have
been extremely eager and coopera-
tive in seeing this project take shape
and in helping to get it off the ground.
The pantry has a full-size refrigera-
tor and a locked cabinet containing
a microwave for kosher use. Fran
Weinberg of Teaneck and Chaya
Adler of Bergenfield, BCBC’s coor-
dinators at Kessler, have stocked the
pantry with comfort foods, snacks,
drinks, Shabbos packages and meals,
and sefarim. These items will always
be available to family members while
spending time with their loved ones
during their stay at Kessler.
Margarita L aw ton, RN, clini-
cal nutrition manager will serve
as BCBC/Kessler liaison and work
closely with the BCBC to keep them
up to date as to the needs of any
family members of an incoming
patient designating themselves as
kosher. Upon arrival, these patients
will be informed of Bikur Cholim’s
services, not only on site, but also
of the availability of beautifully fur-
nished apartments located just a few
miles away. If there are “out of town”
family members in need of a place
to stay, arrangements can be made
through Bikur Cholim Bergen Coun-
ty’s hospitality coordinator, Lydia
(call the Bikur Cholim hotline at 201-
579-3066 for more contact info).
Kessler’s medical director and
chief qualit y officer, Dr. Bruce
Pomeranz, says that “the support
provided by Bikur Cholim permits
our patients and their families to
focus on healing and their rehabili-
tation. We are most appreciative for
our relationship with this dedicated
organization.”
To see a complete description of its
services, to volunteer, or to donate to
Bikur Cholim Bergen County, please
visit www.bikurcholimbergencounty.
org or call 201-579-3066.

How Israel swims against OPEN HOUSES

tide of worldwide water crisis SUNDAY, JANUARY 20
t TEANECK t
A visit to the country’s largest desalination and wastewater-treatment
plants reveals smart technologies and policies to keep the water running

ISRAEL21C STAFF households, industry and agriculture.

Israel has solved its water crisis! That’s a typical headline
about Israel’s world-leading smart water management and
advanced water technology.
As I sipped freshly desalinated Mediterranean water at
the world’s largest seawater desalination plant, the bril-
liance of Israel’s many-pronged approach was as clear as
the H2O in my paper cup.
But if residents, farmers and tourists in the Holy Land
never worry about the tap running dry, that’s only because
Israel invests huge amounts of money and brainpower to
stay one step ahead of a worsening worldwide water crisis.
Five years into a severe drought, it’s more accurate to
say that Israel is constantly inventing and implement-
ing practical solutions to a problem that is not entirely
solvable.
“It is a never-ending story,” says Yossi Yaacoby, chief of
staff to the CEO of Mekorot, Israel’s national water carrier.
Yaacoby formerly headed WaTech, Mekorot’s innovation
arm.
Due to climate change, he explains, Israel’s October-to-
March rainy season has been reduced to a handful of tor-
rentially rainy days, causing most of the precious liquid to
be lost to runoff. The North’s waterways are no longer an
abundant trickle-down source for much of the country;
the Sea of Galilee is approaching its lowest-ever level.
“This is why we can’t depend on rain. Even in winter we
need to irrigate. And it’s not only in Israel; it is happening
everywhere,” says Yaacoby.
Since 2005, wastewater reclamation and seawater
desalination have become key in assuring an adequate
supply — 2.1 billion cubic meters annually — to Israeli
Some 31 percent of irrigation water originates from
wastewater treated at more than 150 plants. Treated
brackish water (not as salty as seawater) is supplied from
45 plants for both agricultural and non-agricultural needs.
Sixty to 80 percent of Israel’s municipal water, adjusted
according to season and real-time demand, flows from
large coastal desal plants in Sorek, Ashkelon, Ashdod,
Palmachim, and Hadera.
“In 2014, we thought we had enough [desalinated
water] capacity, 600 million cubic meters, that it didn’t
matter how much [rain] God will supply in the winter,” 657 Northumberland Rd. $499,000 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM
says Yaacoby. “That was a mistake. We are lacking 100 mil- Prime W. Eglwd. Completely Renov. EF, LR/Fplc, FDR, Sky Lit rear
lion to 200 million cubic meters of water per year in Israel Great Rm/Cath Ceil. New Quartz MEIK, .5 Bath. 2nd Flr: 3 BRs +
these days.” Marble Tiled renov Bath. Tiled Recrm Bsmt/.5 Bath. C/A/C. Ent to
Gar. Secluded Back Yard. Also For Rent @ $3,700/mo
Two more desalination plants are to be completed in
the next few years. “Altogether, in 2025 we will be getting 312 Marine Ct. $387,500 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM
1.1 billion cubic meters of desalinated water,” Yaacoby says. Quiet Cul-de-sac. Glenpointe Area. Move-in Cond. 4 BR, 2 Bath
Cape. Polished Oak Flrs. LR open to DR, MEIK, Huge Bsmt. C/A/C.
Sorek, world’s largest desal plant Rm to Expand.
Operational since 2013, Sorek is the largest seawater ALL CLOSE TO NY BUS / HOUSES OF WORSHIP /
reverse osmosis desalination plant in the world. It is oper-
HIGHWAYS / SHOPS / SCHOOLS
ated for the government by water-treatment pioneer IDE Download Russo Real Estate's
Technologies, established in 1965 by Technion-trained mobile real estate app to get FREE access
scientists.
to all local listings from your smartphone or tablet.
http://app.russorealestate.com/
IDE is now a multinational company with 400 desal
and wastewater treatment installations in more than 40 or scan QR code on your
smartphone or tablet
countries.
The highly automated Sorek plant covers 100,000 For Our Full Inventory including
square meters and can produce 624,000 cubic meters of Details & Pictures, Visit our Website
water daily — 20 percent of domestic water consumption. www.RussoRealEstate.com
Mekorot distributes the desalinated, quality-tested
SEE WATER PAGE 58 (201) 837-8800
JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 57
Real Estate & Business

Water IDE developed proprietary technolo-
FROM PAGE 57 gies to minimize costs and environmental
water (after essential minerals have been re- impact, says Boris Liberman, CTO and VP
added) to 57 municipal water utilities through- of Membrane Technology.
out Israel. From Sorek, it costs about 55 cents Desalination normally uses chemicals,
per cubic meter; somewhat more from the which present an environmental problem
other four plants. when the brine is discharged back to the
By comparison, it costs 10 cents to get a sea. IDE uses chemical-free biological and
cubic meter of freshwater from Israel’s natu- physical processes customized for each
ral sources – whose supply is fast declining. In installation.
some other countries, desalinated water costs “We use biological filters to remove
as much as $3 per cubic meter. bacteria, silt, algae, and other suspended
solids. We don’t kill anything, even bac-
reclaimed water, which Yaacoby says is
teria,” says Liberman.
close to drinking quality, is pumped to
To avoid harming the little fish and
Negev farms for irrigation.
fish eggs that pass through the screens
“ S h a fd a n u s e s b i o l o g i c a l a n d
on the intake pipes bringing in 40,000
mechanical means to treat all sew-
age effluent from the Dan (Greater Tel
cubic meters of seawater per hour, IDE
Aviv) region, home to approximately
is developing “nursery” tanks where
250,000 to 300,000 people,” Yaacoby
the creatures are harbored until they
explains during a tour of the plant, one
choose to swim back to their habitat
of the most advanced of its kind in the
via rotating doors.
world.
As for the plant’s effect on the Med-
iterranean, “What we pump back
Shafdan, established in 1955, receives
into the sea is twice as saline and one
470,000 cubic meters of raw sew-
age daily. Reclaiming the water from
degree warmer than seawater,” says

J J
this sewage supplies 140 million cubic
Liberman. “We use diffusers to spread

immy Jim
im
meters to Israeli farms annually just
it widely. We don’t believe it negatively
from this one facility.
affects marine life.”
Like desalination, wastewater recla-
Desalinating about 500 liters requires
mation is energy-intensive. (Mekorot is
1.5 kilowatts of electricity, similar to the

the Junk Man the

the biggest client of the Israel Electric
power consumption of a refrigerator,
Company, racking up a $200 million
Liberman says. Sorek therefore pro- the
RESIDENTIAL & COMMERCIAL RESIDEN
duces most of its water at night to avoid
bill annually, says Yaacoby.)
straining the national grid. Each plant
However, over the past two years at
has a different energy source; some
Shafdan, enough biogas has been gen-
WE CLEAN OUT: WE
Basements •Basements Attics • Garages • Fire Damage erated onsite from the anaerobically
have their own power stations.
• Att
Construction Debris • Hoarding Specialists treated sludge to provide 90% of the
Construction Wastewater reclamation facility’s energy needs.
De
WE RECYCLE “We don’t even call sludge ‘waste’ W
CALL TODAY
Covering 250 acres, Shafdan is the
CALL TODAY FOR A FREE ESTIMATE biggest wastewater treatment plant anymore because it is a resource from

201-66•1845-600-5941
- 4940 201- 6
in a country that recycles more water which to make energy, bioplastics and
201-661-4940 (85-90%) than anywhere else. The fertilizer,” Yaacoby says. ISRAEL21C.ORG
We do not transport solid or hazardous waste
We do not trans

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58 JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019

JEWISH STANDARD JANUARY 18, 2019 59
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