Arnie Eisen to Conservative rabbis: Yes we can
Neil Rubin, editor of the Baltimore Jewish Times, reports on the appearance of Arnie Eisen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, at the annual convention of Conservative rabbis – and offers plenty of his own advice:
While Conservative Judaism is in no danger of closing up shop, it must redefine and recapture its niche on the contemporary Jewish scene. Rest assured that if not inspired now, tomorrow a large percentage of the children and grandchildren of present-day Conservative Jews will be Jewish in name only.For me, chief among the concerns is that Conservative congregations — entrenched in institutional leadership and programming — are struggling to make themselves relevant to large numbers of teens, young adults and young families.
Yes, there are efforts to stem this tide, including here. And yes, some people with children find deep purpose in synagogue life. (I'm one of them.) Yet the numbers in study after study speak for themselves.
Those surveys show that what works with younger Jews is volunteerism and social action.
Rubin says Eisen is on to the problem – the JTS chancellor acknowledged that the Reform and the Orthodox are light years ahead when it comes to political activism.
"Young people, feeling at home in their country, expect to have Judaism matter here and all over the world, and they are dismayed when it does not," Eisen said. "We need to know that our community is active. We need to know that our people have maintained faith with [Judaism's] compassion and righteousness."
According to Rubin, Eisen went on to recall that many of the movement's present-day leaders were "once inspired –– and driven to meaningful debate –– by JTS' Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's passionate embrace of civil rights and the Vietnam War protests." If not for Heschel, "Many of us might not be here today."
Rubin ended his column on a hopeful note:
If Dr. Eisen can succeed –– and it will take years –– the Conservative synagogue can again be a venue of debate with integrity, which leads to action. If that does not happen, Jews will continue to be at the forefront of social causes, as they have ever since Emancipation itself began in the late 1700s. But sadly, our synagogues will have missed a wonderful opportunity.
A good start, he urged, would be to simply pick one issue and make it the cause of Conservative Judaism. With all that faces our nation, how hard should that be?
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Denominations |
Ha’aretz: Israel on the edge
Ha'aretz argues in an editorial Thursday that "restraint can no longer be seen as strength" when dealing with the continued Palestinian rocket attacks against Israel in the south.
The dozens of rockets that were fired yesterday from the Gaza Strip – one of which killed Roni Yehiah, a 47-year-old father of four – have placed the IDF on the threshold of a major raid into the Palestinian territory. Crossing this threshold is soon liable to be seen as a necessity that cannot be condemned, but it can still be prevented.Responsibility for the escalation lies entirely with the Palestinian side; in other words, the Hamas government. We can only imagine what would happen had the Palestinians launched rockets southward into Egyptian territory. We can assume that Egypt would protect its sovereignty and the welfare of its citizens with a tough response directed at the sources of the firing.
Israel is entitled to preserve its sovereignty, which is violated daily by steep-trajectory firing and occasionally by underground activity as well. Its citizens deserve protection from the Qassams. …
After the severe attack at the Tel Aviv Dolphinarium in June 2001, Ariel Sharon said that "restraint is strength." Sharon stopped thinking so nine months later, after hundreds had been killed, and after the mass murder in the Park Hotel in Netanya. It's true that in the South there have been fewer casualties, but Israel has been restraining itself for a far longer time, to the point where restraint can no longer be seen as strength.
Although the situation has worsened, a massive invasion of Gaza is not unavoidable, if outside forces can be harnessed to decree restraint on Hamas. … The decision as to whether, how and when to embark on an operation will remain in Israel's hands. We must hope that this decision will be both daring and level-headed.
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Israeli-Palestinian Conflict |
My (Israeli commando) bodyguard
The celebrity gossip Web site TMZ has a video segment on the latest wave of Jews to invade Hollywood: Israeli commandos.
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Israel-Diaspora,
Pop Culture,
Video |
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Media |
Photo of Anne Frank’s ‘true love’ surfaces
Reuters reports that a photograph of the boy with the "beautiful brown eyes" who Anne Frank described as her "one true love" is set to go on display in Amsterdam.
The photo of Peter Schiff was donated to the Anne Frank museum by his former childhood friend Ernst Michaelis who realized after rereading Anne's diary recently there were no known pictures of Schiff, a museum spokeswoman said on Tuesday.
In her famous diary, Frank wrote: "I forgot that I haven't yet told you the story of my one true love."
"Peter was the ideal boy: tall, slim and good-looking, with a serious, quiet and intelligent face," Anne wrote of the 13-year-old she had fallen for in 1940 when she was just 11.
To see the photo, click here.
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Shoah |
From skinhead to skullcap
Anshel Pfeffer has a story in Ha'aretz about Pinchads Zlotosvsky, 32, a Polish skinhead who became a fervently Orthodox Jew after learning of his Jewish roots.
The transition in Zlotosvsky's life occurred after his mother told him she comes from a Jewish family. Her parents, she said, sent her to a monastery when she was a small child so that she would survive the Holocaust.All her relatives were murdered, as far as Pinchas Zlotosvsky knows.
"I realized I was Jewish according to Judaism. I couldn't look myself in the mirror for a whole week after I found out," he recalls. After he recovered from the shock, he spent the past few years rediscovering his Jewish roots. He has also become very active with the Jewish community.
Ha'aretz caught up with Zlotosvsky at an annual conference for hidden Jews in Lodz. The newspaper reports that official figures put the number of Jews living in Poland at 4,000 – but the number of people who are Jewish according to Halacha.
The discrepancy stems from the fact that thousands of Jews who survived the war preferred not to reveal their Jewish identity for fear of anti-Semitic persecution by the local population. ... Another significant portion of the hidden Jewish population consists of people like Pinchas Zlotosvsky's mother, whose parents sent them to monasteries to be raised as Christians. Despite efforts by international Jewish organizations to locate these people, not all have been found, and many are assumed to have remained Christian.
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Shoah |
Holocaust beats Israel
JTA's Tom Tugend discusses reaction to the loss of the Israeli film "Beaufort" in the Foreign Film Oscar category and continued Jewish dominance of Hollywood.
[audio:/images/archive/022508_harris_tugend.mp3]
To subscribe to JTA's Behind the News podcast, click here.
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Film,
Podcast |
The Academy Award for Chutzpah goes to … the Academy
Okay, it's true that I haven't seen any of this year's nominees for best foreign-language film. Maybe "The Counterfeiters" was the best of the bunch.
Still, on principle, it bugs me: Israel finally has a great chance to win its first Oscar (for "Beaufort") – and loses to an Austrian picture about the Holocaust!?! To add insult to injury, it was written and directed by director-writer Stefan Ruzowitzky, a descendant of Nazis and/or Nazi sympathizers.
Yes, Ruzowitzky, was quite gracious in victory, paying homage to the Jewish directors who were exiled from his native land prior to World War II. But the bottom line is there should be a rule against Israeli films losing to Holocaust-themed movies made in countries that sided with the Nazis.
And don't get me started on Leni Riefenstahl.
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Film,
Shoah |
Frank Bruni misses the real shandah!
Frank Bruni triggered quite a debate with his blog post about whether the Second Avenue Deli should be considered kosher since it is open on Shabbos.
"What say those readers who know more of matters kosher than I do?" Bruni asked.
We'll leave that debate to the more knowledgeable and passionate posters to Bruni's blog entry. But we would like to humbly suggest to the esteemed NYT food critic that the real shandah came this week, in his review of Dovetail, an Upper West Side eatery that most readers would agree is probably not kosher.
This passage of the review would seem to remove any doubt:
There's an appetizer that combines two of the most fashionable ingredients in upscale restaurants these days, seared pork belly and a slowly poached egg, and as soon as you taste them together, you smile at what's afoot. It's breakfast for dinner, only at breakfast the belly is smoked and called bacon.In one of the entrees, curls and chunks of lobster are scattered around monkfish, reminding you that this fish has often been cast as the poor man's lobster, vaguely similar in texture but not nearly as sweet.
But, now, check out the photo that ran with the review:
Give the guy on the right with the yarmulke a break – he probably just ordered the apple.
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Kashrut |
Silow-Carroll: Can you be a little bit kosher?
In his column this week, the editor-in-chief of the New Jersey Jewish News, Andrew Silow-Carroll, reflects on his decision to run an article about Dinnersmith, a new community kitchen in Maplewood, N.J., that "isn't kosher" but accommodates those who "keep a lenient form of kashrut."
How does a Jewish newspaper write about an establishment that is clearly nonkosher but goes out of its way to cater to a crowd that keeps a personal form of kashrut out of the home? More to the point, how does it write about it without really ticking off rabbinic authorities who demand that clear lines be drawn between what is certified kosher (that is, carries a hechsher from the local rabbinical council or national agency) and what isn't?Lets return to the Dinnersmith dilemma. Plenty of Jews go to nonkosher restaurants but observe what some call "kosher lite" — ranging from no pork or shellfish, to no meat or fowl, to eating cold foods only. Many of them keep kosher homes. (They're the ones who never ask for doggie bags.)
By the Orthodox rabbis and many Conservative rabbis (but not all, as we'll see) kosher lite is like being a little bit pregnant — or not pregnant, if you want to be technical, and if you care at all about kashrut, of course you do.
Silow-Carroll asserts that the deeper debate is between "Authority and Autonomy, the milk and meat of modernity."
For many people, limiting the menu outside the home is a personal and, in some cases, a profound statement of Jewish identity, whether or not the restaurant carries a rabbinical certificate. When I started becoming observant in my 20s, one of the first things I began observing was kashrut, under the thesis that no matter what else I did or didn't do Jewishly, I'd be making Jewish choices every time I put something in my mouth. I'll eat in a nonkosher restaurant, but every time I pick and choose I remind myself and my tablemates that I belong to a people apart.
In the end, the N.J. Jewish News editor writes, the newspaper published the Dinnersmith article but left it to readers to make their own informed choices.
For the uninitiated, "the owners cover the counters in plastic" sounds like mere fastidiousness. For others, it's code for "we'll do all we can to keep your meal from touching another's treif."We'll also leave it to readers to debate whether it is better to help people do a mitzva as they define it, or only as the rabbis define it.
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Kashrut,
Ritual |
