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JEWISH NEWS
THE CHICAGO
June 12-18, 2015/25 Sivan 5775
www.chicagojewishnews.com
One Dollar
WEST
ROGERS
BLUES
As off-duty cops patrol the
Jewish neighborhood of
West Rogers Park, the
Chicago Police Department
is not happy
Supreme Court and
Jerusalem passport case
Rabbi Goldhamer on
how we are all one
Joseph Aaron on Caitlyn,
Duggars and gray
Facebook’s Sandberg on
Jewish mourning
2
Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
As Lightning vies for Stanley Cup, meet the team’s Jewish owner
By Hillel Kuttler
JTA
Jeffrey Vinik, the owner of
the National Hockey League’s
Tampa Bay Lightning, is experiencing a first: his team playing in
the Stanley Cup Finals against
the Chicago Blackhawks.
Vinik and his wife, Penny,
recently contributed $1.5 million
toward building a new Jewish
community center in Tampa.
The Lightning went 50-248 in the regular season – among
the best records in the league.
What’s it like to experience
these heights and then win
three playoff series to get this
far?
Vinik: Obviously it’s a very
exciting time being an owner.
We have one of the best franchises in sports here, but we also
want to win. We think we have a
strong team this year, played well
under pressure in the playoffs, got
a bounce here and there, and are
fortunate to be competing for the
Stanley Cup. I’m proud of what
we’ve accomplished both on and
off the ice. The team has competed hard and is close to its ultimate goal of winning the Stanley
Cup. We’ve really resonated in
this community. Our fans have
been great, our TV ratings are
running double and triple what
they ever have before and it’s a
fun time.
As a kid in New Jersey, did
you attend any playoff games or
even a Stanley Cup Finals
game?
I can’t remember exactly,
but I’m sure I went to New York
Rangers playoff games occasionally when I was in high school.
As an adult, I’ve been to a few
[Stanley Cup Finals] games, but
certainly not with a team I’ve
owned. Since I’ve owned the
Lightning, I’ve watched the finals on TV because I love the
sport of hockey.
What is the atmosphere
like in your arena suite during
the final?
For the finals, just about all
family members are joining us.
That’s one of the great offshoots
of what’s one of the great events
that comes along. For my wife
and me, there’s nothing more important than spending time with
our kids and our extended family.
My box is exclusively for family
in the playoff games – and while
the puck’s in play, we have a notalking rule.
Do you, your kids and other
relatives have favorite players
on the team?
Players are like kids, from an
Jeffrey Vinik says his Lightning has "really resonated" in the Tampa-area
community, noting "great fans" and soaring television ratings. (JTA)
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owner’s perspective. You love
them all equally.
What do the eyes of the
hockey world being on Tampa
mean to the city?
We think this is a great
hockey market. I strongly believe
that hockey is the best professional sport and that there’s no
reason it can’t succeed or excel in
warm climates. To the extent
that that message gets transmitted across the country, whether
our $1 billion real-estate development piques some interest –
I’m glad that we get that benefit.
[Groundbreaking on the downtown project – surrounding the
arena with offices, residences,
even a medical school – will be
later this year.]
What kind of interest? Do
you mean that there are any obstacles to the project’s getting
going?
There are no obstacles; it’s
all about economic development
and jobs. If we can recruit companies to move to this area,
they’ll find it’s a great place to attract and retain employees because it’s a great place to live.
This is a great opportunity for us
to showcase this area.
Has the Jewish community
of Tampa been rallying behind
the Lightning?
I wouldn’t single out anything. One of the things we’re
proud of is how broad our support
is across the region. This Tampa
Bay area is very diverse. It’s important that we as an organization reach out to different
religions, different cultures, and
I think we’ve done a pretty good
job doing that. Obviously I have
a number of good friends in the
Jewish community behind us,
and it’s greatly appreciated.
3
Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
Limited ruling on Jerusalem passports met
with relief from pro-Israel community
By Ron Kampeas
JTA
WASHINGTON – Justice
Anthony Kennedy, writing for
the majority in the Supreme
Court decision that will keep “Israel” off the passports of
Jerusalem-born Americans, begins by calling Jerusalem a “delicate subject.”
Competing claims to the
Holy City were not the only
timeworn and sensitive issue the
justices contended with in their
6-3 decision, which upheld the
State Department’s policy of not
allowing Americans born in
Jerusalem to list “Israel” as their
birthplace. The Supreme Court
in Zivotofsky v. Kerry waded into
tensions dating to the founding
of the United States over
whether the executive or the legislative branch determines foreign policy.
The ruling effectively nullified a law passed by Congress in
2002 requiring the State Department to list “Israel” as a birth
country for Jerusalem-born
Americans, should the citizens
request it. Like its predecessor,
the administration of President
George W. Bush, the Obama administration said recognition of
another nation’s sovereignty over
territory was a matter strictly for
the executive branch.
Pro-Israel groups had hoped
for a decision that would determine U.S. recognition of
Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. But
after hearing judicial interjections during oral arguments on
the case last year, some feared
that that case was mutating into
a broader issue over Congress’
role in determining foreign policy.
Marc Stern, who wrote the
amicus brief filed by the American Jewish Committee arguing
that recognition of another nation was a matter for Congress as
well as the president, said the decision left intact the traditional
American ambiguity over which
branch determines foreign policy.
“This issue has been unsettled for
200 years, and the court leaves
much of it unsettled today,” he
said.
Stern, the AJC’s general
counsel, called the decision “as
good a defeat as we could have
suffered.”
That’s because Kennedy’s
majority decision considered
only the president’s right to recognize another nation’s sovereignty. “A formulation broader
than the rule that the president
alone determines what nations to
formally recognize as legitimate –
and that he consequently controls his statements on matters of
recognition – presents different
issues and is unnecessary to the
resolution of this case,” Kennedy
wrote.
In its statement responding
to the ruling, The American Israel Public Affairs Committee
noted that Congress, where the
lobby is most influential, retained its foreign policy clout.
“Clearly, we are disappointed
by the ruling,” AIPAC’s spokesman, Marshall Wittmann, said in
an email. “However, the court
opinion, viewed in its totality,
clearly recognizes the important
role that Congress plays in U.S.
foreign policy – a role that has
been critical in strengthening the
U.S.-Israel relationship.”
In addition to Kennedy, a
conservative who sometimes
swings liberal, the majority included the bench’s four liberals,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen
Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia
Sotomayor, as well as Clarence
Thomas, a conservative. Breyer,
Kagan and Ginsburg are the
court’s three Jewish justices. The
dissenters were all conservative:
Chief Justice John Roberts,
Samuel Alito and Antonin
Scalia.
The constitution “does not
give the president exclusive
power to determine which claims
to statehood and territory ‘are legitimate in the eyes of the
United States’,” Scalia wrote in
the dissent. “Congress may express its own views about these
matters by declaring war, restricting trade, denying foreign
aid, and much else besides.”
The decision was a defeat for
much of the pro-Israel community on an issue close to its heart
– the Israeli and Jewish claim to
Jerusalem.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations said it was “deeply
concerned” by the decision.
“We hope that a constitutionally acceptable path can be
found to assure that Americans
born in Jerusalem will be accorded their full rights, including
the designation of their country
of birth,” the Jewish community’s
foreign policy umbrella said in a
statement.
Yet the decision’s narrow
cast drew expressions of relief
from Alyza Lewin and her father
Nathan Lewin, lawyers known
for their pro-Israel and Jewish advocacy who represented Menachem Zivotofsky, the 12-year
old Jerusalem-born American at
the center of the case, as well as
the array of Jewish groups that
had backed Zivotofsky in friend
of the court briefs.
“Justice Kennedy acknowledges that ‘the subject is quite
narrow: The Executive’s exclu-
sive power extends no further
than his formal recognition determination,’” the Lewins said in
a statement. “Congress’ broad
powers to deal with foreign policy remain extensive and virtually unlimited.”
It appeared during oral arguments last November that the
justices were considering whether
to settle a constitutional argument on who controls foreign
policy that has dogged relations
between presidents and legislators going back to the time of
George Washington.
“What you’re saying is that
Congress can’t compel speech by
the president with respect to foreign relations,” Sotomayor said
to Donald Verrilli, the U.S. solicitor general who was arguing
on behalf of the policy.
A wider decision limiting
congressional influence might
have had an immediate impact,
AJC’s Stern said, on efforts in
Congress to assert a role in determining whether the United
Menachem Zivotofsky, left, and his father Ari posing in front of the
Supreme Court with their attorney Alyza Lewin and Lewin's father
Nathan. (JTA)
States agrees to an emerging nuclear deal with Iran. Pro-Israel
groups back an assertive role for
Congress in overseeing any deal.
“This was a defeat, but a
limited defeat,” Stern said. The
decision “doesn’t determine the
result regarding Congress’ powers
regarding Iran.”
August 26-30, 2015
On August 26-30, 2015, the AJA will lead a group to New Orleans, LA
to study its rich Jewish history. Participants will have the opportunity for
interactive learning while touring local historic sites, including TOURO
SYNAGOGUE, TEMPLE SINAI, CONGREGATION GATES OF PRAYER, THE
FRENCH QUARTER, THE GARDEN DISTRICT, LONG VUE HOUSE AND
GARDENS & THE NATIONAL WORLD WAR II MUSEUM.
Featured scholars include
DR. STUART ROCKOFF,
DR. MICHAEL COHEN, and DR. GARY P. ZOLA.
Participants will interact with featured scholars, other participants,
and local Jewish community members.
Total cost of the program is $585.00.
Our group will be staying at the Omni Riverfront Hotel in New Orleans.
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND REGISTRATION
please contact:
Lisa Frankel, Director of Programs for the AJA
by e-mail: lfrankel@huc.edu, phone: 513-487-3218
or visit our website: AmericanJewishArchives.org.
RESERVE YOUR PLACE ON THE TRIP!
4
Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
Contents
Jewish News
■ The Ahava Dead Sea minerals cosmetics company, under
pressure for operating in the West Bank, is considering opening
a manufacturing plant inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders. The company, owned by Kibbutz Mitzpe Shalem, located about one mile
from the Dead Sea in the eastern West Bank, is considering opening a new production plant in the Tamar Regional Council to the
south. The company, a target of the Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions movement for operating in the West Bank,framed the
potential move as due to changing needs, not politics. “In light of
expanding production needs and changes in regulations for cosmetic products in some Western nations, Ahava is indeed examining the possibility of opening an additional factory. One of the
possibilities is the Tamar Regional Council. Other possibilities
are also being looked into. As of now there is no final decision,”
the company said.
■ Israeli lawmakers from all parties have called on a freshman
Knesset lawmaker to resign in the wake of a news report that he
used crystal meth and pimped prostitutes while managing a casino
in Burgas, Bulgaria. Likud lawmaker Oren Hazan, 33, who serves
as a deputy Knesset speaker, vehemently denied the claims made
in a TV report. The report cited Israeli tourists who said they did
the drugs with Hazan at the casino and his former driver, who
said he went on Hazan’s behalf to a local strip club to hire prostitutes. It also interviewed the manager of the strip club, who confirmed that Hazan sent for women; she laughed when she heard
Hazan was now a lawmaker. “I say this unequivocally: There were
no drugs. There was no pimping women,” Hazan said. “I came to
the Knesset to do important things for the People of Israel and
the Land of Israel. I won’t let anyone distract me from this,” he
said, blaming the media “which has yet to accept the Likud and
Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s victory.”
■ Israel’s chief Sephardi rabbi slammed Rabbi Shlomo Riskin,
the chief rabbi of Efrat, for his liberal “innovations.” Rabbi
Yitzhak Yosef said “Every morning we say the blessing [being
thankful that G-d] ‘didn’t make me a woman,’ not like that one
from Efrat, who makes all kind of innovations, who says we
shouldn’t say that blessing, that women and men have equal
rights … this doesn’t hurt women. He doesn’t understand,” Yosef
said. He accused Riskin of “making a new war.” Riskin recently
appointed a woman, Jennie Rosenfeld, to serve as a religious
leader in Efrat, giving her the title “manhiga ruchanit,” or spiritual adviser. He has also come under fire from the Chief Rabbinate for his views on reforming the conversion process in Israel,
supporting a government directive that would allow municipal
chief rabbis to form conversion courts rather than requiring potential converts to appear before four Chief Rabbinate-led courts.
Late last month, the Chief Rabbinate declined to automatically
renew Riskin’s appointment as Efrat’s chief rabbi and summoned
him for a hearing on the matter. Riskin has been the chief rabbi
of Efrat since 1983, when he helped found the settlement located
in the Gush Etzion bloc of the West Bank.
■ The Iraqi site believed to be the burial place of the biblical
prophet Nahum is in danger of being destroyed by the Islamic State,
or ISIS.Nahum’s Tomb in Al Ooosh, an annual pilgrimage spot for
generations of Iraqi Jews, is 10 miles from territory controlled by
ISIS. Until the early 1950s, thousands of Jews gathered at the site
during the Shavuot holiday, some staying for as long as two weeks.
The tomb, inside an abandoned synagogue, is cared for by Asir
Salaam Shajaa, an Assyrian Christian whose father and grandfather also cared for the site at the request of Jewish community leaders who fled, along with the majority of Iraq’s Jews, after the Iraqi
government vowed to expel them following the establishment of
the state of Israel in 1949.Shajaa told Haaretz that he worries about
the future of the tomb and the abandoned synagogue adjacent to
it. “I’m not sure how long my family will continue to stay in Iraq –
we want to leave, most of the Christians want to leave,” Shajaa
told Haaretz. “My brother says he will stay, though. If my family
gets to leave Iraq, my brother and his children will look after the
tomb. It will stay in the family, G-d willing.”
■ Saudis dislike Iran more than they dislike Israel. A poll released by the Interdisciplinary Center at Herzliya’s Institute for
Policy and Strategy found that 53 percent of Saudis named Iran
as their country’s main enemy, 22 percent named the Islamic
State, or ISIS, and 18 percent named Israel, The Associated Press
reported. Israel and Saudi Arabia do not have diplomatic relations. The poll also found that 85 percent support the Saudi-led
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Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
Conservative rabbis claim exclusion from
bnai mitzvah at Israeli president’s residence
Orthodox synagogue.
Rivlin has made reconciliation between different sectors of
Israeli society his central goal as
president. But this isn’t the first
time Rivlin has offended nonOrthodox movements. In 1989,
after visiting a New Jersey Reform synagogue, Rivlin – then
the chairman of the Likud party
– told Israeli newspaper Yediot
Achronot that Reform Judaism is
“a completely new religion without any connection to Judaism.”
By Ben Sales
JTA
TEL AVIV – Israeli and
American Conservative rabbis
are protesting Israeli President
Reuven Rivlin, claiming that he
shut their movement out of a
bnai mitzvah ceremony for Israeli
children with disabilities.
The ceremony, scheduled to
take place at the end of June, was
supposed to be co-officiated by
one Conservative rabbi, Mike
Goldstein, and one Orthodox
rabbi, Benny Lau, Conservative
movement officials say. At the
service, 10 children with disabilities such as autism, will undergo
a group bnai mitzvah ceremony.
But a strongly worded letter
to Rivlin signed by 24 Conservative rabbis and movement professionals claims that Rivlin sent
them the official ceremony program – without Goldstein’s
name.
“It is painful to say it, but
this is an act of cruelty in which
disabled children and their parents are being denied a service
that would help them,” according to the letter, which asserts
that “the sole reason for this denial is the contempt of Israel’s
leaders for the sponsors of this
program, the worldwide Conservative/Masorti movement.”
Rivlin’s spokesperson, Jason
Pearlman, told a different story,
saying the event program had yet
to be finalized, and a number of
possible options for the ceremony were still on the table. A
statement put out by the president’s office in response to the
letter criticized the “obstinacy” of
the Conservative rabbis and accused them of “seeking to advance their agenda through the
cynical use of children.”
“The final details of what
was going to happen and who
would do what in what order,
these details had yet to be finalized,” Pearlman said.
But Yizhar Hess, CEO of the
Masorti movement, Israel’s counterpart to the Conservative
movement, said the details of the
event had been finalized at a
“It looks to me like he’s
building his record, he’s expanding his record,” Julie Schonfeld,
executive vice president of the
United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, said. “Previously,
he’s made these highly derogatory comments about the Reform
movement. Now, he has not only
added the Conservative movement to that, but he has deepened the impact of his loathing
of our movements.”
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Israeli president Reuven Rivlin at the president's house in Jerusalem.
(JTA)
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meeting at the president’s residence.
“We had a meeting in the
president’s house with the president’s people, two and a half
hours, going from every place to
every place, putting the program
together by the minute,” Hess
said. “Everything was set in
stone.”
Hess says that if Rivlin
agrees to hold a co-officiated
service as previously planned, the
ceremony can go on.
The bar/bat mitzvah ceremony for children with disabilities has been taking place in the
central Israeli city of Rehovot,
under the auspices of the Masorti
movement, for 20 years. The celebration was moved to the president’s residence in Jerusalem
after Rahamim Malul, the mayor
of Rehovot, in April canceled
the ceremony in his city because
it would be held at a Masorti synagogue.
Malul, a former lawmaker
for the Sephardic Orthodox Shas
party said that there were several
Orthodox students with disabilities in the program who were uncomfortable going to a non-
“Previously, he’s made these highly
derogatory comments about the Reform movement. Now, he has not only
added the Conservative movement to
that, but he has deepened the impact
of his loathing of our movements.”
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Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
At security confab, Israeli coalition members
split on West Bank policy
By Ben Sales
JTA
HERZLIYA, Israel – When
Israel’s coalition government
formed last month, its constituent parties all but ruled out
establishing a Palestinian state in
the near future. But that doesn’t
mean they can agree on what to
do instead.
Speaking at the Herzliya
Conference, Israel’s premier
diplomatic and security policy
gathering, senior Israeli government officials struck different
and sometimes conflicting tones
on what Israel’s policy should be
toward the Palestinians. Even
within the ruling Likud party, officials advanced significantly different proposals for the the future
of the West Bank.
Some favor indefinite control of the territory. Others support negotiations and interim
steps to prepare the ground for a
future partition. Others want to
hang tight while the wars roiling
the Middle East play out.
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, who on the eve of
his re-election in March appeared
to reverse his earlier support for
Palestinian statehood, portrayed
himself in his conference address
as having never shifted his position on the subject. He called on
the Arab world to push the Palestinians toward negotiations and
insisted that, in a final agreement, the Palestinian Authority
would have to agree to a demilitarized state and recognize Israel
as the Jewish state – a condition
they have thus far refused.
“There might be an opening, because some of the Arab
states silently agree with what I
say,” Netanyahu said. “They
might be in the position to influence the Palestinians to adopt a
more conciliatory or positive approach. It will be hard, because
all politics is theater, and international politics is theater, too,
and everyone is cast in a role.”
Held annually at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya,
a college founded in 1994, the
Herzliya Conference brings together top officials from Israel’s
government, diplomatic and defense arenas to discuss threats
facing Israel and the Middle
East. The conference offers a
peek into the minds of Israel’s
leading decision makers and occasionally provides a venue for
Israeli leaders to make important
announcements.
There were no such big developments this year, but the
conference did reveal the extent
of the disagreement within the
Israeli government about the appropriate path forward in resolving Israel’s decades-long conflict
with the Palestinians.
Likud Defense Minister
Moshe Ya’alon was more pes-
Israeli Minister of Education Naftali Bennet speaks at the Herzliya Conference. (JTA)
simistic than his boss on Tuesday,
declaring a “stable agreement”
with the Palestinians unlikely in
his lifetime. Though Ya’alon,
who is 64, suggested measures to
improve the Palestinian economy and local Palestinian government, he rejected any
limitation on Israeli military operations in the West Bank, saying that could invite a takeover
by Hamas, the militant group
that governs Gaza.
“There’s really something
stable here,” Ya’alon said, referring to the West Bank. “Should
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we upset it out of wishful thinking? So we’re suggesting, within
the framework of not ruling
them, steps that make it possible
for both sides to live in welfare,
to live with respect, to live in security without illusions.”
Likud Interior Minister Silvan Shalom, who would serve as
Israel’s chief delegate to peace
talks should they resume, struck a
more optimistic tone in his address, calling for a regional conference of Israel and the Arab
states to confront shared regional
threats, and encouraging the
Palestinians to return to bilateral
negotiations with Israel without
preconditions.
“We believe the only way to
achieve a solution is through
peace, and peace can be
achieved only through negotiations,” Shalom said. “If they are
willing to do so, and to resume
the negotiations, they will find
Israel as a real and serious partner to peace.”
But Likud Deputy Foreign
Minister Tzipi Hotovely dismissed the prospect of a peace
deal entirely. Instead, she said
mass Jewish immigration to Israel
is the solution, as millions more
Jews would eliminate any danger
of Palestinians gaining a majority in Israel.
“This is the Zionist vision: It
was always connected to the tradition, connected to the Bible,
connected to Jewish history,” she
said. “It won’t be achieved by dividing the land. That’s not what
will bring Israel legitimacy. Israel
needs to be right. Israel needs to
continue in its Zionist direction.”
At last year’s conference, held
just months after an intensive
round of Israeli-Palestinian talks
had collapsed, pro-settler Jewish
Home Chairman Naftali Bennett advocated annexing the Etzion settlement bloc south of
Jerusalem. This year, with the
prospect of Israeli withdrawal no
longer under discussion, he made
scant mention of the West Bank,
saying simply that he and the foreign governments urging territorial concessions would have to
“agree to disagree.”
Instead, he turned to another territory Israel captured in
1967, the Golan Heights, calling
on the international community
to recognize Israel’s sovereignty
there. The civil war in Syria has
made withdrawal impossible, he
said, advocating instead that Israel move tens of thousands of
Jews to the strategic plateau in
the next five years.
“Whom should we give the
Golan to, to al-Nusra? To alQaida?” he asked, referring to
two terrorist groups active in
Syria. “Why do they still not recognize the Golan? What’s the
reasoning? If we had listened to
the world, we would have given
away the Golan, and ISIS would
have been on the Sea of
Galilee.”
While they disagreed on the
peace process, Israel’s officials advanced a unified front in opposing boycotts of Israel. Many
alluded to recent statements by
Stephane Richard, CEO of the
French
telecommunications
giant Orange, suggesting he
would pull his business out of Israel. They called on Israel to
fight back against boycott efforts,
marshaling the buying power of
its supporters to boycott companies that boycott Israel.
“We have disagreements in
many other issues – peace, security, economy,” Shalom said.
“But we are very united about
fighting back [against] the boycott. And I am sure that if we
keep our unity, finally, we will
prevail.”
7
Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
Arts & Entertainment
Jewish comedian goes big in China – but the humor doesn’t always translate
By Uriel Heilman
JTA
How do you tell a joke in
China about Jews when the only
things most Chinese think they
know about the Chosen People
is that they’re smart and good
with money?
That was Jesse Appell’s
quandary when he moved to
China three years ago from Massachusetts with plans to become
a comedian – and, like
many stand-ups, to mine his own
upbringing for material.
“All the bad stereotypes
about Jews in the West are considered good in China,” Appell
said. ”Chinese say: ‘The Jews
control the media and the banks
– amazing!’ When people find
out I’m Jewish, they say that’s
why I speak Chinese so well, because Jews are super-smart. I’m
like, that’s not how it works.”
Appell, 24, is one of only a
handful of stand-up comedians in
China, a country of 1.35 billion
people that until very recently
didn’t have much of a stand-up
circuit. The country’s first standup show premiered on Dragon
TV in 2012, the same year that
Appell graduated from Brandeis
University and moved to Beijing.
He came on a Fulbright scholarship to train in the traditional
Chinese comedic art known as
Xiang Sheng, in which two performers engage in witty banter in
semi-scripted routines – a bit like
the Abbott and Costello classic
“Who’s On First.”
But Appell, who performs in
Mandarin Chinese, soon found a
following with humorous videos
and stand-up routines. Much of
Appell’s humor centers on his
position as an insider/outsider, a
foreigner in China who gets Chinese culture – except when he
doesn’t. A Gagnam-style parody
video Appell made about being a
“Laowai,” Chinese slang for foreigner, has garnered over 2 million views on Chinese websites.
“I’m the type of Laowai who
sucks at basketball,” Appell sings
in Chinese in the music video.
“The type of Laowai who buys
stuff at Silk Street but doesn’t get
ripped off. The type of Laowai
who doesn’t drive a BMW and
instead drives a secondhand electric bike. A regular guy who’s a
Laowai.”
By combining some traditional Xiang Sheng routines with
TV appearances, stand-up performances, touring on the college circuit and teaching a high
school improv class, Appell has
been able to cobble together a
living as a comedian in China –
not exactly a standard career
path for an American Jewish boy.
There are some limitations to
being a stand-up comedian in
China. For one thing, the Chinese term for stand-up is the
same as the one for talk show, so
many audience members coming
to open-mic nights at their college or local bar have no idea
whether to expect a Louis C.K.
or an Ellen DeGeneres.
You can’t really poke fun at
the government, which intentionally leaves the boundary of
acceptability vague to get artists
to censor themselves. The Chinese aren’t great at self-deprecation. Add to that the lack of
alcohol and Chinese inhibitions
against laughing too loudly and
it can make for a tough crowd.
“Until I got to China, I
never realized how big of an effect there is going into a set
where the audience is a little
liquored up,” Appell said. “The
Chinese tend to come in, sit
down in neat rows, don’t talk and
wait for the show to start. But
people still have a good time – if
we can make them laugh.”
Appell sometimes serves as
an opening act for Joe Wong,
one of China’s biggest stand-up
comedians. Appell also recently
launched a new web series about
living in China. He says he has
performed in more than 20 Chinese provinces, and last fall he
did a 13-city tour in North
America.
Funny business came early
for Appell. He and his brother
used to do bar mitzvahs, with his
brother handling the music and
Appell serving as the emcee and
funnyman. He continued doing
comedy in college, but also
began studying Chinese intensively. Appell spent six months
of his junior year studying in
China, where he discovered traditional Xiang Sheng comedy.
He still does plenty of Xiang
Sheng, often with a 300-pound
Iranian partner training with the
same Xiang Sheng master as Appell.
“You have a skinny Jewish
guy and a fat Iranian guy doing
Chinese comedy,” Appell said,
noting that the absurdity of the
juxtaposition is lost on Chinese audiences.
American-style stand-up offers Appell a way to get his own
material onstage. Though Chinese people don’t know much
about the Jews, Appell says
they’re always excited to hear
him talk about Judaism. A routine he recorded about being
Jewish in China made it to the
front page of China’s version of
YouTube and quickly got
100,000 views.
“I feel like Jewish culture
Jesse Appell performing Xiang Sheng, a Chinese comedic art dating back to the Qing dynasty that involves
quick, witty banter between two performers. (JTA)
and Chinese culture have a lot of
commonalities,” Appell said in
one of his stand-up routines.
“Jews at the age of 13 have a
coming-of-age ritual. It’s called a
bar mitzvah. We need to read
lots of books, we have to study a
new language, but whether we
speak it or not doesn’t matter.
There’s a lot of praying involved,
and finally we share all the boring stuff we’ve learned. After I
got to China I realized that Chinese people have a similar coming-of-age ritual at 13: It’s called
the high school entrance exam.”
Ironically, Appel, who grew
up in the heavily Jewish Boston
suburb of Newton, Massachusetts, and attended Brandeis, the
Jewish-sponsored nonsectarian
university, says he has actually
become much more Jewishly involved since moving to China.
“At Brandeis, the Jewish
stuff was everywhere, so you
could engage with it without
stepping out of your way,” he
said. “In China, if I don’t go to
services, I’m not going to walk by
services or see people lighting
candles in their dorm room.”
Appell says he finds himself
at the egalitarian Jewish congre-
gation Kehillat Beijing nearly
every Friday night – that is, if he
doesn’t have a show. This year he
emceed
the
community’s
Passover seder, which drew 200
people on the holiday’s first
night.
He says his mother often
asks him if he’ll stay in China for
good.
“That’s in the figure-it-outlater column,” Appell said.
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8
Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
Torah Portion
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We are all one
Offender and
offended are
really the same
By Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer
Torah Columnist
Torah Portion: Shelach
Numbers 13:1-15:4
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Our Torah portion this week,
Shelach Lecha, describes the adventures of the 12 spies sent into
the land of Canaan. They come
back with two reports. All the
spies acknowledge that the land is
“ … an exceedingly good land …
which floweth with milk and
honey.” But only two believe that
the Israelites can conquer it. Ten
spies believe that the land is not
worth conquering, for not only
could the Israelites not defeat the
Canaanites, “We are like
grasshoppers in their eyes.” But
also the 10 spies believe that once
the Israelites occupy the land of
Canaan, it will be very corrupting. Their values are inconsistent
with the values of Torah Judaism.
When the people hear the
report of the returning spies, they
panic. Moses tries to calm their
nerves and renew their courage.
G-d threatens to destroy these
people with little faith and create a new nation through Moses.
“I will smite them with the pestilence, and destroy them, and will
make of thee a nation greater
and mightier than they.” (Numbers 14:12)
Moses appeals for divine forgiveness, even using the argument that G-d’s reputation is at
stake. “Now if Thou shalt kill
this people as one man, then the
nations which have heard the
fame of Thee will speak, saying:
because the Lord was not able to
bring this people into the land
which He swore unto them,
therefore He hath slain them in
the wilderness … Pardon, I pray
Thee the iniquity of this people
according unto the greatness of
Thy lovingkindness, and according as Thou hast forgiven this
people, from Egypt even until
now.” (Numbers 14:15-19)
Regarding this passage, the
Talmud teaches us to see ourselves and the world as balanced
between good and evil. The Kabbalah teaches us to seek balance
between the forces of Chesed
(Compassion) and Gevurah
(Judgment). Furthermore, Rabbi
Moishe Leib, the Chasidic
Sassover Reb, suggests that this
balance exists within G-d, between the desire to punish
wrongdoing or forgive it.
Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer
In our text, Moses tries to tip
the balance toward forgiveness
by asking what good punishment
would do when the same result
could be achieved by forgiveness.
Rabbi Leib points to a lesson for
all of us. He maintains that if we
seek to punish those who have
offended us, whom are we harming with our anger –them or ourselves?
This reminds me of Chaim
Vital’s great kabbalistic text
“Sha’arey Kedushah,” which
teaches “you are who you hate.”
He means by this that we are all
one –you, me, the victim of the
Boston bombing and the perpetrator of the Boston bombing.
And if we continue to hate those
who offend us, we are really only
continuing to hate ourselves. If
we seek to punish those who
have offended us, whom are we
harming with our anger? Them
or ourselves? Clearly we harm
ourselves, because we are all one.
Prior to the exile of the
Shechina from Gan Eden, Adam
and Eve recognized that they
were one with G-d and the other
beings in the Garden. But after
they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Duality, they lost the
ability to see wholeness and oneness, and reality became a reality
of duality, where punishment is
meted out to those who offend
us, and forgiveness is impossible.
When we lash out with
anger at those we feel offend us,
we harm ourselves. I think this is
a theme that runs throughout
this Torah portion of Shelach.
Moses tries to teach G-d that it’s
not about who’s right and who’s
wrong. It’s about how we can embrace “the other,” recognizing
that “the other” is ourselves.
This insight is alluded to by
Talmud teaches us
to see ourselves
and the world as
balanced between
good and evil.
Rabbi Moishe Leib, when he
clearly maintains that, if we seek
to punish those who have offended us, we ultimately harm
ourselves. I recognize the difficulty or near impossibility of embracing the offender. Even
though we know that the Boston
bomber and those whom he
killed are really one, I am not at
the level that sees the offender
and the offended as one. Even
though this is what Hashem
taught us in Gan Eden, with the
Tree of Life.
I once heard a story that –
perhaps 20 years ago –Elie Wiesel
took a train from one French city
to another, when a man came up
to him and confessed that he had
committed horrific crimes during
the Holocaust. He asked Professor Wiesel for his forgiveness.
Wiesel responded, “I can’t forgive someone for crimes they
committed against others. I can
only forgive those that hurt me.
You must ask for forgiveness from
those people you hurt.” Professor
Wiesel was much closer to practicing oneness than I could ever
be, but even he failed to recognize the oneness of Gan Eden
and the oneness that modern
subatomic physics teaches today.
In the magnificent text
“Sha’arey Kedushah,” there is
the reward of hearing the voices
of the departed luminaries of our
Bible and Talmud, if we can truly
forgive the Boston offender and
understand we are he. We are
who we hate. But, I can’t do it
yet.
This Torah portion is very
good as an instrument in creating peace with one another. It is
commonly accepted today that
you are what you eat –I would
call it a New Age secular ethic.
But I believe if we build on that
secular ethic and share with
members of our community that
you are who you hate, since from
the perspective of G-d, we are all
one, this would go a great distance in creating shalom. However, I completely confess that I
am not yet at that level.
And even though, according
to “Sha’arey Kedushah,” we are
all one, I still can’t find it in my
heart to really forgive the Nazi.
But perhaps, if I take Ben BagBag’s credo to heart, “Delve into
it (the Torah) again and again.
Use it to see the truth; for all is
in it. Grow old in it and depart
not from it, for there is no better
pursuit for you than Torah.”
Amen.
Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer is
senior rabbi of Congregation Bene
Shalom (Reform) in Skokie and
president of Hebrew Seminary,
Skokie.
9
Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
Community Calendar
Sunday
June 14
Anshe Emet Synagogue
hosts Chicago barbecue festival and competition.
11:30 a.m.- 4 p.m., 3751 N.
Broadway, Chicago. $5 suggested donation. (773) 6616384.
Illinois Holocaust Museum
and Education Center presents Holocaust survivor
Ralph Rehbok telling his
personal story and answering questions. 12:30 p.m.,
9603 Woods Drive, Skokie.
Free with museum admission. ilholocaustmuseum.
org or (847) 967-4800.
Congregation Solel hosts
concert, “Voice of Song,”
benefitting Kol Zimrah Jewish Community Singers and
featuring soloist Cantor
Vicky Glikin. 3 p.m., 1301
Clavey Road, Highland
Park. $36 and $20. kolzimrah.org or (847) 297-5745.
Congregation B’nai Tikvah
hosts light supper and discussion of the movie “Ida”
followed by screening. 5:30
p.m., 1558 Wilmot Road,
Deerfield. $15. RSVP, (847)
945-0470.
Tuesday
June 16
Chicago YIVO 2015 Summer
Festival of Yiddish Culture
presents Gypsy Rhythm
Project with Steve Gibons
and Nicolae Ferraru. 2 p.m.,
Northbrook Public Library,
1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook. (847) 272-6224.
ELI Talks presents “inspired
Jewish ideas” including the
neuroscience of ritual, race
relations, the moral imagination of the Talmud,
Ladino proverbs, death,
dance and more. Be part of
the live studio audience at
6 p.m. for light kosher reception with chance to
meet the speakers. 6:30
p.m., also Wednesday, June
17 and Thursday, June 18.
WTTW Channel 11 Studios,
5400 N. St. Louis, Chicago.
$18 advance, $20 door. Tickets at eventbright.com/e/
eli-talks-chicago-jewishife-and-learning-tickets16635512265.
JCC PresenTense Chicago
holds Launch Night 2015.
6:15-9 p.m., 1871 Chicago,
222 Merchandise Mart
Plaza, 12th Floor, Chicago.
Free with advance RSVP,
$10 door. RSVP required,
http://bit.ly/ptlaunchchi or
(847) 763-3629.
Wednesday
June 17
Northwest Hadassah Chapter holds chocolate event.
7:15 p.m., Morkes Chocolates, 1890 N. Rand Road,
Palatine. $14. Elizabeth
Gordon, 3220gordon@sbcglobal.net.
Ezra-Habonim, the Niles
Township Jewish Congregation’s Men’s Club presents
Howard Romanek speaking
on “Searching for Meaning
and Community: The Historical Challenge of Sports
to American Judaism.” 7:30
p.m., 4500 W. Dempster,
Skokie. (847) 675-4141.
Thursday
June 18
Illinois Holocaust Museum
and Education Center’s
Young Professional Committee holds inaugural
event, “LOL with YPC” featuring comedian Gary Gulman. 6-9 p.m., Thompson
Hotel, 21 E. Bellvue Place,
Chicago. $75. ilholocaustmuseum.org/lol-w-ypc/
Beit Yichud presents
Jerusalem Rabbi Yitzchak
Shwartz speaking on “The
Art of MMM-ing” (Mystical,
Musical Meditation-ing), a
musical exploration of how
to meditate in this way. 9
p.m., 6932 N. Glenwood,
Chicago. $10 suggested donation. (Additional presentations run through Sunday,
June 21.) www.facebook.
com/BeitYichud.
Friday
June 19
JCC Chicago hosts Father’s
Day Weekend for grandparents (parents not allowed) and their
grandchildren ages 4-12.
Runs through Sunday, June
21. JCC Perlstein Resort,
Nixon Road, Lake Delton,
Wisc. $260 adult, $89 children. Registration, bit.ly/
LDorVaDor or (847) 7633605.
Saturday
June 20
JCC Chicago presents the
2nd annual Chicago Jewish
Film Festival. Runs
through Sunday, June 28.
Venues for the festival are:
Century 12 Evanston/Cine
Arts 6 and XD, 1715 Maple
Ave., Evanston; Landmark
Century Centre Cinema,
2828 N. Clark St., Chicago;
Illinois Holocaust Museum
& Education Center, 9603
Woods Drive, Skokie; and
Victory Gardens Theater,
2433 N. Lincoln Ave.,
Chicago. $64 festival pass
(includes eight films). Single
film $12 adults; $10 seniors
or students. www.chicagojewishfilm.org.
Jewish comedian Debbie
Sue Goodman presents An
Evening of Comedy, Music
and Spoken Word. 7:30-9
p.m., Glenview Grind, 989
Waukegan Road, Glenview.
(847) 729-0111.
Jewish Child and Family
Services presents
“Nechama: A Workshop to
Comfort the Bereaved
Among Us” for the newly
bereaved and their loved
ones. 7-8:30 p.m., West Suburban Temple Har Zion,
1040 N. Harlem Ave., River
Forest. elizabethcohen@
jcfs,org or (847) 745-5404.
Thursday
June 25
Chicago YIVO 2015 Summer
Festival of Yiddish Culture
shows film “Lost Embrace”
with English subtitles. 2
p.m., Skokie Public Library,
5215 Oakton, Skokie. (847)
324-3126.
Keturah Hadassah hosts
“Spend the Afternoon with
Johnny Cash.” 3 p.m., Mercury Theater, 3745 N.
Southport, Chicago. $40.
(630) 294-7247.
Friday
Sunday
June 26
June 21
Illinois Holocaust Museum
and Education Center
shows documentary film
about Nazi-hunter Simon
Wiesenthal featuring guest
speaker and filmmaker Inna
Rogatchi. 1-3:30 p.m., 9603
Woods Drive, Skokie. $10,
$5 members. Reservations
required, ilholocaustmuseum.org/events.
Tuesday
June 23
Chicago YIVO 2015 Summer
Festival of Yiddish Culture
presents Jeff and Janis,
vocal and instrumental duo.
2 p.m., Edgewater Branch,
Chicago Public Library, 6000
N. Broadway, Chicago. (312)
743-1945.
Wednesday
June 24
Chicago YIVO 2015 Summer
Festival of Yiddish Culture
presents Eileen Berman
singing Favorite Yiddish
Musical Gems accompanied
by Jane Kenas on piano. 2
p.m., Morton Grove Public
Library, 6140 N. Lincoln
Ave., Morton Grove. (847)
929-5122.
Jewish Child and Family
Services hosts “A Striking
Event” celebrating JCFS and
honoring Don C. Trossman
and Scott Bauer, with barbecue from Milt’s, bowling,
jugglers and carnival. 4-7
p.m., Pinstripes, 1150 Willow Road, Northbrook.
$150 adult, $35 under age
21. jcfs.org or (312) 6732726 or SarahPerl@jcfs.org.
Beth Hillel Congregation
Bnai Emunah holds Shabbat at the Beach with
dessert provided. Bring
your own picnic dinner.
6:15 p.m., Gilson Park, Shelter 5/6, 101 Lake Ave., Wilmette. (847) 256-1213.
Saturday
Monday
June 29
Decalogue Society of
Lawyers holds 81st annual
Dinner and Awards Presentation. 5:15 p.m., Union
League Club, 65 W. Jackson,
Chicago. $130 members,
$160 non-members. Payment and advance registration required, DecalogueSociety.org.
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June 27
Beth Hillel Congregation
Bnai Emunah holds Inclusion Shabbat Service followed by Kiddush.
11:15-11:45 a.m., BHCBE Library, 3220 Big Tree Lane,
Wilmette. office@bhbe.org
or (847) 256-1213.
SEEKING
SPANISH SPEAKING
KABBALAH TEACHER
For weekly lessons
WRP or Skokie area
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262-374-3469
CEMETERY LOTS
Sunday
VIRGIN GRAVES FOR SALE
June 28
Weinberg Community for
Senior Living presents First
annual Dog Show with
competition and prizes.
Dog must have valid registration and proof of current vaccines/rabies to
attend. 10:30 a.m.-noon,
1551 Lake Cook Road, Deerfield. RSVP required,
michelle.bernstein@cje.net
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10
Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
As off-duty cops patrol the Jewish neighborhood of West Rogers Park,
the Chicago Police Department is not happy
By Pauline Dubkin Yearwood
Managing Editor
It’s a quiet Saturday night in
West Rogers Park, a neighborhood of old trees, lively young
children and synagogues – many,
many synagogues – on the city’s
Far North Side. It’s Shabbat, so
most of the Orthodox Jews who
make up a significant portion of
the population in a 16-block radius here are in shul. Everything
seems peaceful.
But stroll through the neighborhood and you’ll see that outside of several synagogues, armed
officers – not Chicago Police –
are keeping an eye on things. A
patrol car with a yellow light circles the area.
The officers, off-duty Chicago police, are part of a controversial effort begun earlier this
year. Some 25 families, many belonging to the same synagogue,
have hired private security to patrol the area after a series of antiSemitic incidents took place.
The patrols are hired for Shabbat
and Jewish holidays when Orthodox Jews walk to synagogue
and are forbidden to carry or use
cell phones.
Some residents, community
leaders and rabbis favor the patrols or at least feel they don’t do
any harm. Many others oppose
them. Some, like Ald. Debra Silverstein (50th) would like to see
residents work more closely with
the Chicago Police rather than
hiring a private force of officers.
The department is doing a more
than adequate job of protecting
the neighborhood, she and others say.
Chicago Police issued a
statement on the matter: “The
Chicago Police Department values strong partnerships with
every community throughout
this great city. Community members are encouraged to remain
alert and to notify police if they
witness any suspicious or criminal activity.”
A spokesperson for the department said the police could
say no more about the matter.
But Sgt. Shawn Sisk, who leads
the 24th District’s community
policing efforts, told a reporter
for the website DNAinfo that al-
though the district could not
stop the patrols, “we’re not going
to support it. We don’t want that
to send a false sense of security to
the neighborhood.”
he idea of the private security
patrols began more than a
year ago, according to Andrew Glatz, a member of the
loose group of individuals who
initiated them. It has no formal
name nor organizational ties, he
said, but is “kind of fluid. It is in
its infancy.” Many who are involved are members of Beis
Medrash Mikor Hachaim, an Orthodox synagogue on West
Chase Street in West Rogers
Park.
David Kamish, who has
been reported as initiating and
organizing the patrols, did not return calls from Chicago Jewish
News.
Glatz said a series of anti-Semitic incidents over the last year
sparked the need for the patrols.
“We were all taking the advice of the police to be more vigilant, be more aware of our
surroundings, be more prepared,”
he said.
During last year’s conflict in
Gaza, Glatz said, several cars in
the area were vandalized and
messages were left on them stating the equivalent of “we know
who you are and where you live
and if you don’t stop bombing
Gaza we will come back for you.”
In December, anti-Semitic
graffiti was scrawled on the
garage of Congregation Atereth
Yehoshua in the 2900 block of
West Touhy Avenue and on the
outside of several homes.
In April, several synagogues,
private individuals and Jewish
organizations, including the
Bernard Horwich JCC on Touhy
Avenue, received letters filled
with a white powder that turned
out to be baking soda. The letters
contained Arabic writing and
pictures of what appeared to be
Arabic rebel fighters, sources
said. Glatz said a rabbi’s car was
vandalized in a garage in the
area.
On April 19, two people
were robbed at gunpoint in the
early hours of the morning in the
3000 block of West Jerome Avenue. According to police, an
SUV pulled up and a man with a
T
Andrew Glatz
Howard Rieger
Bruce Rottner
gun demanded the couple’s belongings.
“That was the straw that
broke the camel’s back,” Glatz
said. “There has been a rash of
anti-Semitic events. We appreciate the diligence of the local authorities but since the attacks
(against Jews) in France and
Copenhagen, in Europe, the
Middle East and elsewhere with
ISIS destroying ancient Christian and Jewish cities, it’s happening.”
Some 25 families got together and agreed to pay $25 a
month for the extra security, he
said.
He compared it to hospitals
where patients, without faulting
the care they receive, hire private nurses.
Some other cities use citizen
patrols for this purpose, but,
Glatz said, “we thought the police would prefer to have their
own trained officers moonlighting as opposed to our own community members. They work the
districts already and are familiar
with the other officers. What we
are doing now is being proactive
instead of reactive.”
The effort started at Glatz’s
own synagogue, he said, then expanded north to the “Touhy corridor” and beyond. Two to four
officers patrol on most Shabbats
and Jewish holidays depending
on the perceived need, he said.
Synagogue members weren’t
advertising the service to the
public but Ald. Silverstein “got
wind of our patrol,” Glatz said,
and requested a community
meeting with patrol organizers, a
CAPS (community policing
through the Chicago Police De-
partment) officer and heads of
community organizations. A reporter for the website DNAinfo
attended and “that’s how it got
picked up” by other news outlets,
Glatz said.
“None of us wanted this in
public discussion but it’s good
now that there is open debate
about it,” he said. “We have gotten positive feedback and calls
from other communities.”
Silverstein said she organized the meeting when she heard
about the patrols because “I felt
it was very important that we
work together (with the police)
and have open lines of communication. That was the message
given at the meeting – that we
need to work together,” she told
Chicago Jewish News.
“I think it’s encouraging that
(the group hiring the off-duty officers) work together with the
police,” she said. “I think that’s
key – people calling the police
when issues arise.”
At the meeting, police encouraged residents to call 911
when they witness suspicious behavior or feel unsafe. One CAPS
facilitator suggested that Orthodox Jews find a non-Jewish
neighbor to whom they can go
for help on a Shabbat or holiday.
“Never be afraid to reach
out and ask for help – or make
contact,” he said, according to
DNAinfo.
which includes West Rogers
Park.
Rieger, a former president
and CEO of Jewish Federations
of North America who moved
back to his native Chicago several years ago, has done considerable work to improve the area,
hiring a planner and laying out a
strategy to upgrade and beautify
the Devon corridor, where there
were many empty storefronts,
and other spots. He most recently was instrumental in creating a park at Devon Avenue and
McCormick Boulevard at the site
of an abandoned parking lot.
He has had nothing to do
with the security patrols but is
aware of them, he said. “These
neighborhoods have taken this
direction and they have a right
to do it,” he said. “But the issue
from my point of view is that it
be coordinated with the police.
An independent force out there
operating on its own is not going
to be good for the neighborhood.
If we can share information with
the police then it can be a constructive thing.”
He said his interactions with
the Chicago police have been
positive.
“They’ve been responsive to
whatever we asked them,” he
said. “I particularly appreciate
the fact that on an ongoing basis
they pay special attention to the
neighborhood on Shabbat and
yom tovs.”
During the Gaza conflict last
year, the organization asked the
24th District commander to convene a meeting with agencies and
synagogues in the area to discuss
security. “They were very responsive to that, very knowledgeable
oward Rieger, president of
the Jewish Community
Council of West Rogers
Park, agrees, touting the positive interactions he has had
with the Chicago Police Department and its 24th District,
H
11
Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
about the neighborhood and Jewish traditions,” he said.
As for the anti-Semitic incidents, “What can you think?”
Rieger said. “The good news is
that Jews haven’t been accosted.
It’s out there but we have a new
police commander (District
Commander Roberto Nieves)
and he is a sophisticated guy who
will help bring up to speed in
terms of being familiar with Jewish agencies and traditions. They
have always been completely
willing to work with us.”
Noting that anti-Semitic incidents can and do happen anywhere, including Lincolnwood
and Northbrook, Rieger said he
hopes people outside of West
Rogers Park aren’t left with the
impression of “oh my gosh, what
is happening here?”
Jewish Child and Family
Services is building a major addition to its facility in the area, the
Horwich JCC is upgrading,
“shuls are being built, people are
building massive houses,” he
said. “There is a lot of good here
and more good to follow. Some
people are out of touch with
that.”
Shalom Klein, executive director of the Jewish Community
Council of West Rogers Park,
said he does not endorse the security patrols and knows of no
other formal organization that
has become involved in the effort.
The council “doesn’t really
have an opinion of it,” he said.
“These are individual steps people are taking over and above the
very wonderful cooperation
we’ve had with the Chicago Police.”
He feels satisfied with the
job the Chicago Police Department is doing, Klein said, and
sees Ald. Silverstein’s meeting
bringing together police, rabbis
and community leaders “a perfect
example of a public-private partnership, and that is good news.
When things were going on
overseas, in France, in Israel, immediately I was on the phone
with Chicago police, Lincolnwood, Cook County, the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security, the FBI.” All the agencies
responded quickly, he said.
Rabbi Doug Zelden
n the neighborhood, reaction
to the security patrols is mixed.
Longtime West Rogers Park
resident Esther Manewith said
the necessity for such patrols
“breaks my heart. There was a
shooting near a school recently
and they had to cancel recess.”
Having extra protection “I
think is great in a way,” she said.
“Orthodox people can’t carry a
cell phone on Shabbos. We’ve
got to do something. When there
is a shooting near a school and
kids can hear it, this is an obscenity.”
One neighborhood rabbi,
Rabbi Douglas Zelden of Congregation Or Menorah, said he
does not use the private patrols
but is not against anyone who
wants to do so.
“It’s not a bad thing to do
because there is a lot of craziness
around,” he said. But he doesn’t
feel it’s necessary for his synagogue because the building is
small and doesn’t stand out. In
addition, he said, “when you
walk into a synagogue you want
to feel like home. I don’t want
people to walk in and feel like
they’re getting looked over. You
want them to feel like it’s their
home, and you don’t want security in your own home.”
He also doesn’t want a member of the congregation to stay
outside watching the door, as
some synagogues have done. “I
don’t want to tell one of my congregants that you can’t be in
shul, you have to be outside
watching the door,” he said.
Although “everybody agrees
there is precedence” to hire private security patrols, Zelden
doesn’t think people in the
neighborhood are necessarily terrified.
“There is a limited amount
of fear, I don’t know about a lot,”
he said. “It has died down some.
When there is an incident, it
lasts for two or three weeks then
it dies down, and there hasn’t
been an incident recently. People are letting their children
walk down the street without
adult supervision. I’m letting my
12-year-old walk with a groups of
friends without adult supervision
when going to youth groups.”
Deputy Chief Bruce Rottner
served as commander in the 24th
District for three years and
served with the Chicago Police
for 39. When he retired several
years ago, he held the rank of
deputy chief of patrol for Area
North, an area that encompasses
the North Side of Chicago. Rottner, who is Jewish, is president
of the Shomrim Society of Illinois, an organization of Jewish
police officers.
Of the private security patrols, he said,”I’m a much
stronger believer in working with
the police department. That’s’
what we pay taxes for. If you have
a good relationship with the police, sit down and tell them what
(the community’s) needs are.”
He said that today the police
are more attuned to the needs of
various ethnic communities than
when he started with the department in 1972.
“It’s just a matter of sitting
down with the officers and supervisors who patrol your neighborhood and telling them, this is
what our concerns are,” he said.
When he served as 24th
District commander, “the first
thing I did, recognizing that the
Orthodox have special needs, I
started the Shabbos car,” a patrol
car that watched several locations on Shabbat and Jewish holidays.
“My stance is the same as it
was back in 2005 and 2006 when
I was commander,” he said. “I’m
in favor of any strategy that can
help a community reduce fear
and reduce crime, but you need
to do it within the framework of
what is existing already, and
that’s the police. I don’t feel people have to hire outside help to
solve the problem. If you work
closely with your local police the
problem can be solved.”
Rabbi Zev Cohen, spiritual
leader of Congregation Adas
Yeshurun Kanesses Israel and a
West Rogers Park religious
leader, said he was not consulted
about the private patrols and
can’t comment on them.
His synagogue, like several
others in the area, uses “code
locks” on its doors, locks with a
special code that congregants
learn so they don’t have to carry
keys on Shabbat when they
might want to enter the synagogue at times when it isn’t open.
“We’ve had code locks on
the doors for 15 years,” Cohen
said. “The synagogue is open
Rabbi Alan Abramson
Richard Baehr
I
Ald. Debra Silverstein
Rabbi Zev Cohen
from 5:30 in the morning to
12:30 at night, people are studying and praying there all the time
and nobody wanted to carry keys
on Shabbat.” But he said that,
contrary to some residents’ beliefs, the code locks have to do
with convenience rather than security.
“As far as I’m concerned,
our neighborhoods are extremely
secure,” he said. “The police are
doing a wonderful job. We live in
a wonderful neighborhood in a
wonderful country.”
Rabbi Alan M. Abramson of
Congregation Anshe Motele, another nearby synagogue, said he
and his congregants “are satisfied
with the attentiveness of the
Chicago Police Department.
They’ve been responsive to the
Jewish community of West
Rogers Park and we have confidence.”
The congregation sometimes hires private security for a
large bar mitzvah or holiday
crowd, he said, but not primarily
for security purposes. “We just
want to make sure when we have
a bigger crowd the children don’t
get into trouble or get hurt. It’s as
much internal as external.”
Richard Baehr, a political
analyst who writes for the American Thinker, a website that covers issues of Jewish interest as
well as others, posted there that
the largest number of hate crimes
in the country are against Jews.
Even though those hate crimes,
such as anti-Semitic graffiti, have
traditionally not been violent,
that could be changing, he said.
“People do this (hire private
security patrols) when they’re
nervous,” he told Chicago Jewish
News. “The area where this is occurring is probably not the prime
focus area of the Chicago Police
Department. They’ve got bigger
issues.”
He believes the security patrols might be necessary, he said.
“I don’t criticize people who try
to add security to their community,” Baehr said. “It’s a new situation we’re in in terms of direct
threats and the changing population mix in this country and the
kinds of things that have occurred overseas. I think we’re entering into a new era. It doesn’t
take large numbers of people to
commit these kinds of acts.”
His view, he said, is that “if
people do this, there’s a reason to
do it, a need. Sometimes it’s simply communicating that we’re
not as visible a target as other
places.”
latz, meanwhile, said his goal
is to get more synagogues to
sign up for the patrols and to
“streamline” that process.
As it is now, he said, “there
are various security arrangements
in place. Rabbis are handling it
on their own, not as a unified effort. Some congregations have
private security companies, some
have actual police officers, some
have shul members who have researched (security issues) and
been trained.” Some synagogues
and Jewish institutions have
staged mock emergencies to provide training to some of their
members, he said.
“Now it’s a board by board
decision as to what type of security (a synagogue) should have,”
he said. “The goal of our organization is to train the presidents of
synagogues that each respective
(synagogue) should have a security detail and evacuation
method, have a plan in place ,
just like most schools have in
case there should be an event.”
Before his group started the
security initiative, “there was no
unified response or method in
place besides the police. There
was no coordination with members of the community. We have
CAPS but no one seems to take
them seriously,” Glatz said.
While he stressed that he
and others at his synagogue “very
much appreciate and respect”
Chicago police and “want them
to work closely with us,” he feels
the synagogue is much more secure now than previously.
“It’s on a busy street,” he
said. “We took action, we
changed our entrance policy. It
used to be that the door was left
open. Now we have a lock and
on Shabbat we have a greeter.
“Now we’re trying to open
up the eyes of the community
and let them understand (the
neighborhood) is not as rosy, safe
and tranquil as we would all love
it to be.”
G
12
Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
Senior Living
Agnieszka Kurant and the art of what’s missing
By Lucy Blatter
JTA
Agnieszka Kurant has become one of only a handful of
artists to have their work adorn
the famous curved facade of the
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Kurant’s “The End of Signature,” a neon white projection
created from the actual signatures of museum visitors with the
help of a computer program, is an
evolving light sculpture that the
Polish-Jewish artist calls an ode
to the disappearing art of handwriting. The “collective signa-
ture” will be visible on the Manhattan building at night and is
similar to a work projected in
blue outside a shopping mall in
Holland in 2013.
“It’s like the signature of an
invisible hand of a collective
body,” said Kurant, a self-described post-conceptual artist
now based in New York.
Her work will also be on display inside the Guggenheim as
part of its summer contemporary
art show. “Phantom Library”
comprises 112 fictional books,
originally mentioned in novels,
lined up on a shelf. Kurant has
given the books physicality, complete with ISBN numbers and
bar codes.
“It relates to my general interest in phantom capital and
how [the] contemporary economy is becoming based less and
less on physical products and
physical labor and more on virtual and immaterial products and
immaterial labor,” Kurant said.
Invisibility and the power of
what cannot be seen are constants in the work of Kurant,
who learned only as a teenager
that her mother’s family was Jewish. Kurant’s maternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors,
and her mother, who spent most
of her life in communist Poland,
had been afraid to tell her daughter the truth.
Her family’s choice to keep
The work of Polish-Jewish artist Agnieszka Kurant will be featured this
summer at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. (JTA)
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her cultural and religious background hidden has weighed ever
since on Kurant and her work.
“I’m particularly interested
in how certain narratives are suppressed in collective memory,”
she said.
Kurant was born and raised
Catholic in Lodz. At 14, she accompanied her mother’s family
to visit family graves in Warsaw.
Noticing the Jewish stars etched
on the tombstones – sometimes
appearing alongside swastikas –
she learned that her mother’s
family was Jewish.
“When my mother was
growing up, Jewish origin was
taboo,” said Kurant, who until
now has not discussed her Jewish
identity in the media. “My maternal grandparents changed
their names during the war and
kept the fake names. ... They had
a fake Catholic wedding during
the war and baptized my mother
when she was born.”
Kurant’s mother’s family had
been secular Jews, part of the
Warsaw intelligentsia before the
Holocaust. During the war they
were hidden by a German businessman who allowed them to
work in his factory. Her grandfather was a well-known surgeon in
Lodz after the war. But in 1968,
amid a wave of anti-Semitism in
Poland that led to an exodus of
20,000 Jews from the country, he
lost his job and was forced to live
out his professional life at a small
provincial hospital on the outskirts of the city, which is some
85 miles southwest of Warsaw.
Before moving to the
United States permanently 3 1/2
years ago, Kurant lived on
Chlodna Street in Warsaw, the
site of a bridge that once connected the small and large Jewish ghettos. She was struck by the
absence of a Jewish memorial at
the site, which has monuments
to Polish victims of the 1919-21
CONTINUED
O N N E X T PAG E
13
Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
Senior Living
CONTINUED
F RO M P R E V I O U S PAG E
Polish-Soviet war and a monument to a Polish priest who lived
on the street and was murdered
by communists in 1984. The
Jewish narrative, Kurant says,
was suppressed.
So in 2009, along with the
Polish artist Anna Baumgart,
Kurant created “(...),” a huge
sculpture of movable balloons
commissioned by the Museum of
the History of Polish Jews in
Warsaw. The ellipsis between
parentheses suggests a gap in narration.
“It was created as an ‘antimonument,’ a way of showing
what was not there,” Kurant said,
describing the piece as a
“portable monument-for-hire for
places where unresolvable conflict exist, or where there are
problems impossible to discuss
and where certain discourses
were suppressed in collective
memory.”
Since learning about her
own family’s suppression, Kurant
says she has embraced her Jewish-Polish cultural identity.
“It’s who I am,” she said.
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Agnieszka Kurant's "The End of
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14
Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
Senior Living
Turkish newspaper tries to save a dying Jewish language
By Cnaan Lipshiz
JTA
ISTANBUL – Every time
she prepares her newspaper for
print, Karen Sarhon has her pick
from dozens of submissions she
receives daily from writers
around the world.
A desirable situation for any
editor-in-chief, Sarhon says it is
nothing short of unbelievable for
her monthly, El Amaneser,
which is the world’s only newspaper in Ladino – a Jewish-Spanish language teetering on the
brink of extinction.
“In the 1970s, Ladino was
truly a dying language, but El
Amaneser is among the relatively
new initiatives giving Ladino a
new lease on life,” said Sarhon, a
Turkish-Jewish linguist who
launched the Ladino publication
10 years ago as part of her work at
the Turkish Jewish community’s
Ottoman-Turkish Sephardic Culture Research Center.
Sarhon’s center was founded
as Jews worldwide, and especially
in Israel, grew alarmed at the
prospect of Ladino’s disappearance and mounted an international effort spanning four
continents to preserve it. The effort to preserve the language also
has gotten a boost from Spain’s
push to export its culture and
language abroad through its Cervantes Institute – and from popular nostalgia for Sephardic
culture.
Ladino is spoken by about
100,000 people, most of them in
Israel, according to Israel’s Association of Translators. Other es-
timates say the number of Ladino
speakers worldwide may be more
than twice that number. Whatever the exact figure, Ladino is
not being passed on to the next
generation – partly because these
Ladino speakers are dispersed in
countries dominated by other
languages.
Starting in the mid 1990s,
language classes and online forums promoting Ladino began
popping up in Israel. In 1996, Israel’s National Authority of
Ladino was established, and in
the early 2000s two Israeli universities, Bar-Ilan and Ben-Gurion, began teaching the
language.
These conditions allowed El
Amaneser to recruit writers from
Turkey, France, Argentina,
Chile, Israel, the United States
and Britain, who every month
send in far more material than
the paper can print in its 24
pages.
With no more than 2,000
readers in Turkey and another
300 worldwide, El Amaneser is
not exactly a moneymaker. It exists as a nonprofit, like most
other bodies that were set up
over the past 30 years to save
Ladino from oblivion.
But whereas most of these
bodies have state or university
funding, El Amaneser exists
thanks to the resources of Turkey’s
small Jewish community and
Salom – the country’s Jewish
weekly, which prints El Amaneser
and houses its offices in its building. Unlike most Diaspora Jewish
newspapers, Salom actually generates a profit, and, aside
from funding El Amaneser, Salom
distributes the Ladino paper for
free to Salom’s 4,500-odd subscribers. It’s not clear how many
of them actually can read
Ladino. Originally written in Hebrew letters, the language has
been transliterated into Latin
letters for the past 30 years.
For Turkish Jews, preserving
Ladino is a historical obligation,
says Sami Aker, a journalist at
Salom. He notes that Ladino was
developed in the Ottoman Empire by Sephardic Jews who arrived as refugees in the 15th
century after fleeing the Spanish
and Portuguese Inquisitions.
“Contrary to common misconceptions, Sephardic Jews didn’t speak Ladino in Spain and
Portugal; they spoke their local
dialect over there,” Sarhon said.
Only after they came to the Ottoman Empire did they begin
using Ladino, “which is very
much an Ottoman language,”
she said.
While most immigrant populations lose their native language within four generations,
Ladino has survived for centuries. It was so widely spoken
among Turkish Jews that it was
chosen over Turkish as the language for Salom when the paper
was founded in 1947.
But Ladino readership diminished as young Turkish
Jews either left for Israel or integrated into Turkish society.
Salom switched to Turkish in
1984, keeping Ladino alive only
in one weekly page and in the
framed, yellowing front pages
that adorn the walls of the
paper’s headquarters in downtown Istanbul.
Ladino did not fare any better in Bulgaria, where Jews spoke
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Karen Sarhon and members of her Ladino song group Los Pasharos
Sefaradis in Istanbul. (JTA)
the language until recently (Bulgaria, too, used to also be part of
the Ottoman Empire). Claire
Levy, a Bulgarian Jew, recalls
how the language died out
within her family, like many
other Jewish families, when
everyone left for Israel in the
1950s except for one Ladinospeaking aunt.
“Later on, she married a Bulgarian guy and stopped speaking
Ladino altogether,” Levy said.
In Turkey, preserving Ladino
is not the most pressing issue for
a community concerned about its
future amid rising Islamism and
the anti-Israel – and, some say,
anti-Semitic – tirades of Turkey’s
president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
and his cronies. After two Istanbul synagogues were bombed in
2003, Salom added new security
Sweet
measures at its headquarters,
which are now housed in a nondescript building under constant
guard and equipped with massive, blast-proof doors.
Turkish Jews’ stake in preserving Ladino – a language rich
with humorous expressions,
songs, jokes and poetic metaphors – is understandable considering how intricately woven
into their communal identity the
language has become. To this day,
Ladino phrases pepper the conversations of Turkish Jews, not
unlike the way American Jews or
Israelis use Yiddish. Turkish Jews
use Ladino references for everything from domestic items
(“pantofeles” for slippers) to insults (“jandaracho,” which can
mean floor mop, or a submissive
person).
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Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
Senior Living
Sheryl Sandberg brings the ideas of Jewish
mourning into the national spotlight
By Aish.com
The unexpected death of
tech leader Dave Goldberg –
husband of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg – has brought the
ideas of Jewish mourning into
the national spotlight.
As the 30-day mourning period (“Shloshim”) concluded,
Sandberg shared her thoughts
with millions of people. Publicizing Judaism’s sensitive and wise
mourning practices constitutes a
“Kiddush Hashem” – sanctification of G-d’s Name – that serves
as a merit for the dearly departed.
Excerpts from Sandberg’s post:
Today is the end of sheloshim for my beloved husband
– the first thirty days. Judaism
calls for a period of intense
mourning known as shiva that
lasts seven days after a loved one
is buried. After shiva, most normal activities can be resumed,
but it is the end of sheloshim
that marks the completion of religious mourning for a spouse.
A childhood friend of mine
who is now a rabbi recently told
me that the most powerful oneline prayer he has ever read is:
“Let me not die while I am still
alive.” I would have never understood that prayer before losing
Dave. Now I do.
I think when tragedy occurs,
it presents a choice. You can give
in to the void, the emptiness that
fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or
even breathe. Or you can try to
find meaning. These past thirty
days, I have spent many of my
moments lost in that void. And
I know that many future moments will be consumed by the
vast emptiness as well.
But when I can, I want to
choose life and meaning.
And this is why I am writing: to mark the end of sheloshim and to give back some of
what others have given to me...
I have learned that I never
really knew what to say to others
in need. I think I got this all
wrong before; I tried to assure
people that it would be okay,
thinking that hope was the most
comforting thing I could offer. A
friend of mine with late-stage
cancer told me that the worst
thing people could say to him
was “It is going to be okay.” That
voice in his head would scream,
How do you know it is going to
be okay? Do you not understand
that I might die? I learned this
past month what he was trying to
teach me.
Real empathy is sometimes
not insisting that it will be okay
but acknowledging that it is not.
When people say to me, “You
and your children will find happiness again,” my heart tells me,
Yes, I believe that, but I know I
will never feel pure joy again.
Those who have said, “You will
find a new normal, but it will
never be as good” comfort me
more because they know and
speak the truth. Even a simple
“How are you?” – almost always
asked with the best of intentions
– is better replaced with “How
are you today?” When I am asked
“How are you?” I stop myself
from shouting, My husband died
a month ago, how do you think I
am? When I hear “How are you
today?” I realize the person
knows that the best I can do
right now is to get through each
day.
I have learned some practical stuff that matters. Although
we now know that Dave died immediately, I didn’t know that in
the ambulance. The trip to the
hospital was unbearably slow. I
still hate every car that did not
move to the side, every person
who cared more about arriving at
their destination a few minutes
earlier than making room for us
to pass. I have noticed this while
driving in many countries and
cities. Let’s all move out of the
way. Someone’s parent or partner
or child might depend on it.
I have learned how
ephemeral everything can feel –
and maybe everything is. That
whatever rug you are standing on
can be pulled right out from
under you with absolutely no
warning. In the last thirty days, I
have heard from too many
women who lost a spouse and
then had multiple rugs pulled out
from under them. Some lack support networks and struggle alone
as they face emotional distress
and financial insecurity. It seems
so wrong to me that we abandon
these women and their families
when they are in greatest need.
I have learned to ask for
SEE MOURNING
PAG E 1 6
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Sheryl Sandberg with her late husband David Goldberg.
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16
Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
Senior Living
Mourning
CONTINUED
F RO M PAG E
15
help – and I have learned how
much help I need. Until now, I
have been the older sister, the
COO, the doer and the planner.
I did not plan this, and when it
happened, I was not capable of
doing much of anything. Those
closest to me took over. They
planned. They arranged. They
told me where to sit and reminded me to eat. They are still
doing so much to support me and
my children...
For me, starting the transition back to work has been a savior, a chance to feel useful and
connected. But I quickly discovered that even those connections
had changed. Many of my coworkers had a look of fear in
their eyes as I approached. I
knew why – they wanted to help
but weren’t sure how. Should I
mention it? Should I not mention it? If I mention it, what the
hell do I say? I realized that to restore that closeness with my colleagues that has always been so
important to me, I needed to let
them in. And that meant being
more open and vulnerable than I
ever wanted to be. I told those I
work with most closely that they
could ask me their honest questions and I would answer. I also
said it was okay for them to talk
about how they felt. One colleague admitted she’d been driving by my house frequently, not
sure if she should come in. Another said he was paralyzed when
I was around, worried he might
say the wrong thing. Speaking
openly replaced the fear of doing
and saying the wrong thing. One
of my favorite cartoons of all
time has an elephant in a room
answering the phone, saying, “It’s
the elephant.” Once I addressed
the elephant, we were able to
kick him out of the room.
At the same time, there are
moments when I can’t let people
in. I went to Portfolio Night at
school where kids show their parents around the classroom to
look at their work hung on the
walls. So many of the parents –
all of whom have been so kind –
tried to make eye contact or say
something they thought would
be comforting. I looked down the
entire time so no one could catch
my eye for fear of breaking down.
I hope they understood.
Jewish News
CONTINUED
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F RO M PAG E
4
Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 calling for peace with Israel if it
withdraws to its pre-1967 borders. Twenty-five percent said Israel and Saudi Arabia should team up to fight Iran. “What we
think here in Israel about the Saudis is not exactly what they
are,” Alex Mintz, head of the Interdisciplinary Center, told AP,
adding, “There is a commonality of interests between Saudi Arabia and Israel right now that the Israeli government should take
advantage of and capitalize on because it is unique in the history
of the two states.”
■ Rabbi Marc Schneier of The Hampton Synagogue reportedly has been expelled from the Rabbinical Council of America.
Schneier, the founding rabbi of the synagogue in tony Westhampton Beach, N.Y., reportedly was expelled earlier this year
following allegations that he had an extramarital affair with a
congregant five years ago. The RCA, the main modern Orthodox
rabbinic association, did not deny that it had expelled Schneier.
Schneier also is the founder and head of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding. The woman with whom Schneier is said to
have had the affair, Gitty Leiner, became his fifth wife. The divorce papers from his fourth marriage disclosed the affair.
■ The Orthodox Jewish owner of American Pharoah walked
to the track to see his horse claim the first Triple Crown in nearly
four decades. Owner Ahmed Zayat and his family slept in RVs on
Friday night and walked to Belmont Park in New York the next
day in order to observe the Sabbath, The Associated Press reported. Racing to victory in the Belmont Stakes, American
Pharoah became the first horse to win the third leg of the Triple
Crown for 3-year-olds following victories in the Kentucky Derby
and Preakness since Affirmed in 1978. “We all wanted it. We
wanted it for the sport,” Zayat, of Teaneck, New Jersey, said after
the race, according to AP. American Pharoah’s jockey, Victor Espinoza, who is not Jewish, visited the Lubavitcher rebbe’s grave
in Cambria Heights, New York, in the borough of Queens, where
he prayed and presumably asked for good luck for his colt. Zayat,
52, who was born and grew up in Cairo, had watched horses he
owns finish second in the Kentucky Derby three out of the past
four years. In 2012, his horses finished second in each of the three
Triple Crown races. Zayat owns 144 horses.
JTA
17
Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
By Joseph Aaron
CONTINUED
F RO M PAG E
Get Home Care
18
Jews, they were not according the Orthodox that very acceptance and
respect.
If you want how you choose to be Jews to be valued, then if an
Orthodox family chooses to be Jews by not having a TV or by having 14 children, that is equally deserving of being valued. There is no
difference. Pluralism is a two-way street.
Which is why I have so much trouble with liberals berating the
Duggars for having 19 kids, saying it’s wrong. Why is it wrong? If that
is what they believe to be their Christian duty, we should respect that
just as much as atheists wish to be respected for their choice. And the
notion that because the Duggars are devout and don’t believe in
same sex marriage somehow makes them hypocrites because one of
their kids behaved in a very unchristian way is absurd.
Again gray. I’m really not sure how I feel about the Duggars.
Which is the point. It’s as wrong to dump all over them as crazy religious fanatics as it is for Bible thumpers to defend them as if what happened and how they handled it is not a big deal, not worth talking
about.
The Duggars and BruceCaitlyn give us much to talk about, think
about, reflect about. There are no simple answers here and no, the
Torah does not tell us how to respond and feel. The Torah indeed recognizes that we are all frail humans, tells us to remember that we were
once strangers in a strange land, to not do unto others as we would not
have done unto ourselves.
Meaning we need to wrestle with things, be open to things, open
our hearts and minds to things. What should someone born male who
truly feels in their heart they are somehow intrinsically a woman do
about that, deal with that? To say just ignore it and accept who you are
is as wrong as saying well then just get breast implants and put on a dress.
And so with the Duggars. Were they bad parents, bad Christians
because their son behaved as he did? And if he truly atoned and his sisters truly forgave him is that enough? And just because they are intolerant of gays does that make them not worthy of our sympathy for what
they had to deal with with their children? There are plenty of other
questions to ask and none of them are easy to answer, none of them
lend themselves to black and white thinking, all of them are very gray.
And, by the way, if you’re one of those who instinctively, arrogantly, looks at all the above and says it demonstrates the superior
morality of Jews and Judaism, don’t get so cocky. Please remember that
in just the last few weeks, we had one of Washington’s most prominent rabbis sentenced to six years in jail for having secretly videotaped
nude women as they used his shul’s mikvah; we learned that one of
New York’s most prominent rabbis has for 30 years taken young men
and boys, some as young as 12 years old, into the sauna with him where
he and they would sit naked, the rabbi gawking as the boys were in
the shower; we had the Israeli rabbi known as the ‘rabbi to the stars’
for all the celebrities he advised, sentenced to jail because money intended to provide food for needy Holocaust survivors instead wound
up in the rabbi’s pocket.
So our superiority too is a matter of gray. We may be the chosen
people but we are not necessarily the morally superior people.
In all that’s been going on, there has been a whole lot of gray. But
there is one very clear thing I do feel emerges from it all. And that is
that in today’s world, there is no such thing as a secret. Thanks to the
internet and its vast antennas and sources of information, nothing remains hidden. We know now that Speaker Hastert probably molested
boys when he was a wrestling coach. We know that the pious Duggars
had a son who engaged in wrongful touching of his sisters. We know
about the Sauna Rabbi and the Mikvah Peeping Rabbi.
Judaism teaches that as the time for the Moshiach to come draws
closer, scientific developments come more rapidly and are more amazing. No one denies that has been the case, where if you had trouble
believing that G-d hears every word each of us says, that’s less hard to
believe when you learn the U.S. government keeps track of every single phone call every American makes every day.
And so the notion that G-d sees all our actions, judges us for
everything we do, even the things only we and He knows, is less hard
to believe in a time when all is revealed about everyone.
And so, even as my head is spinning from all the gray things going on in the world that are very hard to know how to process, my
heart is gratified that we are learning so much about so many, especially about those we have looked up to, made into false idols.
For it reminds us that our deeds, all our deeds, are seen by G-d.
Now that our technology makes it easier for us to believe that, and
harder for us to hide anything, there is no surer sign that we truly live
in the time when Moshiach is not far away.
And for all of you who dismiss that kind of thinking as religious
claptrap, I remind you that seeing it that way is also being black and
white. What do you make of the amazing technologies that have transformed our lives, what does it mean that everyone’s secrets are coming out? Is that just coincidence and meaningless, or is there a profound truth to be found here? Don’t be so sure. Embrace the gray.
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18
Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
Death Notices
Francine S. Malkin, nee Skar,
beloved wife of Howard I.
Malkin. Loving mother of Dr.
Steven (Pamela Weiner) Malkin and Gary (Lisa) Malkin.
Cherished Nana of Jordyn,
Marilyn F. Taksin, nee Mendel; age 72; died June 3;
beloved wife of the late
Mike; loving mother of Sam
(Victoria) Taksin and Bonnie
(Scott) Walsh; devoted grandmother of Beverly (Justin)
Kendall, Abbie, Spencer and
Becca. Devoted sister of Sylvia
(Raymond) Gilbert. Dear aunt
of Natalie (Nate) Solomon,
Sheldon (Donna) Gilbert and
Jeffrey (Jenilyn) Gilbert. In lieu
Messamore, Eric (fiancee
Emily Bork), and, Blaine and
Sean Walsh; proud great
grandmother of Dominic
Taksin; fond sister in law
Aaron (Sheri) and Joe Taksin;
aunt of Sarah (Said) Leon,
of flowers remembrances to
Jewish United Fund, would be
appreciated. Arrangements by
Mitzvah Memorial Funerals.
Embrace the gray
Matthew Taksin, and Kara
Taksin. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the
American Cancer Society, cancer.org. Arrangements by
Lakeshore Jewish Funerals,
(773) 625-8621.
Leader of Myanmar’s Jewish community
(JTA)– The leader of Myanmar’s small Jewish community
and the caretaker of the country’s
only synagogue has died.
Moses Samuels, 65, passed
away, his son, Sammy, wrote in
an email to Coconuts Yangon, a
media source. No cause of death
was identified, but Samuels had
been battling cancer for several
years.
“For over 35 years he has
been taken care [sic] of Yangon
Synagogue and the Jewish com-
munity” Sammy Samuels wrote.
“And he made sure [of] keeping
the Jewish Spirit alive in Myanmar. He is great person with very
good heart. His legacy will continue to live in the hearts and
minds of everyone who came
across to know him. May Hashem
[the Lord] bless his Soul.”
The Samuels family has
looked over the Mesmuah
Yeshua synagogue in Yangon –
Myanmar’s former capital and
largest city, with a population of
over 5 million – for generations.
Moses Samuels inherited the task
of synagogue caretaker from his
father and grandfather. Now his
son will assume the role of keeping the synagogue open.
Before World War II, Myanmar’s Jewish community flourished, and Yangon’s synagogue
had 126 Torah scrolls. Today it is
estimated that only a few dozen
Jews remain in the country.
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Sometimes it really does feel like the whole world is being turned
upside down.
Men are marrying men, women are marrying women, a famous
male athlete is featured on the cover of a magazine dressed in a
corset, cleavage showing, a movie star-like beautiful female, the former Speaker of the House, chosen to be so because he was so squeaky
clean, is exposed as a probable child molester, the Christian family stars
of a reality TV show are shown to have a dark secret.
Here’s the thing about all that. Everybody seems to know exactly
what is right and wrong, good and bad. As if such matters have easy
answers, require no thinking or reflecting, only reflexive reactions.
One thing I’ve learned is that almost nothing is black and white,
almost everything is gray. And it would be nice if we were all mature
enough to recognize that, realize that.
Take me, for instance. I’m what you would call a liberal. And so
in the cable news Twitter Facebook immediate reaction world in
which we now live, it would seem obvious how I feel, what I think
about some of the issues mentioned above.
But that would be an inaccurate, simplistic belief. Take Bruce now
Caitlyn Jenner. As a liberal, I should be thrilled about it, see it as a victory for diversity and acceptance.
Now I’m for all diversity and acceptance, but I got to tell you, I’m
very ambivalent about BruceCaitlyn. For starters, I must admit I simply don’t understand the notion of someone feeling they are not the gender they were born. I’m not making fun of it, I’m just saying I can’t grasp
the idea of someone feeling they are a woman when they are a man.
And I don’t think that is an easy thing to understand, which is
why I equally have a problem when those who are for transgender
rights get all upset if you are not one hundred percent overjoyed at all
the BruceCaitlyn hoopla; and when insensitive clods like Rush Limbaugh just dismiss the whole thing out of hand as not normal.
It is clearly a very complex thing. I believe that Bruce has always
felt somehow that in his mind and heart he was female. Doesn’t mean
I’m not uneasy to see him all dolled up on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. If he says he always felt like a woman, does that mean he has always wanted to wear a dress and makeup, or is it something deeper? And
how can that be, where does that come from, what does it mean?
Gray. To just be thrilled or just be disgusted is too easy. This is
something that involves really trying to understand what Bruce is talking about, not feeling you have to be comfortable with it if you are not.
I am not.
Especially since it kind of feels like a publicity stunt, a way for a
has-been to get attention, a way for a member of the hyper manipulative Kardashian clan to get a TV show. And yet it was hard not to
be touched by his heartfelt interview with Diane Sawyer.
I don’t see BruceCaitlyn as a hero or as a freak. But I must admit
it makes me almost physically sick to look at the Vanity Fair cover.
Yet, I’m not saying I’m right in feeling that. What I am saying is
that there are a lot of complexities here, identity issues, matters that
are almost beyond comprehension and it would be nice if we all recognized that and didn’t feel we have to be black or white about it.
So it is with the Duggar family. We now know that one of the
Duggars’ sons, Josh, acted very inappropriately towards his sisters
when he was a teenager. Which, of course, should be condemned. But
I must admit, though I am a liberal, I have not joined my fellow liberals in being so quick to condemn the Duggar family.
For starters, families are complex things and that is especially so
if you have 19 kids. I frankly have found the intolerance of some toward the Duggars to be nauseating. And it is the same kind of intolerance in the name of tolerance that I have often seen in the Jewish
community.
I used to frequently speak at Conservative and Reform synagogues.
And what I universally found was anger and hurt at what they perceived
to be the intolerance of the Orthodox community, what they saw as the
Orthodox non-acceptance, indeed delegitimizing of them.
Funny thing though is that when I would tell them that many Orthodox families I know do not have a TV, they would snort. And when
I told them that many Orthodox families I know have a dozen or more
children, they would label that as wrong, even disgusting, often followed by the inevitable jokes about the connection between not having a TV and having lots of kids.
I would gently point out to them that while they demanded that
the Orthodox world accept and respect Reform and Conservative
SEE BY JOSEPH
AARON
ON
PAG E 1 7
19
Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
FIRST PLACE.
TWO TIMES.
The Chicago Jewish News has again showed that it is Chicago’s quality Jewish newspaper.
Every year, the American Jewish Press Association hands out its Rockower Awards
recognizing the very best in American Jewish journalism.
And this year, the Chicago Jewish News won two FirstPlace prizes. It was the only Chicago Jewish paper to
win any first-place Rockowers.
Editor Joseph Aaron won First Place
for his story, “Life and Death,”
the judges calling it, “Meticulously
and movingly written.”
Jews and
Parkinson’s
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A new study
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By Joseph Aaron
This week, for the
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He died exactly 70 tual yahrzeit, on the anniversary ofit of my zaydie.
years ago, but it wa
the day he died.
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That ’s because it , say kaddish on the exact date of year that I could
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million Jews mur were murdered in the Holocaust, zaydie, bubbie and
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See story on page
5
Managing Editor Pauline Dubkin
Yearwood won First Place for her
story “Jews and Parkinson’s,” the
judges calling it, “Outstanding
work.”
More proof that quality journalism is what you can
expect every week from the Chicago Jewish News.
Quality matters. It matters because it gets people to make sure to go through each page of the
paper because they know they will find things of interest to them. And that matters when you
consider where to spend your precious advertising dollars, because it is not how many people
get the paper, but how many people ACTUALLY READ the paper. And so when you place an
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THE CHICAGO
Jewish News
20
Chicago Jewish News - June 12-18, 2015
Comfort
Introducing Selfhelp Home’s
New Health and Rehabilitation Center
The new Health and Rehabilitation Center combines a luxury setting with great care to help you regain your strength
after a hospital stay so you can return home.
„
Luxury Setting: Private
hotel-like suites with private
baths, Wifi, in-room dining,
as well as room for a family
member to stay with you
„
Great Care: Our Rehab to Home program
features experienced and compassionate
healthcare professionals including physicians,
nurses and therapists, and a spacious therapy
gym with state-of-the-art equipment
„
Engaging Jewish Community:
Enjoy access to our movie theater,
rooftop garden, and numerous social
events and activities
All this is available at The Selfhelp Home, rated five-star by CMS and recognized by U.S. News and World Report
as one of the Best Nursing Homes in 2015.
Great care, right at home…the Selfhelp Home.
For more information, visit www.SelfhelpHome.org or call 773.271.0300.
908 W. Argyle Street, Chicago
The Selfhelp Home is a non-profit senior living community offering independent living, assisted living,
intermediate, rehabilitation and skilled nursing services.