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On the Train Back to Williamsburg

Mon, 21 May 2012 16:29:00 GMT-5

On the G train home from the ultra-Orthodox rally at Citifield last night, I talked Zionism with a passel of Hasidim headed for Williamsburg.

A rabbi named Yechiel Meir Katz had drawn an implicit historical parallel in his address earlier in the evening between the rejection of Zionism by the Orthodox and the need to reject the Internet.

Another speaker, Rabbi Ephraim Wachsman, underlined the point, citing Communism and Zionism as historical challenges the Jewish people had been forced overcome.

On the subway headed from Citifield to Williamsburg, I asked a group of mostly Satmar Hasids about the comparison between Zionism and the Internet.

“Everyone who has a Jewish heart knows Zionism is against Judaism,” said one, speaking from the back of the small crowd that had gathered around me.

The sentiment isn’t rare among the Satmar, who remain among the most anti-Zionist of the ultra-Orthodox groups.

What was rare, at least for me, was to have a conversation with a Satmar Hasid about these sorts of controversial ideas.

Though it was the exhortations against the use of the internet by a handful of rabbis on the JumboTron at the that drew headlines, the real action at the anti-Internet rally was in the stairwells and the subways, where ultra-Orthodox of all stripes mixed and chatted with each other, and with me.

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Adrianne Jeffries: A 21st-Century Yentl

Mon, 21 May 2012 16:08:00 GMT-5

It’s Yentl for the 21st century. A female reporter from The New York Observer’s tech blog, BetaBeat, snuck into Sunday’s ultra-Orthodox, men-only rally against the dangers of the Internet by dressing up — apparently rather convincingly — as a man.

Adrianne Jeffries bought a pair of cheap loafers at Payless, borrowed her brother’s white dress shirt, black pants and striped rep tie and borrowed a kippah before heading to Citi Field, where some 40,000 Haredi men gathered to listen to some of this generation’s leading Torah sages inveigh against the dangers of going online.

“I have short hair already, so I didn’t do anything in addition to wearing men’s clothing and men’s shoes. I did tape my chest down a bit with duct tape and tried, not that successfully, to deepen my voice,” she wrote in an email to The Sisterhood.

She didn’t find a hunky love interest at the rally, as Barbra Streisand-as-Yentl did with Mandy Patinkin’s character, Avigdor, in the 1983 movie based on an Isaac Bashevis Singer story chronicling a young woman’s journey into drag as she tries to infiltrate the male-only world of the yeshiva.

But Jeffries did find men interested in making her acquaintance. Her plan had been “to keep my eyes down and my mouth shut, or pretend to talk on my cell phone,” so that her woman’s voice wouldn’t give her away.

Yet even before making her way to a seat, an elderly rabbi “with long gray hair reached out his hand and started pumping my arm up and down. ‘What brings you here?’ he asked.”

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Next Food Network Star Takes on Jewish Food

Mon, 21 May 2012 15:14:00 GMT-5

What would a gastronomical visit to New York be without a stop on the Lower East Side for some traditional Eastern European Jewish food? That’s exactly what the producers of The Next Food Network Star were thinking when they sent one group of contestants to the area on this weekend’s episode.

The episode was all about ethnic food in New York, with Alton Brown’s group checking out the Jewish food, Giada De Laurentis’s crew headed to Little Italy, and Bobby Flay’s team checked out Harlem. The assignment was to visit several landmark culinary businesses in the neighborhood, and then to make a dish inspired by them.

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Monday Music: The Face of Ladino Dream-Pop

Mon, 21 May 2012 15:00:00 GMT-5

Any artist working in “World Music” (likely the vaguest genre for which Billboard tracks sales) has to determine the role traditional sounds play in their compositions. They hang suspended between the present and the past; too much fealty to the canon and the recordings become academic exercises in evoking a world long gone. Update your sound too much and you risk severing your connection to the folk vernacular entirely. After all, all music comes from somewhere in the world but no one calls Lady Gaga “World Music.”

This conflict between history and the now is dramatically enacted in Sarah Aroeste’s music. Not only does Aroeste labor in an idiom that dates back to the 15th century, but she does so for an audience that doesn’t even speak the language. Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish language of much of the Sephardic diaspora, is spoken by less than 100,000 people around the world today, most of whom live in Israel. Aroeste, is not the only Ladino singer in 2012, but with Gracia, her third album, she is its most public face.

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Law and Order: Special Yiddish Unit

Mon, 21 May 2012 14:45:00 GMT-5

So, you think there isn’t much work out there in the public sector for Yiddish speakers, right? Well, think again. If you just happen to speak the mammeloshen and have always wanted to serve the public, then there’s a job for you.

It seems the police department in Israel’s capital is looking for native Yiddish speakers to join its Central Unit. According to the Haredi news website B’hadrei Haredim, flyers have been see posted around town saying: “Wanted: Israel Police, Jerusalem’s Central Unit, seeks native Yiddish speakers for an interesting and challenging position. The position is open to men and women who are about to finish their studies. Position is not open to students.” In other words, there’s no moonlighting as a cop if you are still a yeshiva bocher.

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Changing My Mind About Marrying Young

Mon, 21 May 2012 14:18:00 GMT-5

Before I came to Yeshiva University’s Stern College, for Women, my mother told me about what the college was like back when she was an undergraduate there. One thing that stood out as something truly mockable was the marriage stats she gave me about her graduating class: “One third of the class was engaged and another third was married when we graduated. And that was more or less the same for every class at Stern when I was there.” Two-thirds engaged or married? While still in college? In my independence-loving, feminism-embracing mind, that was flat-out nuts — and certainly impractical.

The Orthodox Jewish community seems to encourage early marriage — with 18 being an acceptable age for weddings, 26 being considered old and 30, quite frankly, over the hill. Never mind that in the secular world, 30 is when many people start considering marriage as an option. (Inidentally, Israel is now weighing whether or not its citizens should be allowed to marry if they are under 18.)

For a long time, I thought the secular world got it right. I have never been against marriage, per se. It just felt like something to be done once I’d traveled the world and gotten a job that would actually lead to a career. Once I’d gone skydiving and snorkeling. Once I’d tried pot. Not until I used my 20s to my fullest would I be ready to settle down and have a family. Or so I thought.

And then I fell in love. At the unripe age of 22, I met the man I knew I wanted to spend my life with, and it only took me a few months into our relationship for me to realize that.

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Einstein Museum To Be Established in Jerusalem

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT-5

Crossposted from Haaretz

The Israeli cabinet approved the establishment in Jerusalem of an Albert Einstein museum on Sunday, which will display items from the estate of the man who is considered the greatest scientist of the 20th century.

A sum of NIS 1 million from the budget of the Prime Minister’s Office’s national-heritage promotion program will be allocated to planning the museum, a joint project of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Jerusalem Development Authority. The museum will exhibit some of the more than 80,000 documents in the university’s Albert Einstein Archives.

“The idea of creating a center that would make the treasures in the archive available to the general public has been around for a long time,” Prof. Hanoch Gutfreund, a former president of the university and academic director of the archives, said on Sunday.

Sarah Jessica Parker To Host Obama Fundraiser

Mon, 21 May 2012 12:30:00 GMT-5

Michelle, meet Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha, and Miranda. Sarah Jessica Parker is the latest Hollywood star to offer up her not-so-humble abode in the name of Obama fundraising. Following in the footsteps of George Clooney and Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, who raised a cool $15 million from a bash at Clooney’s place, Parker is offering up her Manhattan home for a fundraiser on June 14. (Looks like those plans to move her brood to Brooklyn have been put on hold.)

According to the Daily News, supporters can enter a raffle to attend the soiree by donating as little as $3. Parker’s announcement is not only a call for Democrats to support the President, but an invitation to laud the Commander in Chief “Sex and the City” style. “It should be fabulous,” Parker emailed in her invitation.

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Zuckerberg's Surprise Wedding

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:59:00 GMT-5

Mark Zuckerberg may have not worn a suit to meet with investors in New York, but at least he ditched his hoodie for his own wedding.

In a move that was a surprise even to the wedding guests, the Facebook founder and CEO married his longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan on Saturday in the backyard of their Palo Alto, California home. Just a day after the much-hyped Facebook IPO, the couple invited fewer than 100 friends and family for what was ostensibly a party for Chan, 27, who had graduated from medical school at the University of California at San Francisco on May 14 (which was coincidentally Zuckerberg’s 28th birthday). But in a bait-and- switch move, the couple announced that the party was actually a wedding only after the guests had arrived.

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A Jewish Sandwich Grows at the Carnegie Deli

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:46:00 GMT-5

A successful off-Broadway show is one thing, but if you really want to know whether you’ve made it in the big city, check the menu at Carnegie Deli.

Last week, the Carnegie Deli unveiled its massive “A Jew Grows in Brooklyn Sandwich” (shown) in honor of Jake Ehrenreich’s off-Broadway show of the same name, about growing up in 1960s East Flatbush, the child of Holocaust survivors.

Click here to read our list of the 10 Jewish Sandwiches To Eat Before You Die

The mostly comedic show — which includes personal stories and music — is being immortalized with a sandwich made of corned beef, pastrami and turkey with lettuce and Russian dressing on rye. It’s topped with a broccoli flower (the “tree”).

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Tel Aviv = Titanic or Pompeii or Sodom?

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:22:00 GMT-5

How many clichés is it possible to stuff into one soft feature about Tel Aviv?

That was my thought as I was watching Bob Simon’s 60 Minutes segment on the city, which included, in the first three minutes, these good, old chestnuts: “dancing on the Titanic,” “the last days of Pompeii,” and “later-day Sodom.”

Were there any new ways to express this extraordinarily tired idea? How about this stinker? “There are more synagogues than bars in this city of the Jews, and remember Tel Aviv isn’t far from where Moses came down with those commandments…”

There is so much to say about this segment, but my fingers hurt too much from pounding my fist against the wall while I was watching to catalog all the ways in which it ignored reality.

There are basic reporting errors here. The piece is framed as an exploration of the political apathy of the bronzed and beautiful citizens of Tel Aviv (all of them apparently working at start-ups by day and dancing on tables doing vodka shots at night). So how can you tell this story without letting any complicating factors seep in? For one thing, only interview people that give it to you. So the two main people Simon spoke with, who take up most of the face time are Ron Huldai, the mayor of Tel Aviv, and Gideon Levy, the Haaretz writer best known for his searing and unrelenting portraits of Palestinian suffering. Both in their own ways offer confirmation that the city is indeed Titanic/Pompeii/Sodom.

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Author Blog: What's In a Name?

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:00:00 GMT-5

Jonathan B. Krasner is the author of the National Jewish Book Award winning title “The Benderly Boys and American Jewish Education.” Krasner was also a finalist for the 2012 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. His blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit:

One of the greatest dilemmas I faced while writing “The Benderly Boys & American Jewish Education” was how to refer to the group of Jewish educators who were mentored by New York Bureau of Jewish Education director Samson Benderly. At first glance the answer seemed deceptively simple. Benderly referred to his protégés as my “boys,” and the moniker “Benderly boys” was widely used both by members of the group and their colleagues in the field.

And yet, the appellation is problematic. For one thing, in today’s world the term “boy” or “girl” when used in reference to a grownup has taken on a pejorative, or at the very least, a paternalistic connotation. This usage has largely become anachronistic, a relic of the “Mad Men” and “Driving Miss Daisy” era.

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The World of Jewish Cooking — According to Gil Marks

Mon, 21 May 2012 09:43:00 GMT-5

“How much time do I have?” Gil Marks asked towards the end of his presentation at the 92Y last Tuesday. The answer (two minutes) didn’t seem to perturb him in the slightest. “Great. Well, in the next two minutes, let me take you through about 2,000 years of Jewish history.”

That was pretty much the theme of the evening, as cookbook author and Forward columnist Leah Koenig interviewed Marks, also an author of several cookbooks and, most recently, the “Encyclopedia of Jewish Food,” during a talk labeled The World of Jewish Cooking, part of the 92Y Talks series.

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Out and About

Mon, 21 May 2012 09:00:00 GMT-5

The New Republic has hired back Franklin Foer as editor.
Crown Heights gets a Hasidic art gallery.

Could Boris Gelfand become the first Israeli world chess champion?
Zackary Sholem Berger explores the Hasidic literary underground.
White-collar criminal Andrew G. Bodnar wasn’t just ordered to write a book as part of his sentence, he also considered “Call me a schlemiel” as the opening line.

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More Credit Where Credit is Due

Sun, 20 May 2012 17:10:00 GMT-5

Many of us were grateful that the public editor of The New York Times, Arthur Brisbane, chose to devote his column today on the issue of crediting publications such as ours for the work we do. The case in point concerned The Times’ two-part series on sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox community in Brooklyn, and the way communal, religious and political pressure has combined to limit the public’s right to know what exactly is happening to those who commit these awful crimes.

When the series was first published, I wrote to Brisbane, congratulating The Times for its work but suggesting that the reporters violated their own ethical guidelines by not acknowledging stories in The Forward and The Jewish Week that formed the foundation of that work. Gary Rosenblatt, editor of The Jewish Week, signed onto the letter, and wrote about it in his own publication.

It’s rare that an institution as powerful as The Times owns up to its mistakes, and I’m impressed to see the way Brisbane reacted so quickly and authoritatively. That said, I wish his analysis had gone further, to credit The Forward’s work dating back to 2009 and continuing until today. Here’s one example:

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John Cleese Will Star in Israeli's Film

Sun, 20 May 2012 15:25:00 GMT-5

British comic actor John Cleese has signed on to a film by Israeli director Reshef Levi.

Cleese will play a disgraced, eccentric British lord in the heist comedy “Hunting Elephants,” in which three Israeli senior citizens help a 12-year-old boy hatch a plan to rob a bank in order to save his family home.

Cleese’s participation was announced last week at the Cannes Film Festival and reported first by the Hollywood Reporter.

Also at Cannes, an Egyptian director told reporters that he does not want his film distributed in Israel, according to Yediot Achronot. Yousry Nasrallah learned during the interview at Cannes that his film “After the Battle” was picked up for distribution in Israel.

“I do not know at all if the film was sold to Israel,” he said. “But if you want my opinion, no, I do not want it to be. Not as long as the Israelis still occupy the Palestinian territories.”

Several reporters reportedly applauded the director’s statement.

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Kosher Sweep: Trader Joe's Chocolate Chips

Sun, 20 May 2012 06:00:00 GMT-5

For insight into last week’s happenings at Trader Joe’s grocery stores nationwide, referencing the vintage TV sensation “Supermarket Sweep” might not be a far stretch. The contestants were kosher customers, the prize, semi-sweet chocolate chips. The last of the pareve ones, that is.

The chocolate chips, which have been regarded for years in kosher households as some of the best for desserts following meat meals (and at the best price, a twelve-ounce bag for $2.29), will soon have their “pareve” label replaced with the “OK-D” label for certified dairy (non-Cholov Yisroel). The notice by Kashruth Administrator Rabbi Don Yoel Levy was released on Wednesday.

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Video: Zuckerberg, the Musical!

Fri, 18 May 2012 15:00:00 GMT-5

Guess what day it is today?! Yes, it’s Friday…but it’s also Mark Zuckerberg’s big day! If you haven’t been living under a rock lately, then you’ll know that today is Facebook’s IPO (that’s “initial public offering” for the financial anachronisms-challenged), and that it is the largest tech sector IPO ever.

Before the hoody-wearing CEO gets down to the serious business of counting the $18.4 billion this IPO will raise, he should take a fun moment — if he hasn’t already — to watch a cute video called, “Zuckerberg: The Musical!” The video shines a humorous and musical spotlight on the milestones along the way of Facebook’s development from Zuckerberg’s dorm room at Harvard to today’s FB symbol debut on the Nasdaq ticker.

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Author Blog: Tisha B’Av and the Olympic Games

Fri, 18 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT-5

Earlier this week, Dvora Meyers wrote about being an Orthodox Jewish gymnast and the designer of her book cover. Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit:

What happens when the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, the Ninth of Av, which memorializes the destruction of King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, coincides with you learning about the U.S. women’s victory at the 1996 Olympics, arguably the happiest gymnastics moment in my 20-year relationship with the sport? Should I cry for the Temple? Or flip for the Magnificent Seven?

Unfortunately, the rabbis never bothered with these (and other) questions in their responsa. I was forced to answer them on my own (I flipped and then felt guilty about it, thus covering both my Jewish and gymnastics bases).

The text above is a snippet from the introduction to “Heresy on the High Beam.” In it, I allude to a story that I never ended up writing out (though I did tell it at my Leotard Optional book launch party, which was just like a “black tie” event except with a lot more spandex). Since I didn’t include the anecdote in any of the essays, I’m giving it away for free here.

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Edward James Olmos Tours the Holy Land

Fri, 18 May 2012 12:58:00 GMT-5

Actor Edward James Olmos is sitting at a Jerusalem cafe. For the better part of two weeks, this 65-year-old American actor-director, and star of television and the big screen, has traveled the length of Israel. He has taken in the holy sites in Jerusalem and the Sea of Galilee, visited Sderot in the south and the Golan Heights in the north, met with Israeli actors and political scientists and engaged Palestinian civic leaders and entrepreneurs in Ramallah.

Olmos has agreed to meet a reporter for 30 minutes, and then he’s off to another meeting. “I’m here for a multitude of reasons,” says Olmos, who is joined by Robert M. Young, the noted American filmmaker with whom he has collaborated on more than half a dozen films and numerous television projects. “It has been a remarkable visit.”

Olmos - the first American-born Latino to receive an Academy Award nomination for best actor, for his role in the 1998 film “Stand and Deliver” - is visiting Israel for the first time. He is a guest of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and its annual Civic Leaders Study Trip, co-sponsored by Israel’s Foreign Ministry. The program seeks to “build a connection between activists in Los Angeles and Israel while providing first-hand knowledge about Israeli society, democracy, innovation and challenges,” according to Catherine Schneider, a Federation spokesperson.

“I’m interested in anything that has to do with humanity and the human condition anywhere on the planet,” says Olmos, a native of Los Angeles and a social activist, who notes that he was impressed by some of the emergency first-responder technology he was shown.

For more, go to Haaretz.com

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