Ebb and Flow tapping into israel’s water tech Face the Facts ten things you can

an do to end slavery

ISSUE TWO

Shushan USA
SPR I NG 2 0 0 7 Iranian Jews in Southern California

a year in service
a new rite of passage

presentense $4.95
www.presentense.org Until You Don’t Know
short story
 contents
features
editor and publisher Ariel Beery
executive editor Beth S. Pollak
senior editor Esther D. Kustanowitz
associate editor Miriam R. Haier
food columnist Miriam Segura
28
theater critic Lonnie Schwartz
contributing editors Ben Brofman, Adam Chandler, Deborah Fishman,
Damage Report
Sara Fried, Ruvym Gilman, Rebecca Bebe Leicht, Natasha Rosenstock, Tiferet
the spring after
Zimmerman-Kahan Tiferet Zimmerman-Kahan

assistant editors David Dabscheck, Brauna Doidge

copy editors Tamar Benzikry, Devorah Klein, Meredith Mishkin, Sarah 31
Sundberg, Ariella Saperstein
Pioneering a New Present
editorial staff John Becerra, Susan Jacobs, Aaron Small, Michal the periphery takes center stage
Shinnar
Abigail Janet and sara fried

art director Lina Tuv

art team Hillel Smith (cover), Peter Orosz (food comic)
32
photography editor Avital Aronowitz Ebb and Flow
photographers avital aronowitz, Sharone bond, ben faulding, seth garz,
tapping into israel’s water tech
..
martin griffiths, daniella kahane, Robert Lotzko, Daniel schummer, Leora Addison
stephanie shelan, Julian voloj

programming director Polly Zavadivker

34
advertising and circulation director Simi Hinden Farm Fresh
community supported agriculture
business team Leonard Pader, Samuel Grilli
Natasha Rosenstock

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs

2.5 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-
nd/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco,
36
California, 94105, USA.

cre ative commons

The Death of Eco-Kosher
we think the creative commons approach to content is smart because it gives creators ethics on the table
flexibilit y in their licensing choices and it allows for seamless sharing of content. at
PresenTense , our exclusive rights to content expire af ter no more than 120 days. at that time, Leah Koenig
we encourage our authors and photographers to adopt a cc license for their work.

38
CC

WWW.PRESENTENSE.ORG

Eden Revisited
printed in canada

PresenTense is a grassroots effort to invigorate Jewish Life and Hebrew Culture made possible by
a network of volunteers around the world. Special thanks to: Bleecker and Sullivan Advertising, the today’s jewish farmers
Croitoroos, the Hausmans, the Zavadivkers, the Pollaks, Lisa Eisen, Ariel Foxman, Inbal Freund, Shelley
Gazin, Zach Gelman, Yossi Klein Halevi, Lindsay Litowitz, Jonathan Mark, Jackie Miller, Aylam Orian, Simon Feil
Mikhail Rayzman, Navit Robkin, Chloe Safier, Susan Weidman Schneider, Jeff Rubin, William Rapfogel,
Roy Sparrow, Rachel Travis and Daniel Treiman.

This issue is dedicated to the memory of Mikhail Rayzman, 39

It’s Not Easy Being Green
who was a source of true enthusiasm and inspiration.

PresenTense has 501(c)3 nonprofit status thanks to the fiscal sponsorship of the National Foundation for
Jewish Culture, and supports itself by selling advertising and group subscriptions. If you would like to reach a Susan Bodnar
young Jewish audience through our pages, please contact Simi Hinden at simi@presentensemagazine.org.

PresenTense is also proud to collaborate on events with others of like cause, including the ICC Israel Action
Grant Project, supported by the Avi Chai Foundation, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation
and Morris B. Squire, SaveTheAssistants.Com and the Edgar M. Bronfman Center of NYU.
39
If you would like to support PresenTense in its mission to enrich Jewish life, please make checks payable
to the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, noting “PresenTense” in the memo line. Checks can be
Cuisine with a Conscience
Dyonna Ginsburg
mailed to: PresenTense, 214 Sullivan Street, Suite 2A, NYC, NY 10012

PresenTense accepts submissions, pitches and letters to the editor by email: editor@presentensemagazine.org

editorial PresenTensemagazine.org 
 contents
features

3 20 When the Get Gets in the Way

no spring fling
Film
52 Beyond “Wonderful”
Editorial Abigail Pickus art comes home
spring back Benjamin Hanau
22 Face the Facts
ten things you can do to end slavery
6
Theater
Laya Millman 53 Reality Check
Letters 23 Seder Unplugged
when personal becomes public
to the editor Lonnie Schwartz
we wine, we dine, we recline, and then…
Adam Chandler Music
7 55 New Albums
24 New Order the spring line-up
Here alternative haggadot Mat thue Roth
7 In the Spitz Sara Fried
british-jewish identity fusion Music

Daniel Silverstein 26 Vines and Wines 56 on the horizon

four cups new artists
9 More than Kugel and Knishes Neil Berman ben brofman and miriam r. haier
harvard university’s sephardi society
Hillary W. Steinbrook
42 57
10 Another Freedom paradigm shift arts
rememberance and redemption A Year in Service Music
Victor Wishna a new rite of passage 57 Portrait of an Artist
Seth Garz dj handler
12 A German in Tel Aviv
Deborah Fishman
closure in bauhaus
..
Daniel Schummer
44 Poetry
photo essay 41 Babel
13 Shushan USA Clearing the Path Yehuda M. Hausman
iranian jews in southern california leading up north
Karmel Melamed Eli Valley Poetry
24 sonnet; conversation
15 He Said
my grandma and your grandma 48 Dana Weiss

Levi Barlavi Reviews Food

Books 58 The Crispiness of Compromise
16 48 Under the Hammer and Sickle persian dill rice with limas (polo sabzi)
now kosher in the ussr
Rachel Levy
Miriam Segura

16 Information SuperChaiWay Short Story

surfing the jewish web Television 60 until you don’t know
Leah Jones 51 Curb Your Identity Charlie Buckholtz
larry david’s laundry
18 Mother Ruth Bezalel Stern Music
oldest young person in the world 64 milk and honey
Rebecca Bebe Leicht
Sam Ackerman

 issue two 2007 PresenTensemagazine.org contents

 editorial
spring back

W
hy celebrate spring? Throughout history, spring has inspired celebration, from
harvest festivals to holy weeks. In the Jewish calendar, we start early with Tu
B’Shvat, kicking off spring almost before winter has started. After rejoicing with
the trees, we spend a month indoors avoiding the cold, generating steam for Purim
revelry. And then we take another month to clean up our lives, eliminating traces of cookies and
crumbs to celebrate Pesach (Passover).
While Pesach occurs near the same time as many other spring festivals, it is not a holiday that
we tend to celebrate with the earth-bound elation of Tu B’Shvat or the ecstasy of Purim. Instead,
it is a feast guided by disciplined observance that asks us to exercise restraint (from eating hametz,
unleavened bread) in order to celebrate our freedom. It is a holiday that asks us to utilize our collective
memory to remember our past and to put ourselves in the shoes of those who came before us—who
suffered injustice and who experienced redemption. It is a festival that requires us to look at Then
(back in the day) and There (in Egypt) and relive it as Here and Now.
On Pesach, within the framework of the Seder, and within the confines of our leaven-free lives,
we are reminded that what we see in the mirror is just as much a reflection of the present as the past.
Following in that vein, Issue Two of PresenTense has altered its lens to focus our spring mindset.
The new “Here” and “Now” sections replace the previous “Around the World” section—because the
questions we ask around the globe are not just isolated phenomena of specific locations, somewhere
else, but rather concerns that regularly land on all of our doorsteps. Take a look at ten ways you can
end slavery (“Face the Facts,” p. 22), or learn about how members of the Iranian-Jewish community
balance collective concerns with the realities of Los Angeles life (“Shushan USA,” p. 13). And “Seder
Unplugged” (p. 23) humorously reminds us how our Passover Seders, whatever form they might
take, often provide more questions than answers.
The spirit of spring impelled PresenTense to take a closer look at our relationship with the
natural world and the way the Jewish community specifically impacts—and is impacted by—the
environment. In “Damage Report” (p. 28) Tiferet Zimmerman-Kahan weighs the ecological effects
of last summer’s Israel-Lebanon war on the region, and in “Ebb and Flow” (p. 32), Leora Addison
discusses how to responsibly tap in to Israel’s water-management technology.
This issue also looks at the social and environmental impact of putting (kosher) bread on the
table, considering Community Supported Agriculture (“Farm Fresh,” p. 34), new social justice
Kosher certifications (“Cuisine with a Conscience,” p. 39), as well as “The Death of Eco-Kosher”
(p. 36) and our reluctance to go green (“It’s Not Easy Being Green” p. 39).
Finally, PresenTense aims to remind our readers that seeing themselves in others’ shoes is not just
about reflection, but about seizing the opportunity to hit the ground running. In the new “Paradigm
Shift” section (p. 42), Seth Garz considers how our world would look if Jewish teens around the
globe opted for a mandatory year of service; and in “Clearing a Path: Leading Up North” (p. 44),
Eli Valley highlights the efforts of the 500+ young Jews who traveled to Israel during the winter to
help efforts to restore and rebuild Israel’s Northern region following last summer’s war. Lastly, in
“Mother Ruth: the Oldest Young Person in the World” (p. 18), meet Ruth Gruber, who has used
the force of her writing to bravely share stories of politics and power, pain and injustice, with readers
around the globe.
This spring, whether you read PresenTense on the beach or on the bus, over matzah or maror,
we ask you not only to enjoy the articles in your lap, but to think about where you fit into this
dynamic picture. It’s easy to embrace the spring with abandon, rejoicing as the days get longer and
the flowers gather in the trees, but it’s not as easy to remember the responsibility we bear to those
trees, to the generations before us as well as those to come, to the trees over There as well as those
Here. Thinking about Pesach and the rites of spring, these pages are not meant to encourage you to
sit still, but to inspire you to find your place in this cycle, and to impel you to take action. Read on,
and this Passover, don’t pass up the opportunity to push for change.

editorial PresenTensemagazine.org issue two 2007 

 letters
to the editor
NEEDS MORE JUDAISM
While I congratulate you on
what seems to have the makings
of a fine publication, I must
complain about the dearth of
scriptural or theological coverage
in PresenTense . What has kept
the Jewish community bound
together has not been the mere
association of Jews as Jews, or
our affairs in the secular world.
It has been Judaism itself that has
sustained us and will continue to
do so. Why not provide coverage
of contemporary debates within
rabbinical schools and other new,
textual interpretations by modern
scholars? Surely we can find such
debate alive within the young
Jewish community alongside our
forays into popular culture and
politics. You have let me down so
far, but I am hopeful your next
few issues will add these vital
elements of coverage.
Venyamin Asher Cedarhurst, NY
AN ISRAELI’S RESPONSE
First, I enjoyed or at least found
interest in all the items you’ve
included in your magazine (Issue
One, Fall 2006). However, it is
a little hard for me, as an Israeli,
to relate to articles about Jewish
life in the Diaspora—and
reading made me realize that
I think Jews should come to
Israel if they say they cannot
practice Judaism abroad. I
mean—isn’t Israel the easiest
place to be Jewish in? I find it
hard to relate to problems of
“just one” communities. It also
made me realize the immense
identity problem we have as a
people and how difficult it is
for Jews to define or even accept
who they are. It is indeed hard
to be Jewish, searching for the
“Right” Minyan...
Second, I really liked the emphasis
on cultural issues: people like me
define their Jewishness as culture,
 issue two 2007
so I’m glad that the magazine
reflected this side of Jewish life.
Criticism of Israeli bands in English
makes them seem so different, so
“upgraded,” in a way. I’m also
happy about the way the war
was dealt with through personal
stories and that the magazine takes
Israel’s side without sounding too
militant. That soldier’s story on the
last page was not too much to my
personal taste (as I’m not such a
big supporter of the army...), but
if people out there want to know
what the Army’s like, well, there
it is.
Anyway, on the whole, the
magazine makes good reading
once you get into it and it looks
just great. Very high quality.
A.B. Tel Aviv, Israel
ZIONISM WORTH THE RISK
Esther D. Kustanowitz’s column
misses the point with “Zionism
and Me” (Fall 2007) when
she seems to question whether
Zionism (and all of its risks and
dangers like service in the IDF
and terrorism in Israel) is really
worth the costs and risks to human
life. Like everything else in life,
Zionism has risks and costs, but
Israel also provides us all with so
many rewards. Just look at all of
the wonderful technology, culture,
and music that have come out of
Israel. Virtually all of the new
Intel-based PCs now use chip
designs that came out of Haifa.
As Jews, we could have decided
at any time in the past 3000 years
that being Jewish was just too risky
or too tough, but obviously our
ancestors stubbornly clung to
their traditions. Maybe there is
some greater reason behind Jews
being one of the few if not only
people to have survived over all
of this time. Over the ages, Jews
have significantly contributed to
the Sciences, Law, Culture, Civil
Rights, and other pursuits.
We can look at Albert Einstein
who remained committed to the
cause of Zionism for his whole life,
eventually leaving all of his earthly
belongings to Hebrew University
in Jerusalem. Einstein had
consistently supported numerous
Zionist events in America. He
could have focused in on the
fact that being Jewish had led to
him having to leave Germany, but
he did not. Perhaps his lifelong
devotion to Zionism, somehow
helped give him the inspiration
to devise his revolutionary views
that would transform Physics.
Giving up on something just
because it seems too risky or
too dangerous is never the right
answer. The early colonists to
America could have all returned
to Europe after the first setback.
Throughout America’s history,
many immigrants struggled
to make a place for themselves
in America. As a result of their
perseverance, the World has been
blessed with America’s leadership.
We can only hope and pray that
America and Israel with all of their
love for Life and Creation will
prevail over those who worship
Death and Destruction.
Michael J. Szanto Chicago, IL
RIGHT OF RESPONSE
Mr. Szanto is absolutely right
when he writes, “Giving up on
something just because it seems
too risky or too dangerous is never
the right answer.” Of course it
isn’t. But if Mr. Szanto thinks
that’s what “Zionism and Me”
is about, it is he who has missed
the point.
The article isn’t a polemic for
giving up, or advocating that
Israel isn’t worth the effort;
nor is it even a peace-loving, if
naïve, exhortation to just give
peace a chance. It’s an attempt
by one person to reconcile her
own emotional connection to
Zionism with the fact that she still
chooses to live elsewhere, to accept
that war is both necessary and
may have a devastating personal
impact, and to determine how she
can support the Jewish state with
limited finances and no immediate
intentions to move there.
Like many diaspora Jews raised
within relatively privileged circum-
stances, I’ve only experienced war
in the abstract. But for me, only in
Israel—and only recently—has the
human face of war become personal,
prompting such an analysis.
But whatever my intention and
Mr. Szanto’s reaction to “Zionism
and Me,” when I read his prayer
that “that America and Israel
with all of their love for Life
and Creation will prevail over
those who worship Death and
Destruction,” I can only utter
the most heartfelt “bimhayrah
biyameinu, amen” (speedily, in
our days, let it be so).
Esther D. Kustanowitz
Senior Editor, PresenTense Magazine
COULDN’T PUT IT DOWN
Last night I started reading the copy
of your magazine on the train home,
and even though it was way past
my early-ish bedtime, I couldn’t
put PresenTense down. One
article after the next, just bubbling
with intimate stories of the Jewish
paradox—life. I feel inspired and
excited and wanting to be a part of
your special project.
Ingrid Latman Brooklyn, NY
PRAISE FOR PRESENTENSE
I read PresenTense and was so
blown away by the publication!
The quality of writing and the
whole layout is really impressive.
Give yourselves credit for helping
create a very thought-provoking,
beautiful magazine.
Shoshana Friedman Chicago, IL
PresenTensemagazine.org letters
 here
T
he East End of London is in many
ways analogous to the cultural
resurgence on the Lower East Side
of Manhattan. Here in London,
early waves of 19th-century Jewish immigrants
from Eastern Europe first landed and began
their struggle in a new world. And here their
great-grandchildren are rediscovering their
roots, returning to and reinvigorating the area
here PresenTensemagazine.org
british-jewish identity fusion
Emunah by Mar tin Grif fiths
their forebears left behind in the pursuit of
material success and social acceptance.
London’s Old Spitalfields Market, once
home to countless Jewish traders, is now a
renovated site of commerce and tourism. In
its midst is The Spitz, a venue synonymous
with London’s explosive world music scene.
There, in April 2006, a crowd of 300 people
gathered to experience Psychosemitic, an
In the Spitz
Daniel Silverstein
evening of Jewish and Israeli-based music, art
and culture, hosted and headlined by Emunah,
a London-based hip-hop and drum & bass
band. Emunah is but one example of a wave
of artists, writers and musicians who have
connected with the desire of many young
British Jews to create a new, more confident
identity. The key to this identity is that it
demands to be expressed and appreciated
on its own terms, in contrast to the earlier
deference of our forebears. Like many of our
peers around the world, young British Jews
hold a strong desire to participate as equals
in the remolding of our society.
Until a few years ago, events like
Psychosemitic were scarce, and there was
little alternative for young Jewish Brits from
the dreaded meat-markets known as “Jew-
do’s,” invariably replete with awful music
and over-age sexual predators. Mark White
from London’s klezmer-house innovators
Ghettoplotz has ran several successful events
which feed this new thirst for creativity and
depth on the Jewish scene, as he told Time
Out: “Everyone’s fed up with Jew-do’s”.
Emunah, founded in 2002, is one of
a wave of projects seeking to place Jewish
identity on equal terms with our Asian and
Black peers, whose music and art is embraced
by the mainstream of British culture, and
whose traditions are widely celebrated
for their authenticity and depth. Since its
inception, Emunah has grown organically
in multi-cultural London, acquiring members
along the way who are Pakistani, Russian,
Armenian, Irish and Palestinian. This has
helped the band sell itself as “international,”
exposing new audiences to Jewish melodies,
themes and texts, and provided ripe ground
for exploring religious and political dialogues
through music.
Jonny Hornig, a young British Jew who
recently saw Emunah live, describes how
the band encouraged him to find a new
confidence with his Jewish roots. “Putting
Jewish melodies and lyrics from the bible
together with ingredients from other cultures
makes it so much more relevant, it brings
it all back home.” This new wave of Jewish
issue two 2007 
art is challenging young British Jews to
define themselves more creatively, to stand
up and speak up for who they are rather
than falling into the same cultural abyss as
their forebears.
British Jews are often held up as a model
immigrant community who have integrated
well into the tapestry of UK society. They have
penetrated and excelled in all professional
fields. For example, as recently as the 1970s,
Jews still struggled to enter the top echelons of
the legal world, but now Jewish judges, even
senior ones, are commonplace. However, the
accomplishments and material advancement
of the Jewish community came at a steep
price: a desiccated Jewish identity among
the younger generation. Playing the role of
the loyal, model Britons created a feeling
that it’s better to “keep your heads down”
or (to use the American parlance), promote
a “don’t ask, don’t tell” Jewish identity. This
state of mind was memorably characterized
by Ned Temko, a former editor of the Jewish
Chronicle, as “secretly expecting to flee on
the next boat.”
This is particularly telling when
comparing the visibility and role of Jews in the
United States to that in the United Kingdom.
Of course, this dichotomy has much to do
with the history and self-perception of the
respective host countries. The United States is
a relatively young society that has been created
and shaped by successive waves of immigrants,
while Britain is rather less confident in its own
identity and struggles to fit minorities into the
national narrative. Unsurprisingly, this leaves
many British Jews living an uncomfortable
balancing act, attempting to manage their dual
identities without being seen as threatening
by their non-Jewish peers.
This precariousness has come into sharper
relief with the failure of the Oslo process and
the reigniting of the Arab-Israeli conflict in
September 2000. Suddenly, Jewish identity
became associated with the actions of the
Israeli government and army, portrayed in
the intelligent British media as aggressive,
even blood-thirsty. To identify as a Jew was to
expose oneself to all kinds of attack, from polite
criticism to verbal and physical abuse.
This imbroglio was manifested by a
dramatic rise in anti-Semitic incidents from
2000 onwards, and growing challenges to
being Jewish on British campuses. The Union
of Jewish Students has been forced to fight
a relentless defensive campaign against a
coalition of left-wing and Muslim students,
who seek to destroy Jewish societies. Individual
Jewish students have been subject to increasing
bouts of verbal and physical abuse. Meanwhile,
UK academics have been leading the campaign
to boycott Israeli universities.
Ironically, young British Jews often
look to their Asian peers, whose families
immigrated to the UK far more recently,
for a model of confident ethnic identity.
The success of Asian Britons in carving a
distinct and attractive niche for themselves
in mainstream British culture is seen as a
desirable model for emulation. For example,
Emunah’s innovative fusion of traditional
ethnic melodies with contemporary music
forms owes as much to similar Asian pioneers,
like Nitin Sawhney and Talvin Singh, as
it does to any particular Jewish musical
tradition. The undoubted trailblazers in
this niche have been Oi Va Voi, who have
inspired not just Ghettoplotz and Emunah
but countless other projects in the UK and
beyond with their intricate but accessible
fusion of old and new sounds.
At the Spitz gig, a mixed crowd of
students and young professionals took in
the Hebraic art, the breakbeat Carlebach
niggunim—repetitive cantoral melodies—and
the hip-hop re-working of ancient prophecies
and prayers—all without visible signs of
shock. This kind of event was long overdue.
While the burgeoning Jewish youth culture
in the UK seems promising, British Jewry
stands at a critical juncture in its 350-year
history. Demographically, the community is
shrinking, as apathy and assimilation take
their toll. A recent revival of anti-Semitism
has made it increasingly problematic to be
openly Jewish in British society. And yet, as
with other communities worldwide, there have
never been so many opportunities and outlets
to celebrate and re-create Jewish identity and
culture. Therefore, although our detractors
would seek to make conflict the sole focus of
Jewish identity, we will continue to display a
tenacity for creative re-invention that bodes
well for our future.
Daniel Silverstein is the co-founder and vocalist of
Emunah, a London-based hip-hop and drum & bass
band whose reper toire includes Jewish melodies,
themes and texts. www.emunahmusic.com,
www.myspace.com/emunahmusic
PresenTensemagazine.org here
 More than Kugel and Knishes
har vard university’s sephardi society
Hillary W. Steinbrook

community. “Are We There Yet?” was a
Shabbat dinner with a Caribbean menu that
incorporated both social and educational
elements while honoring the previously
unheralded participation of Sephardim
in Columbus’s expeditions. Fliers with
information about how Jews contributed
beyond the walls of the Eastern European
shtetl experience.
The Sephardi Society does not rely mainly
on electronic resources but rather prides itself
on cultivating relationships with students and
community members who identify as Sephardi
in order to brainstorm for events. Fostering

U
ntil the fall semester of my
second year of college, I
thought that “Mizrahi”
referred to a brand of shoes
and purses. I did not know about Mizrahi
Jews, whose ancestors come from Middle
Eastern countries, and who are often
inaccurately labeled as Sephardim, a term
that connotes Jews whose ancestors come
from the Iberian Peninsula. But halfway
through my sophomore year, I became more
sensitive to such differences, thanks to my
involvement with the Sephardi Society at
Harvard University.
Harvard’s Sephardi Society is not large
—it boasts a Facebook group membership
of only seventeen. However, its existence
seems to serve a positive role in students’
extracurricular lives. By promoting openness
in the exploration of Jewish backgrounds,
the Sephardi Society aims to help students at
Hillel and in the larger university community
understand that not all Jews proceeded directly
from Eastern European shtetls to Lower East
Side tenements to East Coast suburbs, as
many young American Jews believe. Open
to individuals of all backgrounds, the Society
divides the Jewish population in order to
expose differences in culture while uniting
the community in celebrating Sephardic
traditions. This paradoxically promotes
both pride in one’s own special heritage and
a willingness to accept one another as fellow
members of “the tribe.”
The Sephardi Society aims to bring
together Jewish students from diverse
backgrounds, to uncover the variety of
cultural practices in the Harvard Hillel
family and foster an inviting, comfortable
atmosphere in which students can learn
and creatively contribute to the Jewish
to the exploration of the Americas through connections between individuals in every
navigational and monetary resources step of party planning, from the initial stages
decorated the tables. Other dinners have through the post-party clean-up, supports
included guest presentations on the Jews of the primary goal of the group: promoting
Brazil, Turkey and France, with international community. This should be a feasible goal for
meals and traditional Sephardi tunes. any college campus enthusiastic to broaden
The Society has also hosted guest speakers its cultural horizons.
on Sephardi-Jewish artists like French
impressionist Camille Pisarro, and screenings Hillary W. Steinbrook, a senior at Har vard
of movies like The Merchant of Venice that University, grew up in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
address Sephardi-Jewish communities. A psychology major, she is going to law school
Food is an important component of next fall.
Sephardi culture; Claudia
Roden’s The Book of Jewish Food,
which includes descriptions
of past and present Jewish
communities around the world,
inspired members of the society
to create “Sephardi Knows How
to Party,” a post-Passover study
break celebration of the return
of chametz. Students jammed
to Turkish and Ladino music
while sampling delicious Middle
Eastern pastries.
Students who participate
in the events programmed by
the Sephardi Society —whether
those students are of Sephardi
heritage or not—are likely to
discover that the individuals
who have contributed to the
rich, vibrant history of the
Jewish people are more diverse
than we have been led to
believe. This forum for Jewish
education might serve as a
useful model on other campuses
to create programs that are
simultaneously educational
and entertaining, and that
expand the definition of Jewish

here PresenTensemagazine.org issue two 2007 

 Another Freedom
rememberance and redemption
Victor Wishna

10 issue two 2007 PresenTensemagazine.org contents

 T
ake NYC Transit’s E train to the
end of the line, switch to the #4
bus, and 20 minutes later, you’re
there. The Beth Elohim Hebrew
Congregation occupies a storefront on Linden
Boulevard in the St. Albans neighborhood in
Queens; the building is nondescript except for
the large Stars of David on the awning. Inside,
the long, narrow space resembles a modest
synagogue sanctuary, with a mahogany ark,
carved chairs and pulpit. And like Jews around
the world, the congregants of Beth Elohim
annually mark Pesach, and its redemptive
message of freedom following generations of
bondage. While these ideas of persecution,
slavery, liberation and self-determination touch
the core of Jewish identity and faith, they have
additional significance at this synagogue. Here,
everyone—from the rabbis and Hebrew School
teachers to the music director and down to the
last member—is African-American.
According to blackjews.org (a website
administered by Rabbi Shlomo Ben Levy,
Beth Elohim’s rabbi), there are approximately
Whether talking about slavery in Egypt
or America, he refers to “our people.”
40,000 African-American Jews in the
United States. These are not Ethiopian
Jews, but Americans who have come to this
interpretation of Judaism primarily in the
20th century. The majority of them observe
most holidays, the rite of circumcision, and the
laws of kashrut. God is invoked as Hashem;
men and women sit separately on Shabbat;
and when the evening begins with a rendition
of “Hinei Ma Tov,” the tune is the same one
many other American Jews learn in Sunday
school and summer camp.
Beth Elohim is part of a loosely affiliated
movement of Hebrew congregations in
Brooklyn, Harlem, Philadelphia, Chicago,
and elsewhere. Unlike some more radical black
sects that claim to be the only true Jews, these
Black Jews—or Israelites or Hebrews, as they
sometimes prefer—see Jews as co-religionists,
despite differences in race and tradition. Rabbi
Levy admits that most of his congregation
is not Jewish according to halakhah, but
points out that fewer than 10 percent of the
5.3 million white Jews in America observe
halakhah themselves.
Rabbi Levy was born into the community;
his late father, Levi Ben Levy, founded Beth
here PresenTensemagazine.org
Elohim in 1983. But Chief Musician Raphael
Ben Dan, who has released a CD of original
Hebrew songs, was born a Baptist in Ohio
and first converted to Islam before finding his
place among the Israelites. A guest from Beth
Shalom in Brooklyn, Rabbi Yeshurun Ben
Israel, was a city transit worker before attending
Israelite Academy, the Queens-based institute
that ordains the community’s rabbis.
Like many other synagogues, on Tish’ah
B’Av, Beth Elohim commemorates the
destruction of the first and second Temples,
as well as a litany of other Jewish catastrophes.
But this congregation adds one more date:
August 8, 1444, when Portuguese traders
embarked from Africa with a shipload of
human cargo, marking the beginning of more
than 400 years of slavery in the Americas.
“The Torah gives us a way to commemorate
the slavery in Egypt, but we needed to create a
ceremony to convey our slavery in this country,”
Rabbi Levy says. Whether talking about slavery
in Egypt or America, he refers to “our people.”
About 40 people gather; many of the men wear
jeans and kippot, but most of the women are
in colorful African robes and headdresses. The
program is led by Assistant Rabbi Eliyahu, who
makes a dramatic entrance in white Ethiopian
robes and a goat-hair hat. On other days, he
wears a sharp modern suit or a red velvet
garment festooned with Stars of David.
The congregation rises as Rabbi Yeshurun
reads loudly from Deuteronomy, Chapter 28.
“He will put a yoke of iron upon thy neck,” he
by Julian Voloj
intones, pointing to the poster pinned to the
podium: a 19th century daguerreotype of a
slave on an auction block, his hands and legs
chained, a large iron yoke around his neck.
To everyone in the room, this passage is the
Torah’s prediction of the Middle Passage, the
long, middle leg of the Europe-to-Africa-to-
America slave trade route.
The ceremony includes a symbolic display
not unlike a Passover table. Four colored candles
represent four attributes of nature, and a Seder-
plate-inspired selection of seven foods (bread,
rice, fish, corn, boiled egg, parsley, and water)
signifies everything from sustenance to the
bitterness of 400 years of slavery. “But 400 years
can’t take away 40,000 years,” Rabbi Eliyahu
exclaims. He implores the congregation to move
forward from an enslaved mentality, to cast off
that “chain on the brain.” “The Torah has the
key to unraveling these problems,” he exclaims,
eyes wide. “And we even heard it in this week’s
Haftarah, remember? ‘Comfort ye, comfort
ye, give comfort to my people…proclaim that
their service is at an end!’ Isaiah said that. It’s
all about moving on!”
Later, Rabbi Eliyahu repeats his message,
identifying the meeting place of Jewish
traditions: “Torah is what it’s about and
you all are the custodians of the Torah,”
he says. “You kept it for 3,000 years. I tell
my people to think about that. If it weren’t
for you, we never would have been able to
rediscover it.”
Victor Wishna and Julian Voloj are completing a
book about black Jews, from which this piece is
excerpted. Victor’s first book, In Their Company:
Por traits of American Playwrights, was published
last fall (www.intheircompany.com).
issue two 2007 11

I
am a German and I love Tel
Aviv. I was not always this
way, though. I was born
in an old German town,
Aachen, the point where Holland,
Belgium and Germany meet. Until
the spring of 1992, when I was about
to turn 16, I had not heard anything
good about Israel. In fact, I had no
desire to come to Israel in the first place.
My love for Israel is my father’s fault.
It was he who forced me to go on yet
another international youth exchange,
he who pushed me to meet Israelis.
And since then, I’ve been hooked. I’m
addicted to Tel Aviv.
Tel Aviv is not just a city; it
is a collection of various different
characters, from sympathizers to
Nobel Prize winners. There is an
Orthodox man on inline skates who
rides up and down Ben Yehuda Street,
and spreads the word that the Messiah
is coming. During Sukkot he moves
around wearing a phone booth-like
sukkah on wheels, offering every
passer-by the chance to observe Sukkot
prayers and shake the lulav. There are
the Breslover Chassidim, or followers
of Rabbi Nachman, who dance around
cars stuck in traffic jams, telling drivers
that one must always be happy. There
is the Chassidic man that wants to
turn me into a good Jew, since he is
convinced that my mother must have
been Jewish.
There is the vagrant who wears
suits, whose living room I abuse to
do my laundry. Unlike in European
cities, people here talk to the poor. My
vagrant friend lives in the laundromat
12 issue two 2007
a german in tel aviv
closure in bauhaus
..
and nobody seems to mind. People talk Daniel Schummer
to him, and I never saw him begging
for money. His clothes are relatively
tidy and sometimes his family comes
for a visit.
Here, there is a Muslim girl in
my neighborhood who loves Vodka
Redbull, and dances the night away
on the bar at the Nanutshka Georgian
nightclub. I cannot tell her apart from
any other Israeli girl.
Here, there is a famous game
programmer who lives on a small yacht
without an Internet connection; there
is the “gay beach” right next to the
“religious beach”; there are the Filipino
guest workers that celebrate Christmas
in the basement of the Central Bus
Station, and there is the Italian ice
cream man who built an empire of ice
cream shops. There is an old lady who
explained to me in her finest Hoch
Deutsch how to use the shelter in case
Hizbullah ends up shooting missiles
at Tel Aviv.
It seems that most senior citizens
in Tel Aviv speak German, but I never
experienced any negative attitudes
towards me as a German, non-Jew.
In Germany, people fear visiting
Israel, because they believe Jews would
single out the grandchild of a German
perpetrator. In my experience, the
opposite is true. Old people love to
talk to me in German. For Holocaust
survivors that I meet, it feels as if I am
providing a final chapter in a long and
painful story of the Jewish-German
relationship. A happy ending, with
friendship between Germans and
Israelis, and reason for hope.
..
Daniel Schummer
..
Daniel Schummer is a graduate student at Tel
Aviv University’s Middle Eastern Histor y Master’s
Program. His Israeli and German friends call him
a true Israeli Ambassador to Germany since he
organizes many youth exchanges, and infects
Germans with the “I love Israel virus.”
PresenTensemagazine.org here

by Ben Faulding
system for new Iranian Jewish immigrants. JVS has helped
about 250 immigrants locate suitable work over the last
five years, said Elham Yaghoubian, one of the agency’s four
Persian language-speaking counselors.
“We refer them to appropriate English as a second
language classes and vocational training,” Yaghoubian said.
“We also train our clients in job-search techniques and provide
job referrals.”
Also with new immigrants in mind, the L.A.-based Torat
Hayim Center, Eretz-SIAMAK and the Hope Foundation
formed the Caring Committee, which helps provide newly
arrived Iranian Jews with funds for rent, groceries, medical
and legal bills, transportation and school tuition.
“We help them because no one else does, and we offer
them what they cannot receive from welfare; or some don’t
have any documents in this country but are hungry,” said
Manijeh Youabian, an 18-year Eretz-SIAMAK volunteer.
Philanthropic causes are central to many Iranian Jews.
During Israel’s war with Hizbullah last summer, Iranian
Jews living in Southern California and New York pledged a
total of almost $6 million for Israeli organizations aiding the
victims of Hizbullah rocket attacks. The giving has special
meaning for Iranian-American Jews who not long ago enjoyed
here PresenTensemagazine.org
SHUSHAN USA
iranian jews in southern california
Karmel Melamed
W
hile news about Iran often dominates current
political headlines, one does not often learn much
about its ex-patriot community—particularly
its Jewish one. Yet almost 30 years after Iran’s
Islamic revolution, the near 30,000 descendents of Queen Esther who
resettled in Southern California have become one of the most affluent
and productive Jewish communities in the United States.
“You have to look at our situation from so many angles. We
are the survivors of a revolution,” said Dariush Fakheri, co-founder
of the Eretz-SIAMAK Cultural Center, a Jewish cultural center
formed in 1979. “Our main goal was to survive, so we did whatever
we had to do to reach that goal.”
While many Iranian Jews have been successful professionally,
Eretz-SIAMAK has taken up the task of providing support to
Iranian Jews in Los Angeles who are just barely getting by. With
their primary goal to feed hungry, low-income Jews, Eretz-SIAMAK
subsidizes food expenses for needy families by giving them $50- to
$100-worth of coupons per month, depending on their income, and
provides help from other organizations and assistance for people
in their households, said Manizeh Yomtoubian, co-founder of
Eretz-SIAMAK.
In addition, the Jewish Vocational Service (JVS), Jewish
Family Service and other agencies affiliated with The Jewish
Federation of Greater Los Angeles have helped create a support
persians in politics
Political activism is a new phenomenon for Iranian Jews. Throughout their
tenure in Iran, most Jews were barred from political activities and were denied
certain civil rights.
“It took a while for us [Iranian Jews] to take care of our immediate needs
in the U.S.,” said Sam Kermanian, Secretary General of the Iranian American
Jewish Foundation and a former co-vice chair for the Bush/Cheney 2004
campaign in California. “This is a community that came here as refugees and
had to put its foundations in place—so getting involved in politics in the last few
years only became a priority after all these other issues were taken care of.”
Beverly Hills Councilman Jimmy Delshad, who in 2003 became the first
Iranian Jew elected to public office in the United States, has inspired other
Iranian Jews to run for municipal elected offices.
“One of the reasons I ran was to get Iranians involved and now I think one
of my dreams is coming true,” Delshad said. “I see quite a few Iranian Jews are
getting involved in lobbying for Israel through the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee and traveling to Washington.”
Iranian Jewish support has also extended to the Democratic Party. In 2004,
Los Angeles attorney and now president of the Los Angeles Board of Water
and Power Commissioners, H. David Nahai, campaigned for John Kerry in the
community, and in 2005 campaigned on behalf of Democractic Los Angeles
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
“The Iranian Jewish community is very much a part of this city,” he said.
“What happens to Los Angeles happens to us and so we have a deeply vested
interest in the outcome of that race.”
issue two 2007 13
the umbrella of protection Israel offered them while living in Iran.
Now, many feel a sense of duty to support Israel at a time when it is
being threatened by Iran.
“We are the children of parents who were born and raised in
Iran’s ghettos during the Holocaust and the subsequent birth of the
State of Israel,” said Sam Kermanian, Secretary General of the Iranian
American Jewish Federation (IAJF), based in L.A. “I think we have
a keen understanding of the fact that when the chips fall, the only
guarantee against another Holocaust is a strong State of Israel.”
In 2000, various Iranian-Jewish organizations in Los Angeles brought
to the world’s attention the plight of 13 Iranian Jews who were arrested
by Iran’s fundamentalist Islamic regime on false charges of treason
and were in danger of being executed. Immense publicity resulted in
the Jews being sentenced to short prison terms and later released.
Despite these collective efforts, the community is often divided
on matters of religiosity, leadership roles, economic and social status,
and political activism concerning Iran. As a result, the community
in Southern California hosts, in addition to large synagogues, more
than two-dozen storefront synagogues and small religious schools.
Community leaders have made a new effort to set aside differences
of opinion to attract younger Iranian Jews who have begun to
intermarry, who join American synagogues, or who abandon their
Jewish roots. In particular, the Nessah Cultural Center in Beverly
Hills has encouraged greater participation of women in its religious
services, which used to be more male-oriented.
“I have always felt that Nessah could be an incredible bridge for
more women to participate in our community, for younger American
Preserving
Cultural Treasures
Southern California’s Iranian Jews have also taken steps to preserve
Judeo-Persian literature. “In Iran the Jewish community was not aware
of the value of Judeo-Persian writings, but now that they are away
from their home they feel more attached to their heritage and want to
preserve it,” said Nahid Pirnazar, founder and director of the nonprofit
Los Angeles-based House of Judeo-Persian Manuscripts foundation.
Considered some of the oldest but least-studied Jewish texts in the
world, Judeo-Persian writings consist of the Persian language written in
Hebrew characters by Jews living in what today are Iran, Afghanistan,
Uzbekistan and some parts of India during the last 1,000 years. Judeo-
Persian came into being following the Arab Islamic conquest of Persia in
the seventh century, when the Jews of Persia, who then spoke what is
known as Middle Persian, refused to write the Persian language in Arabic
letters and instead wrote it in Hebrew, Pirnazar said.
“Our first goal is to collect and transliterate these manuscripts into
the Persian script before the generation that can read them easily is
gone,” Pirnazar said. “The next step is to eventually publish and translate
some into English and other languages.”
Pirnazar said she formed the House of Judeo-Persian Manuscripts
in 2000 after a significant number of Iranian Jews in Southern California
expressed their interest in learning more about these ancient texts.
In the last five years, Pirnazar has acquired Judeo-Persian manuscript
collections from the United States, Europe, Israel and Iran. Ultimately,
she aims for the House of Judeo-Persian Manuscripts to amass the
largest collection of Judeo-Persian works in the world.
PresenTensemagazine.org contents
Jews of Iranian descent to connect with their heritage and for American
Jews to become more familiar with us,” said Dr. Morgan Hakimi,
Nessah president.
In Persian Orthodox culture, where men traditionally dominate
leadership positions, Hakimi’s post is unique because she is the only
female president of an Iranian-Jewish synagogue. Hakimi was first
elected in 2004, despite great skepticism. Yet as her initiatives led to
a substantial increase in membership, she was re-elected in 2006.
Now, more young Persian and non-Persian Jews participate in
programming Hakimi has developed. During Shabbat services, crowds
pack Nessah’s two sanctuaries, particularly women. Eight women
now sit on the center’s board of directors, and more women serve in
committee and staff positions. Nessah is also one of the few Iranian
Jewish organizations that gives its youth committee a full budget and
the ability to make decisions on their social activities.
Despite the high rate of assimilation of Iranian Jews, many say
they will continue to pass on their cultural traditions to the U.S.-
born generation.
“I feel the pain of a Jewish mother who was born and raised in
Iran and has difficulty raising her children in the U.S., where there
are different values,” said Hakimi. “I hope that as a community we
can bridge the gap between American Jews of Iranian heritage and
their rich traditions.”
Karmel Melamed is an internationally published freelance journalist
based in Southern California and contributing editor for the Iranian Jewish
Chronicle magazine: www.ijchronicle.com.
lights, camera
Living in Hollywood’s backyard, many Iranian Jews aim to leave
their imprint on the entertainment industry. In 2006, Iranian-Jewish
real-estate-developer-turned-film-producer Bob Yari’s independent
film Crash won an Oscar for best picture and generated $93 million
in worldwide sales.
“I had a gut feeling that it would be something special but you
never know, so I was hoping and my hopes came to fruition,” said
Yari, 44, whose four production companies have backed 25 films in
three years.
The acting bug also has bitten a number of Iranian Jews. Last
year Bahar Soomekh made her film debut in Crash in the role of
an Iranian woman named Dorri, and over the summer she played
opposite Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible III. Another Iranian Jewish
actor, Jonathan Ahdout, 16, was a regular on the Fox television series
24, playing the role of an Iranian terrorist. Ahdout made his acting
debut four years ago in the film House of Sand and Fog, alongside
Oscar winners Jennifer Connelly and Sir Ben Kingsley.
“My biggest fear is becoming type-cast as the Muslim Middle
Easterner because I think society today has their sights set on the
Middle East and it’s become a much bigger part of American culture,”
said Ahdout. “I don’t want to necessarily fuel any kind of stereotype
that could be created”.
Finally, history was made in 2006 when Lila Yomtoob, a 30-
something sound editor on the HBO documentary Baghdad ER,
became the first Iranian Jew to win an Emmy.
“W
hen are you going to get married?” is a question
I hear constantly from my grandmother now
that I’m back in Los Angeles after three years
of law school on the East Coast. Mind you I
only recently turned twenty-seven. The question used to be, “what
are you going to be when you grow up?” That one was a simpler
multiple-choice question with two correct answers: a) doctor or b)
lawyer. At least I got that one right. Now it is simply “when are
you going to get married?” Jewish grandmothers think finding
someone is as easy as going to the supermarket and picking
out a Cornish hen for Shabbat dinner. “Whatever happened
to falling in love?” I ask her. She doesn’t have time for that. She
wants great-grandchildren.
In considering my experience as a single 20-something Persian Jew
living in Los Angeles, my grandmother is one of the first things that
comes to mind. The truth is, whether you are Ashkenazi or Sephardic, a
Persian Jew or South African, your experience with your grandmother
is one of the links that unites the tribe. Grandmothers are in fact part
of the great Jewish trifecta: Torah, Israel, and “Nana” as my Ashkenazi
brethren refer to them. I’m certain that if any young Jewish ladies
visit the Chabad House in Shanghai, there is a grandmother like
mine waiting to ask for your phone number to give to her grandson.
It’s just what they do.
When I was a law student in Washington, D.C., people unfamiliar
with the great many Persian Jews living in the United States, Europe,
and Israel thought the whole concept of an Iranian Jew was oxymoronic.
The reality is that before its Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran housed
one of the largest and oldest Jewish communities in the Diaspora.
Today, a great deal of them live in Los Angeles.
As a Persian Jew and first generation American, my life, both
professional and social, consists of negotiating between three different
worlds: American, Iranian, and Jewish. My experience is not unique.
Add a dose of Los Angeles superficiality to the mix and you can
understand why some young Iranian-American Jews here feel so
here PresenTensemagazine.org
He said
my grandma and your grandma
Levi Barlavi
conflicted. You learn to adapt—if you don’t, you’re liable to drive
yourself crazy. It’s a Darwinian thing.
I value privacy, but it is hard to come by in a small insular
community like mine. Rumors abound about who is dating whom.
Go to a café in Brentwood, and like Cheers, everyone knows your
name. Whether you are glad to see each other is a different story. All
of a sudden, taking a date to a restaurant an hour away starts to seem
like a good idea. Just be sure not to expend all your conversation on
the car ride there. The whole experience can become a bit stifling.
Despite this, growing up Persian and Jewish can be very enriching.
We Persians do things big. We are big on food, most of us grew up in
big families, and we like big parties. We are also a sensitive species.
We love to laugh and are not embarrassed to cry. Hugs and kisses
from friends and family are the norm. You learn to incorporate these
parts of your culture into your life as you grow older. It becomes food
for the soul. Assimilation is not a bad thing if it is done right.
My experience reflects the similarities Jewish communities around
the world share. Again, I refer back to my grandmother. I liken
my grandmother and her friends to traders on the New York Stock
Exchange. The commodity they peddle: 20- and 30- something single
Iranian Jews. It’s a small market but the trading is fierce. Graduate
from medical school, and your stock goes up.
Move to Silverlake and become an artist and
you’ve relegated yourself to over-the-counter status
overnight. When I shared this anecdote with an
Argentinean-Jewish friend of mine he laughed.
He told me he now understood how similar my
whole experience here in Los Angeles was to his
situation in Buenos Aires. We both realize that if
you allow some of your culture’s antiquated ways
to get to you, you lose the forest for the trees.
I had dinner with my grandparents the other
night. We had barely finished our salads when
my grandmother started up again. “When are
you going to get married so I can have great-
grandchildren?” There is really only one way to
answer the question. “Why don’t you pick me up
a wife when you go to the market and grab dinner
for Friday night,” I said. She wasn’t amused.
Levi Barlavi is a graduate of Georgetown University
Law Center and does not have a myspace page.
All serious dating inquiries will be for warded to his
Grandmother.
issue two 2007 15
 now
Blogs, podcasts, wikis, widgets, social bookmarking, use
B
logs, podcasts, wikis, widgets,
social bookmarking, user-
generated content, metaverse,
aggregated content and social
networking...don’t feel bad if you can’t define
all (or any) of these terms. Technology is
constantly evolving, and in almost every new
mode of creating content, there are sites built
by Jews for Jews. If you haven’t yet traveled
the information superchaiway—or you are
looking for a newish Jewish site to visit, here are
a few worth your time right now—although
it could all change tomorrow.
The Je wish MySpace
Taking the social media concept and
Jewing it up a bit, Koolanoo.com, Shmooze.
com, Chosennet.com and FrumHere.com—all
competing to be the Jewish MySpace—offer
familiar Friendster-like features allowing
you to build a network, upload photos, and
rekindle connections.
When musician Jon Fursh was promoting
his Hanukah song parody, “Latkelicious,” this
winter, he created profiles on a number of
social media sites.
“Koolanoo certainly has potential; it has
already laid the foundation for becoming a
leader in the online Jewish community market
—they offer a great service very similar to
MySpace,” he said. “However Koolanoo still
has some work to do.”
The site still needs a critical mass of users
to be useful as a social network. Opening new
windows and instant messenging is clumsy,
and the site doesn’t allow personalized pages.
16 issue two 2007
Another site, Chosennet, is still in beta (a
testing phase); it is free and has more than 1500
members in Southern California, 350 in New
York and only 50 in Chicago. If Chosennet
can follow the Craigslist model—starting in
California and moving east—it might find
a bright future.
Instead of rekindling friendships
or playing matchmaker, one new social
networking company, SmartVolunteer.org,
seeks to match non-profits to volunteers
offering professional skills pro-bono.
“SV embraces the fundamental principles
of tzedakah (charity) by giving volunteers the
opportunity to share their most precious
commodity, time, in concert with their
given and cultivated professional skill sets,”
says Moshe Bellows, a co-founder of the
site. Bellows envisions a time when “every
organization—down to the smallest nonprofit
—is using the site, growing its volunteer base
and saving millions of dollars.” Already the site
has registered more than 100 non-profits and
received NYU’s Stern Business School’s and
the Satter Fund’s Prestigious Entrepreneurship
Award last year. Volunteers are calling it “the
perfect networking device to assist in making
a difference in the world.”
Widge ts
Many bloggers or users of Google’s
personalized homepage, Yahoo! or MSN Live
use small programs called widgets that stream
content or information from a third-party site.
Thousands of widgets are available, and can
be run on a desktop or via website sidebar.
They provide everything from daily quotes and
sports scores to event countdown clocks and
tools to track water intake. Already familiar
to Mac users, widgets will become even more
ubiquitous in 2007; it shouldn’t take long for
Jews to invent widgets that provide a Pirkei
Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) quote-of-the-day,
a list of regional Jewish events, or a Hebrew
date calculator.
Je w Tube
YouTube made video-sharing easy and
scalable (as accessible to one million people as
it is to a hundred). Its flash videos, links and
html scripts enabled enterprising Netizens
to embed the video into their own blogs and
websites to share with friends. If you want to
enter the field, you might consider snapping up
www.jewtube.com (on sale by an enterprising
sitename squatter for the bargain price of ten
grand), ensuring your place as the name brand
in Jewish video content. Until then, check out
the “Israeli YouTube,” www.Flix.co.il, for a
sampler of Israeli videos, including TV clips,
weekly horoscopes and numerology forecasts,
and categories like “Don’t Try This at Home”
(we won’t).
It could all change
tomorrow.
PresenTensemagazine.org now
 Information SuperChaiway
er-generated content...
Predictions for an
Interne t Je w-topia
What precisely is the future of Jewish
Internet tools? “I think they should be
embraced and financially supported by the
organized Jewish community to a much
greater extent,” says Allison Kaplan Sommer,
now PresenTensemagazine.org
a writer and editor for Israelity, a group
blog about life in Israel. “Everyone’s always
talking about ‘outreach’ and ‘continuity’ and
‘bringing in the unaffiliated.’ Well, here is
your tool—and it should be used much,
much more.”
“I think the Internet will help progressive
Jewish organizations and projects flourish,”
predicts Aryeh Goldsmith, founder of blog
aggregator JRants.com, social networking
sites Twentyfoursix.com and Jewster.com,
as well as the new JewishInnovation.org.
“Online anonymity allows people to get
acquainted with Judaism without feeling
intimidated. It used to be ‘my way or
the highway.’ Today it’s, ‘My way or the
information super-highway.’ People who
want to be Jewish but don’t identify with
the established Jewish organizations of
yesterday are the people who are starting
surfing the jewish web
Leah Jones
and participating in new progressive Jewish
organizations and projects.”
Adam Shprintzen, a Chicago blogger,
has his own idea of an ideal Jewish website:
“Can there be a Jewish web application that
DOESN’T have a banner ad for a Jewish
dating site?”
While the answer to that question seems
a clear “no,” the Internet could provide many
solutions for today’s Jews. Those who complain
that the unaffiliated won’t come to them need
to get online and go to the unaffiliated. The
infrastructure for the Jewish future exists, if
only we make the choice to embrace it.
Leah Jones is a writer in Chicago, blogs at
AccidentallyJewish.com, and by day is a
Conversation Analyst in the me2revolution at
Edelman Public Relations. Leah also contributes
to JewishFringe and Shebrew.
issue two 2007 17

Ruth Gruber by Daniella Kahane
I
n December 2005, as the Limmud conference dedicated to
Jewish cultural study was winding down, a blonde woman
with blushed, pink cheeks and tinted red lips was asked on
a date. She accepted, though it was far past her bedtime.
At the bar, the young man who had asked her to join him inquired,
“What would you like to drink, Ruth?”
Ruth Gruber replied, “Do you happen to have some warm milk?”
By the time Gruber and her date sat down, a crowd gathered
around them. This is how Gruber’s life seems to work—when she
speaks, people listen. Especially those younger than her. And at 95
years old, almost everyone she meets is younger than her.
“A day without an interview, writing, or teaching is a day wasted,”
she says, sitting in a cushioned chair in the living room of her Central
Park West apartment, resting her bruised arm on a pillow.
Gruber is delicate and small, and covering the cast on her arm is
a sleeve of tanned silk, to go with the taupe-and-beige scheme she’s
chosen for the day. Gruber’s demeanor, like her clothing, is fluid and
deliberate, evoking images of an elder Bette Davis without the cigarettes
and damning personality. Gold slippers match the hoops in her ears, and
one gets the feeling that’s no accident. A walker stands next to her chair,
and its cumbersome, hard, metallic presence seems out of place—other
than its durability, it has nothing in common with its owner.
“It was the sardines that gave me the bruising,” Gruber explained.
“I was at yoga, and I like the instructor so much that when he mentioned
that we should eat sardines, I went out and bought some. I don’t think
18 issue two 2007
Mother ruth
oldest young person in the world
Rebecca Bebe Leicht
I’d bought sardines in fifty years. When I began taking them out of the
can—proud that I’d opened the lid so easily—what I didn’t know was that
I’d dripped oil all over the floor. Next thing I knew, I was sprawled on it.”
She’s been in a cast for weeks, but that doesn’t stop her from working.
Gruber’s living room doubles as her office, and, accented with an
iMac desktop, it is wrapped, wall-to-ceiling, with an extensive book
collection—a number of them books she authored (she will publish her
nineteenth book in April 2007). Wall-space not covered with books is
draped with awards, photography, and artwork from Gruber’s travels
as a foreign correspondent. The long ivory couch in the center of the
room is lined with colorful pillows depicting African life.
“They are made by Ethiopian Jews-the Falasha—and they are
all for sale,” says Gruber. “The proceeds from the pillows all go to
charity for Ethiopians in need…aren’t they lovely?” The pillows pay
tribute to Gruber’s coverage of airlifts of Ethiopian Jews from famine
to safety in Israel.Gruber has tracked, traveled, and written about
almost every wave of Jewish refugee migration—in fact, almost every
significant moment in the recent history of the Jewish people.
When reminded of her date, Gruber chuckles. “They didn’t have
Those refugees, their
children, and grandchildren
still call her “Mother Ruth.”
any warm milk, but they heated up some when they saw how many
people I was attracting.”
People listen to Gruber because she’s got lots of good stories
to tell. Gruber has been writing for most of her years—initially as
a student, which garnered her first New York Times story. Gruber’s
name is generally found in bylines, but in 1931, she herself was the
subject of a big story: according to the Times, at age twenty, Gruber
was the youngest person in the world ever awarded a doctorate.
She wrote her dissertation on Virginia Woolf while studying
in Cologne, Germany, and it was there that Gruber believes she
began changing focus. “I thought I would teach,” she says, “but I
was living as an exchange student in Germany…and I tried to go
to as many Hitler rallies as I could.” There, in an exhibition hall on
the Rhine, Gruber saw Swastika banners waving in the packed hall,
a stage adorned with Nazi flags, and heard anti-Semitic songs that
charged the crowd with an “energy of hatred.” As Hitler chanted
“Juda verecke,” (or, “may the Jew croak”), the crowd took up his cry.
And it was there that Ruth Gruber, clutching her American passport
in her bag, began to think of herself as a refugee.
After a year in Germany, she moved back to her family’s home in
Brooklyn, New York, and began to look for work. Gruber began sending
pieces to the New York Times—and they bought one of her first articles
for twenty-five dollars. “It was a lot of money in 1935,” she says.
PresenTensemagazine.org now
 Gruber’s work as a journalist began in earnest when she was
offered the chance to go back to Eastern Europe. Working as a foreign
correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, she was determined
to write about the danger of Hitler’s rise. It was in traveling around
the region that she found her first scoop. Gruber was given the chance
to travel to the Soviet Arctic, to Siberia and to the Gulag—the first
woman, and the only Western journalist, to have that opportunity.
“It was in the Siberian gold mines that I learned to write in the dark,”
she writes in Inside of Time: My Journey from Alaska to Israel.
After filing story after story from the Arctic, Gruber caught the
attention of President Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior, Harold
Ickes. Ickes hired her as his special assistant. Her first assignment was
to survey Alaska for the Department. Later, when Roosevelt allowed
a group of 1,000 Jewish refugees to take shelter in the United States,
it was Gruber who was their official chaperone from Europe.
In a long glass case in Gruber’s entranceway, opposite shelves
upon shelves of memorabilia from all over the world, a tangible truth
of this time sits on royal blue felt. It is a portion of the Safe Haven
fence, behind which the refugees Gruber chaperoned to the United
States were detained in Oswego, New York. Those refugees, their
children, and grandchildren still call her “Mother Ruth.”
It was on the Haven boat that Gruber recalls her most pointed
moment of focus. “Give me words—words, words—I live by words
and photos…these are my tools, and wherever there was injustice, I
turned to my tools,” she said, recounting her crystallized and sustained
now PresenTensemagazine.org
ambition. She asked the refugees to describe the horrors they had
seen before being rescued. They described losing children, having
their babies torn from their arms and hung on meat hooks, like cow
carcasses, before their eyes. As Guber wrote, she “often had to stop,
because tears were wiping out the words in my notebook.”
After the Second World War, Gruber covered Displaced Person
camps. She reported on official talks to allow more Jews into Palestine.
She sat in on the Nuremberg trials. She wrote of the British “ban” on
Holocaust survivors coming to Palestine. She published the stories of
the Exodus, Israel’s War of Independence, and the migratory aftermath
of “rivers of Jews” pouring into Israel from Europe, the Soviet Union,
North Africa, and the Middle East. Her photography has been in
more than twenty exhibits and documentaries.
For Gruber, conflicts of the past are not a question of numbers
and incidents. The human face peers out of every corner of her writing,
and the horrors and triumphs of refugees become thoroughly real.
So what more does Ruth Gruber want?
“To continue to use my tools—words and images—to fight
injustice wherever I see it. To wake up to the sun rising, to see it
setting, and to never, never retire.”
All this, and she still has time for warm milk with young men.
Rebecca Bebe Leicht is a graduate student at Columbia University and a writer
for the Mayor of New York City. In her dreams, she writes good poetr y; in reality,
she writes good policy.
issue two 2007 19
 When the get gets in the way
no spring fling
Abigail Pickus

N
ot long ago I had a weekend romance with a fellow in New
York.
After I returned home to Chicago, we exchanged a few
emails and talked on the phone once; a long, lovely chat that
ended with me reading an article I was working on aloud and him offering some
very keen editing suggestions.
But then he disappeared.
I didn’t think much of it at the time and attributed it to the distance. I was
thinking more in terms of geography than religion, but during a recent visit to
New York, upon running into the friend who had introduced us, I discovered
otherwise.
“You didn’t hear this from me, but the reason he never called you again is
because of your divorce,” said the
mutual friend. “Because you got
a Conservative get (religious
divorce) and not an Orthodox on Judaism, who no longer observed, no longer attended synagogue, didn’t keep
one.” kosher and wasn’t—don’t ask how I know this—shomer negiah (refraining from
I was shocked. I knew that touching the opposite sex), would be the type to not accept my Jewish divorce.
the weekend romance with My sister had another take on it. “This is someone who is just looking for
this particular fellow wasn’t obstacles to prevent him from being in a relationship,” she said. But there were
going anywhere, but I didn’t plenty of other obstacles to hide behind, the most obvious being that we live in
mind because he was such a different cities. Or he might have pointed out that when I told him after seeing
delightfully odd little guy. his disgusting, filthy, cramped apartment that I’d never, ever, ever, set foot in
What I never anticipated there again, that he’s looking for someone a little more—how shall we say this?
was that this same ferret of a —generous of spirit.
kid who had turned his back But he didn’t say either of those things. And what he did imply was far
worse, because it reeks of hypocrisy.
This isn’t the first time I’ve found myself dismissed on religious grounds. Two
other men said they couldn’t date me because they were kohanim - descendants
from the priestly tribe who are forbidden from marrying a divorcee. One of
these gentlemen was so disconnected from Judaism that he didn’t even attend
synagogue on Yom Kippur. And yet, as he pointed out in an e-mail he sent after
our one and only lunch date, while he found me attractive, smart and funny,
as a kohen, he couldn’t in good conscience date a divorcee because he couldn’t,
ultimately, marry her. (He did magnanimously offer to have a strictly sexual
relationship, “no strings attached,” which I magnanimously declined.)
Then there was the male friend, a modern Orthodox Jew, who during my
separation, pulled me aside and advised me to get an Orthodox get so that “there
won’t be any problems later on when you re-marry.”
“But I’m not Orthodox,” I told him. “Plus, I got married by a Conservative
rabbi, so if they didn’t accept my marriage in the first place, what difference
does it make who sanctions my divorce?”
This made me wonder: why is it always the men who refrain from nearly all
Jewish observances that nonetheless cling to the most outdated tribal customs
and display such a strong sense of Orthodox superiority when it comes to their
dating lives? Is this akin to the man who, completely disconnected from Jews
and Judaism, dates a Gentile woman specifically because she does not remind
him of his mother, sister and cousin Stacy with the double master’s degree? Is

20 issue two 2007 PresenTensemagazine.org now

 it the same guy who, when faced with marrying his non-Jewish
girlfriend, suddenly insists that his bride convert, or at least give
up Christmas, and vows that there will be no baby showers or
Easter bunnies for their children?
To be fair, much of contemporary Jewish life is about picking
and choosing. It would be hypocritical of me to blame a guy for
choosing to observe some aspects of Judaism and not others when
I do that myself. What I don’t understand is why a man who
chooses to observe nearly nothing considers my choices, such as
the religiosity of my divorce, not kosher.
Maybe the answer to these questions is not found within
Judaism, but within the men who use Judaism as a point of
contention rather than as a point of commonality. When the time
comes for me to marry again, I have a feeling that whomever the
stars have destined for me won’t let a little thing like a get get in
the way of spending the rest of his life with me.

Abigail Pickus runs the Nextbook literar y series in Chicago (www.

nextbook.org). Her ar ticles have appeared most recently in the online
publications Zeek, Killing the Buddha, and the Book Slut.

by Rober t Lotzko

now PresenTensemagazine.org issue two 2007 21


Protest against child labor in a labor parade
George Grantham Bain Collection
S
lavery isn’t just an aspect of
our identity as Jews; it is the
cornerstone of our history as
a people. Since we remember
what it was like to live as slaves to Pharaoh, we
should cherish our freedom and independence
all the more.
Given this collective memory of slavery,
Passover is an annual reminder that slavery
is by no means a past phenomenon. While
we sit down for lavish banquets, others sit
enslaved. An estimated 30 million individuals
live in slavery today—more than all the people
kidnapped from Africa during the entire
period of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The
U.S. State Department reports that within ten
years, slavery, or “human trafficking,” as it has
become known, will exceed arms and drugs as
the largest illegal enterprise in the world. And
it’s not just happening far away—pervasive
across America, human trafficking is also a
steadily increasing problem in Israel.
Today’s human trafficking involves the
recruitment, transportation, and harboring
of individuals using fraud, deception, and
violence. These modern-day slaves might
find themselves working in agriculture,
construction, textiles, the domestic services
industry, and most infamously, the sex trade.
In all cases, they are brutally exploited for third-
party gain. We need to face the facts: from the
clothes we wear and the chocolate we eat to the
coal that powers auto-manufacturing plants, we
are all net beneficiaries of modern slavery.
How can we help? Unfortunately,
there are no swift or sexy answers. Human
trafficking is so insidious and complicated
that most people are not in a position to effect
lasting change. However, Michele Clark,
Head of the Anti-Trafficking Assistance
Unit at the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), offers
suggestions of how we can help bring an
end to contemporary slavery:
22 issue two 2007
Face the facts
ten things you can do to end slavery
1 Support and empower individuals and
organizations who are in a position to effect
real change. Volunteer your time or donate
money to a local NGO that fights human
trafficking.
2 Educate yourself and others. Read a
book on the topic, like Disposable People by
Kevin Bales, to learn about slavery and the
global economy.
3 Google “human trafficking” and
the name of your city to find out what’s
happening where you live. Map your
community and know what is going on in
your own backyard. Whether you live in a
big city or a small town, human traffickers
can take advantage of the economic, social,
and cultural vulnerability of women and
children for their own profit. Talk to the
police. Investigate the commercial sex
scene—are there massage parlors and strip
clubs? If so, there is probably exploitation.
4 Are foreign workers—those who work in
factories, in fields, in restaurants, as maids—
allowed to keep their own travel documents?
Are they paid a decent wage? Are they
permitted to maintain regular contact with
their relatives and to develop relationships?
5 Keep your eyes open! Many victims of
human trafficking have been rescued by
neighbors who saw that something was not
right and reacted. This is especially true in
the case of forced domestic servants and
women working in massage parlors. If you
suspect something, contact a local NGO.
6 Help provide for a trafficking survivor.
Many NGOs lack resources to provide
for necessary long-term protection
and assistance. Raise funds to directly
contribute to assisting one person.
7 Advocate for policy change where
you live. Are the laws sufficient? Do they
Laya Millman
define the crime, ensure punishment for
the perpetrators and provide for victim
protection and assistance? Does the law
provide for temporary or permanent
residence status? If there is a law, is it
being enforced? Are those charged with
enforcing the law sufficiently trained? Are
those charged with protecting the victims
capable of ensuring their security?
8 Contact local government
representatives to make sure that human
trafficking continues to be a priority issue
on the political agenda.
9 Internet child pornography is child
trafficking and child abuse. Each hit on
a porn site enslaves a child; don’t tolerate
it among your friends, colleagues, co-
workers, or family members.
10 Raise awareness in your community
by starting a campaign in your school/
synagogue. Get creative: initiate a campus-
wide “Day Without Chocolate” to boycott
the use of slaves in the manufacturing of
chocolate and get the media involved.
+ 1 Be a responsible consumer. Educate
yourself about the manufacturers of
the brands you like to wear. Many large
fashion companies have made changes
to ensure fair wages and labor practices
in their overseas factories as a result of
public pressure. Support the companies
that have made these changes, and boycott
companies who have not.
Remember The “Bad Son” in the Seder does not
deny that slavery existed—he simply places himself
outside of the story. But we are an inextricable part
of the story. Let’s not let one of the most poignant
lessons of the Seder be lost on us.
Laya Millman is a writer, photographer and web
designer. She is the co-founder of Jewlicious.com and
lives in Jerusalem.
PresenTensemagazine.org now
 Seder Unplugged
we wine, we dine, we recline, and then...
Adam Chandler

by Avital Aronowitz

H
ow is this Texas-style Seder
night different from all
other nights? Well, four or
more glasses of wine are
imbibed; technically, no leavened bread is
four questions redux
consumed; and there is reclining, albeit mostly
kneeling over another celebrated deity made of
Why haven’t you called me?
What are you doing with your life?
porcelain. It’s freedom, right? Why not feel free
to break the mold of the Seder, and reaffirm

?
the importance of long-standing Passover
traditions in new and inventive ways?
“Alternative” traditions are simply When are you going to get married
sweeping the Jewish globe. (Alright, maybe
Did you know that Debbie Wasserman is a
?
not exactly “sweeping the Jewish globe,” but
scattered deviations from the norm have brought
new perspectives to religious observance). (great) grandmother of two children already
now PresenTensemagazine.org issue two 2007 23
 Take Israel for example, where some have adopted the custom of not holding a Seder at
all. Think about what kind of statement that makes in the Jewish State: that on every single Ne w Order
day, Jews should commemorate their freedom and make Passover stand out no differently
from any other day. Critics of this observance consider it to be an apostasy, but who are they alternative haggadot
to judge? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, say the striking words from the Gospel
of John. (Which Jews don’t hold by, but we’ve made our point.) Sara Fried
Other Israelis observe Passover by taking a “reverse Exodus” and going to the Sinai
in Egypt. These pilgrims wander the desert without electricity and reenact the history of
their oppression by sleeping in modest tents and playing paddle tennis by the water. While
lambasted by adherents of more conventional Passover rituals, this tradition comes closer to
literally re-emerging from the birth canal of Jewish freedom than any other.
Jews who have chosen to keep having a Seder or two also have personalized their Passover
traditions. For feminists, the ritual of placing an orange on the Seder plate has political
significance. The story goes* that a rabbi once claimed that a woman belongs in the rabbinate
like an orange belongs on a Seder plate. Perhaps by placing an orange on the Seder plate,
some feminists believe that if Jewish women are able to scrub away the sticky citrus juice
from the Seder plate then maybe the Jewish community will be sufficiently impressed to
allow all women into the rabbinate.
(*The “orange” story was recently revealed as an urban legend. Writer Susannah Heschel
once heard someone say that a lesbian has as much place in Judaism as a crust of bread does on
the Seder plate. Wanting to express solidarity with the gay Jewish community, but unwilling
to put bread on her Seder plate, Heschel substituted an orange as a sign of fruitful support.)
Another popular tradition which has emerged (I’m guessing from California or Colorado),
uses a more lax or “chill” interpretation of what constitutes the “bitter herbs or bitter greens”
on the Seder plate. This tradition also blunts the method by which Jews are supposed to
ingest said “herbs” during the Seder. While causing a high increase in the excitement over
the communal pursuit of that last munchy-crunchy piece of matzah, many observers of this
tradition omit other cherished Passover traditions like the singing of Chad Gadya because
of the new and sudden complexity of the task.
When visiting home for the holiday, younger Jews who have recently moved out for
college or life in the real world, often detect a difference in the Four Questions. They find that,
instead of the youngest person at the Seder asking the Four Questions, suddenly it becomes
the task of the oldest person at the Seder, usually the mother or bubbe, and the questions are
no longer just sung but rather are “scream-sung” accordingly.
By and large, these questions are not answered by the person who asks them; instead, the
inquiries are often met with awkward silence or sporadic crying. From personal experience, it
is not recommend that the “bitter greens” and the “going home” traditions are ever combined
in the course of the same Seder, no matter how appealing they may seem as complementary
interpretations.

Adam Chandler is a contributing editor of PresenTense Magazine. He currently

lives and works in New York and is the founder and editor of TrustfundRepor ting.com.

sonnet; conversation
by Dana Weiss by Avital Aronowitz

W
They say that we are like indigent children hether you call it “Passover”
so hungry, even for the pockets of air in our bread, or “Pesach,” the Jewish
the spaces between the letters; holiday that calls for spring
this is a metaphor we are familiar with. cleaning, giving up most
we are familiar with metaphors, forms of carbs, and staying up late singing a
the dreaded conventions of our speech; song about a goat probably brings many fond
I don’t, like, speak to You like I talk to him, memories to mind. While Passover lasts for
hesitatingly and kind of rushing like eight days, the focal point of the celebration
I’ve drunk a little too much of the coffee of exile; of the exodus from Egypt comes at the very
or maybe not enough. beginning in the form of the Seder.

24 issue two 2007 PresenTensemagazine.org now

 What makes this night different from all
other nights of Jewish feasting? The answer
lies in the Haggadah, the book that leads us
from enslavement, through the Exodus saga,
and finally to a roaring rendition of L’shana
ha’ba’ah b’Yerushalayim, a culminating hope to
celebrate the Seder “next year in Jerusalem.”
The Passover story can become a bit banal
after retelling it in the exact same manner
each year. Others feel that the Haggadah
needs to be restructured to make it more
politically correct. Fortunately, the nature of
the Haggadah leaves room for us to tailor the
Seder experience to our own needs. In recent
years, the idea of creating alternative Haggadot
surfaced as a solution to dissatisfaction with
the norm.
The commandment that we fulfill by
having the Seder and retelling the exodus story
rests in the words “V’ higadeta l’bincha bayom
hahu… ,” “And you shall tell your children
on that day...” (Shemot 13:8). Jews are not
obligated to read from a Haggadah, but for
centuries we have used Haggadot to both
tell the Passover story and also gain a deeper
understanding of how it relates to our lives.
The contents of the Haggadah have evolved
since it was first written. For example, the
songs Dayeinu and Chad Gadya were only
added around the 10th century, but who today
could imagine a complete Seder without these
classic jams?
The metamorphosis of the traditional
Haggadah continues. We do not simply add
a new prayer or song, but instead we find new
ways to make the Seder an evening of insight
and learning. Both Jews and non-Jews alike
have found messages of hope, freedom and
strength in the Haggadah, and the newest
editions create opportunities for people of
all stripes to relate the exodus story to their
lives. The Haggadah has been re-written as a
work of feminist literature, humanist ideals
and other incarnations. If Pesach is about
retelling, and therefore reliving, the exodus
then these Haggadot create a framework for
ways that today’s Jews are actively discovering
their connection to the Jewish nation, just as
our ancestors did centuries ago.
Hippie Haggadah
The Santa Cruz Haggadah
By Karen Roekard
Santa Cruz is the birthplace of the Haggadah
that claims to ensure “a Seder that is deep,
high, and fun.” For anyone seeking a feel-good
Seder night, this is the Haggadah for you. It
now PresenTensemagazine.org
includes the traditional text with humorous
cartoons, messages of Tikkun Olam (healing
the world), and mystical or what some might
call “new-age” thought. Check it out at www.
santacruzhag.com.
Vegetarian
Journey of the Liberated Lamb:
Reflections on A Vegetarian Seder
By Roberta Kalechofsky
For many, the concept of enslavement refers
not only to human beings, but also to animals
as well. Whether you are a member of PETA,
a pet owner, or just think sheep are too cute to
sacrifice, then this Haggadah is right up your
alley. In it you will be led through the Passover
story by a lamb and learn about alternatives
to ritualistic animal slaughters throughout
Jewish history.
Children’s
A Different Night: The Family
Participation Haggadah
By Noam Zion and David Dishon
Choosing the best Haggadah for children
is a daunting task. Many options consist of
the traditional text with a few illustrations
and questions to ponder. But with beautiful
illustrations, rabbinic tales, Jewish history,
and games alongside with the traditional
text, A Different Night is a great Haggadah
for both the young and the young at heart.
For a supplementary children’s Passover book
where Mother Goose meets matzah, Uncle
Eli’s Special-for-Kids, Most Fun Ever, Under-
the-Table Passover Haggadah can add some
rhyming and laughter to the holiday.
Musical
The So Called Seder: A Hip Hop Haggadah
Not an actual Haggadah, The So Called Seder:
“Ah, Jews are very impatient
with doing the same thing
over and over again. It’s
gotta be different!”
— Arthur Miller, playwright
A Hip Hop Haggadah is a rock album. With
tracks like “Pesach Zelt” and “Passout For
Passover,” it is a great way for the hip-hop
generation to celebrate their Passover love.
Additional tracks retell parts of the exodus
story. To add more Jewish-themed hip-hop to
your playlist, check out Los Hip Hop Hoodios
at www.hoodios.com.
Patriotic
The American Heritage Haggadah
Compiled by David Geffen
At first read, the title of this Haggadah seems
odd. What exactly would an American
Haggadah contain? The answer is: Americana
of course! Full of Passover advertisements from
over the years, pictures of Haggadot produced
by big-name companies, and entertaining
stories of the history of Passover in America,
this Haggadah is sure to delight anyone who
loves to see American consumerism in all its
glory, selling Passover to the Jewish masses.
Cyber Seder
Congregation Emanu-El NYC
For 11 years now, Congregation Emanu-El
of New York City has been broadcasting a
cyber-Seder which includes readings from
A Night of Questions: A Passover Haggadah.
If you are more of an audio learner than a
visual one, this might be the right fit for
you. You can find all the information at
www.emanuelnyc.org/seder/seder.html.
Happy listening!
Sara Fried was born and raised in Los Angeles and
graduated from UC San Diego in 2005 with a BA in
Art History. She is pursuing a career in magazine
publishing, and currently lives in Israel studying
Hebrew, interning at The Jerusalem Report and
having a blast!
issue two 2007 25
 VINES and WINES

K
osher wine is good for you. Well, let’s work backwards.
four cups
Wine is good for you. Modern science has confirmed
what wine-lovers have always dreamed - that wine, and Neil Berman
red wine in particular, lowers the risk of heart disease
and heart attacks, raises HDL cholesterol (the “good cholesterol”),
and thwarts LDL (the “bad”), all the while preventing blood clots,
reducing blood vessel damage caused by fat deposits, and other sundry
salutary properties.
The funny thing about scientific discovery is its propensity to
confirm what the “believers” have always known. And how did this
believer know? I was weaned on wine, literally from the cradle, or,
er, my circumcision. Apart from witnessing the curative powers of
viticulture in my own life (when I drink I have the capacity to fly, x-
ray vision, and the strength of ten Jewish men), I’ve also been taught
wine’s essential role in Jewish tradition. Kiddush aside, in early rabbinic
literature wine is described as a source for happiness:

“‘And you shall be happy in all that the Lord your G-d has given you’
(Deutoronomy 26:11). With what does one make them happy? Wine…
Rabbi Yehuda ben B’taira said: there is no happiness without wine, as it
is said: ‘and wine makes happy the heart of Man’ (Psalms 104:15).”
Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 109a

And this, written thousands of years prior to medical research,

simply speaks to the happiness of “the heart.” I can proudly attest to
wine making this man’s heart happy, and that of many others.
So how does one make a kosher-keeping heart happy? What
distinguishes a kosher wine from one that’s not kosher? In theory,
all wines could be kosher (winemakers don’t often tamper with their
art by including foreign ingredients, be they pig, mollusk or insect
in provenance). As you probably know, wine is the beautiful product
of grapes. Grapes, like all fruits, are kosher.
Be that as it may, history kicks in to problematize a seemingly
simple situation. There’s a well-known biblical principle that prohibits
gaining benefit or pleasure from an item used for idolatrous purposes,
a principle that seems to have grown out of the historical encounter
of Jews and Pagans. In ancient times, the overwhelming majority of
non-Jews were card-carrying Pagans, and wine was regularly used
as a libation for idols. As a result, the rabbis derived a new regulation
– any wine handled by a non-Jew was off-limits to Jews, in case, while
handling it, a non-Jew might plan to proffer the wine as an offering
to a deity. Since no self-respecting Pagan would use boiled wine for
rituals to appease the gods, the Rabbis offered an exemption – if
wine was cooked (mevushal), it would be Kosher, even if handled
by a non-Jew after boiling.
With that lesson out of the way, let’s turn to recommendations.
This time of year is perfect to enjoy Chile’s major red wine export,
the beloved Malbec, made from a grape practically engineered to
provide solace and shelter from the harsher elements. I recommend
Layla’s Malbec available for around $15.
Another wine to enjoy (or cellar, if you’re inclined to keep
precious bottles away from light, heat or vibration) is one belonging
to the class of oldest and grandest in sophistication and complexity,
a Bordeaux. Mouton Cadet Rouge from Baron Philippe de
Rothschild is one of the most requested Bordeauxs in the world;
smooth, medium-bodied, with an elegant bouquet, this red is a
delightful assemblage of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. It
is available with kosher certification on the label for about $15.
Another fine kosher Bordeaux is the Chateau Bel Air Bordeaux
Superieur, also from a long-established chateau that strictly reduces
the output from its vineyards to realize the best possible grapes. The
result is limited annual production, and it’s a masterful blend of
Merlot (50 percent), Cabernet Sauvignon (35 percent) and Cabernet
Franc (15 percent). The 2001 and 2002 vintages are still available,
priced at about $17 to $19.
Some other stellar Bordeauxs that frequently bear kosher
certification, though somewhat more expensive ($35 to $60), are
the Marquis de St. Estephe, the Chateau Roc de Boissac (St. Emilion),
the Chateau du Quint (Pomerol), and the Chateau Haut Breton
Larigaudiere Margaux.
And let’s not forget the Holy Land. Great new Israeli reds from
the Hebron Heights area include Noah (Tevel)’s Cabernet Sauvignon,
Merlot and Cabernet-Merlot blend, priced around $15 to $17. Replete
with concentrated, fully ripe fruits and hints of juicy currants, cherries,

26 issue two 2007 PresenTensemagazine.org now


by Avital Aronowitz
raspberries and plums, they have benefited from the marriage of the
Judean Mountain sun and the cool Mediterranean breeze. If cellared
over time, you’ll notice additional elements of fuller-bodied wood,
rustic tannins and playful tobacco aromas.
Another fine Israeli red is Gedeon’s 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon. It
hails from the foothills of the Judean Mountains, such that you can
practically taste the Bet Shemesh fruit, toasted vanilla and tobacco
notes. It is typically priced at an inexpensive $14. If your liquor store
doesn’t carry the Gedeon or the Noah, you should politely request
them while asking how many more years their policy of Zionist
discrimination will be in effect.
Everyone brags about their favorite Australian Shiraz, but I find
many to be overrated and overpriced. A chateau of exception is the
Beckett’s Flat Western Australia Margaret River vintages, which
resemble Napa and Bordeaux in climate and soil. The Beckett’s
Flat 50/50 Cabernet Sauvignon/Shiraz blend is awash in dense
red cherry flavor, rich spices and soft tannins, and for about $25,
it’s a perfect accompaniment to a hearty steak or course of lamb. If
you’re looking for a nice white, Beckett also makes a delightfully
now PresenTensemagazine.org
Mevushal is the Hebrew word for “cooked.” A mevushal wine retains
its ‘religious purity’ no matter who opens, pours or drinks it. Making wine
mevushal is a process that includes bringing the liquid to a boiling point,
defined as heating it until air bubbles are brought to the surface and some
wine is lost through evaporation. The point at which most modern kosher
winemakers apply the heat is until what is called the “must” is achieved,
the slurry of grape solids and juice resulting from the grape pressing, and
is done before the fermentation process begins.
High-Density Lipoprotein (HDL) carries about one-third to one-
fourth of blood cholesterol. HDL cholesterol is known as the “good”
cholesterol because high levels of it seem to protect against heart
attack. Medical experts think that HDL tends to carry cholesterol away
from the arteries and back to the liver, where it is passed from the
body.
Low Density Lipoproteins (LDLs) are combinations of lipids (fats)
and proteins, and are the form in which lipids are transported in the
blood. The low-density lipoproteins transport cholesterol from the liver to
the tissues of the body. When too much LDL cholesterol circulates in the
blood, it can slowly build up in the inner walls of the arteries that feed
the heart and brain. LDL cholesterol is therefore considered the “bad”
cholesterol.
Viticulture, from the Latin word for vine, viticulture refers to the
cultivation, science, production and study of grapes, often for use in the
production of wine. It is a branch of the science of horticulture.
Tannins are usually condensed, bitter-tasting, polymerizing plant
protein compounds prevalent in red wines, composed and fermented
from grape skins, seeds or oak containers. Tannins are a key component
in the flavor and complexity of a wine and aid in controlling the rate at
which wine is so essentially oxidized – that is, given adequate time to
breathe. Tannins also slow down the hardening of arteries.
Chateau is a wine-producing “estate,” which in contemporary spin
sometimes bespeaks a far less stately seat of centuries-old nobility than
might naturally be inferred.
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is a fellowship of men and women who
share experiences, strength and hope with each other to solve their
common problem of alcoholism, and aid others in recovering and achieving
sobriety. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.
For more information, visit www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.
Wine Defined
crisp 2006 Sauvignon Blanc-Semillon with intriguing apple, orange
and pear edges.
Happy drinking, and remember, friends don’t let friends drink
bad wine, unless the cupboard is irreparably bare. Oh, and if anyone
needs an AA sponsor, I’m available and I offer a discount to expectant
mothers.
Cheers!
Neil Berman is an attorney by day, criminal by night and oenophile throughout.
He has given classes at the Chelsea Wine Vault and other wine education
centers, is a first-time contributor to PresenTense Magazine and ardently
advocates for a more vibrant pepper economy.
issue two 2007 27
 features
damage report
the spring after
Tiferet Zimmerman-Kahan

P
oliticians have been trying
to foster peace in the Middle
East since the founding of the
State of Israel, but last year’s
violent Israel-Hizbullah conflict and the
environmental toll it exacted on the region
should urge world leaders to step up those
efforts. Fighting during the hot summer of
2006 left a horrific scar on the land and sea. The
harm after only two months of confrontation
is a call to consider whether images of dead sea
turtles, oil-coated beaches, or bare, parched
land that once rooted a forest (now burnt
down to stumps) serve as a warning against
inciting another war.
The Damage : Lebanon ; Oil Spill
In mid-July, about 30 kilometers south
of Beirut, the fuel storage at the Jiyeh power
station was bombed. Many media sources
reported that the Israeli Air Force carried out
the strikes, but the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s
Acting Deputy Director General for the
Middle East, Jacob Keidar, says it’s not
clear whose bombs fell on the fuel tanks.
What is clear, however, is that the strikes
resulted in a massive oil spill, releasing at
least 15,000 tons of heavy fuel oil into the
eastern Mediterranean Sea according to
sources at Friends of the Earth Middle East,
a regional NGO.
Because of Israeli air and sea blockades as
well as other military operations, volunteers
were unable to address the spill immediately,
the most effective way to deal with it.
Unfortunately, the oil spread 150 km north
along the Lebanese shore, reaching the
southern coast of Syria. By the end of August,
Greenpeace Middle East said they detected fuel
oil on the seabed and just below the surface.
The effects of an oil spill can be profound:
contamination of an ecosystem touches all
species that are dependent on it for survival.
In this case, the loggerhead turtle has been
particularly threatened. This creature, already
found on the endangered species list, nests
along the Lebanese coast and depends on
other sea life in the contaminated region for
food. Migratory birds on their way south from
Europe to Africa use the war-torn area as a
popular flight route, and are now susceptible
to poisoning. In a world where biodiversity
is decreasing at unprecedented rates, this
oil spill is just another example of the same
old pattern of loss due to human activity.
Our biosphere, however, is an intricate web
of interdependent relationships between all
species. The thinner the web gets, the faster
it will completely collapse.
Though the direct impact of this spill on
humans is mostly economic, oil contaminant
in natural systems can eventually cause
humans physical harm. In August, the World
Conservation Union, an environmental umbrella
group, found cancer-causing substances—poly-
nuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs for
short—present in oil-slick samples. PAHs are
known by scientists to persist in the ecosystem
by accumulating in the organs of fish, causing
fish populations to plummet. From now on,
people may need to think twice about eating
fish caught in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Damage : Israel; Loss of Forest
In Israel, the most noteworthy damage
is the loss of landscape and habitat due to
fires ignited by Hizbullah-launched Katyusha
rockets from southern Lebanon. According to
a recent collaborative study by public Israeli
agencies and the Jewish National Fund
(JNF), more than 800 forest fires blazed in
the northern region as a result of the war,
during the driest season of the year. More than
2,900 acres of forest, mostly coniferous, burned.
The JNF estimates that at least half a million
trees (about 20% of the forests in the north) were
lost. More than 16,000 acres of nature reserves,
national parks, and other conservation land
in the Galilee and Golan Heights regions also
burned. Areas sustaining the most concentrated
damage were in the Naftali Ridge (more than
1800 acres, with 70% of the forested region
burned) and near Tzfat in the Birya Forest.
Because of the soil type and other factors,
rehabilitation of the Birya Forest might be
more complex than in other regions.
Though fires can be part of a healthy
ecosystem cycle, 50-year-old coniferous trees
burn up like matchsticks in unmanaged
situations of such breadth, and burning will
lead to more far-reaching environmental
consequences. Bare, deforested land is much
more susceptible to soil erosion and landslides.
Forest-dwelling wildlife (especially young)
is harmed or displaced, causing problems
elsewhere. Loss of forests also decreases

Did you know?

air quality and raises the average air
temperatures, an especially important
consideration during the hot summer
Jewish texts accentuate a clear point in the Jewish tradition: we must be aware of affecting months.
God’s creations and have respect for them, while at the same time acknowledging that we have
“dominion” over them (Genesis 1:26). Even if we must besiege a city, the Torah commands us
“not to destroy its trees by forcing an axe against them” (Deut. 20:19-20). The Torah brings this
Remediation Efforts—
extreme example of consciousness during wartime to teach that we should be even more aware Lebanon
and careful of our actions during calm periods. The concept of bal tashchit, not to be wasteful The Israeli Foreign Ministry
(derived from the verse above), is discussed at length in the Talmud, showing the importance of insists that it is unclear whether the
understanding and observing this commandment fully. It is said that “one who covers an oil lamp Jiyeh oil spill is a result of Israeli
(causing the flame to burn inefficiently) or uncovers a kerosene lamp (allowing fuel to evaporate actions, and has not issued any
faster) violates the prohibition of bal tashchit” (Talmud Bavli, Masechet Shabbat, p. 140 side statements apologizing for the damage
b) This application of the law stresses the importance in our tradition of the conservation of
caused or claiming responsibility for it.
resources and the wise use of what we are given.

28 issue two 2007 PresenTensemagazine.org features

According to Keidar, Israel offered assistance
to Lebanese authorities with cleaning
equipment and expertise, but Lebanon has
not responded. Rather, other international
sources have contributed funding and
expertise to Lebanon’s remediation efforts.
A meeting in Athens in mid-August resulted
in backing from the UN Environmental
Program (UNEP) and International Maritime
Organization of a $50-million (actually, about
$66-million) action plan to initiate clean-up
in Lebanon.
By last November, some of the coordinated
efforts taken by the UN environmental
unit, together with the Lebanese Ministry
of Environment, were already underway.
The Joint Unit established an oil-spill clean-
up management center, facilitated flights
during the continued Israeli blockade to
survey the damage, and set up a clearinghouse
for coordination among groups providing
environmental assistance. Longer-term
recovery plans are meant to be addressed
more fully by Lebanon itself, still enlisting
the help of its foreign supporters.
Greenpeace Middle East has also been
involved in the clean-up effort. Its “Rainbow
Warrior” naval station, anchored off the donated by JNF
Lebanese coast, assisted with the beginning
stages. An international team of crews and More than 2,900 acres of forest,
divers, working under the direction of the
Central Institute for Marine Research in Italy, mostly coniferous, burned.
helped to map the extent of the oil spill and
location of contamination in preparation for have taken responsibility for clean-up and time around will, according to Ginsberg, allow
removing it completely. remediation efforts there. In September, the for “a greater level of biological diversity of
In a report released December 1, 2006, Jewish National Fund (JNF) launched a global, [the] forest inventory and a higher degree of
the Regional Marine Pollution Emergency ten-year, $400-million plan to “rebuild and resistance to fire and diseases. They will also
Response Center for the Mediterranean renew northern Israel and help make it home contribute habitat and food sources for native
Sea (REMPEC) laid out the progress of the again for its residents,” hoping to redevelop wildlife.” The remediation projects in Israel
clean-up efforts to date. Most of the NGO and rejuvenate the North. Their plan includes will likely serve as a forum for scientific study
groups conducting clean-up along the shore reforestation efforts, preparing agricultural and research on environmental repair and
have completed their efforts and are awaiting lands, creating incentives for families to move development as well.
final inspection, or have turned over the up North, and purchasing a fire fighting plane
responsibility of monitoring and follow-up to assist in the case of a similar disaster. moving forward
to the Lebanese government. Submerged The forest fires destroyed mainly Keidar, of the Israeli Foreign Ministry,
oil collection has been completed but, as of Jerusalem pines that had been planted in recalls his experience on the front line.
November 18, floating oil still remained on the the years after the State’s founding, half a “Unfortunately, when you’re under attack,”
surface mostly to the west of the Tabarja Beach century ago. According to Paul Ginsberg, he says, “the environmental issues seem to not
Club, in the Tripoli region north of Beirut. Director of the Forest Department of the JNF, be so important.” It is naïve at this point to hope
REMPEC reports that “cleanup of the area is the pine was chosen at the time because it that a country would choose wartime tactics
under consideration to avoid a recontamination is “a very adaptable species, [able to grow] that avoid harm to the environment rather than
of cleaned beaches north of Beirut, as the oil in the moist, cool north, [as well as in] the to respond to political needs. In a time of peace,
may be remobilized during winter storms.” dry south, in a large variety of soil types.” however, it is reasonable to expect a country to
The JNF reforestation campaign plans to act in its best interest environmentally.
Remediation Efforts—Isr ael reintroduce more broad-leaf native species, Environmental resources do not obey
National government agencies and such as eucalyptus, cypress and pistachio. political boundaries, and securing safe access
independent foundations within Israel Planting a larger variety of tree species this to these resources often entails cooperation

features PresenTensemagazine.org issue two 2007 29

and Did you know?
When the pioneers, known as the Halutzim, first came to Israel, they focused on making the land habitable. They
drained the swamps and planted fields, and formed kibbutzim that would rely on land-based income and sustenance.
David Ben-Gurion introduced and promoted the idea of “making the desert bloom” in hopes of increasing the arable land
for Jewish inhabitants. Since then, Israel has been an international leader in agricultural technologies. Students come
from developing countries in Africa and elsewhere to learn water conservation techniques. Drip irrigation, which brings
water directly to plant roots, limiting evaporation, was a technique invented by Israeli scientists and engineers.
Organic farmers in Israel have been focusing on growing food in a balanced way that aims to replenish the soil.
Nutrient-rich soil, like water, is a scarce commodity in Israel, and these farmers pride themselves in “growing soil”
as much as in growing food. Organic farming traditionally focuses on sustaining nutrient levels in the soil, unlike
conventional farming methods, which concentrate on maximizing yields, often at the expense of environmental interests. warm, as political conflicts
Small-scale farmers are looking to native drought-resistant crops rather than genetic engineering in order to deal with do occasionally erupt,
the lack of water. Recently, an organization was founded teaching Israeli and Palestinian farmers seed-saving techniques
Bromberg explains that the
to decrease dependence on imported, non-adapted hybrid seeds that need to be replaced each year. The organic
collaborative environmental
consciousness is growing as people realize the necessity of sustainable practices. See www.jerusalemcityfarmers.org
for a good collection of sources and information.
initiatives “survive even
through periods of renewed
conflict because of the
strong mutual interest.”
As Israel and Lebanon work
between the countries that share them. Can maintained between Israel, Jordan and through the political fallout
mutual environmental interests establish a Egypt in the management of the Gulf of of their summer conflict, one would hope
lasting peace between two political entities? Aqaba on the Red Sea, built on the peace that shared environmental concerns can help
Gidon Bromberg of Friends of the Earth that exists between the participating nations. bring them closer to a lasting peace upon
Middle East insists that the environment There, the countries share information and which they could build future cooperation
can only “help strengthen the peace process, policies in working to prevent oil spills and on environmental issues.
but it won’t be the environment alone”—a other pollution problems, because the spot
framework for peace and cooperation is an important tourist attraction as well Tiferet Zimmerman-Kahan is a recent
between the two nations must exist first. as a unique ecosystem. Although relations college graduate committed to working in the
For example, a strong partnership is between these countries are not always environmental field.

30 issue two 2007 PresenTensemagazine.org contents


“The desert provides us with the best opportunity to begin again. This is a vital element of our renaissance in Israel. For
it is in mastering nature that man learns to control himself. It is in this sense, more practical than mystic, that I define
our Redemption on this land. Israel must continue to cultivate its nationality and to represent the Jewish people without
renouncing its glorious past. It must earn this–which is no small task– a right that can only be acquired in the desert.”
P
art of the Negev and the
Galilee are often referred to
as Israel’s “periphery” areas in
desperate need of new residents
to strengthen existing communities and to
create new ones. While the pioneers of Ben-
Gurion’s time established some communities
in the Negev—as well as a world-renowned
university—the majority of this region has
remained undeveloped. Today, the Negev desert
covers 60 percent of Israel, but is home to only
15 percent of its population, and many existing
inland cities in the desert suffer economically.
But with cities in the center of Israel
becoming increasingly overcrowded, today’s
new pioneers are making efforts to realize
Ben-Gurion’s dream and create sustainable
settlements throughout the Negev.
A “Blueprint” for a Greener Nege v
Following the Israeli withdrawal from
Gaza in Fall 2005, hundreds of families
were relocated from Gaza to the Negev. “The
Negev is at a critical turning point,” said
Jewish National Fund President Ron Lauder.
“Following ten years of dramatic population
growth in Israel, all of the indicators—
economic, demographic, and geographic
—point to the necessity of developing the
features PresenTensemagazine.org
Pioneering a New Present
the periphery takes center stage
Abigail Janet and Sara Fried
Excerpt, Memoirs of David Ben-Gurion
Negev. The Jewish National Fund’s aim is
to transform the Negev into a region where
people choose to live and choose to work.”
JNF’s Negev Blueprint project creates
housing and the agricultural infrastructure
to support new communities in the desert.
The region’s brackish salt water is used to
produce fresh-water fish and sweet tomatoes;
greenhouses allow farmers to grow flowers
that can be exported all over the world; and
the JNF recently began bottling a premium
olive oil produced with no fresh water. Even
vineyards are in the works. Further south and
more inland, however, fewer communities
have been established, as the land is harder
to irrigate and more mountainous.
In the next ten years, Lauder says the JNF
aims to bring more than 500,000 people to
100,000 housing sites, creating another 25
new communities. Toward this goal, the JNF
has established a fund of $250 million to be
used for the development of the Negev.
Activism Makes an Impact
In September 2002, a group of young
army veterans created an organization designed
to invigorate peripheral communities in the
North and South. Ayalim’s program—which
combines settlement activities, community
The Negev by Sharone Bond
service, and commercial entrepreneurship
—enables student activists to transform the
land using a hands-on approach.
Working with the Jewish Agency and the
Office of the Prime Minister, Ayalim (www.
ayalim.org.il) promotes the establishment of
villages for students and young entrepreneurs.
In these villages, students become involved in an
intensive experiential educational environment,
learning what it takes to live in these often-
overlooked areas. In an environment of social
action, they discuss their new homes in terms
of Zionist ideals, considering what it means
to serve Israel and their new communities to
the best of their abilities. Scholarships and
subsidized housing further encourage activists
to settle in the area permanently.
Channeling the spirit of the halutzim who
settled Israel in its early years, today’s settlers of
the Negev are greening the desert, emerging as
pioneers for a new century, and contributing to
the practical redemption of Israel. Safe to say,
Ben-Gurion would have approved.
Abigail Janet has a Masters degree in architecture
from Savannah College of Ar t and Design and is
currently working at Kushner studios in New York.
Israel is her favorite pastime.
Sara Fried is a contributing editor of PresenTense.
issue two 2007 31

I
f you ask Israelis what they see as
the number one existential threat
to the state, their response will
increasingly be a nuclear Iran. On
the heals of the recent UN Security Council
sanctions against Iran, it seems the international
community has come to agree with Israel’s
assessment regarding the real dangers posed
by Iranian nuclear weapons. Yet despite the
proof provided by the vitriolic rhetoric spewed
forth from the mouth of the Iranian President,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, two of members of
the Security Council —Russia and China—still
pose obstacles to getting any sort of meaningful
sanctions passed.
With the rapid growth of their economy,
the Chinese foresee only an increasing need
for Middle Eastern oil in order to keep their
development machine chugging along. As
such, China was hesitant to impose too severe
sanctions on Iran, one of its major energy
suppliers. If Israel wants to “convince” China,
an on-the-rise international power, that Iran’s
threat needs to be taken seriously, it is becoming
apparent that an emotional appeal regarding
the dangers of Iranian political leadership will
not do the trick. Rather, Israel should seek
to undermine Iranian influence in China by
32 issue two 2007
ebb and flow
tapping into israel’s water tech
making the case that it can supply crucial
elements to aid in the rapid and sustainable
development of China’s economy
A major way Israel is attempting to build
up its economic ties and its political clout
with China is through Israel’s expertise in
water management and water conservation
technology. Israel’s advancements in water
technology have become a cornerstone of its
bilateral foreign relations with China. An
analysis by the Britain Israel Communications
& Research Centre in February 2005 states
that China “has been eager to receive Israeli
support—especially since providing adequate
sustenance for over a billion inhabitants is
a tremendous developmental challenge.”
Further, in February 2006, China announced
its goal to produce 5.5 billion cubic meters of
desalinated water annually.
In a December 2005 article entitled
“Israel: Waterworks for the world?,” Business
Week Online cited the Israeli water sector as
a “world leader in desalination.” Desalination
has existed for years, but is just beginning
to be considered a serious potential method
for producing enough potable water to satisfy
consumer needs. In the past, desalination
has been used mostly by oil-rich, water-poor
Leora Addison
countries because the traditional evaporation
method of desalination is incredibly inefficient,
requiring enormous amounts of energy. Israeli
engineers have attempted to supplement limited
freshwater supplies through the development
of negative osmosis technology. This process
moves water through a permeable membrane
while not allowing other substances, such as
salt, to pass through. Negative-osmosis uses
relatively less energy and is more cost-efficient
than the alternate method still used by many
of Israel’s oil-rich Arab neighbors.
In the summer of 2005, Israel began using
a new 70,000-square-meter desalination plant
in Ashkelon, which owner VID Desalination
Company Ltd. says is the largest and most
advanced negative osmosis facility in the
world. As China’s power in the international
arena, and especially in the Middle East,
continues to grow, Israel hopes that its
assistance in such technological realms as
water and agriculture (in addition to its now
infamous sales of military weaponry) will help
counter-balance China’s dependence on Arab
and Persian oil.
To advance its interests, the Israeli water
industry formed a lobby called Waterfront in
2005. According to Business Week, the goal
PresenTensemagazine.org features

of Waterfront’s chairman, Ori Yegev, is “to
turn Israel into water technology’s equivalent
of Silicon Valley, with $5 billion in water-
related exports by the end of the decade.” As
part of a response to Waterfront, the Israeli
government developed a new research and
development program called “Agamim 10.”
Agamim was designed “to tap a window of
opportunity and enable approximately 100
Israeli start-ups to leverage their advantages
and become major players in the $400 billion
annual global water market,” according
to the Israeli Export and International
Cooperation Institute.
The government’s new program is set
to allocate more than $7.5 million a year
towards encouraging additional academic
and industrial research and development in
water technology. In addition, over the next
three years, the Israeli government will spend
$3.3 million to promote wastewater treatment
technologies for agriculture and industry,
and $6.7 million to encourage innovation
in Israeli urban water infrastructure. Israel
is also gearing up to showcase current and
developing water technology at the worldwide
conference WATEC (Water Technologies and
Environmental Controls) in the fall of 2007.
features PresenTensemagazine.org
As the Israeli water industry
markets itself, many fast-growing
countries, particularly in Asia, look
to Israel as a source of inspiration
for their water-conservation
techniques.
Among the technologies that Israel will
showcase at WATEC are its advancements
in drip irrigation techniques. Guided by the
Zionist principle to “make the desert bloom,”
Israel, in its mission to cultivate the Negev,
pioneered the system of drip irrigation—which
transports water to individual plants directly,
close to the ground. Using computers to monitor
soil moisture and regulate dripping, this process
exemplifies the Israeli fusion of information
technology with water management.
Israel has also become a world leader in
recycling treated wastewater for crop irrigation.
A July 2006 World Bank background paper
reported that in 2003, half of Israel’s irrigation
sector was using 65% of the country’s
wastewater (it should be noted that there
are health standards imposed on the quality
and usage of the treated wastewater in crop
irrigation). According to The Wall Street
Transcript, the second largest water recycler in
the world is Spain, with only 12% recycled.
The Israeli government, academia and
private sector have begun proactively to
take advantage of their growing expertise in
water management technology in an attempt
to become major players in the field. At the
moment, no single business or country controls
by Avital Aronowitz
a dominant share of the global market. Israel
and the international business community,
however, see this power-vacuum quickly
evaporating. As the Israeli water industry
markets itself, many fast-growing countries,
particularly in Asia, look to Israel as a source
of inspiration for their water-conservation
techniques. Israel aims to use this role not
only to advance its economic ties, but also
its political influence.
In the past, water was the natural resource
that was most sought after, and its limited
availability was respected and feared. Although
economic and human sustainability continue to
depend heavily on water, the importance of this
natural resource, as well as its finite availability,
is often overshadowed in international dealings
with the Middle East by the overpowering shine
of “black gold.” Israel, however, is attempting
to step out from under oil’s shadow, and bring
the international community back to the day
when water was king.
Leora Addison has a Master’s degree in
International Relations concentrated in Middle
East Studies and International Economics from the
School of Advanced International Studies at Johns
Hopkins University.
issue two 2007 33

It’s good for the farmer because it puts local purchasing power
behind his or her produce, and it’s good for you because
healthy organic food is available at competitive prices.
W
hen it comes to rules
about food, Judaism has
no shortage. So why are
young Jews looking for
more? Jewish scholarship waxes poetic on the
types of permitted animals and their required
level of fitness, but what about pesticides
on fruits and vegetables? Does Jewish law
include rules about how to grocery shop, or
require you to get to know the farmer who
sells you produce?
“Eco-kashrut” has developed over the
past 15 years as an intersection of traditional
Jewish and environmental concerns (see
sidebar). These include: caring for the earth
(bal taschit), respecting animals (tza’ar ba’alei
chayim), guarding one’s body (sh’mirat haguf),
not oppressing workers and customers (oshek),
and sharing with the poor (tzdakah).
The “eco-kashrut” concept—which
originated within the Jewish Renewal
Movement—has evolved to such an extent,
that now the Conservative Movement is
considering an additional hechsher (kosher
34 issue two 2007
community supported agriculture
certification) based on fair labor practices.
The Reform Movement is also reviewing this
possibility. This could lead to another layer of
kashrut supervision, and eventually another
concept of kashrut entirely.
Yet many maintain that “eco-kashrut”
is nothing new—rather, it embodies the
continuation of Jewish tradition, which has
always focused on how to live ethically.
In 2004, Hazon, a Jewish environmental
organization, created a Community Supported
Agriculture (CSA) program, Tuv Ha’Aretz,
which organizers say will be running in 10
cities by the end of 2007.
“In a CSA, a group of people come
together and agree in advance that for a given
growing season, they’ll buy food from a local
organic farm,” said Hazon Communications
Coordinator Ben Murane. “It’s good for
the farmer because it puts local purchasing
power behind his or her produce, and it’s
good for you and your family because healthy
organic food is available every week, at
competitive prices.”
farm fresh
Natasha Rosenstock
by Avital Aronowitz
Murane says that people are drawn to
CSAs for many reasons: a concern for social
justice; a sense of community from picking
up produce weekly with others; sharing
recipes; participating in farm activities; and
participating in learning about farming from
a Jewish perspective.
Lindsey Paige Savoie participates in
a Hazon CSA hosted by Tifereth Israel, a
Conservative congregation in Washington,
D.C. Though not a congregation member,
Savoie learned about the CSA from a neighbor.
She says maintaining a personal relationship
with a local farmer appeals to her.
“He invited us to the farm a couple of
times, not even to work, but just to show us
around, get to know us, for us to get to know
them,” she said.
The farmer is Jewish, and trained in
ritual slaughter. He is currently working
to become certified to sell kosher turkeys
and chickens.
“What’s nice about Mike, our farmer, is
he sends weekly e-mails with a list of what he
PresenTensemagazine.org features
 to mark these products with a hechsher, or
kosher seal.
“A lot of people are buying kosher chicken
who aren’t Jewish, or Jews who don’t keep kosher
buy it,” said General Manager Joe Holtz. “It
might be the one that looks the best that day.”
Corrine Lang, an observant Jew and
WHAT IS A CO-OP? A CSA? grandmother, has been a member of the Park
Slope Co-op for 20 years, and is currently
CO-OP is a cooperative food store that is owned and operated by members. Often the head of food processing for the Kosher
prices are much lower than in regular grocery stores and a variety of fresh and organic Committee, which meets once a month.
foods are available. At most food co-ops, members are required to work shifts at least “We’re giving them the information of
once per month, allowing the co-op to save money on labor. Some co-ops require you what it says on the packaged item, and then
to be a member in order to shop there. people decide for themselves which hashgachas
[rabbinic supervision] they want to use,” she said.
CSA Community Supported Agriculture allows participants to purchase
“It’s very neutral in that way. We’re not deciding
a yearly share in a local farm and receive fresh products from the farm, usually on a
what’s kosher and what’s not kosher.”
weekly basis. CSAs are beneficial because the farmers do not need to borrow money at
the beginning of the growing season and they are sharing the risk of bad weather, etc.
A co-op bulletin board displays updated
with the CSA participants. Participants often get to know the local farmers and visit the information on the symbols for different
farms for programming. hashgachas, including the name and number of
the Kosher Committee’s supervising rabbi.
“We’d like to bring in more kosher
products like kosher cheeses,” Land said.
“We have hopes but it moves slowly. I find
that there’s a lot of red tape and bureaucracy.
is sending,” Savoie said. “If he sends a lot of “All Jews should be doing this because Everything has to go through the board.”
one thing or something different, he’ll send we all care about the earth. Participating in a However, if one goal of eco-conscious
recipes or links to articles about the food so CSA is a great way to do that without changing consumerism is to support local farmers, is
he really gets you involved in it.” our lifestyle.” a co-op or CSA your only option? Current
Nonetheless, Sovoie says joining a CSA While CSAs are taking off with some consumer focus on farmers’ markets and local,
is not for everyone. “Being a shareholder in young Jews, food cooperatives are the places family-run farms has led large retailers such as
a farm, you’re running a risk of whatever for many others to find fresh, eco-conscious Wal-Mart, Whole Foods and Food Lion to seek
the farmer is risking. You’re investing in groceries. Although exclusively Jewish co- nearby suppliers. If an eco-conscious consumer
something that could or could not work, ops are hard to find, many food co-ops sell can go to the nearest chain supermarket and
depending on the weather. You have to kosher products, in addition to natural and buy affordable organic products and local
deal with that there are going to be losses. organic items, at a reduced price for members. produce, will there be a need for co-ops and
You have to get past that to appreciate For Jews outside of cities with major Jewish CSAs in the future?
the benefits. There are weeks when there populations, this can be a valuable resource. Mary Keltner, a resident of rural
isn’t any rain and he’ll tell us nothing was Jewish co-op members in some cities band Kentucky, used to belong to a food co-op.
growing. Or too much rain at one time. together several times a year to order a large Every month, co-op members ordered organic
You’re so used to going to the grocery store amount of kosher products for delivery. products—produce and dairy, frozen and fresh
and getting whatever you want whenever Even in a richly Jewish city like Philadelphia, —for delivery. Now that Kroger and Wal-
you want.” which has kosher stores, the Weaver’s Way Co-op Mart are in town and offer organic products,
However, she still recommends joining, exists as a resource for challah, kosher poultry the co-op is a thing of the past.
“to appreciate how difficult it is to grow and Jewish holiday products. “This was started because there wasn’t any
things, how it works, how much better fresh “You see members wishing each other gut health food store or organic food around. Now
produce tastes; it’s not shipped in from Texas yontif and gut shabbos,” said Jon McGoran, that has changed,” Keltner explained.
or California or Argentina; to support local Weaver’s Way communications manager. Only time will tell if commercial grocers
farms because without them, all of our food In Brooklyn, members of the Park will stick to this buying habit or go back
is going to be grown in factories. It’s a really Slope Co-op are as culturally diverse as the to their old ways. Perhaps the demand for
powerful message that we can grow these neighborhood, and by no means exclusively organic products will mature—or perhaps
things, and can have food that tastes good Jewish. Yet the co-op has a Kosher Committee it will fizzle out.
and is grown here.” to handle the purchasing and repackaging But for now, the ideas are fresh—and
Savoie adds that by participating in the of organic kosher chicken and other kosher hopefully the food is too.
CSA, one practices many Jewish values, such foods that are bought in bulk, including
as guarding and respecting the earth, and nuts, dried fruits, spices and loose teas. Natasha Rosenstock is a writer living in
tikkun olam. The committee decides whether and how Washington, DC.

features PresenTensemagazine.org issue two 2007 35

 the Death of Eco-Kosher
I
magine a bag of potato chips. We’re talking salty, savory
potato chips that beg for a sandwich and dill pickle. On the
bottom-right corner of the package, a small OU symbol
proclaims the chips kosher, meaning they were processed
and packaged in accordance to Jewish dietary laws. What the bag
doesn’t say is that the potatoes used to make these chips were grown
using synthetic pesticides. They were picked by migrant Mexican
workers who were paid less than a living wage. Once picked, they
were fried in trans-fat oils which make chips taste great, but are linked
to increased heart disease. So here’s the million-dollar question: are
the chips actually kosher?
Beginning with the Torah’s prohibitions on certain animals and
eating customs (primarily in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14), and
continuing with the deliberations of the Talmudic and post-Talmudic
Rabbis, the Jewish tradition has a long history of figuring out what
is “fit” (the literal meaning of kosher) for Jews to eat.
More recently, some contemporary Jews have started asking if
their food is not only kosher, but “eco-kosher”. Originally coined by
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi in the late 1970s, eco-kashrut asks
the question: can food really be fit for Jewish consumption if it harms
individual health, weakens community, or damages the earth?
In his book, “Down to Earth Judaism: Food, Sex, Money, and the
Rest of Life,” Rabbi Arthur Waskow writes, “What if, by eco-kosher
we mean a broader sense of good everyday practice that draws on the
wellsprings of Jewish wisdom and tradition about the relationships
between human beings and the earth?” It is hard to imagine, given
these criteria, that the bag of potato chips would be eco-kosher. Neither
would eggs from hens raised in battery cages nor, perhaps less obviously,
36 issue two 2007
ethics on the table
Leah Koenig
by Avital Aronowitz
organic string beans flown from Guatemala to New York and wrapped
in three layers of plastic on top of a Styrofoam container.
For some Jews, the ideas behind eco-kashrut has greatly influenced
the way they think about and purchase food. In 2004, Hazon (the
organization for which I work), created the first Jewish Community-
Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, called Tuv Ha’Aretz. CSA
connects local, organic farmers with urban and suburban Jews who
pre-purchase an entire season’s worth of the farmer’s produce. The
farmer benefits from a stable market of pre-paid customers. The
members benefit from weekly deliveries of organic, locally-grown
produce delivered to their synagogue or JCC.
Tuv Ha’Aretz, which will be in 10 communities across the country
and Israel in 2007, builds upon the CSA model by using it as a platform
for innovative education and community building around issues of
WHY JOIN A CO-OP?
1
Know where your fruits and vegetables come from and how they are grown.
2
Buy nutritious food for much less than you’re spending now.
3
Have access to foods from all over the world.
4
Support local farmers.
5
Help the environment and be an eater, rather than a passive consumer.
PresenTensemagazine.org contents
WHY JOIN A CSA?
1
It’s good for the farmer because it puts local purchasing power behind his or
Jewish Telegraph Agency writer Sue Fishkoff quotes Orthodox
her produce.
2
Union Rabbi Menachem Genack, as saying “The Orthodox
It’s good for you and your family because healthy organic food is available Union…ultimately decided that its mandate is simply to provide
consistently. certification of what’s kosher according to halachah, not what’s
3 ‘healthy’ or ‘ethical.”
Competitive prices. Coming from the leading Orthodox kosher certifier, the
4 possibility for change within the system seems pretty dismal. But
Reframes what it means to keep kosher in a more meaningful way. on a grassroots level, it is becoming increasingly possible for both
5 traditionally observant, as well as non- or alternatively observant
Provides an educational component between the community and farm,
Jews to fully eat their values.
strengthening the community as a whole.
In addition to Tuv Ha’Aretz, meat and poultry company,
Wise Kosher, is “doubly certified,” both kosher and organic. New
York City resident Simon Feil is creating a meat co-op, Kosher
WHY NOT JOIN A CSA? Conscience, which offers customers chicken and beef that was
humanely raised and slaughtered by a certified kosher shochet
1
I would be committed every week and we may or may not be around enough
(butcher). And the Conservative Movement recently announced
to use all the produce. its intention to create an ethical kosher certification that takes
2 workers rights into account.
I wouldn’t know in advance what I would be receiving and there may be weeks Savage remains hopeful that the tide may shift for the
where we don’t like the majority of the items. Orthodox Union as well. “I think that in 50 years, it’s possible
3 that an OU stamp of approval will not only mean that the animal
The quality of the produce is excellent, but I can get almost as fresh at a was shechted in the proper way, but that it was treated ethically
farmers’ market and I am only getting what I want and the amount that I
during its lifetime.”
need.
For the sake of the chickens, as well as the sake of Jewish
4
The need to pick up the share at a set time, and at a set location, which can
tradition, I hope he’s right.
sometimes be inconvenient (or I simply forget).
5 Leah Koenig works for Hazon (www.hazon.org), running their Community-
The feeling that I lose in spontaneity—for instance if I see an item at the Suppor ted Agriculture Program, Tuv Ha’Aretz, and writing for their new
store or farmer’s market that looks really good and want to try it—but I don’t blog, The Jew and the Carrot (www.jcarrot.org). She is also an assistant
because I have enough produce at home through the CSA. editor at Zeek (www.zeek.net).

Adding the prefix “eco”

inherently positions ethical
health and sustainability. One explicit goal of Tuv Ha’Aretz is to
encourage the Jewish community to think more deeply and broadly food issues outside of the
about what it means to keep kosher. That said, Hazon Executive Director
Nigel Savage would not define the program as eco-kosher. Why? mainstream conversation
“I propose that we entirely stop using the word eco-kosher,” Savage
argued at a recent Hazon-sponsored conference on the intersection around kashrut. Proponents
of Jews, Food, and Contemporary Life. This was a gutsy statement,
considering the conference participants included some of eco-kosher’s of traditional kashrut, as
primary advocates. Adding the prefix “eco,” he suggested, inherently
positions ethical food issues outside of the mainstream conversation
well as the kashrut industry,
around kashrut. Proponents of traditional kashrut, as well as the
kashrut industry, can simply write off ethical considerations as not
can simply write off ethical
their concern. considerations as not of
Savage suggests that Jews remove the notion that humane
treatment of animals, locally-grown food, or fair labor practices are their concern.
“eco,” and instead directly challenge the kashrut industry, since many
of these underlying issues are central to Jewish tradition. But will the
industry listen, or maintain that kashrut and social ethics are simply
different categories?

features PresenTensemagazine.org issue two 2007 37

“J
ewish Farmer” might sound like the beginning
of a joke, but what we forget is that ancient
Israel was, by most accounts, a largely agrarian
society. Biblical Judaism revolved around
agriculture and the seasons, and most ancient Jews—our
ancestors—were Jewish farmers.
What we also don’t realize is that Jewish farming is
back and in a big way.
Like most comebacks, there’s been a re-branding.
The difference with Jewish farming is that the changes
are anything but cosmetic. Ancient Israelites were farmers
of necessity; not so the Jewish farmers of today, most of
whom chose farming as an expression of a particular set
of values, a particularly post-modern luxury. Back in the
Land of Israel, inhabitants were farmers who happened to
be Jewish. In contrast, many of today’s farmers are Jews
who choose that lifestyle as an expression of their religion.
While their backgrounds might be as varied as the crops
they grow, they share the search for greater meaning in their
Judaism through farming.
The sign at the entrance to “Adamah,” a Jewish
Environmental Fellowship Center nestled in rural
Connecticut, contains the following passage from the rabbinic
literature knows as the Midrash:
The Holy One, blessed be He, from the beginning of the creation of the
world, was occupied before all else with planting. As it is written, “And
the Lord God planted a garden in Eden” (Gen. 2:8) , and so shall you.
When you first enter the land you should first occupy yourselves with
nothing else but planting, as it is written, “And when you shall come into
the land and plant any tree for eating.”
(Lev. 19:23) Leviticus Rabbah 25:1-2.
“Adamah,” meaning “earth” in Hebrew, is housed at the Isabella
Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, and serves as a training program
for Jewish 20-somethings who want to integrate “organic farming,
sustainable living, Jewish learning, teaching, and contemplative
spiritual practice” into their daily lives.
“At its core, Jewish farming is informed by the essential Torah
principle which teaches that humans do not own the land but rather
serve as stewards of God’s earth,” said Shamu Sadeh, Adamah’s program
director. He is referring to two verses in Genesis, which state, “And
the Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden,
to till it and to tend it” (Gen. 2:15) and “God said to them…‘fill the
Earth and subdue it and rule over…’” (Gen. 1:28). This last verse has
been the cause of much discussion in the enviro-Jewish world, as the
correct reading or translation of the italicized portion is debated.
Does “subdue” imply an iron-fisted, might makes right attitude, or a
more benevolent, holistic approach? Adamah reads responsibility and
stewardship where a more traditional reading has rendered “subdue”
with an almost military sensibility.
For all of their Biblical exegesis and Midrashic quotes, few of
the “Adamah-niks” (as they are affectionately called) come from
traditionally observant backgrounds.
“I grew up where being Jewish meant reciting Sabbath prayers,
visiting Israel and being confirmed after many uninteresting years of
Sunday School. It was only at the Adamah Fellowship when I first
38 issue two 2007
eden revisited
today’s jewish farmers
Simon Feil
by Avital Aronowitz
internalized the potential relationship between myself [and] Judaism,”
said Adamah alum Robert Friedman.
This echoes what many Adamah-niks, even those from observant
backgrounds, express.
“Farming, especially in a Jewish context like Adamah, has
helped me clarify how I practice Judaism,” said Rachel Krieger, who
attended day school for most of her life. “Through farming I have
definitely become more ‘observant’…. observant of Shabbat and
chagim [holidays], yes. And also more observant of nature’s cycles
and seasons, and of my own senses, too.”
Farming has also helped her redefine her Jewish identity.
“I have some friends who call themselves ‘Earthodox,’ and I can
definitely identify with that.”
A Jewish farmer with a different focus, Rabbi Shmuel Simenowitz
of Sweet Whisper Farms, makes maple syrup in Vermont. A “post-
denominational Torah Jew with chassidic sensibilities” dressed in full
Chassidic garb, R’ Shmuel strikes a different chord with respect to his
relationship to observance and farming.
“We don’t merely live a Torah “lifestyle” which sounds like an
L.A. lifestyle or a corporate lifestyle—our very lives are dedicated
to Torah,” he said. “As farmers, we’re just much more aware of the
cycles and rhythms of life. I appreciate shabbos more since the week
involves physical and mental labor.”
Like R’ Shmuel, today’s Jewish farmers come to till their soil
from the entire spectrum of Judaism, to find meaning and peace
from working the land. And as Mr. Sadeh explains, “to work with
the earth, with God—the creative force of the universe—is at once
humbling and awe inspiring.”
How many of us can say that about our daily routines?
Simon Feil is an actor/educator who has created Kosher Conscience, an
ethical kosher meat co-op dedicated to infusing the laws of kashrut with the
values of tsar baalei chayim, the prohibition of causing an animal pain.
PresenTensemagazine.org features
it’s not easy
being green
The New York City temperature
dipped to 10 degrees. My son,
daughter and I bundled out the
door for the walk to school.
“You’re a fanatic,” a neighbor
admonished.
Living an environmentally
ethical life feels fanatical, or, you
could say, a little orthodox. That’s
because halacha, the term used to
refer to Jewish oral or traditional law,
and sustainable living have a lot in
common. A relational psychoanalytic
perspective—one that considers
the connections between people
to be the building blocks of
psychological organization—would
view both halacha and “green living”
as interpersonal strategies to build
a better world.
People have a natural drive to
connect with God, or to a spirituality
that can contain their emergent
identities. Halacha can provide a
means of expressing that drive, and
fosters such a bond. People also
have a natural drive to connect to
the earth, a life force that contains
humanity’s destiny. Living green
can give expression to that drive by
fulfilling a desire for unity with nature.
My colleague David Yammer,
a psychologist at a New York City
day school, describes how halachic
living can imply “an existential
experience of truth.”
“People look for a system to
help them feel closer to that truth,
closer to God, and to spirituality
through behaviors,” he said.
When I encounter people
drawn to green living, I note that
they seek environmental harmony’s
larger truth.
Yammer adds that children
are ready to accept God, to an
experience beyond themselves.
Similarly, children also have a
natural intuition towards steward-
ship of the earth—but then society
intervenes. Peer pressure exerts a
tremendous pull toward secular and
materialistic living. The stewards of
the earth become the caretakers
of merchandising. Consumerism
that passes for authentic living
eschews the discomforts that
typically build character.
Religious observance can
reconnect a person to God.
Environmental practice repairs the
human bond to nature’s spirituality.
PresenTensemagazine.org contents
And both halacha and environmental
practice require living with limits,
accepting constraint and valuing the
larger communal good more than
the individual unit of the self.
In halachic life, shared
observance helps people rediscover
and commit to spirituality. In green
living, people also need communal
practices to remain intimate with
the environment.
“Halachic living is a dance,
finding mutuality through the choice
to be bound by limits,” Yammer
said. Sustainability also dances
between limits and possibility,
between constraints and expanse.
“It is hard to be modern and
halachic.”
It is likewise hard to be
modern and green. Lights must
be turned off. Special bulbs have
to be purchased from out-of-the-
way vendors. Public transportation
does not operate on one’s personal
clock. Organic produce deliveries
often bear weeks of kale and
pears. If the secular world finds
modern orthodoxy peculiar, how
might it react to individuals who
use bamboo fiber sheets, or who
don’t use air conditioning—ever?
Yet the more scientists discover
about the urgent threat of global
warming, the more our future
rests in the shared observances of
sustainable living.
That morning when my
children and I walked to school,
the brisk wind bit our faces. A
gust grabbed my daughter’s scarf
and unwound it up into the sky.
We grabbed the tassels. “Come
back!” we encouraged.
It seemed so natural, appro-
priately cold, and hopeful.
When they arrived at school
that day, the children leapt up the
steps, their legs strong from all the
walking, their faces ruddy. Yes, I
thought, hope is green.
Susan Bodnar runs a private
practice in psychology and
psychoanalysis; is an adjunct
faculty member at Teachers
College, Columbia University; works
with the William Alanson White
Institute, and The Stephen Mitchell
Relational Center; and is assistant
editor at Psychoanalytic Dialogues.
Cuisine with
a Conscience
People many things into account
when choosing a place to eat. They
consider a restaurant’s ambiance,
the quality of food served and the
amount of money entrées cost. But
some people in Israel now consider
more than just aesthetics when
choosing a place to eat, and a new
social seal of approval—the Tav
Chevrati, a mark of socially just
kashrut—helps them to do so.
Those who look for the Tav
think about waitresses and busboys
in Israel, who barely eke out a living
despite working full days.
They might also consider the
fact that it has become normative
practice for Israeli employers,
particularly in the country’s food-
service industry, to pay workers
less than minimum wage while
the government turns a blind eye,
assigning only 22 supervisors
nationwide to uphold the rights of
millions of workers.
Others who seek the Tav might
keep in mind friends who are
disabled, since most Israeli eating
establishments lack ramps, wide
entranceways and other forms of
accessibility. I picture the 700,000
or so Israelis with some type of
disability or injury, and can’t help
wondering where they go when they
want a cup of coffee or a night on
the town.
Created less than three years
ago, the Tav is an initiative of the
Israeli-based non-profit Bema’aglei
Tzedek, “Circles of Justice.” The
certification—which is distributed to
restaurants whether or not they are
kosher in the traditional sense—
expands the classical definition of
kashrut to include ethical treatment
of workers and a concern for people
with disabilities.
In addition to average
restaurant-goers who insist that
their favorite haunts adopt socially
and economically responsible
policies, the Tav derives its strength
from Bema’aglei Tzedek’s ever-
widening grassroots network of
volunteers. Every two to three
weeks, more than 30 volunteer
mashgichim, supervisors, make the
rounds to ensure that Tav-certified
restaurants continue to meet the
organization’s standards. Originally
focused on Jerusalem, the Tav
initiative has expanded its reach
to other major urban centers and
kibbutzim throughout the country.
Currently, there are close to 250
eating establishments that boast
a Tav seal.
By creating the Tav Chevrati
certification, Bema’aglei Tzedek
challenges Israelis to re-imagine
and refashion Israeli society on the
principles of tzedek (social justice)
in addition to those of tzedaka
(charity). Currently, Israel prides
itself on having more welfare-
related non-profits per capita than
most countries in the Western
world. While this fact could be
interpreted as a testament to the
charitable spirit—the tzedaka—
of private Israeli citizens, it
simultaneously implicates the State
of Israel with a lack of economic
and social justice - tzedek. Indeed,
the more a given society is built
on foundations of tzedek—i.e.
equitable opportunities for housing,
employment and education – the
less its inhabitants require acts of
tzedaka. By compelling restaurant
proprietors to respect the rights
of their workers and the dignity of
disabled individuals, the Tav Chevrati
hopes to shift the balance in Israeli
society away from a dependence on
tzedaka to a demand for tzedek.
For more information about
Bema’aglei Tzedek and a complete
listing of the restaurants with
the Tav Chevrati check out their
website: www.mtzedek.org.il
Dyonna Ginsburg
Upon completing her B.A. in
political science at Columbia
University, Dyonna Ginsburg
made Aliyah five years ago. She
is currently living in Jerusalem
and works in the field of nonprofit
administration and fundraising,
having recently finished an M.A.
in Jewish Education at Hebrew
University.
39
Not Just Kosher, Kosher Justice
The Conservative Movement of Judaism is working to create a “Tsedek Hechsher”—a social justice kashrut certification. Such a Hechsher will
ensure that, in addition to providing food that is certified as kosher, kosher food and meat processors are also protecting their workers’ health, safety
and security. In order to earn the certification, companies will have to prove that they are providing employees effective training and instruction, regular
on-the-job support, bilingual instruction when necessary, and maintaining safe working conditions. The need for “Tsedek Hechsher” became clear after
a May 2006 article in The Forward reported hazardous working conditions at AgriProcessors, Inc. in Postville, Iowa. This was not the first time public
attention was drawn to AgriProcessors; in February 2005, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) claimed to have video footage of cruel
and inhumane slaughters at AgriProcessors including practices that were not only illegal, but also against the rules of processing kosher meat.
Following the Forward article, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Rabbinical Assembly sent a commission to tour the plant. The
commission found serious problems, including: insufficient training and safety procedures, the use of possibly unsafe chemicals, and unclean lunch
areas for employees. AgriProcessors is the largest kosher meatpacking plant in the U.S. Its alleged impingement on workers’ rights not only violates
Jewish law and values, but also jeopardizes kosher meat supply. While the commission reports that it is helping to implement reform at AgriProcessors,
the Conservative Movement’s “Tsedek Hechsher” initiative aims to prevent similar troubles in the future.

Miriam R. Haier
 Babel
By Yehuda M. Hausman
And Pharaoh’s heart was hardened:
Let every single man take up his staff,
and stretch out his hand upon the waters,
upon their streams, and upon their rivers,
upon their ponds, and upon all their
gatherings of water, that they may become
free and democratic, like America.
Let freedom ring throughout the land,
That it be on every tree and every stone.
So every fish may live and every frog
might leap with hope,
To hop in every house, and in every
bedchamber, upon every bed, every oven,
and in all kneading trays.
So that a great sweetness may rise up and
waft through the land of Babel.
And Pharaoh’s heart was hardened:
If you are not with us you are against us.
Lice must live throughout the land.
On every hair and piece of skin,
On every beast and every man,
Let freedom ring. Let freedom ring
Throughout the land.
And Pharaoh pointed to the ground:
We must deal wisely with our enemies.
Let swarms of insects fill the sands,
The houses of government,
The homes of upstanding citizens.
We shall overcome. We shall overcome
The wilderness men.
features PresenTensemagazine.org
That night Pharaoh had a vision:
Pestilence deserves a better chance,
An opportunity to live peacefully with all creatures.
Let pestilence coexist with the camel, the cow,
The horse, the sheep and donkey,
That every creature may live peacefully
on my ranch.
I believe in security, security for boils....
I believe in opportunity, equal opportunity for hail.
Let bombs of hail rain down from the sky.
I command all grasses to stand beneath the rain,
All servants and livestock be left out in the open,
That they may be struck by shock
awe and thunder.
Then Pharaoh declared:
I know we have made mistakes.
Miscalculations. Too much rain and thunder.
But we must not let our soldiers go.
What we need are locusts.
They shall invade the country instead,
Every territory therein in thick multitudes.
Let no grass or shrub or tree remain,
No place to hide for the wilderness men,
No fruit or fowl for them to eat.
Let darkness reign throughout Babel.
And Pharaoh’s heart was very hard:
We need more soldiers,
We need outstanding citizens.
It is the highest sacrifice.
Let every firstborn be conscripted.
Let them find the wilderness men,
That we may eat the bread of freedom.
Let freedom ring. Let freedom ring
Throughout the land.
issue two 2007 41
 paradigm shift
T
hink of the one question the largest number of self-identifying
Jews would answer in the affirmative. “Do you believe in
divine revelation at Sinai?” is certainly not near the top of
the list. A more likely question might be, “Have you been
bar/bat mitzvahed?” Thanks to birthright israel and Russian aliyah, “Have
you ever visited Israel?” has certainly moved up the ranks recently, but is a
ridiculous question for the six million Jews who currently live in Israel.
But what if we asked about the desire to do good in the world?
High esteem for social service may be one of the most virtuous common
denominators among the Jewish people. And for a people so plagued
by dichotomy—secular vs. religious, Diaspora vs. Israel, particularism
vs. universalism—a shared dedication to social service may be the key
to enhancing the strength and relevance of Jewish peoplehood.
Imagine if Jewish communities around the world shared the
expectation that, following the completion of high school or the
equivalent, Jewish youth across all denominations and religious
backgrounds would spend a year engaged in social service. At the
age when youth are first empowered to demonstrate their national
citizenship through voting or military service, Jewish youth would be
expected to affirm their Jewish citizenship by positively contributing
to communities of their choosing. This Jewish Year in Service (YIS)
would constitute a new rite of passage—and the potential for its
acceptance by the community can be seen in the revolutionary power
of the bar/bat mitzvah.
The bar mitzvah, in its ancient form, was composed of blessings
said by a father to formally abdicate responsibility for a son’s fulfillment
of the commandments. Beginning the Middle Ages, boys began to
mark the bar mitzvah around the age of thirteen by reading from
the Torah in front of the congregation. In the early 20th century,
Reconstructionist Jews began to include girls in the rite of passage in
response to the growth of egalitarian consciousness within broader
society and among certain Jewish communities. The bat mitzvah,
subsequently, has spread throughout Jewish denominations, including
those that do not consider themselves egalitarian. Thus, there is a
Imagine the social impact of tens of thousands of high school
graduates spending an entire year dedicated to service.
compelling precedent for innovating customs, including those based
on Jewish law, in the face of novel circumstances.
Unlike contemporary outreach initiatives practiced by Chabad
and birthright israel, YIS is not intended to bring unaffiliated Jews
“back into the fold” of religious or Zionist tradition. Quite the opposite,
YIS provides common ground on which to renovate the concept of
Jewish peoplehood.
The initiative allows for the inclusion of vastly different Jewish
communities by broadly defining the concept of service. Students who
42 issue two 2007
A Year in Service
a new rite of passage
Seth Garz
are loath to forestall their progress in academic fields may conduct
research in areas with direct social application, such as HIV or
depression. Jewish high school graduates (particularly Israelis) who
already travel to the developing world in parts of South America and
Asia after graduation, could perform service in these locations. Because
YIS allows communities to define service for themselves, it would create
a platform for globally-minded, unaffiliated young Jews to explore
the non-Jewish world through the lens of their Jewish identity, while
not excluding Jews from traditionally observant communities.
Beyond strengthening Jewish peoplehood, social service provides
intrinsic value for the global community and the individual. Imagine
the social impact of tens of thousands of high school graduates spending
an entire year dedicated to service. For the individual, the experience
would facilitate personal growth, enhance social consciousness, and
help develop useful professional skills. Additionally, this movement
of tens of thousands of young Jews around the world could enhance
the perception of Jews in the non-Jewish world.
The potential impact of the YIS concept, however, does not answer
the obvious question: How can such a cultural transformation be
accomplished? As we’ve seen, the bar mitzvah model for change provides
precedent, but non-Jewish movements can serve as models as well.
The Quaker community is well respected for its ethic of social service,
and the and the Mormon community claims to currently have more
than 40,000 19-26- year-olds serving in some 330 missions around
the world.
Unlike centrally organized programs, the YIS challenge is not
to coordinate the litany of Jewish organizations dedicated to social
service, but to diffuse the concept of a year of social service across the
network of Jewish people. However, the organized Jewish community
is not necessarily supportive of this proposal.
When asked about the idea, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, principal
of Ramaz, the Orthodox day school on the affluent Upper East Side
of New York, was critical, suggesting that high school graduates
“should be completing their education and then devoting themselves
to chesed. If the completion of that education involves a year or two
of study at a Torah institution in Israel, so much the better. But, if
not, they should get on with their university studies.” Noga Brenner
Samia, executive director of the advocacy group Kol Dor, explained
some of the critical responses she heard while campaigning to establish
the Hebrew month of Cheshvan as a Jewish month of social action:
“Some people said ‘we do social action all year.’ Others said ‘Why
one month? It needs to be one day.’” It is important to consider such
challenges while developing the YIS idea.
PresenTensemagazine.org paradigm shift
 Would a year of service take away from
an individual’s commitment to his or her
Jewish community? Would forestalling full-
time Torah learning, academic studies, and
professional engagements inhibit the spiritual,
intellectual, and material development of the
Jewish nation? Many religious communities
send children to study Torah full-time in Israel
after high school—could dedication to Torah
study be combined with social service? Israelis
must serve in the Israeli military after high
school—could military service be considered
a form of social service? The range of questions
reflects the variety of communities that YIS
could potentially reach and the paradigm shift
that YIS represents.
But there is reason to believe that this idea
will take hold. Social service programming
is emerging as the next major theme in the
Jewish philanthropy world, and resources are
on the rise.
In December of 2006, through the new
Center for Leadership Initiatives, the Charles
& Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation
organized the Leading Up North winter break
trip for 500 young Jews to rebuild northern
Israel, in order to “reduce the distance between
Israel and the Diaspora and to model global
Jewish community.” One of Leading Up
North’s trip organizers was the Jewish Coalition
for Service. And, in June of 2006, Tel Aviv
University’s School of Government and Policy
organized a brainstorming workshop with a
veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of Jewish leaders from the
international development world to launch their
Tikkun Olam Project, which, according to the
subsequent policy paper, “seeks to significantly
increase Jewish involvement in humanitarian
and development assistance, making it a central
component of Jewish identity and Israel-world
Jewry relations.” As a quantitative indicator,
the budget of the American Jewish World
Service (AJWS), the largest Jewish international
development organization, has grown from
$2.1 million in 1998 to approximately $22.5
million in 2006.
As a new rite of passage, the Year in
Service offers a badly-needed mechanism for
affirming diverse forms of Jewish citizenship,
connecting Jews with other Jews and with
the tradition of service, while simultaneously
enhancing the relevance of the Jewish people
for the world. Will you encourage your peers
and children to participate?

Seth Garz can be found riding his bike through the

streets of Tel Aviv when he is not consulting on
China-related business and cultural projects.

43 issue two 2007 PresenTensemagazine.org contents

 photoessay
clearing a path
leading up north
Eli Valley

PresenTensemagazine.org contents issue two 2007 44

 Immediately following the Lebanon-Israel War in the summer
of 2006, human rights groups and international aid agencies
converged on Northern Israel to aid communities that had been
subject to crimes against humanity. The University of California
at Berkeley sent a contingent of more than 500 human rights
activists to renovate bomb shelters and uproot dead trees.
Progressive luminaries such as Tony Judt and Noam Chomsky
marched hand-in-hand down the main thoroughfare in Metula,
chanting “No more imperialism! Iran and Syria out of Lebanon!”
before helping to dismantle undetonated bombs throughout
Northern Israel. Kofi Annan chained himself to a tree on a hill
overlooking Kiryat Shemona, vocally defying the “Party of God”
to stop committing crimes against humanity.

photoessay PresenTensemagazine.org issue two 2007 45

 Just kidding! Actually, not a single
international human rights group came to
Israel’s aid during or after the war crimes
perpetrated by Hizbullah. Instead came
a different kind of aid: over the course
of two weeks, 500 young Diaspora Jews
participated in this winter’s Leading Up
North service initiative, to help heal an
area ravaged by war.

One of the founding myths of Zionism

was that Israel would not only be a safe
haven for Jews, but that world Jewry
could rely on Israel to come to its rescue.
It went without saying that Israelis would
be able to take care of themselves
without physical assistance from the
Diaspora Untermenschen that Zion had
come to replace. But with Leading Up
North, Israel wasn’t aiding world Jewry;
world Jewry crossed the Mediterranean
to assist Israel.

46 issue two 2007 PresenTensemagazine.org photoessay

True, participants were not defusing bombs or paratrooping
behind enemy lines. And the program did not transform the
North into a utopian dreamscape. Indeed, some critics groused
that the program’s cost of $1.5 million, funded by the Charles
& Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, could have been better
spent in more direct aid to Northern Israeli communities. But the
criticism misses the point: the purpose of Leading Up North was
to instill a tactile sense of shared experience and responsibility
between Jews in a trying period of Israeli—and, by extension,
Jewish—history. When Israelis suffer, all Jews suffer and it was
the collective responsibility to help heal the trauma.

Perhaps the most important contribution of Leading Up North was

the strengthening of the implicit bond between Diaspora Jews
and Israel, through the magic ingredient of service. Leading Up
North participants spent their days underground, in dilapidated
bomb shelters, and on the ground, amid the roots of trees in
burnt-out forests. Through service, they literally burrowed into
the ground of Israel—and, one might argue, into the substrata
of Jewish history and experience—to connect to a familiar and
yet not-too-familiar society that had been traumatized by war.

Eli Valley is the author of The Great Jewish Cities of Central

and Eastern Europe. He is currently finishing his first novel.

photoessay PresenTensemagazine.org issue two 2007 47

 reviews
Under the Hammer and Sickle
M
y good friend Boris knows
his Soviet history inside
out. Whenever he travels
back to the former Soviet
Union where he was born, he catches up on
months of deprivation of what he holds to
be “proper” culture by attending the theater,
concerts and ballets night after night. When
his visit in his native country is finished, he
returns to his new home in Amsterdam with
a suitcase stuffed with Russian literature and
music, because only Russian literature and
music meet his standards of “decent cultural
productions.” The other half of his suitcase is
filled with Russian delicacies such as caviar
and cuttle fish.
Boris would never dream of marrying a
Gentile girl and the vast majority of his friends
are Jewish. He attends shul on practically all
Jewish holidays. Yet, he does not believe God
exists and because he believes in the truths of
astrology, makes his life decisions based on
the position of the stars.
But Boris is not alone in his beliefs—in
fact, it seems that many Russian Jews, who
celebrate both Christmas and Chanukah,
and reject even the basics of Jewish dietary
laws eating pork and cuttle fish, are quite
comfortable in their mode of Jewish life. But
how did that come about?
In her new book, Anna Sternshis, a
Many Russian Jews, who
celebrate both Christmas
and Chanukah, and reject
even the basics of Jewish
dietary laws eating pork
and cuttle fish, are quite
comfortable in their mode
of Jewish life.
48 issue two 2007
Moscow-born professor of Yiddish at the
University of Toronto, tries to analyze the
Soviet Jewish culture that formed after the
Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The Soviet
government that came to power enacted
policies to eliminate perceived injustices
from the tsarist regime and to turn its multi-
ethnic empire into a Soviet nation. Soviet
Jews were among the biggest beneficiaries of
these new policies. Old pre-revolutionary laws
that restricted Jews’ mobility and access to
education were eliminated; this change caused
a social revolution, with Jews migrating, both
physically and metaphorically, to the centers
of power in the cities. At the same time, the
government engaged in a cultural revolution
to create a new kind of Soviet Jew. In her new
book, Shternshis tries to uncover the results of
this social and cultural revolution. In more than
100 in-depth interviews on three continents,
conducted over four years, Shternsis tried to
determine what being Jewish meant to those
who grew up in the Soviet Union.
The Bolsheviks were brazen when it
came to agitating against religion, but also
used religion when it suited their ideological
goals. On Passover, Jews would gather to read
“red Haggadahs” in which the traditional
themes of slavery and freedom would be
applied to the liberation from tsarist rule:
“This year a revolution here; next year—a
world revolution!” As Shternshis argues, the
Bolsheviks essentially set up a parallel shtetl
that preserved Jewish identity while convincing
Jews that religious belief was not essential
to it. Rather than having Jewish children
taught in Russian, authorities insisted that
they attend special Yiddish-language schools.
Hundreds of synagogues were shut down,
many of them transformed into clubhouses
where former congregants were inculcated
with a new set of beliefs. Local and visiting
theatrical performances became the center of
rural Jewish life; among the odder practices
Shternshis describes were elaborate mock trials
in which everything from literary heroes to
Jewish holidays (the Sabbath, Yom Kippur)
were put on the stand.
books
kosher in the ussr
Rachel Levy
SOVIET AND KOSHER:
JEWISH POPULAR CULTURE
IN THE SOVIET UNION, 1923–1939
by Anna Shternshis
252 PP, Indiana University Press,
$24.95, 2006.
By 1939, the Sovietization of the Jews
was considered complete and the cultural
campaigns were on the decline. The
changes within the Jewish community were
astonishing: urban centers now accounted
for 86.9 percent of the historically provincial
community. From just 26 percent of Jews
declaring Russian to be their mother tongue
in 1926, the number had grown to 54 percent.
But as Shternshis points out, not all cultural
programs worked as planned; indeed, much
of the Bolshevik propaganda was interpreted
satirically, or plundered for information about
the religion it criticized. By combining careful
readings of newspapers, leaflets, songs and
scripts with interviews of 225 people born
between 1906 and 1930, Shternshis clearly
shows how the reception of Soviet propaganda
differed from the intended purpose.
In the end, the harnessing of Jewish
ritual for Soviet ends seems to have backfired.
Regardless of the anti-religious message Soviet
efforts attempted to communicate, the fact
that they were still geared toward a Jewish
PresenTensemagazine.org reviews
 audience helped to keep a Jewish identity intact
in traditionally religious areas. The hundreds
of thousands of Jews flocking to the cities
had to cobble together an identity by other
means. As the younger generation rejected
their parents’ lifestyle and insisted, almost
defiantly, on speaking Russian, their sources of
information about Jewish culture dwindled to
the output of sympathetic propaganda about
Jews—films, books, songs—that was aimed
at reducing anti-Semitism. Paradoxically, as
Shternshis demonstrates in one of her more
provocative arguments, it was largely through
this propaganda directed at Gentiles that many
urban Jews re-conceptualized their secular
Soviet Jewish identity. Which brings us back
to Boris and his cuttle fish who, in spite of the
Soviets’ best efforts, would still never marry
a non-Jewish girl.
Rachel Levy is a freelance journalist and editor for
publications in Holland, America, and Israel.
The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry
from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492
by Peter Cole
576 PP, Princeton University Press, $24.95, 2007.
The Dream of the Poem gives English-speakers a
unique oppor tunity to explore Sephardic poetr y
written in medieval Spain. The anthology includes
about four hundred poems by fifty-four authors,
making it an essential source of Hebrew literature
and Jewish histor y. Translated, edited and
introduced by Peter Cole, the volume also features
an historical introduction, author biographies and
notes. The full original poems in Hebrew can be
found on the Princeton University Press website,
press.princeton.edu.
reviews PresenTensemagazine.org
Pioneer Jews: A New Life in the Far West
by Harriet and Fred Rochlin
272 PP, Houghton Mif flin, $30, 2000.
Confronting extreme weather was just the start
of it—Jewish pioneers in the West were met
with hardships unknown and unimagined
by their European cousins and their brethren
in crowded East Coast cities. Hostile Native
Americans and the rigors of frontier life
turned these pioneers into tough Jews. And
still, removed from Old World rituals and
biases, many settlers found success, starting
dry-goods companies and blue-jeans empires.
In this book, Harriet and Fred Rochlin give
us wonderful, insightful anecdotes about the
difficulties these trailblazers faced, like Denver
couples who had to plan their weddings far
in advance—in order to guarantee use of the
city’s single chuppah.
Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist:
An American Story
by Yossi Klein Halevi
248 PP, Little Brown, $22.95, 1995.
In this straightforward autobiography,
journalist Yossi Klein Halevi brings to life
the turbulent undercurrents sweeping young
Jews to the fringe in post-Holocaust America.
Beset by mirages of ‘Holocausts-on-the-verge,’
searching for a spiritual home in a changing
world, Halevi channels his adolescent rage into
for further re ading
tough jews
the fierce provocations of the Jewish Defense
League (JDL). Halevi’s tale sifts through
his motivations in recounting the appeals of
Rabbi Meir Kahane, and describing how he
became a part of the JDL—and why he left.
The author, who became an activist in the
Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry while just
a boy living in Brooklyn, resembled many
1960s radicals, shifting restlessly as the decade
progressed. Even as he questions his violent
past, the sharpness of Halevi’s words cut
deeply, fashioning a true examination of his
place in the modern world.
Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems
and Other Writings
by Emma Lazarus
364 PP, Broadview Press, $21.95, 2002.
Lazarus is perennially known as the author of
the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty:
“Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled
masses yearning to breathe free.” But the
forceful humanism of those bold lines also
infuses the rest of her work.
Born to an assimilated family in 1849, her
discovery of Jewish history and literature—
spurred by her activism on behalf of Russian
refugees—earned Lazarus her place as the first
important American Jewish poet. The poems
in Songs of a Semite passionately defend the
dignity of an oppressed people, presenting
America as the land of Jewish freedom: in
“1492,” she links the expulsion from Spain
with the discovery of the New World, where
“Falls each ancient barrier that the art / Of
race or creed or rank devised, to rear / Grim
bulwarked hatred between heart and heart!”
issue two 2007 49
 The Book of Judith
Judith Beheading Holofernes
painting by Caravaggio

A Jewish contemporary of Boadicea, Judith was best-known for wreaking havoc

on the enemies of the Jews—specifically, the invading general Holofernes, who
quite literally loses his head in her honeytrap. Don’t be deterred by words like
epigrapha and pseudopigrapha: The Book of Judith is a gripping read for all
post-feminist Jewish women, men, and anyone seeking a good dose of in-your-
face heroism. Want to save the kingdom of Judea? Check her out.

Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, Witness

and Gangster Dreams
by Rich Cohen
304 PP, Random House, $13.95, 1999.
Meyer Lansky. Bugsy Siegel. Louis Lepke, the
self-effacing mastermind of Murder, Inc. Red
Levine, the Orthodox hit man who refused to
kill on the Sabbath. Abe “Kid Twist” Reles,
who looked like a mama’s boy but once buried
a rival alive. These are the looming figures of
the Jewish mob, and Rich Cohen traces their
steps from the candy stores of Brownsville to
the clubhouses of the Lower East Side. Cohen
gleans his sharply witty stories from research,
government documents, and mostly, oral
histories—his father grew up on New York
City streets where Jewish gangsters controlled
the neighborhoods with muscle and moxie.
You can practically hear the rattle of gunfire
and screeching tires.
by Ruth Gruber
288 PP, Schocken, $27.50, 2007.
When we say tough, we mean gutsy. A force of
nature. In Witness, Ruth Gruber shows us not
only her own daring adventures, but also new
insights into some of the most dramatic events
of the last century. Among the photographs
and essays included are Gruber’s account
of Exodus, the ship which, in 1947, tried to
deliver 4,500 Jewish refugees—including 600
orphans to Israel. When it was attacked by
five British destroyers and a cruiser, the Exodus
refugees fought back with potatoes, sticks, and
cans of kosher meat to plant their feet on
Israel’s soil. More than tough—that’s simply
inspiring.
Rebecca Bebe Leicht

50 issue two 2007 PresenTensemagazine.org reviews


Curb Your Identity
David is still probably best
known for his work as the driving
force behind the hit series Seinfeld,
which dominated American pop-
culture in the mid-’90s. Seinfeld’s
narrative revolved around the Jewish
comedian Jerry Seinfeld and his
three purportedly non-Jewish but
very Jewish-like friends. While in
its beginnings, Seinfeld skirted the
issue of its obvious Jewishness, in its
later (and better) seasons, the show
dealt with such Jewishly-inflected
themes as shiksappeal, the laws of
kashrut (in order to get back at a
kosher-keeping woman, George
feeds her lobster), and, of course, the
age-old question of what to do when
everyone other than your Jewish
self is celebrating Christmas (“A
festivus for the rest of us”).
by Avital Aronowitz David did not truly peak,
A
however, either creatively or in
merican Jews have been his exploration of Jewish themes, until his
exploring different modes creation of the magnificent HBO series Curb
of interaction with their Your Enthusiasm, in which David plays a
gentile neighbors since the character—Larry David—strikingly similar
establishment of the Republic. Historians to David himself. But even Curb, which goes
and philosophers, scholars and critics have so much further than Seinfeld in directly
pontificated on the meaning of American addressing themes of Jewishness, only truly
Judaism practically since the moment the dealt with the issue of being an American
first Jews landed in New Amsterdam, more Jew recently. In the fifth season of Curb,
than 350 years ago. the startled viewer is treated to such Jewish
It should come of no surprise then, that wisdom as a lecture on shkias hachamah—the
one of our greatest contemporary thinkers setting of the sun, after which, according to
would focus on the question of American the Rabbinic experts who wrote the episode
Jewish identity. I am speaking, of course, of (and other, Talmudic Rabbis), a man may
It should come of no surprise then, that one of our greatest
contemporary thinkers would focus on the question of American Jewish
identity. I am speaking, of course, of the comedian Larry David.
the comedian Larry David. David has recently, not be alone with a woman who is not his
in his own style—both highly imitated and wife. There is also a recitation of the laws of
decidedly inimitable—created works that have kashrut, and an explanation of how to make
probed incessantly at these questions. vessels pure (bury them in dirt).
reviews PresenTensemagazine.org
tv
larry david’s laundry
Bezalel Stern
In the season finale, David finds out that
he may not be Jewish after all. In a typically
hilarious arc, David discovers that he’s been
adopted, and that his birth parents, whom he
assumed were Brooklyn Jews named Cohen,
are actually Arizona WASPS named Kan.
David’s realization causes him to experience
a startling transformation. All his neuroses
fall away like water from Teflon. Formerly
a shabbily dresser, he takes to wearing stiff
suits covering bright, friendly vests. Indeed,
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Executive Producer Larry David
HBO
the man’s entire personality changes.
Formerly a whining crank, David becomes
an indefatigably cheerful man.
Watching the clearly Jewish man lose
himself in the revelry—or, to be blunt, the
utter carelessness that the true Jew can never
experience—is both fantastic and somehow
depressing. Fantastic, because David, who so
clearly is a Jew (and discovers at the end of
the season that he has been a Jew all along),
so wants, so needs this acceptance into a
community he never truly knew he missed
until he had the chance to experience it.
Depressing, for the same reason: David has
no possibility of attaining this revelry as a
Jew, and he knows it.
After David learns he really is Jewish,
the real David kills the fictional David off.
He is sent to a heaven in which all of the
characters—both the actors themselves and
the characters they play—are Jews. Everyone
from Marilyn Monroe (who famously had a
Reform conversion; if David’s heaven is
issue two 2007 51
Jewish, it isn’t Orthodox) to his nagging
Jewish mother is there to meet him. That all
of the characters in David’s heaven are Jewish
is never explicitly mentioned, but it is surely
more than coincidence. David’s character, who
tried so hard to live the life of the American
and discard the life of the Jew, is hounded by
his Jewishness not simply in life, but also in
death. Indeed, when he shows up to the pearly
gates, he is met by two men, his guardian
angels, played by Dustin Hoffman and Sacha
Baron Cohen.
In a sense, these two men, Hoffman
and Cohen, represent the fading present
and the rising future of Jewish comedy. Both
Hoffman and Cohen can and should be seen
as Everymen. Hoffman has played the most
universal of roles: from Benjamin Braddock
in The Graduate to Willy Loman in Death
...a reality check on everyday life away from the headlines.
A
rt-house films. Foreign films.
Festival films. No-budget
films that deal with reality,
real people, real issues. We
always go see them, scared to find out which
of two possible genres it will reflect: boring
and pretentious, or smart and to the point?
When you think about it, there’s nothing
hard about making a movie today: anyone
with a camera and a computer can
gather a few friends, shoot them in the
neighborhood and present the result as an
what a wonderful place
by Eyal Halfon
104 min, 2005
52 issue two 2007
of a Salesman. For his part, Cohen literally
morphs himself into various alter-egos: the
gay Austrian; the British pseudo-gangsta; the
Kazakh reporter. But both, just as inarguably,
are fundamentally Jewish. Hoffman’s role of
Bernie Focker in Meet the Parents is that of the
ultimate stereotypical Jew: wimpy, sex-starved,
ridiculously analytical and emotionally an
open book. Cohen, even given the anti-
Semitic swagger of his character Borat, is
clearly obsessed with Judaism.
David’s choice, then, of the two landsmen
as his guides to the Jewish heaven was
particularly apt. Both represent everything
they want to be, that they superbly present
themselves as being, but that they ultimately
cannot let themselves become. The simple fact
of their own Jewish identity disallows it.
Of course, the shared religious and
beyond wonderful
“independent movie about what it’s really
like.” Whether it matters to the viewer,
though, is another question. Those movies,
while pertinent to the filmmaker, might be
vacuous to a broader audience. Worse, they add
to the pool of so-called artsy movies, in which
the few actual gems get lost and diluted.
That’s why audiences should be reassured
when they enter the theater to watch What a
Wonderful Place (Eize Makom Nifla), directed
by Israeli filmmaker Eyal Halfon. Initial bad
lighting, awkward camera movements and iffy
acting didn’t promise much, but focusing on
the background—the Negev landscape—the
dialogues in Hebrew should be enough to make
viewers feel comfortable, if not win them over.
And as characters develop, the story shows its
depth, and the director’s vision becomes clear.
cultural identity of the three men is not
something that is imposed externally. David
is the creator of his own show—he doesn’t
need to make his character Jewish. Except,
of course, he does. Just as Seinfeld would
have been a failure had its star ignored his
Jewishness, David realizes that his creation
is believable and funny because of his Jewish
baggage. Without the frenzied and neurotic
history of his religion, his comedic persona
would ring false. True, David will always
be the neurotic outsider. But it is not the
goyim who ultimately reject him. It is
David himself.
Bezalel Stern is a freelance writer and journalist
based in New York. In his spare time, he studies
law at Columbia University.
film
art comes home
Benjamin Hanau
What a Wonderful Place is part of a new
wave in movies: lots of different characters,
seemingly living their own little lives, but
whose stories intersect at one point or another
in the script (Crash, Babel, 21 Grams). What
makes this film stand out within this new
genre is that its many stories take place within a
small Negev town. It allows the film to exploit
this exotic and under-used location, and to
show how varied life can be today in a place
that was once a desert.
There, we follow a group of young Russian
women who were promised a good life in Israel.
But the reality is different: Once they cross the
border illegally and immigrate, they have to
prostitute themselves to earn a living and pay
most of their revenue to their boss (really, a
pimp). It is soon clear that their status is more
PresenTensemagazine.org reviews
 the ater
or less that of slaves. Taking care of them is
Franco, a middle-aged man with gambling reality check
issues. He is drawn to one of the girls, Jana, and
takes her under a protective wing. A parallel when personal becomes public
story introduces us to Zeltser, an unhappily
married moshavnik who manages his ranch Lonnie Schwartz
with the help of Thai workers. A myriad of
characters of all ages and nationalities join the
fray, as they strive to make it though their days
without slamming into the obstacles inherent
in the Israeli status quo.
The strength of this movie is not in its
technicality, but the depth of its characters
and story. It shows us Israeli men as we’ve
never seen them before: unsure of themselves,
troubled, and even overweight. It deals with
an issue often overlooked: the conditions
immigrants live in and the quasi-slave status
Israeli society assigns them. This movie
complicates the national identity of Israel and
its citizens. To the pioneers and visionaries,
it adds a few villains; to perpetual war and
economic meltdown, it offers a reality check
on everyday life away from the headlines.
But more than the story as a whole, what
can really be enjoyed are small moments, full
of truths and tenderness: a young Russian
woman who, after months of struggling in by Avital Aronowitz

Tel Aviv, is one day stuck in traffic and realizes
she still hasn’t seen the sea; a Filipino couple
trying to show courage and strength when
confronting a mob boss; the moshavnik
realizing he enjoys his evenings a lot more
drinking beer with his Thai workers than
listening to his wife. Such moments are empty
of false artistic pretension.
Throughout the movie, one aspect of
Israeli society is never mentioned: war. Nor
do any Arab faces appear on screen. This break
from the current state of Middle-East affairs
reminds viewers that Israeli life is not just
about dodging bullets and bombers, but about
the daily struggles of a diverse population.
Perhaps when What a Wonderful Place screens
in festivals around the world, audiences will
see this movie as a reflection of the complexity
of 21st-century globalization in a country not
unlike their own and understand, for once,
that Israel, a “wonderful place,” is a lot more
than meets the eye—or than what we see on
the nightly news.
Benjamin Hanau is a producer and editor for an
independent production company in Brooklyn.
He’s French on his ID, but his hear t belongs in New
York and Israel. He loves to watch movies, write
about movies and may just make one someday.
D
rama is the one literary form
never intended to remain on
the page. When a playwright
composes a dramatic work it
is a means toward live performance, a conduit
toward physical enactment for an audience
whom—the playwright hopes­—will afterward
contemplate and discuss it. But what happens
when the text in question was never intended to
be a work of theater? My Name is Rachel Corrie,
which ran at the Minetta Lane Theater this fall, is
essentially a play without a playwright. The text
is an amalgamation of letters, emails and journal
entries by a Washington State resident turned
Palestinian, activist killed by an Israeli tank in
March 2003 in the Gaza town of Rafah.
The problem with a play basing its entire
text on one girl’s real thoughts, words and
decisions is that one ends up judging not
Corrie the character but Corrie the individual.
Because the whole script is composed of either
Corrie’s ruminations to herself or letters to
those close to her, and because her character
is the only one onstage for the duration of the
performance, the play is predictably small
in scope. The information we gain about
the Palestinian/Israeli conflict—the axis
around which the play revolves—is based
primarily upon Corrie’s first-hand experiences
of specific incidents, leaving the audience with
no more than a fragmented, keyhole-sized
window into a tremendously complex and
multi-faceted struggle.
We meet Corrie at home, in Olympia,
Washington. Her bedroom is cluttered with
clothing and books in a manner that suggests
character rather than laziness. She is funny
and personable, a girl inclined to naming
neighborhood cats and making lists of the
artists she would like to “hang out” with in
eternity. Her walls are plastered with posters,
postcards and photos of people and things that
have affected her, and the areas unadorned
are painted a deep red, a shade she likens
to “carnage.” The bedroom is a metonym
of Corrie’s character: quirky, inspired and
passionate. We like her already.
Corrie’s language indicates an evident
precociousness, and both actresses who
brought her character to life during the New
York run—Megan Dodds and Bree Elrod
—imbue her words with an articulateness that
is self-assured while never haughty. We learn
of Corrie’s desire to investigate what happens
on the other side of American foreign policy,
and, in a matter of minutes, we see her pack up

reviews PresenTensemagazine.org issue two 2007 53

her bedroom and set off for the Middle East Iraq war and the U.S. government’s foibles they were. But since the creators controlled
—a region about whose history, politics and therein. It incorporates quotations from real- the editing, tone and structure of the piece,
culture she lacks the knowledge base one needs life politicos while weaving in fictional language the work runs the risk of becoming a means
before taking on a socio-political mission. Nor to imagine our public figures in their private toward their own political argument.
does she mention any intention to research the moments. This “real-life” play works because the The production of My Name is Rachel
Palestinian/Israeli conflict before traveling to synthesis of documented statements and crafted Corrie has no current plans for touring, and
Gaza. Did Rickman and Viner assume this dialogue composes an artistic medley where we perhaps this time apart from performance will
information would be superfluous? Did they recognize the semblance of life while retaining allow for a reassessment of the work amongst its
leave out details deliberately? the awareness that what we see is fabricated. creative team. Despite the stylistic excellence of
In Gaza, Corrie organizes protests, Not so with Corrie, which begs us to see the production as well as the eloquence of the
connects with Palestinian families and it “as it was.” Co-editor Katherine Viner has language, there is a stark manipulation at work
documents her impressions in a pocket said that the play can “stand on its own” with in using the personal expressions of someone
notebook. Eventually, the keyhole through no outside knowledge of the Palestinian/Israeli who can no longer speak for herself to argue a
which Corrie experiences the Palestinian/ conflict. “We realized that we didn’t need to global polemic. Theatrical performance is, most
Israeli conflict becomes the lens through which be playwrights,” she stated. “We just needed often, the culmination of rewriting, reworking
the audience perceives the situation. Corrie’s to edit Rachel’s words…Rachel could tell the and re-crafting. It is wholeheartedly removed
final moments are depicted in the voiceover of story on her own.” Yet Corrie presumably never from the spontaneously jotted notes in the
a fellow activist describing the tank that killed intended to publish her journals, nor did she diary of a girl who is searching to understand
Corrie en route to a Palestinian home she was likely expect her e-mail conversations to serve her place.
trying to physically protect. In the eyes of the as polemic for the Palestinian cause to a room
witness, the tank driver knew “absolutely that of theatergoers. Viner and co-creator (and Lonnie Schwartz is PresenTense’s Theater Critic.
she was there.” And so it is left. director) Alan Rickman no doubt expected She is currently pursuing her MFA in Dramaturgy and
At several points during the play, Corrie audiences to be as moved by Corrie’s story as Script Development at Columbia University.
verbally attacks the Israeli military for bulldozing
homes in Gaza, but she never questions why
the bulldozers were there in the first place. If
she had, she might have learned that the Israel
Defense Force specifically targets the homes of
terrorists and suicide bombers. Are innocent
Palestinians affected in this retaliation? Without
a doubt. But such strategies, based on Israel’s
need for self-defense, do not merit Corrie’s
labeling Israel’s military policies as evil—her
exact word. Were she a playwright, the use of
so strong a word could be a rhetorical device
in the crafting of a character; said candidly
by a girl out of her element, it simply makes
her appear misinformed. This is not to say
that writers should shy away from incendiary
and challenging work. But we must be clear
that art—even when it imitates life—is not
life, and should not be reflected upon as such.
Our judgment of fictional characters and their
opinions is incomparable to our judgment of real
individuals. In an interview with Alan Rickman
by the Royal Court, the director expressed, “My
biggest challenge was that Rachel’s words were
not written to be staged.” Exactly.
It is unusual to see plays where the entire
text is based on an individual’s thoughts. Several
shows base their text on the words and ideas
of one individual, though typically writer and
actor are one and the same. This is the case
with writer/performers like Lisa Kron, Billy
Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg. David Hare’s
Stuff Happens, staged last year at the Public
Theater in New York City, depicts the current

54 issue two 2007 PresenTensemagazine.org reviews


Klezmatics group
Wonder Wheel album
The Klezmatics’ Wonder Wheel (winner of
this year’s Grammy for Best Contempo-
rary World Music Album) consists of
twelve songs with new music composed
from lyrics left behind by Woody Guthrie,
the godfather of American folk music. This
concept’s been tried before, in Mermaid
Avenue and Mermaid Avenue II, a pair of
similarly-premised albums released in 1998 by Billy Bragg and Wil-
co. Wilco and Bragg might have seemed like odd choices to carry on
Guthrie’s legacy—one’s barely American, the other is barely folk—
but the albums were a success critically and commercially, selling
more copies than any of Guthrie’s albums ever had. Now the Klez-
matics try the same experiment. Does it work? Sort of.
The opening song, “Come When I Call You,” sets Guthrie’s
words to a rollicking, sea-shanty rhythm, a little haunting and more
than a little old-school. Lead singer Lorin Sklamberg’s vocals are
note-perfect, and the whole group seems determined to make every
minute of Wonder Wheel worth listening to. “Gonna Get Through
This World” is eerie and sad; “Mermaid’s Avenue” swings in a way
that we always imagined the ’20s did (circa the TV show Brooklyn
Bridge, or Neil Simon-induced movies).
But everything feels a little too perfect. Till We Outnumber
’Em, Ani Difranco’s Guthrie tribute featuring Bruce Springsteen,
the Indigo Girls, and others, felt largely unrehearsed—just folks
on acoustic guitars singing old Guthrie songs by heart. On Wonder
Wheel, everything feels too polished, the lyrics treated with too much
care—as though every moment has been meticulously planned.
Guthrie and longtime collaborator Pete Seeger were famous
for abducting other people’s songs and adding their own verses; you
won’t find any of that here. The lyrics make Guthrie’s Mermaid Avenue
hangout feel like a jolly, clean place, not the lowbrow, working-
class rumble of a party that it probably was. Songs like “Headdy
Down” and “Goin’ Away to Sea” are sanitized and polished, the
arrangements so perfect that they feel hollow, despite the Klezmatics’
best intentions. These are songs written about sailors and soldiers and
penniless drunks, not Broadway theater-goers and armchair-klezmer
Upper East Side yuppies.
But there’s a lot about Wonder Wheel that’s undeniably good.
The Klezmatics make these songs their own, putting klezmer violin
segues and step-dancing rhythms in places where they shouldn’t fit,
but always do. The clarinet-and-violin jams are executed masterfully,
in a way that makes every moment feel like a Coney Island carnival
sideshow. Not like the voice of the streets, but a voice to take us away
from them. Maybe, even, like Woody would’ve wanted.
reviews PresenTensemagazine.org
music
Matthue Roth
Ta-Shma group
Come Listen album
Ta-Shma is a supergroup of sorts—Hasidic
MC and beatboxer Chunah Silverman, pre-
viously best known for freestyling on every
corner of Crown Heights with anyone, at
any time, combines his talents with Men-
achem Shapiro, another Chabad Hasid and
“C.H.” scenester, and the production team
of Twelve Tribes, a hip-hop beatmaking
outfit best known for their work on Matisyahu’s first album. The re-
sult of their collaboration is Come Listen, a primer in Hasidic hip-hop
and a mash-up of programmed beats and traditional Jewish songs like
“Woman of Valor” and the Alter Rebbe’s wordless song, or niggun.
The album’s opener, “Revolution,” starts with Shapiro and
Silverman singing an original niggun a capella—a melding of two
musical terms (respectively, “a slow, meditative Hasidic dirge” and
“singing without instrumental accompaniment”) which are not
commonly found in contemporary hip-hop. A deep, concentrated
beat drops in, and before you know it, Shapiro and Silverman are
going crazy over the music, spitting verses and trading rhymes while
imploring listeners to “promise to be loyal and faithful” and “it’s not
advice, it’s your life / tomorrow is permanent.”
The album features the expected cameos by fellow Hasidic scene
staples Matisyahu, who does his not-exactly-singing, not-exactly-
rapping shtick, and up-and-coming Boro Park M.C. Y-Love, who rips
it up with a song-stealing appearance on “Journeys.” Less expected
is clarinetist Andy Statman’s appearance on two songs; along with
several sampled Chabad nigguns and Ta-Shma’s uplifting, crowd-
friendly lyrics, Statman’s participation transforms from just another
appropriation of culture-specific music into a bona fide approbation
on an existing form of cultural music.
If there’s one major fault to the album, it’s that some tracks suffer
from fuzzy production, and some of the songs—“Shine,” “Return
Home,” “Jacob’s Ladder”—overdo the resonant themes of spiritual
awakening, clinging to G-d, and the need for love. But, hell, it’s about
time somebody said it.
Ta-Shma is a group that could only come out of a place like
Crown Heights—and, if Shapiro and Silverman keep doing their
thing on the stage and in the streets, they could offer the neighborhood
its best chance toward a much-needed multiracial dialogue and
understanding.
Matthue Roth is a writer and per formance poet whose first novel, Never Mind
the Goldbergs, just came out in paperback. Matthue also writes for Bitch
Magazine, Zero, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and reads a lot of comic
books. He and his wife live in Chicago.
issue two 2007 55

Ever dreamt you were in synagogue, and
not only were you naked, but Frank Zappa,
or maybe Tom Waits, was your cantor? Well,
after hearing Sway Machinery you just might.
While much amazing, new Jewish music is
spiked with references to Jewish themes,
stories, and melodies, Sway Machinery is
jazzy, punk-infused Judaic music, grounded
in ancient scriptural liturgy, advanced on a platform of modern musical
idiom. The New York-based quintet of vocalist and guitarist Jeremiah
Lockwood and drummer Tomer Tzur, joined by the Afro-beat horns
of Antibalas, aims to create music that forges an emotional connection
to a modern mythology. Codenamed Hidden Melodies of the Jews
of New York City, this sound is grounded in the deep roots of Ashkenazic
Jewish spiritual music, based on the arrangements of Lockwood’s
grandfather and teacher, renowned cantor Jacob Konigsberg. With
a powerful rendition of “Shalom Aleichem,” possessed by the ghost
of Fela Kuti, the ensemble has been barnstorming New York and
Europe with snowballing success. Along with grooving melodies
provided by Stuart Bogie (tenor sax) and Jordan McLean (trumpet)
listeners will be roused by a rich hard-bop and Mid-Eastern backbeat
via the novel rhythmic pairing of Tzur’s Israeli drums with the stalwart
Colin Stetson on bass—saxophone that is. If American music is an
outgrowth of the blues, and Jewish music an outgrowth of chazzanut,
then Sway Machinery is a perfectly wild blend of both and everything
after; melding tunes of jazz, rock, klezmer, punk, and Israeli folk with
funky nigguns.
Ben Brofman
56 issue two 2007
music
on the horizon
new artists
Ben Brofman and Miriam R. Haier
Musician, percussionist, and penny-whistler,
Shmuel Perkel is constantly working to
engage others in the arts. A native of South
Africa who divides his time between New
York and Israel, he sees music as a universal
means of education and expression—one
that is often lacking in schools.
In Spring 2006, he created Musical
IQ, an interactive and educational music program for children of all
ages. Central to the program is The Drum Tales workshop, where
participants are each given a drum (often handmade and imported
from an African country), and encouraged to play as part of a musical
narrative. The workshops often focus on Jewish holiday stories, like
Hanukkah, Purim, and Pesach.
“Musical IQ is all about creativity. It’s about opening up one’s
creativity through music and art,” he said.
Additional Musical IQ workshops include Percussion Playground
(percussion and rhythm), MusIQ (tone, melody, and harmony), Moyo
(dance and movement), and Quilt (fine arts and crafts).
Perkel brings his programs to schools and camps in the U.S.,
South Africa, and Israel, and took them on the road as part of a
“Sunshine Summer Tour” last year.
Miriam R. Haier
PresenTensemagazine.org reviews
 arts
by Avital Aronowitz
H
is mother is Yemenite, his father’s
of Eastern European descent, he’s
soon to marry into the Chabad
tradition and he runs a Sephardic
music festival single-handedly. Meet Erez,
a.k.a. dj handler, the 26-year-old who delivers
a fluid kaleidoscope of sounds as diverse as
his own background.
Despite the current popularity of Jewish
music, dj handler laments that Sephardic music
flies below the radar for too many American
Jews. “The majority of American Jews put the
focus on Eastern European Jewish music,” he
notes, pointing to most Jewish music festivals
and articles about Jewish music to illustrate
his conviction. His personal answer is the
Sephardic Music Festival, with its mission of
giving people “the opportunity to learn and
enjoy this rich, sensual tradition that has the
power to make hips shake and souls soar.” The
second installment took place in December
2006 and showcased Mizrahi, Yemenite and
Ladino grooves, presenting at least one party
arts PresenTensemagazine.org
on each of the eight nights of Hanukkah (with
the exception of Shabbat). It was a pretty
hefty solo undertaking. “There were nights
were I was expected to produce one event, dj
at another, and photograph another.” This
took timing and coordination, as dj handler
arranged for djs to sub for him when he was
otherwise occupied and factored in the time it
would take him to run back and forth between
clubs in time to do what was needed. “I guess
I have a lot of energy,” he said.
But rather than focus on his own
performances, dj handler prefers to highlight
the diversity of the events and artists , who
often play together onstage. The most recent
festival featured “Hip Hop Sulha” at B.B.
King’s, with acts Hadag Nachash, Saz, Yuri
Lane, Y-Love, Omar (N.O.M.A.D.S.), Ragtop
(the Philistines), and Jake Break as well as dj
handler himself.
“All these great performers were on the
same stage,” he marveled. “Their backgrounds
could not have been more different, and the
way they interpreted hip-hop on stage was
drastically different, but it worked. Hadag
Nachash balanced party vibes with more
political views all over a fun live hip-hop funk
band. Then you had Saz rhyming over Arabic
hip-hop beats about his life as an Arab Israeli.
Then Y-Love took the stage with religious and
political views that bridged the two groups,
and then you have Yuri Lane depicting the
situation and hoping to relate both sides with
equal pathos and all through the art of spoken
word and beat-boxing.”
Another festival highlight was “Women
of Tzadik,” a performance featuring Basya
Schechter, Jewlia Eisenberg and Ayelet Rose
Gottlieb, which was also a personal favorite of dj
handler’s. “Jewlia did a one woman-show with
visuals and sound effects. Ayelet Rose Gottlieb’s
show was a sextet with backup singers and
elegant choreography involving a multicolored
tapestry, wrapping Ayelet with the tapestry
during the songs. Basya Schechter closed the
show with her Queen’s Dominion project, a
beautiful collaboration with Santur player Alan
Kushan. It was very theatrical,” he said. In
addition to nightly concerts, the festival offered
programs such as the Sephardic Scholarship
Series at Makor, which discussed, in dj handler’s
words, “where the roots started, where it’s at
now, [and] keeping the music alive.”
To embrace the full miscellany of
Sephardic music, the festival avoided defining
DJ Handler
portrait of an artist
Deborah Fishman
what exactly Sephardic music is or should
be. Nor did the artists themselves have to be
Sephardic. “There were a lot of Ashkenazi
people playing in the festival what they see
as Sephardic music,” dj handler said. And as
for creating a mash-up between a Yemenite
cantorial piece and a hip-hop beat, “it’s tricky
to make it subtle,” he says.
Dj handler’s work has not gone unnoticed,
and SMF fans are calling for similar shows in
other cities, particularly on the west coast.
Currently, dj handler is convinced that New
York is the best possible festival venue, largely
because of the proximity of its innumerable
musicians. “Jewish, not Jewish—musicians
live in New York,” he said.
Dj handler’s inspiration for the festival—
and his primary connection with Sephardic
music—came from his grandparents’ Yemenite
synagogue in Ramat Gan. Dj handler was
hypnotized by the Sephardic Shabbat service,
traditionally based on variations on a single tune.
“The whole thing is very meditative. You really
get into a zone,” he said, “a meditative state that
makes you feel more spiritual and connected
to something that rarely happens.”
Dj handler began his career as the hip-
hop and jazz director for the University of
Maryland radio station, where he developed
his fan base. Since then, he has been
recognized by numerous publications and
radio stations for his vision and creativity.
When not orchestrating the SMF, dj handler
runs Modular Mood Records, an independent
record label that produces hip-hop, rock and
klezmer-jazz bands. He also spins parties in
and around New York City. He said his favorite
part of being a dj is providing transitions by
playing between sets or between bands.
For dj handler, it’s all about sharing his
style of musical fusion with the world. And
for the artists and fans readying themselves for
SMF ‘07—that’s music to their ears.
Deborah Fishman is a recent graduate of Princeton
University, where she was a News Editor for the
Daily Princetonian. She currently works for the
American Zionist Movement and lives with her
husband in New Jersey.
issue two 2007 57
 The Crispiness of Compromise
persian dill rice with limas (polo sabzi)
Miriam Segura

G
rowing up in Los Angeles, a
community with a considerable
Iranian-Jewish population, I
had my first taste of the many
sublime varieties of polo at the buffet of a lavish
Persian wedding. My favorite was the polo sabzi,
a pretty dish gaily adorned with dill and lima
beans, the bright and muted greens contrasting
with the golden, turmeric-scented rice, and, of
course, the shatteringly crisp tadig on the top of
the platter. The ambitious home cook who tries
to replicate this wedding classic at home will find
that there is more than a spurious connection
between a good marriage and good rice. The
intricate mechanics of Persian rice recipes
contain valuable lessons for any relationship.
by Avital Aronowitz
All of the polo recipes, whether made
by a wedding caterer or a housewife, follow tendency, allowing the cooking properties at this critical interface, however, creates a
the same basic principle. White basmati of both liquids to integrate harmoniously. crispy delicacy that only serves to sharpen the
rice, thoroughly rinsed and par-cooked, The seasonings add endless variety, and old saw that the way to your beloved’s heart
is mounded into a steaming hot oil-water spice up the nourishing but otherwise plain is through his/her stomach. While a pot of
mixture at the bottom of a heavy pot. The oil rice, preventing boredom. The cooking rice rice might not be the answer to all of your
crisps the bottom of the rice, forming the tadig requires constant attention and monitoring relationship woes, the attention and loving
layer, and the water bubbles up into steam that lest the bottom burn. care symbolized by cooking for your loved
ensures that every grain is tender. Mixing oil The Vilna Gaon on the Aggadic portion ones certainly can’t hurt.
and water and heat usually results in spatters, of Berakhot 56b notes that a pot is a symbol of
burns and chaos. However, just like in a good productive harmony. In order to make peace Miriam Segura is a Biotechnologist, a Foodie, and
argument, where equal measures of listening between fire and water, even your best cast-iron a Talmudist. Catch her trademark variety of cute
and talking prevent hurt feelings, using equal Le Creuset will have to suffer a little blackening snark at www.hungr yhungr yhippogirl.blogspot.com.
amounts of oil and water mitigates this chaotic and burning. A skillful interposition of rice

Dead in. The sages admonish, Isn’t it forbidden to end sentences with prepositions? Strunk & White The weight of Torah. How much does a Torah weigh? A rabbi once said, Torah is the weight of all that
says yes. Although many contemporary authorities have approved prepositions at the end of sentences, was and all that will be, plus the expectations of one’s parents. Countered a parent, we don’t want to be
many still cling to the ancient tradition. a burden, do what you think is best, as long as you’re happy.
All Jews. Who is a Jew? birthright Israel says, one Jewish parent. Orthodox Jews say, if the womb is Nes, a miracle. What is a miracle? The Orthodox say, every aspect of our lives is a miracle, from the time
Jewish, so is the baby. Mel Gibson says, police officers who cite him for DWI. we get up in the morning until we go to sleep. The Conservative say, life is a miracle but our choices are
The word itself. What does the word sound like? Some say, it is like ‘blah.’ Others say, it reminds us of our own. The Reform say tikkun olam is our chance to create our own miracles. The Vatican countered,
the second plague visited upon the Egyptians. it is not a miracle unless we so declare it.
The Talmud. The Oral Law, made up of the Temporarily based. How many years makes
Mishnah and the Gemara. a “temporary” dwelling? Existentialists say, all
Accessible to everyone. Doesn’t open accessibility dwellings are temporary, because life is temporary.
also open the document to error? Bill Gates says, Singles columnists say, while everything is
“404 File Not Found.” temporary, a dwelling is temporary until it
Springtime crocuses. Some people say, what of becomes a home filled with love. Parents say, even
regions in which the frozen tundra prevents the if you are evicted from your apartment, you will

TwO JEws,
sprouting of flowers, even in spring? And others always have a home with us.
reply, this is not meant to be literal, but is a general Enhance. What parts of religious or social
reference to the springtime season, whatever the institutions require enhancement? Synagogue
actual impact to flora and fauna; rabbis say, it is written: “Our house is a house of
New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Non-
dwellers inquire, And what of the other cities?
Demographers note, not just in these three cities,
but in any city containing a strong Jewish
ThrEE blOgs prayer, and so it will be called among the nations.”
The twentysomethings and thirtysomethings were
sought but could not be reached for comment.
But PresenTense Magazine has written, Because
population. current institutional structures do not permit
Morphing into ‘the People of the Blog.’ People our generation to flourish—we need to create
have asked, will the advent of blogging obviate spaces, in print, online and in-person, to carry
the need for traditional journalism? Others have on the conversation.
asked, what of books? Have they no place in the Generation Tech. Said the professors of media
Jewish future? The answer is complex, and is studies, What is Generation Tech? Is it Generation
debated by experts in other places. As it is written Two Jews, three opinions. That’s the shul I wouldn’t be caught dead in. I don’t X or Generation Y? Wired Magazine replied,
in the book of Yul Brynner, “so it shall be written, X+Y=Tech, as it is written, “Those who have
and so it shall be done.” ‘hold by’ that rabbi. With a plethora of voices and myriad opportunities for MySpace or Facebook accounts, or who engage in
Spiritual seekers. Entertainment Tonight asks, self-expression and dissent, blogging is the perfect venue for Jews with something text messaging.” And if the parents should ask,
who is considered a spiritual seeker? The National to say. (Which means, of course, all Jews.) what is the difference between text messaging and
Enquirer says, If the embrace of spirituality is According to the Pew Internet Study, eight million American adults have started instant messaging, the children will respond,
intended to deflect attention from their bomb of blogs. But for many (62 percent of the Internet-using population, according to the LOL.
a movie career, they are not considered seekers. Conference on Jewish student identity. A third
Rabbi Boteach says, Kabbalah for the sake of career survey), blogging is still something foreign and feared; perhaps the word itself conference will take place in March 2007.
is not Kabbalah. sounds too journalistically informal, or conveys the perception that blog access Limited number. Some people meet their
requires advanced technology. But after overcoming initial hesitations, Jews are spouses and cease their blogging. But others who
discovering the endless potential of blogging. Perhaps it’s because the format, in meet via blogging go on to blog together in joint
which multiple opinions create an open conversation on a central text, already exists in the Jewish literary experience...it’s blogs about how much they love each other. Other
couples say, that’s so sweet. And singles say, if you’ll
called the Talmud. excuse me, I have to go hurl.
Sacrilegious as it might seem, realistically, it’s not much of a stretch. If the Talmud were being compiled today, instead of Blogger parties. The sages recall: there once was
separate Babylonian and Jerusalem versions, we would likely have one Big Blog edition, a living document, constantly evolving in New York a blogger party at which bloggers
through international, interdenominational discussion. No longer the private domain of rabbis and sages, this contemporary wore stickers with funny phrases on them as
Talmud would be accessible to everyone. conversation pieces. And it came to pass that one
blogger wore her sticker—which read “I take
Where little Jewish life exists, blogs sprout like springtime crocuses, in metropolitan centers like New York, Los Angeles money from homeless people”—on her shirt for
and Chicago. Where Jewish living thrives, so does Jewish blogging. From every denominational position, every new blogger the entire train ride from Murray Hill back to
has a pulpit and a congregation. The face of Jewish identity and the nature of community itself is changing. ‘The People of the Upper West Side.
the Book’ are morphing into ‘the People of the Blog’. Anonymous. The rabbis say, anonymity is
Today’s spiritual seekers, rabbis, students, and the average Joe Jew are also reaching out through blogging, seeking deception, as it is written, “I am God.” As God
identifies Godself, so should we identify ourselves.
community and spiritual connection. “Some people write with searing honesty about why they rejected Orthodoxy, others But there are other rabbis who say, God is sometimes
about why they embraced it. Others write about their courtships, their losses, their journeys, their love,” says blogger Rabbi hidden, as it is said, “I am that I am.” Another
Neil Fleischmann. When she posted about lifting the Torah during a prayer service, Karen Perolman, a first-year-rabbinical rabbi points out, we learn from the Book of Esther
student in Jerusalem, recalls that she “really felt the weight of Torah and the weight I was going to carry my whole life as a that sometimes God is even more hidden. As God’s
Jewish professional. When I read my old posts, I can see how much my Jewish identity has changed.” name does not appear in the megillah, sometimes
our names must be hidden in order to achieve
Blogging has become the great equalizer, celebrating individuality and creating connections between the ostensibly dissimilar. miracles.
For Orthodox screenwriter Robert Avrech, a self-proclaimed “hermit by nature,” the blog suddenly expanded his social horizons. Beit Hillel/Beit Shammai. Two opposing houses
“For the first time in my life, I have close friends who are Reform Jews, Conservative Jews, atheist Jews, and many deeply of Jewish thought in the Talmudic era.
religious Christians who read and comment. This is all something of a nes, a miracle.” Words are powerful. As the cliché says, “the pen
“The more I looked around online, the more I found out about Judaism that I had no idea existed,” says YoYenta’s thirty- is mightier than the sword.” As the writer says,
“The word is mighty, and words can wound. Still,
something Jessica Leigh, temporarily based in the San Francisco Bay area. “After reading so much about what I don’t know, opposite a sword, a smart writer would probably
what I don’t practice, all the references and Hebrew quotations that I don’t get, I feel inclined to become more observant.” prefer another sword.”
Especially in areas lacking a centralized, accessible Jewish community, Jews turn to the Internet for a personalized Judaism The conversation continues. Beyond the
that they design themselves, a la carte and online. “While blogs themselves won’t replace religious or social institutions, they original document, as the editors of PresenTense
can do much to enhance them,” says Oklahoma-based technology consultant Simon Fleischmann, 35, of Up-Load.com. “As have said, the articles are just the beginning
of the conversation—the real goal is to create
the Internet continues to grow, the use of blogs, and other community-builders like podcasts and online forums, will only multiple opportunities for young Jews to connect,
expand in influence,” he predicts. as we continue to converse on the issues that are
On the college campus, life happens on the Internet. Through LiveJournals, MySpace, Friendster blogs, and message boards, important to our generation.
students pursue connection and community. And Jewish innovators are jumping on the campus blogwagon, using online
communities to access the minds, hearts, and Jewish souls of Generation Tech.
Southern California’s Beach Hillel runs an active online community featuring blogs, podcasts, and bulletin boards, has several MySpace profiles, and in 2005, launched
a conference on Jewish student identity, with co-sponsorship from group blog Jewlicious (for which, full disclosure, I am also a contributor). The 2006 conference
drew 350 participants from more than 40 schools: Jews from all over the political, religious, and creative map. And because the conference sprouted from blog roots,
post-conference discussion has flourished online, through blog posts, Flickr picture sharing, and MySpace recollections.
So far, there are a limited number of documented cases of bloggers who have met their spouses online. But there is an expectation of connection—reading someone’s
writings provides a more solid foundation than meeting someone at a party or even online dating. Group blogs like Jewschool and Jewlicious, whose team members live
in different geographical locations, spend so much time together online that the relationship often translates extremely well into offline reality. When bloggers travel,
meetings with local bloggers are de rigeur and transition to bigger blogger parties, where people are introduced by bloghandle (“I’m Esther-JDaters Anonymous”) and
where loyal readers and fellow bloggers can meet the people behind the posts.
For those exploring Jewish identity, the option of anonymity is often a major draw. But others reject disguise. As Rabbi Fleischmann puts it, “By being myself I feel
that I truly connect with people to a much greater degree than if I was completely anonymous.”
Connection. Identity. Community. Self-expression. All of these are the goals of those who participate in the blogculture. But sometimes, these goals create conflict...turf
wars can happen quicker than you can say “Beit Hillel versus Beit Shammai.” Once the gloves are off, leader loyalties are tested. Interblog conflicts utilize PhotoShopped
images and text to engage rivals in everything from good-natured kidding to near-libelous reputation-skewering.
Perhaps blog conflicts teach readers and commenters an important lesson: words are powerful, and once you send them out into the world, you cannot get them back.
Or perhaps the lesson will go unheard and unheeded. Time will tell, but the Jblogosphere will surely be there to record it all—with posts and comments galore—as the
conversation continues.

Original and commentary text by Esther D. Kustanowitz

58 issue two 2007 PresenTensemagazine.org arts

 1 In a 4-quart Dutch oven, place 2 cups frozen lima beans in enough
water or broth to cover. Add a generous shaking of turmeric, and 1
tsp salt. Bring to a boil and cook until tender but still firm. Drain,
reserving the cooking liquid.
2 In a colander, thoroughly wash 1-1 1/4 cups white basmati rice
under cool running water, rinsing until the water runs clear to remove
external starch.
3 Add rinsed rice to the reserved cooking liquid, which should cover
the rice by an inch; add more water if needed. Add a bit more turmeric.
Cover and bring to a boil, then drain in a colander.
4 Add the cooked limas to the drained, par-cooked rice, along with
up to 1/2 a cup of dried dill. Toss together gently until combined. Set
aside.
5 Add enough of a neutral oil (like canola or soybean) to cover the
bottom of the Dutch oven. Heat on a medium flame, and add an equal
quantity of water. Cover with lid, and let the oil/water come to a boil.
Pour half of the oil/water mixture into a bowl and reserve.
6 Lightly mound the rice mixture in the pot in a cone-shaped pile.
Poke a few holes in the pile with a fork to allow steam to permeate
the rice. Cover, turning to medium high heat, until the rice begins to
give off steam. Pour the reserved oil-water mixture over the rice pile.
Carefully fold a kitchen towel into a square slightly larger than the
mouth of the pot and place on top. Cover the towel and pot tightly
with the pot lid. Checking by smell to ensure that the rice is not
burning, simmer at medium-to-low heat for 20 minutes or slightly
longer for maximum crispiness.

59
arts PresenTensemagazine.org
issue two 2007 PresenTensemagazine.org contents
 Until You Don’t Know
Charlie Buckholtz

O
n the fifth day, Esther put on
royal apparel and stood in the
inner court of the king’s palace,
facing the king’s palace, while
the king was sitting in his royal throne room.

She was sitting at her special little table,

signing books—I don’t know if I am going
to be able to explain this. One of the big
bookstores, the chains; she had just given a
reading to a rowdy roomful of New Yorkers.
I had not yet eaten, though The Fast of Esther
had officially ended.
Her reading had begun before sunset, in
the hardest, purest moments of the fast, the
time of prayer. Was she performing at the end
of a foodless, drinkless day? Had she brought
something to snack on after it got dark, a water
bottle in the covey of the lectern?
Had she fasted at all?
I arrived in the middle of her vivacious
Q&A that made everyone proud. Star bat-
mitzvah girl in miniskirt, silk blouse and slight,
game figure. A breast pin gleamed wincingly
as she spoke.
“Whenever I get questions about my
religious practice, what I always tell people
is I’m a pretty observant Jew, but I’m a very
observant writer.”
Big laughter, swelling of applause.
I couldn’t see her. Standing-room only,
musky with shtetl pride, less a bookstore than
a family reunion complete with the requisite
spectrum of aunts and uncles you are vaguely
afraid of but don’t know why.
I knew her brother-in-law.
We shared a rabbi. the jawline. I pictured myself leaning close, nestling experience, sitting at my computer . . .”
I positioned myself at a gap between my head in the crevice of her neck, resting my “Stop coughing on me! I don’t want to
bookshelves, by a middle-aged woman with face on the fleshy pillow of her shoulder. get sick from you!”
just-going-gray hair. She reminded me of the “Don’t cough on me! Shhhhhhh!” I had coughed again. It was a nervous
females on my mother’s side of the family: stocky She stared at me with eyes like bloody habit!
and fair, planted stubbornly in her spot. An aunt egg whites. “I turned away to cough. I coughed over
who took a different route to get here, lost in the True, I had coughed; my latest tick, a there. This place is crowded. If you want more
smoke of some forgotten genealogy. recent habit formed by pressures on the job. space you should move.”
I strained to see, swaying on my feet, almost “I don’t think of myself as an ‘Orthodox I was ready to take a bite out of her face.
brushing against her. With static electricity, I could Writer.’ I don’t think of myself as a ‘Jewish Understand, this was a time in my life.
not only see but also feel the shimmering rows of Writer,’ or a ‘Woman Writer’ or a ‘Young Writer.’ “Why are you standing so close to me?
blond down that padded her broad red cheeks at At the end of the day, it’s just me, with my life You can’t see her.” (She had a kind of pervasive

60 issue two 2007 PresenTensemagazine.org arts

nervous twitch you could not isolate to a body
part.) “I don’t want you breathing on me. I
don’t want to get sick from you. And you keep
making all these noises.”
But Esther still did not reveal her kindred or
her people, for Esther obeyed Mordechai’s bidding,
as she had done growing up in his home.
One year out of college, two or three tops:
we’re the shit-rats, the slaves. Come early, leave
late, sleep in the office two or three times a week.
Hoard away money to put ourselves through
B-school. Who gets a life outside of work, much
less a festival day, a Day of Rest 25 hours/week
on the clock?
read a lukewarm review of that novel and heard
the same from friends I trusted; my own brief
gloss confirmed those reports. But I also have
dreams (stretched threadbare from caffeine at
three a.m., at my desk on private files with secret
passwords) of a shall we say literary nature. Story
titles, character names, fragments, vignettes;

A new starting point:

from this pure good
intention my life
would begin.

by Stephanie Shelan

I’d left work early under the pretense of
going to shul, which I almost, actually, never
do. Once I went every day; that lasted a year.
Some attribute it to religious conviction, but I
don’t know if that’s something that comes and
goes. Friday afternoons on the short days of
winter I am out by two or three, but even then
it’s under the cloud of hostility, the umbrella
of shame. Ushered out by goyish colleagues’
quick, begrudging Seeya-laters, coreligionists’
low caustic Shabbat-Shaloms.
I come in Saturday at the first three stars,
stay through late Sunday night to make it up.
But tonight was Purim. Not that I was
planning to go to shul. It was all an excuse
to see her.
Wise beyond her years.
But wait—do I really care this much
about her? I have not read a word she’s written.
Correction: I read a few lines of her second book
and put it down to go do something else. I’d
bits of language strung together in a losing
effort to remind myself that I am in fact more
than the sum of the day’s gross.
Granted she had a few extra years, a
publishing head-start, but still how many
of us were there? We shared a universe of
background. We could be a support network
for each other, talking Jewish from our unique
writerly perspective. She could introduce me to
others of our ilk—broad-minded souls who saw
not contradiction but strong lines of currency
connecting creativity, appreciation of holiness,

arts PresenTensemagazine.org issue two 2007 61

respect for tradition—whom I trusted were out
there but had not yet personally met. Meanwhile,
our vital dialogue and expanding community
would revive the passion for Yiddishkeit and for
life that God help me I know I once had, and
then didn’t, and in the meantime had been too
baffled and paralyzed even to look for.
A kind of prayer. Dear God, help me to
grow up. To grow. To be a grownup.
A new starting point: from this pure good
intention my life would begin.
The line for signatures swirled into
shape, clusters of Jews effusively shmoozing,
me thumbing the pockets of my jeans while
scanning the crowd as if looking for someone.
Seeing women, only women, infinite variations
on a handful of Jewish types. Most dominant
the ruddy Russo-Poles, a tepid generation or
two from the Motherland, brown curly hair still
thick as twine and frizzed out in frenetic humid
halos. Straight from the Pale, no amount of
higher education/urban sophistication sufficient
to squelch the sensual aura of hand-skinned
chickens, peeled potatoes, gutted fish.
From this pool I was blessed with three
sisters and a mother and over my high-school
and college years plucked a small handful
of amazing playmates. Soulmates, lovers,
sisters, opponents, tormentors, victims,
friends; movers-in, ubiquitous shapers of my
soul, presently forging lives for themselves
throughout the country and world without the
benefit or apparent need of my assistance.
Abby, Victorian lit. aficionado, Ph.D.
track at a mid-level southeastern college.
Emily, married to a rabbi upstate.
Shayna, in her village studio, dancing by
day and waitressing by night.
Sephardi women peppered the crowd,
angular, exotic. Them I have learned to love from
a distance. I had girlfriend, a former Yemenite,
Hagit, the one woman I can accurately say I
‘dated.’ We ate ice cream at night, went to
college plays and dances and tracked the local
Haman was still being advised by his inner circle when the royal runners
arrived, and hurried him off to the private feast that Esther had made.
bands she obsessively followed.
She began to move in. With increased
daylight exposure, I could more vividly observe
what must rightfully go by no other name than
62 issue two 2007
a mustache. Thin and wiry, almost pubic, with
the same unsettling (but misplaced) appeal.
Standing out in jarring contrast against what
was otherwise olive-skin perfection.
I wanted to love it but managed only to
become increasingly repulsed.
Also: thick tufts of arm hair that seemed
to grow darker as I knew her more. (I began
to feel intimidated, outmanned.)
And finally: the wispy tendrils, two or
three of them, that swirled around each broad
nipple. “Dammit!” Hagit would say when they
snagged in my teeth like floss. “Are you trying
to pluck me?”
“Is that done?”
“It’s a good thing I’m not falling in love
with you.”
I’d look up with two big eyes.
“What?” she said. “Are you falling in love
with me?”
I wanted to, it seemed I could and even
should have, my life might have blossomed
out in wondrous unknowable ways. But that
darkness—so viscerally disturbing; that lush
extra measure of fur. Too much, too different.
It stopped me then and has stopped me
ever since.
The king extended to Esther the golden scepter
he had in his hand, and Esther approached and
touched the tip of the scepter.
The line had mostly evolved against the
wall into a purposeful organism. I found I
was standing alone in a space almost empty,
industrious Bookstore People scurrying around
me, folding and stacking chairs.
I didn’t own any of her books and was
not about to lay out the cash to buy one. I
stood watching her as she settled in for an
indefinite span of brief personable interactions
with strangers. Chatting away, energetically
pleasant, exuding charisma like a protective
shell. Full ruddy chipmunk cheeks, big white
smile, short dark bob. Thin, with a silk short-
sleeved button-down—untucked—that slid
around on her wiry frame, never quite taking,
now and again revealing her breastplate, the
beginnings of a bony cleavage unabashedly
announcing its delicious independence.
I wandered over to a display on Jewish
authors, three concentric squares against a
gridded metal stand. The perimeter had the
most recent releases and reissues of the Jewish
Old Guard: Ozick, Malamud, Bellow et. al.
Just the books, with little stenciled author
name tags running above. The second square
featured first- and second-books gathered under
the heading, “PostModern Orthodox: The New
Jewish Writers.” Here, each book was crowned
by a small glossy author photo, and a cleverly
provocative author quote.
The center square occupied itself entirely
with the three-book oeuvre of tonight’s celebrity
guest, with photos and quotes tastefully wedged
among the crevices. As a whole, her section’s
busy layout conveyed a buzz of youthful
industry, of sincerity and humor and zeal. A
cute girl about my age—I took her for a grad
student—thumbed through books, read the
backs, turned them over in her hand. She was
the kind I usually liked: light brown wavy hair,
if cut fairly short, cheeks stained a permanent
pink flush.
I thumbed through a perimeter paperback,
some new translation of Isaac Babel. She wore
long sleeves and a past-the-knee skirt, possible
indicators of religious observance. She had
Abby’s green eyes, Shayna’s full, active lips and
was built like Emily, athletically top-heavy. That
easy warmth; I could already feel it starting.
She flipped through the celebrated reader’s
most recent novel, hip-looking hardcover,
big-name house.
I pored over the publishing history of
Babel’s Collected Stories.
“D’you read that?” I shocked myself by
saying. First the fact of my own voice, then the
echo, answering-machine pale.
But she did not seem to take it as an
intrusion. In fact, she barely even looked up
when she said, “Nope, but I’ve heard . . .” as if we
already were in the middle of a conversation.
“Nope, but I’ve heard that it’s good,” she
said. “If you ask me it’s kind of hard to believe
it could be as good as everybody says.” Then she
did look up with a pair of nervous, not unfriendly
green eyes. “She’s so young, you know.”
“Oh,” and here I lifted a pedagogical index
finger, “but that’s her whole thing. Have you
PresenTensemagazine.org arts
read the reviews?”
“Yeah yeah, ‘wise beyond her years.’
Whatever.”
“You sound,” raising my eyebrows and
smiling—I am not without a few backup
charms—“like you’ve got something against
her going in.”
The accusation did not faze her. She
continued to speak as if writing a paper, trying
to get the words out quickly enough to keep up
with her thoughts. “I’m just sick of the media
frenzy surrounding all these young Orthodox
writers,” gesturing vaguely to the display, “I’m
sure they’re fine at what they do, but like her
for example, it has as much to do with the
fact that she’s this cute spunky young Modern
Orthodox woman who takes good pictures
and gives good sound bites.”
I nodded “Hmm.” She kept one hand at
all times on a big leather bag that covered her
stomach and part of her chest. I didn’t disagree
with her, but still felt a defensive welling-up on
the reader’s behalf. Protective. It wasn’t her fault
she was cute. Maybe the sound-bites came too
fluently, but that could be a good thing if there
was more behind the work itself. That’s where I
would come in. All roads led back to the necessity
and thus inevitability of our meeting.
I kept these certainties to myself. Meanwhile
here was this one; why queer the deal? Everything
in its time. I scanned the perimeter of the display.
“Wait—is Vonnegut really Jewish?”
“No, he’s German. Somebody screwed up.
If anything, he’s probably an anti-Semite.”
Vonnegut?
“You know, if the name is German, I just
assume.”
Oh. Of course. Well…nice to meet you.
“Go to Germany. You’ll see.”
Sudden guilt: what if she were my sister?
Then would I just walk away?
“Vonnegut’s not even German,” I said.
“He was born in America. He fought against
the Germans in the war. He’s like the head of
the,” I waved a hand around as if whipping the
name up from invisible particles in the air, “the
International Society for the Advancement of
Humanism, or whatever.”
“The Germans were the biggest humanists
of the 20th century. There’s no contradiction
when you define a certain group as being sub-
human.”
“But he’s not German,” I said. “Did you
read Slaughterhouse Five? He participated in
the bombing of Dresden!”
“He feels guilty about bombing Dresden.
Of all the things to feel guilty about!”
arts PresenTensemagazine.org
“He feels guilty as a human being, as
a humanist, not as betrayer of his Aryan
brethren.”
“Humanist, shmumanist. All I’m saying
is that some things don’t come out so easy in
the wash of one or two generations. There
is something about the German gestalt,
something built-in, hardwired, that demands
the annihilation of the Jews.”
Well! It must be said that, in addition to
being cute, she did seem interested in continuing
the conversation, perhaps over coffee in the
bookstore cafe. But it was tweaked: even as
a sister, she was creepy. And even as a creepy
sister I still fantasized single-mindedly about
flipping the back of her skirt up and making
her rhythmically brace herself against the wall,
spread-armed like someone under arrest.
Which was, I had to admit, ten times creepier
than some dime-a-dozen Holocaust fetish.
“I should get going,” I said.
She seemed surprised. Slightly hurt.
“Okay, well. Seeya.”
“Take care.”
I walked in big strides towards the escalator
going down.
Haman was still being advised by his inner
circle when the royal runners arrived, and
hurried him off to the private feast that Esther
had made.
Broadway screws with your mind. This I
learned as a child. We had friends in the high
60’s who would invite us for Shabbes lunch,
a good thirty blocks downtown. My family
was six, three sisters and me, and we walked
as a boisterous cloud, exploding showers of
Sabbath laughter.
It’s a straight shot down to 72nd; you are
taking a neighborhood stroll. Then you look up
and suddenly the buildings are tall, Broadway
is broad, you have to negotiate little concrete
islands to cross the street. You’re in Manhattan.
Ahead, Broadway curves and forks, switches
places with Amsterdam. West End ends.
My eyes would dart, disoriented, dwarfed.
I could not comprehend how we got here, how
things could change so much just walking
straight. My family would quiet down and
squeeze hands. My big sister would narrow her
eyes and scan the traffic for signs of danger.
Wait here, Mom would say and stiff-arm
us to the curb.
Then she’d step out, stiff-arming traffic.
Purim the year of the reading fell out mid-
February. By the end of December I had started
calling ex-girlfriends. Shayna, Emily, Abby. I
did not want to talk. I did not want to hear how
their lives were going, how challenging-but-
rewarding everything was, how hard-but-good.
I just wanted to hear the way they said my name
in the moment of voice-recognition. That first
reaction that tells you everything is still on.
Getting the numbers was not difficult; I’m
resourceful that way. No qualms 411-ing old
female friends of theirs I knew still lived in the
area, friends happier to hear from me than any
of my ex-girlfriends ever would be again. Only
one of the friends, from what I’d heard, was
seriously dating; three out of four others invited
me out for coffee. Orthodox women this age,
still unmarried—I had an older sister and knew
not to remind myself of the crushing communal
hydraulics, prospects dwindling exponentially,
friends and family trading you like stock.
I dialed the number. After all that! I dialed
it and let it ring.
“Hello?” Emily’s voice rich with
motherhood.
“Abby here,” unwelcoming the
interruption.
Shayna’s unselfconsciously hip “Yo.”
Then:
“Who is it?”
“Is anyone there?”
“Hel-lo?”
Then:
“Whoever you are, know that you just
woke a sleeping baby. Have that on your
conscience.”
Click.
“Go to hell, Chris. Stop being an asshole.
Chris?”
Haman said, “The Jews are divided and
dispersed throughout the land. Easy prey.”
Mordechai said, “Don’t think you’ ll save
yourself: it could be for this very reason you became
queen.”
And Esther said, “Fine—bring everyone
together in a communal fast. I’ ll approach the
king without permission and beg. If I die, I
die.”
I went down to the cafe and thought of
ordering a frappucino, but decided instead to
keep fasting.
The up escalator was right where I had left
it. Parallel to the down.
The story continues on www.presentense.org.
Charlie Buckholtz is a rabbi and fiction writer
in NYC’s East Village. His aspiration is to write
aggadic stories and create aggadic communities.
issue two 2007 63
 backpage Sam Ackerman

Sam Ackerman is an editorial cartoonist for the Brandeis University paper, The Justice, as well
as an editor, writer, and illustrator for Chalav U’Dvash, Brandeis’ journal of Zionist thought.

64 issue two 2007 PresenTensemagazine.org backpage

 write a letter, sign a petition, wear a dog tag.
don’t let them be forgotten.
www.azm.org American Zionist Movement 633 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Th e r e a r e s o m e

m o u n t a i n s wo r t h

c l i m b i n g, eve n

3 0 0 0 ye a r s l a t e r.

Livnot is a different way to see

and experience Israel. If you’re

21 years or older, like hiking

and community service, Livnot

might be for you. Programs run

all year-round, from two weeks

to three months.

www.livnot.com
646.443.1277
66 issue two 2007 PresenTensemagazine.org contents