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

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 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

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nd/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco,
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It’s Not Easy Being Green
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Cuisine with a Conscience
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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

 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
 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
 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
 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
 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 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

 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


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
 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
 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