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In the typhoon-ravaged Philippines, Israel brings its experience in disaster relief By Marcy Oster (JTA) – Obviously wanting to get back to work as the medical manager of the field hospital set up by the Israel Defense Forces in the Philippines, Lt.-Col. Dr. Ofer Merin speaks hurriedly about the three days his team has been seeing patients in the typhoonravaged nation. He tells of at least 12 babies the hospital has delivered – most of them premature – and the stabbing victim who may have died if not for the IDF hospital in Bogo City on Cebu Island, one of the areas hardest hit by the recent Typhoon Haiyan. By 5 am on November 17, Merin says at least 50 people had lined up in front of the field hospital to receive treatment. “If we stayed here two months or even two years, we would have patient work,” he said during a phone call with the media from the Philippines. The field hospital began operating on

the morning of November 15, about seven hours after the team arrived on the island. The parents of the first baby delivered by the Israeli team that first morning named him Israel in gratitude to the volunteers. Established adjacent to the local hospital in Bogo City, the Israeli field hospital is the only one located in a region of about 250,000 residents, Merin says. Representatives of other countries have visited to view its operation. The 125-member Israeli team has been seeing about 300 patients a day who were either injured in the typhoon or unable to care for chronic conditions, such as heart disease or diabetes, due to lack of running water or electricity. Others with untreated diseases, including those with advanced cancer, also have made their way to the facility. Some 22 members of the team are medical doctors, 15 are nurses and the rest are

At right: Israeli military personnel are assisting survivors of the typhoon that ravaged the Philippines on November 8.

technicians, lab workers and members of the Homefront Command who are coordinating logistics. The delegation brought 100 tons of equipment and supplies. Merin says the local officials and residents, as well as the medical staff of the local hospital, “greeted us warmly. We are working hand in hand with the Filipino people,” he said. Merin, a cardiac surgeon and deputy director of Shaare Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem, says the Israelis also have performed surgeries in the local hospital in concert with local doctors “to give them some of our knowledge.” Despite the death toll of more than 3,000, which is expected to climb thousands higher, and the nearly two million displaced, Merin says the wounded are not wandering the streets like he saw in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. He also was part of the Israeli team that traveled to Japan in the aftermath of its 2011 tsunami; the Japanese infrastructure was better able to withstand a disaster, Merin said. At about 4 am, a man who had been stabbed in the chest was brought to the Bogo City field hospital by friends. Doctors put in a chest drain, which Merin says was beyond the capabilities of the local hospital. “I am not sure what would have happened if we had not been around,” he said. Mobilizing and operating the field hospital has cost Israel millions of dollars, Merin says, as well as lost manpower. The medicines and much of the equipment brought in will remain when they leave in about two weeks, he adds.

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Merin, who is volunteering, believes the IDF is able to mobilize so quickly in the wake of natural disasters because it operates as an army unit, sending an advance team that allows the unit to deploy quickly upon arrival. One of the logistics officers left with the team for the Philippines two days after his wedding, despite being on leave from the army for the occasion. Israelis, Merin says, are “ready to drop everything and come and assist anywhere in the world that we need to be.” His team in the Philippines, he adds, is “really treating [the patients] with all their heart.” (The Jewish Federations of North America, Union for Reform Judaism and American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee are collecting donations to help the survivors. See ad on page 9 regarding sending donations through the JDC.)

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THE REPORTER ■ november 21, 2013

a matter of opinion Judenrein The following article was published exactly 10 years ago. It is being reprinted at this time due to rising antisemitism across Europe – a phenomenon that has prompted nearly a third of European Jews to consider emigrating, according to a detailed European survey concluded in October. The problems in Europe in 2013 are the same as in 1938. When the boycotts and singling out of the Jewish people began, the good people chose to look the other way. Given that we have just passed the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938), which signified the transition of the Nazis from discrimination to genocide, it is time to reflect on what, if anything, the world has learned from that experience. In 1862, the lord mayor of London hosted a dinner in honor of the visiting grand duke of Russia and among the invited guests was the famous Jewish philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore – then sheriff of London and president of the British Board of Deputies. The grand duke was a rabid antisemite and, being true to his pathology, he could not let the moment pass without commenting to the lord mayor in a voice loud enough to be heard by the assembled guests that on his last visit to Japan, he noted that the country was unique in that it had neither Jews nor pigs! The assembled quests were clearly embarrassed, but Montefiore casually leaned forward and looking the grand duke directly in the eyes, replied, “Well sir, perhaps you

and I should visit Japan. That way, they would have a sample of each!” History tells us that the level of antisemitism in any society is a barometer of that society’s health. If so, I would say that the United States is in pretty good shape, that Europe is developing a serious case of Alzheimer’s and that the Muslim world is about as pathological as one could possibly imagine.

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Mark silverberG Four recent incidents have occurred that should be cause for concern. In early November, two suicide bombers attacked the two major synagogues in Istanbul, Turkey, killing 24 persons attending a bar mitzvah. Last month, Joe Lieberman was hissed at by an Arab-American audience in Dearborn, MI, when he briefly explained Israel’s defensive wall in terms not unlike those used by Howard Dean and the other Democratic candidates. The problem was not so much what he said. He was hissed at because he was a Jew. At about the same time, a Gallup poll was taken by the European Union to determine the countries that Europeans felt represented the greatest threat to international peace. Israel placed number one; America came in a close second. Now understand, throughout the past decade, the North Korean regime has starved an estimated three million of its own people; established thousands of slave labor camps, developed nuclear weapons in violation of every agreement it has ever made and is seeking to sell them to the highest bidder. North Korea has lobbed ballistic missiles over Japan, threatened a nuclear war of annihilation against its southern neighbor and supports itself primarily by dealing in drugs and counterfeit currency. And yet, 60 percent of Europeans regard Israel as more threatening than either North Korea or Iran – the second largest funder of terrorism in the world next to Saudi Arabia. So, if ever there was proof that there was something sinister lying behind Europe’s constant criticism of Israel and its support of Israel’s enemies other than pure antisemitism, this poll now answers it. Antisemitism has evolved from an irrational hatred or jealousy of Jews to an irrational hatred or jealousy of the Jewish state, Israel. Last month, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia summed up the world’s problems with his buddies in the Organization of Islamic Nations. According to Mohamad, Jews should be condemned for having invented (among other things) such concepts as human rights and democracy. Then he added, “They and their ideas rule the world by proxy.” This is not a man who is especially interested in inter-faith dialogue. Yet, even his crudely antisemitic remarks aren’t the real problem. The real problem is that 57 other world leaders applauded him. A politician making such remarks about Jews at an international summit is a man with a problem. But when 57 Muslim world leaders applaud him, that’s a clash of civilizations, because a mindset that dwells on the hatred of Jews and infidels leads directly to a rejection of Western values and Western civilization. These four events should give us cause for concern because most of the 1.3 billion Muslims in the world have never even met a Jew. For example, there are 70 million Egyptians today, 95 percent of whom have never come within a mile of a Jew (unless they were in the Egyptian Third Army that was surrounded by the Israelis in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which case, they would have seen plenty of Jews under less than pleasant circumstances). But that aside, one of the highest-rated Egyptian television programs in recent

memory was a 41-episode series aired last Ramadan on the Jewish conspiracy to take over the world and the methods used by “that accursed, wicked race” to use Christian or Muslim blood to bake into their Passover matzah and hamantashen for the Purim holidays. It is amazing that the greatest hatred of Jews today exists in a country where only 28 Jews actually remain. The 57 countries present at the Muslim Summit did not notice, however, that the prime minister was insulting them more than the Jews, for he was addressing the leadership of a group of failed states whose total gross domestic product constitutes less than the GDP of Spain. He was speaking to a collection of aging jihadists, dictators, kings and emirs who would probably be the only audience on earth to applaud the damning of Jews for establishing human rights and democracy. Ironically, these nations are hardly in a position to condemn human rights and democracy, since they have never tried them! In fact, their only achievement has been that they have stolen their nations’ oil wealth and plundered the human capital of their own people. So, there’s something pathetic about a culture that is so ignorant and ill-prepared for the challenges of the 21st century that even its pathologies, like antisemitism, have to be imported from Europe! The truth is, by not introducing human rights and democracy into their nations, the Arab/Persian world has doomed itself to live forever in the shadow of the greatness that was once the Moorish Empire of Spain. Bin Laden and the Muslim Brotherhood say they want it back. The problem is, they can’t deliver, and only the West can show them how. A thousand years ago, the Islamic Empire in southern Spain produced leaders, philosophers, mathematicians, chemists and astrologers who encouraged their followers to experiment and to challenge established norms; scholars who coined the terms algebr-wa (algebra) and al-kamiya (alchemy, the forerunner of chemistry); who created the first celestial map (check the names of the stars and note that many are in Arabic); who adapted Hindu numerals (now known as Arabic numerals) to mathematics; and who laid the foundations for the European Renaissance. Moorish Spain was the greatest economic and military power on earth, a symbol of the greatness of the Islamic world at a time when Europe was lost in medieval feudalism. In fact, the great Jewish doctor and philosopher Maimonides was a student who studied at the feet of Islamic scholars. Today, that same Islamic world has descended into a stagnant cultural abyss whose social and economic development is about where Europe was in the 11th century. They are a sorry group of failed states that have not produced one single manufactured product of sufficient quality to sell competitively on world markets; whose national productivity is the lowest in the world, with the possible exception of sub-Saharan Africa; whose capitals do not contain a single world-class university; and whose countries do not host a single true democracy that respects human rights, permits a responsible media or encourages the rights of women or minorities. So, for the leader of a Muslim nation to condemn Jews because they are the founders of human rights and democracy, and to attack them “as a people who think” can only be perceived as a compliment by any sentient human being. The prime minister is wrong when he says that Jews rule the world, but he is right when he implies that we have made a difference in it. The Arab Muslim world may weave conspiracy theories about Jews, and cover its newspapers with excerpts from the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and stories of Jewish blood libels, but the truth remains that, as a people, the ideas and concepts that Jews formulated have changed the

face of virtually every civilization known to man – and from a people who represent less than one quarter of one percent of the world’s population – I’d say that was pretty damn good. Ideas are the engines of history, so if the Arab Muslim world wishes to foster this cult of Jew-hatred, it is shortsighted if it believes that human rights and democracy are the only things that can be “blamed” (so to speak) on the Jews. Truth be told, the Jews have contributed much more than that to mankind. In the pagan era, it was religion; in the Greco-Roman era, it was humanism; in the Islamic era, it was philosophy; and, in the modern era, the Jews gave the world the principles of theoretical science. While Romans worked man and beast seven days a week until they died, it was the Jews who introduced the concept of the Sabbath and, for this, they were condemned as heretics. From the Jewish prophets arose the concepts of the right to trial, the right to confront one’s own accusers and the right to present evidence on one’s own behalf. These principles were part of our culture from the time of Deborah and the judges, a thousand years before the Common Era. These concepts were carried throughout the millennia by the Jews, while what is now the Western world floated on a sea of superstition. From the Jewish people sprang a Jewish Essene who became the messiah for Christianity. From the Jewish people came Saul of Tarsus, the organizer of the Christian church. Even the Mormons today claim they are the descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. So, if the Arab-Muslim world chooses to wallow in self-pity and Jew-hatred, they should understand the whole picture. Ask historians like Arnold Toynbee and they will tell you that, by all historical standards, the Jewish people should be footnotes to history. They should not exist today. Technically, they should have died out thousands of years ago with the Hittites, the Ammonites, the Canaanites and the Philistines – their historical contemporaries. These great nations of antiquity left behind a record of their history in material things like tablets, monuments and ruins. But the Jewish people survived the eons of time because of the ideas they taught and continue to teach, and the impact these ideas have had upon other peoples and other civilizations. Unlike the ancient tribes, we have survived because Judaism contained the seeds of its own rebirth and evolved as the world changed. Alternatively, Islam has never had a Renaissance. The Malaysian prime minister condemns Jews because, as he says, “they think.” And because “they think,” the Jews survived and prospered in Babylon, in the Hellenic world, during the Roman Empire, flourished in the Islamic era, emerged from a 1,200year darkness known as the Middle Ages, and have risen to new intellectual heights in the 21st century. But we have paid dearly for these contributions. In fact, if pain and suffering could ennoble, the Jews could challenge the aristocracy of any nation on earth. In their eagerness to eradicate all vestiges of Judaism from the world, the Nazis of yesterday and the antisemites of today forget that from the Jewish Talmud came the principles of tort law, trade regulations, civil damages, real estate, commerce, the principles of credit and negotiable securities, the sanctity of oaths and the enforceability of civil contracts. The Chinese have a saying – “be careful what you wish; it may come true.” So if the antisemites of the world are to condemn the Jews, let them imagine a world that is Judenrein – a world without Jews. In the 1850s, Jewish medical researchers argued that microorganisms caused contagious diseases and laid the foundations of modern heart therapy, bacteriology, clinical pathology and endocrinology. It was the Jews who See “Judenrein” on page 4

NOVEMBER 21, 2013 ■

THE REPORTER

The Pennsylvania Jewish Coalition Pennsylvania Treasury: Treasurer McCord provides update on Pennsylvania’s divestiture from companies having scrutinized activities in Iran or Sudan HARRISBURG (Nov. 4) – Pennsylvania Treasurer Rob McCord recently lauded findings in Treasury’s recent report on Pennsylvania’s efforts under Act 44 of 2010 to divest from companies having certain scrutinized activities in Iran or Sudan. “I’m pleased that we have been able to divest these securities without having the significant negative impact to the General Fund that some had feared,” said McCord. “More importantly, Pennsylvania and states that have enacted similar legislation are sending an important message that institutional investors do not want their investments being associated with genocide in Sudan or the enhancement of Iran’s oil and military capacity. This collective message is resonating, as more than 30 of the companies that we’ve been tracking have ceased their scrutinized activities in Iran or Sudan.” During the fiscal year ending June 30, Pennsylvania’s public funds divested of holdings in 13 companies involved in prohibited activities under Act 44 in those two nations. Proceeds of the sales were more than $59 million, producing a net investment gain of $3.7 million. Under Act 44, Pennsylvania’s public funds – the State Employees’ Retirement System, the Public School Employees’ Retirement System, the Pennsylvania Municipal Retirement System, and any fund of which the treasurer

is a custodian, referred to as the Four Funds in the report – are required to compile and publish lists of “scrutinized companies.” The lists comprise companies identified as having prohibited business operations in Iran or Sudan described in Act 44. The Four Funds are then barred under Act 44 from acquiring securities of scrutinized companies and must divest securities of the companies that fail to take requisite action within a specified period of time. The Treasury under McCord proposed and has led the Four Funds’ collaboration compliance activities in order to reduce administrative expenses and provide a consistent methodology in determining scrutinized companies. Treasury’s leadership saves taxpayers approximately $250,000 each year in services that would have otherwise been redundantly procured by each fund. “This is a perfect example of how different agencies can work together in order to increase efficiency and lower the cost of government,” McCord said. He credited the General Assembly for enacting legislation that gave the funds a sufficient timeframe in which to divest scrutinized securities. The treasurer explained that the law’s provisions allow the Four Funds time to execute sales in order to take advantage of favorable market performance.

With electromagnetics and metal caps, Israeli companies aim to zap brain diseases By Ben Sales JERUSALEM (JTA) – It looks like a futuristic salon hair dryer. Connected to a computer by a bright orange strip, the half-cube with rounded corners sits comfortably atop the head, a coil of wires resting on the skull. As a doctor stands at the computer, the patient gets comfortable. A few seconds later, a brief electromagnetic pulse hits the head. Do this every weekday for six weeks, doctors tell Alzheimer’s patients, and you’ll feel your brain come back to life. The technique, known as transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, uses electromagnetic waves to penetrate the brain and activate underused neural connections. Two Israeli companies are hoping it will change the way brain diseases are treated. “This is the first time in neuroscience that we have a noninvasive tool to directly penetrate and influence deep structures of the brain in a targeted way,” said Ronen Segal, the chief technology officer of Brainsway, based in Jerusaslem. “No shocks, no hospitalization. You come into the clinic, you sit in the chair for 20 minutes, you get a series of electromagnetic zaps.” Unlike electroshock therapy, now known as electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT – a risky and controversial procedure long used to counteract severe depression and other disorders – TMS targets specific regions of the brain rather than the whole organ and at a much lower intensity. Unlike ECT, Brainsway’s clinical trials show TMS carries almost no risk of seizure. Brainsway is working on using TMS to combat a range of diseases. The company received approval this year from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat depression with TMS, and has European Union permission to use the technique to treat 10 diseases or disorders, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and autism, even tobacco ad-

diction. Other drug addictions and obesity are next on the company’s list. Another Israeli company, Neuronix, focuses on Alzheimer’s, which affects five million Americans – a number sure to rise as the baby boomer generation ages. “Every emotion, thought or action starts with electric activity in the brain,” Segal said. “The problem is if you have too much or too little activity, you get a brain disorder.” In a person suffering from depression, for example, the section of the brain that regulates mood isn’t as active as it should be. Electromagnetic pulses targeting that section stimulate brain cells to fire, restoring them to a normal level of activity, Segal says, and teaching them to be more active in the long-term. For Alzheimer’s patients, treatment entails an additional step. Patients who receive Neuronix’s electromagnetic pulse have less than a minute of increased brain activity. During that window, a computer screen flashes a simple task meant to exercise the affected region of the brain – asking patients, in one example, whether two sentences mean

Similar legislation in other states requires divestment within as little as six to eight months after brief periods for engagement, whereas Act 44 provides the Four Funds with a 26-month window to divest scrutinized holdings after a 180-day engagement period and one-year period of monitoring of commitments to cease scrutinized activities. McCord noted: “We knew that providing our investment managers with a longer divestment window would allow them to maximize market opportunities and consequently minimize costs associated with divestment. That’s why we worked with the General Assembly in developing Act 44 to provide this longer period of time for the Four Funds. As a byproduct, the longer window provides additional time for companies to wind down scrutinized operations in Iran and Sudan and avoid mandated divestment altogether. I commend the General Assembly for providing us this flexibility.” For more information, and to view a copy of the 2013 Divestment Report, visit www.patreasury.gov.

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THE REPORTER ■ november 21, 2013

Breaking down stereotypes about religious Jews

Announcing Jew in the City’s 2013 Orthodox Jewish All Stars By Allison Josephs Originally published by Jew in the City on October 16, 2013 U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Nobel Laureate Robert Aumann are among 10 individuals who have been named 2013 Orthodox Jewish All Stars by Jew in the City, the organization dedicated to re-branding Orthodox Jews and Judaism to the world through digital media. This year’s All Stars have been called “an extremely accomplished and diverse”

Judenrein

suggested serum immunity for contagious diseases, who pioneered the chemistry of muscles, and who made blood transfusions possible through the discovery of different blood types. It was Jewish scientists who measured the distances to the stars in the heavens, who contributed to the study of the internal combustion of stars and who discovered the planet Uranus. It was Jewish chemists who created the modern chemical and dye industries, who worked out the theory of atomic valences, developed molecular theories, classified organic compounds based upon their molecular structure and determined the composition of chlorophyll and the role of enzymes in the chemical processes of life. The antisemites want a world that is Judenrein, but it will cost them. Let them remember that it was Jewish

group. In addition to Lew and Aumann they include Sarah Hofstetter, who was promoted last week to CEO of 360i in the U.S. (the number two advertising firm on Ad Age’s Agency A-List); Ari Pinchot, co-executive producer of the critically acclaimed film “Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” featuring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey; Naama Shafir, the first Orthodox female professional basketball player; Joseph Shenker, chairman of Sullivan and Cromwell (the number three law firm in

the country, according to Vault Rankings); Rama Burshtein, writer, director and producer of the awarding-winning film “Fill the Void”; Anne Neuberger, the director of the National Security Agency’s Commercial Solutions Center; Issamar Ginzberg, a marketing guru who was named one of Inc. Magazine’s Top 10 Entrepreneurs, and is the grandson of Chasidic rebbes; and Dr. Laurel Steinherz, director of pediatric cardiology at Memorial Sloan Kettering and co-founder of Camp Simcha, a camp

for Jewish children with cancer. This year’s winners will be honored at a red carpet event that will coincide with the overlap of Chanukah and Thanksgiving. The event will commemorate the redemption from religious persecution of Chanukah coinciding with Thanksgiving’s celebration of religious freedom in America, which has provided Jews with the opportunity to achieve professional success while maintaining their heritage. See “All Stars” on page 6

Continued from page 2

physicists who delineated the theory of relativity, discovered the photoelectric effect and discovered gamma rays that now scan for weapons of mass destruction in the millions of foreign cargo containers that arrive each day into America from foreign ports. It was Jewish physicists who isolated isotopes, worked in electron kinetics and pried open the secrets of the atom. If Jews are to be hated for these contributions, then they must be hated for all their contributions. In the 20th century, Sigmund Freud lifted the lid off man’s mind, and with psychoanalysis revolutionized man’s concept of himself and the relationship of mind to matter. Three hundred years earlier, Baruch Spinoza was outcast and excommunicated because he pried philosophy loose from superstition and mysticism, and opened the path to rationalism and modern science. Albert Michelson dis-

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covered the speed of light and won America’s first Nobel Prize in 1907. Selman Waksman isolated streptomycin. Casimir Funk discovered vitamins. And Jonas Salk introduced the polio vaccine that saved my life when I was a child and billions of other since then. So, to the antisemites of the world, I say beware what you wish, for this world would be a lesser place but for the contributions of the Jews. In truth, these contributions pale in the face of the contributions made by scientists of other faiths, but these contributions are no less significant when one takes into account that they come from a religious/cultural group of negligible size. Jews are hated by the bin Ladens, the Khaddafis, the Khomeinis, the Assads, the Ahmedinejads and the petty dictators of the Arab Muslim/Persian world, not because of who they are, but because of what they have achieved. Jewish heritage has always respected learning and education, has always imparted justice and has always taught its doctrines in abstractions, and never absolutes, like the jihadists whose greatest “contribution” to mankind has been to restore the pagan ritual of human sacrifice – suicide bombers – to the modern era. So, if the bin Ladens of the world believe that by murdering Jews in synagogues, buses, restaurants, marketplaces and Passover seders they are killing their ideas, they are wrong. Conclusion In the early 1980s, a letter appeared in the Colorado Gazette Telegraph, which is not a Jewish newspaper, nor was the author of the piece Jewish. It was written by a World War II veteran in response to some antisemitic

graffiti that was scrawled on the walls of a Denver synagogue. The graffiti consisted of a swastika and under it was written the words, “Jews Go Home.” The letter went like this: Jews go home Well there’s nothing really new in this. You’ve heard it all before. But suppose, just this once, you took the advice of these sick people, and actually packed your bags and left for parts unknown. Before you go, would you do me a favor? Would you leave your formula for Salk vaccine behind? After all, you wouldn’t want my child to die from polio would you? And would you leave your genius for science and physics and mathematics behind because if it wasn’t for your Einsteins, Fermis and Steinmetzs, we would be looking up from our chains to see a happy, aging Hitler drive by in one of our Cadillacs. And would you leave your talent for humor and music and entertainment behind because I’m not too sure that I would want to live in a country where you weren’t here to share your genius with us. You see if you go, if these stupid people force you to leave, then freedom goes with you, democracy goes with you, and everything my buddies and I fought for in World War II goes with you. So when you go, would you do me a favor? Would you slow down in front of my house and honk……because so help me God, I’m going with you too. Mark Silverberg’s book: “The Quartermasters of Terror: Saudi Arabia and the Global Islamic Jihad,” his articles and editorials have been archived on his website, www.marksilverberg.com.

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NOVEMBER 21, 2013 ■

THE REPORTER

Israel’s latest Nobel laureate in chemistry on understanding how enzymes work By Alina Dain Sharon JNS.org What is behind Israel’s recent string of Nobel Prize winners? It could be that Israelis have a practical way of thinking and strong strategies for solving difficult problems, says Arieh Warshel, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in October for his role in developing computer programs that simulate “large and complex chemical systems and reactions.” An Israeli-American professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Warshel focused on enzymatic reactions within an all-Jewish team of three researchers sharing the prize. His fellow winners are colleagues Michael Levitt, a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine who holds Israeli, British and American citizenships; and Martin Karplus, a professor at Harvard University and the University of Strasbourg who holds American and Austrian citizenships. Warshel and Levitt join a long list of recent Israeli Nobel laureates, particularly in chemistry. Prof. Dan Shechtman of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology won the chemistry prize in 2011, and Ada E. Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science won in 2009. In an exclusive interview with JNS.org, Warshel said that his main motivation as a scientist is “to be the first to solve how things are working. “If the motivation is to make money… those people won’t do original science,” Warshel said, calling this phenomenon “equally bad in Israel and in America.” The announcement that Israeli citizens working abroad, like Warshel and Levitt, had won the Nobel Prize sparked a media

debate in Israel on the country’s “brain drain,” where promising young professionals leave the Jewish state for better academic and industrial opportunities. When it comes to governments funding science, Warshel believes that investing in many smaller research projects is better than investing in “one flashy project.” The work of Warshel and his counterparts has long been supported by American federal science grants, but resources are still limited, and in both Israel and the U.S. it has become “less and less likely that the best idea will be funded,” he said. During the 1960s, in the laboratory of Prof. Shneior Lifson at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Warshel and Levitt developed a computer model describing molecules classically, as composed of atoms, and predicted the structure of proteins under various conditions. According to Warshel, atoms can be described as balls being bonded by springs. You can model a molecule by taking actual balls and connecting them with real springs. Then you can follow how the balls, representing atoms in a molecule, are connected, vibrate and move. But in a manmade model, the balls would soon fall apart because of gravity, whereas in molecules the gravitational force is negligible. The alternative is to build a computer model that simulates the behavior of a real molecule. Assuming that the atoms in the molecule behave according to Newton’s laws of physics, which are expressed by classical mechanics theory, and encoding the equations that describe Newtonian movement into the computer program, the behavior of the molecular system can be simulated.

One cannot, however, describe the breaking of a chemical bond with classical mechanics, as a ball and a spring. Warshel’s particular interest has been in modeling enzymatic reactions. Enzyme molecules are complex proteins that exist in most living organisms and engage in catalysis, which often involves the breaking of chemical bonds. The Schrödinger equation, formulated in the 1920s by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, describes how electrons are attracted to the nuclei of atoms. From this development evolved the field of quantum mechanics – an essentially different way of looking at a molecule, from the perspective of subatomic particles, like electrons, See “Nobel” on page 14

University of Southern California Professor Arieh Warshel at an October 9 press conference for his Nobel Prize in chemistry. (Photo by USC Photo/Gus Ruelas)

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THE REPORTER ■ november 21, 2013

All Stars

The inaugural “Orthodox Jewish All Stars” began last year with a YouTube video written, directed and produced by Jew in the City founder Allison Josephs, featuring a varied group of recipients, including former Senator Joe Lieberman, Top Ten Billboard recording artist Alex Clare and New York Times bestselling novelist, Faye Kellerman – all people who are said to have reached “the pinnacle of their respective fields,” which ranged from an HBO producer to a former top title holding professional boxer – while maintaining a religiously observant lifestyle. Many of this year’s and last year’s All Stars will attend the red carpet awards party in midtown Manhattan on Sunday, November 24, the weekend before Chanukah and Thanksgiving. Attendees will enjoy live music, an open wine bar and Chanukah and Thanksgiving-themed dishes. Operators of Jew in the City sought out the winners of last year’s awards, but this year organizers opened up nominations to the public and a panel of judges selected the winners. Jack Lew, U.S. Treasury secretary – law and government Jacob Joseph “Jack” Lew is currently the secretary of the U.S. Treasury and a member of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet. Prior to that, Lew served as Obama’s chief of staff and as the director of office management and budget in the Clinton and Obama administrations. Lew was born in 1955 in New York City. He received an A.B. from Harvard and a J.D. from Georgetown Law. Lew’s career in Washington began in 1973. He spent eight years as principal domestic policy adviser to the late House Speaker Tip O’Neill, of Massachusetts. After leaving the Clinton administration, Lew worked for Citigroup and served as vice president of New York University. He returned to Washington to serve the Obama administration and in 2012 became the White House chief of staff. Lew has lit the National Menorah in Washington twice, once in 1998 and again in 2011. He is married with two grown children. Dr. Robert Aumann, Nobel laureate – science and medicine Robert Aumann was born in June 1930 in Frankfurt-am-

Continued from page 4

Main, Germany. Aumann and his family emigrated from Frankfurt to New York in 1938 because of the coming World War. Aumann obtained a bachelor’s degree at the City College of New York in mathematics. He went on to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned his Ph.D. under the tutelage of George W. Whitehead. In 1955, Aumann married an Israeli girl named Esther and, in 1956, he took a teaching position at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Aumann and his wife are the parents of five children (one of whom who died while serving in the Israeli army), 21 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. Aumann is the author of more than 90 scientific papers and six books, and has held visiting positions at Princeton, Yale, Berkeley, Louvain, Stanford, Stony Brook and NYU. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the British Academy and the Israel Academy of Sciences. He holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Chicago, Bonn, Louvain, City University of New York and Bar Ilan University; and has received numerous prizes, including the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2005. Sarah Hofstetter, CEO of 360i U.S. ad agency – business and industry Sarah Hofstetter is the CEO of 360i U.S., a firm that was named number two on Ad Age’s Agency A-List this year, as well as Mashable’s best Digital Agency of 2013. Before being elevated to U.S. CEO, Hofstetter was president of the agency, whose clients include Coca-Cola, Ben and Jerry’s, Oreo, Verizon and HBO. Since joining the agency in 2005, she has both “created and evolved” 360i’s brand strategy, social marketing and media practices. Hofstetter has won numerous industry honors, including being named to Ad Age’s “40 Under 40” for 2013 and CableFAX’s Digital Hot List. She has been honored as a “Social Media All-Star” by the Social Media Society and as one 2012’s Female Advertising Executives of the Year at the Stevie Awards. Prior to joining 360i, Hofstetter was president and founder of Kayak Communications, a marketing agency focused on developing brand strategy. Hofstetter is married and has a daughter and son.

Rama Burshtein, writer, director and producer of “Fill the Void” – sports and entertainment Originally from New York, Rama Burshtein graduated from the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem in 1994. A ba’al teshuvah, Burshtein became deeply religious during her time in Jerusalem, and upon graduation dedicated herself to promoting film as a tool for self-expression in the Orthodox community. Released to critical acclaim – receiving a Rotten Tomato score of 83 percent and an 81 percent on Metacritic – “Fill the Void,” her first feature film, premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, where it was selected to compete for the Golden Lion award. Lead actress Hadas Yaron won the Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup for her work. The film went on to win seven Ophir Awards, including best director and best film. Sony Pictures Classics picked up the movie for North American distribution. Burshtein has three sons and a daughter with her husband. Joseph Shenker, chairman of Sullivan and Cromwell – law and government Joseph Shenker is the chairman of Sullivan and Cromwell, the number three law firm in the country (according to Vault Rankings) and is a personal adviser to many of the world’s business leaders and families. Shenker received his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1980 and B.S. in accounting from City University of New York, Brooklyn, in 1977. Shenker joined Sullivan and Cromwell in 1980 and became a partner at the firm in 1986 at only 29-yearsold, the youngest person to make partner in the history of Sullivan and Cromwell. Under Shenker’s leadership, the company was recognized as U.S. Real Estate Law Firm of the Year at the 2012 ACQ Finance Magazine Law Awards. Shenker was named one of the “Top Ten Agents of Change” by The Financial Times’ U.S. Innovative Lawyers 2012 report. Shenker was also named the 2012 New York City Real Estate Law Lawyer of the Year by Best Lawyers and, in 2007, he was recognized as one of the Top 100 New York Super Lawyers. Shenker has been profiled in The New York Times, Bloomberg and numerous other law journals. He is a trustee at Mount Sinai Hospital. Among his pro bono and community activities, he is a member of the board at Jewish Community Relations Council and on the Steering Committee of the Lawyers’ Division of the United Jewish Appeal. Naama Shafir, first Orthodox professional women’s basketball player – sports and entertainment A native Israeli, Naama Shafir is the only female Orthodox Jew to earn a scholarship at a Division I NCAA university. The four-time All MAC basketball player has received national media exposure from numerous major media outlets, including Sports Illustrated, USA Today, The New York Times, ESPN and CNN. However, Shafir never compromised her Orthodox values for the game, whether it meant traveling before the squad or having of all her meals brought frozen so that she could remain kosher. Shafir now plays guard for Israel’s Elitzur Ramla, making her the first Orthodox female professional basketball player. See “Stars” on page 12

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NOVEMBER 21, 2013 ■

THE REPORTER

To Brighten the Festival of Lights ailable Where Av

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THE REPORTER ■ november 21, 2013

d’var torah

Liberating ourselves from our resentments ABINGTON TORAH CENTER

Rabbi Dovid Saks President: Richard Rutta Jewish Heritage Connection 108 North Abington Rd., Clarks Summit, PA 18411 570-346-1321 • Website: www.jewishheritageconnection.org Sunday morning services at 8:30 am Call for other scheduled services throughout the week.

BETH SHALOM CONGREGATION

Rabbi Yisroel Brotsky 1025 Vine St., Scranton, PA 18510, (corner of Vine & Clay Ave.) 570-346-0502 • fax: 570-346-8800 Weekday – Shacharit: Sun 8 am; Mon, Thurs. & Rosh Chodesh, 6:30 am; Tue, Wed & Fri, 6:45 am; Sat & Holidays, 8:45 am. Mincha during the week is approx. 10 minutes before sunset, followed by Maariv.

BICHOR CHOLEM CONGREGATION/ CHABAD OF THE ABINGTONS Rabbi Benny Rapoport President: Richard I. Schwartz 216 Miller Road, Waverly, PA 18471 570-587-3300 • Website: www.JewishNEPA.com Saturday morning Shabbat Service 9:30 am. Call or visit us online for our bi-weekly schedule

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CONGREGATION B’NAI HARIM

Affiliation: Union for Reform Judaism Rabbi Peg Kershenbaum President: Alan S. Wismer P.O. Box 757 Sullivan Rd., Pocono Pines, PA 18350 (located at RT 940 and Pocono Crest Rd at Sullivan Trail 570-646-0100 • Website: www.bnaiharimpoconos.org Shabbat Morning Services, 10 am – noon; every other Saturday Potluck Shabbat Dinner with blessings and program of varying topics, one Friday every month – call for schedule.

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TEMPLE HESED

by RABBI RAFAEL GOLDSTEIN, NORWICH JEWISH CENTER, NORWICH, NY Vayeshev, Genesis 36:43-40:23 There are three things in this week’s Torah portion that I find really amazing. I’m not sure how they fit together yet. Maybe they are just ideas for all of us to think about and discuss with our friends. Trust in God? Jacob favors his son Joseph above all of his other sons. He is open about his favoritism, and there is tremendous family resentment because of it. This is the same Jacob that went to great lengths to reconcile with his own brother, to resolve a lifetime of bad feelings with Esau. One might have expected Jacob to see in his own behavior the creation of yet another generation of resentment, anger and ill will among brothers. Instead, Jacob gives Joseph a coat of many colors, to make sure everyone knows he’s special. Jacob encourages him to tell his dreams, in which Joseph describes himself as superior, even to his own parents! Jacob, well-aware of the resentments, sends Joseph, the favorite one, the one whom he loves, on a mission to find the brothers, and to then come back and tell him how they are doing. Why would Jacob do that? He knew the brothers hated Joseph. He knew that sending Joseph out alone to “tattle” on his brothers would not be well-received. So, why did he do it? Why would this father intentionally endanger his son, his only son (the only son of Rachel) whom he loves (more than the others)? There seems to me to be an echo here of the binding of Isaac, when Jacob’s grandfather almost sacrifices Jacob’s father, the only son of Sarah, whom he loved. Is this some kind of strange family tradition? What was Jacob expecting would happen to this beloved son? I don’t know why Jacob would send his favorite son directly into the path of doom. But once he sent him on his way, Joseph was blessed by the kindness of strangers and cursed by the resentment of his brothers. Perhaps Jacob thought that the only way to change the family dynamic was to let it play out, even if the consequences were disastrous. Perhaps in reading about all this family dysfunction, we can see that there can be light and good that can come out of the nastiest of situations. Maybe Jacob was trusting that in the end there would be good from it all, just as his grandfather trusted when he almost sacrificed Isaac. God would somehow provide a way to make it all come out right. They went that way Joseph goes on his way to find the missing brothers, and runs into some unnamed guy and asks if he saw where the brothers went. The man replied, “They went that way.” Why is this story part of the Joseph saga? Why is it in the Torah? Joseph asking for directions is not exactly earth-shattering. Yet, as a result of getting these well-meaning directions, Joseph finds the brothers, who throw him into a pit and sell him into slavery. As a slave, he is sold to Potiphar, whose wife, Mrs. Potiphar (the second unnamed person in the story) has the hots for him, and due to her romantic advances he gets sent to prison. There he interprets dreams, which brings him ultimately into Pharaoh’s court, where he gains power and influence. This leads his brothers down there for relief from a famine, which ultimately transplants the entire people of Israel to Egypt, leading to their own slavery, creating the situation in which God has to rescue the people. That takes us to Mount Sinai, to receive the Torah. In other words, some unnamed guy, who said, “They

went that way,” put Joseph on a path that determined the entirety of Jewish history! Such a small thing, giving directions, ends up changing the world forever. From resentment to slavery The resentment that the brothers have for Joseph leads directly to our people’s coming into slavery in Egypt. Admittedly, Joseph is obnoxious, arrogant and insensitive to his brothers’ feelings. But their reactions are brutal, viscous and ugly. The message is that due to resentment – the feeling of being shortchanged, the feeling of being less than, deprived – and the feeling of fraternal hatred, we went directly down the road to slavery. Resentment leads to slavery. The rabbis teach us in Pirke Avot that a rich person is one who is satisfied with what he or she has. The best way to avoid resentment is to be grateful for what we have. The person who is most harmed by resentment is the one who harbors it and is enslaved by the resentments. There is a lot to these three themes. Maybe there is hidden good even in our worst of places, even when we don’t see any good way out. Perhaps small acts of kindness, that we don’t even see as having much significance at all, somehow change everything. Maybe we can liberate ourselves from our resentments before we become enslaved by them. May it be your will, Holy One of Blessing, that we find what is hidden from us, trust that there is wisdom, encouragement and strength that comes from You. May we see that sometimes Your guidance comes through strangers along our way who just point us in the right direction. And may we be humble enough to appreciate what we have, to not resent others for what they have and to put our resentments away long enough to be able to do Your will with our own hands.

Brain

Continued from page 3

the same thing. Affirming that “The salad has tomatoes” equals “There are tomatoes in the salad” helps sustain the short-term benefit of TMS therapy. “To understand [the sentences], to process them, to understand whether they have the same meaning, is a challenge,” said Orly Bar, Neuronix’s vice president for marketing. “We want to get to a point where the mechanism improves.” While both companies emphasize that treatment should complement existing medication, not replace it, clinical trials show that TMS can be more effective in counteracting Alzheimer’s than current medications. And unlike pills that enter the bloodstream, the electromagnetic zaps have no side effects. “We know there’s medicine that works on the same mechanism,” Bar said. “There’s no contradiction. They can work together great.” Neuronix and Brainsway were both featured at Braintech Israel 2013, a conference in October highlighting Israel’s growing brain technology industry. Along with medical advancements, the conference showcased innovation in fields such as brain modeling and mind-control gaming. “It’s widely accepted that we’ve made a lot of progress in heart disease and cancer,” said Miri Polachek, executive director of Israel Brain Technologies, the nonprofit that organized the conference. “The one area where we need to make a big push is the field of brain research. It’s no longer science fiction. You can see these things becoming real.”

Union of Reform Judaism Rabbi Daniel J. Swartz President: Ken Miller 1 Knox Street, Scranton, PA 18505, (off Lake Scranton Rd.) 570-344-7201 Friday evening Shabbat, 8 pm; Saturday Morning , when Shabbat School is in session, at 11 am

Happy Chanukah!

TEMPLE ISRAEL OF DUNMORE

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TEMPLE ISRAEL OF THE POCONOS

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May you and your family be blessed during the holiday and throughout the year! Bruce and Rho May your Chanukah be filled with the miracles of the holiday Bonnie Rozen, Advertising Representative

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Wishing the community a Happy Chanukah! Rabbi Rachel Esserman, Executive Editor

NOVEMBER 21, 2013 ■

THE REPORTER

Historic Thanksgiving-Chanukah overlap leads to math and merchandise

By Jacob Kamaras JNS.org November 28 marks Thanksgiving Day, as well as the first day of Chanukah 2013. It would be a natural reaction for an American Jew, when noticing that overlap during a casual reading of the calendar, to smile or even laugh. But Dana Gitell took things much further. A marketing professional living in Norwood, MA, Gitell coined and trademarked the word “Thanksgivukkah,” launched a website as well as Facebook and Twitter pages for the joint holiday, and partnered with Judaica retailer ModernTribe.com on a line of t-shirts and greeting cards to mark the occasion – one that, according to one analysis of the Jewish and Gregorian calendars, won’t occur again for more than 75,000 years. Gitell, who had known “Thanksgivukkah” was coming for five years, said the more she thought about it, the more she came to appreciate the significance behind the overlap of two holidays which “both celebrate religious freedom” and have “similar themes.” “You can celebrate Judaism, you can celebrate America and you celebrate the Jewish-American experience on the same day, because how would this be possible if we didn’t have a country as free and as welcoming as America?” Gitell told JNS.org. Exactly how rare is Thanksgivukkah? Gitell did her due diligence through online research and taking a stab at the math herself, but said she ultimately leaves such matters “to the scientists.” Enter Jonathan Mizrahi, who has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Maryland and currently works for Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. Mizrahi used the math software program Mathematica to chart the futures of the Jewish and Gregorian calendars, and the output “produced no results other than this year.” “I thought I made an error in the program and I checked what I’d done, and everything seemed OK, and I pushed the year out further and further and further… and it still was telling me that it wasn’t ever going to happen,” Mizrahi told JNS.org. According to an analysis posted online by Mizrahi, the Jewish calendar “is very slowly getting out of sync with

Gitell got enthusiastic feedback when she the solar calendar, at a rate of four days per started posting juxtapositions and mash1,000 years. ups of different cultural aspects from “This means that while presently Thanksgiving and Chanukah online. Chanukah can be as early as November “So many people that I talked to, many 28, over the years the calendar will drift who aren’t Jewish, think it’s exciting and forward, such that the earliest Chanukah can funny,” she said. be is November 29,” Mizrahi wrote. “The last After creating the Thanksgivukkah Facetime Chanukah falls on November 28 [will be] book page with her sister, Deborah, Gitell 2146 (which happens to be a Monday). Thereworked with graphic illustrator Kim DeMarco fore, 2013 is the only time Chanukah will ever to design t-shirts and greeting cards, and apoverlap with Thanksgiving. proached ModernTribe.com about being the “Of course, if the Jewish calendar is never modified in any way, then it will slowly move A “Thanksgivukkah” t- retailer. She said she got an e-mail response forward through the Gregorian calendar, until shirt offered by Judaica from ModernTribe.com within five minutes of it loops all the way back to where it is now. So, retailer ModernTribe. sending the inquiry. “After talking with Dana, and seeing the Chanukah will again fall on Thursday, Novem- com. (Photo courtesy of See “Overlap” on page 16 ModernTribe.com) ber 28... in the year 79811,” he added.

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THE REPORTER ■ november 21, 2013

New books: Marvelous menorahs, purple gorillas and back to ‘64 Berkeley

By Penny Schwartz BOSTON (JTA) – A gift-giving, angst-ridden purple gorilla is among the characters who help enliven the Chanukah celebrations in eight new holiday books for children, families and young adults. One, “With a Mighty Hand,” is not about Chanukah, but will be a treasured gift to add to a family’s book- “ABC Hanukkah Hunt” shelves. Tilda Balsley, the is one of two new books author of many children’s this Hanukkah from Tilda books, including four Balsley. (Photo by Kar-Ben Jewish-themed “Sesame Publishing) Street” titles about Grover, Big Bird and friends, brings two new offerings, “Eight is Great” and “ABC Hanukkah Hunt.” “Thank You For Me!” is perfectly timed for the confluence this year of Chanukah and Thanksgiving. For young adults, award-winning writer Ruth Feldman in a coming-of-age novel spins an intricate tale of historical fiction and fantasy set in 1964 Berkeley, CA, at the dawn of the city’s free speech movement. Here are the new titles for Chanukah: “Eight is Great” by Tilda Balsley, illustrated by Hideko Takahashi Kar-Ben ($5.95 board book, $4.95 eBook), Ages 1-4 Simple rhymes and illustrations enliven the colorful toddler board book that plays on the theme of the eight nights of Chanukah. “Thank You For Me!” by Rick Recht; illustrated by Ann Koffsky Jewish World Publishing ($10), Ages 1-3 The illustrated lullaby, which can be read or sung, encourages young ones to appreciate themselves and all that surrounds them. A free download to Rick Recht’s companion song, “Kobi’s Lullaby,” and a link (www. annkoffsky.com) to a coloring page by illustrator Ann

Koffsky are included. “ABC Hanukkah Hunt” by Tilda Balsley; illustrated by Helen Poole Kar-Ben ($17.95 hardcover, $7.95 paper, $6.95 eBook), Ages 3-8 A lively rhyming alphabet romp through Chanukah provides plenty of entertainment for young kids. Each large-format page is filled with cartoon-like illustrations and a simple riddle that can be solved by looking at the pictures of flames on a menorah, a maze to Jerusalem’s Holy Temple and plates full of sugar-coated doughnuts, or sufganiyot. “Sadie’s Almost Marvelous Menorah” by Jamie Korngold, illustrated by Julie Fortenberry Kar-Ben ($17.95 hardcover, $7.95 paper, $6.95 eBook), Ages 2-6 What preschooler won’t relate to young Sadie when her carefully crafted and painted clay menorah shatters into a million pieces? Sadie’s spirits are lifted when she discovers that the shamash helper candle holder did not break. All’s well when Sadie uses the pink-and-blue shamash In “Sadie’s Almost Marvelous to light all the household Menorah,” preschooler Sadie menorahs, starting a new turns a near disaster into a family tradition. Julie new family tradition. (Photo Fortenberry’s colorful il- by Kar-Ben Publishing) lustrations allow kids to tell the story through the expressive and energetic art. “The Eighth Menorah” by Lauren L. Wohl, illustrated by Laura Hughes Albert Whitman ($16.99 hardcover), Ages 4-7 In this delightful story, a young boy named Sam makes a Chanukah menorah in Hebrew school using a shiny rock he picks at a park outing. But he frets: What will his family do with one more menorah? In phone conversations

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with his grandmother, Sam confides that he’s keeping a special Chanukah secret for the family. Their relationship feels authentic and warm. Readers will wonder along with Sam as he tries to figure out the perfect new home for the menorah. Laura Hughes’ illustrations convey a contemporary, real-world feel. Grandma lives in a condo in an urban high-rise, and there’s a refreshingly diverse group of kids at Hebrew school. Rules for how to play dreidel are included. “Esther’s Hanukkah Disaster” by Jane Sutton, illustrated by Andy Rowland Kar-Ben ($17.95 hardcover, $7.95 paperback, $6.95 eBook), Ages 4-9 Poor Esther: The endearing purple gorilla is looking forward to celebrating Chanukah with her jungle friends, but all the gifts she selects turn out wrong. Worse, the friends give her the “perfect” Chanukah gifts. But Esther makes it all right at a Chanukah party Thetitleaside,Estherthepurple where good friends cel- gorilla and friends celebrate ebrate together and swap the holiday in “Esther’s the gifts. Hanukkah Disaster.” (Photo “Esther’s Hanukkah by Kar-Ben Publishing) Disaster” is a new favorite book for Barbara Krasner, the author of many children’s stories who is active in the Association of Jewish Libraries. “The illustrations are hysterically funny,” she writes in an e-mail.

For young adults “The Ninth Day” by Ruth Tenzer Feldman Ooligan Press ($13.95), Older teens and up Hope Friis, the teen protagonist here, has an enviable relationship with her grandfather, who as his health declines gives Hope the gift of a tallit that belonged to her grandmother, Miryam, for whom she is named. The blue threads woven into the tallit call forth a mysterious visitor, Serakh, who beckons Hope on a journey back in time to 11th century Paris, where she is challenged to save the life of a Jewish baby. The mature material, which includes references to LSD and tragic Jewish history during the Crusades, is not overly dark or depressing. Through curiosity and courage, Hope, who has a stutter, finds her own voice as she faces tough, consequential decisions. The book takes place during the eight days of Chanukah.

For any age “With a Mighty Hand: The Story in the Torah” by Adapted by Amy Ehrlich, paintings by Daniel Nevins Candlewick ($29.99), All ages Readers of any age will savor the beautifully designed “With a Mighty Hand,” Amy Ehrlich’s adaptation of the five books of the Torah with stunning art by Daniel Nevins. Based on the original biblical text, Ehrlich approaches the Torah’s stories as a lyrical narrative. She includes the nuanced details and weaves a story line that brings the characters to life as humans, with strengths and flaws. Nevins’ illustrations draw from a rich palette of purple, red, brown, blue and ocher. In a full-page illustration of one of Joseph’s dreams, a copper-skinned Joseph stands tall and regal in his multicolored coat looming above the stars and moon. A two-page Torah genealogy, Ehrlich’s introduction and end notes offer readers helpful explanations to supplement the narrative.

NOVEMBER 21, 2013 ■

THE REPORTER

weis wishes you a

Happy Chanukah!

Elite Milk Chocolate Coins

Streit’s Chanukah Candles

David Elliot Whole or Cut Up Fresh Chickens

5/ 1 49 0.53 ounce

parve

David Elliot or Empire Kosher Frozen U Turkeys per 10 to 14 lb average

Manischewitz Potato Pancake Mix

Kedem Sparkling Blush

6 ounce

25.4 ounce

2 3 $ /

2.49

Cohen’s Mini Beef Franks

Fox’s U-Bet Syrup

6 ounce

22 ounce

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Savion Fruit Slices

Tabatchnick Chicken Broth

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2 4 $ /

$ /

Kedem Tea Biscuits

Tabatchnick Soups 15 ounce

2 5 8 ounce

32 ounce

per pound

Bake Shop Fresh (Sufganyot) Jelly Filled Donuts

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2/ 5 10.6 ounce

2.49

Golden Potato Pancakes

44 count

3 1 4.2 ounce

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$ /

Weis Proudly Accepts Prices Effective November 17 through December 7, 2013

We also carry many of your favorite Kosher deli, dairy, frozen and grocery products. We reserve the right to limit quantities. Not responsible for typographical or pictorial errors.

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THE REPORTER ■ november 21, 2013

Stars

Ari Pinchot, co-executive producer of “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” – sports and entertainment Ari Daniel Pinchot is the co-executive producer of the film “Lee Daniel’s The Butler,” starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey. A Yeshiva University graduate, his first credit came as an associate producer of the award-winning documentary “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg.” Purchased by HBO for television, the film won Best Non-Fiction Film 2000 from the National Society of Film Critics; Best Documentary 2000, Broadcast Film Critics Assoc.; and Best Documentary 2000, National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. Following “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg” Pinchot helped produce the award-winning feature documentary “Paper Clips,” distributed by Miramax Films. Also bought for television by HBO, the film won several audience and best documentary awards including the Best Documentary at the 2003 Palm Springs International Film Festival. The film was released theatrically in fall 2004. Pinchot also served as

Bronfman Youth Fellowships

The Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel announced that applications are now being accepted. The Bronfman Fellowships selects 26 North American teenagers for an academic year of seminars including a free, five-week trip to Israel between the summer of fellows’ junior and senior years of high school. The program seeks to educate and inspire young Jews from diverse backgrounds to grow into leaders grounded in their Jewish identity and committed to social change. Applications for the 2014 Fellowship are available online at www.bronfman.org and must be submitted online by January 6. High school students in the United States and Canada who self-identify as Jewish and who will be in the 12th grade in the fall of 2014 are eligible to apply. BYFI is a pluralistic program for Jews of all backgrounds; prior Jewish education is not required. Students are chosen not on the basis of financial need, but on merit alone.

the executive producer for the film “Crossover” (Showtime Networks), with Magic Johnson and Penny Marshall, and consulting producer for the recent documentary feature “War Child,” winner of the audience award at the 2008 Tribeca film Festival. Co-founder and president of CCE, he also directed “Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story.” Pinchot is also the uncle of “America’s Got Talent” semi-finalist Edon Pinchot. Anne Neuberger, director of National Security Agency Commercial Solutions Center – law and government Anne Neuberger is the director of the National Security Agency’s Commercial Solutions Center and a member of NSA’s senior leadership team. Before that, Neuberger served as special assistant to the director, NSA, and on the U.S. Cyber Command Implementation Team. Prior to joining the NSA, Neuberger served as the Navy’s deputy chief management officer and a special advisor to the secretary of the Navy, with responsibility for guiding Navy enterprise information technology programs. Neuberger first joined government service in 2007 as a White House fellow, working for Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Neuberger earned an M.B.A., beta gamma sigma and a master’s of international affairs from Columbia University. She graduated from Touro College, summa cum laude, where she was awarded the Hannah Lander Award for Academic Excellence and a Merit Scholarship. Neuberger founded and runs Sister to Sister, a not-forprofit that provides a network of services for approximately 900 Jewish single mothers in 30 communities. She is also a board member of House of Ruth Maryland, which operates a domestic abuse shelter and other services for victims of domestic violence, and Stern College for Women. Neuberger grew up in Borough Park and attended Bais Yaakov of Borough Park. She is married and has two children. rabbi Issamar Ginzberg, Inc. Top 10 entrepreneur and marketing guru – business and industry Rabbi Issamar Ginzberg is a business strategy and marketing advisor, an award-winning entrepreneur and a public speaker in addition to being a Chasidic rabbi and a descendant of the Nadvorna rabbinical dynasty. Ginzberg advises executives at publicly traded companies, as well as political figures and government ministers. His clients are located in more than 30 states and countries, from Dubai to Japan, and include Oracle, Apple and National Geographic.

Continued from page 6 Ginzberg was named one of the “Top Ten Entrepreneurs” of the year by Inc. in 2006. Ginzberg’s business advice has been featured in media outlets that include CNBC, The New York Times, Fox Business and many more. He has lectured to audiences of thousands at organizations such as Google, the Jewish National Fund and Tel Aviv University. He also writes a weekly column for The Jerusalem Post and has been published in many other publications. He splits his time between New York and Israel, and learns in yeshiva every morning. Ginzberg is married with four children.

Dr. Laurel Steinherz, director of Pediatric Cardiology at Memorial Sloan Kettering and co-founder of Camp Simcha – science and medicine Dr. Laurel Steinherz is the director of Pediatric Cardiology at Memorial Sloan Kettering. She received her M.D. at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, did her residency at the New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center and St. Louis Children’s Hospital, and had fellowships at the New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center. Steinherz published some of the earliest research on the acute and long-term cardiac effects of cancer treatment. She served as the chairwoman of the Cardiology Committee of the Children’s Cancer Group and wrote the CCG’s Guidelines for Cardiac Monitoring of pediatric patients, during and after therapy. These guidelines are still used throughout the United States and around the world. Steinherz designed specific cardiac monitoring incorporated in Memorial Sloan-Kettering and CCG treatment protocols. She was also an early advisor and participant in the design of the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study. The results of this research are being used to determine appropriate cardiac monitoring and interventions in survivors of pediatric cancers and to refine the treatment of patients today. Steinherz is double board certified in pediatrics and pediatric cardiology, and was named one of New York Family’s top pediatric specialists in 2012. She and her husband also co-founded Camp Simcha, a camp for Jewish children with cancer. She has four children with her husband and 17 grandchildren. Her daughter is a pediatrician and her sons are all rabbis in Israel. Jew in the City was founded six years ago to break down myths and misconceptions about religious Jews and observant Judaism. To read more, visit http://jewinthecity. com/2013/10/announcing-jew-in-the-citys-2013-orthodoxjewish-all-stars/#ixzz2jyvP8ddQ.

NOVEMBER 21, 2013 ■

THE REPORTER

PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE A REPAIRING THE WORLD A TAKING RESPONSIBILITY ONE FOR THE OTHER A PURSUING JUSTICE

Times have changed. Our responsibilities haven’t. Federation and its agencies work together to rescue Jews and to transform lives. Federation is your connection to Jews in Northeastern Pennsylvania, Israel and around the world. It’s the safety net for our local and global Jewish community. No gift touches more lives.

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THE REPORTER ■ november 21, 2013

Modi’in struggles to preserve its Hasmonean roots

By Judy Lash Balint JNS.org Modi’in is a town mentioned in the Mishnah that was home to the Maccabees of Chanukah fame, and where the oldest synagogue in Israel was discovered, but it is also the Jewish state’s largest planned community and bills itself as “The City of the Future.” Reconciling those two images of Modi’in is at the heart of a struggle that is playing itself out on the local, national and international level, as archeologists and preservationists try to raise awareness of Modi’in’s rich Chanukah-related history and preserve ancient sites, while most city and government officials prefer to focus resources on development of services for today’s residents. In 1993, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin laid the cornerstone for Modi’in on a rocky hillside in the center of the country on an ancient crossroads between the coastal ports and the hills of Judea and Samaria. The idea was to develop a large city in the center of the country – equidistant from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, to spread the population and take advantage of the limited amount of land available for development. Today, Modi’in is a diverse and successful city of more than 85,000 people, spread over 10 neighborhoods built on wadis and hilltops. The city features an extensive park system and a high level of cultural, commercial and sports facilities. Amongst the first people to arrive in modern-day Modi’in in 1996 was Marion Stone, an immigrant from the U.K. who had been living in the Galilee development town of Carmiel since 1979. “I moved in two days before Chanukah,” recalls Stone. She was appalled to learn that bulldozers were then already working on Titora Hill, where evidence of First Temple-era settlement was found along with a complex of cisterns, mikvaot (ritual baths), tunnels and dovecotes. Some experts believe the area may have been used as a hideout during the Bar Kochba revolt. Stone immediately joined the Society for Preservation

Masada, Herodium and Gamla, that have all become major tourism sites. “There’s never been a proper archeological survey done of this area,” Elbaum asserts. “We have places here See “Modi’in” on page 20

Nobel

A view of Modi’in. (Photo by Ilana Shkolnik via the PikiWiki – Israel free image collection project) of Sites and Landscape in Modi’in that undertook legal action to prevent destruction of the hill. The society’s efforts were only partially successful, as ultimately part of Modi’in was built on portions of Titora, covering many of the ancient artifacts. Finally, last spring, a court ruling ordered developers to find an alternative site for construction of an additional 750 apartments. Stone and Leiah Elbaum – another early resident of Modi’in, who has a background in land of Israel studies and has conducted extensive research into her hometown – agree that elected officials in Modi’in have neglected to capitalize on the rich Maccabean heritage of the area. Elbaum and Stone cite Titora, as well as the extraordinary find of the remains of the Umm el-Umdan (Mother of Pillars in Arabic) synagogue built in the Hasmonean period, which boasted a roof supported by eight pillars that was constructed in the time of Herod. The structure, located near the Buchman neighborhood on the Modi’in-Latrun road, closely resembles other Second Temple-period synagogues, such as those at

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Continued from page 5 that exist inside it. “There are not only springs of bonds to classical atoms, there are also the effects of the charges on classical atoms,” Warshel said. Quantum mechanics computer modeling creates a map of an entire environment depicting where the electrons are likely to be and allowing researchers to predict what may happen next. But using quantum mechanics to calculate and model an entire environment of atoms that will interact with themselves, and with the electrons, becomes difficult for medium or large-sized molecular systems. It would take years to model larger systems in this way, so Warshel and his fellow researchers developed improved computer modeling systems that look at the molecule both in terms of its classical particles (atoms) and its subatomic particles, like electrons. “When you do it you actually start to understand how enzymes work,” Warshel explained. The Swedish Nobel Prize academy called the work by the three scientists “ground-breaking in that they managed to make Newton’s classical physics work side-by-side with the fundamentally different quantum physics… Previously, chemists had to choose to use either/or.” There are also practical, real-world implications for the research, both in the commercial world and in medicine, Warshel told JNS.org. For example, laundry detergent often has an enzyme that helps it digest dirt from clothes. Hypothetically, the enzyme protein could digest too slowly, or stop working when the temperature rises. “Since this program allows you to understand exactly how [an] enzyme is working, you [could know how to] change some… amino acids in the enzyme and make it work better,” Warshel said. There are also enzyme proteins in the body that can mutate and cause cancerous cell division, according to Warshel. “If you understand how they work, you can try to find a way to make the broken enzyme not be so effective. In principle, you could look for a drug that when it is bound to the enzyme, it will make it stop working,” he said. A similar scenario involves the HIV virus. When a new drug that is blocking an enzyme protein in the virus is developed, the virus changes sequence and stops binding well to the drug. But it is possible to look at the enzymes in the virus and analyze the mutations by which the virus tried to unbind and evade the drug, and the mutations that make the normal chemistry of the virus go on. Based on those two factors, researchers can suggest the next move of the virus. “It’s like playing chess,” Warshel said. “In the cases where you want to understand how the virus or parts of it change in order to have resistance to drugs, knowing to model both the chemistry and the binding, and also knowing to model how stable the enzyme will be, is useful, and I believe would be more useful in the future,” he said. According to statistics recently reported by Haaretz, Jews comprise 0.2 percent of the world population, yet 22 percent of all Nobel laureates have been Jewish. Warshel suggests that one factor behind this phenomenon is described in the book “The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History,” by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, which stipulates that the survival of the Jewish faith – and by extension the survival of the Jewish people – has depended for centuries on the ability to read the Torah, enabling Jews to ultimately broaden their own education and develop practical skills. This differentiated Jews from many other populations, which for centuries were generally illiterate. In Warshel’s estimation, there is yet another theory behind Jewish scholarly and scientific success, one that is simpler and hits closer to home. “There is the idea of the Jewish mother,” he quipped.

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THE REPORTER ■ november 21, 2013

Chanukah latkes and cookies with a twist from “Queen of Kosher” Jamie Geller

By JNS.org All kinds of uber-creative latke recipes appear around Chanukah-time: apple-parsnip latkes, sweet potato-leek latkes, sweet cheesy latkes, and savory cheese and chive latkes. But the truth is, you can’t go anywhere in the world of latkes until you’ve mastered the classic potato version, says celebrity chef Jamie Geller, who likes to fry the latkes, keep them warm and then layer them with show-stopping toppings. Hailed as the “Queen of Kosher” and the “Jewish Rachael Ray,” Geller is the co-founder of the Kosher Media Network, publisher of the Joy of Kosher with Jamie Geller magazine and its companion website, JoyofKosher.com, and author of the “Quick and Kosher” cookbook series. Geller’s online cooking videos have garnered more than half a million views. The following two recipes for Chanukah latkes and cookies, edited by JNS.org, are from “Joy of Kosher,” Geller’s new cookbook that was published in October. Latkes with Caviar and Cream Kosher status: Dairy Prep time: 15 Minutes Cook time: 40 Minutes Total time: 55 Minutes Yield: 20 latkes “Consider creating a latke-topping bar, so your Chanukah party guests can mix and match or try them all,” says Geller. “I like topping latkes with Latkes with caviar and guacamole and an over-easy cream, by Jamie Geller. or poached egg, or doing From the book “Joy of Caprese latke towers with Kosher: Fast, Fresh Family slices of mozzarella and Recipes by Jamie Geller.” tomato, plus a few fresh basil leaves. Oooo, and I love a smear of brie cheese topped with a dollop of jam, or blue cheese, pear and arugula piled on top. You can go exotic or country or Brooklyn, but this super elegant cream and caviar version can only be described as super posh and simply divine.” 4 large russet potatoes (about 2½ lbs.) 3 large eggs, beaten

2 tsp. kosher salt 1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper Canola oil for frying 1 medium onion quartered ¼ cup Manischewitz® Matzo Meal 1¼ cups crème frâiche or sour cream Caviar, for garnish 1. Fill a large bowl with cold water. Peel the potatoes, cut them into quarters lengthwise and place them in the bowl of cold water to prevent browning. 2. Combine the eggs, salt and pepper in a large bowl; set aside. 3. Heat about 1 inch of oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. 4. Put the onions and potatoes in a food processor and pulse until pureed. Transfer the mixture into the large bowl with the eggs. Add Manischewitz® Matzo Meal and mix to combine. 5. Line a baking sheet with paper towels. 6. Using a ¼-cup measuring cup, scoop up the potato mixture and carefully drop it into the hot oil. Use the back of the measuring cup to flatten the latke. Fill the pan with as many latkes as you can, but do not let them touch. Do not overcrowd your pan, or the latkes will be soggy instead of crispy. Fry until golden brown and crispy, three to five minutes per side. Drain on the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with remaining batter. 7. To keep latkes warm and crispy once fried, spread them in a single layer on a baking sheet and place in a 200°F oven until ready to serve. 8. To serve, place the latkes on a large serving tray and garnish each with a generous tablespoon of crème frâiche and caviar. Quick Tip: Remember, don’t overcrowd your pan when frying. Make sure the latkes aren’t touching and there is room around each for the edges to crisp. That’s the perfect latke: soft, fluffy and creamy on the inside with crispy edges. Sweet Cinnamon Latkes “My friend Anita’s grandmother used to make her latkes with a pinch of cinnamon,” says Geller. Omit the onion and the pepper, reduce the salt to a pinch, and add 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon and 3 tablespoons sugar. Mix 1 cup sour cream with ¼ cup maple syrup and

serve it on the side. Make it pareve: Use soy sour cream or serve with applesauce. Cardamom-Scented Chanukah Cookies Kosher status: Dairy Prep: 10 minutes Chill: 30 minutes Bake: 12 minutes Cool: 10 minutes Total: 1 hour 2 minutes Yield: About 24 2-inch cookies “I really feel like a good mom when I bake with my kids, especially for the holidays,” says Geller. “Chanukah cookies can also be a lot of fun to make, but they’re usually so blah and one-dimensional, no one really craves them. With just one touch of cardamom, this recipe immediately transforms those bland little cookies into something super special. You don’t even need to decorate them. Just pile them on your party tray and watch them go!” 1½ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling ½ tsp. baking powder ¼ tsp. kosher salt ¼ tsp. ground cardamom ¼ tsp. ground ginger 8 Tbsp. (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature ¼ cup granulated sugar ¼ cup packed light brown sugar 1 large egg 1 Tbsp. fresh orange juice 1 cup confectioner’s sugar Blue sugar or sprinkles, for decorating 1. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt, cardamom and ginger in a small bowl. Beat together the butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add the egg and orange juice, and beat until combined. Add the flour mixture and mix just until incorporated. 2. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for 15-30 minutes. 3. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Lightly flour your work surface. See “Cookies” on page 18

THE REPORTER ■ november 21, 2013

With more dual-faith families “doing both,” outreach groups reconsidering approach ly taught by Jewish and Christian Institute’s executive director, said it instructors. They say the children “doesn’t help anyone to stand in judgwho complete their programming ment.” And Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the have the knowledge and skills to president of the Union for Reform Jumake informed decisions about the daism, which in 1995 recommended role of faith in their lives. that its religious schools not accept Sheila Gordon, founder and students receiving formal instrucdirector of New York’s Interfaith tion in another religion, similarly Community, said that while the esdeclined to take a firm position on tablished Jewish community remains the matter. wary of raising children in both “Decades ago Rabbi Alexander faiths – her group has had difficulty Schindler overturned all previous raising money from Jewish sources, Jewish communal assumptions about she said – the idea has become more interfaith families by insisting that we acceptable among individuals. “We An interfaith couple celebrated a embrace them and draw them close do workshops for couples, and 10-12 baby naming organized by Interfaith in all aspects of Jewish life,” Jacobs years ago we spent all the time talk- Community. (Photo by Interfaith said. “How congregations do this ing about the angst of the [couples’] Community) holy work varies, but it is an axiom parents; now that doesn’t exist as much,” Gordon said. of Reform Judaism that we do this holy work of inclusion “Many of the couples are themselves children of intermar- every day.” riage and they’re different because of that. It’s changing right under our feet.” Just as many Jewish leaders have concluded that they are Continued from page 9 powerless to stop intermarriage and should focus instead on welcoming the intermarried, some are now arguing they modern designs and illustrations of Kim DeMarco, I knew can’t turn back the tide of dual-faith families and should that a collaboration to create Thanksgivukkah items was a direct their energies toward offering such families positive perfect match for our mission to create ways for modern Jewish experiences. Jews to express their faith and keep our traditions alive, A number of mainstream Jewish leaders are on meaningful and fun,” Jennie Rivlin Roberts, president of Gordon’s advisory board, including Rabbi Marcelo Bron- ModernTribe.com, said in a statement. stein, of Manhattan’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, and The ModernTribe.com Thanksgivukkah merchandise Carol Ingall, an education professor at the Conservative employs the slogan “Light, Liberty, & Latkes.” Ten permovement’s Jewish Theological Seminary. The group cent of its proceeds will benefit the nonprofit MAZON: A also has recruited rabbinical students from the liberal Jewish Response to Hunger. Orthodox Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and JTS to teach in “I felt like [Thanksgivukkah is] almost like a Woodits Sunday school. stock-like event, we can tell our kids, ‘I was there, I Bronstein acknowledged that raising children in two lived through Thanksgivukkah. I remember that day, it religions is controversial, but insisted that it’s never- will never happen again.’ So that gave me the idea for theless a reality that demands a response. “It’s a new something akin to a concert t-shirt, expressing that you landscape,” he said. “My response is we should rein- were there, you lived through it, as a memento,” Gitell force as much as we can the Jewish identity wherever told JNS.org. the Jews are.” Gitell said her childhood in Squirrel Hill, PA, a neighMichelle Dardashti, who taught for Interfaith Com- borhood of Pittsburgh with a significant Jewish populamunity as a rabbinical student at JTS, acknowledged she tion, colored her passion for the Thanksgivukkah project. is unsure whether the organization’s approach “produces “[Squirrel Hill] was a place where most kids were Jewish, in kids more questions than grounding,” but insisted that and people who weren’t Jewish, they felt left out,” she “showing their kids the values of both their faiths is better said. “Non-Jews wanted to have their own bar mitzvah in than not showing the value of either.” middle school. That’s the kind of experience that probably Leaders of Jewish outreach efforts were loath to con- could only happen in America.” demn dual-faith families; neither would they embrace While American Jews prepare for Thanksgivukthem outright. Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, the Jewish Outreach kah, whether or not 2013 is the first-ever occurrence of the “holiday” is up for debate. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln enacted Thanksgiving to fall on the JFS VEHICLE DONATION PROGRAM last Thursday in November. But Thanksgiving was changed to the fourth Thursday of November – not Support JFS with a donation necessarily the last Thursday – in 1942 under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a move intended to of your car, truck, RV, boat or motorcycle extend the holiday shopping season. Using the former • Fast, Free Pick-up and Towing date of America’s Thanksgiving, the last Thursday of • Receive a Tax Deduction for your Donation November, Thanksgivukkah would have occurred in • All Vehicles Accepted Running or Not! 1888, according to Mizrahi. Thanksgivukkah’s frequency can also depend on Visit Us on the whether the first night or the first day of Chanukah is used Web at: as an indicator. This year, the first candles of Chanukah www.jfsoflackawanna.org are lit the night of November 27, while the first full day of the holiday is Novemver 28, corresponding with Thanksgiving. According to an analysis by Eli Lansey, To Donate, Call Today Toll Free: 1-877-537-4227 who has a Ph.D. in physics from the City University of New York and like Mizrahi used the Mathematica software program, the first night of Chanukah will correspond with Thanksgiving in the years 2070 and 2165 – much sooner than 79811, the next time after 2013 that Mizrahi said Thanksgiving would fall on the first day of Chanukah. No matter what metric one uses, Thanksgivukkah has garnered a significant following – Mizrahi’s mathematical Community Menorah Lighting at East Stroudsburg University analysis garnered about 100,000 page views online, to his Monday night, December 2 at 7 pm “utter amazement. When I first did this, I thought it was Followed by reception at home of university president interesting, but I did not expect anywhere near the response I got,” Mizrahi said. Kosher pastries to be served for all

By Julie Wiener NEW YORK (JTA) – When Susan Katz Miller’s Episcopalian mother and Jewish father married in the 1960s, they did exactly what most religious leaders advised intermarried couples to do: They chose one religion and stuck to it. Katz Miller’s mother put her religious tradition aside, learning to make matzah balls and shepherding her four children through bar and bat mitzvah lessons. But when Katz Miller married her Episcopalian husband, she didn’t want to choose. Instead, she and her husband raised their two children with knowledge of both their Jewish and Christian heritages and left it up to them to decide how to identify. In a recently published book and in a recent Op-Ed in The New York Times, Katz Miller makes the case that this approach is good not just for interfaith families and their children, but for the Jewish community itself. Children raised in this way are not “lost” to Judaism, she says. Some grow up to practice Judaism exclusively, while others will “have an unusual knowledge of and affinity for Judaism” even as they practice other faiths. “Both my experience and my research tell me that we are turning out young adults who feel deeply connected to Judaism, not through coercion, but through choice,” Katz Miller wrote in the Times. Jewish institutions have become increasingly accepting of intermarried couples and their children in recent years, but raising children in two faiths remains largely frowned upon. The established view has long been that the approach is confusing and waters down important distinctions between religious traditions. But significant numbers of families do it anyway. The recent Pew Research Center study reports that 25 percent of intermarried Jews are raising their children “partly Jewish by religion and partly something else.” Jewish groups that advocate greater outreach to the intermarried are reassessing how they deal with families like Katz Miller’s. Ed Case, the founder and CEO of InterfaithFamily, said he initially declined to cooperate with groups like Interfaith Community and Interfaith Families Project of Greater Washington, both of which serve families raising children in two faiths. But Case has changed his mind once he learned that Katz Miller and others like her weren’t blending Judaism and Christianity, but teaching elements of both. “We’re willing, happy and even eager to present the Jewish side of things to couples that want to do both,” Case told JTA. Groups that cater to dual-faith families say they are respectful of religious differences, offering classes joint-

S n t i r o h u a d k s u burg n a h C Temple Israel of the Pocono’s Annual Indoor Menorah Lighting

711 Wallace Street at Avenue A Stroudsburg, PA 18360 www.templeisraelofthepoconos.org • 570-421-8781 (office) Tuesday, december 3, 2013 • 5-6:30 pm Bring your menorahs - bring your families Potato latkes with applesauce, dreidels & more! Contact Dr. Sandra Alfonsi at 570-223-7062 or sanalfonsi@aol.com

Overlap

THE REPORTER ■ november 21, 2013

news in brief from israel From JTA

Quash ex-official’s testimony, Israel asks U.S. court in terror case

The Israeli government filed a petition with a U.S. federal court seeking to block the testimony of a former Israeli intelligence official in a terrorism case. The petition, which was filed on Nov. 15 in U.S. District Court in Washington, is aimed at stopping Uzi Shaya from revealing what the Israeli government said are state secrets, according to reports. Families of victims of Palestinian suicide bombers who brought the suit accuse the Bank of China of funding terrorist organizations through U.S. accounts. They are seeking millions of dollars in damages; a guilty verdict under anti-terrorism laws also could affect the bank’s ability to continue conducting business in the United States, according to the Associated Press. Shaya, according to reports, in 2005 alerted Chinese security officials to suspicious transactions, including transfers of money to terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. “The disclosure of such information would harm Israel’s national security, compromise Israel’s ability to protect those within its borders, and interfere with international cooperative efforts to prevent terrorism,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement on Nov. 16. In a statement the same day, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center and the lawyer for 22 families of terror victims, said said Shaya’s testimony has already been laid out in a previous affidavit. Darshan-Leitner said the Israeli government was breaching a direct promise to provide witnesses and evidence necessary to establish the Bank of China’s liability. “We understand the need for financial engagement with China, but not at the cost of abandoning these families who have had loved ones murdered by the Palestinian terror groups who we allege moved funds through the Bank of China,” she said. The case is being heard in U.S. District Court in New York.

Fire at Palestinians’ home seen as bid to avenge Israeli soldier’s murder

Five Palestinians were treated for smoke inhalation after their home was set ablaze in a “price tag” attack believed to be in revenge for an Israeli soldier’s murder. “Regards from Eden, Revenge” was spray-painted on the house, which is located in a Palestinian village northeast of Ramallah. Its five residents were treated at a nearby hospital. Pvt. Eden Atias, 18, of Nazareth-Illit was stabbed to death on Nov. 13 on a public bus in Afula by a 16-year-old Palestinian male who was in Israel illegally. Atias was traveling back to his army base. Thousands attended his funeral the evening of Nov. 14. The Palestinian homeowner told the daily Haaretz that four “settlers” approached the house, poured flammable liquid near the door and set it alight. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the incident appeared to be in response to Atias’ murder, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, on Nov. 14, two Palestinians arrested in October on suspicion of murdering an Israeli army colonel admitted to the killing, calling it a “gift to the Palestinian people.” The suspects, aged 18 and 21, told Israel’s Shin Bet security agency that they had originally planned to rob Saraya Ofer, but decided to murder him when they realized he was a senior Israel Defense Forces official, The Jerusalem Post reported. Ofer was the nephew of brothers and leading Israeli businessmen Yuli and Sammy Ofer.

Netanyahu aborts plans for 20,000 West Bank homes

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a halt to plans for 20,000 new West Bank housing units. “This is a meaningless step – legally and in practice – and an action that creates an unnecessary confrontation with the international community at a time when we are making an effort to persuade elements in the international community to reach a better deal with Iran,” Netanyahu said on Nov. 12 in his announcement in reprimanding Housing and Construction Minister Uri Ariel, according to the Prime Minister’s Office. Hours earlier, Netanyahu had ordered the cancellation of a tender for 1,200 housing units in the controversial E1 corridor connecting Jerusalem to the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim. Ariel agreed to reconsider the plans, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement. White House spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan told JTA that Netanyahu’s order to halt the tenders was “welcome. As we said yesterday: Our position on settlements is quite clear. We consider now and have always considered the settlements to be illegitimate,” Meehan said. “We have called on both sides to take steps to create a positive atmosphere for the negotiations. We do not consider settlement planning, even in its early stages, to be a step that creates a positive environment for the negotiations.” On Nov. 13, during a Knesset debate on housing prices, Netanyahu said there would be more construction in the settlements. “In recent months, we built thousands of homes in Judea and Samaria, and in the coming months we plan to build thousands more,” he said. “It was never easy, but we did it responsibly, despite international pressure.” Also on Nov. 13, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said in a statement to Reuters TV that negotiations with Israel were frozen over the announcement of new housing construction in the settlements.

Save the Date!

Create a Legacy for our Jewish Future in NEPA TYPES OF GIFTS

Your charitable gifts to the Federation can result in immediate and/or future benefits for you and your family.

PERPETUAL ANNUAL CAMPAIGN ENDOWMENTS (P.A.C.E.) There are considerable tax advantages in establishing a P.A.C.E. gift to the Federation outright or as part of your estate planning. In doing so, you can perpetuate your annual UJA Campaign gift in your name, the name of your family, in memory of a loved one or in celebration of a significant event in your life or the life of another. On average, the annual income normally calculates out to 5% of the amount of your P.A.C.E. endowment. The corpus of your Fund would not be affected, and only the income would be used for the annual UJA gift – in perpetuity. That is, a P.A.C.E. endowment of $100,000 would normally produce an annual gift of $5,000 to future UJA Campaigns.

IMMEDIATE GIFTS OF CASH Cash contributions are deductible as itemized deductions in the year you make the donation(s), up to 50% of your adjusted gross. Excess charitable deductions can be carried forward for up to five years.

GIFTS OF SECURITIES The best stocks to donate are obviously those with increased value. However, depreciated securities are not necessarily unworthy of charitable contributions. In order to preserve the best tax advantages, with regard to appreciated and depreciated securities, please contact the Federation.

MATCHING GIFTS If you work for a company that participates in a Matching Gift Program (see details in this issue of The Reporter), then the company will match your gift to the Jewish Federation. Please check with your Human Resources Department for more information.

GIFTS OF MUTUAL FUNDS Contributing mutual fund shares can provide the same tax advantages as appreciated stocks. Due to the great complexities involved with the transfer of mutual fund shares, please begin the transfer process well before December 31st.

GIFTS OF REAL ESTATE A charitable contribution of property is most attractive when there is no mortgage balance and the property is increasing in value. Based upon the fair market value, you may claim an income tax deduction, avoid all capital gains taxes, and remove that property from your taxable estate. You may transfer real estate to the Jewish Federation at any point, but please consult your tax professional or financial advisor prior to a real estate transaction.

DEFERRED/PLANNED GIFTS Deferred gifts are often called “planned gifts” because they are integrally connected to your financial and/or estate plans. They may range in size from very small bequests to multi-million dollar trusts. They are deferred gifts because, even though they are given today, the Jewish Federation will not realize their benefit until some time in the future. Please contact the Federation for more information regarding various planned giving options.

GENERAL ENDOWMENT FUNDS Bring in a new, unwrapped toy for the Chai Lifeline Chanukah Toy Drive, providing joy to children with severe illness!

Tuesday, November 26 Beth Shalom Social Hall, 5:30-7:30

Full, delicious sit down adult and children’s menu Enjoy a scrumptious dinner and let the kids eat and have fun!

The Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania expresses its gratitude to those who have made a commitment to our Endowment Fund. These very special contributions represent a commitment to maintain a high quality of Jewish life in our region for the decades that lie ahead.

CONTACT For further information, please contact Mark Silverberg, Executive Director, Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania, 601 Jefferson Avenue, Scranton, PA at 570-961-2300 (ext. 1)

THE REPORTER ■ november 21, 2013

New Season of

Films!

Delancey to Doughnuts walking tour

November 2013

• Non-Feature Films •

Blessed is the Match - In 1944, 22-year Hannah Senesh parachuted into Nazi- occupied Europe with a small group of Jewish volunteers from Palestine. Theirs was the only military rescue mission for Jews that occurred in World War II. *Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy - This entertaining documentary, narrated by the award winning Joel Grey, examines the unique role of Jewish composers and lyricists in the creation of the modern American musical. There are interviews alongside standout performances and archival footage. Budapest to Gettyburg - The past and present collide as a world-renowned historian confronts a history he has refused to study-his own. Gabor Boritt is an expert on Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War. But it took his son’s urging to get him to return to his native Hungary and learn about the Jewish experience there from the time of his childhood until, together with his family, he escaped to the United States. Constantine’s Sword, is a 2007 historical documentary film on the relationship between the Catholic Church and Jews. Directed and produced by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Oren Jacoby, the film is inspired by former priest James P. Carroll’s 2001 book Constantine’s Sword. Inside Hana’s Suitcase - A real-life Japanese schoolteacher, who appears throughout the film, sparked this entire story by gathering artifacts for a Holocaust educational center she was developing along with a group of girls and boys called The Small Wings. After applying to receive Holocaust artifacts, a large box arrives with a handful of artifacts, including a battered brown suitcase labeled with Hana Brady’s name. The teacher and her students begin searching for the story behind the suitcase. What they discover will surprise you. They wind up unlocking--and showing us in the film--a whole series of deeply moving memories and other related artifacts and photos. Finally, Hana’s surviving brother George travels to Japan to meet the Japanese students. Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story - This excellent documentary, narrated by Dustin Hoffman, portrays the contributions of Jewish major leaguers and the special meaning that baseball has had in the lives of American Jews. Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story was shown at the Opening Event for the 2012 UJA Campaign. The Case for Israel: Democracy’s Outpost - Famed attorney, Alan Dershowitz, presents a vigorous case for Israel- for its basic right to exist, to protect its citizens from terrorism and to defend its borders from hostile enemies. *The Flat - This gripping autobiographical documentary tells the story of the filmmaker, Arnon Goldfinger who travels to Tel Aviv to clean out the apartment of recent deceased German-born Jewish grandmother. Goldfinger discovers, while going through her belonging, he finds evidence that his grandparents were good friends with Leopold von Mildenstein, a leading official within the Nazi propaganda agency and that they remained friends after World War II. He journeys to find out the details of this disturbing revelation. The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg - As baseball’s first Jewish star, Hammering Hank Greenberg’s career contains all the makings of a true American success story. *Orchestra of Exiles - This riveting documentary tells the story of how Polish violinist Bronislaw Huberman, watched Jewish musicians being fired from classical orchestras when Hitler came to power. Huberman decided to build a new orchestra in Palestine encountering many obstacles along the way. He ultimately succeeds and the Palestine Symphony gave its first performance December, 1936. (When Israel gained independence in 1948, the orchestra was renamed the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, which remains to this day a world class orchestra.)

• Feature Films •

A Matter of Size - Winner of numerous international awards, this Israeli comedy is a hilarious and heart-warming tale about four overweight guys who learn to love themselves through the Japanese sport of sumo wrestling. (not rated) Avalon- Sam Krichinsky and his extended family arrive in American to find the American dream in a place called Avalon. We watch the Krichinsky family move from poverty to prosperity,facing their changing world with enduring humor and abiding love. Crossing Delancey - This is a warm comedy taking place in New York City. Isabella Grossman desires to rise above her family’s Lower East Side community but her grandmother has other matchmaking plans. Footnote - The story of a great rivalry between a father and son, both eccentric professors who have both dedicated their lives to work in Talmudic Studies departments of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Though the father shuns overt praise for his work and the son is desperate for it, how will each react when the father is to be awarded the most sought after prize, the Israel prize? This Oscar nominated film will entrance from the start. Frisco Kid - It’s 1850 and new rabbi Avram Belinski sets out from Philadelphia toward San Francisco. Cowpoke bandit Tom Lillard hasn’t seen a rabbi before but he knows when one needs a heap of help. Getting this tenderfoot to Frisco in one piece will cause a heap of trouble- with the law, Native Americans and a bunch of killers. Good - In an attempt to establish its credibility, the new Nazi government is seeking out experts to endorse its policies and they come across Johnnie Halder’s novel of a husband who aids his terminally ill wife in an assisted suicide. Because of this the Nazis flatter Johnnie arranging for high paying and prestigious positions. Never evil, Johnnie Halder is an Everyman who goes along, accepts what he is told without question until he is an unwitting accomplice to the Nazi killing machine. Hidden In Silence - Przemysl, Poland, WWII. Germany emerges victorious over the Russians, and the city comes under Nazi control. The Jewish are sent to the ghettos. While some stand silent, Catholic teenager Stefania Podgorska chooses the role of a savior and sneaks 13 Jews into her attic. Every day, she risks detection--and immediate execution--by smuggling food and water to the silent group living above her. And when two German nurses are assigned to her living quarters, the chances of discovery become dangerously high. This is the true story of a young woman’s selfless commitment and unwavering resolve in the face of war. Noodle (PAL version- can only be played on computer NOT regular DVD players) - At thirty-seven, Miri is a twice-widowed, El Al flight attendant. Her well regulated existence is suddenly turned upside down by an abandoned Chinese boy whose migrant-worker mother has been deported from Israel. The film is a touching comic-drama in which two human beings- as different from each other as Tel Aviv is from Beijing- accompany each other on a remarkable journey, one that takes them both back to a meaningful life. Operation Thunderbolt - The true story of the Entebbe hijacking and rescue. “Operation Thunderbolt,” was filmed in Israel with the full cooperation of the Israeli government, and is an exciting re-creation of the events of those tense days. We see the full scope of the story, from the original hijacking to the passengers’ captivity in Uganda to the agonized debates at the highest levels of the Israeli government over a diplomatic vs. a military solution. “Operation Thunderbolt” is the thrilling and true story of how one small country refused to let their people be killed by terrorists and took action to prevent it. People who claim that Israel is a “terrorist state” should see the film and be reminded who the real terrorists are. Orthodox Stance (documentary-2007) - Dimitriy Salita, a Russian immigrant, is making history as a top professional boxer and rigorously observant Jew. While providing an intimate, 3-year long look at the trials and tribulations faced by an up and coming professional boxer, ORTHODOX STANCE is a portrait of seemingly incompatible cultures and characters working together to support Dmitriy’s rare and remarkable devotion to both Orthodox Judaism and the pursuit of a professional boxing title. Playing for Time - An outstanding cast brings life to this Fania Fenelon autobiography about a Jewish cabaret singer and other Jewish prisoners whose lives were spared at Auschwitz in exchange for performing for their captors. The Angel Levine - Things couldn’t get worse for Jewish tailor Morris Mishkin (Zero Mostel). His shop has gone up in flames, his daughter has married outside the faith and, worse yet, his wife is slowly dying. But just when he decides to give up on God, a mysterious man (Harry Belafonte) appears, claiming to be his Jewish guardian angel! Doubtful that the stranger is Jewish, never mind an angel, Mishkin must overcome his skepticism if he wants one last chance at redemption. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - Set during World War II, this is the story of Bruno, an innocent and naïve eight-year old boy who meets a boy while romping in the woods. A surprising friendship develops. The Couple - Based on the true story of a Jewish Hungarian’s desperate attempts to save his family from the Nazi death camps. Mr. Krauzenberg (Martin Landau) is forced to hand over his vast wealth to the Nazis for the safe passage of his family out of occupied Europe, only to find his two remaining servants are left trapped in a web of deceit and danger. Their only hope for survival relies on the courage of Krauzenberg. The Debt - Academy Award winner Helen Mirren and two-time Academy Award nominee Tom Wilkinson star in The Debt. In 1966, three Mossad agents were assigned to track down a feared Nazi war criminal hiding in East Berlin, a mission accomplished at great risk and personal cost… or was it? *The Other Son - The dramatic tale of two babies switched at birth, The Other Son creates a thoughtful presentation of what could be a soap opera type event. Instead, director Lorraine Levy and a wonderful screenplay takes the viewer down a very different path allowing each to come to his/her own conclusions. *The World of Sholom Aleichem - Three of Sholom Aleichem short stories are adapted for the stage and broadcast on the 1959 television series “The Play of the Week”. Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story - Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story is an incredibly riveting, Emmy award-winning, fact-based story about a hero who helped over 100,000 Hungarian Jews escape from the Nazis during the Holocaust. *Just added to the Jewish Federation’s Film Lending Library!

The Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy will hold the tour “Delancey to Doughnuts: A Chanukah Walking Tour” on Sunday, December 1. The tour will start at the LESJC Kling and Niman Family Visitor Center with a look at the photo exhibit “If You Live in New York...” before moving to the Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue and Museum with a presentation by resident scholar, and museum director, Marcia Haddad Ikolomopolis. The last stop will be at Congregation Bnai Jacob Anshe Brzezan (Stanton Street Shul) where board member Elyssa Sampson will be on hand to share the history of the site. The program will concludes with the lighting of the menorah, soufganiyot (doughnuts) and coffee. The starting time of the tour is TBA. Participants will meet at the LESJC Kling and Niman Family Visitor Center, 400 Grand St., between Clinton and Suffolk streets. The cost is $20 for adults and $18 for seniors and students. There is an additional charge of $2 additional day of tour. To sign up for the tour, visit www.nycjewishtours.org or contact LESJC at 212-374-4100 or info@nycjewishtours.org.

Jewish mathematicians

The exhibit “Transcending Tradition: Jewish Mathematicians in German-Speaking Academic Culture” will be on view at the Center for Jewish History in New York City through January 5. It seeks to highlights the role of Jewish mathematicians in German-speaking academic culture before 1933 – in teaching and academic research, in professional organizations and throughout mathematical culture, from academic to popular. Spanning a period of 150 years, it documents their emergence from segregation into the academic limelight, recalls their emigration, flight or death after 1933, and illuminates their lasting legacies. For more information, visit www.cjh.org or call 212294-8301.

Multi-media exhibit

The exhibit “Hanan Harchol: Jewish Food for Thought” will be at the HUC-JIR Museum in New York City until June 27. In the exhibit, multi-media visual artist Hanan Harchol mines personal family psycho-dynamics to illuminate the complexity of ethical values in contemporary life. Offering conversations between the artist and his parents, which are depicted in animated videos and expressionist drawings, the exhibit seeks to offer perspectives on the themes of envy, repentance, forgiveness, gratitude, love and fear, humility and faith.

Continued from page 15

4. Flour your rolling pin and cookie cutters. Roll out the dough to ¼-inch thick on the work surface. Cut into desires shapes and place them on the prepared baking sheets. Reroll the scraps and continue until all the dough has been used. Bake until the edges are just golden, 10-12 minutes. Cool two minutes on the baking sheet, then move to a wire rack to cool completely. 5. Place the confectioners’ sugar in a small bowl. Add water, 1 tablespoon at a time, and whisk until a smooth, thick but pourable consistency is reached. Drizzle the frosting on the cookies and decorate them with blue sugar or sprinkles. Variation: Use 1 cup all-purpose flour and ½ cup whole wheat flour, or ¾ of each. Black and White Chocolate-Dipped Chanukah Cookies: To make Chocolate Ganache¸ bring 1 cup of heavy cream to a simmer in a small saucepan over medium heat. Place 4 ounces chopped milk chocolate in a small bowl and 4 ounces chopped white chocolate in another small bowl. Pour half of the warm cream into each bowl. Let sit for a few minutes, then stir with rubber spatulas to melt the chocolates. Let cool slightly before dipping your cookies. Divide the cookies into two equal batches. Dip the cookies in one batch in the milk chocolate, covering each cookie halfway; dip the cookies in a second batch in the white chocolate, dipping each cookie halfway. Sprinkle the frosted parts of the cookies with gold and silver decorating sugar. Make it pareve: These are so easy to make nondairy: just sub in margarine for butter. “Because it’s traditional to eat dairy delicacies on Chanukah, and I rarely have occasion to make dairy desserts, I seize the opportunity to use butter in this recipe,” notes Geller. “But it’s a great quick cookie recipe and shouldn’t be relegated to Chanukah – just use cookie cutters that are not holiday themed.” From the cookbook “Joy of Kosher: Fast, Fresh Family Recipes by Jamie Geller.” Copyright 2013 by Jamie Geller. Published on October 15 by William Morrow Cookbooks, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted with permission.

NOVEMBER 21, 2013 ■

THE REPORTER

NEWS IN bRIEF From JTA

Firing of bearded Chasidic police recruit ruled religious discrimination

A Chasidic police recruit who said he was fired from the New York Police Department because he would not trim his beard was the victim of religious discrimination, a federal court ruled. Fishel Litzman, 39, could be reinstated in the coming days, according to the New York Daily News. U.S. District Court Judge Harold Baer issued his decision on Nov. 15. Litzman had filed a civil rights lawsuit in June 2012 against the NYPD, the City of New York and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly to be reinstated to his job and for damages. He was a month away from graduating from the Police Academy when he was dismissed on June 7, 2012. He reportedly received test scores of 99, 100 and 96 on Police Academy exams, but was cited constantly for failing to maintain his personal appearance. Litzman said it would violate his religious beliefs to trim his beard to the 1 millimeter length allowed by the NYPD. Litzman’s attorney, Nathan Lewin, said he would file to have Litzman reinstated. The Law Department of the NYPD told the Daily News, “We respectfully disagree with the court and are considering our options.”

Montreal Jewish hospital to defy charter banning religious symbols

Jewish General Hospital in Montreal said it plans to defy Quebec’s controversial Charter of Secular Values. The proposed law, known as Bill 60, is “patently discriminatory,” the hospital said in a statement on Nov. 13. The bill, proposed by the governing Parti Quebecois to establish what it has called religious neutrality and gender equality, would ban all “conspicuous” and “overt” religious symbols in the public sector. That would include hijabs, yarmulkes and turbans worn by civil servants, day-care workers, doctors, nurses, police officers and others. The proposed law is “deeply insulting” to public-sector workers, the hospital said. “This bill is flawed and contrary to Quebec’s spirit of inclusiveness and tolerance,” said the hospital’s new executive director, Dr. Lawrence Rosenberg. “For nearly 80 years, the JGH has prided itself on the fact that its staff, representing a wide diversity of faiths, with many employees wearing conspicuous items of clothing with religious symbols, has provided care of superior quality to Quebecers of all backgrounds.” The hospital, founded in 1934 partly in response to prejudice faced by Jews at Christian institutions in receiving treatment and entering medical professions, will not ask for an exemption under the bill. “Since the bill is inherently prejudicial, there is no point in taking advantage of any clause that would grant us temporary, short-term relief,” Rosenberg said. If passed, “this offensive legislation would make it extremely difficult for the JGH to function as an exemplary member of Quebec’s public healthcare system.” The hospital said its position will be submitted to Quebec’s legislature at a later date.

Jewish groups laud federal proposal on holiday time off

Jewish groups made up nearly half the faith groups that praised proposed federal regulations clarifying compensation time for religious holidays. Some 20 groups, including nine Jewish ones, on Nov. 13 joined in attaching a formal comment praising the latest federal proposal for compensation time. Since 2005, the federal government has attempted to make a uniform rule for such compensation. Religious groups objected to a version proposed that year that would have required “written documentation” proving the “legitimacy” of observance and compensating for time off within six weeks. The new rule, proposed several months ago, requires only objective data – for instance, published dates and times marking a holiday – and a year within which to make up the time. It also extends to part-time employees. Abba Cohen, the Washington director of Agudath Israel of America, helped draft the comments praising the new proposed rule and said such rules have an impact beyond the federal government. “What the federal government – the nation’s largest employer – does in this area cannot be overstated,” Cohen said in a statement. “It is a role model and standard-bearer in making ‘religious accommodation’ an important principle in federal and state law.” Other groups signing on to the comments included the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the American Jewish Committee and the Orthodox Union. The federal government posts proposed rules for a time, accruing negative and positive comments, before deciding whether to put them into effect or discard them. Negative reaction to the 2005 proposal helped to shelve it.

Hoarder of Nazi-looted art vows to fight for Munich stash

Cornelius Gurlitt said he is the legal owner of the 1,400 works of Nazi-looted art found in his Munich apartment and he will fight for them. At issue are long-lost works by Chagall, Picasso, Matisse and others deemed “degenerate” by the Nazis. “I won’t give anything back voluntarily,” Gurlitt, 80, said in the German-language Spiegel magazine. Gurlitt, whose father, Hildebrand, was among a handful of art dealers authorized by the Nazis to obtain and sell works for the benefit of the German treasury, said he had turned over papers to the state prosecutor to prove that his father acquired the works legally. Customs agents confiscated the paintings, drawings and etchings in early 2012 as part of an investigation of Gurlitt on possible tax evasion charges. The story came to light earlier in November in an article in Focus magazine. Gurlitt said the courts and media had given a wrong impression of the situation. Expressing amazement at all the attention to the case, he said he “only wanted to live with my paintings.” Gurlitt said the authorities could have waited until he was dead before removing the artworks and he decried the recent decision by the state prosecutor to post images from the collection online as an invasion of his privacy.

German men sentenced for smuggling nuclear components to Iran

Four Germans who smuggled products for use in Iran’s nuclear program were sentenced by a Hamburg court. As the violations are believed to be the largest of the trade embargo with Iran, critics said the sentences – ranging from four years in prison to 18 months probation – are too lenient and called for repercussions for the German Office for Export Control. According to the Hamburg Abendblatt newspaper, the four men procured reactor parts for Iran’s heavy water reactor in Arak, but claimed they were sending the goods to Turkey and Azerbaijan. U.S. intelligence services reportedly informed German export authorities about the planned illegal shipments in 2009, but the shipments went ahead in 2010 and 2011. Klaus Barthel, a member of the German parliament and economic policy speaker for the opposition Social Democratic Party, has blasted the federal government in recent weeks for refusing to answer questions about the lapse. The German nongovernmental organization Stop the Bomb criticized the lenient sentences and called on Germany to fire the director of the Federal Office for Export Control, Arnold Wallraff. Despite all warnings, “they still gave their permission for the exports,” Stop the Bomb Executive Director Michael Spaney told JTA. “It is a major scandal.” The Hamburg judge said the four men had not only violated the embargo, but endangered German foreign relations. “They knew exactly that this was business with a nuclear background,” he said.

U.S. drama series by “Homeland” writer to be filmed in Jerusalem

A new drama series to be aired on the NBC subsidiary USA Network will be filmed mostly in eastern Jerusalem. “Dig” will be filmed in the City of David national park located in the Silwan neighborhood, as well as in the Old City of Jerusalem. The series will be produced by Gideon Raff, screenwriter of the Israeli series “Hatufim,” which is aired in the United States as “Homeland” and co-written by “Heroes” writer Tim Kring, a co-creator of “Homeland.” The first six episodes have been purchased without buying a pilot. The series deals with an American FBI agent stationed in Jerusalem who uncovers a conspiracy while investigating the murder of an American archaeologist. It reportedly will be broadcast in the United States at the end of 2014, and will be filmed using Israeli and American actors. Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat worked to bring the project to Jerusalem. “The new series is a significant milestone on the road as Jerusalem becomes an attractive location for international productions,” he said. “Jerusalem’s rich history attracts series and films with great stories to tell.” Silwan has been a flashpoint in Israeli-Palestinian relations in Jerusalem, where 400 Jews live among 31,000 Palestinians.

Scholastic apologizes for publishing Mideast map without Israel

Scholastic Inc. apologized for publishing a map of the Middle East that omits Israel in a popular children’s series. On Nov. 13, hours after the Times of Israel reported about the Israel omission in “Thea Stilton and the Blue Scarab Hunt,” the book publisher in a statement on its website said it was stopping shipment immediately of the title, revising the map and reprinting the book. The book, part of Scholastic’s “Geronimo Stilton” series, was published in June 2012. It tells of a journalist mouse who travels to Egypt to participate in an archaeological excavation. “We regret the omission which was in the original version of the book published in Italy and was translated by our company for English language distribution,” the statement said. Under the comments section, readers thanked Scholastic, and asked how the mistake could have passed through editors and proofreaders. Some complained about the vitriol shown by some commenters and offered their full support to Scholastic. “What bothers me most are these questions: what about the books already sold? What exactly caused Scholastic to react?” one reader wrote in the comments section. Several booksellers’ websites as of late Nov. 14 were allowing the purchase of the book, new or used.

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THE REPORTER ■ november 21, 2013

Modi’in

that could raise the profile of Modi’in and enhance the connection of the people to the land, but it’s not a priority for local officials,” she says. “Part of what attracted me to live here was the idea of building a new Jewish community where an ancient one had existed so many years ago,” she adds, noting with disappointment that no neighborhood or school in Modi’in is named after an important Hasmonean-era figure. Stone says one of her “most profound experiences” took place at the Umm el-Umdan synagogue during Chanukah in 2002, shortly after it was discovered. Students from the nearby Nitzanim School held a torchlight march to the synagogue and lit a Chanukah menorah there. “It was momentous,” Stone remembers. “I was in tears. There was singing and speeches. It was the day of the terror attack against Israelis in Mombassa.” The chanukiah lighting ceremony at the ancient synagogue went on for a number of years after that, until the event grew too large and there was concern over damage to the site. In recent years, nearby residents have been marking Shabbat Chanukah by coming to pray at Umm el-Umdan.

Modi’in resident Howie Mischel wrote of the impact of last year’s Chanukah gathering: “The men stood in the central part of the site, in a rectangular area that was probably the main floor of the beit knesset. In front of me was a small indentation in the stone framework surrounding the floor, perfectly positioned to accommodate an ark to hold Torah scrolls. As I looked past it, I realized that it was perfectly oriented on this hill to face Jerusalem. It was not lost on any of us that this site has remained unmarked, undeveloped and virtually ignored by both municipal officials and our national government. How could we have been standing on this incredibly meaningful site, in the town where the Maccabees’ efforts assured Jewish continuity, and be in the dark? How could this archaeological site be so ignored and treated almost as a nuisance by the municipal government, without – aside from the weeds being plucked – a shekel having been invested in site preservation?” According to a spokesman for the Prime Minister’s Office, the Umm el-Umdan compound was approved for inclusion in the Prime Minister’s Cultural Heritage Program that designates funding for heritage

Dear Friend: PROJECT JOY, through the Scranton Jewish Community Center, was the “brainchild” of a very special woman, RoseBud Leventhal. Although RoseBud has passed on, the project continues in her memory. The monies come solely from private donations. The goal is a simple one. We want every child to experience a special Holiday season. Through your generosity, we can do this. This year in our area the economic situation has worsened. Our gift might be the only one a child receives. Last year, over 75 children benefited with wonderful gifts we purchased from wish lists that we received from Jewish Family Services, the Catherine McCauley Center and Saint Joseph’s Center. In this northeast Pennsylvania region, one out of every three children lives at or below the poverty level. In 2009 we added Children and Youth Services and Children’s Advocacy to our list of needy children and were thrilled that we were able to help even more kids. And, as always, we still visited the pediatric departments of our three local Scranton hospitals to give their patients gifts of cheer over the holidays. Once we were made aware of specific needy families in the area, we were fortunate to have the monies to assist them too. We hope this year to give even more gifts with your help. Each year we receive so many “thank you letters and notes,” which just confirms how extremely vital and special this project has become.This all depends on you! Please send a donation to “PROJECT JOY” in care of the Scranton JCC, 601 Jefferson Avenue, Scranton, PA 18510. Or you can just drop off a new unwrapped toy at the JCC’s office. We will be wrapping the gifts on Thursday, December 12th at the JCC starting at 9:00 am. All volunteers are welcome. Please call Carol Leventhal at 570-587-2931 or 570-586-0241 if you will be able to help us wrap gifts this year. It’s fun and worthwhile! Thank You! Carol Leventhal, Chairperson Project Joy

sites across the country. With a projected total budget of 2.1 million shekels, half from the government and half to be raised from outside sources, the spokesman told JNS.org that renovation of the pathways has been completed; preservation of the synagogue itself, the residential quarters of the Hasmonean village and artifacts is almost finished, and restoration of the synagogue interior is under way. A protective pergola will be in place in coming months and the final phase is to include an on-site visitor center. Alex Weinreb, 55, was one of those who stood in front of the tractors at Umm el-Umdan during Chanukah 2001 to prevent the destruction of the synagogue. His concern led him to run for office and the New York native subsequently served as deputy mayor of Modi’in between 20032010. Weinreb, who has an advanced degree in archeology, has long been in the forefront of efforts to put Modi’in’s history on the map. One initiative he pushed through is the annual Chanukah and Modi’in Heritage Conference, which brings together scholars, archeologists and community members to study aspects of the area’s history. Weinreb also initiated

Continued from page 14 the approach to the Prime Minister’s Cultural Heritage Program. In 2010, Weinreb and a team of architects, designers and museum specialists put together a sophisticated proposal to create a Hasmonean Educational and Tourist Visitors Center for the promotion of the Maccabean heritage in Modi’in on the site of the synagogue dating to the Maccabee period. They’re still seeking donors and government support to jumpstart the project. Meanwhile, some local families mark Chanukah by taking an outing to the “Maccabean Graves” just outside Modi’in. They take the kids and a chanukiah, set up camp on the rocks surrounding the caves in the national park, light the chanukiah, sing the traditional Chanukah songs, and even take a primus stove and fry up latkes. Despite the official sign at the entrance, contemporary archeologists believe the site just outside Modi’in is of Byzantine origin. The true location of the grave of the Maccabees continues to be the subject of speculation and, like many other parts of history in Modi’in, is awaiting funds for methodical research.

In Modi’in are the remains of the Umm el-Umdan (Mother of Pillars in Arabic) synagogue, which was built in the Hasmonean period. The structure, located near the Buchman neighborhood on the Modi’in-Latrun road, closely resembles other Second Temple-period synagogues, such as those at Masada, Herodium and Gamla, that have all become major tourism sites. (Photo by Bukvoed via Wikimedia Commons)