Moment Magazine - September/ October 2018 by Moment Magazine

VOL. 43. NO. 5

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

the End Of (Jewish) Patriarchy How Women Rabbis have Changed Judaism #metoo grows stronger The abuse of Shalom Bayit $6.95 US/CANADA

SO-2018_COVER.indd 2

9/4/18 3:18 AM

Moment Magazine is published under the auspices of the nonprofit Center for Creative Change and led by Nadine Epstein. It is an independent publication founded in 1975 by Elie Wiesel and Leonard Fein, and edited by Hershel Shanks from 1987 to 2004. More at momentmag.com. TO SUBSCRIBE CALL: (800) 777-1005 OR (515) 248-7680 (CANADA) OR VISIT MOMENTMAG.COM/SUBSCRIBE

DEPARTMENTS

FROM THE EDITOR

The dark side of shalom bayit by Nadine Epstein EDITOR-IN-CHIEF & CEO DEPUTY EDITOR Amy E. Schwartz Diane M. Bolz CULTURE EDITOR Marilyn Cooper POETRY EDITOR Faye Moskowitz ISRAEL EDITOR Eetta Prince-Gibson EUROPE EDITOR Liam Hoare SENIOR EDITORS Dina Gold, Terry E. Grant, Diane Heiman, George E. Johnson, Eileen Lavine, Wesley G. Pippert, Laurence Wolff EUGENE M. GRANT FELLOW Ellen Wexler RABBI HAROLD S. WHITE FELLOW Lara Moehlman DESIGN DIRECTOR Navid Marvi ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Tanya George DIRECTOR OF MARKETING Ellen Meltzer

Nadine Epstein

Sarah Breger

OPINION EDITOR

MOMENT MAGAZINE ADVISORY BOARD

ARTS EDITOR

Robert Arnow, Kenneth J. Bialkin, Michael Berenbaum, Diane Lipton Dennis, Albert Foer, Esther Foer, Michael Gelman, Lloyd Goldman, Terry E. Grant, Phyllis Greenberger, Tamara Handelsman, Julie Hermelin, Sharon Karmazin, Connie Krupin, Peter Lefkin, Andrew Mack, Judea Pearl, Josh Rolnick, Jean Bloch Rosensaft, Menachem Rosensaft, Elizabeth Scheuer, Joan Scheuer, Leonard Schuchman, Sarai Brachman Shoup, Walter P. Stern, Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, Diane Troderman, Robert Wiener, Esther Wojcicki, Gwen Zuares

ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR/EVENTS

Johnna Miller Raskin Pat Lewis DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY AFFAIRS Debbie Sann DIGITAL MARKETING Ross Bishton CONSUMER MARKETING Nicole Bowman SPECIAL PROJECTS Suzanne Borden COPY EDITOR Sue Driesen TRAVEL COORDINATOR Aviva Meyer ACCOUNTANT Jackie Leffyear MOMENT FILM Robert Uth BOOKKEEPER Debra McWhirter WEBSITE AllStar Tech Solutions INTERNS Jacob Biderman, Molly Cooke, Arielle Gordon, Anis Modi CONTRIBUTORS Marshall Breger, Geraldine Brooks, Susan Coll, Marc Fisher, Glenn Frankel, Konstanty Gebert, Ari Goldman, Gershom Gorenberg, Robert S. Greenberger, Dara Horn, Clifford May, Ruby Namdar, Joan Nathan, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Sarah Posner, Naomi Ragen, Suzanne F. Singer, Abraham D. Sofaer SENIOR DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE

MOMENT INSTITUTE FELLOWS

Ira N. Forman and Nathan Guttman

DANIEL PEARL INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM INITIATIVE ADVISORY BOARD

Michael Abramowitz, Wolf Blitzer, Sarah Breger, Nadine Epstein, Linda Feldmann, Martin Fletcher, Glenn Frankel, Robert S. Greenberger, Phyllis Greenberger, Scott Greenberger, Amy Kaslow, Bill Kovach, Charles Lewis, Sidney Offit, Clarence Page, Steven Roberts, Amy E. Schwartz, Robert Siegel, Paul Steiger, Lynn Sweet Project Editor Mary Hadar Articles and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent the view of the Advisory Board or any member thereof or any particular board member, advisor, editor or staff member. Advertising in Moment does not necessarily imply editorial endorsement.

Volume 43, Number 5 Moment Magazine (ISSN 0099-0280) is published bimonthly by the Center for Creative Change, a nonprofit corporation, 4115 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Suite LL10, Washington, DC 20016. Subscription price is $23.97 per year in the United States and Canada, $61.70 elsewhere. Back issues may be available; please contact the editorial office for information. Copyright ©2018, by Moment Magazine. Printed in the U.S.A. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, DC, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Moment Magazine, P.O. box 37859, Boone, IA 50037-0859. Canada Post Publication Mail Agreement 41463528, undeliverables 2-7496 Bath Road, Mississauga, Ontario L4T 1L2

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS HOW DO I BUY A PRINT OR DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION TO MOMENT FOR MYSELF OR AS A GIFT?

Visit momentmag.com/subscribe or call 800-7771005. For Canada and foreign subscriptions, call 515248-7680. Call 202-363-6422 for bulk subscriptions and other questions. IS EVERYTHING MOMENT PUBLISHES ON THE WEBSITE?

No. Some articles that appear in the print or digital

edition are only accessible to subscribers. If you are not a subscriber and would like immediate access you can buy a digital subscription online at momentmag. com/subscribe. Moment can also be purchased on select newsstands. CAN I DONATE ONLINE?

Yes! Donate at momentmag.com/donate. We could not produce this beautiful magazine without loyal friends and supporters. You can also make a donation by calling 202-363-6422.

articles via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms using the buttons on the top of each article. WHAT IS “MOMENT MINUTE” AND HOW DO I SIGN UP?

“Moment Minute” is our free biweekly newsletter. Tuesdays we send out a carefully curated roundup of what we think you might want to know for the week; Thursdays our editors share what they’re reading, writing and thinking about. To sign up, visit info.momentmag.com/newsletter. WHO DO I CONTACT TO ADVERTISE IN THE MAGAZINE, NEWSLETTER AND/OR WEBSITE?

Email Ellen Meltzer at emeltzer@momentmag.com or call 202-363-6422. DOES MOMENT HAVE AN ONLINE GIFT SHOP?

Yes. Recent past issues, books and assorted gifts can be purchased at momentmag.com/shop.

HOW CAN I ELECTRONICALLY SHARE AN ARTICLE I READ ON THE WEBSITE OR IN THE NEWSLETTER?

HOW DO I SUBMIT A LETTER TO THE EDITOR, ARTICLE OR PITCH A STORY?

Copy and paste the URL address of the story into an email and hit send. You can also share Moment

Email editor@momentmag.com. We will be in touch if your submission fits our editorial needs.

FOB11.indd 2

THE CONVERSATION

WEB HIGHLIGHTS

Can one man redeem Jimmy Carter’s image? by Sarah Breger

ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH

The waltz of the Austrian far right by Liam Hoare

CONTEXT

Is Judaism pro-life or pro-choice? by Amy E. Schwartz

OPINIONS

Why Israel votes GOP by Shmuel Rosner The nation-state law is not all bark by Marshall Breger Online misogyny is hate speech too by Vivian Kane

OPINION DEBATE

Should education be free to all? Naomi Schaefer Riley & Frances Fox Piven interviewed by Amy E. Schwartz

JEWISH WORD

Is gender neutrality possible in Hebrew? by Lara Moehlman

ASK THE RABBIS

What sins should we atone for in our use of social media?

POEM

“The State of Things” by Julia Knobloch

TALK OF THE TABLE

The power of couscous by Vered Guttman

BOOKS

Kafka’s Last Trial review by Ruby Namdar The First Book of Jewish Jokes review by Eitan Kensky Author interview: Alfred Moses by Ellen Wexler

CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST

80 SPICE BOX theNEW AGE(ing) 59 9/4/18 2:11 AM

T H E N E X T 5 , 0 0 0 Y E A R S O F C O N V E R S AT I O N B E G I N H E R E

MOMENTMAG.COM

CREATIVE COMMONS; FLASH90; NOAH PHILLIPS. COVER DESIGN BY NAVID MARVI

M O M E N T F E AT U R E

MOMENT SYMPOSIUM

THE WEIRD AND WONDROUS WORLD OF JEWISH MAGIC

HOW HAVE FEMALE CLERGY TRANSFORMED JEWISH LIFE, RITUAL AND PRACTICE?

Contrary to popular belief, magic has been a presence in Judaism since biblical times. What’s the difference between sorcery and miracles, superstition and ritual—and for that matter, magic and religion?

Forty-six years after the first American woman rabbi was ordained, Judaism is transformed. Or is it? Interviews with Rabbi Sally Priesand, Rabbi Sandy Sasso, Rabbi Amy Eilberg, Rabba Sara Hurwitz and others.

by Marilyn Cooper

Introduction: Marilyn Cooper, Interviews: Marilyn Cooper & Ellen Wexler

V I S UA L A RT

THE YEAR OF THE WOMAN

MOMENT FILM

THE NOT-SO LOST CAUSE OF MOSES EZEKIEL

WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO SAY #METOO?

MOMENT’S 2018 GUIDE TO JEWISH FILM FESTIVALS

The statues by a Jewish Confederate sculptor have become a beacon for white supremacists and a flashpoint in the debate over America’s past.

It’s not easy to come forward with sexual harassment allegations in the Jewish community, especially when they are leveled against “big machers.”

by Lara Moehlman

From Warsaw, Poland to Grand Rapids, Michigan, more than 50 film festivals will be showcasing this year’s Jewish films. Plus, a sneak peek at some not-to-be-missed features and documentaries. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

FOB11.indd 3

9/4/18 2:11 AM

F ROM THE E D I TOR | NA DINE EP S T E I N

The Dark Side of Shalom Bayit

When I was growing up, my mother often referred to the Jewish concept of shalom bayit—peace in the house—even though our home, inhabited by four noisy children and a short-tempered, stubborn father, was anything but peaceful. She rarely, if ever, used the actual words, but the ideas behind it were clearly an integral part of her Jewish upbringing. On its face, shalom bayit is a lovely concept of domestic harmony between husband and wife with roots in the Talmud and classical rabbinical literature. As a kid, I tried hard to believe in it, but even then I couldn’t help but observe its lopsided application. In practice it requires women to maintain the peace by bending to the will of the males around them. Although my mother was a feminist for her time, she still subconsciously bought into the notion that shalom bayit was the duty of women and girls. She regularly expressed this to me in comments such as “let your father have his way even when he is wrong,” “don’t fight with your brother even if he is acting like a jerk” and the infamous “if you apologize first, maybe he will too.” And just as it was my daughterly and sisterly duty to dance

FOB11.indd 4

around the behavior of the men and boys in childhood, shalom bayit would also be my wifely duty someday. “Never go to bed angry at your husband,” my mother said, which I understood to mean that it would be my responsibility to make up with my husband by giving in to his wishes. In general I learned that it was my role to accommodate males without making a fuss, and that if I didn’t, the resulting catastrophe would be my fault. She meant well, but as I grew older, I came to understand that shalom bayit perpetuates patriarchy through female submission. It can also be a cover for bullying and domestic violence and a powerful tool for keeping the victim silent: The fear of retribution, burning bridges and breaking up the family is more important than speaking the truth and protecting the victim. This column is not only about the abuse of shalom bayit in the home, which domestic violence organizations and Jewish feminists have done great work identifying and combatting. It is also about the shroud of shalom bayit that hangs over the Jewish communal world and is less examined. Just as it perpetuates the dominance of males in the home, shalom bayit maintains their control in the professional world. It feeds the culture of complicit silence that leads to power abuses of all kinds. This comes into play in the growing #MeToo movement. In the small Jewish professional world, it’s not easy to confront powerful men who have a history of sexually harassing women. In addition to the culture of silence, they are shielded by money, position, renown, friends and staff. Women are afraid that they won’t be believed, or that if they are, they will face retribution. They are concerned that coming forward with allegations will make the Jewish community look bad. They often hold onto the lingering belief that whatever the treatment was, it is the “way of the world” and “they deserved it.” As part of Moment’s “Year of the Woman,” we turn our attention to some of the women who have dared to speak out in the Jewish community. We tell their stories and examine the critical role of the press and informal networking in expos-

ing sexual harassment. Of course, having more women in positions of authority would be one way to counteract inappropriate behavior. Our symposium, “How Have Female Clergy Transformed Jewish Life, Ritual and Practice?” takes a look at where we are 46 years after the first American woman rabbi was ordained. We interview Sally Priesand, Sandy Sasso, Amy Eilberg and Sara Hurwitz, among others, and as you will see, the views expressed in the symposium are both positive and negative. Speaking of negative, witches make an appearance in our story on magic, a fascinating journey into a less explored territory of Jewish thought and practice. Along the way, you will learn what differentiates magic from miracles, superstition from ritual, and magic from religion. There is so much more between the covers of this beautiful new issue: Did you know a Jewish Confederate sculptor is behind some of our nation’s most controversial statues? That it’s going to be tough for the Hebrew language, which is so intimately bound to gender suffixes, to adapt to gender neutrality? That most Israelis are rooting for the GOP to win our 2018 midterms? And, if social media makes us sin, how should we atone for it? Back to shalom bayit: It is a valuable concept that has the potential to bring out gentleness, respect and love, but only when it is built on a strong foundation of gender equality. I view the #MeToo movement as a necessary step toward that end. So, if you have a story to tell, please contact us confidentially (see instructions on page 78). If you are inspired by our work, we invite you to attend one of our upcoming “Year of the Woman” events. I’ll be in conversation with CNN anchor Dana Bash (one of our 2018 honorees) about women and power on Wednesday, September 26 in Manhattan, and we will be honoring Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Jane Mayer, Carol Brown Goldberg and Esther Coopersmith on Sunday, November 11 at our gala in Washington, DC. I look forward to seeing you there!

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

9/3/18 11:15 PM

MOMENT'S JEWISH HERITAGE TOUR OF GREECE & BULGARIA MAY 1–MAY 15, 2019

VOL. 41. NO. 5

ELIE WIESEL

THE MANY LEGACIES OF

•

DAVID IRVING •

Tuesday, January 15, 2019 MOMENT MAGAZINE-KARMA FOUNDATION SHORT FICTION CONTEST 2019 SUBMISSIONS DEADLINE Find out more at momentmag.com Friday, February 15, 2019 DANIEL PEARL INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM INITIATIVE PROPOSAL SUBMISSIONS DEADLINE Find out more at momentmag.com

FOB9.indd 5

+ ELISHA WIESEL REMEMBERS HIS FATHER

Plus TRUMP VS. CLINTON HEATS UP

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2016

GALA & AWARDS DINNER Honoring Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, reporter Jane Mayer, artist Carol Brown Goldberg, and former U.S. Representative to the UN Esther Coopersmith. The master of ceremonies will be Robert Siegel, former host of NPR’s All Things Considered. National Press Club 529 14th Street NW, Washington, DC 6 pm For tickets and tables, contact Johnna Raskin at jraskin@momentmag.com or 202-363-6422

Leon Wieseltier Natan Sharansky Bernard-Henri Lévy Ted Koppel and others

2016 ELECTION COVERAGE

Sunday, November 11, 2018

MOMENT TALKS WITH

•

WOMEN & POWER LUNCHEON Honoring Dana Bash, CNN’s Chief Political Correspondent; Sherry and Robert Wiener and Joan Scheuer, with a memorial tribute to Eugene M. Grant. Editor-in-Chief Nadine Epstein will be in conversation with Bash. Yale Club 50 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY Noon For tickets and tables, contact Johnna Raskin at jraskin@momentmag.com or 202-363-6422

MUSLIM PERSECUTION IN MYANMAR

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2016

T H E N E X T 5 , 0 0 0 Y E A R S O F C O N V E R S AT I O N B E G I N H E R E THE MANY LEGACIES OF ELIE WIESEL

EVENTS AND DEADLINES

DON'T FORGET TO MAKE MOMENT PART OF YOUR YEAR-END GIVING MOMENT MAGAZINE

For more information: contact Johnna Raskin at jraskin@momentmag.com or call 202.363.6422

Do You Know We Are a Non-Profit?

THE UNREPENTANT DAVID IRVING MUSLIM PERSECUTION IN MYANMAR JEWISH GENES AS TIME MACHINES $6.95 US/CANADA

GERALDINE BROOKS REVIEWS JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER'S NEW NOVEL

YOUR SUPPORT HELPS MOMENT KEEP JEWISH INTELLECTUAL TRADITION, CULTURE AND WISDOM ALIVE FOR THE NEXT GENERATION. HERE’S HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT MOMENT: Send a check to Moment at 4115 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Suite LL10, Washington, DC 20016 or donate at momentmag.com. Give a gift of stocks, bonds or mutual funds. Be remembered as a champion for independent Jewish journalism. Include a gift to Moment in your will or estate plan.

GIFTS ARE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE Contact your ﬁnancial adviser or Moment Director of Community Aﬀairs Debbie Sann at dsann@momentmag.com or 202.363.6422

9/3/18 12:58 AM

THE CONVERSATION

“IRON DOME IS A BRILLIANT PIECE OF TECHNOLOGY. BUT UNLESS ISRAEL IS RESIGNED TO ANOTHER 70 YEARS OF ENDLESS WAR, A MISSILE SHIELD IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR REAL PEACE WITH ALL OF ITS NEIGHBORS, INCLUDING THE PALESTINIANS.” TO JOIN THE CONVERSATION: • RESPOND AT MOMENTMAG.COM • TWEET @MOMENTMAGAZINE • COMMENT ON FACEBOOK • EMAIL EDITOR@MOMENTMAG.COM • SEND A LETTER TO THE EDITOR Moment Magazine 4115 Wisconsin Avenue NW Suite LL10 Washington, DC 20016 Please include your hometown, state, email and phone number. Moment reserves the right to edit letters for clarity and space. 6

FOB9.indd 6

IRON DOME NO SUBSTITUTE FOR PEACE Dan Raviv’s fascinating article (“Inside the Iron Dome,” July/August 2018) reminds me of how Robert Oppenheimer and his own team of Manhattan Project scientists developed the atomic bomb in two and a half years. The story of how Israeli scientists developed the Iron Dome defensive shield against short-range rockets in a relatively short time period is testimony to human ingenuity. When we humans set our minds to it, we are very good at inventing weapons—and not so good at making peace. The key line in Raviv’s story is, “It didn’t take long for Hamas to adapt.” As Raviv points out, Hamas and Hezbollah could simply fire enough missiles simultaneously to overload Iron Dome’s capabilities. And after all, it only takes one conventionally armed and targeted missile to create a bloody tragedy. Or worse, think about the possibility of a simple “dirty bomb” filled with radioactive medical waste. Iron Dome is a brilliant piece of technology. But unless Israel is resigned to another 70 years of endless war, a missile shield is no substitute for real peace with all of its neighbors, including the Palestinians. And that means an end to the occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Unfortunately, the political reality is that too many Israelis believe peace is just not possible— and thus they seek refuge in Star Wars technology. Good luck with that. Kai Bird Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography and coauthor of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer New York, NY ASK THE RABBIS CONSIDER THE JEWDROID Kudos to the rabbis (“Can a Robot Be Jewish?” July/August 2018) for trying to answer a complex question in just a few hundred words. At the Jewish Museum in Berlin, we have already seen a robot write a Torah scroll as perfectly as a trained scribe—and more efficiently. Given advances in robot

mobility, dexterity and intelligence, why can’t a robot be Jewish? Let’s assume that the robot resembles an average human and passes the Turing test, and that he is thoroughly familiar not only with Jewish foundational texts like the Torah, the rest of the Tanakh and the Talmud, but also all that followed, up to and including today’s Jewish literature and philosophies. Assume, finally, that he wants to identify with the Jewish community. Why can’t that droid be Jewish? The rabbis, directly and indirectly, have mentioned five objections, ranging from the silly to the sacred. The most fundamental objection to the Jewishness of our droid is theological: that the droid is not made b’tzelem elohim (“in the image of God”). What does that mean? From at least the time of Maimonides, we have understood that the phrase requires something other than an imagined physical resemblance. Instead, it relates to activities and powers attributed in Genesis to God, including, as the University of Chicago Professor Leon Kass summarizes, the exercise of “speech and reason, freedom in doing and making, and the powers of contemplation, judgment and care.” A droid created to be intelligent, learned, thoughtful and compassionate would seem to qualify. So, shall we reject the Jewdroid whose existence is unprecedented, or shall we heed the ancient lesson and welcome the stranger? Roger Price Evanston, IL ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH ILLIBERAL DEMOCRACY As a human rights activist focused on combating anti-Semitism, I agree with Ira Forman (“We Must Confront the Orbáns of the World,” July/August 2018) that Viktor Orbán must be confronted; he poses a threat to Jews, refugees and all who care about liberal democracy. Orbán built his “illiberal democracy” by rolling back checks and balances, controlling the media and demonizing civil society. He’s stayed true to that course by controlling a narrative of fear. By conjuring enemies—see George Soros—and directing Hungarian ire toward migrants, Muslims, the European Union

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

9/3/18 12:59 AM

and all-powerful Jews, he’s been irritatingly difficult to confront. But because of Orbán’s need for a healthy relationship with America, the United States has leverage. There are several important actions the Trump administration and Congress can take to confront the Hungarian strongman, if they choose to do so. These include filling the State Department’s legally mandated position of anti-Semitism monitor, supporting Hungary’s beleaguered independent media and passing into law the Combating European Anti-Semitism Act. Susan Corke Director, Antisemitism and Extremism Human Rights First New York, NY SHOULD THE U.S. RESTRICT IMMIGRATION? TIPPING TOWARD TYRANNY I immigrated to the U.S. more than 30 years ago (“Should the United States Restrict Immigration?” July/August 2018). It took two years of countless trips to the embassy in London, waiting in line for hours, filling out reams of paperwork, medical examinations, all with no end in sight. I was investigated, so I was told, by the FBI and CIA, and the background checks were extensive. I resent—and am highly offended by—these foreigners who enter my country illegally being described as immigrants and expecting amnesty and citizenship. Send them back to wherever they came from and make them immigrate legally. They have no legal or moral right to be here. There was a time when Republicans and Democrats worked together toward a common goal, although they had different ideas on how to achieve it. Now the progressive Democrats look and sound more like National Socialists of the 1930s. This Jewish immigrant is finding the direction in which this country is going unsettling. Perhaps it is a good time for my wife, son, his Russian Jewish immigrant wife and children to move to the safety of Israel. Progressive democratic socialist big government is another step closer to totalitarian tyranny. We all know how that works out for us Jews. Gary Buck via momentmag.com

Saving lives. It’s in our blood.

Efrayim Yanko Paramedic, Kiryat Gat MDA Station

Efrayim saves lives every day, but he doesn’t do it alone. Gifts such as yours help to mobilize our EMTs and paramedics who carry more than 700,000 Israelis to safety each year. We’re Israel’s emergency medical and ambulance service, Magen David Adom. Together, we’ll make this New Year a healthy one for millions of Israelis. Please give today. Shanah Tovah. Saving lives. It’s in our blood – and it’s in yours, too. Save a life in Israel with a gift to support Magen David Adom. Donate on AFMDA.org/give or call 888.674.4871

ABUSE OF AUTHORITY Americans who justify the separation of asylum-seeking families as necessary for the enforcement of our immigration laws might think twice if they imagined their SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

FOB9.indd 7

9/3/18 12:59 AM

own immigrant ancestors in the shoes of today’s refugees from Central America— desperate enough to cross the border illegally, knowing it is the only way to escape the pervasive poverty or unspeakable violence making life unbearable at home. Yes, children are necessarily separated every day from the parent who is sent to jail. But it is patently different when the government jails an asylum seeker for the sole, specific and political purpose of separating child from parent in order to discourage the parent—and others who might follow—from exercising their legal right to apply for asylum even after an illegal entry. It’s a policy our federal courts have rightly condemned as an arbitrary and thus unlawful abuse of governmental authority. Dan Unger San Fransisco, CA

JEWISH REVIEW BOOKS

You’ll never miss a thing! Whether it’s the latest novel, a classic Jewish text, or politics in the Middle East, the Jewish Review of Books brings you brilliant authors who know that truth (not to speak of beauty, etc.) is in the details. Subscribe today! Bernard Berenson from Summer 2015

Visit www.jewishreviewofbooks.com or call 1-877-753-0337.

Jewish Culture. Cover to Cover. 8

FOB9.indd 8

ETGAR KERET A DISTURBING STORY I have been a Moment subscriber and supporter for many years. Tonight, for the first time, you have let me down. I spent the last two hours or so coaxing my baby grandson to sleep. Exhausted myself, I came downstairs and finished reading the last few paragraphs of the enlightening article on Iron Dome. I turned the page to find a short story by Etgar Keret (“Pillow Monster,” July/August 2018), someone your deputy editor described as one of her favorite writers. How dare you. Spoiler alert for anyone fortunate enough not to have already read this story: It is about a father who murders his child in her bed (apparently after having murdered her sibling previously). Cheerfully. If this is what passes for award-winning fiction writing, I would prefer you stick to nonfiction. There is enough real terror in the world; what kind of mind would invent such an evil as “entertainment”? And now, I must try to get some sleep myself, with this filth in my head. Michael Krause St. Louis Park, MN TOVA MIRVIS AND DANI SHAPIRO MASTERS OF MEMOIR Thank you for this wonderful and instructive interview with Tova Mirvis and Dani Shapiro (July/August 2018), two of my favorite authors. I’m fascinated by how a writer structures the chaos and complexi-

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

9/3/18 12:59 AM

ties of a life into a compelling narrative. I greatly admire Mirvis and Shapiro, not only for this accomplishment, but also for their bravery and honesty. Both writers pass the litmus test for a good memoir: moving seamlessly from the individual to the universal. Shapiro’s latest, Hourglass, examines the very nature of marriage through the lens of her own; Mirvis’s personal exodus from Orthodox Judaism weighs the cost of being true to oneself against obligations to family, community and heritage. As a fiction and essay writer, I’ve thought a lot about how one acquires the courage and thick skin needed for such revelation and exposure. I prefer to select brief excerpts from my life to explore through creative nonfiction. Revealing in this way allows me to both shape and contain the experience while still keeping the curtain partially closed. The challenge remains, though: how to let in enough light to illuminate my readers. Evelyn Krieger Sharon, MA BOOK REVIEWS AGAINST THE INQUISITION The saga of the crypto-Jews in the LatinAmerican colonies of Spain and Portugal, as told in Against the Inquisition, is a dark corner of Jewish history (“A Tragic Life Lived Truthfully,” July/August 2018). As masterfully evoked by Marcos Aguinis, Francisco Maldonado da Silva, the son of a convicted Marrano, strives to recover his forgotten heritage and live a Jewish life. A physician and an accomplished poet, knowledgeable about theology and the scriptures, skillful and supremely courageous, Maldonado was, however, more than a match for his tormentors. He withstood isolation, hunger strikes, torture and theological challenges during 13 years and faced the threat of a painful death with an unshakeable faith in the God of his ancestors. Such was his confidence that, even after managing to escape the dungeon, Maldonado felt he had more urgent things to do than to try to save his physical life. Besides being a source of pride for the Jewish people and of inspiration for the sons and daughters of the Marranos, the life and death of Francisco Maldonado da Silva is a testament to the resilience and resourcefulness of the human spirit even under the most brutal oppression. Mauro V. Mendlowicz Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

MINDFULNESS A CONCOCTED CATEGORY I was honored to see my book Everyday Holiness included in your illustrious listing of summer reading (“Top 5 Books,” July/August 2018) but galled that it was included in a category called “Jewish Mindfulness.” Strange that you put together a concocted category like that and not one on the authentic subject of “Jewish Spirituality.” The Jewish world many of us grew up in was devoid of spirituality, and there has been a tendency to fill the void through the expedient of importing non-Jewish concepts and practices, dressing them in tallis and tefillin and calling them Jewish. If a seeker wants Jewish wisdom to guide their heart’s journey, they won’t find it in mindfulness or positive psychology, but by doing the harder but ultimately rewarding work of digging into our own authentic tradition to bring the gems to light. Alan Morinis Founder, The Mussar Institute Vancouver, Canada Go to momentmag.com to read readers’ suggestions of their favorite detective, sports, mindfulness books and more.

ATTENTION WRITERS! THE 2018

MOMENT MAGAZINE KARMA FOUNDATION SHORT FICTION CONTEST NOW ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS All are welcome to enter this prestigious contest that provides recognition and prizes to writers of Jewish short fiction.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE:

01|15|19

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

FOB11.indd 9

9/4/18 2:16 AM

HIGHLIGHTS FROM MOMENTMAG .COM

AUTHOR INTERVIEW | STUART EIZENSTAT

Can One Man Redeem Jimmy Carter?

n the 13th day of negotiations at Camp David, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin had had enough. “Okay, my friends, let’s pack and go,” he said to his delegation. U.S. President Jimmy Carter knew that if Begin left it would completely undercut Egyptian President Anwar Sadat—and possibly inflame the entire Middle East. Knowing of Begin’s love for his eight grandchildren, Carter sat down and autographed eight photographs of himself, Begin and Sadat together, addressing each grandchild by name. When Begin saw this, the former Irgun com-

mander became emotional and indicated he would return to the negotiating table for one last try. This revealing anecdote is just one of many found in President Carter: The White House Years, Stuart Eizenstat’s new book on the 39th president. Eizenstat served as policy director during Carter’s 1976 campaign and then as chief domestic policy advisor from 1977 to 1981. His main thesis, that Jimmy Carter’s presidency was one of the most consequential in modern history, might raise a few eyebrows. Moment speaks with Stuart Eizenstat about Carter’s legacy.—Sarah Breger

WIKICOMMONS

You’ve said that this book is an attempt to redeem Carter’s presidency. What does redemption look like? It doesn’t mean that he’s going to have a place on Mount Rushmore. It does mean that he’s somewhere in the foothills with other presidents. That he, with his faults, will be recognized as a consequential president whose accomplishments had lasting benefits for the country and the world. Does that make him a great president? No. Does it make him a near-great president? No. But it does make him a good president, one who was a net positive for the country. I have not whitewashed his mistakes, but what’s happened is that the mistakes have totally obscured the achievements. It’s time for a balanced assessment. How was Carter as a politician? He was a ferocious campaigner. He spent 100 days campaigning for the Iowa caucuses, and he had a great sense of the public mood at the time, which was not for a new burst of social spending or a new Great Society. It was for honesty, integrity, morality. But despite being a ferocious campaigner, he believed in parking politics at the Oval Office door and then doing what was the “right thing” to do, regardless of the consequences. That was a strength and a weakness. It enabled him to take on issues which were political land mines, and over which a lot of political blood was shed. But he forgot that the president is not only the commander-inchief; he’s also the politician-in-chief. He has to constantly nurture a winning coalition to stay behind him in good times and in bad. President Donald Trump is a master at this. Whatever one thinks about him, he’s constantly nurturing the base in one way or another, and Carter didn’t do that. 10

FOB9.indd 10

After the success of the Camp David Accords, why did he get the smallest percentage of Jewish votes of any Democratic president in modern history? To achieve the peace between Egypt and Israel, there was a lot of glass broken. A lot of pressure was put on Israel. Carter also had very tense relations with Prime Minister Rabin, and then with Begin. While Rabin was in the U.S., Carter went to Massachusetts for the first of 100 town hall meetings. He was asked a question, unscripted, about the Palestinians. I was sitting at the step of this open-air forum. I literally almost fell off my chair, because Carter said, “I favor a Palestinian homeland.” He didn’t say a state. He said homeland. That caused a huge uproar and hugely embarrassed the Labor Party in Israel and Rabin. They still blame it for their defeat in the next Israeli election. Then the relationship with Begin was also very difficult. Carter saw the Palestinians as being the African Americans of the Middle East—op-

pressed by the Israeli military in the same way the white police oppressed African Americans. In fact, he said, it was even worse. I strongly disagreed with that. It failed to take into account Israel’s security issues and the failure of the Palestinians to be willing to make peace, but that was his view. In terms of Israel, what would a second term of Carter have looked like? I think the commitment that Begin had made to autonomy for the Palestinians would have been filled out. Would it have led to a Palestinian state? No, I think people weren’t ready for that at that time, but I think we’d be in a very different situation on the West Bank. Had Carter been reelected, I don’t think we would have 350,000 settlers, and we wouldn’t have 100,000 of them east of the settlement blocs. To read more of this interview, visit momentmag.com/jimmy-carter-stuart-eizenstat

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

9/3/18 1:01 AM

A MOMENT TIKKUN OLAM PROJECT

Did you know that more than

15,000 American Jews serve in the U.S. military? M

A Haredi Rabbi’s Rumination on Racism r. Paskow, now long gone, was a transplant to these shores, an Eastern-European-born Holocaust survivor who, in the 1970s, attended services at the small shul where my late father served as rabbi. Like many of his generation, Mr. Paskow (not his real name) harbored some deep, overt racial prejudices against what he referred to as shvartzes, Yiddish for “blacks.” It was 1969, and race riots in a number of cities provided the elderly shulgoer with ample fodder for his racial railings. He would surely have dismissed as insane anyone who suggested that America might one day have a black president. Waiting each day for mincha services to begin, congregants would gather in the shul, and Mr. Paskow would pontificate about political and social issues. I was just a teenager and held my peace. To be sure, I had experienced black antiSemitism. Like the boy who liked to yell “Heil Hitler!” at my father and me when we walked to the synagogue on the Sabbath, or the public school students who, having been invited by a group of us Jewboys to play a game of softball, lost interest in the ball when they were up to bat and wielded the wood against us. But I had also grown fond of my yeshiva’s black gym teacher and become close friends with a black neighbor. I tried to see people as just people. So I ignored Mr. Paskow’s ravings. Until, one day, he was praising Lenny, a boy he had employed years earlier in his haberdashery. Another congregant asked Mr. Paskow whether Lenny, whom the elderly man had effectively adopted and whose college education he had actually underwritten, was Jewish. “No,” said the elderly man. “He was a shvartze who just walked into my store one day and asked for a job.” I was, as the British say, gobsmacked. Old

bigoted Mr. Paskow’s protégé was black? And he had given him a job for the asking? And paid his college tuition? Who could have guessed? I filed that revelation away for future reference. When my wife and I married and had children, we raised them to respect all people of whatever ethnicity. In the early 1990s, I was privileged to write a biography of a local man of African and Native American ancestry whose determination to become a Jew inspired me, and, if readers’ responses are any indication, many others as well. None of that erased the hatred for Jews I had experienced from some African Americans. But I knew there’s no dearth of white haters either. And there’s racism among Jews toward blacks as well. But from what I’ve seen in recent years, and aside from Louis Farrakhan and his tired tirades, I think that blacks and Jews have grown less wary of each other, learned that “the other” isn’t really quite so “other.” Blacks and haredim have increasingly interacted in politics, businesses and many professions. In late April, the leading haredi newspaper Hamodia editorialized about the new museum in Montgomery, Alabama, memorializing those who, over the decades, were lynched because of their race. The editorial asserted “the need for all Americans, even those of us whose forebears were far from American shores when African-Americans were killed and seen as subhuman, to ensure that the tragic history of American racial violence, too, is not forgotten.” My thoughts cycle back to Mr. Paskow. I suspect that the puzzle of his apparent racism and his real-life colorblindness derived from the fact that, although his attitude toward blacks was influenced by radicals and rioters, deep in his Jewish soul he could see

You can help

keep every

jewish

soldier

connected

to his or her

roots

$36 WILL SPONSOR A SUBSCRIPTION FOR 2 JEWISH SERVICE MEMBERS! $72 WILL SPONSOR SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR 4 JEWISH SERVICE MEMBERS! $180 WILL SPONSOR SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR 10 JEWISH SERVICE MEMBERS!

beyond a nebulous group to an individual. And that allowed him to treat Lenny as, in effect, an adopted son. Decades of thinking about racism leave me with the conclusion that it will always be with us, in people’s minds if not in their actions. Racism, I fear, may be a fact of life, and its eradication an unattainable goal. “Curing” racism would be a perfect thing, but, as so often, the perfect is the enemy of the good. But there is a way forward. Rather than trying to disabuse people of the biases they may coddle, we must charge them to focus on individuals. Let people joke and grouse, if they must, about whites, blacks, Jews, Muslims or whoever else, specious though the stereotypes may be. It shouldn’t matter what people think about group X or group Y. It doesn’t matter to me, a visibly Jewish Jew, if someone assumes I possess traits that antiSemites attribute to my tribe. I am, indeed, rather cliquish, preferring the company of my own people. No apologies there. But I’m neither wealthy, nor do I have business acumen. And I can’t control my weight, much less the world. All I ask is that others see me, whatever their beliefs about Jews, as an individual. Judge me as me. It might seem radical to abandon the traditional assumption that fighting racism, sexism and anti-Semitism requires hitting some reset button. But what if there is no button, if looking for it is a fool’s errand? Most Americans are not true bigots; they don’t hate anyone. But we all have prejudices. Maybe the best we can and should do is accept that fact but remind ourselves constantly that whatever we may think about a group of people, each of its members, in the end, is an individual. Even Mr. Paskow was able to do that. Rabbi Avi Shafran

please

help us make this important

project

possible

$360 WILL SPONSOR SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR 20 JEWISH SERVICE MEMBERS! $720 WILL SPONSOR SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR 40 JEWISH SERVICE MEMBERS! $1800 WILL SPONSOR SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR 100 JEWISH SERVICE MEMBERS!

PLEASE SPONSOR AS MANY SUBSCRIPTIONS AS YOU CAN! CALL 202.363.6422 OR SEND A CHECK TO MOMENT, 4115 WISCONSIN AVE. SUITE LL10 NW, WASHINGTON, 20016 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 /DC MOMENT Soldier.indd 111 FOB9.indd

7/2/18 1:01 8:48 AM PM 9/3/18

ANTI-S EM ITISM W ATCH | LIAM H OAR E

The Waltz of the Austrian Far Right

FPÖ

The Freedom Party, founded by Nazis, is trying to soften its image.

In January, Austria’s Freedom Party (FPÖ) same time, he “tried to change the image hosted its annual Academics Ball, where of the FPÖ from an extreme-right party women in gowns and men in tuxedos to a moderate conservative one,” explains and three-piece suits dance and social- Austrian political scientist Anton Pelinka. ize in Vienna’s splendorous imperial pal- Strache took a friendlier line toward Isace. Attendees also proudly dress in the rael, making multiple visits, including a colors and regalia of their Burschen- controversial trip to Yad Vashem in 2016, schaften—student fraternities founded and has made efforts to distance the FPÖ during the 19th century, some of which from anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and espouse pan-Germanism. Once described neo-Nazism. In addition to his speech at as a “networking event” for the European the Academics Ball, he deleted an antifar-right, this year’s gala drew 8,000 anti- Semitic cartoon (posted in 2012) from his fascist demonstrators to the streets. In- Facebook page and has argued that the side the hall, Freedom Party leader and far-right Aula magazine is no longer an Austrian vice-chancellor, Heinz-Christian “organ” of the FPÖ. But some Austrians believe these changStrache—the second-most-powerful man in government—addressed the partygo- es are rhetorical or superficial. “You can ers: “Anti-Semitism, totalitarianism [and] say the FPÖ has become stricter in terms racism are the opposite of fraternity think- of sanctioning” anti-Semites, says Bernhard Weidinger, a researcher at the Ausing,” he said. The FPÖ’s return to government in De- trian Resistance Documentation Center. cember 2017 as the junior partner in a co- But “there is still much to be done.” There alition with the center-right People’s Party have been 38 reported incidents of “exwas viewed as a shift to the right—part of treme-right activity” within the FPÖ since a pan-European trend that has empow- December 2017—including anti-Semiered nationalist, anti-immigration parties tism—according to a report published in in Poland, Hungary and Italy. Founded June by Austria’s Mauthausen Committee in the 1950s by former Nazi functionar- (MKÖ). Such incidents have “increased in ies, the FPÖ has historically represented the last year and they have also increased the so-called Third Camp in Austrian since the [FPÖ returned to] government,” politics: a mix of nationalism, liberalism says Christa Bauer, the MKÖ’s managing and German-ethnocentricity. The party director. In April, for example, the party’s played a minor role in Austrian politics Chief Whip Johann Gudenus launched an until the 1990s, when under the flamboy- attack on George Soros, claiming he was ant provocateur Jörg Haider’s leadership, responsible for mass migration to Europe. Weidinger says the FPÖ retains its it became an anti-EU, anti-immigration party, and its vote share exploded. In 2000, links to the pan-Germanist scene from the party was strong enough to form a which the party was born through the coalition with the center-right People’s Burschenschaften, which play a large role Party despite Haider’s praise of the Third in the party in terms of both personnel Reich and Waffen-SS and his description and policy. In 2011, a clause specifying a of the Mauthausen concentration camp as “commitment to a German people and cultural community” was reintroduced to the a “punishment center.” When Strache became FPÖ leader in party manifesto, he says. There also re2005, he expanded the party’s anti-Muslim main members of Burschenschaften “that message, which became even more stri- think Austria is still a part of Germany,” dent during the 2015 refugee crisis. At the says Nina Horaczek, lead reporter for the

FOB9.indd 12

Heinz-Christian Strache (left) at the Academics Ball.

investigative weekly Falter. “Some of them still have maps up in their meeting rooms where you see the old German Reich [including] parts of Poland and Austria and they still sing these songs that Austria is part of Germany.” Austria’s Jewish community views the FPÖ with suspicion. Since the coalition government was formed in 2017, the Jewish community of Vienna has not worked with FPÖ ministers and members of parliament and has cooperated only with chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s People’s Party. In a speech at Holocaust commemorations at Mauthausen in May, Oskar Deutsch, president of Vienna’s Jewish community, said that the FPÖ constituted the “political arm” of the Burschenschaften, who are the “successors to the precursors of the Nazis” in Austria. The Austrian situation, therefore, is distinct even from Poland, Hungary and Italy, where hostility towards the EU, Islam and asylum seekers has also enabled the rise of far-right populism. It is not that Jews and liberals are afraid the Nazis are coming back, argues Pelinka, and it would be wrong to call the 26 percent of voters who voted for the FPÖ in the 2017 elections Nazis. But while the FPÖ has undergone cosmetic changes to its image, including becoming proIsrael, beneath the surface, observers argue, this party first led by an ex-SS officer retains, through its fidelity to the Burschenschaften, tangible links to hard-right, pan-Germanist elements in society. Although the leadership of the mainstream political parties has come to terms with the awful realities of Austrian history and stands clearly against antiSemitism, Deutsch has argued, the FPÖ has not, and does not.

Liam Hoare is Moment’s Europe Editor.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

9/3/18 1:05 AM

ll.

FOB9.indd 13

9/3/18 2:10 PM

C ONTEXT | AM Y E. SCH WA RT Z

Is Judaism Pro-Life or Pro-Choice?

CREATIVE COMMONS

The same arguments from the same men don’t add anything new to the debate.

Where you stand on most issues depends on where you sit. It’s a truism that dates back far before our polarized age. Women’s issues tend to pose this problem with particular clarity; you might say that it’s not so much where you sit as what set of organs you sit on. The Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, who if confirmed could provide the fifth vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, has twisted the volume knob back to “high” on one of the debates that most vividly demonstrates this phenomenon— the debate over abortion. And nowhere is it clearer than in a recent column by an Orthodox rabbi, Shlomo Brody, seeking to reassure rightward-leaning readers that, despite some inconvenient texts, Jewish law cannot be used as a reason to be pro-choice. Gloria Steinem has famously said that if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. This obviously oversimplifies; many of abortion’s most passionate opponents have been female, including, notoriously, the Roe of Roe v. Wade. And yet there are few debates whose framing is more dependent on the debaters’ identities and assumptions. My new favorite example is the recent Jerusalem Post column by Brody, who offers a thoughtful and scholarly exploration of the ways in which the abortion debate would look different if religious Jews, rather than religious Christians, were conducting it—along with an almost-successful attempt to debunk the idea that the actual answer might come out differently. Just when he’s about to close the sale, Brody inadvertently proves yet again that the abortion issue would look totally different if it were debated with women in the room rather than men. Brody, a doctoral fellow at Bar-Ilan University Law School in Israel and the author of A Guide to the Complex: Contemporary Halakhic Debates, has been writing about this topic for a while. The Jerusalem Post column condenses a long 2016 piece in The Federalist. He seeks to combat—or at least, as the academics say, to complicate—the argument that Jewish law does not equate abortion with murder and therefore aligns more with the pro-choice than the pro-life position. 14

FOB9.indd 14

“Pro-life” efforts to ban abortion, according to this view, impose a specifically Christian framework on a body of Jewish law to which it is alien. The stakes are high, since by this logic even Orthodox Jews, who trend conservative, should oppose overturning Roe v. Wade—since doing so would remove the protective umbrella that allows different religions to parse the abortion question as they see fit. Certainly, even the most traditional halacha contains no suggestion of the conservative Christian idea that life begins at conception. Clear legal markers point the other way. In one well-known Talmudic reference, a man who strikes a pregnant woman and kills her fetus is required to pay a fine for damage to property; absent further circumstances, he is not held criminally liable, as he would be for destroying a human life. Another line of rulings testifies to the rabbis’ belief that a fetus younger than seven or eight weeks is “like water,” with little or no human status before quickening. If the fetus, then, has less than full claims on human life, the argument goes, its right to be born can be balanced against other values, such as the health of the mother or even of the community. Brody delves into all of these references and adds more, including “leniencies” attested to by various rabbis over the centuries—some merely preserved as dissents from established opinion. The rabbis, he says, differed on when a pregnancy might cause danger to a women’s life, or even to her well-being; two well-known 20thcentury rabbis offered this leniency in the case of a fetus carrying Tay-Sachs disease, and another minority opinion thought it worth preventing the birth of a mamzer, or illegitimate child. Anecdotes in observant communities bear out the existence of such “leniencies” to the present day. The Forward recently published a series of mostly anonymous testimonies by Orthodox women describing their abortions—some including private approvals by rabbis for late-term abortions in a variety of ghastly situations.

So, is Jewish law “pro-choice” in this sense? After exhaustive discussion, Brody concludes that it is not. Feticide, he argues, is seen by traditional sages as prohibited, but not murder, which is a long, long way from the view that sees abortion as something that should be available “on demand.” Severe disapproval of abortion is threaded through the sources, he argues. The ideal of female autonomy that animates so much pro-choice sentiment is wholly absent from them. “These significant disagreements create a greater amount of nuance than in other religious traditions that assert that life begins at conception and only allow abortions when the mother’s life is threatened,” he concedes toward the end of the Jerusalem Post piece. “This is a perfectly cogent position, but not the Jewish one. That said, if we had to choose, it’s clear that Jewish law is much closer to the ‘pro-life’ stance of Catholics than the ‘pro-choice’ laws that dominate Western societies.” It sounds so balanced—and then he ruins it. “Fortunately,” the piece ends, “moral traditions with complex ethical perspectives don’t need to reduce ourselves to the binary rhetoric of contemporary politics.” Fortunately? That’s the voice of the cloistered study hall, of rabbis luxuriating in their complex ethical perspectives. And meanwhile, outside the walls, people in the throes of a real or potential pregnancy—than which there is no state more binary—can be heard faintly shouting, “Yes, we do need to be binary about politics. We do, actually.” As folk wisdom has long pointed out, you can’t be a little bit pregnant. And as we would be likely to find out in a world without Roe—where, say, a rabbi might be forbidden by state or federal law from ruling it acceptable for a woman to abort a severely handicapped fetus—you can’t be a little bit pro-choice, either. If the rabbis didn’t sit where they sit—or sat—they might even see that.

Amy E. Schwartz is opinion editor of Moment.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

9/3/18 2:23 PM

Israel

SYNAGOGUE BAR AND BAT MITZVAH TOURS

CELEBRATE YOUR CHILD'S BAR OR BAT MITZVAH IN ISRAEL THE PERFECT FAMILY VACATION! Departure Dates

Tour Ends

Extension Ends

June 10, 2019

June 20, 2019

June 23, 2019

June 17, 2019

June 27, 2019

June 30, 2019

June 26, 2019

July 4, 2019

July 7, 2019

July 15, 2019

July 25, 2019

July 28, 2019

July 22, 2019

August 1, 2019

August 4, 2019

August 5, 2019

August 15, 2019

August 18, 2019

August 12, 2019

August 22, 2019

August 25, 2019

August 19, 2019

August 29, 2019

September 1, 2019

ISRAEL TOUR CONNECTION ALSO OFFERS

Jewish Heritage Tours • • • • •

Israel guaranteed weekly escorted tours Join as one person or more Your choice of 10, 12, 13, or 15 day tours Custom designed tours anywhere in the world Jewish Heritage tours to: Brazil, Cuba, Ukraine, Portugal, India, Panama, Peru, Croatia and Australia

Destination Bar and Bat Mitzvah Family Vacations Israel, Italy, Prague, Budapest, Portugal, England, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Orlando, Caribbean, Alaska, Mediterranean Cruise, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, Curacao, Barbados, Costa Rica and beyond!

Offering Over 30 Years Experience in Designing Private, Escorted and Family Group Tours

FOB9.indd 15

9/3/18 1:05 AM

OP INION | SHM U EL ROSN ER

Israel’s Vote Goes to the GOP

CREATIVE COMMONS

Most Israelis see the midterms through the prism of their own geopolitical interests.

Israelis would find this column boring. They aren’t interested in American midterm elections, and they have a point. There are few familiar faces in the drama, few specific races of great consequence for Israel, a lot of messy confusion and a lot of details to consider as this complicated part of the American political system moves forward. Do we (namely, most Israelis, this writer excluded) really care who wins New York’s 14th Congressional District, and whether Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez makes it to the great chamber? We don’t. But as Israelis, we care about the big picture—or maybe it’s the small picture, depending on your point of view. The Israel picture, while barely a trifle to most Americans, is almost everything to us. We consider only one question: Will the next Congress be supportive of Israel, and of President Donald Trump’s support for Israel? And if that question sounds odd to most American Jews, well, that’s an old story, as old as the story of U.S.-Israel relations. Note that asking the question this way essentially gives an answer to what Israel wants. It wants a Congress supportive of what it sees as Trump’s support for Israel. It knows that only one party can guarantee such an outcome—and that this will not be the Democratic Party. So yes, Israel would like the GOP to retain its majority and is somewhat nervous about the other, more likely, option. Israeli nervousness is simple to justify if you use poll numbers. More Democrats than Republicans openly express views highly critical of Israel. In a recent Pew Research Center poll, 27 percent of Democrats “sympathize with” Israel compared to 79 percent of Republicans. More Democrats still refuse to acknowledge that the Iran deal, to which they gave their support, was a misguided move by the Obama administration. Many Democrats feel that the U.S. should bestow tough love on Israel—a politically acceptable code term

FOB9.indd 16

for less love. Almost half of all Democratic that he is more pro-Israel than provoters (46 percent) feel that the current Palestinian. In a recent survey, Trump’s president “is favoring Israel too much.” approval among Israelis in general was It seems as if many Democrats subcon- compared to Barack Obama’s. The result sciously mesh President Trump and Prime was a lopsided 49-19 percent. Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into a uniThe rational outcome of these beliefs is fied character whom they dislike. Accord- preferring a GOP (party of Trump) victoing to Pew, “Nearly three times as many ry over a Democratic one (to Israelis, still Republicans (52 percent) as Democrats the party of Obama) in the midterms. (18 percent) have favorable impressions of Of course, this does not count for Israel’s leader.” Many Democrats, Israelis much. Americans will go to the polls to infer from this, must have a gut feeling vote for or against many things, among that goes as follows: Trumpism is what we which Israel’s preference is hardly an imbattle, Israel is fond of Trump, hence Is- portant item. Like most other countries rael is also an entity we must battle. in the world, Israel has no say in AmeriIndeed, it is hard to deny that Israelis, can elections but will surely feel its consegenerally speaking, are fond of Trump. Of quences. If Ocasio-Cortez makes it to the course, they recognize his weaknesses and great chamber (whether she does or does his unusual personality. Some of them find not support a “two-state solution” or, as this reprehensible; some consider it amus- I suspect is the likeliest case, just doesn’t ing. But the bottom line is that they don’t have a clue), it could affect our security. much care about his character flaws, as If Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar, who called long as these include the tendency to cut Israel an “apartheid regime,” makes it to through Middle East diplomatic nonsense. Congress, it could affect our security. If From the Israeli standpoint, Trump won’t Rashida Tlaib, who said that she would give in to Iranian bullying, he won’t ap- “absolutely” support cutting military aid pease a Turkish thug, he won’t butter up to Israel, makes it to Congress, it could a rejectionist Palestinian leadership, he affect our security, or at least—given won’t accept lies (such as the assertion the relatively little impact the House of that Iran is becoming more moderate), Representatives has on foreign policy—it he won’t accept bias (such as the notion could negatively affect the way Amerithat the Middle East situation is all Israel’s cans debate issues that affect that security. fault). For now, he seems like the real deal. Still, most of the voters for Ocasio-CorWe know that most Americans don’t tez and Omar and Tlaib will not be thinking see him this way. We know that most about Israel when they vote. They will think readers of this magazine (that is, Ameri- about Trump, and immigration, and health can Jews) don’t see it this way either. We care, and socialism, and #MeToo, and interknow that some of them cringe at the sectionality, and the so-called alt-right, and very thought that Israel, the nation-state the Russia investigation. They—and this inof the Jewish people, is one of the few cludes most Jewish Americans—don’t much countries in the world in which Trump is care about Israel’s preferences. Admittedly, well-liked and appreciated. But that’s the Israel doesn’t care much about theirs either. way it is. Seventy-four percent of Jewish Israelis believe that Israeli interests are important to Trump, according to the Shmuel Rosner is a writer, editor and Peace Index poll conducted by the Israel researcher based in Tel Aviv. Democracy Institute; 70 percent believe

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

9/3/18 2:24 PM

OP INION | M ARSHA LL BREG E R

Israel's Nation-State Law Is Not Just Bark Its bite affects Arabs, Druze and the foundation of democracy.

envisioned the “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.” Although Israel was thus legally a “Jewish and democratic state,” the political balance remained to be played out. As a sociological matter, the state has a Jewish lifestyle and rhythm, but at the legal level it upheld equality. The new law alters this political balance in very concrete ways. After the supposedly symbolic demotion of Arabic, for instance, the speaker of the Knesset made clear it was meaningful by refusing to accept the resignation letter of an Arab MK because it was written in Arabic. And it reinforces existing practices that go against equality: The enshrinement of Jewish settlement as a value may be symbolic, but as a factual matter, no new Arab settlement has been approved in Israel proper since 1948. Contrast that with the way then-Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Herzog in 1948 expressed the nation’s values in responding to a question about whether Jews could sell land to Arabs. In an essay titled “Rights of the Minorities According to the Halacha,” he argued that until the creation of the state, there was a religious duty to keep land under Jewish control to help create the Zionist vision. But after the creation of the state, there was another value—equality under the law—and the sale of land from Jews to Arabs was a sign of a country that lives under the rule of law. The supporters of the new nation-state law don’t want this messy balancing of democracy and Judaism. They fear the explicit statement of equality. Indeed, the only good thing about the nation-state law is that it is far better than earlier drafts, some of which codified practices that in any other country would be called apartheid. But that is a very low bar, and one we should not be proud of.

Marshall Breger is a law professor at Catholic University.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

FOB11.indd 17

DAFNA TALMON

After the passage of Israel’s nation-state as they used to be called) had married Nalaw, which anchors the Jewishness of the tive Americans on arrival. The Virginia state in Israel’s “basic law” or constitu- law in effect made those mixed-race progtion, the Israeli right and its American eny honorary whites. fellow travelers were quick to tell us that What does the nation-state law actuthe law was no big deal—that it merely ally do? It states that the right of selfcodified what was already social reality determination in Israel “is unique to the in the State of Israel. (Of course, before- Jewish people”; it enshrines Hebrew as Ishand they had trumpeted its passage as rael’s “official language,” consigning Arabic of existential importance to prevent the to “special status,” whatever that means; it demise of the Zionist dream.) declares Jerusalem the undivided and uniThis notion that the law is of little sig- fied capital of Israel; and it declares “Jewish nificance is belied by the reaction to it, settlement” a “national value” and says that and not just on the left (which dreams of the state “will act to encourage and permits Israel as a “state of all its citizens”). Druze its establishment and consolidation.” (There officers resigned from the Israel Defense is no indication whether this applies to IsForces. An Arab MK resigned from the rael within the Green Line only or includes Knesset, and the only permanent former settlement in the West Bank.) Arab Supreme Court justice, who had just The law is a response to two changes in retired, begged his former colleagues to Israeli society. The first is an increased ethoverturn the law. Perhaps more impor- no-tribalism that uses Judaism (in its varitantly, the law has already served as a dog ety of meanings) as an icon for identity. But whistle to Jewish exclusivism, encouraging second, and counterintuitively, the law is an manifestations such as border interroga- act of weakness if not desperation. Despite tions of American liberal Jews, settlement their political success in recent years, Israeli expansion and denigration of Arab citizens. “statists” fear a vast secular conspiracy that Responding to Druze complaints that will take away their territorial inheritance. the law denied their validity as a commu- Thus Yoaz Hendel, a right-wing activist, nity, Likud officials suggested they would noted, “The danger is the future: If we do seek amendments to accommodate the not define who we are now, the generations Druze, perhaps in separate legislation. to come will fight one another.” They could not, of course, privilege the What Hendel is saying, of course, is Druze by name, so a legal workaround may that future generations of Israelis may be proposed, stipulating that those who not choose to privilege Judaism in the served in the armed forces—as the Druze State of Israel, so the rot has to stop bedo—get the benefit of the legislation. The fore it can pick up speed. It’s a far cry very suggestion underscores the bad faith from Theodor Herzl’s call to arms: “If involved, since it makes it clear that the you will it, it is no dream.” legislation is actually directed against the Although defenders of the law analyze 18 to 20 percent of the population who are its text to prove it is largely declarative and Arab and excused from conscription. symbolic, they miss the larger point that To exempt the Druze makes them in Israel has a choice of symbols it can dea sense “honorary Jews,” rather as Hitler ploy—those that are inclusive or those that made his Japanese allies honorary Aryans. are exclusivist if not xenophobic; those that Similarly, Virginia’s old Racial Integrity seek to integrate minorities and those that Act of 1924—found unconstitutional in underscore to them that they live in Israel the iconic 1967 case Loving v. Virginia— on sufferance at best. Even in the euphoria made marriage between the races illegal of the state’s creation, the framers of Israel’s except for descendants of Pocahontas and Declaration of Independence understood other American Indians. Why? Because so this tension. They explicitly stated that Ismany of the first families of Virginia (FFV, rael was to be a Jewish state but one that

9/3/18 10:53 PM

OP INION | VIVIAN K A NE

Online Misogyny Is Hate Speech

ADL REPORT

Like other forms of hate speech, it can lead to violence.

For women who work or spend time online, only defensible, but is a skill that can and the idea that online misogyny is dangerous should be taught.” All of these types of men seems like basic common sense. Female express ideas stemming from a core set of journalists, politicians, celebrities and other beliefs: that men are entitled to women’s women with work-related internet pres- attention, both emotional and (especially) ences often face daily harassment, hacking sexual, and that feminism is a specific evil or doxxing—the release of their private in- designed to deny them that right. The ADL says it intends to continue formation, including phone numbers and home addresses. The hostility is often only investigating “the ways in which people loosely, if at all, tied to a woman’s specific in the white supremacist, incel and MRA work or actions; rather, the mere act of oc- orbits feed and inform one another’s poicupying public space seems to be the crime. sonous hatred of women.” This could actuThat level of harassment is increased many ally help. For far too long, these men have been written off as fringe types or as all times over for women of color. Whether because of the anonymity, or talk. What few have officially recognized— the nature of internet echo chambers— except for women who have been on the where people’s thoughts are parroted back receiving end of this hate—is that this sort to them with no opposition—bigots of all of online misogyny can also have serious stripes have felt emboldened to share their real-life implications. We’ve seen internet-specific toxic menhate not just within but also outside the “manosphere”—that too-flippantly-named talities come to life with men such as Elliot area of the internet designated for those Rodger, who in 2014 killed six people and who want to mourn and seethe over what injured 14 more in California after releasing a manifesto called “My Twisted World.” they see as the theft of their masculinity. So it surprised me that it’s taken this Rodger believed he was being unjustly delong for the Anti-Defamation League nied the sex he was owed by the women (ADL) to issue a report officially condemn- in his life, specifically the women of the ing misogyny in the same way it has other sororities of the University of California forms of violent hate speech. Until now, at Santa Barbara. His devotees referred to the ADL’s “Women’s Equity” category was him as “the Supreme Gentleman,” and one limited to gender bias, pay inequality and of them, Alek Minassian, drove a van into a fighting gender stereotypes. It’s about time crowd on a Toronto sidewalk after praising somebody highlighted the genuinely haz- Rodger in a Facebook post. Beyond these high-profile incidents, nearly every recent ardous aspects of extreme misogyny. The new report pulls together research instance of mass violence—from Orlando establishing a direct connection between to Las Vegas to Parkland and countless othmisogyny and white supremacy, anti-Sem- ers—has been committed by a man with a itism and other forms of violent terrorism history of violence against or harassment of and says misogyny should be considered women, often online. There’s a specifically Jewish angle to “a dangerous and underestimated component of extremism.” It explores the ways this, says Jessica Reaves, the report’s aumisogyny is expressed, both in person and thor. White supremacists see feminism (or online, and offers a useful taxonomy: There empowered women generally) as part of are the men’s rights activists (MRAs), who a Jewish globalist conspiracy. Meanwhile, believe feminism has resulted in discrimi- “incels”—who are predominantly white— nation against men; the self-proclaimed view Jewish men and men of other races “involuntary celibates” or “incels”; and the as being an undeserving obstacle between self-described “pickup artists,” who believe, themselves and the white women they deas the report puts it, that date rape is “not sire. (Jared Kushner is an example they fre-

FOB9.indd 18

quently use.) In these instances, everyone is the enemy: Jewish or non-white men for stealing the affections of white women, and white women for showing interest in those men rather than in white incels. More generally, the report notes, incels, MRAs and white supremacists all share a sense of entitlement: “Bigots of all stripes view justice as a zero-sum game.” This mentality is visible in the racism shown towards immigrants and refugees. It’s reflected by the so-called alt-right protestors marching through the streets of Charlottesville, chanting “Jews will not replace us,” and by the misogynists who blame feminism for denying them sex, jobs and whatever else they feel is lacking in their lives. Sometimes their anger comes from simply seeing women occupy spaces they’ve previously seen as exclusively male, as with women in video games or comic book fandoms—whether it’s Gamergate targeting women gamers and journalists, or racists harassing celebrities of color, such as Star Wars actress Loan Tran or Saturday Night Live’s Leslie Jones, on social media. What’s the next step? The ADL does have some recommendations, especially for law enforcement. Equally important, though, is simply taking misogyny seriously and not dismissing it as “boys being boys” or, at most, “trolling.” “We tend to focus more on racism, on anti-Semitism,” Reaves says, “but this is just as dangerous, just as deadly.” One group’s declaration of this fact won’t end misogyny. But if we finally agree to treat misogynistic language with the same zero-tolerance policy we often demand for anti-Semitism and white supremacist rhetoric, there’s at least a chance that virulent sexism can be stopped in some instances before it festers and breaks out into more violence.

Vivian Kane is the opinion editor of The Mary Sue, an online pop culture magazine.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

9/3/18 2:21 PM

C E L E B R AT I N G 4 3 Y E A R S O F INDEPENDENT JEWISH JOURNALISM!

Sunday, November 11, 2018 National Press Club, Washington, DC 6 PM

JOIN US FOR MOMENTâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S GALA & AWARDS DINNER HONORING AMAZING WOMEN

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Supreme Court of the United States

Jane Mayer

Investigative Reporter and Author

Esther Coopersmith Former U.S. Representative to the UN

Carol Brown Goldberg Visionary Artist

Master of Ceremonies: Robert Siegel With a special performance by artists from the Washington National Opera Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program Gala Committee Chairs: Phyllis Greenberger | Connie Krupin | Sharon Wilkes | Gwen Zuares

F O R T I C K E T S & TA B L E S C A L L J O H N N A R A S K I N AT 2 0 2 . 3 6 3 . 6 4 2 2 O R E M A I L J R A S K I N @ M O M E N T M AG .CO M

Gala FP Ad.indd 1

9/4/18 3:22 AM

MOMENT

D E B AT E

S H O U L D E D U C AT I O N

OP INION : NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY ‘If we keep giving colleges money, they will find ways to spend it’ Naomi Schaefer Riley is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute whose books include The Faculty Lounges: And Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get the Education You Paid For.

Should education be free to all? No. A lot of politicians and policy makers are trying to make higher education more affordable, which is a great goal, but making it free is not the way to go. It may be that too many people are going to college. We’re telling kids, “All you need is college,” but nothing about what they should study when they get there. We don’t require them to develop advanced skills in reading and writing and math. People say the skills for the jobs of tomorrow will be different, but I’ve yet to hear anyone explain why, in the jobs of tomorrow, we won’t need reading and writing and math. In four-year or even two-year colleges these days, people are advised to follow their passions, just as they’re told they should find their soulmate to get married. These are both terrible pieces of advice. Not that they shouldn’t study something they like, but we need to be honest with kids about what they need to learn and what the jobs that are out there require. By putting everyone on a college track, we’ve actually cut off a lot of vocational options for students who might like to pursue them. There are great jobs out there for people who want to be carpenters, welders and plumbers, and we have a shortage of all these things, which used to be wellpaying jobs, because we’ve told people they need a college degree. We also have a lot of people who have wasted money on college and not gotten a degree. That’s time and money lost for them, and for us. Subsidizing this broken system even more would be bad for the kids who could be making better choices, and it would also cause a further rise in tuition. If we keep giving colleges money, they will find ways to spend it. The biggest growth on college campuses unfortunately is not in hiring faculty, it’s been administrative load and facilities, fancy gyms and so on. 20

FOB9.indd 20

Should there be free vocational programs, or free tuition at community colleges? Community colleges don’t cost that much to begin with. These people you hear about with crushing student debt burdens, that debt usually is not from community colleges. So I think that’s a solution in search of a problem. A lot of things are good, and it’s not necessarily going to be better to make them free. I think there should be an operating market and competition, and we should be holding community colleges to quality standards and not just saying we’ll foot the cost no matter what. Vocational programs don’t actually need to be subsidized. The market rewards people for going in those directions. Those training programs actually used to be part of high school, so you could subsidize them as part of K-12 education. The job market is so tight right now that the market will institute its own training. Is there a broader problem of access to higher education? I don’t think it’s the access issue you typically hear about. Anyone can go to a community college. The access issue is whether you are prepared academically to succeed in college. Because if you’re not, college is a huge waste of time and money. You can trace that to our K-12 system, which is failing poor and disadvantaged students. A few years ago in the California State College system, something like 40 percent of freshmen needed to take a remedial math or reading course in order to go on to other topics. That seems crazy. The federal government is putting its finger on the wrong end of the scale, urging kids to make unwise decisions with their money, which in turn urges colleges to make unwise decisions with theirs. Does education cost too much? Yes, it does. Let’s take four-year state universities, because those are, or used to be, possibly affordable options for some families, but their costs have gone through the roof. Forget about out-of-state tuition—even if you’re in-state, those numbers have gone up significantly, partly just because of the expectations of what a residential college should look like.

Colleges are not cutting costs—they’re racing to see who can have the best students and the most attractive campus and the most extracurricular activities. It’s a vicious cycle, because they think that if they don’t have those things, they can’t attract the caliber of students they want, and then they can’t get alumni dollars, and round and round. Can the cost of college be reined in? There are a couple of ways. Colleges are so focused on the frills. I want them to pare things down and understand the basics, not just for the benefit of taxpayers but for the benefit of students. A group called the American Council of Trustees and Alumni issues a periodic report called “What Will They Learn?” It looks at general education requirements: How many students will graduate with a year of math? How many will graduate with an understanding of American politics? Basic, important questions, but the sad fact is that an increasing number of colleges don’t require these things, and they leave students flailing. What will happen to colleges in the near future? Is the model sustainable? Demographically, not as many people will be coming out of high school in the near future. So the whole four-year residential college system will be tested. There will be fewer and fewer of those schools. You’ll always have the schools at the top, the demand from well-off domestic and international students will always be there, and a lot more pressure on state universities. There will be a lot more online education, some good, some terrible. I think we’ve learned in recent years that even online education still requires a lot of human capital. You can’t just log everyone onto a magic website. I hope there will be more competencebased education. Schools have been skating by on the idea that a college degree is a stamp of approval. Employers will not just say, “Oh, I see you have a degree from this university.” They’re going to test employees for reading, writing, math, or say, “Look, you may or may not have a degree, but if you’ve gone to two months of coding class, you’re hired.”

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

9/3/18 2:23 PM

B E F R E E TO A L L ?

MOMENT

D E B AT E

OPIN ION: FRANCES FOX PIVEN ‘They should have everything we can afford, and we can afford plenty’ Frances Fox Piven is a professor of political science and sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author, most recently, of Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America.

Should education be free to all? Yes, it should. Not only that, but there should be subsidies to cover the cost of living for lowincome young people going to school. Free tuition by itself isn’t enough. Young people trying to study while struggling to earn enough money to maintain themselves and maybe help their families are always behind the eight ball. I’ve been teaching in various higher education institutions for basically all of my adult life, so I know a lot about the circumstances of these young people. I think that our society has become very, very unequal. The inequality is increasing rapidly and endangering our democracy. You know, educational institutions are not self-sustaining. They live off tuition, big donations and tax dollars. I’m sitting across the street from Columbia University right now, and Columbia occupies a huge swath of upper Manhattan and pays no taxes, even though it gets all the city services. Families invest a lot in the future of those young people, and then at Columbia they pay a lot but nevertheless are also subsidized by the state and the city of New York. It’s not that we should deny these free public services to Columbia; we should expand our thinking and do more to support other young people who don’t already have all these benefits. Is there a broader problem of access to higher education? Yes, it’s a big problem. Young people usually go to college when they’re 18, but they start school when they’re four, five or six. And all those years they have the benefit, or the lack of benefit, of being prepared for success in the world of work. We should pour resources into the preparation and education of all our children. We’re not doing that. We should do more for public education, for pre-K education, for children deprived of full-time

parenting. They should have everything we can afford, and we can afford plenty. Does education cost too much? Yes, it does. Universities are mirrors, and the internal workings of universities are beginning to mirror the distortions of the larger society. Enormous sums go to administrators and to for-profit consultants. There’s no good reason for that. I recently read that the take-home compensation of Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, is now $2.5 million a year. And every overpaid president has by his side and behind him a dozen or two dozen provosts, vice provosts, associate provosts, deans and so on. The administrative staffs of universities has become hugely bloated. They have become a kind of class unto themselves, at war with faculty and students. I can’t tell you how much the daily dynamics of the university have changed because some forprofit educational consultant has sold some administrator on the usefulness of monitoring this and that, requiring all sorts of questionnaires and procedures for doing things that are simple common sense. It’s poison for the universities, and in my experience, it’s true across the board. One other major problem: The most important thing that happens in universities is teaching, and a very large proportion of the teaching is no longer done by fulltime faculty. It’s done by adjuncts who work far too many hours and get paid very, very little. So we have not only these overpaid administrators with their retinue of forprofit consultants, but also a large class of people whose work is very insecure, a precarious labor force. Can the cost of college be reined in? State legislatures have a kind of control over public universities, and over private ones as well because they pay some of the costs, but they’re also susceptible to the lobbying and influence of the for-profit consultants and also of the administrators themselves. So it’s a very big problem. Would universities just spend more if they got higher subsidies? That could hap-

pen. It happens everywhere else in American society. But we’re talking specifically about a plan for free tuition. It’s true that universities will therefore require more public support, but I think that could be administratively handled so it would not produce bloat. I’d be all in favor of attaching conditions to new subsidies spelling out exactly how much could go to administrators, how much could go to the chancellor, etc. Some people suggest community college is already close to free. Is it? Tuition is cheaper there, but most of the students are poorer. Even if tuition were free, we should make cost-of-living subsidies available to them, just as I think we should do for students at four-year colleges. New York was the pioneer of free higher education. In 1847 the trustees of the City College of New York declared it their mission to provide “a free college education to the children of the working class.” And we are no longer doing that. During the fiscal crisis in New York City in 1976, the entire CUNY system, 10 or 20 colleges, imposed tuition for the first time, and the proud tradition of free higher education evaporated. What will happen to colleges in the near future? Is the model sustainable? I don’t know what’s going to happen about anything. Do you? One scenario is that a blue wave changes the House and even the Senate, a different administration comes in, the progressive movements that arose in reaction to President Donald Trump are encouraged and nourished, and all sorts of reforms that would improve American society become possible again, from Medicare-for-all to free college education. But it all depends on what happens politically. Government policy affects everything. Only trivial reforms are possible if you stay in the private sector and talk only about private schools. Maybe we get Harvard or Dartmouth or MIT to admit a few more black students. But a real, sweeping transformation of higher education is possible only with a transformation in politics.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

FOB9.indd 21

9/3/18 2:24 PM

JEWISH WORD | GENDER PRONOUNS

Can Hebrew Be Gender-Neutral?

ISTOCKPHOTO

n the first day of the semester, a fly on the wall might hear a college professor ask students to introduce themselves by sharing their names, intended majors and their own preferred gender pronoun identifiers, such as “ze,” “hir,” “hirs,” “they,” “them” and “theirs.” The practice of promoting gender inclusivity is becoming more commonplace on the American college campus, and it’s all part of the evolution of the English language. But for Hebrew speakers, gender inclusivity is much more complicated. That’s because gender in Hebrew—as in Spanish, Hindi, French and other languages—is intimately woven into word construction. “Hebrew goes a lot further,” says Erez Levon, a professor of sociolinguistics at Queen Mary University of London who focuses on questions of gender and sexuality. He explains that the language is particularly restrictive because gender is conveyed through masculine or feminine verb, adjective and adverb endings and almost every other part of speech. Take the noun “friend” in Hebrew. It translates to chaver for a male, chavera for a female, and chaverim and chaverot for a group of male and female friends, respectively. Levon says Hebrew can be “a challenge” for those who don’t fit into traditional gender categories or identify as nonbinary—those who don’t consider themselves male or female or don’t want to refer to gender at all. Some Israelis within the LGBTQ community have come up with their own strategies to address this problem. One example is the practice of fusing male and female suffixes to create a gender-inclusive plural suffix such as -imot or -otim, according to Sarah Bunin Benor, professor of contemporary Jewish studies at Hebrew Union College and linguistics professor at the University of Southern California. For example, chaverim is replaced with chaverimot when addressing a group of friends of different genders, rejecting the masculine default. A more-common method of promoting gender inclusivity is gender reversal, in which biological men—regardless of which gender they identify with—use female signifiers in conversation, and biological women use masculine signifiers. Some choose to 22

switch back and forth in a single conversation or even a single sentence—a practice Levon says communicates that “they don’t want to play that gender game.” This is what Nir Kedem chooses to do. A professor of culture studies at Sapir Academic College in Sderot and lecturer at Tel Aviv University, Kedem specializes in queer theory and feminism. He is a cisgender (someone who identifies with the gender they’re assigned at birth) gay man, but sometimes uses feminine language to refer to himself in the classroom and in writing to his students.

CHAVERIM

CHAVEROT

CHAVERIMOT

“It requires a certain effort, but this is my preferred strategy,” he says, explaining that he has had a hard time getting comfortable with fusing gender suffixes. In his writing, Kedem sometimes uses slashes or periods to refer to genders, such as chaverim/ot or chaverim.ot instead of just chaverim. Or he may change the order of the suffixes to place the feminine first, as in chaverot/im. Outside Israel, a policy normalizing gender inclusivity in Hebrew is found in an unexpected place—Habonim Dror, a North American Jewish youth movement that comes out of progressive labor Zionism. There, leaders have adopted the genderinclusive plural suffix, chaverimot, in their camps and youth groups and created a new gender-neutral singular suffix, -ol, which has its roots in the Hebrew word kolel, meaning “inclusive.” Now, a camper who identifies neither as a male camper (chanich)

nor female camper (chanichah) is a chanichol. Benor says the gender-neutral suffix -ol is an entirely Habonim Dror invention not found in Israeli communities. A similar phenomenon is taking place in some American congregations, where congregants are called to the Torah using gender-neutral language such as mibeyt/mimishpachat, meaning “from the house of” or “from the family of” instead of the traditional ben or bat (“son” or “daughter”). At Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST) in Manhattan, congregants who prefer not to signal their gender are called to the Torah with mibeyt. “The Jewish community is much broader than simply those who identify as one gender or another,” says Sharon Kleinbaum, CBST’s senior rabbi. “Language should express the reality of our lives, so we have expanded the language as we use it.” Benor doesn’t believe these policies will gain much traction in Israel. “They work in America because most American Jews are not fluent in Hebrew, and because the Hebrew words in question are used in primarily English settings,” she says. Americans only need to modify words they use in synagogue or at camp, but Israelis would need to change whole conversations. “The entire grammatical system would have to be modified,” Benor adds. The road to gender inclusivity in conversational Hebrew is long, says Kedem. He points to official forms in Israel that use male language to address all genders. Some include disclaimers at the top, saying that although the form uses masculine language, it addresses both males and females. But Kedem has yet to see a form with an option to mark “other” for gender in addition to male or female. There are signs that the Hebrew language is evolving with respect to gender, though. “Some of the feminine suffixes are falling out of use entirely,” says Levon. Just as Americans may refer to a group of women as “you guys,” Israelis are doing the same. This still promotes the use of masculine signifiers for people of different genders, but it might be a step forward for gender inclusivity. Although the trend doesn’t seem like a deliberate rejection of gender norms, says Levon, “it does seem that gender, in this sense, is becoming a little less important.”—Lara Moehlman

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

inthemoment5.indd 22

9/3/18 12:36 AM

ASK THE RABBIS | YOM KIPPUR EDITION

What Sins Should We Atone For In Our Use of Social Media? TELL US WHAT YOU THINK AT MOMENTMAG.COM/RABBIS

“DO WE GOSSIP? DO WE REPOST STORIES ABOUT FRIENDS, FAMILY OR COLLEAGUES THAT OUGHT NOT BE REPEATED? DO WE BELIEVE EVERYTHING WE READ?”

inthemoment5.indd 23

9/3/18 10:58 PM

WHAT SINS SHOULD WE ATONE FOR IN OUR USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA?

INDEPENDENT

O Master of the Universe! On this Yom Kippur, please forgive me...For the sin of neglecting the chulent pot and allowing it to boil over and become encrusted due to my obsessive checking and rechecking of Facebook. For the sin of not having heard my partner whisper “I love you” because I was listening to some rant on YouTube. For the sin of believing every libelous tirade posted on Instagram as if it had come down from Sinai. For the sin of spending hours hypnotically glommed onto Facebook Messenger while texting the person seated beside me. For the sin of not turning off my smartphone before going to sleep. For the sin of longing more desperately for an incoming text than for the touch of a lover. For the sin of not checking the content of my text prior to sending it, resulting in verbiage never intended. For the sin of awakening envy and disdain in others by sending photos and tweets about how absolutely wonderful my life is. For the sin of allowing social media to transform me into a mesmerized worshiper of screens illuminated by light-emitting diodes while I waste away in the back seat of my self-driving car. Rabbi Gershon Winkler Walking Stick Foundation Rancho Cucamonga, CA

HUMANIST

Social media provides a crucial platform for many people. It helps the marginalized find and embrace each other. It enables the powerless to combine into powerful coalitions. And, of course, there are those pictures of the grandchildren. Yet like many new technologies, social media has created new opportunities for us to wrong one another. From the spread of falsehoods to anonymous bullying to the ease with which we make casual racist, homophobic, misogynistic and ableist statements, social media encourages some terrible behaviors. Humanistic Jews are not shy about updating and adapting Jewish literature. But the traditional holiday confessional already seems to have anticipated social media. The wrongs we commit by means of the internet are not so very different from those that our tradition describes us committing “openly and in secret...with our speech...with foolish talk...by means of our evil inclination.” Social media extends the reach of all this lashon hara and other bad behavior. Yet its potential for good remains. Keeping this in mind, 24

during this year’s confession let us resolve to use the internet to fight falsehoods, bullying and so many more ills of our society.

“send.” We frame: cast innuendo without owning our actions and their implications. We maim: name-call, stereotype, use dehuRabbi Jeffrey Falick manizing language. We shame: “Whoever Birmingham Temple Congregation for publicly insults/shames another, whitening Humanistic Judaism their face in embarrassment, spills blood” Farmington Hills, MI (Bava Metzia 58b). And one non-rhyming entry: misplaced priorities. How many posts about lunch or pets; how many about justice or sustainability? For the sin of being snarky—and reveling Instead, let’s cultivate silence, “the best in it. It’s funny, it’s satisfying, and it’s probmedicine of all” (Megillah 18a), by posting ably not so good for our souls. Social media less. Let’s listen, reading carefully, assumreminds me of the passage in Deuteronomy ing the best of others. Let’s cultivate lashon where Moses sets before the people both tov, positive, constructive speech, words blessings and curses—except that with social that heal and build. And let’s avoid bitul media you get both, all the time. Like the z’man, the sin of wasting time: step away Shehecheyanu blessing, social media encourfrom the ^#%&* screen! ages us to recognize and bless special moRabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb ments. But the desire to share with others Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation “out there” can take us away from that moBethesda, MD ment and from those who are “right here.” The moment is happening, but we turn away, trying to find the right words for a Facebook post. Or our kids are sitting next to us, re- Each Yom Kippur we recite the Ashamnu ceptive and eager to talk, but we’re absorbed prayer, an alphabet of sins we, as imperfect in “liking” other people’s lives. human beings, are inclined to commit. ReOr we miss the mark by letting envy join citing collectively rather than singularly, we us as we scroll through other people’s celebra- take shared responsibility for keeping one tions, their beautiful families, their burgeon- another on the proper path. Consider this ing careers and exciting travel and well-word- modern alphabetical Ashamnu: ed opinions. Can we instead help ourselves For the sins of making assumptions, bulto see other folks as part of us, as being on lying, careless use of words and dishonesty the same team? How can we turn jealousy in our posts, may we be forgiven. May we into what Rabbi Nehemia Polen calls “holy no longer engage in egotism, spreading envy”—the kind of envy that lifts us up and falsehoods, gossip, hate speech or indecenconnects us rather than separating us? cies. May we no longer be tempted by jinRabbi Gilah Langner goism, kneejerk responses, malevolence and Congregation Kol Ami name-calling. We should stand up against Arlington, VA obsequiousness, public shaming, quarrels and resistance to hearing new ideas. May we let go of selfishness and no longer take time away from family for social media. The double-acrostic Al Chet enumerates May we call out unchecked sources, report our sins, places where we’ve missed the violent threats, not whet our tongues with mark. Many of its 44 sample shortcom- xenophobia nor yield to zealous divisiveings deal with speech, whether “utterance ness. For all these sins and more, we ask of lips,” “evil tongue” (lashon hara) or “false Your forgiveness. Amen. vows.” Amid today’s ubiquitous imper- Rabbi Laura Novak Winer sonal social media, the theme is amplified: Fresno, CA thoughtless keyboard-clacking; 5 a.m. texts; forgetting the recipient’s humanity. For real teshuvah (turning/repentance), we must know just how we err, online: Jewish tradition is fully aware of how freWe aim: weaponize words. We blame: quently our words can be misused. The rabsingle out someone for undue condemna- bis wisely understood the danger of cruel, tion. We claim: advance unchecked assump- disrespectful or dishonest words. They can tions, opinions or fake news as factual. We divide a family, break a friendship and deflame: fail to reassess, or check our anger stroy a reputation. To atone, we must first ask or our basest instincts, before pressing ourselves the right questions.

RENEWAL

REFORM

RECONSTRUCTIONIST

CONSERVATIVE

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

inthemoment5.indd 24

9/3/18 10:58 PM

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK AT MOMENTMAG.COM/RABBIS

Do we post more than we read what others have posted? Do we gossip? Do we repost stories about friends, family or colleagues that ought not be repeated? Do we believe everything we read? Do we post with the intention of hurting others? Do we waste time on social media? Do we post pictures that are hurtful? Or embarrassing? Or misleading? Do we repeat poorly sourced rumors? Are we mean-spirited or cruel because we are not talking face-to-face with another person? If spoken words can be dangerous, the written word on social media can be exponentially more hurtful. Social media revives the old problem of the destructive effects of village gossip and extends it to the global village. Rabbi Amy Wallk Katz Temple Beth El Springfield, MA

ORTHODOX

In the Torah portion Re’eh, we read, “See, I have given you today a blessing and a curse” (Deuteronomy 11:26). Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Charlap (1882-1951) was appalled by the notion that God can ever be described as “giving” a curse. So he argued that, really, God gives us only a blessing: Just as God creates things ex nihilo, he gives us some of that same creative capacity. What we do with that creativity can then turn into either a blessing or a curse. Unfortunately, social media, like so many other things that could have been a blessing, is something we have often turned into a curse. We have used it to create distance between people rather than bring them together. We have used it to shrink our personal universes rather than to expand them. We have used it to feed our egocen-

MODERN ORTHODOX

There is nothing in using social media that is intrinsically sinful. Like all technology, it may be used for good or for evil. So if we have “spoken slander” or “framed lies,” if we have shown “contempt for parent and teacher” or “spoken with impure lips,” if we have “entrapped a neighbor” or “breached a trust” on social media, then we should confess under those rubrics in our general confession of sins. Then we need to win atonement by apology, restitution and seeking forgiveness from our victim. None of this is distinctive to social media. Some people do act more sinfully on the internet than they would in interpersonal society. The anonymity of the act or lack of personal contact with the victim brings out particularly vicious behavior in some people. People who would never act this way in person may be guilty of bullying or cruel and cutting demolitions of others. They may spread “fake news,” total fabrications or groundless conspiracy theories. Especially damaging sins require extra effort to win atonement. The method of teshuvah is the same for “new breed” sins as it is for traditional sinful behavior. One must feel/express regret, confess the sin before God, offer apology or restitution and seek forgiveness from the victim. Atonement is then completed with the observance of Yom Kippur. But be warned: The Talmud says that there are some sins so terrible that God does not grant atonement/ forgiveness until the death of the sinner. Rabbi Yitzhak Greenberg Riverdale, NY

IF SPOKEN WORDS CAN BE DANGEROUS, THE WRITTEN WORD ON SOCIAL MEDIA CAN BE EXPONENTIALLY MORE HURTFUL.

tricity rather than our ability to give and share. And in the rare cases where none of the above apply, we have used social media to squander the ultimate non-renewable resource—time. Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein CrossCurrents Los Angeles, CA

SEPHARDIC

Social media sins! Where do I even start? Probably with Jeremiah 9:8, “Their tongue is a sharp arrow.” Gossip, calumny and libel are compared in the Bible to swords and poison, but the image of arrows best captures the dangerous power of our words, because once an arrow leaves the bow, there is no retrieving it. The best 21st-century weapon analogy for social media would be biological warfare—going “viral.” Social media allows us to communicate with billions of users, which is wonderful, but words written in haste, in anger or for revenge can alter the lives of countless people. Even if it’s only one person, the damage

in most cases is irreversible. How do I reach out to all the people who read my original post to tell them that I made a mistake? Another serious offense is exposing sensitive information about others. It is usually not deliberate, but one cannot escape responsibility. Then there is trolling, spamming, phishing and let’s not forget the friend who sends you a million WhatsApps and then scolds you for not replying. There’s gluism, the state of being glued to your phone and the primal need to document and post every minute of your life. The only atonement for the sins of social media is awareness as a preventive measure. Let us think twice (or more) before unleashing unretractable arrows. Rabbi Haim Ovadia Bethesda, MD

CHABAD

The answer is rather simple: a lot. A classic Jewish story is told of a rabbi who was once maligned by a member of his community, who then regretted his actions and approached the rabbi asking to be forgiven. The rabbi asked the person for a pillow and went with him to a hilltop. He then sliced open the pillow as they both watched the feathers blow in every direction. The rabbi said, “I can forgive you when you collect every last feather and place it back in the pillow.” The moral is obvious. When you post or share something on social media, you can’t really take it back, even if you delete it. It gets shared so quickly that sometimes things can literally be seen around the world by many millions, even billions. Chassidus explains that speech, or expression, is the process by which that which is yours alone becomes part of the world beyond you. This applies even to words spoken only to Alexa. G-d wanted to create a world. When He actually spoke the words, the world then came to be. That which had been His alone now existed for others as well. We need to be mindful of what we post and share—and even what we choose to see. And when the High Holidays come, we should resolve to see and share only what helps make our lives more uplifting and the world better. That’s the core human mission. Let’s post good things and bring light to what has become all too dark all too often. Rabbi Levi Shemtov Executive Vice President, American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) Washington, DC

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

inthemoment5.indd 25

9/3/18 10:59 PM

W E I R E H AND D T R D O N U O S W ORLD

W OF W E J ANDS AGIC M by Marilyn Cooper

Magic6.indd 26

9/3/18 11:48 PM

to popular belief, mag y r a r t ic Con n e c s e e in Judai n a pr e e b sm s ha blical times until today i b m . fro

he first time I came face-to-face with Jewish magic was when I moved to Israel in my early 20s. It was the fall of 1995 and Jerusalem was beginning a 15-month celebration marking the 3,000 years since King David conquered the city and proclaimed it the capital of the Jewish people. Bright banners emblazoned with â&#x20AC;&#x153;3000â&#x20AC;? hung from street lamps throughout the municipality and the mood was festive. Along with countless others, I watched the opening ceremonies outside the Knesset and listened, enthralled, as

Magic6.indd 27

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told of leading the Israeli Army into the Old City of Jerusalem during the 1967 War and then spoke about how the real message of the last 3,000 years was the need for tolerance between religions and love between peoples. At the end of the speech, an Israeli man turned to me and told me that, for the first time, he believed Israel would know peace within his lifetime. Six weeks later Rabin was shot dead. Overnight Jerusalem was transformed. Black-and-white images of the slain prime

9/3/18 11:38 PM

FLASH90

Members of Gush Emunim, a right-wing group that supports Jewish settlements in the West Bank, perform a Pulsa deNura ritual against Yitzhak Rabin shortly before he was assassinated in 1995.

minister replaced the celebratory banners, and a somber atmosphere prevailed. Wild rumors soon emerged, with one in particular gaining traction. I heard over and over that a magical curse had led to the assassination. At a time when the impossible had happened, this seemed plausible to many. The rapidly spreading story held that 32 days before the assassination, on October 3, 1995, a small group of ten or so fringe national-religious activists, angry at Rabin’s intention to trade land for peace, had gathered outside the prime minister’s home in Jerusalem. It was Yom Kippur Eve—considered the holiest night of the entire Jewish year—and the rabbis, who had fasted for two days in preparation, stood in a circle around two Torah scrolls, blew a ram’s horn and then chanted: “On him, Yitzhak son of Rosa, known as Rabin...we have permission...to demand from the angels of destruction that they take a sword to this 28

Magic6.indd 28

wicked man...to kill him...for handing over the Land of Israel to our enemies, the sons of Ishmael.” Known as the Pulsa deNura (“Lashes of Fire”), this ancient Aramaic ritual was first mentioned in the Talmud and then described in greater detail in ancient Hebrew manuals of magic. When performed correctly, the curse was purported to inflict divine wrath on its victims within a year. After Rabin’s assassination, Pulsa deNura quickly became a household phrase. It remains a canonical element of any recounting of Rabin’s assassination; even the official Israeli government biography of Rabin mentions the curse by name. Intrigued by this tale, I began to study the use of magic in Judaism. Like many others, I hadn’t been aware that Judaism had a rich tradition of magic that dated back to the Hebrew Bible. Many modern Jews simply ignore the topic altogether, because they believe that Jews have evolved past that aspect of their religion.

They dismiss it as “irrational folklore,” says Yuval Harari, author of Jewish Magic Before the Rise of Kabbalah. Magic is an “alien element that penetrated” Judaism “from the outside and stained it,” influential mid-20th-century Israeli scholars Saul Lieberman and Ephraim Urbach argued. Their view prevailed until Moshe Idel, the preeminent scholar of Jewish mysticism, presented a picture in which magic was a central aspect of Judaism. Magic, he writes in the foreword to the 2004 edition of Joshua Trachtenberg’s Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion, “is a vital form of Jewish spirituality. [Judaism is] deeply informed by magical ways of thinking and manners of action that are conceived to be both effective and licit.” As I investigated magic in the Bible, I found many contradictory messages. In Exodus we are told, “You shall not suffer a witch to live.” In Deuteronomy, Jews are forbidden from being a “sooth-

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

9/3/18 11:38 PM

Left: A text fragment of an exorcism ceremony performed on Qamar bat Rahmah to try to rid her of the spirit of her dead husband, Nissim ben Bonia, which was held in the 18th or 19th century and recovered from the Cairo Geniza. Right: A she-demon bound with chains and surrounded by words of adjuration.

Amos, a folklorist at the University of Pennsylvania, about this, he explained: “In short, God makes miracles and people perform magical acts.” The Talmud is also full of magical lore and seems equally conflicted about the supernatural. Talmudic-period rabbis (70-640 CE) forbid some magic as being the “ways of the Amorites,” the people who inhabited Palestine before the Israelites, but describe other magical acts with awe and even pride. In one story, the sage Rabbi Eliezer gains prestige when his deep knowledge of Torah endows him with supernatural powers that enable him to prevent a house from collapsing. In one of my favorite stories, a pair of 3rd-century rabbis are celebrated for using a spell to create cows on a Friday afternoon, just in time for a sumptuous Shabbat steak dinner. But when another rabbi uses the same words to manufacture a humanoid golem, his rabbinical colleague turns it to dust because it can-

not speak and therefore must be “a [dangerous] creature of the magicians.” In general, Talmudic rabbis are not concerned with magical actions per se, but rather with the character and intentions of the person performing the act. As in the Torah, whether an unusual event is a miracle (and therefore praiseworthy) or magic (and thus deplorable) depends on who does it and for what purpose. Part of the confusion hinges on the definition of terms: What’s the difference between religion and magic? How can we distinguish a prayer from a spell, or superstition from religious ritual? Carlo Ginzburg, a history professor at UCLA and author of the seminal 1976 book on folk religion and magic, The Cheese and the Worms, attributes it to point of view. “Magic,” he says, “is generally used to describe the religious and ritual practices of people of whom the speaker disapproves.” He adds that historically there is an attitude that “what I do is ritual, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

Magic6.indd 29

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE;COURTESY OF YUVAL HARARI, COLLECTION OF SHLOMO MOUSSAIEF, PHOTO BY MATTHEW MORGENSTERN

sayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer.” It appears from these texts that the Bible views magic as a real phenomenon, albeit one that the Israelites shouldn’t take part in. Yet the most revered figures in the Bible engage in magical acts. Following a directive from God, Aaron throws his rod down before Pharaoh and it becomes a snake. The Egyptians follow suit, and using their “secret arts,” perform the same act. But proof of Aaron’s superiority comes when his snake swallows the Egyptian ones. The Torah of course is full of supernatural acts—manna raining down from heaven, barren women giving birth, animals speaking—but these events are all attributed to God. Thus the supernatural happenings of the Israelites—whose source of power is God—are extolled. Similarly, when God parts the Red Sea as the Israelites flee Egypt, it’s considered a miracle. When I asked Dan Ben-

9/3/18 11:38 PM

iSTOCKPHOTO

Witch-burning in the County Reinstein in 1555. A woodcut engraving from 1881.

but what other people do is magic or idolatry.” Folklorist Ben-Amos agrees that perspective is key. “Terms like superstition and magic are usually used to describe the beliefs or religious practices of other people,” he tells me. “The beliefs of Jews, for instance, were considered superstitious by Christian Europe.” Ultimately it’s hard to know exactly what magic is. “In real life,” he says, “religion and magic often converge.” Yuval Harari concurs. “From biblical times to our day,” he maintains, “there is an unclear and sketchy borderline between the prophet or the rabbi, the hasid or the sorcerer, miracle or magic and prayer or incantation.” He argues that “we should not draw a hard line between magic and Jewish ritual or halacha, because magic is not essentially different from the ‘normal’ Jewish religious view that ascribes actual power to sacrifice, prayer, ritual and observance of law.” 30

Magic6.indd 30

Magic, which calls on unseen forces, also does not differ from common Jewish views of the involvement of God—and angels and demons—in day-to-day life. Indeed, magical creatures populate Jewish texts and traditions. Shedim is the Hebrew word for demons or malevolent spirits, and like most people in the premodern world, Jews believed that shedim were real and ubiquitous: One medieval census estimated the number of demons at somewhat more than one for each person on earth. Amitai Adler, a rabbi who lectures on Jewish magic, explains that the belief in the prevalence of demons reflected a life replete with unexplained diseases and other threatening phenomena. Evil spirits, Jewish sources relate, were potentially everywhere: They inhabited dark corners and even lurked at the dinner table to gather leftover crumbs. Jews thought demons could cause harm by infiltrating one’s house, body, thoughts

and even dreams. They were invisible, but fortunately, the Talmud gives practical advice on how to deal with them: For a person to see the demons that surround him, he should “take the afterbirth of a black she-cat, the offspring of a black she-cat, the first-born of the first-born,” roast it, grind it up and then put the powder in his eye. Another text recommends sprinkling ashes around one’s bed: If demons are present, you will see their footprints in the ashes the next morning. If you wanted to protect yourself from a demon or expel one that had already infiltrated your body, the Talmud also provides specific advice about how to use amulets and magical bowls covered with spells and holy names. Although in many ways Jewish magic is similar to other magic, it possesses certain defining characteristics. One is the use of the Hebrew language and biblical names. In Jewish Magic and Superstition, Trachten-

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

9/3/18 11:38 PM

berg writes that “invocation of [biblical] names was the commonest feature of medieval Jewish magic. Incantations most often consisted of a name, or a series of names, with or without an accompanying action.” This aspect of Jewish magic caught the attention of non-Jews early on. Origen Adamantius, a 3rd-century theologian and the first Christian known to study Hebrew, commented on the magical power of invoking biblical names. In his Hexapla, the first critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, he wrote of biblical names that “are so powerful that when linked with the name of God the formula ‘Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’...exorcises demons, and [it is] used not only by members of the Jewish nation but also by almost all those who deal in magic and spells.” Adamantius correctly understood that Jews used the exact same words and liturgical formulations in both “normal” and magical settings. Popular ancient Jewish magic manuals reprinted in the late medieval period, such as Sefer ha-Razim (The Book of Mysteries) and Harba de-Moshe (The Sword of Moses), contain magical spells and formulas that could enable one to know the future, speak to the moon and stars or see the sun during the night. The books claim that these powers, and much more, might be achieved through modifying common Jewish rituals for magical purposes, and offer instructions for manipulating objects and concocting potions. For this kind of folk magic, Jews made use of many of the same materials employed by non-Jewish magicians— blood, saliva, feces, hair, herbs, gemstones and salt. Rabbis turned a blind eye to much of this activity, though they were more comfortable with the more “elite” incantations that made use of the Hebrew language and Jewish names. Black magic—practices that intentionally called upon evil spirits to harm other people—was the only form of magic that was absolutely forbidden. On the more whimsical side, love potions and charms were wildly popular in many eras. “Love,” however, didn’t necessarily have much to do with modern

notions of romance. Yuval Harari explains that in Jewish magic literature, the word “love” refers to a wide spectrum of relationships—from marriage and strong emotional attachments to sexual relations and even sexual abuse. A typical love spell inscribed on an amulet discovered in the Cairo Genizah reads, “You, all the holy knots and all the praiseworthy letters, kindle and burn the heart of Tarshekhin son of Amat-Allah in longing after Gadb daughter of Tuffaha.” There were also detailed spells such as one described in a

From biblical times to our day, there is a sketchy border between the prophet or the rabbi, the hasid or the sorcerer, miracle or magic and prayer or incantation.

recipe also found in the Cairo Genizah: “For love. Tested and proven. Take an egg and draw out what is in it through a small piercing and when the egg will be empty, take the blood of a man and of a woman and fill the entire egg and seal the hole in the egg with wax. Write on the egg with the mixture of the bloods the names of the man and the woman and bury it in the ground. Immediately there will be great love between them, they will not be able to separate from one another.” Other “love” spells were more troubling, including ones for a man to force a woman to follow his orders “even if it

goes against her own wishes” and incantations for a man to get rid of a woman he no longer sexually desired. Today there are new ways of packaging and marketing Jewish magic in regard to romance. For only a small donation to its website, the American Orthodox rabbinic group Vaad HaRabbonim will chant incantations and pray for donors to find their romantic mates at midnight on the seventh day of Pesach—apparently the exact time of the parting of the Red Sea. The group boasts that 90 percent of the names on its prayer list have gotten engaged. There are also Israeli organizations that advertise special segulot (charms) performed on the holiday of Lag b’Omer, again in exchange for a donation, that result in the curing of “severe lovesickness.” Throughout the generations, Jewish women were not just the objects of men’s spells, they were also active participants in the magical arts, serving as healers, diviners, dream-interpreters and mediums. Jews and non-Jews both believed that women were more likely than men to possess supernatural gifts such as clairvoyance. Women mainly practiced folk magic, usually for household purposes—especially anything to do with fertility, birth control or pregnancy. According to Rebecca Macy Lesses, author of the 1998 book Ritual Practices to Gain Power: Angels, Incantations, and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism, women’s expertise in folk magic was such that “while rabbis blamed women for being involved in sorcery, they were at the same time willing to learn from them about healing and the use of amulets and incantations.” There is even a case of a woman and a rabbi performing spells together to rid a household of demons. By the early 17th century, there were instances of rabbis consulting with female mediums in order to reach the dead—which brings us to witches. A dark and threatening image of Jewish women as witches emerged during the Middle Ages. At the time, in Christian as well as Jewish society, there was a great fear of the supposed SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

Magic6.indd 31

9/3/18 11:38 PM

iSTOCKPHOTO; CREATIVE COMMONS

Left: Aaron’s Staff Becomes a Snake, wood engraving, 1886. Right: A page from Sefer ha-Razim, a magical handbook from the Talmudic period, that includes examples of the hamsa, a symbolic hand worn as a pendant or hung on a wall as protection against the evil eye.

prevalence of witches with vampirelike characteristics. These women were accused of drinking blood and eating children. Even after death, they were thought to find ways to devour the living. Sefer Hasidim (The Book of the Pietists), the most important work of the 12th- and 13th-century mystical movement, provides advice on how to deal with these women. The book recommends that in the moment before a vigilante-style execution (the book clarifies that this, of course, would never be done by the pietists themselves), these cannibalistic witches should be offered absolution in exchange for information about how to neutralize them in their graves. The book reports that one “witch” suggested that she be killed by having a stake driven into her mouth and down through her body to the ground beneath, while another proposed filling the mouths of her dead 32

Magic6.indd 32

cohorts with gravel. And although Jews did not actively take part in the early modern European witch hunts, which resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of women, leading Jewish figures endorsed them. Menasseh ben Israel, the 17th-century rabbi famous for being Spinoza’s teacher, justified the executions as being a “necessary” response to the “insurmountable threat of the demonic pack of witches.” A new kind of unwelcome body invader entered the Jewish lexicon during the 16th century—the dybbuk. A malevolent spirit or ghost, the dybbuk was said to usually possess low-status members of society, most commonly women and children. Badly behaved spirits, dybbukim were renowned for accusing respected members of the Jewish community of embarrassing sexual acts. Usually a male spirit possessed a female body. In one famous case, a dyb-

buk was alleged to possess Eidel, the beloved daughter of 19th-century Hasidic leader Rabbi Sholom Rokeach of Belz. After his death, the voice of Rabbi Sholom emerged from Eidel, accusing different prominent men in the community of sexual misconduct. Eventually a dybbuk was identified by Eidel’s brother and exorcised. The exorcism itself likely involved burning herbs and incense and then immersing Eidel in water. Following the exorcism, Eidel collapsed and never fully recovered, reportedly suffering from severe depression for the rest of her life. Kate Miriam Loewenthal, a professor of psychology at the Royal Holloway, University of London, theorizes that voiceless members of society may have claimed to be possessed in order to have a way to express their views, or that those who were deemed possessed were actually suffering from mental health issues.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

9/3/18 11:39 PM

P O EM | J U L I A K NO BLO C H

THE STATE OF THINGS On the day after Yom Kippur, I ride my bike along the waterfront. Pious men build their sukkah before sunset. Will they invite me to be their guest? Priests and prophets are oblivious of emptiness. The past is with me, an unhappy house in my old neighborhood in Buenos Aires. Across the river, platinum flickers.

Excerpts from Harba de-Moshe, a Jewish magical treatise from 7th–9th century.

There is a difference between dream and vision. I want to describe the moon behind olive trees, sunflowers against a black sky. I want to keep the light that fills my bedroom with the memory of a vacation home. I want to fix what is broken before I can let it go. The rabbi said one embrace can heal the world. Cut off and childless, I want to know: What sin did I commit? Which mark did I miss?

To my surprise, there were also instances in which Jews actively wished to be possessed by benevolent spirits. Isaac Luria, the foremost Jewish mystic of the 16th century, and his followers regularly performed graveside rituals intended to attract friendly spirits to possess their souls. They believed that being possessed would increase their ability to know and understand the unseen world. During the early modern period, roughly the 15th through 18th centuries, the study of magic and mysticism occasionally led to close personal contact and intellectual collaboration between Jews and Christians. Kabbalah, equated with magic by many, caught the eye of Christian scholars such as the Catholic priest Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) and philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494). Both men wanted to discover the secret

No one asks for forgiveness at the waterfront. Longshoremen dance in Amsterdam. The factory is gone. I hear laughter in the rain. I don’t have the words for a poem I need to write. Pious men smoke and squint at skinny girls. A string puppet plays the violin. The Argentine bard’s name was He who comes from faraway lands to say something. I smell my hair in the evening wind.

Julia Knobloch’s poetry has appeared in Jewish Currents, Moment Magazine, Reform Judaism, Jewcy, Green Mountains Review, Rascal and elsewhere. She won the 2016 Poem of the Year Award from Brooklyn Poets. A trained journalist and documentary filmmaker, she now works in the Jewish nonprofit world and lives in Brooklyn.

Continues on page 63 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

Magic6.indd 33

9/3/18 11:39 PM

How Have

Female

Clergy Transformed

Jewish

Life, Ritual and

Practice? WomenRabbi4.indd 34

9/4/18 3:14 AM

A MOMENT SYMPOSIUM

With Eric Alterman Marc D. Angel April Baskin Baruch Efrati Amy Eilberg Nadine Epstein Blu Greenberg Susannah Heschel Sara Hurwitz Naamah Kelman-Ezrachi Avis D. Miller Tova Mirvis Stacy Offner Sally Priesand Steven Pruzansky Stephanie Ruskay Sandy Sasso Avi Shafran Adina Shmidman Deborah Waxman David Wolpe

he history of female clergy in Judaism is a short one. In modern times, it begins with Regina Jonas, who was privately ordained in Nazi Germany in 1935 and later died in Auschwitz. It has continued over the past five decades as Sally Priesand, Sandy Sasso and Amy Eilberg became the first ordained Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative female rabbis, respectively, and Sara Hurwitz the first ordained Orthodox female clergy. But Jewish women served as spiritual leaders long before modern times, although their histories have largely been erased. Historically, Jewish women faced enormous obstacles when trying to obtain a Jewish education and were usually barred from yeshivot. Those who overcame these barriers were normally the daughters of male scholars who had no sons to educate, or those who benefitted peripherally from the education of their brothers. The first such woman was likely Beruriah (ca. 150 CE), an accomplished scholar who the Talmud says “learned 300 laws a day from 300 different teachers.” Her father was probably the renowned teacher Chanina ben Teradyon, and her husband may have been Rabbi Meir, a Talmudic commentator who helped shape the Mishnah. Beruriah, best known for ingenious explanations for biblical verses, rose to fame after challenging the great male scholars of her time. And although the frequently cited erudition of the daughters of the 11th-century French commentator Rashi is entirely mythological, one of his 14th-century descendants is credited with educating the women of her community, and the wife of another was a respected Talmudic scholar. By the 16th century, a growing number of upper-class Italian women received a good Jewish education, over the objections of rabbinic authorities

that it would corrupt them. One, Anna d’Arpino, was paid for leading women in prayer in a synagogue in Rome, making her the first Jewish woman known to earn a salary for a clerical role. As Hasidism spread in the 18th and 19th centuries, more women became religious leaders and scholars. Hannah Rachel Verbermacher (1805–1888), known as the Maiden of Ludmir, resisted marriage in order to study Hebrew texts and gained a modest following of both men and women. Eidel, the daughter of the 17th-century founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, also became a popular Hasidic leader and teacher. These and other women performed most of the functions of rabbis, but without any official recognition. From the late 1800s through the 20th century, a number of Hasidic women actually led and sustained their communities after their fathers or husbands passed away. Many of those Hasidic dynasties still exist today, but most won’t acknowledge the female leaders in their past. These women and others set the stage for female clergy to come, but none of them enjoyed the authority and prestige that accompanies the title “rabbi.” All that changed on June 3, 1972, when Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk, president of the Hebrew Union College, placed his hands on Sally Priesand’s head and granted her smichah. When Priesand later said of her long journey to the rabbinate, “I not only envisioned it; I fought for it,” she could have been speaking for centuries of her foremothers. It’s been only 46 years since that day—but outside the Orthodox movement, it’s increasingly rare to find a synagogue without female clergy. Moment asks Priesand, Sasso, Eilberg, Hurwitz and many others—including those who still adamantly oppose the ordination of women—to weigh in on how female clergy have transformed Jewish life, ritual and practice.—Marilyn Cooper SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

WomenRabbi4.indd 35

9/4/18 3:14 AM

I N T E R V I E W S B Y M A R I LY N C O O P E R & E L L E N W E X L E R

SALLY PRIESAND was the first American woman ordained as a rabbi (1972). She spent 25 years as a rabbi at Monmouth Reform Temple in New Jersey.

y experience these past 46 years tells me that female rabbis have changed Jewish life in the following ways: rethinking previous models of leadership and opening doors to partnership and networking; training new leaders to be more gender-aware by welcoming to our institutions of higher learning respected female scholars able to share with us valuable lessons and insights unique to women; creating new role models and allowing to be heard, often for the first time, the stories of those whose voices have been silenced for too long—the countless number of women who have enriched our people from biblical times on. Feminism has had an important impact on theology. Like many, I grew up with the image of God as King, omnipotent and clearly male. Life as a congregational rabbi, however, gave me the opportunity to discover new models of divinity, to know that God embodies characteristics both masculine and feminine and to fashion for myself, and hopefully for my congregants, a meaningful theology that has been a source of strength. As America’s first female rabbi, I experienced many challenges along the way. When I first arrived at Hebrew Union College, there were those who thought I had come to marry a rabbi

rather than be one, and my sincerity was often suspect. I always felt the need to be better and do better than my classmates so that my commitment and my academic ability would not be questioned. Occasionally, I sensed that some people would not be overly upset if I failed. More than once it would have been easy to drop out, but I persevered because I truly wanted to teach Torah. Finding a job was not easy. Some congregations would not consider me from the get-go, and others wanted me only for publicity value. In talking to colleagues, I have discovered that one of the greatest tensions, both for the rabbi and the congregation, centers on being a congregational rabbi, having a family and being pulled in so many different directions all at once. I did not face this challenge because I consciously chose not to marry and have children. I know myself well enough to know that I could not have a family and be a congregational rabbi and do both well. I admire those who can, but I know that I am not one of them. If we want our rabbis, both female and male, to model meaningful family life, then we must support them in the choices they make and enable them to spend more time with their families.

AMY EILBERG was the first woman ordained as a Conservative rabbi (1995). She serves as the coordinator of Jewish engagement for Faith in Action Bay Area.

he symbolic meaning of women serving as rabbis sends a profound message of equality—that women are needed and welcome in all aspects of Jewish life. While not all women rabbis are the same, women rabbis in general tend to have a primarily relational focus in life. One’s own self-advancement is not as important as caring about those around us. This has transformed the new generation of Jewish leadership. Women are less concerned with being on top and more concerned with attending to the needs of other people in building Jewish communities, life and spiritual practice. The younger generations of rabbis—both men and women—prioritize this. The stan36

dard image of a rabbi as remote and far away from the community is no longer current. This would not have happened without female clergy. That style of rabbinic leadership served some generations well, but it is passing away—few rabbis even choose to stand on raised platforms anymore. Women rabbis have been in the lead in creating women’s rituals for parts of the life cycle that are not in the canon. We have created feminist liturgy and midrash, non-gendered God language and an entire feminist ethos. Judaism itself evolves differently now that the whole Jewish people, not just half of them, are involved in creating it.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

WomenRabbi4.indd 36

9/4/18 3:14 AM

AVI SHAFRAN, an Orthodox rabbi, is the director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.

can only bear witness to the haredi and tradition-bound Orthodox worlds. There are halachic limitations on the roles of women, but halacha contains no particular section on the qualifications of a congregational rabbi. So contemporary halachic decisors, scholars who make Jewish legal decisions, must extrapolate a position on the matter from other halachic areas. The spirit of the law is most important when weighing any new questions. Decisors must judge whether a departure from the de facto tradition is within that spirit or not. They must weigh things such as “Is a proposed innovation motivated exclusively by the determination to create a better-functioning Jewish world, or might it be fueled, in part or in whole, by a particular society’s secular ideals?” My concern, therefore, is that the acceptance of female clergy is at least partly motivated by non-Jewish societal values and not inherently Jewish ones. That is a major part of why the idea of female clergy has been rejected by the haredi and traditional Orthodox communities. The bottom line, though, is that Orthodox Jews look to their halachic decisors

for guidance, and all widely accepted decisors who have opined on the matter have determined that it is unacceptable for women to lead congregations. Through the ages, accomplished Jewish women have had a powerful influence, but it has been brought to bear—as is the case with many male role models and religious guides—quietly and modestly. Neither the title “clergywoman” nor public appearances or speeches have ever been necessary for women to influence Jewish lives, and they won’t be necessary for that meaningful influence to continue. In the haredi and traditional Orthodox worlds, the wife of a congregational rabbi is usually an intrinsic and important part of the leadership of the congregation. Although a traditional rebbetzin will not offer sermons before men or engage in other public demonstrations of her leadership, she will often counsel female congregants and serve as a role model for them. That has always been the case and has not, to my witnessing, changed in any way since the advent of female clergy in other parts of the Jewish world.

SANDY SASSO was the first woman ordained as a rabbi in Reconstructionist Judaism (1974). She is the director of the Religion, Spirituality and the Arts Initiative at Butler University and Christian Theological Seminary.

early five decades after the ordination of the first woman in the United States, so much has changed. What was once alternative, even countercultural, has for many become tradition. The unwritten narratives of women’s lives have shaped the contours of religious renewal. From birth to death, from menarche to menopause, new landscapes have been sculpted from the soil of tradition. Women rabbis not only help create new ritual, they also reshape its performance, from something acted out upon us to something we enact. When a baby girl was born in our rabbinic community in the 1970s, my husband and I created a covenantal ceremony for girls. It made the newspapers and the first issue of Moment Magazine. Now it is tradition. Women rabbis not only brought their perspectives to life cycle ritual but also to holy day celebrations. From adding voices of women to traditional narratives to creating new symbols for the Seder, they have enriched sacred moments. As women transformed the ritual landscape, they became narrators of our sacred stories. Refusing to accept their absence from the text, they became in-

terpreters of Torah, writing commentary and midrash. They gave voices, names and stories to women who had none. As women called God by different names, the language of prayer began to change. Now there are few prayer books that are not gender-inclusive. People often expected women to adapt to the male rabbinic model. But women established new models and new ways of looking at gender. Because women traditionally had been denied a place in the public square, they often experienced the sacred moving through interior space. Having been excluded from the religious center, women’s leadership is marked by inclusivity, sensitivity to the periphery, a belief that difference doesn’t mean superiority or inferiority. Despite advances, women still have lower salaries, inadequate family policies and fewer opportunities to rise to powerful leadership positions. Sexual harassment is a serious concern. Yet, for nearly five decades, Jewish women have poured their souls into the crucible of time and affixed their names to the holy narrative of our people. What happened is nothing short of a revolution. It is not finished yet. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

WomenRabbi4.indd 37

9/4/18 3:14 AM

BARUCH EFRATI

is an Orthodox rabbi in Efrat, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. He is the head of Derech Emunah or “The Path of Faith,” a religious Zionist organization of Orthodox rabbis.

n considering female clergy, we first need to understand what leadership is. It means leading to a better place, and there are all kinds of leaders. There are those who are responsible for rabbinical leadership and those responsible for other kinds of leadership. Rabbi Kook, the chief rabbi of Mandate Palestine, taught that the main identity of women is different from man’s obligations and identity. Women were not responsible for creating Jewish law in the past or in the present. Therefore, women who want to imitate the identity of men are not following the guidance of our rabbis. The Jewish legal book, Shulchan Aruch, explicitly states that it is unacceptable for a woman to serve as a judge in Jewish court and that she is not obligated to study Torah all day. Why? Not because women lack the mental capability for this, heaven forbid, but rather that this should not be a woman’s goal or purpose. The text states that a woman’s spiritual work should focus on building the Jewish internal structure as leaders. Therefore, she is exempt from part of Torah study and not obligated to perform many of the mitzvot or commandments. Of course, it’s good that women work, are successful in public life and study parts of the Torah, but there is a special feminine way for that, and it is not as rabbis. The new movement of female rabbis is attempting to do the complete opposite of what our Jewish sages taught. Some of

them are trying to imitate men’s obligations and in doing so, they miss the point. Of course women are capable of learning and leading in religious issues, but it’s a fact that the creator gave different goals in Jewish law for men and women. Conversely, women who follow our sages and who continue to build Israel according to the view of the Torah are on a sacred path and show real leadership. Rabbi Soloveitchik said that we do not need to apologize for saying that women should not do certain things. We should boast about the traditional status of women in Judaism and the role they play as internal leaders. The trend of women to focus on studying Torah only after they have filled their important roles at home and care for their children is very good. It helps women and men love Torah. But the radical feminist attempt to influence women to be like men as rabbis is upsetting. It is a mistake that causes pain and sorrow. It creates a shameful confusion between masculine and feminine identities and is an attempt to change the nature of women. It is a blatant effort to introduce radical feminism to Judaism and to violate tradition. Ultimately, it will not succeed. The Torah will not be replaced, and the Torah roles of men and women will not change. I support and understand the desire of women to take part in the Jewish community. Women will get this satisfaction by building the nation by fulfilling the laws of the Torah.

SUSANNAH HESCHEL

is a professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth College and the author of numerous publications, including On Being a Jewish Feminist.

omen clergy are inspiring. Seeing a woman lead services and knowing that women have moved from the margins to the center has revitalized Jewish communities. Women ask different kinds of questions of texts and of history. We think about issues in a different way. Women rabbis have changed the way we understand Judaism, ourselves and the way we view women in leadership. Most Jews experience women rabbis at some point in their lives, and the experience is transformative. Yet as someone involved in interfaith work, I am always surprised that interfaith conferences are still primarily conferences of men. Photographs of these conferences highlight the differences between the reality of American religious life and of Jewish life—both 38

of which have many women clergy—and formal leadership, which tends to be men only. In terms of contemporary Judaism, this shows that there is a gap between official Jewish leadership and the Jewish life most of us experience. There is a holdover of an almost superstitious way of thinking that says only men can officially represent Jews and Judaism when we meet with other religions. In general, the irrational can be overcome only by the rational. The rational approach would be for people to stand up and say that this is inappropriate, wrong and does not appropriately represent Jewish life. Men who are invited to men-only conferences should decline to participate, or they should say that they will participate only if there is full gender parity.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

WomenRabbi4.indd 38

9/4/18 3:14 AM

“A DECADE AGO, THE QUESTION OF WOMEN IN ANY SORT OF CLERGY ROLES WASN’T EVEN DISCUSSED IN THE ORTHODOX WORLD. NOW, EVEN COMMUNITIES THAT DON’T NECESSARILY ACCEPT WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP POSITIONS ACKNOWLEDGE THAT WOMEN HAVE A LOT OF TORAH SCHOLARSHIP AND WISDOM TO OFFER.”

SARA HURWITZ was ordained in 2009. She is on the rabbinic staff of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale and cofounder and president of Yeshivat Maharat, the first Orthodox yeshiva to ordain women as clergy.

n Orthodox communities, women have been in clergy positions for only the past decade or so. When I was ordained by Rabbi Avi Weiss and Rabbi Daniel Sperber, my title was maharat (which is an acronym for the description of the job of a rabbi). At first, there was actually very little pushback for the position. But we decided to change the title to “rabba,” to better reflect the job—so that when I walked into a funeral home or a hospital, people would understand who I was and what I was doing. That’s when the controversy broke out. One man called and said, “You’re destroying the Orthodox community,” and hung up. That really shook me. There were a lot of vitriolic comments and blog posts, and many times when I wanted to quit. I didn’t want to be a cause of controversy, but I was committed to the Orthodox community, to making it better. And there were also young girls who wrote and said that they could now see themselves on this trajectory, and that kept me going. I realized it was important for other Orthodox women to have a clear route towards this career path. So Rabbi Weiss and I opened Yeshivat Maharat to train and ordain Orthodox women to be part of Jewish communal leadership. We now have 26 women in the field and 30 women coming through the pipeline. It’s very exciting—but I think that the organized Orthodox Jewish community looks at that with fear. On one hand, there’s an acceptance for greater roles for women, but there’s also been an attempt to put boundaries around what those roles can be.

Allowing women to serve in clergy roles helps 100 percent of the population. Girls and boys look toward role models, and girls see themselves as future leaders and as relevant participants in religious life. As more women who are trained scholars are given the opportunity to hold leadership positions, our community will be better off, and issues that were being ignored for so long will be at the forefront of the Jewish community’s mind, such as talking about sexual harassment, infertility and miscarriage. We will also normalize conversations around mental illness. All of the topics that were swept under the rug are now being revealed. A decade ago, the question of women in any sort of clergy roles wasn’t even discussed. Now, even communities that don’t necessarily accept women in leadership positions acknowledge that women have a lot of Torah scholarship and wisdom to offer. In addition, if women are not included in leadership roles, they will leave the Orthodox world in droves. Research has shown that one of the reasons people have left Orthodoxy is because of the gender question: Women don’t feel like they are seen or can participate in public religious life. The normalization of women in positions of leadership will continue. Young women are already seeing that this is a natural part of organized religious life. The community is waking up to the reality of how much better we are with highly trained female leaders who understand what 21st-century Jewish communities are thirsting for. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

WomenRabbi4.indd 39

9/4/18 3:15 AM

AVIS D. MILLER, a Reconstructionist rabbi, served as a rabbi of Adas Israel in Washington, DC from 1984 to 2008, the longest pulpit tenure of any woman in the Conservative movement.

hen measuring the impact of women in the rabbinate on Jewish life, it is difficult to determine how much change is due to having women rabbis and how much is the result of wider trends in the surrounding culture. As the 19thcentury writer Heinrich Heine quipped: “Wie es sich christelt, so jüdelt es sich.” “What the Christians are doing, so do the Jews.” Recent years have witnessed the general movement toward inclusion, not only of women but of people of color, LGBTQ and the differently abled. But women rabbis have certainly been responsible for crafting a trove of creative, participatory and gender-inclusive rituals. Having taught more than 400 women for their adult bat mitzvahs, I have also witnessed the empowerment of women who chose to acquire and use Jewish skills from which they had been excluded. Immediately upon graduation from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, I became the full-time assistant rabbi at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, which then had about 1,200 member families. To my knowledge, no one left the congregation in protest, undoubtedly due to the specific

culture of the DC area, with its substantial cohort of professional women. During my years at the congregation, I was unaware of anyone requesting a male rabbi to replace me for officiation in a congregational life-cycle event—brit milah/baby naming, bar/bat mitzvah, wedding or funeral. However, my initial fulltime salary was less than half of that of my male predecessor. A congregational leader was reported to have said at a personnel committee meeting setting my low salary: “She has a husband.” Pay discrimination against women in the Conservative rabbinate has been documented as a persistent phenomenon. Attempts at creative programming were often stifled by the male-dominated, hierarchical professional and lay leadership. I had to fly under the radar to create programming, including a symposium on visiting the sick, which produced the first contemporary Jewish guide to bikkur cholim and the first DC-area Jewish healing services; programs for engaged couples and first-time pregnant couples. Many of these initiatives, especially those related to family, reflected what might be called a woman’s perspective.

TOVA MIRVIS is the author of the memoir The Book of Separation and three novels, including the bestseller The Ladies Auxiliary.

or me, growing up in the Orthodox world, rabbis were by definition men. Rabbis were in charge of religious life, which meant that men were in charge of religious life—of my religious life. That was the way the world looked; those were the roles that were assigned and unchangeable. Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I didn’t imagine that the world might look any different. When I spent a year in Israel, at Midreshet Lindenbaum, I was introduced to the world of Orthodox feminism and came into contact with many women who were extraordinary Torah scholars—women who, of course, were more than qualified and could have been rabbis had they been men. They changed my worldview and made me realize that I had grown up within one part of the Orthodox world, but that there was a vibrant learning community of women who, in that part of the Orthodox world, were changing the boundaries and were revolutionizing the notion of what it meant to be a Torah scholar. 40

And yet, the term “rabbi” still remained an impenetrable boundary. Some said, “What difference does a title make? What is the value of an institutional role? How far could the envelope be pushed? What did it mean to educate women to this level, yet still deny the title of rabbi?” These were the debates that I came of age with in the Orthodox feminist world. My decision to leave Orthodoxy was not about the role of female clergy per se but about the constant need to hold conflicting and contradictory values and ideas at the same time and have to tell myself that I was not bothered by what in fact I was bothered by. Even with the changes, even with the opening of so much new ground on the Orthodox feminist frontier, I still believed that this was not a system in which women were equal to men. This became something I could no longer tell myself I could live with. This, along with the fact that I did not believe in the theological assertions on which these inequalities were supposedly based, was among the reasons I left.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

WomenRabbi4.indd 40

9/4/18 3:15 AM

“WHILE WE DO NEED TO THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT THE POTENTIAL DANGERS OF ‘SLIPPERY SLOPES,’ WE HAVE ANOTHER POTENTIAL DANGER TO CONSIDER: BECOMING A FROZEN FOSSIL. WITH THE INCLUSION OF ORTHODOX FEMALE CLERGY, OUR COMMUNITY MOVES TOWARD INCREASED CREATIVITY, INCLUSIVITY—AND VITALITY.”

MARC D. ANGEL, an Orthodox rabbi, is rabbi emeritus of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in New York City and founder of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.

hile some Orthodox leaders have welcomed the participation of women as clergy, the “establishment” has been opposed. Not only has Agudath Israel issued prohibitions against women being ordained and serving as rabbis, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations (OU) and the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA)—both historically viewed as mainstream Modern Orthodox—have strongly opposed the ordination of women as rabbis. Although they do not object to women serving as teachers or administrators, they object to conferring “ordination” on women and giving women titles that imply rabbinic credentials. Their basic argument is that ordaining women is a violation of tradition and halachic precedent. Orthodox supporters of engaging women as religious leaders obviously realize that this represents a change in historic patterns. But they also realize that we live in a new era when women receive unprecedented religious education, including not only sacred texts but also pastoral and communal training. Rabbinic leaders have written extensive papers demonstrating the halachic permissibility of women serving in positions of religious leadership. It seems that the real issue is not halachic, but psychological and sociological. It is emotionally difficult to overcome past patterns and attitudes.

The participation of women in our conferences, discussions and online conversations has been a boon to all of us. The women—using various titles such as rabbah, maharat, rabbanit—have expanded our range of concerns and our knowledge base. Surely, female clergy serve as inspirations to women congregants. But of equal importance, they break stereotypes about the “role of women”; they demonstrate to male and female congregants that women can lead communities wisely and sensitively. Orthodox communities that wish to employ qualified women in rabbinical positions should be free to do so and should have our blessing. If some communities and rabbis do not wish to employ these women, that is their decision. The Modern Orthodox community should not fear positive change, but should welcome it. There are those who raise the fear of “the slippery slope.” Once one change is made, it will lead to others, and yet to others…and we will end up abandoning halacha altogether. While we do need to think carefully about the potential dangers of “slippery slopes,” we have another potential danger to consider: becoming a frozen fossil. With the inclusion of Orthodox female clergy, our community moves toward increased creativity, inclusivity—and vitality. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

WomenRabbi4.indd 41

9/4/18 3:15 AM

“PERHAPS A MORE TO-THE-POINT QUESTION IS: WHAT MIGHT JUDAISM BE LIKE TODAY IF A FEW BRAVE MALE RABBIS AND A FEW BRAVE WOMEN WHO WANTED TO BE RABBIS HAD NOT FOUGHT FOR CHANGE?”

NADINE EPSTEIN is the editor-in-chief and CEO of Moment Magazine.

esides the new energy and the fresh perspectives on theology, scholarship, pastoral care and leadership, the entry of women into the ranks of Jewish clergy has ensured that much-soughtafter holy grail: continuity. If not for an egalitarian clergy, most non-Orthodox American Jews would feel less connected to Judaism. This includes women and men, Jews from a range of denominations, post-denominational Jews, less affiliated Jews, cultural Jews, and oh yes, most young Jews, too. Even some modern Orthodox Jews would back off from their practice of Judaism. Perhaps a more to-the-point question is: What might Judaism be like today if a few brave male rabbis and a few brave women who wanted to be rabbis had not fought for change? If we could take a break from navel gazing, we might learn a lesson from one of the religions in which a patriarchy continues to exercise complete control and forbids women from serving as clergy. The 2015 Pew Research Forum report “America’s Changing Landscape” found that the total number of Roman Catholics in the United States decreased by 3 million between 2007 and 2014. Of the nearly one-third of American adults who say they were raised Catholic, 41 percent no longer identify with the religion. That means that for every convert, more than six Catholics left the fold. Given the recent scandals that have rocked the church, the number of Catholics in the U.S. is continuing to plummet. The exclusion of women from the priesthood—and even as deacons—is only one reason why so many Catholics now declare themselves “ex-Catholics,” but it is at the heart of this sad state of affairs. Liberal Catholics have fought for years 42

for the inclusion of women without success. I once interviewed Mary Ramerman, who in 2001 took over the spiritual leadership of Spiritus Christi Church in Rochester, New York, and was excommunicated along with her thriving congregation by the Roman Catholic diocese. “Excluding women as spiritual leaders,” she told me, “sends the message that not all people are created in the image of God,” a message that is internalized by women—and men—and “goes into everything we are doing in the world.” Another woman who has dared to stand up to the Roman Catholic patriarchy is Benedictine nun Joan Chittister. Chittister tells a story of a churchgoing family she once stayed with who had a quick-minded four-year-old daughter. One Sunday morning after Mass, the child said, “Mama, why don’t we have any girl priests at our church?” The parents looked at one another, dumbstruck, unprepared. “Because, darling,” the mother said honestly, “our church doesn’t allow girl priests.” The little girl pursed her lips and frowned. “Then why do we go there?” she demanded. Fortunately, Jewish four-year-old girls have role models today that I didn’t have as a child. That’s because Judaism has no pope and no central power structure, and although there are those who claim otherwise, no one way to interpret texts. Judaism has always grown through its encounters with the evolution of external thought, and we should be proud of this. It’s the sign of a healthy religion that it can remain relevant and meaningful. Lucky for us, the inclusion of women in the clergy, correcting a long-standing power imbalance based on outdated traditions, has strengthened Judaism for the future.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

WomenRabbi4.indd 42

9/4/18 3:15 AM

“WOMEN CLERGY HAVE TO FIGHT THE STEREOTYPE THAT WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BRING THE MORE EMOTIONAL AND SOFTER SIDE OF JUDAISM AND LEAVE THE INTELLECTUAL HEAVY LIFTING TO MEN. ”

NAAMAH KELMAN-EZRACHI,

a Reform rabbi, is the dean of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem. In 1992, she was the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi in Israel.

n Israel, we have the double hurdle of sexism and discrimination due to the overall dismissal of liberal Judaism here. Many of our male allies suffer from the same institutional discrimination as women. Really, we’re outside the Orthodox movement, so none of us are recognized by the official state rabbinate. Even so, in some cases, my male colleagues are still seen as more acceptable than women. For example, Israeli couples might prefer a male rabbi to officiate at a wedding that is not recognized by the Israeli rabbinate because he “looks the part.” This too is changing. Because of the ultra-Orthodox monopoly in Israel, many secular Israelis see Judaism as antithetical to equality, feminism, inclusion and

pluralism. Here too, we need to win the hearts and minds of these Israelis so they can reclaim a Judaism that is consonant with their worldview. Women clergy have to fight the stereotype that we are supposed to bring the more emotional and softer side of Judaism and leave the intellectual heavy lifting to men. I call this the Jewish emphasis on “text-tosterone,” which men excel at. Women clergy have reshaped ritual, prayer, scholarship and community in ways that even my Reform rabbi grandfather would find startling and, I hope, remarkable. I would like to think that my daughter, who was ordained 25 years after I was, will not have the same battles to fight.

APRIL BASKIN is the vice president of Audacious Hospitality for the Union for Reform Judaism.

iversity in the clergy is one of the most essential ways to convey a sense of belonging. When the tradition is entrusted to a group that wasn’t historically included, it’s a fundamentally deep statement that that group is worthy and trusted—not only with our tradition, but with our people and our community. When these groups are supported in key leadership roles, people begin to see that they’re needed—that it’s not just a luxury or an added bonus, but that their presence fundamentally enhances the quality and meaning of our collective Jewish experience. In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois talks about how black people have

a double consciousness. Jews of color— let alone women rabbis of color—have a multi-dimensional consciousness. Women rabbis of color understand what it’s like to be a woman in the context of patriarchy. They understand what it’s like to be a Jew in the context of a Christian society or Christian hegemony. They understand what it’s like to be a person of color in a broader white cultural context. There’s something truly powerful about someone with multiple identities—someone who is empowered to access the wisdom, insight and strength of all of those different identities and traditions simultaneously—serving in a clergy position. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

WomenRabbi4.indd 43

9/4/18 3:15 AM

STEVEN PRUZANSKY, an Orthodox rabbi, is the former vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America.

ot to rain on the parade, but female clergy in the Orthodox world are almost a non-factor. Its perceived public pervasiveness is primarily media-generated and agenda-driven, with repetitive stories telling the same tale in an attempt to normalize it in the Orthodox milieu. That has not succeeded. In my synagogue of more than 500 families, I have never been asked about it. The reasons against female ordination are rooted in Jewish law, custom, tradition and practicality. If the late Saul Lieberman of the Jewish Theological Seminary could term the notion of female clergy “laughable” from a Torah perspective (a chucha v’itlulah, in the Aramaic expression he used) then it is clear we are not discussing something that naturally emerges from Jewish sources but is rather an idea imported from a non-Jewish worldview and is entirely driven by foreign cultural norms and the embrace of the deity known as “modernity.” Activists are engaged in an ongoing effort to blur and eliminate any distinction between men and women. The Torah abhors that sentiment and sees the division of roles between men and women

as critical in sustaining the Jewish family, community and polity. There are things that men do that women cannot do, and there are things that women do that men cannot do. We tamper with that arrangement at our peril. The consequences of that tampering are already apparent in terms of declining Jewish commitment and observance among devotees of these changes. Obviously, women have always made a vital and equal contribution to the preservation of Jewish life and the Torah world. But “equal” does not mean identical to that of men, and the assertion that women can achieve their maximum potential only by mimicking or duplicating the roles of men does not strike me as very “feminist.” It is self-defeating for women to judge the worth or merit of their activities by the standard of what men can or can’t do, and vice versa. I don’t see female clergy as having any foundation or staying power in the Orthodox world. What is most likely to happen is that proponents of this endeavor will drift away from the fringes of Orthodoxy that they now inhabit and, sadly, tragically, sever their connection with traditional observance in the process.

ADINA SHMIDMAN

is the founding director of the Orthodox Union Women’s Initiative. She is an Orthodox rebbetzin, educational psychologist and educator.

hile the Torah values men and women equally, they are ascribed different responsibilities, a practice accepted, and expected, by the vast majority of Orthodox Jews. According to this standard, in our communities, men fill clergy roles and women do not. But the notion that women cannot lead and be represented fully in Orthodox Jewish life is untrue. To the contrary, our women hold important leadership positions in shuls, schools and many other Jewish communal institutions, where female perspective and decision-making influence all elements of Jewish life. Orthodox women serve as highly respected Torah educators and religious role models, offering spiritual guidance, delivering insightful shiurim and providing personal and pastoral counsel. Perhaps most significant, however, is the Jewish woman’s less-public but extraordinarily powerful responsibility: the

transmission of Jewish identity and heritage; the fulfillment of mitzvot uniquely designated for them; and the establishment of the spiritual tempo of the home. Jewish women create an atmosphere of religious growth through the “surround sound” of life experiences. Professional success and contemporary life have not stopped Orthodox women from nourishing their families physically, spiritually and intellectually and from bringing G-d and Torah into their homes. Our challenge is to further enable and ennoble women to value and appreciate the exceptional contributions they make to their own lives, and those of their families and communities, and for those contributions to be appreciated and respected in turn. Women’s voices have always existed as a force in Orthodox Judaism, and they continue to shape the Jewish world within the guidelines that Torah values dictate.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

WomenRabbi4.indd 44

9/4/18 3:15 AM

STEPHANIE RUSKAY, a Conservative rabbi, is the associate dean of the Rabbinical School of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

aving a diverse group of people able to interpret law, teach tradition and facilitate ritual and practice means that the diverse people they are leading will see themselves reflected in their leadership. Female clergy know what their own life experiences and struggles have been and are able to put these experiences to use in order to best serve their communities. As an example, female rabbis who have experienced issues related to fertility understand what it’s like for women in their community. Female clergy still face challenges in the hiring process, salary negotiations and how their families are perceived in

their communities. Some women opt out of large congregational leadership roles because it seems incompatible with being available to a partner and raising a family. Oftentimes, men negotiate more lucrative contracts, and parental leave is frequently a negotiating challenge for women rather than something congregations automatically include in contracts. In the hiring process, female candidates are frequently asked about their dating life, whether they are married and if/when they plan to have children. It is understandable that communities would want to know this information, but it is usually obtained in an invasive way.

DEBORAH WAXMAN, a Reconstructionist rabbi, is the president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. She is the first woman to head a Jewish seminary and congregational union.

emale clergy add insights, leadership and new voices to Jewish communal conversations. This is true in the religious realm, but also in the organizational and cultural ones. It’s transformative for everyone in contact with the Jewish community, because they see that an ancient culture and tradition that has deep patriarchal roots can be changed while maintaining core commitments and values, such as ethical spiritual leadership, and embracing new ones, such as gender equality. I believe that feminist Judaism offers a redemptive vision for all Jews. But I’m saddened and perplexed that with the rise of women in religious leadership, many men have stepped back from the clergy and from religious participation. This is far from unique to Jews. The feminization of religion and the retreat of men is characteristic of modernity and has been going on for several hundred years. Sometimes this retreat is expressed through ambivalence, sometimes it’s open hostility to or discrimination against women who have broken into leadership, and sometimes the barriers are so

fiercely policed that qualified and effective women cannot rise up. Even when women are in the room, it doesn’t mean that anything necessarily changes. When women ask for or agitate for change, we are still too often chided as partisan or shrill or irritating. This has to be a communal project and a communal commitment. I am heartened by those who agree not to participate in “manels,” that is, all-male panels, but this is not yet common practice, and when women are included it is often as tokens. I had a deeply moving experience recently at a national leadership gathering. The group of 30 people was fairly evenly divided between men and women. When my friend and colleague Robert Bank, the CEO of American Jewish World Service, was called on, he said, “I can’t possibly speak after three men in a row have just spoken. I cede my place to the next woman in the queue.” His attentiveness to the overall dynamic and willingness to step back took my breath away. We need to work together toward a moment when this dynamic is natural and easily practiced rather than breathtaking when it happens. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

WomenRabbi4.indd 45

9/4/18 3:16 AM

“MEN HAVE GOTTEN USED TO OUR PREROGATIVES. IT IS NOT ALWAYS EASY FOR MEN TO WORK FOR WOMEN BECAUSE THEY HAVE DIFFERENT WAYS OF BEING.”

ERIC ALTERMAN,

a CUNY distinguished professor of English at Brooklyn College, is a media columnist for The Nation and the author of ten books.

ainstream Judaism has become profoundly feminized and increasingly, most of the lay positions in professional Jewish organizations are held by women. This should not be surprising, as women have always done much of the work of Judaism. In previous times, they cleaned the house, fed the kids and earned the money so that men could study. Now they are taking over the institutions. I admire many of these female leaders. At the same time, even if we don’t deserve them, men have gotten used to our prerogatives. It is not always easy for men to work for women because they have different ways of being. There will be significant areas of discomfort for the men who are used to running things. On the balance, that is all to the good.

Orthodox Jews, however, simply are not going to accept women as clergy because they believe the Torah forbids it. So this issue is causing a further schism between Orthodox and more secular Jews. We all decide which parts of the laws of the Torah are relevant to our lives, and that is also true in terms of women’s equality. Women contributing their energy, empathy and imagination to Judaism is good for everyone. However, female clergy will probably precipitate a further crowding out of secular Jews by Orthodox Jews in the coming decades. I believe that is a reasonable price to pay in order to come closer to realizing the ideals of “liberal” Judaism. And if that means the “unity” of the Jewish people is reduced, that doesn’t bother me. We are not “one” and never were.

DAVID WOLPE is a Conservative rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, California.

emale clergy have changed Jewish life in innumerable ways. They have brought a sensibility and an experience of half the Jewish population to a leadership that had not included their voices. They have given greater comfort to female congregants, who felt uneasy bringing certain problems to a man. The number of new teachers, bringing a different sensitivity to the text, has increased tremendously. The distance between laypeople and clergy has also been diminished. That said, all changes are difficult. It is a new model, and people still have to get used to the identification of rabbi with women. Some people, even while intellectually approving, find themselves emotionally unable to make the transition away from the experience of their youth. There is also the vexing question of things like tefillin—do you make it mandatory and suggest those women who don’t wear tefillin are 46

somehow in the wrong? And if it is not mandatory, then are women essentially different from men, for whom it is mandatory, even if not always observed? I don’t believe the rise of female clergy has erased the very real distinction in the way women and men perceive and react to the world. But it has erased the idea that there are certain tasks of leadership that are more suited to men. It has also expanded our idea of spiritual leadership in a way that is healthy for women and men alike. I have read that men tend to shy away from professions where women predominate. That may be happening in the clergy. But I suspect this will be short-lived and a phenomenon of shift rather than permanence. In the end, spiritual yearnings are universal, and so should the reflection of that in our clergy—gay, straight, men, women, on and on—the variety of humanity helping humanity.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

WomenRabbi4.indd 46

9/4/18 3:41 AM

STACY OFFNER,

the first openly lesbian rabbi, was also the first rabbi elected chaplain of the Minnesota Senate, the first female vice president of the Union for Reform Judaism and the first woman to serve on the U.S. National Rabbinical Pension Board.

n 1987, I was fired from my position as associate rabbi, soon after coming out to my congregation. It was overt and it was very public, there was a headline in the newspaper that read, “Lesbian rabbi fired.” I myself had not put the two words “lesbian” and “rabbi” together in such a public way before that. I was a rabbi. I was a lesbian. Combining them publicly was groundbreaking for me and the Jewish world. When I was in rabbinical school in the early 1980s, I was out to myself, to my close friends and to my personal world. I was not out to the school because the policy was such that I would not have been ordained. So every day I made decisions about how to balance my integrity and my sense of who I authentically was with not allowing hatred, misconceptions, homophobia and sexism to dictate my future opportunities.

It is important to have Jewish people of all sorts become Jewish clergy. We must be open to all Jewish people who are inspired to serve in this way. All Jews with a commitment to living a life of Jewish ethics, values, learning and community must have access to these roles. It is a matter of fundamental human equality. Neither female rabbis nor LGBTQ rabbis are representative of the dominant culture, but both intersect with being Jewish. Women are the Jews of gender, and LGBTQ Jews are the Jews of sexuality. As minorities, we bring a special perspective and a different approach to the rabbinate. The rabbinate becomes richer by having individuals with a larger variety of backgrounds and experiences—that is equally true regardless of whether we are talking about gender, sexuality, race or nationality.

BLU GREENBERG chaired the first and second International Conference on Feminism and Orthodoxy and founded the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance. Her books include On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition.

he inflow of female clergy has had a very powerful effect on Jewish life, across all denominations. First is the excellence quotient—doubling the pool of rabbinic talent yields more cream at the top. As in any service profession where human interaction is of the essence, a more talented pool from which to choose a rabbi means all of the following: a better-educated laity; more spiritual inspiration and activism; increased observance, prayer and ritual; greater commitment to Jewish continuity—and hopefully to Israel; more tzedakah, more song, more religious fire…All this, not because one gender brings different talents but because two genders bring more talent to the selection process. But I must admit this is conjecture; it is too soon to really know whether gender makes a profound and lasting difference in rabbinic style and content. Another effect has been the modeling of collegiality in leadership roles, again across all denominations. Credit goes to a male rabbinate that made room for female leadership at the top so seamlessly in one short generation; credit also goes to female clergy who arrived more recently at the top and showed gender collegiality. Traditional roles such as that of the rebbetzin have also

changed greatly. Rebbetzins are surely among the most generous-spirited women to walk this earth. They fall largely into the class of two-career-one-salary jobs that also characterized wives of Christian clergy. Today, however, the roles of rebbetzins and their pride of place have been taken over by women rabbis who often become the darlings of their communities. It is my experience that the class of rebbetzins have been supportive and non-competitive, showing amazing, unwavering grace. Perhaps some of this is because they mostly now have their own satisfying careers. Still, that is not the whole story, and rebbetzins deserve to be recognized for all that they have done, past and present. There is still resistance to women rabbis because they are so new; it’s the blink of an eye as Jews count time. The role of rabbi, exclusively filled by men for generations, is confirmed by layer upon layer of halachic texts; no amount of novel interpretation can change that fact. Moreover, gender issues are more visceral than intellectual. What people are used to is even harder to change than what they recall as exclusively legitimate. That is why the front-runners in every denomination are so important. A model is worth a thousand debates on the subject. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

WomenRabbi4.indd 47

9/4/18 3:16 AM

White nationalists rallied around a statue of Thomas Jefferson sculpted by Moses Ezekiel at the University of Virginia in 2017.

Confederate6.indd 48

9/3/18 11:09 PM

THE JEWISH SCULPTOR’S CONFEDERATE STATUES HAVE BECOME A BEACON FOR WHITE SUPREMACISTS. Judith Ezekiel only vaguely remembers the time her grandfather took her to see the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. A young girl, Ezekiel—now a women’s studies professor at Ohio’s Wright State University—was dwarfed by the 32-foot tall monument. A larger-than-life figure of a woman, representing the South, stands at its top, wearing a crown of olive leaves. Her left hand holds a laurel wreath out toward the South, acknowledging the sacrifice of her fallen sons. Below her are 32 life-size figures, among them a black soldier fighting alongside his white master and an older black woman holding a crying white infant as its father, a Confederate soldier, kisses the baby before he heads off to battle. The memorial is the work of one of Ezekiel’s ancestors, Moses Jacob Ezekiel—a Confederate soldier and Jewish sculptor. It is one of the many statues he produced during his lifetime, including one of Thomas Jefferson located on the grounds of the University of Virginia. That’s the statue hundreds of white supremacists rallied around in August 2017 to protest the city of Charlottesville’s decision to remove a different statue—that of Confederate commander Robert E. Lee—from a public park. Tiki-torches in hand, they chanted the Nazi slogan “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us,” likely unaware that the Jefferson statute was created by a descendant of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. Judith Ezekiel watched the deadly events of Charlottesville’s “Unite the Right” rally with disgust. She decided to post a message to her relatives on Facebook: It was time, she wrote, to discuss the fate of the Confederate Memorial. “We’re used to having a progressive family history, and having this Confederate statue presents a conundrum for us,” she says. Her great-grandmother was a secretary to suffragist leader Carrie Chapman Catt. Her great-uncle was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s principal agricultural economist. And another relative, Raphael S. Ezekiel, published The Racist Mind: Portraits of American Neo-Nazis and Klansmen on the psychology and sociology of white supremacy. Family members responded to her post with enthusiasm, but it took a 12-hour family group chat stretching across five time

REUTERS

THE NOT-SO LOST CAUSE OF MOSES EZEKIEL

BY LARA MOEHLMAN

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

Confederate6.indd 49

9/3/18 11:09 PM

Among the life-size figures on the base of the Confederate Memorial is a black woman holding a crying white infant out to its Confederate soldier father.

CREATIVE COMMONS

zones for a consensus to emerge. One suggested pounding the statue to dust. Another wanted to surround it with statues of slaves emerging from the ground. Finally, 22 family members spanning three generations of Ezekiels signed a letter asking for the statue to be removed from Arlington National Cemetery and placed in a museum where it could be properly contextualized. “Like most such monuments, this statue was intended to rewrite history to justify the Confederacy and the subsequent racist Jim Crow laws,” reads the letter, which was published in The Washington Post. “It glorifies the fight to own human beings, and, in its portrayal of African Americans, implies their collusion. As proud as our family may be of Moses’s artistic prowess, we—some twenty Ezekiels—say remove that statue.”

orn in 1844, Moses Jacob Ezekiel grew up in Richmond, Virginia, the son of a successful cotton merchant. One of 14 children, Moses Ezekiel was raised as an observant Jew—and a proud Southerner. His father, Jacob, once 50

wrote to President John Tyler about the impropriety of calling the American nation a “Christian people.” (Tyler wrote back saying he regretted the comment.) At the time there was no conflict between Jewish and Confederate values, says Michael Feldberg, the executive director of the George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom. “Jews who lived in the South during the period before and during the Civil War were pro-slavery. They simply were,” he says. “There was relatively little anti-Semitism in the South because, don’t forget, the Jews were white, and the real issue was not religion but race.” When Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, Moses Ezekiel quickly enrolled at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI)—becoming the first Jewish cadet at the institution. By May 1864, the Confederacy was so desperate it began sending cadets, including Ezekiel, to fight. In the gruesome Battle of New Market in Virginia, Ezekiel held his roommate, Thomas G. Jefferson, the great-great-nephew of President Thomas Jefferson, in his arms as he died. After the Southern defeat, the Ezekiel family lost its livelihood when their warehouse, along with much of the rest

of Richmond, was burned to the ground. Ezekiel resumed his studies at VMI and initially considered going into medicine, but a conversation with Robert E. Lee caused him to change course. Lee, aware of the young man’s artistic skills, told him, according to Ezekiel’s memoirs: “I hope you will be an artist as it seems to me you are cut out for one. But whatever you do, try to prove to the world that if we did not succeed in our struggle, we were worthy of success.” Ezekiel heeded Lee’s advice, going on to explore art and sculpture after graduation, moving first to Cincinnati and eventually to Germany before settling in Rome. “You wouldn’t go to Rome to make new, progressive art,” says Peter Nash, author of The Life and Times of Moses Jacob Ezekiel: American Sculptor, Arcadian Knight. (Nash is also a descendant of Ezekiel, but from a different branch of the family than that of Judith Ezekiel.) Rome was the center of Greco-Roman and neoclassical sculpture, and “Moses resisted Modernism until the very end of his life,” Nash says. “He stuck to the old path. He liked neoclassical forms.” In Rome, free from the constraints of home, according to Nash, Ezekiel

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

Confederate6.indd 50

9/3/18 11:09 PM

The United Daughters of the Confederacy lay a wreath and hold up a Confederate States of America flag at the Confederate Memorial in 1922.

FOR MANY WHITE SOUTHERNERS, THE ‘LOST CAUSE’ BECAME— AND CONTINUES TO BE—A CIVIL RELIGION WITH RITUALS, EVENTS AND MONUMENTS CREATED TO SOLIDIFY THIS NARRATIVE.

to a friend: “Everybody who knows me knows that I am a Jew—I never wanted it otherwise. But I would prefer as an artist to gain first a name and reputation upon an equal footing with all others in art circles. It is a matter of absolute indifference to the world whether a good artist is a Jew or a Gentile and in my ca-

reer I do not want to be stamped with the title ‘Jewish Sculptor.’” Despite that, many of his statues had Jewish or biblical themes, including David Returning from Victory, Judith Slaying Holofornes and Eve Hearing the Voice. Robert E. Lee’s influence on Ezekiel didn’t end with his choice of career; the sculptor also took it upon himself to demonstrate that the Confederacy had been, as Lee said, “worthy of success.” According to Feldberg, Ezekiel was a true believer in what is known as the “Lost Cause”—a romanticized vision of the South and the Confederacy in which soldiers fought honorably for states’ rights and free trade rather than treasonously for the cause of slavery. In this narrative, slave owners are painted as benign protectors and providers for their African American “dependents.” For many white Southerners, the “Lost Cause” became— and continues to be—a civil religion with rituals, events and monuments created to solidify this narrative. Ezekiel’s work is integral to this sympathetic view of the Civil War. His statue of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, which stands outside the West Virginia State Capitol, depicts the Confederate SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

Confederate6.indd 51

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

developed a romantic relationship with Fedor Encke, the illegitimate grandson of King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia. The couple traveled together often and socialized with Europe’s elites, including Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, French actress Sarah Bernhardt and Queen Margherita of Italy. Although he considered himself an Orthodox Jew, Ezekiel didn’t practice many of the rituals, says Nash. Instead, “he flirted with Buddhism, Hinduism and Spiritism.” He also was said to have regularly conducted séances in his studio. Although he was based in Europe, Ezekiel and his art gained popularity in America. In 1876, the International Order of B’nai B’rith commissioned him to sculpt a monument to mark the U.S. centennial. The resulting statue, Religious Liberty, which today stands outside Philadelphia’s National Museum of American Jewish History, portrays a woman holding a copy of the Constitution while sheltering a boy carrying a lantern as a celebration of the country’s protection of religious freedom. But although this commission was for a Jewish organization, Ezekiel never wanted to be labeled a “Jewish artist.” He once wrote

9/3/18 11:10 PM

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; CREATIVE COMMONS

President Warren Harding addressing a crowd at the Confederate Memorial in 1922.

general as a war hero, with the wind blowing his coat slightly open at the waist, a sword in his left hand and a lit cannonball at his feet. Another statue, Virginia Mourning Her Dead, honors the ten VMI cadets who died in the Battle of New Market. In The Lookout, located in a Confederate cemetery, a soldier gazes over Lake Erie toward the site of a former Confederate prisonerof-war camp on Ohio’s Johnson Island. But no monument exemplifies the Lost Cause narrative better than Ezekiel’s Confederate Memorial in Arlington, where the woman representing the South appears to be protecting the black figures below. “This statue was a very, very deliberate part of revisionist history of racist America,” says Judith Ezekiel, noting the memorial was not erected at the end of the Civil War, but in 1914 during the Jim Crow era. Gabriel Reich, a professor of history education and an expert on the Civil War and Emancipation, says the statue functions as propaganda for the Lost Cause. “It couldn’t be worse,” he says. “It’s just a slap in the face to the families of African American service members and 52

Portrait of Moses Ezekiel in 1914.

THE EZEKIEL FAMILY SEES A DIRECT LINK BETWEEN THE CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL AND THEIR ANCESTOR, AND THE REEMERGENCE OF WHITE NATIONALISM IN THE UNITED STATES. American service members generally.” Ezekiel’s Confederate Memorial is one of 1,500 Confederate statues and symbols across the U.S., according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. In recent years, these monuments have reemerged as cultural flashpoints, due in part to the June 2015 mass shooting at

a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. The shooter, Dylann Roof, posed in photos with a Confederate symbol, sparking a national conversation about what to do with Confederate relics and monuments. That same year, the New Orleans City Council decided in a six-to-one vote to remove the city’s four Confederate monuments. The contractors who made an initial bid on this project backed out due to death threats, but the statues were eventually removed under police guard. This past August, activists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill toppled Silent Sam, a statue of an anonymous Confederate soldier on the school’s campus. Reich doesn’t believe all Confederate statues should be removed. Some of the less offensive ones, he says, should be left where they are on the condition they be juxtaposed with contemporary art installations and/or signage that provides historical perspective. “I think the total erasure of these monuments also erases the possibility of discussing how white supremacy reasserted itself after the Civil War and Reconstruction,” he says. Julian Hayter, a historian at the University of Richmond

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

Confederate6.indd 52

9/3/18 11:10 PM

Ezekiel’s Virginia Mourning Her Dead at the Virginia Military Institute.

who focuses on the American civil rights movement and African American history, would like to see Confederate monuments evaluated and removed on a case-by-case basis, taking into account their history and who was—or who was not—involved in creating and installing them. The Ezekiel family’s position on the Confederate Memorial is revealing, he says. “They’ve obviously seen that there’s a direct link between that monument and their ancestor and the reemergence of white nationalism in the United States.”

the Confederacy’s point of view alive and well. “The Lost Cause has never died,” says Feldberg. “That’s why people still fly Confederate flags in the South. There’ve been huge battles to try to get these Southern states to stop venerating the Confederacy because it’s all about white supremacy.” He adds: “They say ‘it’s nostalgia, it’s our history, it’s part of who we are,’ but it’s deeply offensive to African Americans that Southern states still celebrate the heritage of slavery.” That’s why Judith Ezekiel and many other Ezekiel family members want the Confederate Memorial to come down. Unfortunately, the letter they published did not have the effect they had hoped for, says Lewis Ezekiel, Judith Ezekiel’s cousin and a history teacher in Michigan. According to Arlington National Cemetery, there are no plans to remove the statue. Still, Lewis Ezekiel is proud the family made the effort. “Realistically, probably nothing’s going to come out of this,” he says. “But at least we can say that—when this topic was being hotly debated and we had the best chance of catching someone’s ear—we gave it a shot.” SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

Confederate6.indd 53

CREATIVE COMMONS

zekiel died in Italy on March 27, 1917. He wanted to be buried among his Confederate brothers, but because of World War I, his body was not returned to the United States until 1921. He was interred in Arlington National Cemetery at the foot of his Confederate Memorial; his headstone reads “Moses J. Ezekiel, Sergeant of Company C, Battalion of Cadets of the Virginia Military Institute.” President Warren G. Harding praised Ezekiel, calling him “a great Virginian, a great artist, a great

American and a great citizen of world fame.” Harding’s statement was read at the funeral. A separate ceremony was held by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The Jewish community memorialized Ezekiel as well: Rabbi David Philipson of Cincinnati gave a tribute at the funeral. Yet today in Jewish retellings of the Civil War, Ezekiel’s name rarely surfaces alongside better-known Confederate Jews, such as Judah P. Benjamin. The George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom’s Feldberg attributes this to the fact that Ezekiel never wanted to be known as a “Jewish artist.” Despite his celebrity and artistic success, Ezekiel is also not well remembered in the art world. Nash says one reason for his relative obscurity is because, in the late 19th and early 20th century, audiences were more interested in art that evinced “the changes of modernism” as opposed to Ezekiel’s “highly conventional, neoclassical-style sculpture.” Another factor was Ezekiel’s devotion to the Confederacy. “In other words, he twice came down on the wrong side of history,” says Nash. Although Ezekiel’s star has faded, he fulfilled Lee’s wishes: He helped keep

Ezekiel’s bust of Robert E. Lee.

9/3/18 11:10 PM

WHATâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S THE BEST WAY TO SAY #METOO? MeToo5.indd 54

9/3/18 11:24 PM

IN THE SMALL, INSULAR JEWISH PROFESSIONAL WORLD, PEOPLE ARE OFTEN RELUCTANT TO COME FORWARD WITH SEXUAL HARASSMENT ALLEGATIONS— ESPECIALLY AGAINST ‘BIG MACHERS.’ THAT’S BEGINNING TO CHANGE. BY LARA MOEHLMAN

WHEN SHE WAS 23, Debbie Findling was hired by a Jewish Community Center (JCC) in Woodland Hills, California, to oversee its summer day camp under the supervision of acting executive director Leonard “Len” Robinson, an experienced Jewish communal professional in his 40s. It was the summer of 1988, and she was excited when Robinson invited her and her then-boyfriend out to dinner with him and his wife. She told him that her boyfriend couldn’t make it and arrived to find only Robinson, who made an excuse for why his wife wasn’t there either. After dinner, he tried holding her hand as she walked back to her car. When she refused, he told her it was normal behavior for colleagues who liked

each other. When he tried to kiss her, she pushed him off. He called her naive, said she was a prude and told her to grow up. When he then asked her to have sex with him and his wife, she became flustered, jumped in her car and drove away. Findling was so upset she scraped up the money to fly to Denver, Colorado, to discuss what had happened with a previous boss and mentor, who was also a friend of Robinson’s. He advised her to report what happened to the Los Angeles regional office of the JCC Association of North America. She did, and soon after she began to receive voicemails from Robinson, threatening her and saying she was ruining his life by reporting him. She was then transferred to a JCC in Santa

Monica and assured she’d have no further contact with Robinson; she was also told that he was remorseful and seeking therapy. Robinson would go on to become the youth director for the JCC in Portland, Oregon, and then the executive director of the JCCs of Seattle, Greater Phoenix and Greater Los Angeles before being appointed executive director of NJY Camps, the largest Jewish camp system in the world. Findling’s father, an attorney, wanted her to file a lawsuit, alleging the JCC leadership knowingly assigned Robinson to supervise young women despite his history of sexual harassment, but Findling refused. “I was convinced— and still think—that if I had filed a lawSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

MeToo5.indd 55

9/3/18 11:24 PM

NOAH PHILLIPS

suit, that would have ended my career with the Jewish community,” she says. “I would have been labeled, you know, one of those women. An agitator.” She paid a price for this decision. “For 30 years I wondered, ‘did I do something wrong?’ and ‘why was I in that position?’” she says. “Anyone who has experienced sexual harassment knows that it has a deep and lasting impact on the psyche.” But this year, amid the emerging #MeToo movement and 30 years after the incident, Findling—now 54 and an established philanthropic adviser—decided it was time to come forward with her story. Inspired by a private Facebook group called #GamAni (#MeToo in Hebrew) where women share their experiences of sexual harassment within Jewish communal life, she wrote an op-ed in The New York Jewish Week, titled “Is the Jewish Community Perpetuating Sexual Harassment?” In the piece, published on March 20, she discussed her experience but didn’t name Robinson because, she says, she wanted the piece to shine a light on systemic issues of harassment within Jewish agencies and not just her personal experience. For her, it was about “in what ways do guys like this, who have been accused of sexual harassment to HR and have admitted it, just get promoted and moved to other Jewish organizations?” On top of that, she didn’t know if Robinson had changed in the 30 years since she had worked with him. “I had no idea if he sexually harassed other women,” she says, and she “didn’t want to engage in lashon hara [gossip].” She preferred to give him the benefit of the doubt, to believe he had done teshuva (repentance) for his actions. After her op-ed appeared, about half a dozen women contacted Findling, telling her they’d read her piece and knew that she was referring to Robinson. She says they told her that he’d harassed them, too. “They said ‘me too,’ and not 30 years ago; ‘me too’ five years ago, two years ago, last year and very recently,” Findling says. Once she learned of the new allegations, she told herself “all bets are off” and decided to go on the record with Robinson’s name. She contacted The New York Jewish Week, but on April 12, before 56

MeToo5.indd 56

the weekly could publish the story, the president of NJY Camps announced that Robinson had resigned “after being confronted with allegations of sexual harassment and impropriety in a role prior to his employment with NJY Camps.” That same day, The New York Jewish Week confirmed that Findling’s op-ed had indeed referred to Robinson. Findling’s actions led others to come forward publicly. Five days later, with encouragement and guidance from Fin-

harassment story to tell, and she wanted advice from Findling on coming forward. McGinity proceeded cautiously: Before writing about what had occurred, she felt she needed to confirm that her experience was not an isolated incident and reached out to others who had worked with the man in question. After learning that they had had similar experiences, she published an op-ed on June 21 in The New York Jewish Week titled “American Jewry’s #MeToo Problem: A

Debbie Findling’s 2018 op-ed led to the resignation of Len Robinson, executive director of NJY Camps.

dling, Hildy Somerville, a former NJY camper, went on the record with The New York Jewish Week detailing allegations of sexual harassment by Robinson when she applied for a position at NJY Camps in 2007. The same article included three other people confirming the “open secret” of Robinson’s workplace behavior.

TWO MONTHS AFTER FINDLING’S op-ed was published, she received a call from Keren McGinity, director of Interfaith Families Jewish Engagement at the graduate program of Hebrew College in Boston. McGinity, now 51, had her own sexual

First-Person Encounter.” Like Findling, McGinity did not name the man. She wrote that, at an event later confirmed to be the 2011 conference of the Association for Jewish Studies in Washington, DC, an older, married man took her out for a candlelit dinner to discuss her professional future. There, he took her hand and back at the hotel insisted on riding in the elevator up to her floor. When she tried to part with him, he wrapped his arms around her and forcefully kissed her neck. She extricated herself and ran back to her room. Just a few hours after her op-ed appeared, someone in the #GamAni Facebook group used an anonymous post

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

9/3/18 11:24 PM

feature to draw a parallel between the unidentified man McGinity described in her piece and Steven M. Cohen, an extremely influential and well-connected Jewish sociologist. Cohen was director of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive at Stanford University and a tenured professor at Hebrew Union CollegeJewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in New York City. About a week later, a reporter from The New York Jewish Week contacted McGinity asking her to confirm or deny that Cohen was her harasser. By that point, she’d been meticulously keeping notes on other women she had been in touch with, including whether they were willing to go on the record. On July 19, The New York Jewish Week reported that eight women had come forward to the paper with allegations of harassment or misconduct against Cohen; three, including McGinity, went on the record. Soon after, HUC-JIR opened a Title IX investigation into Cohen, and he resigned from his position there on August 22. He also stepped down as head of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive. The events leading to the public exposure of allegations about Robinson and Cohen were similar to those of an earlier story. In October 2016, Danielle Berrin, a reporter for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, wrote a first-person account that was published on the paper’s front page alleging that an “accomplished journalist from Israel” had groped and sexually harassed her. She chose not to name the journalist because, she wrote, a Jewish woman jeopardizes “jobs, social standing or even the opportunity to convert” in naming a sexual aggressor. Within days, the famed Israeli journalist Ari Shavit, author of the wildly successful My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel and a rock star on the American Jewish lecture circuit, admitted, amid an Israeli media frenzy, that he was the man. Soon after, more women came forward with allegations against him, and Shavit resigned from his position as a senior columnist at Haaretz and commentator for Israel’s Channel 10 News. Berrin, who is now 35, never really

wanted to go public, but after the release of the Access Hollywood tape of thenpresidential candidate Donald Trump making light of sexual assault, her editor, who knew about the incident, asked her to, and she agreed. This was a year before the #MeToo movement propelled sexual harassment and assault into the spotlight. Berrin wrote the story but was not prepared for the onslaught of national and international attention. “I felt totally alone at the time,” she says of the experience. Berrin says the response was terri-

THERE WAS SO MUCH PENT-UP PAIN AND RAGE IN SO MANY WOMEN’S LIVES, AS WELL AS MEN’S, THAT THERE WAS NO WAY FOR THIS STORY TO COME OUT BUT IN A DELUGE.

fying. Some people criticized her for coming forward, while others refused to take her claims seriously. In a Facebook post, Hillel Schocken—a member of the Haaretz board of directors—took aim at Berrin for her accusation against Shavit, claiming she was just seeking publicity. She took comfort in the hundreds of emails from men and women, Jews and non-Jews alike, who reached out to her to express support and share their own sto-

ries. “It was like this floodgate had burst open,” she recalls. “I think that’s why the #MeToo movement really exploded. There was so much pent-up pain and rage in so many women’s lives, as well as men’s, that there was no way for this story to come out but in a deluge.”

THE JEWISH PROFESSIONAL world is small, its higher echelons even smaller, and the revelations about these powerful men— each one of them a mover, shaker and macher—rocked it. How these allegations, and the men’s identities, became public, was similar in every case: A victim provided just enough details to the press to catch the attention of others who recognized the person the story was referring to and then felt empowered to also come forward. There is an actual term for this blueprint—“escrow”—which is adopted from legal language for a deed, bond or deposit held by a third party, to be transferred after the fulfillment of a condition. “In a way, the folks who go to the press, what they’re doing is making it a public escrow system,” says Chai Feldblum, a commissioner at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency that enforces civil rights law against workplace discrimination. The press then provides critical exposure, says Feldblum. “I think that the need for women to feel strength in numbers is simply a reflection of the basic realities of our system,” since workplace retaliation is a legitimate fear among women who are considering reporting sexual harassment or assault, she says. Feldblum points to survey data from a 2016 EEOC report she co-authored showing that more than half of the women who report sexual harassment in the workplace experience social or professional retribution. But it’s harder to retaliate against two or more women. “Plus, [the escrow process] helps women feel that they will be believed,” says Feldblum. Going public with allegations is “precisely what we need in order to fix this issue,” she says. Lawsuits are also an option, especially when the harassment is SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

MeToo5.indd 57

9/4/18 2:18 AM

ongoing or recent. But while lawsuits usually lead to settlements that can include non-disclosure agreements, going to the press encourages public discussion, says Washington, DC attorney Debra S. Katz, an expert on sexual harassment, employment and whistleblower law. “If the primary objective is to blow the whistle on misconduct, going to the press can be a very powerful way to meet that objective without going through years of litigation,” she says. “What’s exciting about this moment is many people have

alize, she says, “how deep the problems are, and that a tremendous amount of re-education is required to fully understand how we got to where we are and what needs to change.” At times, she adds, she feels “like a human vault,” but it’s “something I feel called to do.”

THERE’S LITTLE DIFFERENCE between coming forward with a sexual harassment story within the Jewish world and outside of it. The fears of retaliation and

If there is a reluctance to speak out against the Jewish community at large, that reluctance is magnified within even more tight-knit ultra-Orthodox communities. After Berrin told her story in 2016, writer Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt tweeted a statement of solidarity with her, saying that she, too, had been harassed, not by Shavit, but by a different Israeli media personality years ago. She didn’t name who it was—she still won’t— because, she says, she’s not interested in bringing him down. Her objective was to

Keren McGinity

Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt

Danielle Berrin

chosen to come forward without looking for any compensation, simply to tell the story, and it’s resulted in other people finding that they are not alone and feeling empowered to tell their stories.” Once victims go on the record, they become valuable resources for others. “Debbie [Findling] made me realize that even if I was the only one that Cohen had assaulted and no one else came forward, which was unlikely, what he did was still wrong,” says McGinity. “A bank robber doesn’t have to rob multiple banks to be a criminal. The socially ingrained idea that many women’s voices ‘equal’ one man’s is ludicrous.” Like Findling, McGinity is now someone to whom other women—and men—reach out. This has made her re-

not being believed, says Feldblum, “are universal.” But the Jewish community is also unique, or at least unique in the way other small, insular communities are, she says: “The feeling that we’re all engaged in some effort together—social justice or religious work—makes one feel uncomfortable in calling out someone who is not acting appropriately.” Keren McGinity struggled with this for years. She didn’t want to tell her story because she didn’t want to bring shame to her close-knit community of Jewish academics. “The idea that the Jewish people are a family, that we are all responsible for each other, weighed on my mind for a long time,” she says. “It is harder to acknowledge when one of our members does something egregious.”

demonstrate solidarity with other female journalists who were sexually harassed by powerful men in the community. Chizhik-Goldschmidt, now 26, whose husband is an Orthodox rabbi in New York City, was taken aback by the harsh reaction from her religious community. “Instead of getting support, I received a lot of hate,” she says. Many questioned her motives, and an ultra-Orthodox news site even called for her husband to divorce her. As he had with Berrin, Haaretz board member Hillel Schocken also accused Chizhik-Goldschmidt of seeking publicity. Chizhik-Goldschmidt, now an editor at The Forward, says it’s particularly difficult for the ultra-Orthodox to come forward with their stories because of fear, Continues on page 78

MeToo5.indd 58

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

9/4/18 2:18 AM

whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the best way to say #metoo?

In the small, insular Jewish professional world, people are often reluctant to come forward with sexual harassment allegations— Especially Against ‘big machers.’ That’s beginning to change. by Lara Moehlman

When she was 23, Debbie Findling was hired by a Jewish Community Center (JCC) in Woodland Hills, California, to oversee its summer day camp under the supervision of acting executive director Leonard “Len” Robinson, an experienced Jewish communal professional in his 40s. It was the summer of 1988, and she was excited when Robinson invited her and her then-boyfriend out to dinner with him and his wife. She told him that her boyfriend couldn’t make it and arrived to find only Robinson, who made an excuse for why his wife wasn’t there either. After dinner, he tried holding her hand as she walked back to her car. When she refused, he told her it was normal behavior for colleagues who liked

Noah Phillips

September/October 2018

Debbie Findling’s 2018 op-ed led to the resignation of Len Robinson, executive director of NJY Camps.

Two months after Findling’s op-ed was published, she received a call from Keren McGinity, director of Interfaith Families Jewish Engagement at the graduate program of Hebrew College in Boston. McGinity, now 51, had her own sexual

There was so much pent-up pain and rage in so many women’s lives, as well as men’s, that there was no way for this story to come out but in a deluge.

The Jewish professional world is small, its higher echelons even smaller, and the revelations about these powerful men— each one of them a mover, shaker and macher—rocked it. How these allegations, and the men’s identities, became public, was similar in every case: A victim provided just enough details to the press to catch the attention of others who recognized the person the story was referring to and then felt empowered to also come forward. There is an actual term for this blueprint—“escrow”—which is adopted from legal language for a deed, bond or deposit held by a third party, to be transferred after the fulfillment of a condition. “In a way, the folks who go to the press, what they’re doing is making it a public escrow system,” says Chai Feldblum, a commissioner at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency that enforces civil rights law against workplace discrimination. The press then provides critical exposure, says Feldblum. “I think that the need for women to feel strength in numbers is simply a reflection of the basic realities of our system,” since workplace retaliation is a legitimate fear among women who are considering reporting sexual harassment or assault, she says. Feldblum points to survey data from a 2016 EEOC report she co-authored showing that more than half of the women who report sexual harassment in the workplace experience social or professional retribution. But it’s harder to retaliate against two or more women. “Plus, [the escrow process] helps women feel that they will be believed,” says Feldblum. Going public with allegations is “precisely what we need in order to fix this issue,” she says. Lawsuits are also an option, especially when the harassment is September/October 2018 / Moment

There’s little difference between coming forward with a sexual harassment story within the Jewish world and outside of it. The fears of retaliation and

Keren McGinity

Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt

Danielle Berrin

September/October 2018

#MeToo continued from page 58

isolation and shame—as well as the community’s stringent views on sex. “There’s no premarital sex, so when a woman is touched, harassed or assaulted before marriage, let’s say, that only hurts her.” In other words, publicly sharing her story can damage her marriage prospects. For victims, another obstacle stems from how the Jewish professional world is structured. The nonprofit world’s reliance on donors makes claims of harassment particularly difficult to navigate, says Steven Bayar, the rabbi of Congregation B’nai Israel in Milburn, New Jersey and a harassment prevention trainer certified by B’Kavod, a partnership between the Good People Fund and the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York. In July, Cheryl Moore, a Pittsburgh woman who volunteered for Jewish organizations, published an essay called “I’m Never Coming Back” in eJewish Philanthropy about her decision to leave the Jewish nonprofit world after being harassed by several wealthy male donors. She didn’t name them. Their “public, outrageous and/or crude comments and behavior” was “observed by others, but questioned by no one,” she wrote. An executive at one organization says she feels unable to tell her story because of potential backlash, since the person in question is one of the most prominent and best-known philanthropists in the Jewish community. “I wish I could speak out so that he no longer feels he has a license to behave with others in the disturbing way that he did with me,” she says. But speaking out, she believes, could hurt her organization. “He has too many influential friends, making him almost untouchable.”

The wave of #MeToo sexual harassment and assault allegations is not limited to the professional Jewish world; it affects congregations, schools and small organizations of all kinds. “In truth, I was not really aware that the problem existed to the extent that we have uncovered,” says Naomi Eisenberger, one of the pioneers of the #GamAni Facebook page and movement. “There’s a 78

September/October 2018

lot more out there.” Since 2016, Eisenberger, the founder and executive director of the New Jerseybased Good People Fund, has helped bring together women who want to tell their stories. Says Findling, “I reached out to her, and she encouraged me to speak up and connected me to others who gave me support.” Eisenberger also made the shidduch (match) between McGinity and Findling. Even before #MeToo took off, she was trying to determine the scope of

I wish I could speak out so that he no longer has a license to behave with others in the disturbing way that he did with me. But He has too many influential friends.

sexual harassment in Jewish nonprofits. In an effort to help small organizations, she helped establish B’Kavod—Hebrew for “in respect,” which provides an anonymous reporting service for sexual harassment and abuse within Jewish workplaces. Complaints are not reviewed by the authorities but by Jewish professionals and lay leaders who decide whether a situation requires their intervention. The nonprofit also has a guide for those con-

sidering coming forward and a confidential phone line. EEOC commissioner Feldblum says that the Jewish community’s response has been unique, although she is not sure if this is because of the hard work of a few leaders such as Eisenberger or a core commitment to tikkun olam and social justice. “Whatever the reason,” says Feldblum, “I really feel like the Jewish community is trying to set up structures to deal with this in a way that I haven’t seen in other communities.” For Findling, the most important source of support has been the emerging grassroots network of people who email and call one another. “We make referrals to those of us who have come forward so that we can offer our encouragement,” she says. “There is also a robust conversation on Facebook, with women, and men as allies, offering support. Perhaps this is how all movements start—with a small group of people who suddenly find themselves spirited into becoming activists simply by our own circumstances.” Findling is not afraid of retribution and dares anyone to question her story or her motives. But looking back, she wishes that there had been such a network for her to reach out to when she was a young woman terrified that the harassment would continue and that her response could ruin her career. Still, there’s much work to be done, she says. “Unfortunately, 30 years later, communal support is still woefully inadequate. We can—and must—do more to support women for their bravery in exposing sexual harassment. Even better,” she adds, “would be if our community had the courage to stop sexual harassment from occurring in the first place.”

If you would like to confidentially contact a Moment editor about a sexual harassment experience, email editor@momentmag.com to tell your story or to set up an appointment to speak on a private line. For completely anonymous reporting, go to momentmag. com/confidential.

theNEW AGE(ing) A PA R T N E R S H I P B E T W E E N

AND MOMENT

C H A N G I N G T H E N A R R AT I V E

or decades, society placed a stigma on the process of aging, the effects of which are still felt today. By the year 2030, one in five people in the United States will be retirement age, according to the Census Bureau. People are living longer and, as they do, they will demand care from those trained to work with older people. There is this idea that “the elderly are at the end, they’re not producing anymore,” says

Monique Eliezer, a member of the executive team at Ingleside, which operates three continuing care retirement communities in the DC metro area. People complain “they cost Medicare. They cost the government, and so forth. So there’s less investment,” Eliezer says. At Ingleside, residents aren’t costs, though. They’re engaged citizens. For Eliezer, it was the people who drew her to a career working for, and with, senior citizens. “We have a great

population of aging older adults who have stories that are incredible,” she says. Ingleside is pioneering what they call “engaged living.” “It’s something that represents a change, because nowadays you can be engaged until the day you die,” Eliezer says. Eliezer says society’s attitude toward the aging is changing with help from programs that engage older adults throughout their lives— shifting the narrative of aging from one of sickSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

Ingleside Design4.indd 59

9/3/18 2:37 PM

ness to engagement and independence. This engagement manifests in the Six Dimensions of Wellness, a popular model first developed by Dr. Bill Hettler, co-founder of the National Wellness Institute, that emphasizes a balance of spiritual, physical, social, emotional, occupational and intellectual wellness. “What is a new thing is the ability of helping older adults to have the infrastructure to continue to engage throughout life,” Eliezer says. “They don’t need to stop. They continue to grow.” As both an Ingleside resident and an expert in the study of aging, Enid Portnoy brings unique perspective to the topic of aging. She moved to Ingleside in May of 2017 after a 43year teaching career as a professor of communication and gerontology (the study of aging from a humanistic point of view) at West Virginia University. “Even though I’ve taught gerontology classes for many years, it’s different when you are the one who is now in the position of being an older person,” she says. But although she’s had to make some adjustments, she’s found a home at Ingleside. “I knew this was for me. I’m a people person, and you couldn’t find more friendly and warm personalities and so many people who are so interesting,” Portnoy says. “Everybody’s friendly.” And that friendliness is not a coincidence. At Ingleside, all staff offices have open doors, and Portnoy, an academic expert in nonverbal communication, says it sends a message that residents are always welcome— that the staff is always there for residents. The architecture of Ingleside’s buildings also promotes engagement. “We know that we have to bring the outdoors indoors,” Eliezer says. This is done through natural lighting, open spaces and large windows. “The same way that we want to bring the outdoors to the indoors, we want to take the indoors to the outdoors,” she says. Ingleside is working toward building more outdoor spaces for residents to eat, paint or sit with friends by a fire pit.

F O R

INGLESIDE IS SURROUNDED BY THE NATURAL BEAUTY OF ROCK CREEK PARK

CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE BRIDGES THE OUTDOORS AND THE INDOORS

According to the American Journal of Psychiatry, more than 2 million of the 34 million Americans over the age of 65 suffer from a form of depression. “Loneliness is a major issue,” Eliezer says. “Lonely people who stay in their houses don’t have any social contact,” she adds. Often, they fall into depression, which takes a physical toll on their bodies. Ingleside’s extensive programming tries to combat loneliness and foster community. Residents can take classes through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes, a partnership with Johns Hopkins University that brings

M O R E

learning to retirement communities. There’s also a variety of fitness classes at the Center for Healthy Living throughout the day, from swimming to yoga. Movies, gardening, trips and cruises also fill the social calendar at Ingleside. Eliezer says these activities build communities for residents. In addition to tai chi classes and participating in a play-reading group, Portnoy directed the community’s first dramatic production: a compilation of celebrity impersonations with an interactive twist (audience members had to guess who the actors were impersonating).

I N F O R M A T I O N

Ingleside Rock Creek: infoirc@inglesideonline.org | 202-596-3083

dimensions of

Ingleside Design4.indd 60

wellness

Spiritual

Physical

9/3/18 2:36 PM

Portnoy also enjoys interacting with Ingleside’s long- and shortterm care residents—the older residents who do not live independently. “I enjoy listening to them. They have wonderful knowledge and really fascinating stories that we would never know,” Portnoy says, “That’s true even of the people in independent living here—I don’t know these people very well, and the more I get to know them, I think the richer I become.” Looking forward, Eliezer is an optimist. For starters, baby boomers seem to be working and volunteering with their elders at a higher rate than the generation before. This intergenerational programming is crucial, Eliezer says, to maintaining engagement and wellness among the elderly. But the word “intergenerational” goes both ways, and on any given day, residents of Ingleside might

Alexa, the New Resident on the Block

ALEXA, PLAY “WAIT WAIT, DON’T TELL ME!”

WHEN GENERATIONS COME TOGETHER, LIFE IS FAR RICHER

travel to an elementary school to read to kindergarteners, plant trees or sing. On other days, student volunteers visit the campus and serve food, discuss politics or share stories. But it’s not only engaging programs that can help change the narrative; Eliezer says a change in language is needed to destigmatize the process of aging. This starts with younger people speaking to older ones from a place of equality rather than authority. For example, she’d rather hear someone tell an elderly person “I hear you. I understand you,” instead of something along the lines of: “Everything will be okay, honey.” “It’s not because you are a middle-aged person and you are talking to an older person that you need to patronize or you need to treat them as old people,” she says. “They’re people.”—Lara Moehlman

tereotypes dictate that senior citizens and the latest technology don’t mix, but at Ingleside, around 50 residents talk to Amazon’s Alexa on a regular basis. She helps them record their favorite shows, make dinner reservations and even sign up for Ingleside programs and trips. When Ingleside piloted the project, giving 50 residents Amazon Echo (the speaker that Alexa is attached to) in early January, “the longterm goal was to explore how voice recognition devices can contribute to improving or augmenting the wellbeing of residents,” says Dusanka Delovska-Trajkova, Ingleside’s chief information officer. At first, there were concerns that residents would find the new technology challenging. “We were not even sure if the residents were going to use it,” Delovska-Trajkova says, “but now we know that more than 90 percent of the pilot group use it daily,” while the other 10 percent use it two to three times a week. Some use it to create shopping lists, and others have connected their phone contacts to the speaker and use it to make calls. One creative group of Ingleside staff members programmed Alexa to engage cognitively impaired residents by using the speakers to read books or play music. Since last year, the AARP Foundation has been testing a voice-assisted technologies program to build community in senior housing settings. One of its main goals is to test whether the technology can help combat loneliness—and according to AARP, anecdotal evidence shows a speaker like Alexa can provide companionship. George Freeland, a resident at Ingleside, says he is less dependent on Alexa because he’s more computer-savvy. Still, he finds the gadget fun. “You can ask it different kinds of questions, but I haven’t really found a use for it beyond ‘What’s the weather in Tokyo?’ or ‘How old was Ernest Hemingway when he died?’—those sorts of things.”—Lara Moehlman

Ingleside at King Farm: infoikf@inglesideonline.org | 240-499-9019 Westminster at Lake Ridge: infowlr@inglesideonline.org | 703-496-3440

Social

Ingleside Design4.indd 61

Emotional

Occupational

Intellectual

9/4/18 2:22 AM

Aging Around The World According to a 2015 report commissioned by the National Institute on Aging, 17 percent of the world’s population will be 65 and older by 2050. Countries and communities are creating innovative programs to give their aging citizens every opportunity to live life to the fullest.

Hogewyk, the ‘Dementia Village’

Hope Meadows: It Takes a Village

The Netherlands has made headlines with Hogewyk, a village outside of Amsterdam created exclusively for people with severe dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Complete with a movie theater, grocery store, café, bar, restaurant and beauty salon, Hogewyk is staffed with nurses and trained helpers who are indistinguishable from the residents. Houses and gardens of varying styles—urban modern, country chic and even Indonesian—are designed to make seniors comfortable. Residents can safely roam through the streets, squares, gardens and park, and there are no locks on the doors. It is a place where residents are able to feel at home and live their lives to the fullest.—Molly Cooke

Three generations live at Hope Meadows: children adopted from foster care, their parents and seniors (the “community’s grandparents”). The planned neighborhood includes about 40 homes and sits 120 miles outside of Chicago. The elders take care of the children while their parents are at work in exchange for a rent reduction, while younger adults help care for the seniors. This half-community, half-family arrangement is successful because “all the generations take care of each other,” says Brenda Krause Eheart, founder of Hope Meadows. The “intentional neighboring” communities are organized by the non-profit Generations of Hope, which currently supports six such neighborhoods and is developing three more.—Jake Biderman

Japanese Mailmen Check In on the Elderly

Students and Seniors Live Together in Israel

Two of the biggest problems facing aging populations around the world are loneliness and isolation. To combat these problems, the Japanese postal service, Japan Post, created a unique service that helps keep an eye on seniors when family and friends can’t. In the “Watch Over” service, mailmen visit elderly citizens who live along their route once a month. They sit with them and talk, maybe over a cup of tea, and ask how they are feeling and if they need anything. The postmen then write up a report that is delivered to the senior’s family. This innovative program costs families $20 a month.—Jake Biderman

Kan Garim, which means “Here We Live,” is a program that matches university students with seniors who live alone and have a spare bedroom. In exchange for housing and a tuition scholarship, students spend at least four hours a week with their older roommates—which can include everything from going to the movies to browsing the internet. Participants in this unique arrangement (both young and old) say their lives are richer and more rewarding. The program has doubled in size in one year, now enrolling over 400 students and pensioners. Countries such as the United Kingdom and Spain are planning to replicate the program.—Anis Modi

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

Ingleside Design4.indd 62

9/3/18 2:36 PM

Magic continued from page 33

ancient wisdom they believed existed in medieval Jewish mystical literature. Pico’s “tutor” in Jewish Kabbalah and the Hebrew language was Rabbi Johannan Alemanno, a famous Italian Jewish humanist who also taught other Christians. Alemanno argued that the study of magic should be regarded as the final and most important stage of a man’s intellectual and spiritual education. This kind of collaboration, however, was unusual. More often, Christian interest in Jewish magic led to trouble for Jews and contributed to antiSemitism. Medieval and early modern Christians viewed the Jew as the magician par excellence. Christians believed that Satan was the ultimate source of all magic. As a result, Jewish skill with magic was taken as evidence of their allegiance to Satan and their demonic nature as a people. Because of this belief, Christians persecuted Jews time and time again. The most serious episodes were mass attacks and massacres, such as the one that began at the coronation of King Richard the Lionheart in London on September 3, 1189. Amid fears that they would cause mayhem, Jews and women had been barred from the ceremony. Despite the ban, a Jewish delegation attended, bearing gifts and pledges of fealty. Accused of having come to cast evil enchantments over the newly crowned king, they were stripped, whipped and banished from court. The violence escalated and led to a large-scale pogrom in London that eventually spread to other cities in England. Thousands of Jews died before the brutality ended more than a half-year later. Similarly, untold numbers of Jews were accused of black magic and killed during the roughly 600 years (1231-1826) of the Roman Catholic Inquisitions. These prejudices followed Jews into the modern world, and accusations of black magic persist as a source of anti-Semitism. Sometimes Jews viewed magic as a tool to combat their enemies. Throughout their history, Jews have created and compiled magical practices, spells and recipes intended to

harm those who threatened them. One example occurred during World War II. As the news of the Nazi annihilation of the Jews spread beyond Europe, there were Jews in Palestine, who over the objections of some rabbis, began to practice magic in an attempt to save European Jewry. Rabbi Yehuda Fetaya (1859-1942) led a group of 60 people to Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem, a location long used by Jews for magical rituals. Once there, the group put ash-filled sacks on their heads and chanted incan-

Magic is an important part of my Jewish heritage. We live in troubling times. The ancient wisdom of Jewish magic helps me bring order to chaos.

tations for 24 hours. At night, they blew dozens of shofarot and called for God to show the Jewish people mercy. Afterward, the group filled cups with tears and marched around the tomb seven times, then shouted seven times in unison for God to prevent Hitler from entering Jerusalem. Similar pilgrimages were made to the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. And, to protect Palestine itself from the Nazis, Kabbalists were said to have traveled in a plane to spread cock blood on the borders of the land. An alternate version of this story claimed that British officers asked the

Kabbalists to fly in a military plane to spread the protective blood over both Palestine and Egypt. It is also possible that Jerusalem Kabbalists created three magical charms intended to kill Adolf Hitler. These rumors are found in contemporaneous letters and reports and, although evidence that these events actually took place is scanty and disputed, the prevalence of such stories demonstrates the continuing importance of magic in the modern Jewish world. Which brings us to today. Not only is Jewish magic alive and well, it has also become trendy. In the United States, Jewish witches or “Jewitches” bring a Jewish angle to New Age practices such as astrology, moon rituals and goddess worship. The Jewitches I spoke with explained that they use magical Jewish rituals and charms to address contemporary concerns such as workplace discrimination and wage disparity. Gilah Levin, a Jewitch living in the Bay area, says, “Magic is an important part of my Jewish heritage. We live in troubling times. The ancient wisdom of Jewish magic helps me bring order to chaos.” And perhaps it does more as well. A few weeks ago, I had lunch with my childhood friend Rachel and her new baby daughter. Rachel spent close to 15 years attempting to get pregnant. She tried every known fertility drug and in vitro fertilization treatment multiple times, to no avail. She prayed daily to become pregnant. Finally, early last September, she paid an Orthodox rabbi in Israel to perform a segulah (charm) that he claimed would cure her infertility. Following his advice, on each day of Sukkot, hoping that she was already pregnant, Rachel bit off and chewed the pitom or stem of an etrog in order to ensure a safe delivery. In late October she learned that she was pregnant, and this June, at age 49, she gave birth to a healthy baby. There is no way to know how or why Rachel finally got pregnant. But looking at her glowing face and that of her beautiful daughter, I realized that the actual cause didn’t matter. To me, it was magic. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

Magic6.indd 35

9/3/18 11:39 PM

MENT’S O M

GUIDE TO

FILM FESTIVALS FILMS YOU SHOULDN’T MISS

BY ISAAC ZABLOCKI

Red Cow

Directed by Tsivia Barkai-Yacov Starring Avigayil Koevary Gal Toren Moran Rosenblatt

A notable theme that emerged from the film festival lineups was movies about the Orthodox community. This includes Red Cow by Tsivia Barkai-Yacov, a movie about a young woman maturing and coming out as gay in a family of settlers in an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Redemption by Yossi Madmoni and Boaz Yehonatan Yaacov follows the story of a rock band attempting to 64

get back together after the lead singer becomes religious. The Unorthodox by Eliran Malka follows the establishment of the Shas Party—the Sephardic/Mizrachi religious social-political movement. The film is engaging, though it downplays the dramatic outcry that led to the rise of this party. One of the films relating to Arab life in Israel is the documentary Cause of

Death by Ramy Katz, which could not be timelier. It tells the story of a Druze policeman killed while apprehending a terrorist and the questionable cover-up of the truth behind his death. The fact that the film was screened as the Israeli Druze community was in an uproar due to the passing of the nation-state law brought further power to the story. More on the political side, King Bibi by

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

FilmFestivals3.indd 64

9/4/18 2:20 AM

READY, SET...ACTION! SPECIAL MOMENT SUBSCRIPTION OFFER

JUST FOR FILM FESTIVAL GOERS MOMENTMAG.COM/SUBSCRIBE USE PROMO CODE: ENGAGE

2018–2019 FILM FESTIVALS SERET FILM FESTIVAL, THE ISRAELI FILM FESTIVAL London, UK; Berlin, Germany; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Santiago, Chile seret-international.org Year-Round

CINEMATTERS JCC Manhattan New York, NY jccfilm.org Year-Round

JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL OF DALLAS Studio Movie Grill Spring Valley Dallas, TX jccdallas.org/special-events/film-festival September 4–27

AM HAYAM HAVURAH 2018 JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL The WHAT, Julie Harris Stage Wellfleet, MA what.org October 3–30

JAAMM FESTIVAL (JEWISH ARTS, AUTHORS, MOVIES AND MUSIC) Denver, CO jccdenver.org/arts-culture/jaamm-fest October 4–November 18

FilmFestivals3.indd 65

CLEVELAND JEWISH FILMFEST Cleveland, OH mandeljcc.org/filmfest October 4–14

SANTA FE JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Santa Fe, NM SantaFeJFF.org October 7 & Year-Round

CHICAGO FESTIVAL OF ISRAELI CINEMA Chicago and Glenview, IL israelifilmchi.org October 18–28

OKLAHOMA JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Tulsa, OK facebook.com/ OklahomaJewishFilmFestival October 21–October 25

JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL OF CENTRAL NEW JERSEY Rialto Theater Westfield, NJ jccnj.org Fall & Spring

NAGLE FAMILY JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Congregation B’nai Israel Boca Raton, FL cbiboca.org Fall–Spring

OTHER ISRAEL FILM FESTIVAL JCC Manhattan New York, NY OtherIsrael.org Nov 1–8

17TH ANNUAL JEWISH ARTS & FILM FESTIVAL OF FAIRFIELD COUNTY Stamford, CT stamfordjcc.org October 27–November 11

BOSTON JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Greater Boston, MA bjff.org November 7-19

AUSTIN JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Austin, TX AustinJFF.org October 27–November 2

WARSAW JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Warsaw, Poland wjff.pl/en November 12–18

9/3/18 4:54 PM

MENT’S

GUIDE TO FILM

FESTIVALS

King Bibi

A documentary directed by Dan Shadur

Redemption

The Unorthodox

Directed by Yossi Madmoni & Boaz Yehonatan Yacov

Directed by Eliran Malka

Starring Sendi Bar Shahar Even-Tzur Moshe Folkenflick

Dan Shadur provides an in-depth look at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rise to power, his impact on Israeli politics and his record-breaking term in office. The film also gives some insight into Netanyahu’s relationship with Donald Trump, making it all the more relevant. In my mind, Michal Aviad’s Working Woman was the timeliest film, following a woman who gets a job opportunity 66

Starring Shuli Rand Yaacov Cohen Yoav Levi

with a boss who makes inappropriate advances. The film, a fine example of the power of the #MeToo movement, makes its impact through great production and subtle performances, bringing to life a troubling universal reality. American films also seem to have bought into the topic of the ultra-Orthodox. A film that has been getting great reviews and attention is 93Queen,

about an Orthodox women’s ambulance service. Also coming out of the Tribeca film festival is one to keep an eye out for, To Dust, starring Matthew Broderick and Geza Rohrig (Son of Saul), a comedy about a Hasidic man struggling with the death of his wife. Isaac Zablocki is the founder of the Jewish Films Presenters Network.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

FilmFestivals3.indd 66

9/3/18 4:55 PM

MENT’S

GUIDE TO FILM

FESTIVALS

Cause of Death

A documentary directed by Ramy Katz

GERSHMAN PHILADELPHIA JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL (GPJFF) Philadelphia, PA pjff.org November 3–18

VIRGINIA PENINSULA JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL The Williamsburg Library Williamsburg, VA vpjff.com October, January, March

SPOKANE JEWISH CULTURAL FILM FESTIVAL Spokane, WA sajfs.org/our-programs/sjcff January

MOBILE JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Mobile & Baldwin Counties, AL mobilejewishfederation.org January 13–27

CENTRAL MASS INTERNATIONAL JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Central Massachusetts worcesterjcc.org January 18–29

FilmFestivals3.indd 67

THE DONALD M EPHRAIM PALM BEACH JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL North and Central Palm Beach County, FL pbjff.org January 20–February 12

MAYERSON JCC JEWISH AND ISRAELI FILM FESTIVAL Greater Cincinnati, OH mayersonjcc.org/ jewish-israeli-film-festival February 2–21

FT. LAUDERDALE JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL David Posnack JCC Ft. Lauderdale, FL dpjcc.org January 31–February 28

NAPLES JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Naples, FL naplesjewishfilmfestival.org March, First 4 Sundays

SAN DIEGO INTERNATIONAL JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Greater San Diego sdcjc.org/sdjff February 7–17

ATLANTA JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Metro Atlanta, GA ajff.org February 6–26

LOUISVILLE JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Louisville, KY jewishlouisville.org/filmfestival February 2–24

JCC CHICAGO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Chicago, IL jccfilmfest.jccchicago.org March 1–17

HONOLULU JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Honolulu, HI honolulujewishfilmfest.org March 2–18

16TH ANNUAL JCC ROCKLAND INTERNATIONAL JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Regal Theaters Nanuet, NY jccrockland.org/film-festival March 3–April 30

9/3/18 4:55 PM

MENT’S

GUIDE TO FILM

FESTIVALS

93Queen

Directed by Paula Eiselt Starring Amy Ackerman Hadassah Ellis Ailin Elyasi

Working Woman GAINESVILLE JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Gainesville, FL jcncf.org March 17–30

Directed by Michal Aviad Starring Liron Ben-Shlush Oshri Cohen Menashe Noy

JFILM FESTIVAL SouthSide Works Cinema Pittsburgh, PA FilmPittsburgh.org March 7–17

SACRAMENTO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Crest Theater Sacramento, CA jewishsac.org/sjff March 7, 9, 10

BOULDER JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Dairy Arts Center Boulder, CO

BUFFALO INTERNATIONAL JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Amherst Dipson Theatre Buffalo, NY bijff.com March 22–29

boulderjcc.org March 7–17

NEW JERSEY JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL West Orange, NJ jccmetrowest.org/njjff March 27–April 7, 2019

MAINE JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Portland, Brunswick, Waterville, Bangor, Rockland, Lewiston (ME) mjff.org March 9–17

EVELYN RUBENSTEIN JCC HOUSTON JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Houston, TX erjcchouston.org/filmfest March 30–April 10

JUDY LEVIS MARKHOFF BOCA RATON JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Boca Raton and Delray Beach, FL bocajff.org March 10–31

CHERRY HILL VOLVO CARS JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL AT THE KATZ JCC Cherry Hill, NJ katzjcc.org/film March 31–April 7

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

FilmFestivals3.indd 68

9/3/18 4:56 PM

MENT’S

GUIDE TO FILM

FESTIVALS

To Dust

Directed by Shawn Snyder Starring Matthew Broderick Geza Rohrig

JEWISH FEDERATION NEW HAMPSHIRE JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL New Hampshire nhjewishfilmfestival.org April 4–14

WINNIPEG INTERNATIONAL JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Winnipeg, Canada radyjcc.com May 21–June 7

WILMINGTON JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Wilmington, NC wilmingtonjff.org April 28–May 8

ST. LOUIS JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema and JCC Arts & Education Building St. Louis, MO stljewishfilmfestival.org June 2–6

LOS ANGELES JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Los Angeles, CA LAJFilmFest.org May 1–8

EDWARD S. FINKELSTEIN HARRISBURG JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Midtown Cinema Harrisburg, PA hbgjff.com May 5–16

ISRAEL FILM CENTER FESTIVAL JCC Manhattan New York, NY israelfilmcenter.org/festival June 4–12

ROCHESTER JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Rochester, NY rjff.org July 7–14

FALMOUTH SUMMER JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Falmouth Jewish Congregation East Falmouth, MA falmouthjewish.org Tuesdays in July and August

BERKSHIRE JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Duffin Theater Lenox, MA berkshirejewishfilmfestival.org July 8–August 11

JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL OF GRAND RAPIDS Celebration! Cinema North Grand Rapids, MI jewishgrandrapids.org April 28–May 2

ATTENTION FESTIVAL GOERS:

EXCLUSIVE SUBSCRIPTION OFFER AT MOMENTMAG.COM/SUBSCRIBE USE PROMO CODE: ENGAGE

FilmFestivals3.indd 69

9/3/18 4:56 PM

The Power of Couscous

ISTOCKPHOTO; CREATIVE COMMONS

inat Admony is an Israeli chef known for her modern and irreverent interpretations of Middle Eastern cuisine. Her “everyday cauliflower,” for example, is made with the popular Israeli snack Bamba and peanut tahini. Admony’s new restaurant in Manhattan’s West Village, Kish-Kash, however, is a change of tone, dedicated to traditional Jewish North African cuisine. Why the change? Behold the power of couscous. You may be familiar with the five-minute couscous that’s available in supermarkets, but hand-rolled couscous, the kind Admony makes fresh every day in what she calls “New York’s first couscous bar,” requires a lot of patience, practice and time-consuming labor. First made by Berber tribes of North Africa, and to this day a staple in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and western Libya, couscous goes by many different names: The Berber called it sekruo or seksu, in Algeria it’s kisku or ta’am, and in Tunisia it can be kiskisi, kisskiss, kuskusi or kusksi. Throughout the Maghreb, couscous was traditionally prepared by groups of

BOB5.indd 70

women, family and friends, who helped each other pass the long hours it took to make. First, they spread semolina wheat, bought by the men and freshly ground, onto a large round platter, sprinkling it with salted water and sometimes flour. They then rolled the grains with their hands, adding more water and flour as necessary, until the couscous granules formed. “The soothing sound of gold bangles on your mother’s hand banging again and again against the aluminum tray is the sound of home,” recalls Pascale Perez-Rubin, an Israeli food historian and journalist who grew up in a Jewish-Tunisian home. The couscous was then sifted through a special sieve to form equal-size bits. Finally it was either cooked and served or left to dry for a few days in the sun. Before preparing, Jews moistened the dried couscous with a little salted water and oil. “Traditionally, Muslims used samneh”—clarified butter—“which the Jews avoided for kashrut reasons,” says PerezRubin. “This made a big difference in the

flavor and aroma between the two.” The couscous was then steamed in a special dish called a couscousière, similar to a steaming pot. It was placed in the upper perforated section called kishkash or kiskis—the origin of the name of Adomy’s restaurant—and the stew that accompanied it in the lower pan. After the first steaming process, the couscous was left to cool, mixed or sifted again to keep it airy, then steamed once more—or several times more—before serving. The process is so lengthy that even Moroccans prefer ready-made couscous these days. How couscous is served depends on where you are. While Moroccans serve their stews over the couscous in a covered earthenware pot called a tagine—with the couscous in the center, meat on top and vegetables around it—Tunisians ladle the couscous into one bowl, the broth into another and the vegetables and meat into a third, allowing guests to create their own combinations. In Sicily, couscous is served with fish stews, and in Livorno (Italy), it

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

9/4/18 2:24 AM

is accompanied by meat, traditionally lamb. (In her book, Cucina Ebraica, Joyce Goldstein claims that Jews who came from North Africa in the 13th century first brought couscous to Italy.) There are lesser-known varieties of couscous: The Palestinian maftoul and Lebanese moghrabieh are rolled into larger pellets of fine and coarse wheat before steaming. Maftoul are about the size of the Italian orzo, and moghrabieh (meaning “coming from the Maghreb”) are about the size of chickpeas, and both come topped with chicken, onions and chickpeas. American consumers may be familiar with what is marketed as Israeli couscous, which has gained popularity in recent decades. Known in Israel as ptitim, it is prepared by kneading the dough, as opposed to rolling wheat with water, and boiled, rather than steamed, similar to pasta. A staple of many weekday family lunches in Israel, ptitim was invented in

the 1950s during a time of deep austerity, when rice, which was in high demand by Mizrachi Jews, was scarce. Then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion asked Osem, the dried-food manufacturer, to come up with a carb substitute for rice, and Israeli couscous was born. The original recipe was modeled on farfel, Ashkenazi noodles shaped like a rice grain, which later became round. Palestinians often point to the similarity between their maftoul and Israeli couscous, arguing that Israeli couscous is neither couscous nor Israeli. In Israel, Jewish North African families eat couscous on Tuesdays and Fridays. This tradition dates back to Tunis, where bakeries were closed on Tuesdays. “If they have no bread, let them eat couscous,” says Admony. Tuesday couscous is served with a simple soup and Shabbat dinner couscous with mafroum (Tripolitan beefstuffed potatoes in tomato sauce) or boulet (a Tunisian stew with vegetables but no to-

mato sauce). Other classic couscous stews include t’becha bil kar’a—pumpkin and chickpea with or without meat. Although it is considered a poor man’s dish, couscous symbolizes good luck and prosperity, says Perez-Rubin, and so it is a favorite for holidays and family celebrations. Moroccan Jews eat a sevenvegetable couscous on Rosh Hashanah topped with tanzia, a sweet stew of dried fruit, nuts and onion. Other North African communities decorate their holiday couscous with dried fruit and saffron. For Shavuot, Tunisian Jews mix a coarser, unsifted couscous with milk, sugar and cinnamon, while Algerians use milk and green fava. There is even dessert couscous: Tunisian farka cake is made with layers of couscous and dates, nuts and cinnamon, all steamed together, then drizzled with sugar syrup. “Couscous is versatile,” says Perez-Rubin. “It takes form and changes according to the occasion.”—Vered Guttman

Recipe BUTTERNUT SQUASH, CHICKPEA AND TURMERIC COUSCOUS SERVES 6

This simple Tunisian dish is served with a stew of butternut squash or pumpkin, potato, carrots and chickpeas and cooked with a little turmeric. It’s fat free, the vegetables are high in carbs, the chickpeas

provide protein and the whole wheat couscous is full of fiber. The combination helps you stay full for a long time, making it an ideal dish for the seudah mafseket, the pre-fast meal of Yom Kippur.

STEW INGREDIENTS

2 quarts vegetable stock / 2 potatoes, peeled and cut into 2-inch cubes / 3 carrots, peeled and cut into 2-inch sections 1 yellow onion, quartered / 1 cup cooked or canned chickpeas / 1 butternut squash, peeled, cut into large chunks 2 zucchinis, cut into 2-inch sections / 3 celery stalks, cut into 2-inch slices 1 small bunch cilantro, chopped / 1 tablespoon grated fresh turmeric root or 1 teaspoon turmeric powder / salt to taste COUSCOUS INGREDIENTS

1 ½ cups whole wheat couscous | 1 ½ teaspoons salt DIRECTIONS

1. In a large pot over medium-high heat, bring vegetable stock to boil. 2. Add the rest of the ingredients, except for salt, bring to boil, then reduce heat to low. 3. Cover and cook for 1 hour, until all vegetables are tender. Add salt to taste. 4. Prepare couscous according to package directions. 5. In each bowl put a few tablespoons of couscous, top with vegetables and chickpeas with some of the stock and serve. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

BOB5.indd 71

9/3/18 12:53 AM

BOB5.indd 72

9/4/18 2:33 AM

never buy!” Officer: “Well, what is it?” Mendelssohn: “Intelligence.” Here, as in other Mendelssohn jokes, the humor stems from the contrast of body and mind, one weak, one acute. Büschenthal reasoned that cunning was more widespread in lower-class Jews than in upper-class Jews because lowerclass Jews were more oppressed. The particular charm of Mendelssohn jokes is that he embodies a contradiction: As the most enlightened and liberated he is also the most oppressed, always in need of his cunning, his Judenwitz, as proof of his intellectual belonging, since he no longer belongs. Yet this kind of joke also speaks to something else: a culture finding itself, emerging, in thought. If scholars and critics have located Jewish humor in the Eastern European tradition, it’s because so many canonical works of post-Enlightenment Ashkenazi Jewish culture sprang directly from jokes that extrapolated, transformed, overworked, burdened and became the vehicle for deep explorations of the Jewish psyche. “Doctor, this is my only life and I’m living it in the middle of a Jewish joke!" Alexander Portnoy yells in Portnoy’s Complaint. The First Book of Jewish Jokes doesn’t exactly negate that lineage. It asks us instead to look at other points of origin, and indirectly redirects us from psychology to philosophy. The curse of writing about jokes or comedy is that the author is obliged to wade into extended theoretical and historical arguments when what we really want to know is: Is it funny? The answer here is typically no. Many are witty; few will make you laugh. The jokes are largely evidence for Oring’s historical arguments. Consider the following: A rich Jewish man and woman stroll on the street. “A beggar boy” asks them for money. He continues following them, refusing to leave. Finally, the rich Jew reaches into his pocket and examines his coins but he doesn’t find any small change. How could he separate himself from the beautiful money? He decided quickly and put it all back into his pocket and turned to the lady with the words: “I’d give a fortune for a groschen [penny]!”

How far would you go for forgiveness? A haunting exploration of the choices we make in a choiceless time, and the power of the human spirit to transcend even its own destruction. www.kasvapress.com Intriguing! At times dark and haunting, at times lyrical and introspective. Returning resonates long after “the end”.

—Dan Sofer, author of the Dry Bones Society trilogy

I suppose the joke is funny because the punch line presents a reversal, or because the translator managed to preserve the comic sounds. But the joke is remarkable for what it is not: a schnorrer joke. In the Eastern European Jewish tradition, the perspective of the joke would have been reversed: the thrust of the joke would be the poor Jew asserting his humanity. Here the joke is fully aligned with the rich Jew and his problem of having too much money, even if it makes light of his way of thinking. Yet as much as Oring would like to depart from earlier scholars, his narrative is consistent with previous literary interpretations. In considering the maskilic origins of Jewish humor, I was reminded of something the critic and Hebrew translator Robert Alter once wrote: “Jewish humor typically drains the charge of cosmic significance from suffering by grounding it in a world of homey practical realities.” Here, too, we see Jewish humor as a secularization, a departure from the realm of the sacred.

The late Sidney Morgenbesser, professor of philosophy at Columbia and erstwhile rabbinical student, became, like Mendelssohn, a star of jokes, his deep, unbridled capacity to wrestle with the inherent contradictions of life preserved by his friends and students. “I had occasion to probe him for details of a trip he had recently made to Israel, a trip I sensed had been emotionally trying: ‘déjà Jew’ was the cryptic reply.” With its rapid-fire cunning, the joke resembles one of Büschenthal’s Mendelssohn jokes, but with a critical difference: There is specificity, a personality, a Jew telling a joke, a rhythm. Jewish jokes may be historically linked to the enlightenment, but Jewish humor joins philosophy to psychology. Behind the joke is a real person reasoning, rationalizing, aiming for enlightenment. Eitan Kensky is the Reinhard Family Curator of Judaica and Hebraica Collections at the Stanford Libraries and cofounder of In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

BOB5.indd 73

9/3/18 12:44 AM

BOOK REVIEW | RUBY NAMDAR

Who Owns Kafka? KAFKA’S LAST TRIAL by Benjamin Balint W. W. Norton & Company 2018, 288 pp, $26.95

W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

“One summer morning in Jerusalem, Eva Hoffe, eighty-two, sat with her hands clasped on a polished curved wood bench in an alcove of the Israeli Supreme Court’s high-ceilinged lobby. To pass the time before her hearing, a friend who had come to lend support leafed through a copy of the daily newspaper Maariv. On the whole, Eva avoided the press; she resented the farrago of lies generated by journalists bent on portraying her as an eccentric cat-lady, an opportunist looking to make a fast buck on cultural treasures too important to remain in private hands.” These dramatic lines open Kafka’s Last Trial, Benjamin Balint’s account of one of the most fascinating debates over Jewish literature’s definition and boundaries: the 2016 legal battle over Franz Kafka’s literary legacy and the final resting place of his surviving papers. Few literary figures have stirred readers’ imaginations as much as Kafka, his tormented life and early death. Indeed, he is viewed as a mythical figure as much as a renowned author. But above all, the bizarre story of how Kafka’s work survived and entered the canon has become a staple of literary legend. Kafka’s Last Trial focuses on the lively debate over Kafka’s papers, while also shedding light on his 74

BOB5.indd 74

intriguing personality—and his equally intriguing relationship with the author Max Brod, whose name is now irreversibly intertwined with Kafka’s legacy. The story of Kafka’s life, death and literary resurrection is widely known, even among those who have never read a single line of his work. Born in 1883, Kafka grew up in a middle-class Jewish family in Prague. After studying law, he began his working life at an insurance company, leaving him little time to write. The young Kafka found his new position oppressive, later writing that it robbed him of his soul. The conflict between his poetic core and the bureaucratic alienation of middle-class conventions is one of the main motifs in Kafka’s work, and often considered his signature theme. Kafka’s personal life was equally tormented. Ill at ease with himself and his relationships, he was engaged to several women, but never married. His relationship with his father was perhaps his formative conflict, and the famous letters between the two betray Kafka’s overwhelming sense of self-doubt and selfloathing. Kafka’s writing career was also far from thriving. Although a few of his works were published during his lifetime in literary magazines, they received little to no public attention. Kafka ordered his friend Max Brod to destroy the rest of his works after his death, including the unfinished manuscripts of Der Process (The Trial), Das Schloss (The Castle) and Der Verschollene (translated as both Amerika and The Man Who Disappeared). But when Kafka died from tuberculosis in 1924, at age 40, Brod ignored his friend’s request and published the manuscripts. Without Brod’s refusal to honor this final wish, and his tireless efforts to promote Kafka’s work in the years that followed, Kafka’s name would never have become one of the most important in the history of modern literature. The relationship between Kafka and

Brod—who was, at the time, a much more successful writer—and the strange circumstances that turned Brod into the guardian of Kafka’s legacy are at the heart of Kafka’s Last Trial. Balint, an American-born writer, translator and journalist living in Jerusalem, expertly traces a path from the early days of their friendship—their age of innocence, so to speak—to the contemporary battle over Kafka’s legacy. The turn of events that led to this last trial is itself Kafkaesque. When the Nazis took over Prague in 1939, 15 years after Kafka’s death, Brod fled to Palestine with his wife, Elsa, and a suitcase full of Kafka’s unpublished manuscripts. He settled in Tel Aviv, where he continued to write and worked as a dramaturge for the Habimah theatre. During this time he did his best to promote his late friend’s writing and build the international reputation Kafka’s work enjoys today. After his wife’s death in 1942, Brod became very close to a couple named Otto and Esther Hoffe, employing Esther as a secretary for a number of years; many presume that this relationship was romantic as well as professional. Before his death in 1968, Brod passed the legal stewardship of the Kafka papers in his possession to Esther Hoffe, who left them in her will to her daughters Eva and Ruth. Ruth died in 2012, and Eva kept the archive in her small Tel Aviv apartment, never revealing its contents or condition, and viewed it as her most prized personal possession. During the 2016 court case, which played out in the halls of the Israeli Supreme Court, three parties fought for ownership of the archive: Eva Hoffe, the National Library of Israel and the German Literature Archive in Marbach. In the first chapter of Kafka’s Last Trial, Balint presents the logic behind each party’s claim: Hoffe maintains that she received the papers lawfully as part of her inheritance and says she does not wish to part with them. The National Library of Israel tries to claim Kafka as a “Jewish author,” arguing that its shelves are the natural destination for Jewish culture’s literary treasures. At the same time, the German Literature Archive in Marbach sees Kafka as a German-language author, despite his Jewish roots, and argues that

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

9/2/18 11:13 PM

university of michigan press it can store and display the Kafka papers under superior conditions. The Germans also claim that the archives would be at more accessible to KafkaPre-order scholarsonline worldpress.umich.edu wide if they were housed in Germany, rather than in Israel—or in Eva Hoffe’s musty Tel Aviv apartment. These claims lead to many more questions, which Balint artfully examines in Kafka’s Last Trial’s well-conceived and welldefined chapters, bearing alluring names such as “Flirting with the Promised Land” and “Last Son of the Diaspora: Kafka’s Jewish Afterlife.” Balint explores Kafka’s relationship with his Jewishness and the Jewish world’s attempt to co-opt Kafka as a “Jewish author,” as well as Israel’s ambivalence toward Kafka—and diaspora culture in general. Finally, he studies the complex and intriguing questions of “ownership” over ideas, words and stories. In the thought-provoking chapter appropriately titled “Kafka’s Creator,” Balint touches on some of the questions about Brod’s “disobedience” to Kafka’s last wish, and his posthumous “appropriation” of Kafka’s work. In this context, he quotes Cynthia Ozick’s claim that Brod “manipulated whatever came into his hands” and Czech-born author Milan Kundera’s insistence that Brod betrayed Kafka not only by propagating the myth of the suffering modern day saint, but also by indiscriminately publishing Kafka’s unfinished works and diaries, his undelivered letters to his father, and his love letters. Balint’s thoughts on these accusations are clear: “But had Brod obeyed the author’s last wish and consigned his manuscripts to the flames, most of Kafka’s writing would be lost. We—and Eva Hoffe—owe our Kafka to Brod’s disobedience.” This high level of discussion is typical of Kafka’s Last Trial, as is the tightness of its thematic structure. The many questions the book poses are all addressed in great detail and tied back to the dramatic trial, which would, it was hoped, put the issue of the Kafka archives to rest—though I’m not going to tell you what the court decided. Although Kafka’s Last Trial is a work of nonfiction, it reads almost like a novel—a great compliment for such a serious and well-researched project. It tells a vital, gripping tale of a deep friendship between two seemingly incompatible young men— and how the early death of one prompts the other to become the guardian of his friend’s memory. It also tells, with compassion and sensitivity, the story of Eva Hof-

Everywoman Her Own Theology On the Poetry of Alicia Suskin Ostriker Martha Nell Smith and Julie R. Enszer, Editors Much admired by readers for decades, Alicia Ostriker is celebrated by her peers in fresh and insightful essays

Praise for Alicia Ostriker: "What does American Jewish poetry sound like? At its best, it can sound like Alicia Suskin Ostriker." —Jerusalem Post 8 Coming September 2018!

Paper 978-0-472-03729-2 Ebook 978-0-472-12440-4 $29.95 Pre-order online at press.umich.edu

"While Ostriker’s contribution to the poetry world in the past decades has been invaluable, her contribution to the realm of Jewish poetry specifically has been absolutely formative." —The Forward, on The Book of Life

fe, a woman whose raison d’être became the preservation of Kafka’s legacy. Perhaps it is no accident that the two blurbs on the book’s back cover were not written by historians or biographers, but by two prominent Jewish novelists: Cynthia Ozick and Nicole Krauss, whose latest novel, Forest Dark, includes a fictional take on Kafka’s legacy—and mentions a suitcase full of perhaps-imagined papers taken (or stolen) from Eva Hoffe’s home in Tel Aviv. But despite the book’s compelling style and sweeping plot, Balint remains true to the limitations of a serious history. He closely follows the written evidence provided by the letters, memoirs and diaries of Brod, Kafka and others, as well as official sources such as court records and newspaper reports. Balint’s refusal to speculate about his protagonists’ hidden motivations is admirable given the novelistic instinct to explore the endless unspoken possibilities hiding below the story’s surface: Did Brod suffer a Salieri complex, living in the shadow of Kafka’s posthumous fame and glory? Did he harbor envy or animosity toward his late friend’s genius? These questions remain mostly untouched, leaving room for the reader’s imagination and creativity to fill in the gaps.

The Kafka mystique refuses to die. As I was putting the finishing touches on this review, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a sensational story reporting that Kafka had a son he never knew about, who died at the age of seven without ever meeting his father. The child’s mother, whose identity remained hidden behind the intriguing initials M.M., was an openminded, independent woman who was not particularly interested in letting Kafka serve as her son’s father figure. She was murdered by the Nazis in Italy in 1945, when a German soldier beat her to death with a rifle butt. Although this story was mentioned in the English edition of Brod’s book Franz Kafka, it was not perceived by Haaretz as “old news,” a fact that speaks volumes to the vitality of the Kafka legend and its endless dramatic potential. Balint’s Kafka’s Last Trial brilliantly captures this potential, providing lovers of Kafka—and lovers of literary history’s legends—with a wonderful opportunity to peer behind the screen of a dramatic life, death and literary resurrection. Ruby Namdar is an Israeli author living in New York. His novel, The Ruined House, won the 2014 Sapir Prize. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

BOB5.indd 75

9/2/18 11:20 PM

AUTHOR INTERVIEW | ALFRED MOSES

Romania, Haunted by Its Past

ambassador to Romania. He assumed the post in 1994, just as Romania was taking its first tentative steps out of four decades of economic stagnation and political repression toward privatization and democracy. Moment speaks with Moses about his new book, Bucharest Diary: Romania’s Journey from Darkness to Light, which recounts his decades-long relationship with Romania, and is a primer for anyone interested in Romania’s history and future.—Ellen Wexler

COURTESY OF ALFRED MOSES

hen Alfred Moses, an attorney and prominent national Jewish leader, traveled behind the Iron Curtain to Romania in 1976, the impoverished country was under the thumb of the ruthless and corrupt dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. The trip changed Moses’s life, inspiring him to fight for the freedom of Romania’s Jews. Years later, based on his work with the country, President Bill Clinton appointed Moses as the U.S.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

BOB5.indd 76

9/3/18 12:54 AM

How did you become interested in Romania’s Jews? When I went there in February 1976, to lead a delegation from the American Jewish Committee, a couple of young fellows approached me. They asked me if I was American, and if I was Jewish, and I said, “Yes.” Then it all poured out: They said that life for Jews in Romania was horrible, and I had to help them get out—which became my mission for the next 13 years.

others, in working with two administrations in Romania: the first, a social democratic government led by Ion Iliescu, and the second, a center-right coalition, a Christian Democratic coalition, led by Emil Constantinescu. I worked with both presidents to help Romania rebuild its democratic institutions, privatize its industry and strengthen its democracy. One sign that we were on the right track was President Clinton’s visit to Romania in July 1997. He was wildly cheered by 500,000 Romanians in University Square. He said the prophetic words that if Romania continued down the road of democracy, the U.S. would take Romania by the hand and try to bring it into NATO, which was quite ambitious—and which subsequently happened. I think that the enduring legacy of the bilateral relationship is this strategic partnership, which I formulated, named and persuaded the administration to propose, and which was accepted by President Constantinescu. That strategic partnership still exists today as a result of the stationing of U.S. forces in Romania.

What did you do to pressure Ceausescu to let Jews leave Romania? There was opposition; it was never a slamdunk, but we were successful in urging the U.S. Congress to extend the mostfavored-nation status annually for Romania. In return, we made it clear to the Romanian government that continued support for Romania in Congress was dependent upon Romania allowing its Jews to go to Israel. We communicated this directly to the foreign minister, but more importantly on three occasions to Ceausescu himself. How did you become the U.S. ambassador to Romania? It was a long shot. I had no idea that the State Department would actually nominate me. I was not a foreign service officer. I had no reason to believe that President Clinton or his staff would support my becoming ambassador. But many people weighed in on my behalf, and lo and behold, I became the ambassador. All because of my actions on behalf of Romanian Jews. What was the biggest challenge of your three years as ambassador? Romania was a basket case when I arrived. Ceausescu had been executed on Christmas Day in 1989. Economic conditions in Romania were dreadful. I saw it as my responsibility to try to bring the country into the family of Western democratic countries, to rebuild its economy, to help it build its democratic institutions. In other words, to help it become part of modern Europe. What would you say was your biggest success? I look back most fondly on my efforts to save the Great Synagogue in Romania. When Ceausescu was still in power in 1986, I was in Washington; I was not yet ambassador, but I intervened when I heard from Romanian

UNLIKE ITS NEIGHBORS POLAND AND HUNGARY, ROMANIA HAS NOT VEERED SHARPLY RIGHT. Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen that the Great Synagogue was likely to be torn down to make way for Ceausescu’s new Palace of the People. I went to the State Department and met with Assistant Secretary Roz Ridgway and her staff. She went to Secretary George Shultz, who intervened directly. He said that if the Great Synagogue was destroyed, the United States would rethink its relations with Romania. The Great Synagogue was saved. As ambassador, I had a role, along with

How is Romania doing today? Unlike its neighbors Poland and Hungary, Romania has not veered sharply right. It is maintaining its centrist pro-American policy. It nevertheless has severe internal problems centered around corruption, a historic problem for Romania. Has Romania recovered from the tragedy of Ceausescu’s rule? No. It never will, nor from the fascists who preceded Ceausescu. It’s an enduring legacy. Have we ever recovered from the horror of slavery? No. The Civil War was 160 years ago, four generations. The stain of communism will haunt Romania for decades. Is Romania a good place for Jews to live today? No. The Jewish community tries to survive, but it’s an elderly community. Young people, Jewish and nonJewish, are moving westward to France, Italy, Germany, England and the United States, and east to Israel. Romania’s Jewish community has the material means to survive because of reparations, but it can’t truly provide a vibrant, exciting Jewish life for its youth. If I were a young Jew in Romania today, I would set my sights on moving to Israel. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 / MOMENT

BOB5.indd 77

9/3/18 12:54 AM

#MeToo continued from page 58

THE WAVE OF #METOO sexual harassment and assault allegations is not limited to the professional Jewish world; it affects congregations, schools and small organizations of all kinds. “In truth, I was not really aware that the problem existed to the extent that we have uncovered,” says Naomi Eisenberger, one of the pioneers of the #GamAni Facebook page and movement. “There’s a 78

MeToo5.indd 60

I WISH I COULD SPEAK OUT SO THAT HE NO LONGER HAS A LICENSE TO BEHAVE WITH OTHERS IN THE DISTURBING WAY THAT HE DID WITH ME. BUT HE HAS TOO MANY INFLUENTIAL FRIENDS.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

9/3/18 11:25 PM

MOMENT CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST | DRAWN BY BEN SCHWARTZ

SUBMIT A CAPTION FOR THIS CARTOON BY OCTOBER 20, 2018 AT MOMENTMAG.COM/CARTOON

VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE CAPTION AT MOMENTMAG.COM/CARTOON

“Welcome our new cantor. He attracts the base.” —Sheri Knauth, Owings Mills, MD “He’s also a member of Guns and Rosenthals.” —Dale Stout, Colorado Springs, CO “Rock Hashanah seemed like a good idea...” —Melody Savala, Iron River, MI (JULY/AUGUST 2018 FINALISTS)

CHUCKLE AT THE WINNING CAPTION!

“So now it goes, ‘Oy, say can you see...?’” —Stephen Nadler, Princeton, NJ (MAY/JUNE 2018)

BOB5.indd 79

9/3/18 12:40 AM

A Moment favorite since 1980

SPICE BOX!

A cut above the rest

Do not pet

submitted by Roni Breite, San Diego, CA

submitted by Leigh Nusbaum, Alexandria, VA

When G-d isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t enough

BDS has gone too far

submitted by Jenn Director Knudsen, Portland, OR

submitted by Rabbi Aviva Fellman, Worcester, MA

Send your unmarked original newspaper clippings, curiosities and photographs to: Spice Box, 4115 Wisconsin Ave. NW, Suite LL10, Washington, DC 20016 or editor@momentmag.com 80

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

BOB5.indd 80

9/3/18 12:38 AM