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THE JEWISH VOICE
AND OPINION
Promoting Classical Judaism
October 2006
Vol. 20 • No. 2
Cheshvan 5767
What Outraged the Muslim World Last Month: The Pope, the Opera, Police Guarding an Israeli Embassy, Cabbies Transporting Fares with Wine
(in Minneapolis), and Bobbleheads of the Prophet on the Dashboard
N
o sooner did the Muslim
world erupt last month
in the wake of remarks by
Pope Benedict XVI which
were taken as being an insult
to Islam, than Muslim leaders
began pointing their fingers at
the group they said was clearly responsible: The Jews.
Throughout the Muslim
world, especially in Bahrain,
Jordan, and Egypt, antisemitic articles and cartoons were
published by the major media,
promoting the notion that the
Pope had been manipulated
by Jews to attack Islam.
It reminded Orthodox
columnist Jonathan Rosenblum of then-Prime Minister
Menachem Begin’s remark
in the wake of the Sabra and
Shatilla massacre in Lebanon: “Goyim kill goyim and
the Jews get blamed.”
Muslim Control
The entire episode concerning the Pope’s remarks
and the Muslim reaction
continued on page 21
Mayoralty Race in Englewood Echoes Senate Race in Connecticut,
but, in NJ, the Orthodox Candidate is the Democrat
and the Left-Wing Is Supporting the Independent
A
race for mayor in Englewood, NJ, seems to be
paralleling the race for US
Senate in Connecticut, with
many of the players in the
small New Jersey town echoing the political sentiments of
those in the Connecticut race.
But there is one big
difference. In the Connecticut race, many mainstream
Democrats (to say nothing
of Republicans and Independents) are supporting
Senator Joseph Lieberman and Mayor Michael Wildes
Kashruth in Monsey.... .................. 3
Kol Ami: Problems?...................... 4
The Current Crisis.......................... 5
Marathon Minyan........................ 18
Royal Persian Grill....................... 31
Dr. Rachel Does Jeopardy............ 33
IBA Promoted Unity.................... 34
Inside the Voice
Heritage’s Poland......................... 35
The Log........................................ 36
New Classes This Month............. 40
Mazal Tov.................................... 42
Bill Pascrell Speaks Out............... 51
Jose Sandoval Speaks Out........... 51
Trujillo, the Pope, and the Jews... 54
Joseph Lieberman, the threeterm Democratic incumbent
who lost the primary to Ned
Lamont and is now running
as an Independent.
Left-wing Democrats,
who propelled Mr. Lamont to
his victory in the primary, argue that while Mr. Lieberman
has the legal right to run as an
Independent, as a Democrat,
he has no moral right to challenge the Democratic Party’s
candidate.
Ess Gezint: Biblical Food............ 62
Index of Advertisers..................... 63
Give to the UJA?.......................... 66
Wearing Orange........................... 66
Honor the Professional................. 67
Letters to the Editor..................... 68
Walk to Shul................................. 71
Page - The Jewish Voice and Opinion
October 2006
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Cheshvan 5767
The Jewish Voice and Opinion
Page - Kashruth Scandal in Monsey: Possible Rabbinic Changes, but
Butcher May Not Have to Answer to Secular Authorities at All
ecause of the way in
which kosher laws are
written and, more importantly,
enforced in New York, it now
seems doubtful that there will
be any major secular-legal
repercussions against the proprietor of Shevach Meats, an
ostensibly kosher butcher in
Monsey, NY, who was caught
selling non-kosher poultry as
kosher last month.
This is not to say that the
proprietor, Moshe Finkel, is
getting off scott free. According to KosherToday, a prominent on-line magazine of the
kosher food industry, he is
said to have fled the country
after being forced to divorce
his wife and sever his ties
with his eight children, five of
whom are already married.
Stories and rumors concerning Mr. Finkel, including
speculation about his ancestors, were rampant, causing
some, but by no means all,
religious authorities to caution community members
against violations of the halachic requirement to avoid
idle gossip.
Some Justice
“The departure of the disgraced kosher butcher brings
some closure to the scandal,
but the kosher community is
still reeling from the aftershocks of the events in Mon-
sey,” said KosherToday.
The publication cited
an unnamed local rabbi who
said, “Justice has been served
in that within the span of
about three weeks, this man
lost his livelihood, his ties to
the community, his wife, his
house, and his children.”
Monsey resident Rabbi
David Eidensohn agreed, saying Mr. Finkel had brought
great shame on his family.
“His whole life now is
going to be dealing with this.
He undoubtedly has cried
great, bitter tears from this,”
he said.
Search for Reasons
No official reason has
been proffered to explain Mr.
Finkel’s actions. Some say he
simply owed a fortune to kosher meat companies and, unable to pay for more poultry, he
resorted to using non-kosher
products. Others wondered if
he might not have accumulated debts from more nefarious sources, such as gambling,
and, thus, needed the extra
money that would come from
selling treif meet as kosher.
Non-kosher food--comestibles which violate Jewish dietary laws—is called
treif. The term comes from
the Hebrew word “teref”
which means “torn.”
continued on page 6
THE JEWISH VOICE AND OPINION, Inc. © 2004; Publisher and Editor-in-Chief: Susan L. Rosenbluth Phone (201)569-2845
Managing Editor: Sharon Hes, Advertising: Rivkie Lichstein
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October 2006
Kol Ami: Problems?
By Susan Rosenbluth
It’s a New Year on the Jewish calendar, and the 2006 election cycle is coming to a close. Politicians are quick to tell us
what our most important problems are: Liberals say it’s health
care, unemployment, and a quick exit from the Iraq War; Conservatives say it’s security. At the Royal Persian Grill restaurant in
Teaneck last month, the question was: What is the most pressing problem facing the American-Jewish community? Y
There are so many problems, but the one that is
uniquely Jewish is the shidduch crisis. If you find the
right woman to marry, then
everything is good.
Oshi Cubani
Teaneck, NJ
Terrorism is our most
pressing problem. After 9-11,
we know terrorism will never
be eliminated in our lifetime.
It’s an ongoing problem that
affects our economy and our
everyday life.
Cory Fleishman
Woodcliff Lake, NJ
Terrorism is the most
important problem today, and
it will be the most important
problem our children will
face, too. We have to fight it,
not so much because we’re
going to eliminate it, but because by struggling against
it, we may keep it from getting worse.
Andrew Gurin
Montville, NJ
Iran and its push to develop nuclear weapons is
the most serious problem we
face. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be able to destroy the
world if he feels like it. No
one really knows what to do
about it, but that’s the problem.
Ethan Keiser
Teaneck, NJ
Cheshvan 5767
The Current Crisis: “Even in Laughter, the Heart Can Ache”
Friends in Israel just sent us this help-wanted ad from a
small Middle East nation we all know and love: Positions available, or soon-to-be available—
President, Prime Minister, Minister of Security, Minister of
Justice, Armed Forces Chief of Staff, Chief of Police
Experience not necessary. Good Benefits.
***
Heard on Jay Leno last month: “Germany has offered to
send troops to the Lebanon border. You can bet Israel’s breathing a sigh of relief there. Because nothing makes Jewish people feel safer and more secure than having the German army
marching on their border.”
***
At Newark Airport last month, a teacher was arrested as
he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler,
a protractor, and a math book. He was charged with carrying
weapons of math instruction and thought to be a member of the
Al-gebra terrorist group.
Al-gebra members desire solutions by means and extremes,
and sometimes go off on tangents in a search for absolute values. They use secret code names like x and y, and refer to themselves as unknowns. Fortunately, we have determined that they
belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with
coordinates in every country.
***
With the 2006 election campaigns coming to a head, we received a complaint from the camp of Bob Menendez, concerning one Larry Giancola, who’s featured on a radio ad for Tom
Kean, Jr. Although he’s a lifelong Hudson County Democrat,
Page - Mr. Giancola is voting for Kean this year.
Outraged, the Menendez campaign sent out a bunch of letters Mr. Giancola has written over the years to a number of local
newspapers. In one that stands as a pretty good example, Mr.
Giancola warned that some Americans were forgetting about 911 and turning into “the biggest wimps this country has ever
seen.”
“It will be a miracle if we keep our freedom with such
‘brave’ citizens,” he said, adding that “we should fight Islamic
terrorists wherever they may be found, and the countries that
support them.”
“Instead of cowering like scared little rabbits, let’s stand up
for freedom all over the world. I do not want to live under Islamic law. This individual will fight for this country, its values,
and its traditions,” he wrote.
In 2005, he wrote about the problems on college campuses:
“What cultural diversity has to do with expertise in one’s field
of work is anyone’s guess. I would much rather be under the
care of a competent physician than some politically correct doctor,” he wrote, adding that some college courses, such as “Gender, Race, and Class,” and “History of Ethnic Fashion Design,”
“are an absolute joke.”
“What are parents paying for these days and what kind of
education are our children getting? There appears to be no difference in useful knowledge learned by those who go to a liberal
college and by those who stay home,” he wrote.
Well, we, too have a complaint: How come Mr. Giancola
isn’t running for office?
Chag Sameach, everyone, S.L.R.
Monsey Kashruth
On average, kosher
meat costs about 25 percent
more than its non-kosher
counterpart. The extra costs
come from the different and
more expensive slaughtering, inspection, and preparation methods. While many
non-Jewish consumers buy
kosher-certified products for
a variety of reasons, including the belief that the foods
are more sanitary, healthier,
or “blessed” than the non-kosher alternatives, Orthodox
Jews observe the dietary laws
simply because they believe
G-d has mandated them.
Most statistics show the
value of kosher products in
the US to be approximately
$180 billion and growing annually by 15 percent. There
are approximately 82,000
different
kosher-certified
products on market shelves
and more than 10 million
consumers of kosher products in the US.
According to Rabbi Moshe
Elefant, chief operating officer
of the Orthodox Union’s Kosher Division, the problem is
that sometimes the temptation
to switch non-kosher for kosher
meats on an unsuspecting public is too great.
“Non-kosher meat is
cheaper and selling it as kosher
can be a source of significant
profits,” said Rabbi Elefant.
Precedent
October 2006
continued from page 3
Some observers pointed
out that the case in Monsey
is not without precedent. A
few years ago, there was an
incident in which a Jew who
owned two slaughterhouses,
one kosher and the other treif,
was suspected of knowingly
marketing the non-kosher
meat under a kosher label.
In recent years, several kosher butcher shops have been
cited for selling regular kosher
meat as “glatt kosher,” an issue
much less problematic than the
case of Shevach meats.
Calling the Monsey
scandal an “appalling transgression,” Rabbi Meir Weissmandel, a revered community spiritual leader, said it
represented “the conspiracy
of betrayers who misled the
many and deceived in order
to mislead Jewish souls and
make them impure.”
“To sell non-kosher as kosher is one of the biggest acts
of betrayal that a Jew can do
to another. The day the scandal
was uncovered is the darkest
day in the history of the Monsey community since its establishment long ago,” he said.
Looking Within
Itzhak Schier, editor
and general manager of the
website,
Frumspace.com,
suggested that part of the
problem may lie with kosher
community members who
forget that their butchers and
grocers have great expenses
“just like the rest of us.” Too
often, he said, the kosher
community believes its food
merchants are all wealthy.
“We wrongly assume
that because the price of glatt
kosher meat or ‘heimishe’
products,
ranging
from
canned vegetables to the latest gourmet offerings from
France or Israel, are so high,
that our community food retailers are far better off financially than they really are,”
the cause of this situation earlier. Why would a respected
member of a Torah community sell treif meat?” he said.
“If we see our fellow Jew falling or suffering, it is our obligation to at least attempt to
help him. How much more so
when we depend on him for
the food that we eat which,
in and of itself, is part of our
avodah as Torah Jews.”
Sterling Reputation
For almost 11 ten years,
Mr. Finkel’s Shevach Meats
Rav Matisyahu Salomon
he said. “With the exception
of owners of the new large
supermarkets that are appearing in our neighborhoods,
our retail food suppliers are
basically small businessmen
whose profit margins are not
all that high and who have a
great deal of expenses.”
In the case of Shevach
Meat, Mr. Schier said, “someone should have noticed that
there were problems.” While
recognizing that meat suppliers cannot be expected to offer
charity to one of their clients,
Mr. Schier said the suppliers,
who would have been the first
to recognize that Mr. Finkel
was in trouble, should have
provided some marketing assistance or discreetly contacted
one of the community’s rabbis.
“As Torah Jews, we may
have failed by not looking into
rented space in the back of
one of Monsey’s largest kosher supermarkets, Hatzlocha. Shevach was the meat
supplier not only for the supermarket, but also for several local kosher caterers, religious schools, and ultra-Orthodox camps in the Catskill
Mountains.
Mr. Finkel’s customers
believed Shevach offered
poultry and meat from several
devoutly-observant slaughter
houses, including Belz, Empire, Meal Mart, Vineland
Kosher, and KJ (Satmar)
Meats. Mr. Finkel then legally repackaged those meats,
designating them, for example, “Shevach-Vineland” on
the new wrapping.
There was no reason not
to trust Mr. Finkel, whose
continued on page 8
Cheshvan 5767
Page - Page - The Jewish Voice and Opinion
Monsey Kashruth
credentials were considered
extraordinary and whose
mashgiach, Rabbi Shlomo
Mordechai Breslauer, head
rabbinical judge of the Beis
Tefillah Synagogue, is still
regarded as a gaon.
According to reports, Mr.
Finkel was the president of
his shul who often served as
ba’al koreh and always davened for the amud on Rosh
Hashana and Yom Kippur.
He was reportedly a member
of the board of directors of
the Yeshiva of Spring Valley
and a member of the school’s
tuition committee. He reportedly led a Daf Yomi shiur every morning, and was, in the
words of one Monsey resident
who knew him and his family
well, “just the nicest fellow.”
“What do you do when
the guy you actually trusted
turns out to be a fraud? That is
why everybody is so shocked
and awed by this story. We
are very simply afraid to trust
anybody at this point,” said
the resident.
An unnamed rabbi, cited
by KosherToday, agreed.
“This man had the perfect
resume of credibility for
kashrus. Rabbis would be
hard-pressed to second-guess
or question the integrity of a
man with such impeccable
communal and family-life
credentials,” he said.
October 2006
Discovery
Mr. Finkel’s downfall
reportedly came as the result
of an offhand discussion between two brothers-in-law at
a family celebration.
At the affair, one of
the owners of the Hatzlocha Grocery, Mordechai
Grunsweig, allegedly spoke
with his brother-in-law, a key
officer of KJ Meats, which
is in Kiryas Joel, the Monroe, NY, Satmar community.
The brother-in-law told Mr.
Grunsweig that Mr. Finkel
had not purchased any KJ
meats for about three weeks.
The news allegedly shocked
Mr. Grunsweig, who had
seen a great deal of meat in
his store that was labeled as
having come from KJ.
Deeply concerned, Mr.
Grunsweig
immediately
called Rabbi Breslauer and, in
the company of several local
rabbis, broke into the Shevach
Meats cooler room, where
their suspicions were confirmed. They found 15 cases
of unmarked chickens whose
skin was pale, as opposed to
the normally very yellow kosher chickens; was not salty at
all; and had none of the feathers which are invariably found
on kosher chickens. In addition, the chickens’ kidneys
were still intact, a tell-tale sign
because kosher chickens are
always disemboweled before
the required salting to remove
all traces of blood takes place.
No stamps or seals from any
kosher butcher were found
on the boxes containing the
chickens.
Confronted by the rabbis,
Mr. Finkel reportedly responded that he had bought the poultry on Tuesday and Wednesday, Aug. 29 and 30, from “a
black market” truck driver
who had assured him that the
chickens were kosher.
The rabbis didn’t buy his
story.
Community Ruling
On Monday, Sept 4, a
meeting of 20 rabbinic leaders from Monsey was held
for the purpose of issuing a
single, united ruling on the
issue of Shevach Meats.
According to the ruling,
all chickens and meats purchased from Shevach on or
after the 29th of August must
be regarded as non-kosher,
and all cooking utensils used
for meat products had to be
re-kashered.
Rabbi Breslauer immediately announced that he
had withdrawn his supervision from Shevach.
Long-Term Problem
Nobody could say for
certain how long Mr. Finkel had been purchasing and
reselling non-kosher meat
products, but stories quickly
began surfacing.
One Monsey resident recalls that more than 10 years
ago, a family member who
insists on purchasing only
kosher meat which adheres to
the Bais Yosef Glatt standard,
usually used by Sephardim,
asked Mr. Finkel which, if
any, of his meats met this requirement. According to the
Monsey resident, Mr. Finkel
told the prospective customer that all of his meats were
“Bais Yosef Glatt.” More than
a little surprised, the customer
asked to see the original packaging. When he was allowed
into the back of the store, he
saw only one package which
was so designated and drew
the conclusion that Mr. Finkel
had been less than honest.
“Our family member told
us never to shop in Shevach, and
that is why we were spared,”
said the Monsey resident.
A Question of Tongue
Others maintain that,
in the past, there have been
questions regarding meat
without kosher certification
seals delivered by Shevach to
caterers and other commercial establishments.
On his website, entitled
“Yudel’s Rest of the Story,”
Lakewood-based
veteran
kashruth supervisor Rabbi
Cheshvan 5767
Page - Page - 10
Monsey Kashruth
Yudel Shain recalled that
about eight years ago, he had
an experience with Mr. Finkel
that left him unsurprised by
the present Monsey scandal.
Rabbi Shain explained
that, as a kashruth supervisor, his procedure is to keep
all meat and poultry sealed
until he can inspect it. For a
wedding held at the Atrium,
a wedding hall in Monsey, he
had some questions about a
delivery of tongue that came
from Shevach for the affair.
When Rabbi Shain contacted
Mr. Finkel for verification, the
Shevach owner told him the
tongue had come from a recognized kosher butcher, Alle,
and was kosher according to
the standards of Bais Yosef.
On his website, Rabbi
Shain said that when he
checked with Alle, he was
told they had not sent any
tongue to Mr. Finkel in more
than a year and certainly not
October 2006
continued from page “Bais Yosef.”
“I checked with the other glatt purveyors and found
that none had delivered to
him these tongues,” said
Rabbi Shain.
Checking “the Operation”
Concerned, Rabbi Shain
said he went to Shevach to see
for himself “the operation.” “I
left his place after a half hour,
not with questions, but with
answers that indicated to me
clearly what type of so-called
kosher operation he’s operating,” said Rabbi Shain.
But when Rabbi Shain
tried to make others aware
of what he had discovered,
he hit an iron door. No one
would consider questioning
Mr. Finkel or especially Rav
Breslauer, his mashgiach.
Rabbi Shain said he
kashered the Atrium’s kitchen
at that time and, he said, since
then, the owners of the Atrium
had not purchased any meat
from Shevach. “They may be
the only caterer in Monsey
that doesn’t have to kasher,”
said Rabbi Shain.
Rabbi Shain said he is
certain Monsey is not the only
Orthodox-Jewish community
facing kashruth problems.
“If you think that I have
a doubt that this kind of game
is going on in other places—
I’m telling you that it is,” said
Rabbi Shain.
Less Salt
When the non-kosher
chickens were discovered at
the Hatzlocha Grocery, Mr.
Finkel allegedly told the rabbis the kosher meat producers
were refusing to sell him merchandise and that he had been
falsifying the products’ kosher
status for only a few days.
Writing in the Brooklynbased Jewish Press, Rabbi Gershon Tannenbaum said that, in
recent months, some Shevach
customers had noticed that
his meats and meat products,
especially chicken soup, were
unusually less salty. According to Rabbi Tannenbaum, Mr.
Finkel replied that Kiryas Joel
was using “a new low-sodium
salt in order to provide healthier chickens.”
“Sometimes the response
would be that Kiryas Joel
Meats was cutting back on
the amount of salt used to the
absolute minimum required
by kosher law because of
costs or that inferior salt was
being used by Kiryas Joel,”
said Rabbi Tannenbaum.
Rabbinic Instructions
In their ruling, the 20
rabbis said anyone who had
cooked chicken or meat purchased from Shevach prior to
Aug. 29th should consult his or
her own rabbi for instructions.
The Hatzlocha Grocery
announced it would issue a
complete refund for all meat
and chicken returned to the
store, regardless of the date
purchased.
Some rabbis issued detailed steps for congregants
to take, including laundering
tablecloths and turning ovens
to 500˚ for at least one hour.
Rabbi Weissmandel instructed Jews to take “severe
measures” with all dishes and
utensils, including “pots, covers, gloves, forks and knives,
ovens, table counters, blenders,
microwaves, porcelain bowls
of various sorts, glass dishes,
and anything that was used hot
or with spicy matters.”
Rabbi Shulem Nosson
Spiegel of Congregation
Tefillah L’Moshe organized a
public kashering of pots and
silverware in his shul. Other
synagogues followed suit, as
did the Hatzlocha Grocery
itself. Glauber’s Bakeries
reportedly provided facilities for those who needed to
“burn” their pots and pans in
order to kasher them.
Fasting
Sunday, Sept 17, was declared a fast day in the community for all men over the
age of 18 to atone for the unsuspecting violation of kashrus
by residents, many of whom
were still asking “how it could
have happened” in Monsey.
Women and children
were not expected to fast, but
were asked to recite Psalms
and give $18 to charity. Those
too weak or old to fast were
also urged to give tzedaka.
Some residents reportedly decided to switch to alldairy or vegetarian meals, at
least temporarily, while others relied on paper and plastic plates and utensils.
Trying to Recover
After details on how to
recover physically from the
fraud were underway, Monsey’s spiritual leaders turned to
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 11
Page - 12
Monsey Kashruth
October 2006
the issue of repairing the community’s soul
and confidence. The community’s rabbinic
leaders seemed concerned not so much
with how to punish those responsible for
the fraud, as how to avoid its repetition.
On Sunday, Sept. 17, an overflowing
crowd of men and women, representing
all streams of Orthodox Judaism came
to the Yeshiva of Spring Valley Boys
School in Monsey to thank G-d for His
blessings, recite Psalms, and hear words
of encouragement from Rav Matisyahu
Salomon, the revered mashgiach ruchani
of Lakewood’s Beis Medrash Gevoha.
According to a community member who attended the Kinus Torah event,
the rav offered a Torah analysis of the
kashruth scandal in which he exhorted the
Jewish community to seek greater levels
of holiness through thoughts, speech, and
deeds. Rav Matisyahu urged the community to “learn the lesson that Hashem has
given us in this unfortunate event.”
Praising Those Who Helped
At the meeting, Mr. Grunsweig was
praised for disregarding his own financial
loss and immediately notifying Rabbi
Breslauer. Rabbi Breslauer was praised
for going to Hatzlocha in the middle of
night and refusing to accept Mr. Finkel’s
explanation.
Mr. Grunsweig, who, along with
his Hatzlocha partners, is viewed as one
of Mr. Finkel’s chief victims, did more
than merely discard all the Shevach meat
and poultry in his store. He and his partners phoned customers and posted fliers
and posters inside and outside the store
as well as throughout the community,
warning consumers about the non-kosher chickens and urging them to bring
whatever was left for a full refund.
“Our job was to educate,” said Mr.
Grunsweig. “It’s more than a business
practice. We felt it was our obligation
from a religious point of view. We go to
great pains to keep kosher and adhere to
kosher regulations. For something like
this to be sold to the community is very,
very painful.”
Implementing Suggestions
Eager to dispel many of the rumors and general misinformation circulating in Monsey about the scandal
and the people involved, Rabbi Naftoli
Heinemann, president of Congregation
Beis Tefillah, which had given Shevach
Meats its kosher certification, said many
of the suggestions offered in the wake of
the scandal are actually already in place
in the shul’s mashgiach services, which
is headed by Rabbi Breslauer.
For example, many observers have
noted that the mashgiach’s salary should
be independent of the number of stores
and institutions under his supervision, giving him no incentive to add or drop any
particular merchant. In fact, that is the case
with Rabbi Breslauer, who, according to
Rabbi Heinemann, does not actively recruit establishments for certification.
“We only accept establishments that
request a certification. We turn down
more applicants than we accept,” said
Rabbi Heinemann.
He explained that Rabbi Breslauer
works with a team of mashgichim who report on a daily basis. These include mashgichim who work per diem at affairs, those
who supervise kashruth at events held on
Shabbat and/or holidays, and back-up
supervisors. Those who report on a daily
basis carry out random checks on the establishments under their supervision three
or four times each week, and sometimes
more frequently, he said.
According to Rabbi Heinemann, the
mashgichim did not notice a problem at
Shevach because Mr. Finkel had access
to every possible kosher label and seal.
When the mashgichim came, during the
day and normal hours of operation, all
products were properly labeled.
Mashgiach Temidi
But other issues surrounding Beis
Tefillah’s kashruth certification indicate
how Mr. Finkel was able to circumvent
his supervisors.
According to Rabbi Heinemann, Beis
Tefillah’s kashruth certification is granted
by relying on the “intimate and personal
relationship and trust that the proprietor
of an establishment has with us.”
“We accept only those proprietors
of establishments who have a sterling
character and reputation and who agree
to abide by our rules,” he said, adding
that because of the agency’s “stringent
screening process,” Beis Tefillah “does
not require a mashgiach temidi,” a fulltime, on-site kashruth supervisor.
This is a major sticking point which,
in light of the Monsey scandal, has been
raised by kosher-supervision agencies
unconnected with Shevach Meats or the
Hatzlocha Grocery.
Would It Help?
Some say the problem would be
solved if all stores purporting to be kosher,
whether owned by Jews or non-Jews, retained full-time rabbinic supervisors to
oversee all procedures. Others, however,
dismiss this suggestion as onerous, too
expensive, and, in the end, useless.
“What would stop someone in the
store from sneaking in non-kosher products on the sly. It is impossible to observe
every cook all the time. At some point,
there has to be an element of trust,” said
an observer, commenting on the PassaicShuls list, just one of many blogs that
devoted reams of posts on the Monsey
kashruth issue.
According to KosherToday, a prominent rabbi in Flatbush blamed kosher
consumers who, he said, have become
“too complacent.” The unnamed rabbi
allegedly urged kosher consumers to demand the presence of an on-site kosher
supervisor in every establishment which
sells fresh meat “even if it has to cost
$50,000 a year, which will surely result
Cheshvan 5767
in higher prices.”
According to KosherToday, it has
become common practice for grocers to
buy kosher products in bulk and then repackage them in different sizes.
“How reliable is it to have a store
employee repack goods and then stick
a kosher label on it, even if the store is
owned and managed by an Orthodox
Jew?” an unnamed member of the CRC
told KosherToday.
Relying on Trust
Nevertheless, Rabbi Heinemann
maintained that because of Rabbi Breslauer’s selection process (“Rav Breslauer granted kashruth certification only to
a select, few individuals deemed worthy
Page - 13
enough of the Rav’s trust because of their
outstanding religious character”), Beis
Tefillah “does not suspect individuals of
being less than stringent and scrupulous
in maintaining our kashruth standards
and regulations.”
“While we are still vigilant in inspecting establishments under our certification, we don’t expect any to engage
in subterfuge to circumvent the trust we
have in them,” said Rabbi Heinemann.
He urged all consumers of establishments under the supervision of Rabbi
Breslauer to report any suspicions of
kashruth misconduct.
“Rav Breslauer always takes ap-
Page - 14
Monsey Kashruth
propriate action according to
the Shulchan Aruch to correct the situation, even at the
cost of public scrutiny, which
he heroically did here, to do
the right thing,” said Rabbi
Heinemann.
Reviewing Procedures
Speaking for himself at
the meeting at the Yeshiva of
Spring Valley, Rav Breslauer
issued an apology to all those
affected by the scandal and beseeched Divine mercy.
He then discussed various rabbinic opinions regarding possible spiritual impurity resulting from the consumption of treif poultry by
otherwise G-d-fearing Jews.
In addition to the on-going
re-kashering, he suggested
other measures of atonement,
including fasting and increased learning, especially
in areas related to kashruth.
Acknowledging that the
trust he had placed in Mr.
October 2006
Finkel was violated, Rav
Breslauer said all kosher-certifying agencies would have
to review their procedures for
ensuring kashruth integrity.
New Proposals
This was exactly the purpose of a meeting convened
the following day, Monday,
Sept. 18, by the Orthodox
Union (one of the largest
kosher-supervision agencies
in the world) and the Williamsburg, Brooklyn-based
Hisachdus Harabonim (Central Rabbinical Congress).
Among the proposals suggested at the meeting were
using holograms to preserve
the integrity of repackaged
meats; requiring that distributors as well as manufacturers
be certified kosher; and insisting on tighter control for the
repackaging of foods in general. One proposal called for
certifying rabbis and agencies
to have the keys, codes for
alarms, and combinations to
establishments selling fresh
meat, allowing the certifiers
to visit the establishments,
unannounced, at any time of
the day or night.
Some rabbis have suggested banning the sale of
fresh meats in supermarkets,
where the products are usually sold after being repackaged, and returning to the use
of the local kosher butcher.
Other rabbis took a more
spiritual outlook, saying the
lesson that should be learned
from the events in Monsey is
that Orthodox Jews should
stop gossiping and slandering other Orthodox Jews, especially those who are from
different sects. One Orthodox
rabbi who was cited anonymously by Ha’aretz told the
newspaper, “Orthodox Jews
are more meticulous about
what goes into their mouths
than about what comes out.”
A Kiddush Hashem
Frumspace’s Mr. Schier,
on the other hand, saw, especially in the aftermath of
the scandal, so much kiddush
Hashem “that it counteracted the chilul Hashem of the
original sale of treif meat.”
He referred specifically
to the photographs and articles
showing Monsey’s Orthodox
Jewish community kashering their kitchens. Some of
Monsey’s Jews went so far as
to discard expensive china because it had come into contact
with the treif meet and was
impossible to kasher.
“Online and offline media alike were filled with pictures of haimishe Yidden who
responded without question
to the calls of respected local rabbis; never mind that,
as one person who was interviewed said, we cannot see
treif—it is something that affects our souls and especially
now before the High Holidays, we must remove all treif, foodwise, thoughtwise and
deedwise, from ourselves and
our souls—and by responding to the call to remove it
from our dishes despite the
inconvenience and expense,
we showed Hashem that we
are dedicated to Him and to
His Torah,” said Mr. Schier.
Bar Codes
But Mr. Schier also had
some practical suggestions
for the kosher community,
especially the adoption of the
UPC bar code, which allows
information to be stored and
tracked.
“Soon it will be supplanted by a radio tag that is
just ideal for meat and chicken, to the point that I even
wonder whether Hashem
davka revealed this technology to prevent another situation like [the one in Monsey],” he said.
He explained that, by using the bar code, a mashgiach
could immediately discover
if a store had more meat than
was possible from a given
shipment.
“And if meat came into
the store without a bar code, it
could be immediately banned
at least until other supporting
documentation is provided,”
he said.
Too Orthodox
In New York, the state’s
Department of Agriculture
and Markets, Division of Kosher Law Enforcement handles all charges of kashruth
fraud. For 118 years, the state
pretty much accepted the Jewish traditional definition of
kashruth, mostly because it
was unchallenged by any of
the other streams of Judaism.
But in 2002, a federal
appeals court, citing churchstate separation requirements,
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 15
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Page - 16
Monsey Kashruth
ruled that New York’s Kosher
Fraud law was unconstitutional because it excessively
entangled the State of New
York with religion and “impermissibly advanced Orthodox Judaism.”
The appeals court’s ruling, which affirmed a lower
court decision, concerned a
lawsuit by Brian and Jeffrey
Yarmeisch, owners of “Commack Self-Service Kosher
Meats” in Commack, Long
Island. Their store had been
fined for failing to comply
with the law’s mandate that
foods sold as “kosher” had
to satisfy “Orthodox Hebrew
religious requirements.”
The Yarmeisches contended that their store was
under a Conservative rabbi’s
supervision and that New
York State therefore acted
October 2006
unconstitutionally.
Consumer Protection
Those who supported
the original law argued that
kashruth is simply a set of
standards and, therefore, was
no more a church-state issue
than labeling a product “low
sodium” or “high-fiber.”
At the time, David Zweibel, executive director of Agudath Israel, argued that the New
York Kosher law was “a question of consumer protection,
not religious establishment.”
“Government has every
right to insist that a product
claiming a certain feature
actually possesses that feature, as a typical, reasonable
consumer would understand
it. That right is no less present in the context of kosher
food than it is in the context
of used cars and designer
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jeans,” he said.
New Jersey’s Precedent
In ruling against the original Kosher Fraud laws, the
New York courts acted just as
the courts in New Jersey had
several years earlier in 1996.
In New Jersey, despite the
fact that the state managed
to present a unified statement
from rabbinic leaders of the
Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist
movements on a definition
of “kosher,” the courts ruled
that the state had no right to
involve itself in any determination of religious law.
In New Jersey, the butcher shop that had been found
guilty of substituting kosher
labels on non-kosher poultry,
argued that if anyone were to
wake up one morning and say
he had a vision that pig’s feet
were kosher, the state had no
right to interfere with that interpretation of religious law.
With its original kosher
law defunct, New Jersey’s
Department of Consumer Affairs responded by creating
a new law which avoids any
definition or standards for
kashruth. Instead, establishments which claim to be kosher must publicize their own
definitions and standards and
the state assumes the right to
ensure that whatever standard
the establishment claims is
actually followed.
For example, kosher restaurants must display a poster,
provided by the NJ Kosher
Food Enforcement Bureau,
on which proprietors display
the name of the rabbinic supervisor (if any), how often
he inspects the premises,
whether or not he requires all
ingredients to be kosher, and
so forth. If there is no rabbinic
supervisor, the establishment
must disclose that fact and
then answer questions such
as: Do you sell only koshercertified products? If so, by
whom are they certified?
If the state finds that the
establishment is not fulfilling
the standards it set for itself,
the state can prosecute the offending establishment. No one
has suggested that this system
is anything other than consumer-protection which avoids the
problem of advancing any particular religious view.
New York’s Law
New York adopted similar procedures in 2004 with
its NY State Kosher Law Protection Act, which requires
establishments representing
themselves as kosher to post
the “person or organization
certifying that food as kosher.” The law requires kosher
food establishments, including restaurants and caterers,
to file information about their
kosher certifiers and to post a
“Kosher Certification Form,”
similar to the one in use in
New Jersey, in a location
readily visible to consumers.
But while those forms
are virtually universal in New
Jersey’s kosher establishments, KosherToday found,
during a random spot check
of several kosher establishments in New York, that, in
many cases, the forms were
not posted publicly and, in
one case, the information on
the form was outdated because the certification listed
had changed months earlier.
Several former Shevach
customers said they had never
seen a New York State kosher
form posted at the butcher
shop, which, if true, means
Mr. Finkel could not be sited
by New York State for lying
about his standards, because
he never filed them. For mislabeling a food product, Mr.
Finkel could be subjected to a
fine of up to $1,000. The pun-
ishment for fraud would theoretically be much stiffer, but,
by not posting his standards at
all, Mr. Finkel may have been
able to escape that charge.
“He could theoretically
use the ‘G-d-told-me-pig’sfeet-were-kosher argument,’
and, in the eyes of the state,
not be guilty of fraud at all,”
said one observer.
According to Ramapo
and Spring Valley police, no
criminal charges have been
filed against Mr. Finkel.
Kosher On-Line
But the Monsey incident has not gone unnoticed
by New York State officials,
who, according to KosherToday, have promised increased
enforcement in the future.
New York is second only to
Israel in the manufacturing and
consumption of kosher foods.
In January 2005, as part of
the Kosher Law Protection Act,
consumers were able to view
the
state’s Kosher
Registry
on
4444-ZOA
Ad_JVO.p2
10/4/06
line and then search for infor-
Cheshvan 5767
mation by product name, certifier, or food establishment.
According to Governor
George Pataki, the on-line
registry was supposed to provide kosher consumers “with
important safeguards against
fraudulently packaged and
misbranded kosher products
and easy access to information they need to make food
choices that conform to their
religious and dietary needs.”
Stiffer Enforcement
Rabbi Luzer Weiss, who
heads the New York Kosher
Law Enforcement Agency,
said stepped up enforcement
could lead his inspectors to
impose stiff fines on kosher
establishments found to be in
violation of the law.
But it is unclear if that
would have prevented Mr.
Finkel’s actions. The state
law enables consumers to
know who the certifying rabbi is at the point of purchase.
The entire
community
knew
1:47
PM Page
1
Shevach was under the su-
pervision of Rabbi Breslauer.
According to Jessica Chittenden, a spokeswoman for
the NY Kosher Enforcement
Agency, her department quarantined the cases of chicken
found in the Shevach cooler
room and sent samples to be
tested for salt, but she admitted
the effort may be futile.
“The tough thing is you
can’t test for kosher. We’re
trying to figure out who’s at
fault and for what,” she said.
Prompting Action
At the kashruth supervisors’ meeting in Brooklyn,
one of the participating rabbis recalled that, after a scandal two years ago in which
a Flatbush takeout store was
found selling regular kosher
meat as “glatt kosher,” there
were promises by the state
of change. “But nothing happened,” said the rabbi.
In fact, after that episode,
many stores in Brooklyn, even
those owned and operated by
Orthodox Jews, accepted the
Page - 17
Tapes, CDs, and
DVDs of the September
17th Kinus Torah event
by Congregation Bais
Tefillah at the Yeshiva
of Spring Valley are
available from Maximum Impact Media, Inc,
which can be reached at
845-425-1500.
need for a mashgiach temidi.
“With kosher grocers
getting bigger all the time,
the management can’t possibly police the preparation of
all foods, particularly meats,”
one Flatbush rabbi told KosherToday. “What happened
in Monsey is so much worse
than the story with the takeout store in Flatbush.”
KosherToday
agreed.
“The question that many are
asking these days is if the more
serious scandal in Monsey will
at last prompt both rabbis and
the community into action,”
said the publication. S.L.R.
AN EVENING OF
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Justice Louis D. Brandeis Award
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Chairman, Boston Properties &
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Former Chairman, Conference of Presidents of
Major American Jewish Organizations
Dinner Co-Chairmen
RONALD S. LAUDER
JAMES S. TISCH
Former Chairmen,
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
MORTON A. KLEIN
National President,
Zionist Organization of America
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Marriott Marquis Hotel
1535 Broadway (at 46th Street)
Reception 5:30 p.m., Dinner 6:30 p.m.
Couvert $450 per person
$4,500 Table of Ten
For more information, call Felice Capustin at
212-481-1500
Keynote Speaker and recipient of
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Served five U.S. Presidents
Distinguished Leadership
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Ben Hecht Award for Outstanding
Journalism on the Mideast
Managing General Partner & Co-Founder,
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Director, Palestinian Media Watch
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Dr. Michael Goldblatt, Chairman of the Board
Dr. Alan A. Mazurek, Chairman, National Executive Committee
Henry Schwartz, National Treasurer
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4 East 34th Street, New York, NY 10016 Tel. (212) 481-1500 Fax (212) 481-1515 Email: [email protected] www.zoa.org
ITAMAR MARCUS
Founded 1897
Page - 18
T
October 2006
Get Ready, Get Set, Daven: Israeli Disabled Runners
To Participate in This Year’s Marathon Minyan
his year, the New York
City Marathon, scheduled for Sunday, November
5, is expected to attract more
than 30,000 athletes. As they
have for the past 15 years,
many Jewish participants in
the event will begin the day
with the Marathon Minyan at
8:15am at the staging area in
Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island,
adjacent to the orange corrals.
While the davening is Orthodox, the minyan is made up
of a wide variety of Jews from
throughout the US (especially
the tri-state Metropolitan
area, but also Pennsylvania,
Florida, and California), Canada, Israel, South and Central
America, Europe, South Africa, and Australia. Among the
more than 100 men who show
up, some wear kippoth, others
wear baseball caps, or no head
covering at all. Some women
come in long skirts; others
wear running tights or shorts.
There is usually a light
kosher breakfast courtesy
of the minyan organizers. In
addition, some of the Orthodox-Jewish runners participate in pre-Marathon kosher
pasta-loading parties, and
some order kosher food for
post-Marathon celebrations.
Stephen Loeb, an experienced participant from
West Orange, suggests taking a bus to Fort Wadsworth,
Yosef Kalvo, hand-bike cyclist and an amputee, will compete in
the marathon for Beith Halochem.
either from Bryant Park in
Manhattan or the Meadowlands Arena in Rutherford,
NJ. Leaving the car at home
is a good way to avoid traffic
and road-rage energy before
the 26.2-mile run begins.
Disabled Israelis
This year, there will be a
Marathon Minyan within the
Marathon Minyan. Because
the New York Marathon is
open to disabled athletes, ten
Israelis, hosted by Friends of
Israeli Disabled Veterans-Beit
Halochem, will be participating. Calling themselves the
Marathon Minyan, the ten
athletes will be hand cycling,
a sport which requires enormous strength and skill.
Nine of the ten Israelis
athletes were disabled during their service in the IDF.
One was a victim of terrorist
violence.
“These athletes have given their all for Israel and the
Jewish people. Now they are
going to ‘run’ this race with
the same determination and
courage,” said Hillary Charap,
Friends of Israeli Disabled
Veterans-Beit Halochem’s director of development.
The organization is encouraging all IDF supporters
who will be in New York on
November 5th to come out
and cheer these athletes on.
“They most certainly deserve a tremendous showing
of support from all of us,”
said Ms. Charap.
Places to Watch
Mr. Loeb, an attorney,
suggests those who want to
watch the race and cheer on
their favorite runners, find a
spot in Brooklyn, just south
of Park Slope, at about the
6-mile mark along 4th Avenue
at the beginning of the numbered streets.
“Just make sure you
know if the runner you are
looking for will be on the east
or west side of 4th Avenue,”
he said, explaining that it is
a two-way street divided by
a median.
First Avenue in Manhattan is another classic site to
runner-watch, he said, cautioning that the street tends to
get very crowded.
Another good spot, he said,
is mile 23, Carl Shurz Park,
around 86th Street and the FDR
Drive along the East River.
“By that time, your runner, regardless of shape or
ability, will be happy to see a
friendly face for support,” he
said, adding that runners and
their special cheer-leading
squad should pick a location
in advance so that everyone
will be on the right side of the
street during the marathon.
He suggested that runners
give their cheer leaders a distinctive name to call. “Don’t
use ‘mom’ or ‘dad,’ because
many of the runners will be
‘mom and dad,’” he said.
Running for Charity
While runners participate in
the race for a variety of reasons,
many run for various charities.
In fact, running for a charity is
the best way to be able to win
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 19
Page - 20
Marathon Minyan
coveted permission to participate in the marathon.
Most charities sponsoring runners are all sold out,
but as we went to press, three
still had spots available: The
American Legacy Foundation,
a national public health foundation dedicated to building a
world in which young people
reject tobacco and anyone can
quit (1-800-243-7000); the
Thomas G. Labrecque Foundation, which raises funds for
lung cancer research and seeks
to increase awareness about
the disease (212-651-6420);
and the Children’s Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at
Mount Sinai Hospital (212241-5415).
Although Friends of Israeli Disabled Veterans-Beit
Halochem is not sponsoring
independent runners, the organization is seeking sponsors
for the group’s Marathon visit.
Ms. Charap, who can
October 2006
be reached at 212-689-3220,
said there are many levels of
sponsorship, “and we’re certain that one will be perfect
for you.”
Fred Lebow, z”l
For many of the Jewish
participants in the Marathon,
the late Fred Lebow, the Marathon’s founding father, was a
guiding inspiration.AHolocaust
survivor turned sports entrepreneur, Mr. Lebow transformed
the New York Marathon from
an sprint that was little more
than a few laps around Central
Park for a few dozen aficionados, into an international event
throughout the city that attracts
tens of thousands.
Mr. Lebow, who had
battled brain cancer for four
years before he died at the
age of 62 in October 1994,
three weeks before the marathon that year, is the subject
of a biography entitled “Anything for a T-Shirt: Fred Leb-
ow,” by Ron Rubin.
Mr. Rubin said he wrote
the book because he was intrigued with the way Mr. Lebow, who worked in Manhattan’s garment district and took
up running to get in shape for
tennis, made things happen.
“How was this Holocaust survivor who never
finished high school able to
change the popular culture of
the nation? He mainstreamed
the notion of a marathon,”
said Mr. Rubin.
Chutzpah and Nachas
The answer, said Mr. Rubin, is that Mr. Lebow, who
kept “his own modified version of kosher” by being a vegetarian, attended synagogue
on the High Holy Days, fasted
on Yom Kippur, held Passover seders and lit Chanukah
candles with his running club
friends, had “chutzpah.”
According to Mr. Rubin,
it was Mr. Lebow himself who
made sure the marathon wound
its way through the chassidic
neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and personally posted the “no parking”
signs in Yiddish. He also could
be seen shouting encouragement to the runners in Yiddish
from his official car.
The sites along the route
of the marathon are important
also to Mr. Loeb, who suggested that all participants, especially first-timers, make the
most of the entire experience.
“Take in the sights and
sounds. In the anxiety of
competing and completing
26.2 miles, remember to enjoy the day. It’s not just another race,” he said.
No one has any doubt that
Mr. Lebow took pride each year
in the growth of his marathon,
and he also probably would
have shepped special nachas
from the Israeli athletes from
Beit Halochem.
S.L.R.
Muslims Are Outraged
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 21
to them, fit a pattern which
some observers began calling the “Islam-vs.-the-West”
syndrome. Epitomized by
the issues between the US
and Iran, this syndrome pits
deeply held Western values
and principles, such as freedom of speech and religion,
against Muslim demands to
control words, actions, and
even beliefs.
difficult to predict what else
will enflame the devout, Islam has to be treated with
unusual deference, like a
three-year-old child with anger-management problems,”
said columnist James Lileks.
Calls for Unity
Last month, the violent
pattern repeated itself after Pope Benedict delivered
an academic lecture which
In a speech at the Los
Angeles World Affairs Council, British Prime Minister
Tony Blair described the
battle between the extremist
Islamist world and the West
as a struggle between the
democratic values of tolerance, respect, and freedom
and those of “reaction, division, and hatred.”
The Islamists’ goals, he
said, are twofold: to prevent
any Islamic country from
moving towards democracy
and freedom in any form, and
to spread the rule of Islam
throughout the entire world.
All too often, when these
goals are thwarted, the result
has been uncontrolled violence, as was seen in the riots
that erupted in the fall and
winter of 2005 in the wake
of the publication of cartoons
about Islam and the Prophet
Mohammed in a Danish
magazine.
“Now history itself cannot be discussed. Since it’s
many Muslims took as an insult. There were also a slew
of other incidents which indicated new steps in what appears to be Islam’s cultural
war with the West.
Some
commentators
said the only solution is for
supporters of Western culture
to unite in its defense.
“True, these principles
sound pretty elementary—
‘we’re pro-free speech and
anti-gratuitous violence’—
but in the days since the
Pope’s lecture, I don’t feel
that I’ve heard them defended
in anything like a unanimous
chorus. A lot more time has
been spent analyzing what
the pontiff meant to say, or
should have said, or might
have said if he had been given
better advice. All of which is
simply beside the point, since
nothing the Pope has ever said
comes even close to matching
the vitriol, extremism, and
hatred that pour out of the
mouths of radical imams and
fanatical clerics every day, all
across Europe and the Muslim
world, almost none of which
ever provokes any Western
response at all. And maybe
it’s time that it should,” said
columnist Anne Applebaum,
writing in the Washington
Post.
Jews Speak Out
Although many Jewish
writers condemned the Muslim
violence and threats prompted
by the Pope’s remarks, very
few American-Jewish organizations spoke out publicly.
The exception was the AntiDefamation League, which,
in a press release, condemned
the Muslim media for accusing Jews of plotting the Pope’s
statements.
In Israel, Chief Sephardic
Rabbi Shlomo Amar actually
condemned the Pope, sending a letter to Sheikh Yusuf
al-Qaradawi, a leading Sunni
Muslim leader in Qatar who
has been banned from entering the US because of his advocacy of violence, including
suicide bombings in Israel
and Iraq.
In his letter, written in
Arabic, Rabbi Amar said,
“Our way is to honor every
religion and every nation according to their paths.”
Citing the Bible, Rabbi
Amar said, “Even when there
is a struggle between nations,
it cannot be turned into a war
of religions.”
Medieval History
On September 12, the
Pope delivered an academic
lecture at the University of
Regensburg in Germany in
which he quoted a 14th-century
Byzantine emperor on the subject of jihad or holy war. According to the Pope, Emperor
Manuel II Palaiologos said,
“Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new,
and there you will find things
only evil and inhuman, such as
his command to spread by the
sword the faith he preached.”
Although the press was
concerned only with the quote,
the Pope explained that the
Byzantine emperor, whose
empire was about to fall to the
Muslims, issued the statement
as part of a dialogue with a Persian scholar of Islam in 1391.
The emperor was criticizing
the Islamic practice of forcibly
converting non-Muslims to Islam and, as the Pope said, was
“addressing his interlocutor
with a startling brusqueness on
the central question about the
relationship between religion
and violence.”
“The emperor, after
having expressed himself so
forcefully, goes on to explain
in detail the reasons why
spreading the faith through
violence is something unreasonable. Violence is in-
Page - 22
compatible with the nature of G-d and
the nature of the soul. ‘G-d,’ he says, ‘is
not pleased by blood—and not acting
reasonably is contrary to G-d’s nature,’”
said the Pope.
Expanding on this theme, the Pope
went on to explain that European civilization itself is a fusion of Christian faith
and Greek philosophy. Europe’s current
drift, he argued, stems from the cultural
separation between faith and reason that
began with the Reformation and continued with the Enlightenment. By relegating faith to a subculture that has no place
in discussions of practical human endeavors, Europeans have rendered themselves incapable of understanding who
they are or knowing how to defend themselves and their values—something the
14th-century Byzantine emperor seemed
to understand effortlessly, he said.
Dialogue Marathon
Some historians have pointed out that
the dialogue between the emperor and
the Islamic scholar went on for some 26
sessions, during which the Muslim was
allegedly overwhelmed by “continuous
glimpses of Christian truth.” Although the
dialogue did not end with the Muslim embracing Christianity, he did agree to journey to Constantinople, the last significant
stronghold of the Byzantine Christian empire, to study with Christian theologians
there.
The Pope’s chief message seemed to
be that, for a culture to survive, it must
October 2006
be willing to embrace its identity. If it
does not, it won’t be capable of understanding why it should survive.
While the Pope’s message could
speak to Jews and Muslims as well as the
Christians to whom it was addressed, it
was drowned out almost immediately by
Muslims and their supporters who heard
only the emperor’s quote.
“Rhetorical Bomb
Writing in American Prospect Online,
a far-left publication, Adele Stan argued
that “to throw a rhetorical bomb such as
that the Pope tossed into the teeming cities
of the Muslim world is to commit an act
tantamount to violence.”
Demands for a formal apology were
the mildest Muslim reaction, followed
by severe criticism of the Pope by Muslim clerics and political cartoonists.
British Muslims demonstrated outside Westminster Cathedral with signs
reading “Pope Go to Hell” and “Islam
Will Conquer Rome,” while the head of
the Society of Muslim Lawyers declared
that the Pope must be “subject to capital
punishment.”
Vilification
According to Palestinian Media
Watch, PA cleric Osama al-Mazini vilified the Pope in a sermon broadcast on PA
TV as “ignorant and stupid” and “criminal and arrogant.” In the Hamas weekly,
al-Risala, a cartoon depicted the Pope
with the Danish and US flags, holding a
swastika.
Mr. al-Mazini warned that Allah
would punish “the criminal Benedict the
16th, the Vatican Pope,” and threatened
heavenly retribution.
In Gaza, Sheikh Abu Saqer, a preacher affiliated with the Islamic Salafiya
Jihad, called for a holy war against the
Pope, terming him “a puppet” for “that
Crusader George Bush.”
Mr. Abu Saqer said the only ChristianMuslim dialogue that would be acceptable
is one in which “all religions agree to convert to Islam.”
“The call for so-called dialogue by
this little racist Pope is a Trojan horse
with the main goal of reaching a new
system in which the ideals [of Christianity] are a new ideology that will rule relations between nations and people. The
dialogue he wants is dangerous,” Mr. Abu
Saqer told WorldNetDaily, adding that “it
is an open war—the Muslims against all
the others.”
Warning the Pope
Other Muslim leaders in the PA also
warned the Pope that he must “accept”
Islam if he wanted to live in peace.
In Iraq, al-Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri, implied that
by demanding the Pope and Christians
convert to Islam, he was offering them
something beneficial.
“If Benedict attacked us, we will respond to his insults with good things. We
will call upon him and all of the Christians to become Muslims who do not
recognize the Trinity or the crucifixion,”
said Mr. al-Zawahri.
Mr. Lileks, the columnist, pointed
out that the West’s general lack of interest in converting to Islam is in itself
taken as an affront to Islam in the Muslim world.
Calling for Murder
Acting on behalf of the International
Islamic Front for Jihad against the Crusaders and the Jewish People (a group
headed by Osama bin Laden), a Pakistani
militant organization reportedly issued a
fatwa calling on Muslims to murder the
Pope in retaliation for his speech.
In London, Muslim extremist Anjem
Choudary took up the challenge, telling
Muslim protesters that the Pope should
face execution. He said those who insulted
Islam would be “subject to capital punishment,” because, according to Islamic law,
sharia, blasphemy, as defined by Islam, is
a capital offense.
It did not seem to matter that, in
London, it would be considered murder.
Acts of Violence
Inevitably, acts of physical violence
followed. Seven churches of several different Christian sects were attacked by
Arabs in the Palestinian Authority in
Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.
Writing in the Jerusalem Post, columnist Saul Singer said the headline for
the episode should read “Pope calls Islam violent, Muslims riot.”
“The irony here presumably escapes
no one except the rioters themselves.
Torching churches would seem to be a
poor method of disproving the Pope’s
delicate suggestion that Islam is a religion of the sword,” said Mr. Singer.
Almost to prove his point, a Pakistani
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman responded, “Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence.”
“But let us not dare suggest that even
a whiff of intolerance can be detected in
the Islamic world. If you say otherwise,
I will cut off your head,” quipped columnist Jonah Goldberg.
Proving the Point
Writing in the Canadian-based National Post, George Jonas wondered why
“some Muslims have such an uncanny
talent for proving the case of their critics.”
“When accused of violence, they
threaten violence. Better still, they engage in it. ‘Call us unruly and we riot,’
they say in essence. ‘Call us murderers
and we kill you.’ Don’t they see that this
makes them a joke?” he wrote.
Answering his own question, he said,
“Well, no, they don’t—and they’re right.
They don’t care about winning the debate,
what they want to win is their Kampf, better known these days as Jihad.”
They can win, he said, because their
threats intimidate Westerners, even those
who believe they are winning the debate
at the Muslims’ expense. This behavior,
he said, leads Muslim imams to believe,
“Logic may be essential for pundits. It
isn’t essential for our followers who are
willing to blow themselves up to get
their way.”
“The sheiks and mullahs of conquer-
Cheshvan 5767
ing Islam don’t give a hoot about the hearts
and minds of the West. They figure, not
without justification, that if they get us by
the short hairs, our hearts and minds will
follow,” said Mr. Jonas.
Who’s Panicking?
Mr. Saqer’s analysis confirmed Mr.
Jonas’s point. The Islamic leader told
WorldNetDaily that the Pope and the
Christian world are “panicking” because
“they realize who is winning.”
“See how Islam is progressing and
gaining more and more members, and
Page - 23
see the moral crisis in the West. See today the support of Islam in the Arab and
Muslim world and how Islam is gaining
more and more adherents in Europe and
even in the US, and you understand that
Islam is the future and that this dwarf
Pope was wrong. But I can sympathize
with him. He is frustrated because he
understands where things are heading,”
said Mr. Saqer.
According to William Donahue,
president of the Catholic League in the
Page - 24
US, the Pope’s point in the lecture was
not only to criticize secularists for lacking faith, but also to argue that faith must
be coupled with, and backed by, reason.
“Faith unhinged from reason leaves a
trail of blood,” said Mr. Donahue. “This was
the critical reference to un-anchored radical
Islam. Until tolerance and respect are inculcated into a given people, there is not much
hope for dialogue. Dialogue is a means to
an end, not an end in and of itself.”
Not an Apology
Through the Vatican Secretary of
State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Pope
expressed his regret over the incident,
but did not offer a specific apology. Cardinal Bertone issued a statement, saying
the Pope “sincerely regrets that certain
passages of his address have sounded offensive to the sensitivities of the Muslim
faithful and should have been interpreted
in a manner that in no way corresponds
to his intentions.”
The statement was deemed insufficient by most Muslim leaders, and a
senior member of the Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood, Muhammed Bishr, called
it “a pretext that the Pope was quoting
October 2006
someone else as saying so and so.”
“We need the Pope to admit the big
mistake he has committed and then agree
on apologizing, because we will not accept others to apologize on his behalf,”
said Mr. Bishr.
Not that they didn’t try, especially in
territory ruled by the PA. Just after four
masked gunmen doused the main doors
of his church with lighter fluid and then
set them on fire, George Awad, a cleric
at the Greek Orthodox church in Nablus,
attempted to apologize for the Pope’s remarks and urged Muslims to use restraint.
“There is no reason to burn our
churches,” he pleaded.
Small Minority
Christians, who number in the tens
of thousands in the PA, comprise a
small—and dwindling—minority among
the PA’s 3 million Muslims.
Adding to Christian anxiety in the
region, the radical Islamic leader, Sheikh
Raed Salah, head of the Northern Branch
of the Islamic Movement in Israel, addressed a mass rally in Um El-Fahm, one
of Israel’s largest Arab cities, saying he
hoped the Pope’s remarks were “a slip of
the tongue, because, if not, his words are
a direct call to the nations of Europe to
stand behind President Bush and Israel
in their war against Islam.”
Mr. Salah predicted that Jerusalem
would soon be taken over by the Muslims. “Very soon, Jerusalem will be the
capital of the new Muslim Caliphate, and
the Caliph will dwell there,” he said.
Murder in Somalia
In the Somalian capital of Mogadishu, a 65-year-old Italian nun and her
bodyguard were killed at the entrance
to a hospital where she worked. A doctor said Sister Leonella Sgorbati from
Piacenza, in northern Italy, had been
shot four times in the back by two men
with pistols. In Indonesia, four Christian
schoolgirls were beheaded.
Many commentators linked both incidents to the Pope’s remarks, although,
in Indonesia, the world’s most populous
Muslim nation, there has been ongoing
persecution and murder of Christians.
Shortly before Sister Leonella was murdered, a prominent Somali cleric, Sheik
Abubukar Hassan Malin, had called on
Muslims to kill the Pope.
“Sister Leonella was not the Pope,
but she was presumably close enough for
purposes of the local jihadis,” said Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby.
According to reports, Sister Leonella, who served in Africa for almost
40 years as a nurse caring for mothers
and children, forgave her killers as she
lay dying. Her last words, murmured in
her native Italian, were, “Perdono, perdono,” I forgive.
“Islam or Death”
On the Internet, the Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella group led by Iraq’s
branch of Al Qaeda, threatened reprisals
against “worshippers of the cross.”
“We shall break the cross and spill
the wine. You will have no choice but Islam or death,” said the statement, citing
a quote said to come from the Prophet
Mohammed, promising Muslims that
they would “conquer Rome as they conquered Constantinople.”
“We tell the worshippers of the cross
that you and the West will be defeated, as
is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya. Allah enable us to slit their throats,
and make their money and descendants
the bounty of the Mujahideen,” said the
group’s statement.
A few days after the Pope’s lecture
in Germany, he once again raised eyebrows when he cited a passage from the
Christian Bible in which the crucifixion
is described as “a scandal for the Jews, a
folly for the pagans.”
Although, in London, the Guardian
reported that some Jewish representatives
expressed surprise, there were no reports
of Jews attacking the Pope verbally or
resorting to violence, just as there were
none when an Iranian newspaper, with
Iranian-government support, sponsored
a “contest” for antisemitic Holocaust-denying cartoons. One showed the Statue
of Liberty holding a book on the Holocaust in one hand and offering a Nazistyle salute with the other.
Still No Apology
When the Pope finally addressed the
issue of the Muslim response personally,
his comments did not differ in substance
from the statement made by Cardinal
Bertone. The Pope said he was “deeply
sorry for the reactions in some countries
to the passages of my address, which
were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims.”
Cheshvan 5767
“These in fact were a quotation from
a medieval text, which do not in any way
express my personal thoughts,” he said,
indicating that while he was sorry for the
misunderstanding, he did not regret using the quotation to make his point.
The Pope made his explanation, reading from a prepared statement, at a meeting in the Vatican that had been billed as a
“summit” with Muslim leaders from across
Europe. Some observers said the photographs of the event told the real story.
“There sat the leader of Christendom, resplendent on a golden throne and
separated from the assembled dignitaries
by a vast expanse of polished black-andwhite marble floor. He did not take ques-
Page - 25
tions,” said columnist Michael Meyers,
writing in the New York Post. “This was
hardly appeasement, nor was it the ‘dialogue’ the Pope had promised.”
Prof Rafi Yisraeli, who has just
completed a book on the integration of
Islam into Europe, said it was possible
the Pope’s partial apology stemmed
from his concern for Christian minorities
in Muslim countries.
Muslim Dissatisfaction
The Muslim world was not appeased.
In Turkey, Member of Parliament Mehmet Aydin said the Pope seemed to be saying he was sorry for the outrage, but not
necessarily for the remarks themselves.
Page - 26
October 2006
Some observers said that
was exactly the message the
Pope wished to convey, but
Mr. Aydin found it infuriating.
“You either have to say
‘I’m sorry’ in a proper way
or not say it at all,” said Mr.
Aydin.
In Iran, an influential
cleric, Ahmad Khatami,
warned that if the Pope did
not apologize properly, the
“outcry will continue until
he fully regrets his remarks.”
Mr. Khatami suggested “the
Pope should fall on his knees
in front of a senior Muslim
cleric and try to understand
Islam.”
Europe’s Muslim Problem
Many observers pointed
out that the Pope’s lecture
could not have been a mere
slip of the Papal tongue, but,
rather, may signal a new policy in the Vatican. Just last
winter, the Vatican’s position
on the Danish cartoons was
that the Danish newspaper
should have been more careful not to give offense.
Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Anshel Pfeffer
pointed out that while the
Pope is not particularly proIsrael, he is aware that, like
the Jewish State, Europe has
a Muslim problem, particularly concerning violence.
“He sees the spread of Islam through Europe as a definite threat, and a more robust
brand of Catholicism is the only
weapon he knows to counter
it,” said Mr. Pfeffer.
A “Precise” German
Father Pedro Medros, a
lecturer at Bethlehem University and a Catholic priest,
agreed. “You have to realize
two things about this Pope:
first, he is not a diplomat.
Second, he is German, so he
likes things to be very clear,
even difficult things,” he
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 27
said.
According to Father Medros, who in no way is a representative of the Vatican, the
Pope, in speaking at the German university, was warning
secular Europeans, expressing his concern about the
Muslims who have settled
throughout Europe and yet
have little or no allegiance
to the European countries
in which they live. Muslim
immigrants in Europe are
viewed as practicing Sharia,
Islamic law, even when it
runs contrary to the laws of
their countries of residence.
The Pope believes that,
for Muslims to live peacefully in Europe, they will
have to alter some of their religious principles, said Father
Medros.
“His main concerns are
the atheism in Europe and the
infiltration of Islam into those
countries,” said Father Medros, adding that he believes
the Pope’s intention was “to
start an initiative of dialogue,
not one of violence.”
Not a Two-Way Street
Actually, the initiative
was begun in 1962, when the
Vatican, through its Pontifical
Council for Intra-Religious
Dialogue, offered to begin
speaking seriously with Muslims, but, according to Father
Medros, in almost 45 years,
there has never been a single
document of rapprochement
from the Islamic side.
Father Medros seemed
to feel that, with this speech,
the Pope was signaling that
he was no longer prepared
simply to turn the other cheek
in the face of Islamic intransigence. Since assuming the
papacy, Pope Benedict has
opposed Turkey’s joining
the European Union as a full
member and has condemned
terror, placing responsibility
for the violence with Muslim
leaders.
In the US, Mideast expert Michael Ledeen agreed
that the Pope had made his
remarks carefully and fully
anticipated the reaction they
would engender in the Muslim world.
“Of course he knows
that, for several centuries,
Islam conserved the wisdom of the West, the same
‘Greek’ wisdom he invoked
as the indispensable partner
of Christian faith. He’s defying the Muslims to admit
that, because he knows that
the jihadis don’t want to hear
about it, and that an open debate about it may undermine
the sway of so many dogmatic mosques, schools, TV stations, and Internet sites,” said
Mr. Ledeen.
Archbishop’s Concern
And, it seems, the Pope
was heard, at least by some
other Christian leaders in Europe. The former Archbishop
of Canterbury, Lord Carey,
said the West’s problem was
not with a minority of Muslims, but with Islam itself. He
noted that while the majority
of Muslims do not engage in
violence, they do not actively
oppose it, either.
The archbishop may have
been reacting to recent polls
which show that the British
have realized they have a serious Muslim problem. According to a Telegraph YouGov poll
taken last month, 53 percent of
Britons view Islam as a threat
to society.
Observers said this sentiment came in the wake of
the bombings last summer in
the London underground, the
recently uncovered plot to
blow up ten or more planes
Page - 28
on route from London to the
US, and the discovery that a
young English-born Muslim
couple planned to blow up
one airliner by igniting their
six-month-old baby’s bottle
of formula.
Many Western observers
say what is even more upsetting is the lack of protest by
other Muslims.
“Where are the demonstrations in the Muslim street when
the president of Iran denies the
Holocaust and calls for the destruction of Israel? Or when Palestinian kidnappers force two
Western journalists to convert
to Islam at gunpoint? Or when
Sunni terrorists in Iraq bomb
Shiite mosques and slaughter
hundreds of worshippers?” said
Max Boot, Olin Senior Fellow
in National Security Studies at
the Council of Foreign Relations in New York.
Concessions at the Opera
Since the episode concerning the Pope, there have
been a number of other incidents, which experts say point
out that what the Muslims
want is not equal respect, but,
rather, special consideration,
bordering on homage.
The incident that received the most publicity concerned Berlin’s Deutsche Opera which, on the eve of the
first German-Islam Conference, barely two weeks after
the Pope’s lecture, cancelled a
October 2006
con. from p. 27
production of Mozart’s opera,
Idomeneo, because, in one
scene, King Idomeneo sets
the severed heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha, and the
Prophet Mohammed on chairs
and laughs at them.
The government-sponsored conference was designed to promote dialogue
between German officials
and the country’s 3.2 million
Muslims, many of whom are
either from Turkey or are the
children of Turkish unskilled
workers who were brought
to Germany after World War
II to help drive the country’s
economic boom.
To Attend Together
At the conference, the
cancellation of the opera overshadowed other issues, with
the German Interior Minister
Wolfgang Schaeuble decrying
what he called the tendency
of some Muslim radicals to
act in a “crazy” manner with
minimal provocation.
When the conference
closed, Mr. Schaeuble told
reporters he had persuaded all
participants to unite in a call
for the opera to reschedule
performances of “Idomeneo.”
“I’m glad we all agreed
we would like the production
to resume,” he said, adding that
he hoped when performances
were announced, all 30 participants, equally divided between
central and local government
officials and Muslim representatives, would attend together
“to send a signal.”
Who’s Next?
At the production’s premier in December 2003, there
were protests from the audience, but many reviewers interpreted the opera as a radical
critique of religion and religious wars. In the Wall Street
Journal, reviewer Roger
Kimball, however, called it a
“horror” and said the director,
Hans Neuenfels, was “more
interested in nurturing his
own pathologies than in offering a faithful presentation of
the geniuses with whose work
he has been entrusted.”
Nevertheless, Mr. Kimball said, the only thing “less
pleasing than having to sit
through Mr. Neuenfels’s production” was the news that
the opera company had cancelled it because of fears of
enraged Muslims.
“Today it was Mozart.
Tomorrow, perhaps, it will be
Shakespeare. Or Dante, who
after all has a pretty hot place
reserved for Mohammed in
‘The Divine Comedy.’ It is
not—not yet—too late to put
a stop to our habit of appeasing a murderous faction that
demands privileges and indulgences it refuses to grant
others,” said Mr. Kimball.
When the opera was first
performed in 1781, it was set
in ancient Crete after the Trojan War. The text deals with
human resistance to making
sacrifices to the gods, and it
ends with King Idomeneo
issuing as his last command
before ceding power to his
son, “I announce peace.”
Police Warning
In a statement referring
to the furor over the Danish
cartoons, the opera company’s manager, Kirstin Harms,
said police had warned her
that all the press publicity
surrounding the production
would make a performance
of the scene an “incalculable
security risk” for the theatre
and its visitors.
A spokesman for the
Berlin Police Department
said an analysis of security
risks based on the riots that
followed the publication of
the Danish cartoons caused
them to warn the company.
“We told the opera that
possible disturbances relating to the performance in its
planned form couldn’t be ruled
out,” the spokesman said.
Writing in the German
magazine Der Spiegel, Henryk Broder said that, as a
“secular, atheist Jew,” he was
offended that the production
did not include Moses’s head.
“What am I to do? Run
amok and set the opera on
fire?” he quipped.
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He noted that there would have been
no “risk analysis” if Idomeneo had chosen to slaughter only Poseidon, Buddha,
and Jesus—leaving Mohammed out.
Cancellation Furor
The decision to cancel sparked rage
in Germany, with top political and cultural
figures arguing that the threat of violent
retaliation should not constrain freedom of
expression in a Western Democracy.
Calling the cancellation “a mistake,” Chancellor Angela Merkel urged
Germans not to bow to fears of Islamist
violence.
“I think self-censorship does not help
us against people who want to practice violence in the name of Islam,” she said. “It
makes no sense to retreat.”
“If concern about possible protests
already leads to self-censorship, then the
democratic culture of free speech is in
danger,” said German Culture Minister,
Bernd Neumann.
Fear of Violence
Interior Minister Schaeuble accused
some non-Muslims of going “too far” in
their attempts to accommodate Muslim
sensitivities. By showing too much deference to Muslims on such matters, he
said, the non-Muslim world “will not
succeed in convincing people” that free
speech and tolerance “are better than
fundamentalism.”
October 2006
“It’s a difficult situation with some
Muslims. They tend to use anything to
become crazy. I can’t accept that,” he
said.
The parliamentary leader of the
German conservative Christian Social
Union, Peter Ramsauer, called the cancellation “cowardly.” “It’s an incredible
occurrence that has never happened in
Germany before in this form,” he said,
denying that the cancellation had anything to do with respect for religion.
“It’s naked fear of violence. That’s
nothing but pure cowardice,” he said.
Looking to Muslim Moderates
In Denmark, Flemming Rose, culture
editor of Jyllands-Posten, which began the
storm of Muslim protest after publishing
the satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, said bowing to fears of a violent
Muslim reaction would only worsen the
problem.
“You play into the hands of the radicals. You are telling them: your tactics
are working. This is a victory for the
radicals. It’s weakening the moderate
Muslims who are our allies in this battle
of ideas,” he said.
In fact, although the head of Germany’s Islamic Council, Ali Kizilkaya, welcomed the decision to cancel the opera
because, he said, it was taking Muslim
sensitivities into account, Kenan Kolat,
another German-Muslim leader disagreed. Mr. Kolat said it was high time
for Muslims of all ethnic stripes to accept principles of free speech and other
tenets of European democracy.
“This is about art, not politics,” he
told Bavarian radio, adding that anything
else represented a retreat to “the Middle
Ages.”
Policing the London Police
Other incidents also occurred that
seem to fall into the Islam-vs.-the West
syndrome. In England, British police made
the decision to excuse a London policeman
from guarding the Israeli Embassy because
the officer, Alexander Omar Basha, told
his superiors he was unable to carry out his
duties due to his objection to Israeli bombings in Lebanon.
Mr. Basha, 26, who is attached to
the London Police Department’s Diplomatic Protection Group, has reportedly
taken part in recent anti-war protests.
The former London police chief,
John O’Connor, called the request and
its acceptance “the beginning of the end
for British policing.”
“If they can allow this, surely they’ll
have to accept a Jewish officer not wanting to work at an Islamic national embassy. Will Catholic cops be let off working at Protestant churches? Where will it
end? This decision is going to allow officers to act in a discriminating and racist
way,” he said, adding that when an officer joins the police force, it must be in
order to provide a service to the public.
“If you cannot perform those duties,
you leave,” said Mr. O’Connor.
He accused the Metropolitan Police
of setting a precedent “they will come to
bitterly regret.”
“Top brass granted his wish as they
were probably frightened of being accused of racism. But what they’ve done is
an insult to the Jewish community,” said
Mr. O’Connor.
Muslim Chief Says No
Another angry policeman told Mike
Sullivan, the crime editor of the London
Sun, “This decision beggars belief. It goes
against everything the police should stand
for—providing a service to the public no
matter who they are.”
Even Police Superintendent Dal
Babu, who serves as chairman of the Association of Muslim Police, said he disapproved of excusing Mr. Basha, saying
his request dealt with “the welfare of an
individual” and was “not about a moral
issue.”
“I think we are going down a very,
very slippery slope if we start having
postings based on individual officers’
conscience,” he said. “As police officers,
we have to deal with some very, very
difficult situations and we need to be
objective and make sure that we police
all members of the community fairly. We
can’t pick and choose.”
Urgent Review
After the Sun carried the story of Mr.
Basha’s excusal by his superiors, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair
ordered an immediate inquiry. “Having
learned of this issue, I have asked for an
urgent review of the situation and a full report,” he told the paper.
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 31
New Royal Persian Grill: A Family Affair for Food and Yiddishkeit
T
he new Royal Persian Grill restaurant,
located in the heart of “kosher restaurant row” on West Englewood Avenue in
Teaneck is a family affair that represents
the marriage of several traditions.
The owner, Efraim Azari, was born in
Teheran, Iran; his wife, Tova, is originally
from Baghdad. Their children, however, were
born in Israel, and, said Mr. Azari, their various heritages are reflected in the menu currently available at the Royal Persian Grill.
“We use a lot of Sephardic spices, vegetables, and meats, and everything is made
with love for klal Yisrael,” said Mr. Azari.
The mixture of food and Yiddishkeit comes naturally to the Azari family.
Both Efraim and Yosef study at the Ohr
Yisrael Sephardic Yeshiva in Monsey.
Yosef Azari expects to earn smicha next
year, while his father is just beginning.
From Israel to Florida
In Israel, the Azaris owned several
successful restaurants, including one in
Ra’anana, called Sunflower, and another
on Dizengoff in Tel Aviv, called Sami
Burekas.
In 1998, Mr. and Mrs. Azari came
to the US with their youngest son, Yosef,
who is now 29. Their three older children remained in Israel.
Settling in South Florida, the Azaris
opened a dry cleaning business, but, after two years, Yosef decided to return to
Israel to study in a yeshiva. While in Israel, he married his wife, Dana, and then
with her, returned to the US, to continue
his studies at the Sephardic Yeshiva in
Monsey. They now have two children.
From Florida to Monsey
Two years ago, Yosef and Dana
invited his parents to spend the High
Holidays with them in Monsey, and, said
Efraim Azari, he found the Rockland
County community very appealing.
“I saw my heart leaving Florida,” he
said.
By Rosh Hashana 2005, Efraim and
Tova had relocated, and Efraim began
joining his son at the yeshiva.
Yemenite Chef
The family’s thoughts also turned to
parnassah. With the help of friends, they
settled on the West Englewood Ave location in Teaneck and began making plans
to open a restaurant.
One of their first decisions was
choosing their chef, Oshri Cubani, whose
cooking experience began at the Dan
Acadia Hotel in Herzliya. In the US, he
served as a chef for several Lubavitch institutions in Crown Heights as well as at
the Lexington Restaurant in Manhattan.
Mr. Cubani said he enjoys using traditional Yemenite recipes, which he remembers from his childhood in Israel. He
also enjoys Indian cooking and frequently
uses Indian spices in his cooking.
Sephardic Delicacies
A careful perusal of the Royal Persian Grill’s menu is a culinary study of
Sephardic delicacies. Jachmoon, a bread
made with honey, sugar, and oil, is used
like a roll. Cubana uses the same ingredients, but depends on yeast to make the
dough rise and keeps it soft.
Persian red rice, an Iraqi recipe, is
a combination of Basmati rice served in
a tomato sauce, and gharme sabzi is a
stew-like dish consisting of celery, cilantro, parsley, red kidney beans, and
beef. It can be served mild or spicy, and
its secret ingredient is “dry lemon,” a
special variety originally from Iran.
Page - 32
October 2006
L
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 33
Dr. Rachel Jacobs: “I’ll Take Dentistry for $200, Alex”
ast month, Dr. Herbert
Schneider happily welcomed his daughter, Dr. Rachel Jacobs, into his practice
of family, cosmetic, and restorative dentistry, located at
55 Grant Street in Dumont..
From digital x-rays with
reduced radiation to his latest addition, a laser, which
lessens the need for numbing
injections, Dr Schneider has
always provided his patients
with the newest technology combined with the highest level of care for over 25
years. After spending time
in her father’s office, Dr. Rachel, as she is known, knew
dentistry would be the right
choice for her.
“Rachel has already
brought so much to our practice because her clinical excellence, her training and her
values are a perfect fit with
those of our practice team,”
Dr. Schneider said, adding
that he always knew this
would be the case.
No Work on Saturday
But the father-daughter
team share more than dentistry, both are also avid watchers of the game show “Jeopardy,” and, several years ago,
while she was still a student
at Stern College, Dr. Rachel
leaped at the chance to audition for the program when
the producers came to the
New York area.
After taking both a
written and oral exam, she
learned that she would be one
of 15 students on the college
tournament. Stern’s administration was thrilled to learn
that she would be the first yeshiva student ever to appear
on “Jeopardy.”
But things didn’t go as
smoothly as Dr. Rachel and
Stern hoped. Very quickly,
she was told that the show
on which she was scheduled
to appear would be taped on
Shabbat. Worse, the producers
told her if she could not participate on Saturday, they could
not place her in the show’s college tournament at all.
Flying to California
Her disappointment
abated, however, when the
staff accommodated her religious beliefs by offering
her the opportunity to appear
on a regular “Jeopardy” program as opposed to the college tournament.
“And that’s how Rachel,
at the age of 19, ended up on
the regular show,” said her
Royal Persian Grill
Those with a hankering
for lamb will not be disappointed at the Royal Persian
Grill, where kabobs, lamb
chops, and shwarma are all
on the menu. The restaurant also features beef, veal,
and chicken dishes. Its baby
chicken shwarma literally
melts in the mouth.
Expansion
The Azaris have plans for
their restaurant, which, right
now, seats about 30. The family wants to enlarge the seating
cont. from p. 31
area and make sure the vertical
grill, on which the shwarma is
cooked, is readily visible.
“We want the Royal
Persian Grill to be a family
place that’s nice enough for a
special night out, but casual
enough to enjoy often,” said
Yosef Azari.
The restaurant is located
at 102 W Englewood Ave, in
Teaneck. The phone number
is 201-833-1555.
Catering and take-out
are available.
S.L.R.
proud father.
To make up for the $2500
that Rachel had been guaranteed just for making the cut
to appear on the college tournament, the “Jeopardy” staff
paid for her airfare to Los
Angeles and a three-night
stay at the Beverly Hilton.
“Swahili”
The two contestants with
whom she appeared were
much older—one was an attorney and the other a former
stockbroker—but Dr. Rachel
held her own.
“She was even leading
after the first commercial
break, answering a Daily
Double correctly putting her
way in the lead,” her father
recalled.
The Final Jeopardy Category of “Swahili Phrases,”
unfortunately sealed her fate
and ended her participation.
“But she left the show with
some lovely parting gifts and
a deep sense of accomplishment,” said Dr. Schneider.
DDS and Motherhood
Since then, of course,
Dr. Rachel has continued to
achieve great accomplishments. A graduate of the
University of Medicine and
Dentistry of New Jersey, she
completed her residency at
the Newark Beth Israel Medical Center.
Dr. Rachel and her husband Brian, an attorney in the
entertainment industry, enjoy
their adorable son, Dovi, who
was born last December (Dr.
Schneider doesn’t mind him
too much, either.)
Besides playing with
Dovi, Dr. Rachel enjoys
reading, cooking, and, natch,
Trivia.
To contact Dr. Schneider
or Dr. Rachel, call 201-3855538.
Y
Page - 34
October 2006
When Israel Was at War, Camp IBA Organized a Unity Program of
Prayer and Education for All Jewish Campers in Upstate New York
F
aced with the unfortunate
situation in Israel last
summer, the senior staff at
Camp IBA, a sports camp imbued with Zionist ideals, had
an idea: Let’s invite all Jewish
sleep-away camps in Upstate
NY and Pennsylvania to send
representatives to join us at
Camp IBA for a day of unity
tant for people to stay behind
to support Israel’s troops
through tefillot (prayer).
With this in mind, each
camp selected representatives to participate in the special program actively showing support of our brethren
in Israel who were fighting a
battle on two fronts.
your big toe your entire body
feels the pain. The same is
true for the Jewish people.
If our soldiers are hurting in
Lebanon, we feel it here.”
The theme presented
throughout the day was how
the campers could make a
difference in the situation
through prayer and action.
and support for Israel.
Calls were made and,
with input from all the camps
that responded, an initial
meeting was set. The theme
of the entire program was
one of achdut (unity), and
all agreed to come together
Tuesday, August 1st.
One may ask, what difference could a group of
sleep-away campers make,
all of whom were 6,000 miles
away from Israel? The 500
campers of IBA, Mesorah,
Morasha, Moshava, Nesher,
and Ramah heard from a series of speakers that while
fighting on the front lines
was vital, it was also impor-
Prayers
After the opening address from Joel Jerozolim,
head counselor at IBA, the
program began with Hatikva,
the Star Spangled Banner,
and prayers: for the State of
Israel, THE IDF, and for the
missing and captured soldiers. A special prayer composed by the Chief Rabbinate
of Israel was recited simultaneously with an estimated
1,000,000 Jews from around
the world.
Afterwards, the assembled campers heard a dvar
Torah from Rabbi Judah
Mischel of Camp HASC,
who told them, “If you stub
History
The campers were treated to a video presentation,
prepared by Camp Moshava,
on the current situation. After giving some background
on Hezbollah and Israel’s history with Lebanon, the video
gave a day-by-day recap of
the current events.
Using the video as a
springboard to understand
the severity of the situation
more fully, the youngsters
and their counselors divided
into smaller groups moderated by various educational
advisors. In these smaller
sessions, campers had an opportunity to discuss how they
felt about the current situation as well as write letters
to affected members of the
IDF and families who have
been displaced from areas in
Northern Israel.
Many of the youngsters
who participated in the day
of unity were Israelis who
were spending the summer
in the US. The day devoted
to Israel and the war offered
them an opportunity to feel
closer to their loved ones at
home.
Psalms
After a lunch provided
by the IBA hosts, the 500
campers returned to the gym
for the closing program,
which consisted of a group
recitation of Pirkei Tehillim
and an intense period of
“slow shirah” (slow singing)
led by Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan of IBA. Between each
song, the campers heard personal stories from different
staff members, among them,
famed Jewish basketball star,
Tamir Goodman.
At the end of the program, the campers were
privileged to hear from
Rabbi Meir Goldwicht, of
Mesorah, about the role that
tefillah—especially those of
children—plays in changing
the world. Having crystallized the purpose of the gathering, Rabbi Goldwicht led
the entire assembly in a roofshaking “Shema Yisrael” and
“Baruch Shem K’vod Malchulto L’Olam Va’ed.”
The weather that day was
very hot and it was difficult
to tell if people were wiping their faces from sweat or
tears—or both. However, at
the end of the day, those who
had participated felt they had
made a difference and, based
on what people of faith know,
they most certainly had. Y
D
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 35
Heritage Foundation Plans Trips to Poland
uring the summer of
2007, Heritage Moreshet Seminars will run specially designed seminars to Poland for adults. The seminars
are especially conducive to
groups put together by individual synagogues or groups
of shuls from one area.
Conceived as a seminar
with special emphasis on the
cultural richness of Eastern
European Jewry before the
war and its demise during
the Holocaust, Heritage is
not simply a “concentration
camp” tour, although extensive study time is spent at
Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec,
Auschwitz, and Birkenau.
Full days are spent in
Warsaw, Cracow (where the
group observes Shabbat), Lublin, and the shtetlach of Galicia. Evening programs and
analysis take place each day.
Specialized Approach
The seminar features
special programming at the
tombs of Rabbi Elimelech of
Lezajsk and the concentration
camps, among other sites.
All Heritage programs
include orientation and advance preparation. All seminars are accompanied by an
historian, security staff, physician, and food coordinator.
A Holocaust witness is an optional addition to the group.
Heritage has refined a
specialized approach that
reflects a balance between
academic study, attention to
the emotional sites in Eastern Europe, and the study of
Jewish sources, personalities,
and the demise of Jewish life
during the Holocaust.
Fees
Depending on specific
issues which can be deter-
mined by each individual
synagogue group planning a
Heritage Seminar, the cost of
this seminar in Poland is approximately $3,000 with an
approximately $500 addition
for a two-day extension to
Prague. Single supplements
entail additional costs.
Fees include: a group
orientation session; roundtrip
airfare; all land arrangements,
including five star accommodations; deluxe buses; a Heritage historian/scholar in residence; security in Poland and
Prague; educational materials; three mehadrin kosher
meals daily; entry fees to all
sites; porterage and all gratuities; local guides; a Gesher
Tours logistical person; and
all administrative preparation. Travel and medical insurance is not included.
A minimum group of 35
is required for this seminar.
Families, including children
16 and over, are encouraged
to attend.
Dates
The date for this trip will
be determined by each participating synagogue group.
Carrie Teitcher, who recently returned from a Heritage Seminar with the Young
Israel of Oceanside, said she
is happy to meet with groups
considering the trip.
“If there is an interest
in this program, it would be
best if a chairperson can be
appointed by your shul to coordinate such a meeting with
me, as well as future specifics of a potential seminar,”
she said.
Ms. Teitcher can be
reached by phone at 516-5364306 or email, heritagect@
gmail.com
Y
Page - 36
October 2006
The Log:
Wed., Oct 11
“Elul, Teshuvah, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot,” Rabbi Uri Goldstein, spons
by the Orthodox Union online at
www.ouradio.org/takefive
Reality
Interviewing
Workshop, Rhonda Goodman,
spons by the Jewish Family Service Job Search Network, Jewish Family Service, Teaneck,
10am, 201-837-9090
“From Generation to
Generation:
Yiddish
Art
Songs,” Reyna and Robert Abelson, JCC, Tenafly, 11:30am
“Being a Teenager with a
Chronic Illness,” for teenagers, Tamar Stern, JCC, West Orange, 7pm
Dinner in the Sukkah for
Empty Nesters and Seniors,
Cong Ohav Emeth, Highland
Park, 7pm
Healing from the Death of
a Parent, Sherry Woocher, JCC,
West Orange, 7:30pm
Family Simchat Beit
Hashoeva: Live Band, Khal
Tzemach Tzedek, Monsey,
7:45pm, 845-371-7258
Film: “The Lost Song,”
for women and girls, spons by
the Chofetz Chaim Heritage
Foundation, at Yeshiva Gedolah,
Teaneck, 8:30pm
Thurs, Oct 12
“Elul, Teshuvah, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot,” Rabbi David Fine, spons
by the Orthodox Union online at
www.ouradio.org/takefive
Israel’s National Junior
Hockey Team, Chelsea Piers,
Manhattan, 6pm
“Farbrengen in the Sukkah: Shemini Atzeret—Rejoice and Refuel, Simchas Torah—Joy to the World,” Rabbi
Boruch Klar, Lubavitch Center,
West Orange, 7:30pm
Leil Hoshana Rabba: “Defining Torah in Simchat Torah—Halacha, Kabbala, and
Philosophy,” Rabbi Dr. Jacob J.
Schachter, Cong Beth Abraham,
Bergenfield, 7:30pm
Tikun Layl Hoshana Rabba: Family Learning for Chil-
dren and Adults, Young Israel of Monsey and Wesley Hills,
8pm, 845-354-5218
Fri., Oct 13
Deadline to order tickets through Netivot Shalom
for Jewish Family Night:
NJ Devils vs the Florida Panthers, at the Continental Arena on Nov 11, 201-837-7849
NCSY Simchaton, Cong
Ohav Emeth, Highland Park,
through Sun, Oct. 15
Sat., Oct 14, Shemini Atzeret
Speaker of the House
Dennis Hastert (R-IL), spons
by NORPAC, private home in
Englewood, 8pm, 201-788-5133
Tues., Oct. 17
Rep Dan Burton (R-IN),
spons by NORPAC, private
home in Englewood, 8pm, 201788-5133
Wed., Oct 18
Women’s Kriah, Ann Shinnar, Netivot Shalom, Teaneck
Women’s Simchat Torah
Reading, private home in Englewood, 10am, 201-503-0609
“The Mystery of the History of Simchat Torah,” Ilene
Strauss, spons by AMIT, Cong
Ahawas Achim Bnai Jacob and
David, West Orange, 10:45am
Young Israel of Teaneck Simchat Torah Kiddush/Luncheon
Simchat Torah Family Luncheon, Teaneck Jewish
Center. 1pm
Ahavas Family Simchas
Torah Luncheon, Cong Ahavas
Yisroel, Passaic, 3pm
“Understanding
Volunteering” Volunteer Center of Bergen County, Hackensack, 9am
Trip to the Jewish Museum in Manhattan, leave the
JCC, Tenafly, 9am
“Net Gain: Finding Family on the World Wide Web,”
Sandra Lanman, Jewish Historical Society of Central Jersey, New
Brunswick, 10am, 732-249-4894
Jewish
Enrichment
Time for Seniors: Tickling
Your Brain with Puzzles and
Games, Bill Levy, Lautenberg
JCC, Whippany, 11am
“Planning Your Volunteer Program,” Volunteer Center of Bergen County, Hackensack, 1pm
Wednesdays with Fred:
Pizza, Gym, and Swim, for 7th10th Graders, Teaneck Jewish
Center, 6pm
Cong Ahawas Achim Bnai
Jacob and David Sisterhood
Dinner, shul, West Orange, 7pm
“Being a Teenager with a
Chronic Illness,” for teenagers,
Tamar Stern, JCC, West Orange,
7pm
NJ Senate Candidates’ Debate: US Sen Robert Menendez (D) and NJ State Sen Tom
Kean, Jr (R), Temple Beth Shalom, Livingston, 7:30pm
Healing from the Death of
a Parent, Sherry Woocher, JCC,
West Orange, 7:30pm
“Developing the Mind,
Transmitting the Mesorah, Instilling the Midot,” Moriah School
of Englewood Open House, 8pm
“Translating the Bible: A
Symposium,” Prof Everett Fox,
Prof Jack Sasson, Prof Naomi
Seidman, and Prof Gary Rendsburg, Douglass College Center,
New Brunswick, 7pm
“Jewish Communities of
Cuba: Small but Thriving,”
Nancy Katz, photographer, Englewood Public Library, 7:30pm
“Connecting with and
Correcting Media Coverage
Simchat Torah Minyan
for Israelis Who Keep One
Day of Yom Tov, private home
in Teaneck, 646-339-4139
Children’s
Hakafot,
spons by Sephardic Center of
Fair Lawn, Young Israel of Fair
Lawn, and Cong Ahavat Achim,
in the Ahavat Achim Sukkah,
Fair Lawn, 3:45pm
Simchat Torah Celebration, Union County Torah Center, Westfield, 7pm
“The End Is Also the Beginning: Devarim to Bereshit, Parsha Synopsis and Presentations,”
for women of all ages, Cong Ohav
Emeth, Highland Park, 7:45pm,
also Sun, Oct 15, 10am
Sun., Oct 15, Simchat Torah
Mon., Oct 16
Thurs., Oct. 19
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 37
“Separate Yourself Not from the Community”
of Israel,” Fran Dauth and Harry Glazer, Cong Ahavas Achim,
Highland Park, 7:30pm
Rep Bill Pascrell (D-NJ),
spons by NOPAC, private home in
Englewood, 8pm, 201-788-5133
Sat., Oct 21
Young Israel of Monsey and Wesley Hills/ASHAR
Yachad Shabbaton, at the
Young Israel, 845-354-5218
“Rabbi’s Tish for a Taste
of the 3 C’s: Cholent, Cugel, and Conversation,” Rabbi
Lawrence Zierler, Teaneck Jewish Center, noon
“A Tale of Love and Darkness” by Amos Oz and Tales of
the Founding of Petach Tikvah,
Shuly Kustanowitz, spons by
the History Club of Cong Ahavat Achim, private home in Fair
Lawn, 8pm, 201-796-9273
Navi Shiur, Rabbi Yisroel
Reisman, by Satellite, Khal Zichron Mordechai, Airmont, NY,
9pm, 845-356-7078
Sun., Oct 22
TV Film: “A Journey of
Spirit,” story of Jewish singer Debbie Friedman, Hallmark
Channel, 7am
Trip to “Imagine That”
in Florham Park for Grades
Nursery through 2nd, leave
Cong Ohr Torah, Edison, 10am
Chug Ivrit for Intermediate to Advanced Hebrew
Speakers, spons by Raritan Valley Chapter of Hadassah, private
home in Highland Park, 11am,
732-819-9298
“Translating Tradition:
Reviving and Reliving Yiddish
Culture in a Modern World,”
Dr. Carl Rheins, YMHA, Riverdale, noon
70s and ‘80s Ladies Night
at Picante Restaurant, Teaneck, spons by Cong Beth Aaron
Sisterhood, 6pm
NY Yankee and “Designated Hebrew,” Ron Blomberg,
JCC, Bridgewater, 7pm
Moshav Band and The
Big Blue Accident, in Concert,
Mexicali Blues, Teaneck, 7pm
Sen Robert Menendez,
Democratic Candidate for Sen-
ate, spons by the Orthodox
Union, Cong Rinat Yisrael, Teaneck, 7pm
Mon., Oct 23
Leah Sokoloff Nursery
School of Shomrei Torah Open
House, Fair Lawn, 9:30-11am
“Three Scholars, Three
Texts: Reading Rabbinic Literature,” Beth Berkowitz, Jeffrey
Rubenstein, and Azzan Yadin,
Alexander Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, 6:30pm
“Everything You Wanted to Know about Judaism but
Were Afraid to Ask: Jewish
Mysticism and Kabbalah,” Rabbi Ely Allen, JCC, Tenafly, 8pm
Cong Bnai Yeshurun
Nursery School Open House
for 3s, pre-k for 4s and young
5s, Teaneck, 8pm
Mazal Shidduch Group of
Raritan Valley, private home in
Edison, 8:30pm, 732-985-3808
Tues., Oct 24
Ben Porat Yosef, the Sephardic Yeshiva of Bergen
County, Open House for Parents with Children entering
Toddlers (2½) through Grade
4, Leonia, 8pm
Sen Hillary Clinton (DNY), spons by NORPAC, minimum donation $2100 per person, private home in Englewood, 8pm, 201-568-7932
“Genealogy Resources in
the New York Metropolitan
Area: A Paradise for Genealogy Work,” Dr. Nathan Reiss, Jewish Historical Society of
Central Jersey, New Brunswick,
732-249-4894
Wed., Oct 25
“Recruiting and Placing
Volunteers,” Volunteer Center of
Bergen County, Hackensack, 9am
Jewish Enrichment Time
for Seniors: Project SHIN,
Nurse Karen Frank, Lautenberg
JCC, Whippany, 11am
Fundraiser and Consciousness-Raising for Muscular Dystrophy, RCBC-approved
kosher food provided, Assembly
Steak House, Englewood Cliffs,
12-3pm
“Orienting and Training
Page - 38
The Log
October 2006
Volunteers,” Volunteer Center of Bergen
County, Hackensack, 1pm
Healing from the Death of a Parent,
Sherry Woocher, JCC, West Orange, 7:30pm
“Kavanah During Davening,” spons
by Achieving Change Through Torah, Cong
Ohav Emeth, Highland Park, 8pm
Yavneh Academy Open House for
Prospective Families, Paramus, 8pm
Thurs., Oct 26
ATARA: Sisterhood of Keter Torah,
Teraneck, Benefit Bash at Lord & Taylor, Ridgewood, $5 admission ticket gets big
savings, 9am-10pm, 201-483-8268
Tomchei Shabbos of Bergen County, Benefit Bash at Lord & Taylor, Ridge-
wood, $5 admission ticket gets big savings,
9am-10pm, 201-837-7837
Sharsheret, a national not-for-profit organization supporting young Jewish
women facing breast cancer, participates
in “The Shopping Benefit,” at Bloomingdale’s, Hackensack, Bridgewater, Short Hills,
and Willowbrook. Buy a ticket from Sharsheret and save, 10am-10pm, 866-474-2774
Simply Manischewitz Cook-Off, featuring 30 semi-finalists in the competition, Hilton
Newark Airport Hotel, Elizabeth, 11am
“The Many Faces of Israeli Society,”
David Hyman, JCC, Tenafly, 11:15am
JCC MetroWest Patron Gala Dinner,
honoring Sharon and Stephen Seiden and
Robin Eichler, JCC, West Orange, 6pm
“Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk,”
Abigail Pogrebin, JCC, Bridgewater, 7:30pm
Ladino Club, Enrique Levy, JCC,
Tenafly, 7:30pm
Fri., Oct 27
Jr. NCSY Shabbaton, Jewish Educational Center, Elizabeth, through Sat., Oct. 28
Carlebach Yarzheit Shabbaton, Rabbi Sammy Intrator, Rodda Center, Teaneck,
lodging and meals available, through Sat.
Oct. 28, 201-708-6629
Sat., Oct 28
“Those Who Save Us” by Jenna Blum,
reviewed by Meri Bodoff, spons by Cong
Ahavat Achim Sisterhood Book Club, private
home in Fair Lawn, 3:30pm, 201-797-0502
Hoop Zone in Englewood, spons by
Cong Rinat Yisrael and Cong Bnai Yeshurun, for Grades 2-5, 8-10pm
Melave Malka, spons by the Teaneck Carlebach Minyan, Rodda Center, Teaneck, 8pm
Navi Shiur, Rabbi Yisroel Reisman, by
Satellite, Khal Zichron Mordechai, Airmont,
NY, 9pm, 845-356-7078
Sun., Oct 29
Cong Beth Aaron Shul Hike along the
Palisades, led by Daniel Chazin, meet at the
shul, Teaneck, 9am
Shabbos Arts and Crafts, Mayer Berg,
Cong Ohr Torah, Edison, 10am
Noach’s Petting Zoo and Pony Rides,
in honor of Parshat Noach, Cong Rinat Yisrael, Teaneck, 10am-noon
“Tripping the Prom Queen,” brunch,
book discussion, and signing by author Susan Shapiro Barash, JCC, Tenafly, 11am
Film: “The Last Jews of Baghdad:
End of an Exile, Beginning of a Journey,”
with filmmakers Carole Basri and Adriana
Davis, Fair Lawn Jewish Center, 6:30pm
Benefit Concert for Darfur, featuring
Naqshon’s Leap, JCC, Tenafly, 7:30pm
Yeshivat Noam Open House for Prospective Parents, Paramus, 8pm
Mon., Oct 30
Leah Sokoloff Nursery School of Shomrei Torah Open House, Fair Lawn, 9:30-11am
Information Tea for Leah Sokoloff
Nursery School of Shomrei Torah Pre-K,
Fair Lawn, 7:45pm
“Deepening Facets of Stem-Cell Research and How It May Impel New Bioethics,” Rabbi David Feldman and Dr. Carl
Feit, Teaneck Jewish Center, 8pm
“Jewish Genetic Conditions among
the Ashkenazim,” Shannon Barrett, JCC,
Tenafly, 8pm
Wed., Nov 1
“Supervising Volunteers,” Volunteer
Center of Bergen County, Hackensack, 9am
Ben Porat Yosef, the Sephardic Yeshiva of Bergen County, Open House for Parents with Children entering Toddlers (2½)
through Grade 4, Leonia, 9:15am
“Evaluating Your Volunteer Program,” Volunteer Center of Bergen County,
Hackensack, 1pm
“A Nation of Priests and Pundits,” Andrew Silow-Carroll, JCC, Tenafly, 7:30pm
Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey
Open House for Prospective Parents, River Edge, 8pm
Thurs., Nov 2
Concert: “Mom with a View,” Sandy
Cash, private home in Cherry Hill, 7:30pm,
609-502-2597
Sat., Nov 4
In Concert: Simply Tsfat, benefit of
the Yeshiva Shalom Rav community in Tsfat,
Cong Ohr Torah, Edison, 8pm, 732-261-3666
Parlor Meeting for Mesivta Yeshiva
Rabbi Chaim Berlin, featuring Rosh HaYeshiva Harav Aharon Schechter and Harav Yosef Fruchthandler, private home in Clifton,
8pm, 973-773-0259
Sun., Nov 5
NYC Marathon Orthodox Minyan,
bring your own tefillin and siddur or borrow those belonging to the organizers, kosher
breakfast available, Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island, adjacent to the Orange Corrals, 8:15am
Annual Sisterhood Coat Drive, spons
by Cong Ahavat Achim, private home in Fair
Lawn, 201-791-5369
UJA of Northern NJ Mitzvah Day,
River Edge, 9am-5pm
Kristallnacht Commemoration: The Undying Flame—a Concert/Lecture Presentation, Jerry Silverman, JCC, Tenafly, 2pm
Mon., Nov 6
“What We Share and Where We Differ: Approaches to Jewish Law, an Interdenominational Discussion,” Orthodox
Rabbi Saul Berman, Conservative Rabbi
Neil Gillman, and Reform Rabbi Aaron Panken, JCC, Tenafly, 7:30pm
Wed., Nov 8
Concert: “Mom with a View,” Sandy
Cash, private home in Riverdale, 7:30pm,
718-796-4613
Women’s Shiur: “How an Ordinary
Jew Can Achieve Extraordinary Heights,”
Sara Yoheved Rigler, Cong Bnai Yeshurun,
Teaneck, 8pm
Yeshivat Ahavat Yisrael Jewish Montessori Day School Open House, for prospective parents of primary school (2 ½-6
year olds), Lower Elementary (6-9 year olds),
and Upper Elementary (9-12 year olds), New
Milford, 8pm
Thurs., Nov 9
Mission to Cuba, spons by the Jewish
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 39
Federation of Atlantic and Cape May Counties, 609-822-4404
Red Cross Holocaust Tracing, Ed Pavlick, JCC, Tenafly, 11am
Orthodox-Jewish Network for Orthodox Adults Diagnosed on the Autism
Spectrum (Asperger Syndrome, Autism,
or PDD), Fifth Ave Synagogue, NYC, 6pm
646-242-4003, 212-529-9996
Rutgers Jewish Film Festival: “Live
and Become,” Sirak Sabahat, Regal Cinema
Commerce Center, North Brunswick, 7pm
Concert: “Mom with a View,” Sandy Cash, private home in Teaneck, 7:30pm,
201-836-6985
ham, Bergenfield
Rutgers Jewish Film Festival: “The
First Time I was 20,” Regal Cinema Commerce Center, North Brunswick, 7:15pm
Jewish Family Night: New Jersey
Devils vs the Florida Panthers, Continental Airlines Arena, E Rutherford, 7:30pm
Navi Shiur, Rabbi Yisroel Reisman, by
Satellite, Khal Zichron Mordechai, Airmont,
NY, 7:30pm, 845-356-7078
Rutgers Jewish Film Festival: Metallic
Blues,” Prof Yael Zerubavel, Regal Cinema
Commerce Center, North Brunswick, 9:15pm
Baby Girl Kiddush, Cong Beth Abra-
Sat., Nov 11
Sun., Nov 12
“Translating Tradition: Reviving
and RelivingYiddish Culture in a Modern
Page - 40
The Log
October 2006
World—Shlepping
through
the Alps,” Sam Apple, YMHA,
Riverdale, noon
Rutgers Jewish Film Festival: “Live and Become,” Dr.
Ephraim Isaac, Regal Cinema
Artist Morris Katz, spons
by the Ahavath Torah Road Scholars Program, private home in Englewood, 4pm, 201-871-1165
Rutgers Jewish Film Festival: “Metallic Blues,” Prof
Michael Levine, Regal Cinema
Dinner and Concert:
Howard Birnbaum, trumpet,
and Neil Weintrob, violin, accompanied by Jackie Schilloer
Audi, Cong Bnai Yeshurun, Teaneck, 6pm
Night of 100 Dinners, fundraiser for the Jewish Family Service
of Teaneck, begins with “Envelope
Cocktail Party” at Englewood Hospital, 6pm, 201-837-9090
Rutgers Jewish Film Festival: “Fateless,” Anne-Marie
Baron, Regal Cinema Commerce
Center, North Brunswick, 7:30pm
“Anger Management for
Positive Results,” spons by
Achieving Change Through Torah, private home in Highland
Park, 8pm, 732-993-5376
Sun, Nov. 15
Areyvut’s Bnai Mitzvah
Essay Contest Deadline, for
students in Grades 6-9 (12-15)
to write a 250-750 word essay
that describes how and why the
student incorporated or will incorporate the values of chesed,
tzedaka, and tikkun olam into a
bar or bat mitzvah celebration.
For more information, call Daniel Rothner at 212-813-2950 or
email [email protected]
“Breast Cancer and Ovarian Cancer: Exploring the Connection,” Drs. Elizabeth Povnor
and Noah Kauff and Shera Dubitsky, spons by Sharsheret, Teaneck, 6:30pm, 866-474-2774 Y
New Classes This Month
Sundays
“Topics in Halacha,” Rabbi Zvi Sobolofsky, Cong Ohr HaTorah, Bergenfield, 7:50am
Gemara Shiur, Rabbi Botnick, Cong Ohav Emeth, Highland
Park, 9am
“The Power of Words” by Rabbi Zelig Pliskin, Chofetz Chaim
Women’s Learning Group, private home in Teaneck, 9am, 201-8361606
Afternoon Film Course: Jews in New York, Dr. Ilana Abramovitch, Riverdale YMHA, 2pm
Yeshiva Hockey Winter Program for Ages 8-13, private rink in
Monsey, new participants, 4:15pm; younger returning players, 5:15pm;
older returning players, 6:15pm, 845-548-7223, begins Oct 22
Father and Son Learning, Yeshiva Gedolah, Teaneck, 7pm
Shiur, Rabbi Klughaupt, Cong Ohav Emeth, Highland Park,
8pm
“Jewish Life Cycle: How to Run a Jewish Home” for men and
women, Rav Eisenman, Cong Ahavas Yisrael, Passaic, 8:30pm
Mondays
Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Uri Goldstein, Cong Ahavat Achim, Fair
Lawn, 9:15am, begins Oct 16
Sefer Ohel Rachel, Penina Rothman, private home in Passaic,
9:30am, 973-778-5375
Women’s Tehillim Group, Ora Bloom, Cong Ahawas Achim
Bnai Jacob and David, West Orange, 7pm
Rambam, Rabbi David Waxman, Community Synagogue of
Monsey, 7:15pm
“The What and Why of Contemporary Issues in Halacha,”
Rabbi Gidon Lane, Cong Ahavath Torah, Englewood, 8pm
Tai Chi for Adults, Cong Ahavath Torah, 8pm
Gemara Moed Koton, Rabbi Yaakov Neuberger, Cong Beth
Abraham, Bergenfield, 8pm
Shiur for Women and Girls, spons by Hachnosas Kallah of
Monsey, private home in Monsey, 8pm, [email protected]
Gemara Shiur:Tractate Kesubos, Rabbi Botnick, Cong Ohav
Emeth, Highland Park, 8:30pm
Weekly Torah Portion, Rabbi Jordan Yasgur, Cong Bnai Yeshurun, Teaneck, 8:30pm
Weight Watchers, Sari Samuel, Cong Beth Aaron, Teaneck,
8:45pm, 201-836-6868
Tuesdays
Tehillim for Cholei Yisrael and Eretz Yisrael, private home in
Teaneck, 9:30am, 201-837-9682
Chumash Class for Women, Rabbi Eliezer Zwickler, Cong
Ahawas Achim Bnai Jacob and David, West Orange, 10am
Lunch and Learn: “User’s Manual for Your Soul—The Tanya,” Rabbi Ephraim Simon, spons by Friends of Lubavitch of Bergen
County, at The Pasta Factory, Teaneck, 1pm
Shiur for Women, Rabbi Eliyahu Kaufman, Cong Ohav Emeth,
Highland Park, 1:30pm
Tora Dojo Karate, Mark Grebenau, Cong Ahawas Achim Bnai
Jacob and David, West Orange, children 5 and up, 6pm; teens and
adults, 7pm
Beth Aaron Chapter of Teaneck NCSY: Games, Scott and
Adrianne Burgher, Teaneck Jewish Center, 7pm
Directing and Sketch Writing for Teens 12-18, Matt Okin,
JCC, Tenafly, 7pm, begins Oct 17
Beginners Hebrew Reading, Laurette Sasson, JCC, Tenafly,
7:30pm, begins Oct 17
“Estate Planning and Jewish Tradition,” Rabbi Howard Jachter
and Martin Shenkman, Esq, JCC, Tenafly, 7:30pm, begins Oct. 24
Tehillim, Rabbi Emanuel Schwartz, Community Synagogue of
Monsey, 7:45pm
“You Be the Judge: Behind the Steering Wheel of Jewish
Law,” Rabbi Ephraim Simon, Chabad House, Teaneck, 8pm, begins
Nov 7
Advanced Talmud: Mesechet Gittin, Rabbi Tony Glickman,
Cong Ahawas Achim Bnai Jacob and David, West Orange, 8pm
Rayut Women’s Tehillim Group, Yaffa Hollander, Cong Ahawas Achim Bnai Jacob and David, West Orange, 8pm
“You Don’t Have to Be a Mechanic to Have the Tools for
Learning Chumash,” Rabbi Berel Hirschman, Cong Ahawas Achim
Bnai Jacob and David, West Orange, 8pm
“Vos is Dos?: Beginners Yiddish,” Moshe Schreiber, Cong Ahawas Achim Bnai Jacob and David, West Orange, 8pm
Playwriting/Screenwriting for Ages 16 and Up, Matt Okin,
JCC, Tenafly, 8pm
Shiur for Women, Dr. Presby, private home in Highland Park,
8:30pm, 732-572-6231
Parshat Hashavua, Rabbi Meir Goldwicht, Cong Bnai Yeshurun, Teaneck, 8:30pm, begins Oct 17
Shiur, Rabbi Daniel Feldman, Cong Beth Aaron, Teaneck,
8:30pm
Chumah/Hashkofah Shiur, Rabbi Yosef Veiner, by Satellite,
Khal Zichron Mordechai, Airmont, NY, 8:45pm
Orach Chaim, Rabbi Daniel Hartstein, Cong Beth Abraham,
Bergenfield, 9pm
Gemara, Rabbi Dr. Yacov Tendler, Community Synagogue of
Monsey, 9:30pm
Wednesdays
Beginner Hebrew, YJCC, Washington Twnshp, 9:30am, begins
Oct 18
Advanced Beginner Hebrew, YJCC, Washington Twnshp,
11am, begins Oct 18
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 41
Israeli Dance, Stephanie Kaye, Young Israel of Teaneck, Grades
K-3, 4:30pm; Grades 4-8, 5:30pm
NCSY Teen Learning, Scott and Adrianne Burgher, spons by
Cong Beth Aaron, at Starbucks Café in Barnes and Noble, Riverside
Square Mall, Hackensack, 7pm
“Take a Spiritual Journey,” Karen Frank, JCC, West Orange,
7:30pm
“The Path of the Prophets,” Rabbi Ephraim Simon, Chabad
House, Teaneck, 7:30pm
Tanach, Rabbi Scot Berman, Cong Ahawas Achim Bnai Jacob
and David, West Orange, 8pm, begins Oct 18
Parsha Class, Rabbi Uri Goldstein, Cong Ahavat Achim, Fair
Lawn, 8:30pm, begins Oct 18
Gemara: Mesechet Taanit, Rabbi Eliezer Zwickler, Cong Ahawas Achim Bnai Jacob and David, West Orange, 8:30pm
Beginners Talmud Shiur: Gemara Megillah, Rabbi Baruch
Price, spons by the Jewish Learning Experience, Torah Academy of
Bergen County, Teaneck, 8:30pm
Bava Kama Shiur, Rabbi Larry Rothwachs, Cong Beth Aaron,
Teaneck, 8:30pm
Shiur, Rabbi Zvi Sobolofsky, Cong Bnai Yeshurun, Teaneck,
9:15pm
Mishnayos B’chavrusa, Rabbi Dr. Yacov Tendler, Community
Synagogue of Monsey, 9:30pm
Thursdays
Beginners Hebrew Reading, Lucille Foster, JCC, Tenafly,
9:30am, begins Oct 26
Torah Class for Women, Rabbi Teichman, private home in Teaneck, babysitting available, 9:30am, 201-385-2575
Shorashim for 4th-6th Graders, gym and swim, Teaneck Jewish
Center, 7pm, begins Oct. 19
Page - 42
New Classes
October 2006
Chumash Shiur, Rab Eli Roberts, private home in Teaneck,
7:45pm, 201-837-9436
Kol Dodi: MetroWest Community Choir, Cantor Joel Caplan,
JCC, West Orange, 7:50pm, begins Oct. 19
Choson Mishpat and Tractate Taanis, Dr. Presby, Cong Ohav
Emeth, Highland Park, 8pm
Meseches Brachos, Rabbi Elozor Preil, Cong Beth Abraham,
Bergenfield, 8pm
Parshat Hashavua, Rabbi Yissocher Frand, by satellite, Cong
Ahavas Achim, Highland Park; Khal Zichron Mordechai, Airmont,
NY; Cong Keter Torah, Teaneck, 9pm
Michas Chinuch, Rabbi Yaakov Neuberger, Cong Beth Abraham, Bergenfield, 9:15pm
Hilchos Shabbos, Dr. Barry Finkelstein, Cong Beth Abraham,
Bergenfield, 9:20pm
Gemara, Rabbi Dr. Yacov Tendler, Community Synagogue of
Monsey, 9:30pm
Halachic Topics in the Parsha, Rabbi Michael Taubes, Cong
Bnai Yeshurun, Teaneck, 10:10pm
Fridays
Yeshiva Mesivta Hockey for ages 14-17, private rink in Monsey, 1:15pm, 845-548-7223, begins Nov 3
Saturdays
Shabbos Pirchei Program for Boys 6-11, Yeshiva Gedola of Teaneck, 1 hour before mincha
Special
Beis Medresh Program, Rabbi Rockoff, Cong Ahawas Achim
Bnai Jacob and David, West Orange, Mon-Thurs, 8-9:45pm
Y
Mazal Tov
Mazal Tov to the Bar Mitzvah Boys: Max Agress, Yossi Alter, Oryah Amrani, Alex Anhalt, David Borghard,
Marty Elefant, Matthew Federbush, Jordan Michael
Hod, Benjamin Kaplan, Avraham Lerer, Moshe Lewy,
Ariel Rotenberg, Jonathan Taubes, Jonathan Weinrib,
and Max Zeigerman; and the Bat Mitzvah Girls: Michaela
Elias, Estee Levy, Raquel Miller, Shoshana Oster, Yosefa
Sebrow, and Lauren Szpilzinger
Mazal Tov to Atara Weisberger on winning a $900
grant from the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education (CAJE) for a proposal to spark creativity in Jewish
education: “Engaging Orthodox Jewish Students on Environmental Issues.”
Mazal Tov to the Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey
on becoming the first Orthodox regular elementary school
in Northern NJ to be awarded the prestigious Middle States
Accreditation (full story next month).
Y
The Log is a free service provided to the Jewish
community in northern and central New Jersey, Rockland
County and Riverdale. Events that we list include special
and guest lectures, concerts, boutiques, dinners, open houses, club meetings, and new classes.
Announcements are requested by the 25th of the month
prior to the month of the event. Due to space and editorial
constraints, we cannot guarantee publication of any announcement. Please email them to :
[email protected].
The Englewood Mayoralty
On Its Head
In Englewood, the leftwing of the Democratic Party
has stood that argument on its
head. The Democratic candidate for Mayor is Michael
Wildes, a highly regarded
immigration attorney and former prosecutor who, like Mr.
Lieberman, is usually viewed
as liberal but mainstream.
Both Messrs Lieberman and
Wildes are Orthodox Jews.
In Englewood, the leftwingers are supporting Mr.
Wildes’ Independent challenger,
Robert Stern, a retired dentist
whose public record includes
service to the town’s Little
League and its theatre, the Bergen Performing Arts Center, formerly the John Harms Theatre.
Mr. Wildes, who was
first elected mayor in 2003,
after two terms on the City
Council, has been recognized
as an expert on anti-terrorism,
testifying before Congress on
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 43
anti-terrorism legislation and
assisting the media in informing the public of legal and
policy considerations. He has
won international acclaim for
his successful representation
of several defectors who have
provided US intelligence agencies with difficult-to-obtain national security information.
Mr. Wildes, who serves as
chairman of the American Jewish Congress’s Committee on
International Terrorism and Israel, has run forums for mayors
and police chiefs on the issue.
Last year, at a forum on
terrorism and homeland security, held at Englewood Hospital, he hosted Chris Christie, a Republican who serves
as New Jersey’s chief federal
prosecutor. Mr. Wildes conducted the forum after returning to the US from a Mayor’s
Conference in Jerusalem.
Résumé
A frequent commenta-
tor and guest on network
television, Mr. Wildes was
appointed to the District Appeals Board of the Selective
Service System for the State
of NJ.
From 1982 to 1992, Mr.
Wildes also served with the
New York Police Department
as an Auxiliary Police Officer.
A certified Emergency
Medical Technician, Mr. Wildes has been a member of the
Hatzoloh Volunteer Ambulance Corps of New York for
more than ten years. He also
sits on the board of directors
of Boys Town Jerusalem.
Democratic Town
In Englewood this year, all
three candidates for mayor are
Jewish. Like Mr. Wildes, the
Republican candidate, Bruce
Prince, is a member of the city’s
Orthodox-Jewish community.
Dr. Stern is unaffiliated.
Just like his Connecticut counterpart in the race
for US Senate, Alan Schlessinger, Mr. Prince is not given
much of a chance for victory
in Englewood, a Democratic
stronghold in which the Republican Party plays little or
no role. As a rule, in Englewood, the Democratic primary is the only interesting
political race. The winner of
that primary almost invariably goes on to win in the
general election.
Mr. Wildes did not face a
primary challenge to his candidacy for mayor this year,
but one of the town’s councilman—the city council’s
fifth member, a councilmanat-large—did. For a variety
of reasons, Mr. Wildes supported the incumbent, Rev.
Vernon Walton, against a
challenge by NJ Assemblyman Gordon M. Johnson.
Dirty Campaigns
Many observers noted
Page - 44
October 2006
that the primary race between
Mr. Johnson and Rev Walton,
both of whom are African
Americans, was one of the
dirtiest in Englewood’s history and virtually divided the
city’s black community.
On Primary Day, June 6,
Mr. Johnson won, and is, therefore, expected to sail to victory
on Election Day in November.
At the beginning of the
primary campaign, Mr. Wildes endorsed neither Mr.
Johnson nor Rev Walton, but,
in early June, four days before the primary, the mayor
said he had finally made a
decision and formally came
out for Rev Walton.
“I made a choice in the
Democratic Primary this year,
as did Gordon Johnson,” said
Mr. Wildes. “I believed it was
important not to have a divided
African-American community
in Englewood and that Gordon, whatever his arguments,
should not deny Vernon,
whom I believed was a promising young African-American
Councilman, another term to
grow further in the job.”
Mr. Wildes also took
issue with Mr. Johnson’s
holding two political positions simultaneously: NJ Assemblyman and Englewood
Councilman.
“It may have been good
politics for Gordon Johnson,
but it wasn’t about good government for Englewood,”
said Mr. Wildes.
Threats
According to Mr. Wildes, throughout the primary
campaign, Mr. Johnson and
his supporters issued threats,
warning the mayor that should
he come out publicly for Rev
Walton, Mr. Johnson and his
supporters would find another
candidate to run against Mr.
Wildes in the fall.
Mr. Wildes said that as
long as he remained unsure
which of the candidates to
support in the primary, the
threats made no difference to
him. Supporters of Mr. Johnson indicated that they believed Mr. Wildes deliberately
withheld his endorsement of
Rev Walton until it was too
late for them to field their own
candidate in the primary.
Mr. Wildes’s supporters
maintain that as soon as Mr.
Johnson won his primary, he
and his Chief-of-Staff, in an act
of vengeance, filed petitions to
nominate an independent candidate against Mr. Wildes in
the General Election.
Why the Selection
The candidate they selected was Dr. Stern, a member of the Democratic Party,
who said his candidacy was
not dependent on Mr. Johnson or anyone else.
“I’m the one who decided
to run,” he said. But he had
no reasonable explanation for
why he did not mount a primary challenge to Mr. Wildes.
“I needed to wait until I
gained sufficient support,” he
said, adding that Mr. Wildes
“and his war chest was an intimidating presence.”
Asked why it was any less
intimidating to run against
Mr. Wildes as an Independent in the general election,
Dr. Stern had no response,
but his supporters made clear
that one of their major issues
with Mr. Wildes was the fact
that he supported Rev Walton
against Mr. Johnson.
“Michael swore to me he
wasn’t supporting any candidate in the Johnson-Walton
race, but he lied,” said Englewood Council President
Scott Reddin, a self-identified
“left-wing liberal,” who represents Englewood’s Third
Ward and said he is supporting Dr. Stern.
Asked if it were not possible that Mr. Wildes withheld
the endorsement because he
had not yet made up his mind
which candidate to support,
Mr. Reddin said he did not believe that was the case. Asked
to substantiate his claim, Mr.
Reddin said, “Someone told
me Wildes had already decided to support Walton weeks
before he came out with the
endorsement.”
Mr. Reddin declined to
name his source.
Mr. Wildes’s supporters
have questioned the entire
issue of a local Democratic
official supporting, let alone
fielding, a candidate as an
Independent simply because
the Democratic incumbent
supported someone else in
the primary.
“I was threatened on more
than one occasion, that if I did
not stay out of Gordon Johnson’s way in a Council primary,
his backers would run an Independent against me in November. I ignored them, as I do most
people who threaten me in such
a fashion, and, ultimately, supported Rev Walton, the incumbent,” said Mr. Wildes. “I never
imagined that, as a result, Gordon Johnson himself, and his
staff, would personally carry
a petition gathering dozens of
signatures to place an Independent on the ballot against me as
retribution.”
“Development”
While Mr. Johnson did
not return phone calls to
discuss the issue, political
sources in Englewood said
the Assemblyman’s support for Dr. Stern was based
on their opposition to Mr.
Wildes’s efforts to develop
Englewood. Mr. Johnson and
Dr. Stern have termed those
efforts “overdevelopment.”
“I want community-controlled development, not development-controlled community,” said Dr. Stern.
Development in Englewood is a key issue on which
Mr. Wildes and Dr. Stern disagree. Mr. Wildes has worked
hard to attract new businesses
and other ratables designed to
keep the city’s property taxes
from skyrocketing out of control. During the recent election
campaign for Town Council in
Teaneck, the four OrthodoxJewish winning candidates
said they viewed Englewood
as a model to be emulated.
Many residents agree that
with its new upscale shops and
restaurants, Englewood has
become a shopping destination
to rival the ubiquitous malls.
Even Dr. Stern agreed
that, during Mr. Wildes’s tenure, Englewood has become
“more exciting.” “But lots
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 45
Page - 46
October 2006
of people find Epcot Center in Florida exciting. That
doesn’t mean you’d want to
live there,” he said.
Quashing Housing
Asked how he would
confront the issue of spiraling property taxes in Englewood, Dr. Stern spoke more
about “getting real value for
our tax dollars” than he did
about lowering them. He said
that, as mayor, he would demand “financial impact statements” for all new development projects.
Mr. Wildes said he already requires financial
impact statements. “But I
require that they be interpedently reviewed by the city’s
engineering department and
not just by the developer. Before I accept a project, it must
be a win-win-win,” he said.
Last year, Dr. Stern took
credit for quashing a building
project Mr. Wildes had championed, an episode that some
observers said is emblematic
of the differences between
the two candidates.
In an area within walking
distance of two comparatively new Orthodox synagogues
(and, coincidentally, where
Dr. Stern resides), Jonathan
Fischer, a developer who
resides in Englewood, had
sought to erect a small con-
cont. from page 44
dominium complex.
Calling the proposed
project Cobblestone Mews,
Mr. Fischer, who is also Orthodox, saw the complex as
a site which would have allowed young people, who
cannot afford Englewood’s
high-priced homes, especially in the Orthodox areas, to
gain a more modest foothold
in the community.
No Common Ground
In principle, Mr. Wildes,
who never viewed any of the
actual plans, saw the proposed
project as a positive development; Dr. Stern did not.
At one point, Mr. Wildes
called Dr. Stern and asked
him to speak to Mr. Fischer
directly, telling the retired
dentist that the developer was
really “a nice guy.” But Dr.
Stern, who claims to be open
to all new ideas, said he refused to speak to Mr. Fischer
and, instead, battled the project legally until Mr. Fischer
withdrew his plans.
Calling the project’s
failure “a shame,” Mr. Wildes bemoaned the fact that
too many young people are
closed out of Englewood because they cannot afford the
“$1 million plus you need to
buy a home here.”
Cost and Benefit
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lem, Dr. Stern
said Englewood’s
new multi-unit
building complexes,
which
Mr. Wildes has
supported, have
cost city taxpayers in terms of
necessary services to many more
people.
“With the
softening real estate market and
inadequate fiscal impact statements, I fear that Bob Stern’s campaign manager, his son Teddy
we will be lucky
Campaign Donations
to break even—in spite of
The need for affordable
Wildes’s hype about lowered
housing in Englewood is one
taxes,” said Dr. Stern.
of the issues Mr. Wildes said
Mr. Wildes dismissed the
he has tried to address, but
charge. “Stabilized taxes will
Dr. Stern and his supporters,
occur only with controlled deespecially Mr. Reddin, intivelopment which protects our
mated that Mr. Wildes was
residential corridors and creguilty of accepting campaign
ates ratables that are millions
donations from developers in
of dollars ahead of the services
exchange for promoting their
which they cost us,” he said.
projects. Dr. Stern pointed out
Understanding the Needs
that Mr. Fischer and his wife,
While Mr. Wildes underAllyson, gave Mr. Wildes
stands intimately the needs of
$8,000 towards his campaign.
Orthodox young people to live
“I guess Michael figured
within walking distance of
$8,000 was worth making a
synagogues, Dr. Stern seemed
phone call to me when Fischer
to believe there was room
was trying to build his highfor compromise so that some
density condos,” said Dr. Stern.
Orthodox Jews could locate
Mr. Wildes acknowlto parts of Englewood where
edged the Fischers’ support,
property values are lower.
but he denied it was in any
“During the High Holiway payment for favors. In
days, some of the rabbis
fact, the donation had nothcalled on their congregants
ing to do with the mayoralty
to be careful of parking too
race, he said. The Fischers’
close to the synagogue’s
donation was earmarked for
neighbors, so maybe they
a separate account for what
can walk part of the way and
Mr. Wildes anticipates will
drive the rest,” he suggested.
be a future campaign for
When told that Orthodox
Congress if the district’s curJews might drive to synagogue
rent representative, Steve
before and after the Sabbath
Rothman, steps down to run
and holidays, but not at all on
for US Senate, as he has indithe holy days themselves, Dr.
cated he might, in 2008.
Stern seemed surprised.
Mr. Wildes said, in con-
trast to former mayors of Englewood, he takes pride in recusing himself from all projects in which any interested
party may have supported
him or any of the candidates
for whom he has worked.
“Sitting attorneys have assured me that I would be within
my First Amendment rights to
vote on these projects. I think
not,” said Mr. Wildes. “I am exceedingly careful when I vote
on my planning board, and I
refuse to meet with developers
alone to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.”
He added that, as a former
federal prosecutor, he often
targeted corrupt politicians.
“I do not need lectures on
government ethics from politicians with questionable political motivations,” he said.
What Changed?
Mr. Wildes’s development plans for Englewood
did not seem to be a problem
for Mr. Johnson, until the
mayor endorsed Rev Wal-
ton for City Council. In fact,
in April 2006, Mr. Johnson
signed Mr. Wildes’s nominating petition for re-election.
“What changed in the
few weeks between April
and June? Nothing changed,
except I did not support Gordon in his City Council campaign,” said Mr. Wildes, calling Mr. Johnson and his supporters “sore winners” who
are “dividing the Democratic
Party in Englewood, and
beyond, while, at the same
time, having the temerity to
claim they are the ones who
have been wronged and are
justified in their actions.”
“Their claim is simply
that it was unfair that Gordon Johnson was opposed
in the Democratic primary
for Englewood Council,”
said Mr. Wildes, arguing that
the Democratic Party is supposed to endorse “personal
freedoms, especially freedom
of speech.”
“To me, those freedoms
Cheshvan 5767
also include the freedom
to support the candidate of
your choice in a Democratic
primary without fear of retribution in a general election.
Well, it is clear that Johnson
and his backers do not tolerate anyone disagreeing with
them,” said Mr. Wildes.
Signs for Everyone
Another
Democratic
elected official who may be
supporting Dr. Stern over
Mr. Wildes is Councilwoman Charlotte Schoen, the far
left-wing representative of
Englewood’s Second Ward,
which is heavily Orthodox.
When she ran for office in
2005, Mr. Wildes supported
her candidacy. She, however,
signed Dr. Stern’s petition to
run as an Independent.
Reached by phone, Ms.
Schoen said she signed Dr. Stern’s
petition “because everyone has
the right to run for office.”
“If anyone who is not
a supporter of Lyndon LaRouche wants to run, I will
Page - 47
sign his or her petition,” she
said, referring to the extremist political cult leader.
She refused to answer if
that meant she might not be
supporting Dr. Stern for office. Last June, she publicly
supported Mr. Johnson over
Rev Walton.
Asked about the similarities between the Englewood and Connecticut races,
Ms. Schoen said only that she
considered Mr. Lieberman to
be “a mensch.” She did not
respond when asked if she
thought he had the moral
right to run against the elected Democratic candidate.
Supporting a “Good Friend”
Other Democratic leaders in New Jersey suspected
of supporting Dr. Stern were
not much more forthcoming.
NJ Assemblywoman Valerie Huttle, a Democrat who
represents the 37th District,
which includes Englewood,
Tenafly, Teaneck, and Ber-
Page - 48
October 2006
genfield, is, according to her
Chief of Staff, a “good friend”
of Dr. Stern’s who “would like
to see him elected.”
“But she is not endorsing
anyone,” said Rocco Mazza.
Her husband, attorney
Frank Huttle, served as an
advisor to Dr. Stern in his petition challenge to run as an
Independent.
Mr. Mazza said Mr. Huttle’s involvement had nothing to do with the Assemblywoman’s position.
Ms. Huttle’s co-Assemblyman representing the district is Mr. Johnson.
Personal Opinions
Asked if Ms. Huttle, as a
Democrat, was supporting Mr.
Lamont in Connecticut, Mr.
Mazza said, “She has no interest
in the Connecticut election. She
is interested only in her constituents in the 37th District.”
Mr. Mazza said Ms. Huttle
has “opinions” about the race
in Connecticut, but, he said,
“Her opinions are personal.”
Further, he said, somewhat contradicting his own
earlier statement, “She has
no opinion about the Englewood mayoralty.”
Mr. Mazza said he did
not think it was strange for
Ms. Huttle, as a Democratic
leader, not to be supporting
the only Democratic candidate
for mayor in one of her own
constituent communities.
“Why don’t you call
Senator Kennedy’s office and
ask if he, as a Democrat, is
supporting Michael Wildes,”
said Mr. Mazza,
In fact, Mr. Kennedy
has offered Mr. Wildes his
support, saying about his fellow Democrat, “Many of us
have great expectations for
Michael Wildes, because we
need him.”
Explaining the Shift
Mr. Wildes has his own
suspicions to explain why Ms.
Huttle followed Mr. Johnson to
support Dr. Stern. According
to Mr. Wildes, as a result of efforts by her and Mr. Johnson’s
supporters on the Englewood
Council, Mr. Huttle’s law firm
recently received a lucrative
contract with Englewood’s
municipal government. Mr.
Wildes said he privately questioned the ethics involved in
the transaction.
Perhaps more importantly
for Ms. Huttle, at last year’s
District 37 Democratic convention, Mr. Wildes opposed her
candidacy for State Assembly.
“But that was an internal
party convention for Loretta
Weinberg’s vacant Assembly
seat, and I never attacked Valerie,” said Mr. Wildes, adding
that once Ms. Huttle won the
party’s nomination, he supported her “100 percent.”
Mixed Support
In Englewood, the Dem-
ocratic leaders who are supporting Mr. Wildes include
Jack Drakeford, who represents the Fourth Ward, and
Dr. Kenneth E. Rosenzweig,
an Orthodox Jew who represents the First Ward, another
area which boasts a growing
Orthodox community.
In the Orthodox community, Mr. Wildes’s reputation
is mixed. Admired for his
support of Israel and Jewish causes in general, he is
also viewed as too by some
as too progressive on domestic matters. In 2004, his
position in support of a new
public school that will cost
taxpayers millions of dollars was opposed by many of
his constituents who felt that
management would simply
siphon the funds from the
children who need them.
Few in the Orthodox community, however, deny that,
when he is needed for important
issues, Mr. Wildes has made it
his business to be there. He has
been a supporter of virtually all
Jewish institutions—in Englewood and beyond—used by his
constituents.
Buses and Yeshivas
Last year, when the
Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North
Jersey was in danger of losing its busing service between
the school in River Edge and
its Englewood students, Mr.
Wildes stepped in and solved
the problem, actually sponsoring the Englewood bus.
“He has clearly demonstrated his commitment to
Torah education and we are
profoundly grateful,” said
Rabbi Shmuel Goldstein,
principal of RYNJ.
Yeshiva Ohr HaSimcha, an
Agudah high school in Englewood, has been the recipient of
Mr. Wildes’s positive attention
since it first opened in 1997. Mr.
Wildes supported the school,
despite some hostility towards
it from some officials in Englewood’s city government.
Officials at Congregation
Ahavath Torah, where Mr.
Wildes davens, have publicly
thanked him for his help in
facilitating the synagogue’s
major building project.
Campaign Manager’s Website
While Dr. Stern himself
expressed no ill will towards
any of Englewood’s Orthodox-Jewish institutions,
some of his supporters have
not been as welcoming.
Dr. Stern’s son, Teddy,
who serves as his father’s
campaign manager, maintains a website (www.teddystern.com) that, last summer,
in the middle of Israel’s war
with Hezbollah, made clear
that he thought the Jewish
State and Hezbollah were
equally culpable.
He called the statements
“Israel has a right to defend
itself” and “Lebanon is a
hapless victim of Israeli ag-
gression” “rationalizations”
which “do not excuse violence against civilian populations, which have carried the
vast majority of casualties.”
Ignoring the kidnappings
and missile attacks which triggered the summer’s violence,
Teddy Stern wrote: “The
United States must demand
that both sides adhere to the
Geneva Conventions, which
state that civilians not be targets of military conflict.”
Removed for Political Reasons
When a reader wrote that
“the Geneva convention accords do not deal with the situation on hand in Lebanon,”
Teddy Stern responded: “Of
course, this is the same line
of reasoning that the Bush
administration uses to justify
Guantanamo Bay.”
The post, which was dated July 17, 2006, remained
on the website until August.
Some of Mr. Wildes’s supporters said it disappeared
when Dr. Stern discovered
people were questioning it.
“It was removed when
the politics demanded it,”
said a Wildes supporter, who
asked for anonymity.
Stepping Stone
While Dr. Stern said he
has no plans to run for any
higher office than Mayor of
Englewood, he has bitterly
criticized Mr. Wildes, who
has made no secret of his future ambitions. Mr. Wildes
already has a website set up
for donations for a possible
2008 run for Congress for a
seat he hopes will be vacated
by Rep Steven Rothman. Mr.
Rothman is hoping to run for
US Senate that year.
Mr. Wildes said he believes his background as an
attorney with a career in matters related to foreign relations and fighting domestic
terrorism, as well as his background in law enforcement
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 49
Page - 50
October 2006
and government makes him “uniquely
qualified” to serve in the US Congress.
Dismissing Dr. Stern’s criticism that
his website (wildesforcongress.com) offers no concrete policies, Mr. Wildes said
disseminating campaign issues was not the
purpose of the website at the present time;
fundraising was.
In general, Dr. Stern said he believed national and international issues
have no role in local politics. He said he
disapproved of the efforts by some of his
supporters to give Englewood a “foreign
policy.” Some of Dr. Stern’s supporters
were instrumental in trying to force a
resolution declaring that Englewood opposed the war in Iraq.
Prodigious Fundraiser
Over the years, Mr. Wildes has won
a reputation in Democratic circles for
loyalty as well as fundraising ability. He
has raised and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars for the campaigns of
many Democrats, including national figures, such as Hillary Clinton and Charles
Schumer, and local politicians, including
Ms. Huttle and Mr. Johnson.
This past September, despite his
own re-election campaign pressures, Mr.
Wildes held two back-to-back fundrais-
ers for Rep Harold Ford (D-TN), who is
running in a very tight race for Senate.
“If he is elected, Harold will join
Illinois’s Barack Obama to become one
of only two African-Americans currently
serving in the US Senate,” said Mr. Wildes, explaining that he took the time to
hold the fundraiser because “real progress happens only if African Americans
are included at the table.”
Support for Lieberman
One of the candidates he has supported for many years is Mr. Lieberman,
whom Mr. Wildes called “a mentor who
has blended character and middos in an
arena which has too long been woefully
shy of both.”
Like most mainstream Democrats,
Mr. Wildes said he was “saddened” by Mr.
Lieberman’s loss in the primary, but while
their friendship is still intact, Mr. Wildes
said he would not be holding any Lieberman fundraisers in this campaign cycle.
“I had hoped that he would be our
party’s nominee, but I must honor the
choice of the Connecticut Democrats,”
said Mr. Wildes.
As an Independent candidate, Dr.
Stern made clear that while he was supporting Mr. Lamont, he had no issues with
Democrats who are supporting Mr. Lieberman. He also did not find Mr. Lieberman’s decision to run as an Independent
after losing the primary, problematic.
“If Lieberman feels that Lamont is the
wrong candidate and that he—Lieberman—
is the right one, then he has the moral imperative to run,” said Dr. Stern.
S.L.R.
Received just as we went to press:
Regarding the mayoralty race in Englewood, I have to agree with Mayor Michael Wildes’s campaign team that candidate Bob Stern seems to be “a fringe”
and “revenge” candidate propped up by
left-wing Democrats.
While it’s an uphill battle to beat
Mayor Wildes, I’d like to add that what
Democrats Gordon Johnson and Valerie
Huttle are doing is the best thing for the
Englewood Republican Party in years.
I’d like to thank them both.
Baruch “Bruce’ Prince
Republican candidate for Mayor,
Englewood
Leaving Iraq Will Make the US
Stronger for All Allies,
Including Israel
By Rep Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ),
Eighth Congressional District
merica faces grave challenges at home and
abroad. We have troops stuck
in the middle of a growing
civil war in Iraq that costs
American taxpayers $8 billion
a month; a resurgent Al Qaeda
and Taliban on the offensive in
Afghanistan; Islamist terrorist
groups attacking Israel’s borders; global terrorist networks
still plotting against America
and its allies; and some of our
of them. They have deposed a
most despicable adversaries
dictator and defeated his army.
advancing their nuclear proWe all know, however, that the
grams at an alarming rate. In
plan to win the peace was fashort, we are living in periltally flawed. After three years
ous times. We need sound,
in Iraq, over $400 billion spent,
judicious strategies—not just
and the loss of more than 2,700
empty slogans—to help meet
of our troops, it is time for a
the critical threats before us.
new direction. A rapid turnover
We also need honesty
of Iraq to the Iraqi people is esfrom those in Washington.
sential. Our troops need to be
While the President and Reredeployed at the earliest pracpublicans in Congress continticable date. I believe a change
ue to justify the war in Iraq as
in who controls Washington
crucial to the war on terror, our
can make this happen.
nation’s top intelligence exNot “Cutting and Running”
perts have concluded that the
This is not “cutting and
war has actually promoted the
running.” A change in direction
expansion of terrorist activities
is essential to rebuilding our
internationally. People are now
military and to preserving our
realizing that the war in Iraq
nation’s strengths and protecting
has acted as a recruiting agent
our future. A plan to rebuild our
for extremists across the Musmilitary, retrieve our internationlim world. As Great Britain’s
al credibility, and make America
Ministry of Defense recently
stronger starts with the recognistated: “Iraq has served to radition of this truth: While we are
calize an already disillusioned
militarily engaged in Iraq, we
youth and given them the will,
are weaker—not stronger.
intent, and ideology to act.”
And a weakened AmeriOur men and women in
ca is not what the world needs
uniform were sent into war
at this juncture. With threats
without being told what they
gathering in all directions,
were going to confront, withAmerica cannot continue on
out being given the equipment
an unsustainable path in Iraq.
to protect them, and without a
It is not good for us, or any of
plan for what would happen
our allies—particularly Israel.
after the fall of Baghdad. But
Israel has shared a special
our military has still accomplished all that we have asked
A
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 51
US Must Not Abandon Israel by
“Cutting and Running” from
the Middle East
By Jose Sandoval,
Eighth Congressional District (NJ) Republican Candidate
Jewish community.
Volatile Region
I believe the Jewish people
and I share many of the same
values and principles. I am an
ardent supporter of the United
States, Israel, and the vital alliance between these two nations. I support our troops and
our efforts to foster stability
and democracy in Iraq.
We all understand too
well the volatility of the res a child growing up in
gion. I believe those who
the Dominican Repubadvocate an immediate withlic, I came to a personal undrawal or a “cut-and-run”
derstanding and respect for
strategy are being extremely
Judaism through my adopted
shortsighted.
brother, Pierre, who grew up
Those who are familiar
with me. Pierre had a unique
with the Middle East and its hisstory, shared by over 1,000
tory know that if the US were
residents of Jewish descent
to pullout before stabilizing the
who fled Nazi occupation in
country, it would take only a few
France, German, and Austria.
short months before Iraq would
Some 1,000 Jewish refulikely be partitioned by Syria
gees settled in Sosua, on the
and Iran. This would be a repeat
beach about 15 miles from
of history when Nazi Germany
Puerto Playa. Today, Sosua is
and Russia partitioned Poland
very fashionable—some call it
during the early years of the
the Acapulco of the Dominican
Second World War.
Republic—but when the Jewish
No Land for Terror
refugees sought shelter there, all
As a friend and supporter
they wanted was a safe refuge.
of Israel, I am greatly conBy welcoming and carcerned about the threat that
ing for these Jewish refugees,
a stronger Syria and a stronDominican families saved
ger Iran would represent. We
lives, prompting the estabknow these two nations are
lishment of an exceptional
supporters of Hezbollah and
relationship between the Dosponsors of terror against the
minican and Jewish peoples.
Jewish people. We know that
A few of the original Jewish
the ultimate goal of Syria’s
refugees still reside in Sousa.
Assad, Iran’s Ahmadinejad,
Over the years, I learned
and Hezbollah’s Nasrallah is
a great deal from Pierre. He
the outright destruction of the
is a man I am proud to have
State of Israel—and, after that,
grown with, and proud to
the rest of the Free World, esknow and call my brother.
pecially the United States.
Through my close relationIsrael left Lebanon and
ship with Pierre, I feel a speGaza, and the land became tercial bond of kinship with all
rorist training camps and sites
my brothers and sisters in the
A
Page - 52
October 2006
Pascrell
bond with the United States since
its inception in 1948, and over
the past half-century, support for
Israel has been of the greatest
importance to Washington. Our
nations are not only allies, but
true friends. We have combated
hostile enemies together; we
have assisted each other in times
of crisis and pain. America stands
by Israel when terrorism all too
often frequents its borders. And
when America was truly awoken
to the brutality of our enemies on
9/11, Israel was by our side.
Priority
So it goes without saying that the safety and security
of Israel has been a priority for
me as long as I’ve been in Congress. For example, just two
weeks ago, I passed legislation
on the House floor unanimously
that would assist and fund joint
international homeland security
development programs between
the US and Israel. H.R. 4942,
“The Promoting Antiterrorism
Capabilities Through International Cooperation Act,” mandates the Department of Homeland Security to create an office
specifically designed to foster
the joint development of homeland security technology by US
companies and academic institutions and similar organizations
located in Israel. The bill authorizes $25 million for international cooperative activities for each
year through 2010 that I believe
will provide for a great array of
benefits for each nation.
My record of support for
Israel extends well beyond
this vital in
On July 20 I voted to pass
H.Res. 921, a bill to support Israel
in its confrontation with Hezbollah guerrillas. The resolution specifically endorsed Israel’s right
to defend itself. I voted in favor
of this because Israel was faced
with unacceptable provocations
to which any sovereign nation
would be obligated to react. The
world community condemned
Hezbollah’s provocation and Israel has every right to respond to
protect its citizens.
Record
The Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act is another bill that I
support. While I have worked for
years to develop a peaceful coexistence between Israel and the
Palestinians, I believe this legislation is an effective and noteworthy vehicle for the Congress to
send a clear message to Hamas.
Terrorism will not be tolerated.
And we will not treat this government as legitimate as long as
their current anti-Israel policies
and rhetoric remain in place.
It is imperative that we
stop Iran’s weapons programs.
That is why I am a co-sponsor
of the Iran Freedom Support Act
which would, in part, impose
mandatory sanctions on entities
that provide goods or services
for Iran’s weapons programs.
Likewise, I voted in favor of the
Syria Accountability Act, blocking property of certain persons
and prohibiting the export of
certain goods to Syria in an effort to get them to behave as a
responsible international actor.
As a key member of the
Homeland Security Committee, I understand the austere
obligation I have to help protect
America and her allies. I do this
not based on slogans or catchphrases, but with an actual record of legislative success. Y
Cheshvan 5767
Sandoval
for missile launchings. We
must not allow Iraq to be partitioned by Syria and Iran so that
it, too, can become a future
training camp for terrorists.
Yet many US politicians, including my opponent,
Congressman Bill Pascrell,
support political leaders and
policies that may lead to this
very outcome. The political
leaders Mr. Pascrell supports
have called for the immediate
withdrawal of US troops from
Iraq, and have even criticized
Israel’s right to defend itself
against deadly rocket attacks.
In addition, many of
these individuals have spoken
out against Israel’s efforts to
construct a security fence to
reduce the threat from suicide
bombers who target civilians.
But in the US, they have
voted for a border fence as an
appropriate means to protect
our homeland security.
Vigilance
Mr. Pascrell himself voted
against the Patriot Act that gives
our officials the necessary tools
to protect our nation.
In today’s world, where
there is a disturbing trend towards increasing antisemitism
and anti-Americanism, we
must be ever vigilant. We must
remember that we did nothing to provoke the first attack
against the World Trade Center in 1993, and nothing to provoke the Embassy bombings
Page - 53
in Kenya and Tanzania, the
bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen,
and, of course, the deadly attacks against the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon on
September 11, 2001.
We are dealing with an
enemy that seeks the extermination of us as a people and a
culture. And make no mistake,
those who seek to destroy Israel also have the US in their
crosshairs. Saddam Hussein
and the government of Saudi
Arabia were paying restitution
to the families of suicide bombers who had inflicted pain and
death on the citizens of Israel.
Position for the Record
Elections always bring
with them a great deal of posturing over the major issues of
the day, and political hindsight
is not always the best. Reporters and political pundits revel
in asking hypothetical questions regarding how politicians
or candidates would have voted in he or she had known this
or that piece of information.
As a candidate for US
Congress, I would like to state
my position on the Middle East
for the record and for the benefit of the voters who must carefully choose whom they wish to
represent them in Washington.
I believe Israel is our true
friend in the Middle East, and I
strongly believe in Israel’s right
to exist and to defend its borders by any means necessary.
If elected to Congress,
I will act to make the security of our nation our first
responsibility. History has so
harshly taught us the results
of inaction.
I want to wish my dear
Jewish friends the very best
New Year, and extend my
wishes for peace and prosperity in recognition of your
faith and culture.
Y
Page - 54
J
October 2006
Dominican Republic Saved Jews During WWII,
Now the Story May Save Pope Pius XII
ose Sandoval, a native of the Dominican Republic who is the current Republican candidate for Congress in NJ’s
Eighth District, is not the only resident of
his country who remembers Jewish Holocaust refugees who found shelter there.
Now, some say, there is evidence that
those Jews may have been shepherded
to safety in the Dominican Republic by
Pope Pius XII, the wartime pontiff who
is widely condemned in the Jewish community for having done virtually nothing
to try to stop Hitler and the Nazis from
murdering 6 million Jews.
Even Pope Pius’s defenders admit he
remained publicly silent about Nazi persecution and genocide against the Jews until
late 1944, when the war was substantially
over and Allied victory was clear. His
supporters, however, insist that, had the
Pope spoken out, Hitler might well have
turned against the Vatican.
His critics recognize that while
tens of thousands of Jews were helped
and eventually saved by Catholic institutions—to say nothing of individual
Catholics—throughout Europe, the Pope
himself did next to nothing.
His defenders say that just because
there was nothing public or in writing
does not mean there were no quiet instructions.
Exhibit Opened
Last month, an exhibit opened at the
Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center and Archives at
Queensborough Community College, to
honor the role of the Dominican Republic in rescuing more than 1,000 German
Jews from Nazi persecution.
Entitled “Sousa, Haven from the
Holocaust,” the exhibit discusses how
these German Jews, brought to safety
by Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, then the dictator of the Dominican
Republic, formed a cooperative that specialized in dairy farming and meat production. The exhibit is presented in conjunction with Rabbi Isidoro Aizenberg, a
noted scholar of Jewish communities in
the Caribbean.
In addition to farming, they pursued
cultural activities, with several premier
Jewish musicians among the Sousa Jewish community.
Pope’s Appeal
But while Mr. Trujillo undeniably
opened his country’s doors to Jewish
refugees, an article in the New York
Jewish Week at the beginning of October, cites several church officials who
clearly recall instructions from the Pope
to appeal to Mr. Trujillo to grant visas to
400 desperate Jewish refugees stranded
in Lisbon, Portugal.
Portugal, which spent the war years
under the dictatorship of Antonio de
Oliveira Salazar, had declared neutrality
in 1939. Despite intense German pressure, especially after the Nazi invasion
of France, Portugal remained neutral until it clearly sided with the Allies later in
the war.
Following the 1941 Nazi invasion
of Russia, which cut off their supply of
tungsten, the Germans tried to extract
the heavy transition metal from Portugal. Tungsten’s resistance to high temperatures as well as the extreme strength
of its alloys made it a very important raw
material for the weapons industry.
Fear of a Pact with Lisbon
In October 1941, frustrated by Mr.
Salazar’s successful efforts to resist German efforts to buy Portugal’s tungsten,
the Nazis torpedoed a Portuguese merchant ship, the first neutral ship to be
sunk in World War II.
In December 1941, the Nazis sank
a second Portuguese ship. Sufficiently
cowed, Mr. Salazar, in January 1942,
signed an agreement to sell tungsten to
Germany.
This new relationship sent shockwaves of fear through the Jewish community in Lisbon, many of whom had arrived because Portugal had become a safe
haven to Jews from all over Europe. As
soon as war broke out, Jewish refugees
from Central Europe had been granted
resident status. After the Nazi invasion
of France, Portugal allowed thousands of
Jewish refugees to enter the country.
Only a Transit Point
The catch was, Portugal gave entry
visas to those Jews provided the country
was only as a transit point. Jews were expected to find another safe destination.
In the wake of Mr. Salazar’s agreement to sell tungsten to Germany, it was
feared that the Nazis would soon invade
and occupy Portugal, a calamity that
never materialized.
The 400 Jews in question had tried
unsuccessfully to gain entry to the US,
and, according to sources contacted by
the Jewish Week, the Pope hoped that
Mr. Trujillo could be convinced to help.
The Only Country
The papal decision to contact Mr.
Trujillo made sense. The Dominican Republic was the only country in the world
that agreed to accept Jewish refugees
as permanent residents in the wake of
the Evian Conference, an international
meeting held in France in 1938 to consider the issue of the growing number
of Jewish refugees fleeing Germany and
Austria.
After the conference, Mr. Trujillo
offered to grant 100,000 visas to Jewish
refugees. Although Dr. Arthur Flug, executive director of the Kupferberg Center, gives the Dominican Republic altruistic motives for welcoming the Jewish
refugees, the Jewish Week explained that
Mr. Trujillo may have been intent on repairing his tarnished image in the US,
after his army slaughtered thousands of
Haitian squatters.
According to the Jewish Week,
Cheshvan 5767
Archbishop Maurillio Silvani, the papal nuncio in Port au-Prince, Haiti, who
was also accredited to the neighboring
Dominican Republic, contacted the Dominican ambassador in Port au-Prince
and explained the Pope’s request.
According to the archbishop’s secretary, Monsignor Giovanni Ferrofino,
who spoke to the Jewish Week, the Dominican ambassador understood the
Pope’s request and replied, “Trujillo will
never say ‘no’ to the Pope, but it is well
known that the only way one can ask for
such a favor is in person.”
Another Catch
That meant Archbishop Silvani and
Page - 55
Msgr Ferrofino had to travel to the Dominican capital, Ciudad Trujillo (now
Santo Domingo), to appeal to Mr. Trujillo in person.
In phone conversations with the
Jewish Week, Msgr Ferrofino, now 94
and living in retirement in Maussaneles-Alpilles, France, explained that it
was true, Mr. Trujillo could not refuse
an appeal from the Pope and agreed to
grant the 400 visas for the stranded Jews
immediately.
There was one condition, however:
The Jews were not going to be allowed
to reside in Ciudad Trujillo, but would,
Page - 56
October 2006
Dominican Republic Refuge
instead, be sent to a remote
mountainous region along
the Haitian border and be part
of the effort to help guard the
border against desperately
poor and hungry Haitians
then pouring into the Dominican Republic.
398 Left
Five weeks later, the
400 refugees arrived in the
Dominican Republic. Msgr
Ferrofino told the Jewish
Week that all but two of them
quickly left the country and
headed by ship for Cuba and
Mexico, where, with the help
of Church officials in those
countries, they were given
assumed names.
“Many of them then
crossed the border into the
United States, the land that
originally denied their entrance. All of this happened
thanks to Pius XII,” Msgr Ferrofino told the Jewish Week.
According to Msgr Ferrofino, the two Jewish refugees who did not leave the
Dominican Republic, an “attractive blonde” ballerina and
her husband, went to Port auPrince to ask Archbishop Silvani to help them secure permission to reside in Ciudad
Trujillo, where they wanted
to open a ballet school.
Msgr Ferrofino recalled
the archbishop telling them
that the only one who could
grant such a request was Mr.
Trujillo himself, but, once
again, there would be a catch.
“Trujillo will only help beautiful women who give him
something in return,” the
archbishop told the couple.
Msgr Ferrofino told the
Jewish Week he remembered
that the woman “turned pale
and looked at the floor,” but
not long after, he said, her
ballet school, Flor D’Oro,
opened in the Dominican
capital. It was named for Mr.
Cheshvan 5767
Trujillo’s daughter.
Dominican Ballerina
In 1944, on the 100th anniversary of the Dominican
Republic’s
independence
from Haiti, the Flor D’Oro
students, who came from
some of the capital’s most
prominent families, gave a
performance which was attended by the entire diplomatic corps, including Msgr
Ferrofino himself.
Corroborating this information, Oisiki Ghitis, religious director of the tiny
Jewish community in the
Dominican Republic, told
the Jewish Week that he had
heard about Herta Brawer,
an Austrian-Jewish ballerina
who ran a ballet school in Ciudad Trujillo during and after
World War II.
According to at least
one community member, Ms.
Brawer sold the ballet school
in 1948 to a dancer from
Hungary and then moved to
Puerto Rico.
Aiming for Sainthood
In the end, because Germany never invaded Portugal, the Jews who were
there were saved. More than
100,000 Jewish refugees
were able to flee Europe into
freedom via Lisbon. While
very few even tried to stay
in Portugal, all those who did
survived the war.
According to the Jewish
Week, the story about Pope
Pius XII’s alleged efforts in
this instance may have come
to light now because some
Church officials are trying to
take steps to have him granted sainthood.
Many Jewish leaders, including those who deal with
the Vatican as well as Holocaust scholars, have indicated
that, unless a great deal of new
information were to arise, efforts to beatify Pope Pius XII
(the first step toward canonization and sainthood) would
be viewed as insensitivity.
Vatican Recalcitrance
These Jewish leaders
have charged the Vatican
with recalcitrance regarding
longstanding Jewish appeals
for impartial scholars to be
allowed full access to Pope
Pius XII’s overall record during the Holocaust.
The Vatican has promised to open its archives, but
only after all documents from
Pope Pius XII’s time in office
have been catalogued, a process expected not to be completed for years.
Michael Berenbaum, former director of the US Holocaust Museum and Research
Institute in Washington and
current president of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual
History Foundation, told the
Jewish Week that, if the story
of the 400 Jewish refugees
from Portugal can be proven,
“it would show that Pius took
an action that resulted in 400
Jews being alive who might
otherwise have been killed.”
“It turns out they were safe
in Portugal, but no one knew
that at the time,” he said.
Mr. Berenbaum said he
has long believed that the
widely held Jewish perception that, during the Holocaust, the Vatican “didn’t
mind Jews being killed and
Page - 57
the Pope, for his own reasons,
had a record of complicity
and cooperation with Hitler,”
is “too simplistic.”
“I’m not arguing that
Pius should be enshrined as a
righteous among the nations,
but I’m arguing you have to
look at a more complex picture without in any way apologizing for Pius. This story
[of the 400 Jews] would add
to the complexity,” he said.
3500 French Children
The Jewish Week was
able to confirm that, soon after granting visas to the 400
Jewish refugees in Lisbon,
Mr. Trujillo offered to transport to the Dominican Republic 3,500 Jewish children
who were trapped in southern
France.
Once again, there is some
evidence that the Church
might have played a role in
this attempted rescue.
A document discovered
by the Jewish Week, published in 1974 in Volume 8
of the 12-volume “Actes et
Documents du Saint Siege
Relatif le Deuxieme Guerre
Mondiale” (Acts and Documents of the Holy See Relative to the Second World
War), is dated Sept 19, 1942
and is addressed to Vatican
Secretary of State Luigi Cardinal Maglione from Msgr
Paolo Bertoli, the new Vati-
Page - 58
October 2006
The Israeli Embassy was
attacked in 1994 by Palestinian terrorists with a 50-pound
car bomb. Nineteen people
were injured.
According to the Sun,
another Muslim policeman,
who was removed from the
Diplomatic Protection Group
after his security clearance
was rejected, is allegedly trying to sue the London Police
Department. Amjad Farooq
allegedly had a link to an extremist Islamist group.
Dutch Muslim-Only Hospital
In Holland, where many
still seethe over the murder
of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh
at the hands of an Islamist
extremist who was angry at a
film Mr. Van Gogh had made
on the subject of domestic
abuse in the Muslim community, plans for a Muslim-only
hospital have sparked a new
heated debate.
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 59
The hospital, which is
scheduled to open in south
Rotterdam in 2008, will have
separate all-male and all-female wings, halal food, and
a roster of on-duty imams.
Male patients will be treated
by an exclusively all-male
nursing and medical staff,
and similar arrangements
will be made for women. The
slated staff of 45 physicians
and 275 nurses will not all
have to be Muslims.
As a private hospital, the
new institution, the brainchild
of a health-industry entrepreneur, Paul Sturkenboom, will
target Holland’s one million
Muslims.
Step Backwards
The planned hospital has
been roundly attacked by a variety of Dutch politicians and
commentators. A populist rightwing party, the Rotterdambased Leefbaar Rotterdam,
Dominican Republic Refuge
can charge d’affairs in Port
au-Prince, appointed after
Archbishop Silvani was made
Vatican nuncio in Chile.
In the document, Msgr
Bertoli points out that the
newspapers of Haiti and the
Dominican Republic “have
spoken at various times of
the protests of the Holy See
presented…to the French
government of Vichy with
regard to recent laws and
dispositions adopted in that
country against the Jews. In
that regard, I hasten to inform your eminence that the
President of the Dominican
Republic has offered hospitality to 3,500 Jewish children between the ages of 3
and 14 belonging to the Jewish population of unoccupied
France.”
Some Church officials
believe Mr. Trujillo’s offer
was made through efforts of
or Liveable Rotterdam Party,
described the plan for the new
hospital as “a step backwards to
the Middle Ages.”
Last month, the party
tried unsuccessfully to have
the new hospital plan banned.
The hospital was characterized as “apartheid” by
a prominent nationalist MP,
Geert Wilders.
Like Other Religions
Defending his project,
Mr. Sturkenboom said it was
no different than any other
social services institution
erected by any other religious
or ethnic group.
“If Mr. Wilders is saying
in a xenophobic way that this
will prohibit integration of
Muslim-Dutch citizens, we
just point to the fact that 20
or 30 years ago, Jewish, Roman Catholic, and Protestant
Dutch people had their own
schools, their own hospitals,
Pope Pius XII, but, as the
Jewish Week points out, there
is no hard evidence to back
this up.
Corroboration
There is corroborative
evidence, however, concerning Mr. Trujillo’s offer. According to the Jewish Week,
the New York-based Hebrew
Immigrant Aid Society, which
helped thousand of Jews escape from France between
1940 and 1942, was able to
produce a letter, dated Oct
28, 1942, from the Dominical
Republic Consul-General in
Marseilles, Marcel Borde, to
the HIAS office in that city.
In the letter, Mr. Borde confirmed that Mr. Trujillo had
recently contacted Marshall
Henri Petain, head of the
government in Vichy France,
offering to take 3,500 Jewish
children to the Dominican
Republic and pay for the cost
of their transport.
According to the Jewish
Week, the planned evacuation
of Jewish children to the Dominican Republic never took
place. On Nov 11, 1942, two
weeks after Mr. Borde sent
his letter to HIAS, German
troops occupied southern
France and quickly rounded
up thousands of children
there for deportation to the
their own trade unions, and
employers’
organizations.
That autonomy helped those
people integrate at their own
speed into Dutch society. This
compact hospital will give
Muslims time to integrate at
their own speed,” he said.
He said that 40 of Holland’s 100 hospitals are
run by Catholic or Protestant foundations. There are
no Muslim hospitals, even
though Muslim immigrants
constitute 20 percent of the
country’s population.
No Wine Allowed in Cabs
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported last month that
Muslim taxi drivers are currently refusing to take passengers if they are carrying bottles
of alcohol in their luggage.
According to the paper,
about 75 percent of the 900
cab drivers at Minneapolis-St.
death camps.
Nevertheless, the story
of the Jews who found refuge
in Sousa in the Dominican
Republic remains a beacon
of hope and compassion. The
exhibit at Queensborough
College is free to the general
public, and is scheduled to
run through Dec. 31, 2006.
The phone number is 718281-5144.
S.L.R.
Page - 60
October 2006
Muslims Are Outraged cont. from p.59
Paul International Airport are
Somalis, many of them Muslims, and, about three times
each day, customers waiting
for cabs are refused when the
driver becomes aware they
are carrying alcohol.
According to the newspaper,
observant-Muslim
drivers object only when the
alcohol is openly displayed
or if they are told about it.
Thus far, the drivers are not
searching passengers or quizzing them about what they
are carrying.
Dangerous Warning
Eva Buzek, a flight attendant originally from Poland,
said she was denied a ride when
she told the driver to be careful
with her suitcase because it had
wine in it. Other drivers in the
taxi line passed the word, she
said, and four more refused her
service. A dispatcher finally
steered her to a driver who
agreed to take her.
“It’s become a significant
customer-service issue,” said
Patrick Hogan, a spokesman
for the Metropolitan Airports
Commission.
The commission has
come up with a solution:
color-coding the lights on the
taxi roofs to indicated whether a driver will accept passengers who may be transporting alcohol. According to the
Star Tribune, the commission
is waiting to hold meetings
with the Minnesota chapter
of the Muslim American Society to decide which colors
will be acceptable.
American Values
Ali Culed, a Somali Muslim who has been driving an
airport cab for eight years,
told the Star-Tribune the Koran forbids buying, selling,
drinking, or carrying alcohol.
“I cannot force anybody to
change their belief, but not in
my cab,” he told the paper.
Ms. Buzek said the treatment she received violates
American values. “I came to
this country and I didn’t expect
anybody to adjust to my needs.
I don’t want to impose my
beliefs on anyone else. That’s
why I’m in this country, because of the freedom. What’s
going to be next? Do I have to
cover my head?” she said.
Hassan Mohamud, an
imam and vice-president of the
Muslim American Society, told
the Star-Tribune that would
not happen because, he said,
“according to Muslim law, a
Muslim driver cannot question
a person’s faith or beliefs.”
“It’s not a matter of the
person, it’s what the person is
carrying,” he said.
Allowing Avoidance
One Jewish resident
of Minneapolis, who asked
for anonymity, said he was
pleased with the proposed
color system because it would
make it easier for passengers
to avoid drivers who “might
make things uncomfortable.”
“Frankly, I’m surprised
the Muslims would allow
this,” he said.
According to Mr. Hogan,
the cab drivers themselves
will have to purchase the
proposed lights for the top of
their vehicles. A cabbie without the light who refuses to
take a passenger will be sent
to the back of line, which frequently means waiting up to
three hours before a chance
to take another fare.
Some drivers said they
would rather wait than risk
punishment in the hereafter.
Asked if drunken passengers have had trouble getting a cab at the airport, Mr.
Hogan said, no, adding that
if other religious issues arise,
they will be dealt with on a
case-by-case issue.
“We can’t promise that we
can accommodate every religious belief. Our interest is in
making sure people can get a
cab,” he told the Star-Tribune.
Bobblehead Caricatures
The issue of wine-toting
passengers has not come up in
New York, but, soon, Muslim
cabbies as well as all drivers
may have to deal with the image of a ceramic bobblehead
doll of the Prophet Mohammed, created to resemble one
of the caricatures published
by the Danish newspaper.
It is being sold online for
$22.99 by an ex-Marine who
said it is similar to the “dashboard Jesus” figurines that stick
to flat surfaces with adhesive.
“I thought, if they flipped
out over some cartoons, what
will they do with a dashboard
Mohammed?” said the creator, Timothy Ames, 28, from
his home in Hawaii.
He has already sold several hundred of the dolls online, and has paid a Chinese
manufacturer to produce 1,000
more. “I just think it’s funny,”
said Mr. Ames, who sells his
product on a Web site using
the pseudonym “Filthy.”
He said he is not particularly interested in “slamming” people because of
their religion. “Most of the
stupid people I’ve met are
stupid despite their religion,
not because of it,” he said.
Expert Fear
Two professors in the
Middle Eastern Studies Department at NYU, said purchasing the novelties is “a
really bad idea.”
“No depiction of the
Prophet, even if it is positive,
should be made ever—and
certainly not one as ridiculous
as the bobblehead Mohammed,” said Prof Zvi Ben-Dor
Benite. “I don’t think it’s
about freedom of speech. This
is the freedom to insult, which
he shouldn’t be doing.”
His colleague at NYU,
Prof Frank Peters, warned
that while Jews and Christians have “gotten used to
this kind of thing,” Muslims,
he said, have not.
“This may not be his intention, but these things have
consequences,” he said.
Others say a bobblehead
on someone else’s dashboard
may be one of those things
Muslims in America will
have to get used to if they
wish to stay in this country,
just as other Americans have
had to accept bumper stickers
they find offensive.
Parisian Article
But thus far, Muslims,
even in the West, have resisted putting up with insults
that others take for granted.
Last month in Paris, a French
philosopher and high school
teacher, who published an attack on Islam in the French
newspaper Le Figaro, was
forced to go into hiding.
Robert Redeker, who
has to arrange for his own
safe houses when police
bodyguards move him every
two days, started receiving
death threats on September
19, when the newspaper published his article in which he
called the Koran “a book of
incredible violence” and the
Prophet Mohammed a selfdescribed “merciless warlord, a looter, a butcher of
Jews, and a polygamist.”
“Hatred and violence
live in the book by which every
Muslim is educated, the Koran,” he wrote, adding that Islam “exalts violence and hate.”
In his article, which came
out while Muslims were still
protesting the Pope’s speech,
Mr. Redeker defended the
pontiff.
Cheshvan 5767
Threats with a Map
When the death threats
came, they were accompanied by a map with directions
to his home, his phone number, and photographs of Mr.
Redeker and the suburban
Toulouse high school where
he worked.
He told the Reuters news
agency he could not imagine
coming out of hiding and resuming his teaching job any
time soon. His wife has gone
into hiding with him under
the protection of the French
police and the country’s domestic intelligence agency.
“My security is secured,
but the logistics are not. I
have to find myself a place to
sleep at night or live for a day
or two,” he said.
Abandoned
Worst of all, he said, is
the feeling that he has been
abandoned. “The Education
Ministry has not deigned to
contact me to ask if I need
any help,” he said.
Page - 61
Even the support he received from the teachers unions
seemed half-hearted. The
unions said he had the right
to free speech, but one of the
unions added that it was supporting him “even though we
do not share his convictions.”
The
press-watchdog
group, Reporters without
Borders, said Mr. Redeker’s
article may have been “shocking,” but, said the group, “If
Le Figaro had chosen not
to publish this text, it would
have been a defeat for the
freedom of thought.”
Imprisoned by Terrorists
French Prime Minister
Dominique de Villepin said
the threats against Mr. Redeker were intolerable and
showed that “we live in a
dangerous world that is often
marked by intolerance.”
French Muslim Council
head Dalil Boubakeur also
denounced the threats. “No
one can take the law into his
Page - 62
E
October 2006
Ess Gezint: Biblical Food
ver wonder what was in the lentil dish that prompted Esau to relinquish his birthright to Jacob? How about the food Joseph
served his brothers when they journeyed to Egypt? Or the fare at Esther’s banquet? A new book, Cooking with the Bible: Biblical Food, Feasts, and Lore, by Anthony Chiffolo, a classics scholar who is also editorial director of Praeger Publishers, and Rev
Dr. Rayner W. Hesse, Jr., has all the facts you need on these meals and 16 others, mostly from the Hebrew Bible, but four from
the Christian Bible. While the authors treat Jewish history and tradition with great respect (all dates are listed as BCE and CE) and
there is care to exclude treif animals in the recipes, the book, published by Greenwood Press, is not kosher. The Jewish chef must
either use the usual substitutions for butter and milk in recipes which call for meat, or skip those entirely. Nevertheless, it is a fun
book whose research gleams on every page. It is filled with interesting perspectives and commentaries on the recipes, preparation
methods used in Biblical times, and the lore surrounding individual ingredients and dishes.
Y
Abigail’s Lamb for David
3 Spanish onions, chopped
1 cup walnuts, finely chopped
½ cup olive oil
3 cups pomegranate juice
2½-3 lb ground lamb
dash or two of salt
3 cups tepid tap water
2 tsp rice flour
½ cup fresh parsley
1-2 tsp sugar
3 cups fresh mint
rice
2 cloves garlic, chopped
fresh mint sprigs
Fry onions in large pan of olive oil until slightly browned.
Add lamb and cook until meat turns color. Then add water. Bring
to a boil. Lower heat and simmer 25-30 minutes, adding more water if necessary. Wash herbs, peel garlic, and chop by hand or in a
food processor. Put some liquid from the lamb mixture in a separate pan and fry the herbs and garlic for a few minutes. Strain and
add to the meat. Add the walnuts, pomegranate juice, and salt, and
bring to a slow boil. Place the rice flour in a cup of cold water and
stir until it dissolves. Add this to the meat mixture a minute or two
before cooking is complete. If the sauce is sour, add sugar. Serve
over white rice surrounded by sprigs of fresh mint. Serves 8-10.
Elisha’s Apple and Barley Cake in Gilgal
2½ cups barley flour
2 tsp baking powder
Dash salt
2 eggs
2 apples, pared and chopped
¼ cup whipping cream (dairy
or parve)
¼ cup honey
Preheat oven to 400˚. Sift together barley flour, baking
powder, and salt. Beat eggs lightly with fork, combine with
apples, cream, and honey, and add to dry ingredients. Mix well.
Pour batter into cake pan and bake for 20-25 minutes. Cut into
12 squares while still warm.
own hands,” he said.
Nevertheless, from his
hiding place, Mr. Redeker acknowledged that, for the foreseeable future, he and his wife
will be constantly on the move.
“I will be forced to remain anonymous in my own
country. The Islamists have
succeeded in punishing me
on French territory as if I
were guilty of a crime of
opinion,” he said.
Egyptian Bans
On Sun., Sept 24, Egypt
banned the edition of Le Figaro with Mr. Redeker’s article as well as an issue of the
German paper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which
also ran an article authorities
found insulting to Islam.
Under a decree issued by
Egyptian Information Minister
Anas el-Feki, those issues of
the two papers were not permitted to enter the country.
“They published articles
which disparaged Islam and
claimed that the Islamic reli-
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 63
gion was spread by the sword
and that the Prophet was the
prophet of evil,” said the state
news agency, MENA.
The German paper, dated
Sept 16, contained an article
by German historian Egon
Flaig, which questioned
whether Mohammed had
been a successful military
leader. Among the arguments
he listed was the view that Islam has a violent history.
Political Freedom
According to Princeton’s
Prof Bernard Lewis, who
specializes in Muslim history
and is one of the most widely
read scholars of the Middle
East, one of the problems is
that the Arab-Muslim world
never developed the principle
of political freedom.
According to Prof Lewis,
the issue of whether or not
freedom, as it is defined in the
West, is possible in the Islamic world is currently being debated in the US and Europe.
One point of view, he
said, holds that Muslims are
“incapable of decent, civilized
government.” Those with this
position, he said, maintain
that since the Muslim world
will always be ruled by corrupt tyrants, the goal of Western countries’ foreign policy
should be to cultivate good
relations with the tyrants.
“This point of view is
very much favored in departments of state and foreign offices, and is generally
known, rather surprisingly, as
the ‘pro-Arab’ view. It is, of
course, in no sense pro-Arab.
It shows ignorance of the
Arab past, contempt for the
Arab present, and unconcern
for the Arab future,” he said.
No Freedom, No Security
The second common
view is that although Arabs
are different from Westerners, they can be helped to
develop at least quasi-democratic institutions.
“This view is known as the
‘imperialist’ view, and has been
vigorously denounced and condemned as such,” he said.
Prof Lewis said there are
elements in Islamic society
which could well be conducive
to democracy, but the forces
working against it “are very
powerful and well entrenched.”
“One of the greatest dangers is that on the side of tyranny, they are firm and convinced, and resolute. Whereas
on our side, we are weak and
undecided and irresolute,” he
said, adding that although the
effort to bring freedom to the
Arab world will be difficult
and the outcome uncertain, it
must be tried.
“Either we bring them
freedom, or they destroy us,”
he said.
Who Are “Believers?”
Judging by statements
by Islamist leaders on the
issue of Western freedoms,
it will be an uphill struggle.
When asked about the German Deutsche Opera’s de-
Page - 64
October 2006
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 65
Index of Advertisers
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Majestic Caterers................................63
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OMO Construction............................48
Selegman Roofing...............................67
Shalom Plumbing................................67
Auto Leasing/Sales
DC Honda...........................................29
Leasco Automotive Sales & Leasing..5
Insurance
Oxford Medicare.................................45
Steve Kobrin.......................................10
Auto Repair
Eli Auto..............................................33
Kosher Groceries
Food Showcase...................................62
Glatt World.........................................44
Camps & Summer Programs
IBA IHA Sports Camp........................54
Car Service
Kismet Limo/Teaneck Taxi.................35
Caterers & Catering Halls
L’Chaim Catering...............................49
Majestic Caterers................................63
Prestige Caterers................................27
Zichron Moshe...................................25
Charities
Jewish National Fund.........................43
Umbrella Tzedaka Collection.............
Cleaners
Handle With Care..................................3
Education
Chabad Hebrew School of Teaneck....36
L. Sokoloff Nursery Sch. Op. House..40
10/29: Kushner Y. H.S. Open House..37
11/1: Rosenbaum Yeshiva Info. Tea...19
11/4: Tsfat Concert..............................46
11/6: Bruriah Open House..................41
11/12 Moshe Aaron Y.H.S. Op. Hous.42
Entertainment & Events
Weds. Dance with Dassie...................39
Thurs. nights: Wine Tasting.................14
A Jew Grows in Brooklyn...................38
Disney on Ice: Princess Wishes............11
The Milliner........................................31
11/5: Hebron Fund Dinner..................15
11/19: ZOA Dinner.............................17
Financial Services
Greenback Capital, Ken Goffstein......71
Graphic Artists
Graphic Design Lessons.....................59
Make an Impact...................................24
Home Furnishings
Starr Carpet.........................................18
Jewish Communities
Boca Raton, FL....................................12
Kosher Restaurant, Take-Out
Chopstix...................................22
Dunkin’ Donuts....................................8
Levana..........................................47
Teaneck Hot Bagels.............................53
Legal Services
Elder Law, Benjamin Eckman, Esq.....67
Elder Law, Lissner & Lissner...............20
Liquor and Wine
Queen Anne Wine & Spirits................14
Medical Services
Dentistry, Schneider & Jacobs............55
Englewood Hospital & Med. Cntr........2
Holy Name Hospital Cancer Center......7
Home Health Care, Carefinders..........67
Optometric Phys., Dr. M. Luchins......23
Psychotherapy, Chana Simmonds........67
Miscellaneous
BarterYourServices.com..........66
Ceramics By Design............................30
Clary’s Wigs.......................................13
Commentaries..26,32,52,56,58,64
Musicians
Jeff Wilks............................................6
Shelly Lang.........................................28
Symphonia................................57
Photography/Video
Charlie Aptowitzer..............................67
Hello Video.........................................60
Mendel Meyers Studios.......................72
Politics
Bob Yudin for Freeholder......................9
Real Estate.
Carol Weissmann.................................71
Ilene Horowitz, Remax.......................70
Joan and Bob Oppenheimer................71
Ramat Bet Shemesh Aleph................61
Russo Real Estate...............................71
Telecommunications
Chaim Braum........................................4
Travel & Vacations
Emunah Yeshiva Break in Israel......50
Heritage Seminars...............................16
Main Street Travel Center....................21
Tell our advertisers:
“I saw your ad in
The Jewish Voice and
Opinion”
To place your ad,
please call 201-569-2845
Page - 66
October 2006
Israel’s National Camp Activists:
Israeli Arabs Danced for Joy Last Summer When Katyushas Hit Israel,
Now They’ll Get One-Third of UJA Funds for Rebuilding?
T
he UJA’s campaign to rebuild Israel’s north, which
was badly hurt during last
summer’s war with Hezbollah, has come in for harsh criticism. It’s not that anyone begrudges Israel’s citizens who
lost so much, but critics of the
Olmert government are convinced that at least one-third
of hard-earned Jewish charity
dollars designated for “northern rehabilitation” will in fact
not be spent on Jews at all.
Equally upsetting to
many supporters of Israel is
the lack of any UJA money
for the 10,000 Jewish refugees from Gush Katif/Gaza,
who were forcibly expelled
from their homes by the Israeli government in August
2005. More than one year
later, virtually none of the
families has received full
compensation for their destroyed homes and all are still
living in temporary homes,
resembling trailers.
According to Sarah Honig,
a columnist with the Jerusalem
Post, the Olmert government
plans to earmark at least onethird of its “northern rehabilitation” outlay to appease its Arab
population. She implied that at
least part of the government’s
plan is to win political support
from what Ms. Honig described
as “Israel’s increasingly disloyal
Arab sector.”
Just Say No
Ms. Honig asked all those
who have “Israel’s good and
the future of the ever-vulnerable Jewish people at heart”
not to contribute to “large, institutionalized, establishmentaffiliated Jewish funds associated in any way with official
Israel, especially if their pitch
is rehabilitating Israel’s warscarred North.”
The groups which meet
this description most aptly are
the UJA (now UJC) and its affiliates, the Jewish Agency and the
Joint Distribution Committee.
Helen Freedman, a community activist with the nationalist camp and the former
director of Americans for a
Safe Israel, asked Jews to call
their local UJA offices to insist that money “donated by
Jews to help Jews of Israel”
be used for that purpose.
“At the very least, there
must be full disclosure, up
front, that donations to the
Emergency Campaign is going to Arabs as well as Jews. At
least then, Jews can determine
whether to continue donating
their money to UJC or to give it
more specifically to individual
Jewish causes where the money goes directly to help Jewish
Muslims Are Outraged cont. from p. 63
cision to cancel Idomeneo,
Ayyub Axel Koehler, head of
the Central Council of Muslims, one of Germany’s largest Muslim groups, gave an
ambiguous response.
“While we are absolutely in agreement with the need
for a free press, free opinion,
and free arts, we also think
there are certain limits to
those freedoms. If there are
issues that most deeply hurt
the feelings of believers, then
one should be considerate, as
it should be normal among
civilized persons,” he said.
Many observers noted
that by “believers,” he was
referring only to Muslims and
was not concerned about the
feelings of Christians, Jews, or
Hindus, whom Islamist leaders routinely savage. S.L.R.
UJA may not remember the Gush Katif refugees and the Color Orange campaign, but children in Israel with cancer—patients at Rachashei Lev’s Beit Hayeled, Israel’s largest pediatric oncology support network—do. Last month, children of Rachashei Lev were given a special week at the Jerusalem Sheraton and they and their counselors from Bnot Sherut, religious
girls that work with these children instead of doing army service, chose to wear orange, to show that we all care.
Rachashei Lev, located on the Tel Hashomer Medical Campus, is currently embarked on a campaign to raise money to buy
computers. Each laptop costs a little under $3,000, and the organization wants to buy ten.
For more info email Mr. Adler at [email protected], or
call 011-972-8-852-3805 or 866-214-6096.
needs,” said Ms. Friedman.
Breakdown
She said, like most American Jews, she, too, believed UJA
donations were going to help
Jews who spent last summer
in bomb shelters rebuild homes
and schools in the north.
But when she contacted the UJA and asked for a
breakdown of the millions of
dollars raised in the appeal’s
Emergency Campaign, she
received three pages of detailed programs, activities,
beneficiaries,
allocations,
and funds paid thus far.
The very first item was:
Activities for non-Jewish
sector in confrontation area.
The organization designated
for this concern was the Jewish Agency for Israel. The
allocation for “support to
non-Jewish children in community centers” was $3.3
million,” she said.
Centers and Day Camps
The next item, she said,
was “Community Center—
Emergency Outreach Program,” sponsored by the Joint
Distribution Committee. Approximately $3 million was
allocated to its beneficiaries,
25,299 Arab children.
The School Readiness Day
Camp Program, which is run
solely for non-Jewish children,
received almost $3 million and
the summer camp for children,
including 10,000 non-Jews, received $17,300,000.
“The list goes on and on,
but it is clear that Arabs are
benefiting substantially from
the generosity of Jews,” says
Cheshvan 5767
“Honor the Professional According to Your Need”
Place YOUR Ad Here
for your
Professional Services
Call
201-569-2845
Page - 67
Page - 68
October 2006
Asking to Stop Gay Pride Parade
How can Jerusalem allow the so-called Gay Pride Parade
on November 10, 2006? This is the anniversary of Kristallnacht
in 1938, as well as the anniversary of the 1975 vote in the UN
declaring, according to United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, that Zionism is Racism.
Doesn’t holding the “Gay Pride Parade” on that day poke
G-d in His eye?
It is so offensive. Do we have no pride as Jews. If we allow
this parade to be held, the world will hold us in great disrespect,
and they will have cause, because this means we disrespect ourselves.
I hope anyone who can, will try to stop this abomination.
G-d forbid, if it is held, it will be the reason bad things happen
to Israel.
Gail Winston
Chicago, IL
Jews Offering Alternatives to Homosexuality
Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH),
a non-profit international organization dedicated to educating the
world-wide Jewish community about the prevention, intervention,
and healing of the underlying issues causing same-sex attractions,
is offering three scholarships for Israelis who want to attend the first
Journey into Manhood (JIM) weekend in London in March 2007.
This is a joyous occasion because the JIM weekends are
terrific opportunities to jumpstart the process of growing out of
homosexuality.
JONAH relies on Torah principles and is run under Orthodox auspices, but it is open to any member of the Jewish community who is not happy with his or her same-sex attraction
(SSA) and is looking for change. JONAH is also a resource for
Jewish families with loved ones facing this problem.
The three scholarships of $500 each will be given to Israeli
men involved with JONAH to defray the cost of going to the
JIM weekend. The scholarships were generously donated anonymously by an Israeli couple who are members of JONAH’s
Family and Friends Group.
We hope this serves as an impetus to many friends and family of JONAH to donate funds so that men and women who are
unhappy feeling same-sex attractions can take advantage of the
burgeoning opportunities to learn about growing out of SSA.
In addition, the new book by JONAH’s co-director, Arthur
Goldberg, is about to be published. Called “Light in the Closet:
Torah, Homosexuality, and the Power to Change,” the book speaks
about the synergy between the process of teshuva and gender-affirming processes. There are ways in which the process of teshuva
is analogous to the process involved in reparative therapy.
Throughout the ages, the rabbis viewed teshuva as a process, not a single act. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, z”l, explains
that “Repentance is not a function of a single decisive act, but
grows and gains in size, slowly and gradually, until the penitent
undergoes a complete metamorphosis, and then, after becoming
a new person, and only then, does repentance take place.”
In much the same way, healing from SSA does not occur
with a bolt of lightening, the silver bullet if you will. Rather, it
Letters to the Editor
is through a gradual process of growth and renewal by which
one fills in his developmental gaps.
Both teshuva and gender-affirming processes are life-affirming processes. They counteract a form of death-in-life, a
psychic numbing, and, therefore, enhance the personal process
of renewal and growth.
Both processes also involve a future connection of something in the past, because only the future can transform the
trends and tendencies of the past.
The Rambam (Maimonides) set forth three key elements
by which an individual does teshuva, each of which applies
directly to the healing of SSA: regret, rejection, and resolution. Regret deals with the past, rejection with the present, and
resolution with the future. Only when all three dimensions are
securely in place will the full process of teshuva and gender-affirming processes take place.
One can regret and reject his/her SSA but only if these individuals resolve to function differently and have the ability to
internalize such resolution will their SSA be changed.
Teshuva is the Jewish process of repentance and returning
to your pure self as created by G-d.
If you or someone you know wishes to donate to a specific
activity associated with JONAH, please contact us at ejsbtb@
aol.com or [email protected] or by phone at 201-433-3444.
Elaine Silodor Berk
Arthur Goldberg
Co-Directors, JONAH
Jersey City, NJ
Dad Needs a Kidney
My dad is 60-years-old, and an only child, as am I. My dad
desperately needs a kidney.
He is my best friend, and I am totally distraught. I am all
he has.
We live in Queens, and all testing is done at Mt. Sinai.
I am reaching out to as many people as possible, and I hope
this will attract someone who wishes to be tested. The blood
type isn’t the most important thing.
I can be reached at [email protected] or at 917 691 3676.
Thank you.
Jeff Schonsky
Queens, NY
Helping Jewish Prisoners
Unfortunately, right now, there are Jewish inmates in New
Jersey prisons who have been forsaken by their families and
friends. They are in need of community support if they are to
turn their lives around. Your tax-deductible donations can provide them with food on Shabbat along with religious items.
Donations can be sent to the Young Israel of Lawrenceville, 2556 Princeton Pike, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648. “Jewish
Prisoners Fund” should be written on the envelope and in the
memo section of your check.
For more information, call 609-883-8833.
David Lev
Lawrenceville, NJ
Cheshvan 5767
Page - 69
“Thought Is the World of Freedom” (R’ Dov Ber of Mazeritch)
Western Government Failing to Provide Free Speech
The Berlin opera house, Deutsche Oper, has called off a
production of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” for fear that a scene featuring the severed head of Islam’s prophet might lead to violence.
This confirms the warnings, made by defenders of free speech
during the Danish cartoon crisis, that the failure of Western
governments to respond decisively to the death threats from offended Muslims could lead to self-censorship in the West.
This decision demonstrates the disgraceful failure of Western governments to defend our right to free speech.
In 1989, when the Iranian Mullahs issued a fatwa calling for
Muslims to murder Salman Rushdie and attack his publisher, Western
governments did nothing. Last year, when violent mobs threatened the
lives of the Danish cartoonists, Western governments did nothing. If a
government does not ensure its citizens are able to express their views
without fear of violent reprisals, free speech is dead.
Western governments must reverse their trend of appeasement
and declare their commitment to ruthlessly punish anyone who attempts to violate their citizens’ right to freedom of speech.
Dr. Yaron Brook
Executive Director, the Ayn Rand Institute
Irvine, CA
The Voice Reports, You Decide
A friend recommended your magazine to me, and now I am
read it regularly. I think The Jewish Voice is the only truthful
and right magazine I know of. Thank you very much for your
great and extremely important job.
I enjoyed the op-eds printed by Rep Steven Rothman and
his opponent, Vince Micco, in last month’s issue [“Why I Voted
against the Republican Leadership’s Iraq Resolution and Why
I Now Oppose the War in Iraq” and “Supporting the US Means
Supporting Israel and Our Unified War on Terror,” Sept 2006].
I am terrified by Mr. Rothman’s attitude towards Israel
and his willingness to withdraw our troops from Iraq at any
price. Last year I wrote to Mr. Rothman several times on issues
concerning Israel, (in particular I asked him to raise his voice
against Sharon’s unilateral “disengagement”). His answers
were more than disappointing. At the same time, Vince Micco’s
views demonstrate his strong support of Israel and determination to fight global terrorism, which is so necessary now.
Inna Kreer
Fair Lawn, NJ
Reach out and Touch Someone
Last Mother’s Day, inspired my compassionate mother, I
started a kindness experiment. I gave 100 people half of a blue
index card and I the following challenge:
Can you think of five people with whom you know you
should be more in contact? It could be a neighbor, a cousin, a
former co-worker, anyone! Please write their names on this card
and stick it in your wallet. Then, next time you find yourself in
line at the grocery store trying not to look at the magazines,
pull out this card and your cell phone and make a call. Let them
know that you’ve been thinking of them, find out what’s going
on in their lives.
Lately I’ve been phoning my “research subjects” to find
out if they’ve been using the card.
More than 60 percent are using the card weekly. More than
30 percent agree that they should be using the card.
I’ve heard some inspiring stories. Some are picking up the
phone and getting in touch with distant cousins; some are inviting people for Friday night dinner, others are talking to their
neighbors more. Several have started or joined weekly Jewish
study-groups in order to bring people together.
What about the other 10 percent? They consist of two sorts:
the introverts who just don’t like doing this sort of thing, and
the extroverts who were already maxed-out on their relationships. So to both of these, I have started to challenge them to
teach five other people about the blue card. So far, everyone has
accepted the challenge.
Can you name five people whom you know you should be
more in touch with? Can you inspire someone else to name five?
Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld
Baltimore, MD
The Jewish Voice and Opinion welcomes letters, especially if they are typed, double-spaced, and legible. We reserve the
right to edit letters for length and style.
Please send all correspondence to POB 8097, Englewood,
NJ 07631.
The phone number is (201) 569-2845. The FAX number is
(201) 569-1739.
The email address is [email protected]
Page - 70
A
Ms. Freedman.
Not One-Third of the Damage
Ms. Honig pointed out
that although Israeli Arabs
will receive one-third of the
aid, Hezbollah did not target
the Arab sector and it did not
receive the damage inflicted
on the Jews. When Katyushas
slammed into Arab towns, it
was because the notoriously
inaccurate rockets had simply
missed their Jewish targets.
Ms. Honig pointed out
that Arabs living in the Galilee, holding Israeli citizenship
and demanding all the perks
to which they are entitled
(with virtually none of the obligations), not only accepted
apologies from Hezbollah’s
chief, Hassan Nasrallah, the
Israeli-Arab citizens condemned Israel’s self-defense
efforts and lauded Hezbollah
terrorists as heroes.
Virtually all Israeli
newspapers carried reports
of Israeli Arabs standing on
October 2006
rooftops and cheering when
Katyushas exploded in nearby Jewish towns. Many leftwing Israeli reporters and
columnists admitted that Israeli Arabs crossed red lines
by identifying openly with
the enemy.
Bail-Out Scheme
Nevertheless, as Ms.
Honig pointed out, the Olmert government, which she
characterized as “cognitively
challenged,” plans to spend
one billion shekels (more
than $235 million) on Israeli
Arabs. This represents onethird of the rehabilitation
budget for the north.
“The Jewish population—the one that suffered
most and constituted the primary and deliberate target—
will also get a third. The rest
will be spent on ‘infrastructure,’” said Ms. Honig.
She called this “nothing but a disguised bail-out
scheme for chronically mis-
managed and perpetually
destitute Arab municipalities,
where nepotism and corruption are rife.”
She implied that if Mr.
Olmert could have paid them
off without having to justify
the expense, he would have.
Evading
When Englewood resident Morris Stillman asked,
about the allegations raised
by Ms. Honig and Ms. Freedman, especially the lack of
funding for the Gush Katif
refugees, Devra Karger, director of the Bergen County
UJC’s professional divisions,
said, “UJA Federation takes
action every day to improve
the quality of Jewish community life in northern NJ,
Israel, and around the world.
Howard Charish, the executive vice president of the
Bergen County UJA, elaborated, explaining that by “working
in partnership with the Israeli
government and our overseas
partners, the Jewish Agency
for Israel and the American
Joint Distribution Committee,
the Israel Emergency Campaign (IEC) has provided relief to Israelis—Jews, Arabs,
and Druze—whose lives were
shaken by unprovoked Hezbollah attacks.”
Thanking them for “confirming the allegations,” Mr.
Stillman asked again why the
Jewish victims of Gush Katif are
not being helped while non-Jewish victims of Darfur and Katrina
receive aid from the UJA.
When Ms. Karger replied, she still did not address that issue, however, she
insisted that only “three percent of all IEC monies raised
to-date have gone to nonJewish causes in the north.”
However, she added,
“From its outset, the IEC was
aimed at helping all vulnerable
Israelis under fire from Hezbollah terrorists, whether Arab,
Druze, or Jews.”
S.L.R.
Cheshvan 5767
Live Where You Can Walk to Shul
Stop paying
outrageous
closing costs!
Page - 71
Page - 72
Jewish Voice and Opinion
PO Box 8097
Englewood, NJ 07631
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Address Correction Requested
October 2006
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