A Rabbi's World: Endings and Beginnings…

The imminent arrival of the Hebrew month of Elul is invariably a wake-up call to all of us.  Aside from the obvious- that Rosh Hashanah is four weeks away- there are also, of course, subliminal messages that come with a time of penitence and sober introspection.

We are in a time of endings, and of beginnings.

One would think that there would be a kind of numbing sameness to this exercise.  After all, it comes around every year, and we know the drill.  The air begins to get just a little bit cooler, older children are leaving for college, younger ones stocking up on school supplies, and there is no way to avoid that fact that, as school gears up and seasons change, summer is coming to an end.  For most people, that realization involves more than a twinge of sadness.

But though we know that feeling all too well, its sadness is invariably mitigated by the welcome possibilities of new beginnings.  Both in a religious sense and in a practical one, it's hard not to feel that we have what we used to call in our childhood a "do-over."  No matter what was less than wonderful in the preceding year, no matter how disappointed we may be in ourselves or in others, a new year soon to begin offers the chance to do it better this time around.  That's the feeling that guards against any sense of numbing sameness.  Beginnings may, as the Midrash teaches, be difficult.  But they are also, in a sense, like newborn children- perfect and unspoiled, and rife with unknowable potential.

It's been an interesting exercise having the Democratic Party convention juxtaposed with Elul so visible just over the horizon.  Truth to tell, whether Democrat or Republican, party conventions are all about new beginnings- or at least the desire to convince everyone that what is to follow will be new and different.  There are few venues in which the word "change" (so crucial in a spiritual sense at this time of year) gets used quite as often as at a political convention. 

Especially in a year like this one, when no matter which party wins we will have new president, we are asked to believe in the possibility that things can be better than they have been.

Talk about numbing sameness… how can one not be cynical about political promises of better times to come.  And yet, the spiritual dimension within us virtually demands that we remain open to new possibilities, in others and in ourselves.

I'm trying.

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Political Insider: Pro-Israel Hawk On Obama's Congressional Team

As I reported this week, Jewish Democrats in the House and Senate are playing a key role in the Barack Obama campaign's efforts to crank up the candidate's Jewish numbers on November 4 and ease concerns about the nominee's Mideast policies.
 

And none could be as important as Rep. Shelley Berkley D-Nev.).

Why? Berkley said it herself at a sparsely attended press conference at the Denver Convention Center on Tuesday: "There isn't anybody further to the right in Congress than me when it comes to issues that affect the state of Israel," she said.

When she arrived on Capitol Hill in 1999 Berkley was regarded as a leading congressional supporter of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, but since then she has moved steadily to the right on matters relating to Israel. 

In the past few years she has often supported positions of the much-more-hardline Zionist Organization of America, including opposition to the Annapolis peace conference and to aid for the Palestinian Authority.

But Berkley said that her initial reservations about Obama were allayed after "several conversations" with the candidate.

After those talks, she said "I believe he shares my concerns. He has said many times that this relationship, between the United States and Israel, is paramount in our nation's foreign policy. I believe the Jewish community in the United States, when they become more familiar and are comforted by his positions on peace in the Middle East and this nation's continuing support for the state of Israel….will come to the same conclusion I have."

She also castigated the Bush administration -- and linked its policies to Sen. John McCain - for not working to stop the rearming of Hezbollah and Hamas.

The selection of Joe Biden as Obama's running mate just added to her enthusiasm, she said.

"I have received calls from pro-Israel activists around the country who said they were delighted with this selection, and that they will support this ticket with great enthusiasm," she said.

All the Jewish Democrats in the House and Senate are strongly pro-Israel and many are already campaigning actively for Obama in key states. But none has Berkley's credentials as a pro-Israel hawk; her strong endorsement could have an impact with Jews in states like Florida, where some still worry that the Democratic nominee is a secret Palestinian sympathizer, or at least a pro-Israel dove.

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Route 17: A Stone For Mordechai Yasgur

This week the Jewish Week expanded the previous blog on Woodstock into a fuller story  but something struck me the more I was looking over my notes on the museum. Overall, it's a terrific museum, from the display on transistor radios (the ipods of an earlier era), to the music, both on film and interactive (touch-screens that allow one to trace the evolution of any musical  genre through the decad, from folk to r & b), to the Woodstock-era culture that now seems all too fleeting.  

And yet, it occurred to me that there was not enough of a sense in the museum that Woodstock happened in Sullivan County, no real effort to depict what Sullivan County was like in 1969, and certainly no sense of how Jewish it all was.

Aside from Yasgur, several other key players were Jewish, some of the musicians and a nurse were helicoptered to the site from some of the great Jewish hotels (what was that like?), among numerous examples of interaction between the Jewish locals and the festival.

It wasn't an accident that Jackie Robinson broke into the minor leagues in Montreal and then into the major leagues in the diverse and open-hearted borough of Brooklyn - it's inconceivable that Jackie could have played in 1947 for the Atlanta Crackers or the St, Louis Browns, cities still choking on Jim Crow. And its no accident that Woodstock came off as well as it did in the open-hearted Jewish Catskills, rather than in those parts of 1969 America where Woodstock-types were very much thought of as the enemy.

The festival couldn't even survive local opposition in other parts of New York State, before finding a home on a Jewish guy's farm, with help from a Jewish hotel owner, and assistance from many summer people who came, yes, from Jackie Robinson's Brooklyn. These people were part of the story, too.

The movie "Walk On The Moon"  picked up on this, in which Diane Lane plays a seemingly straight bungalow wife up from Brooklyn, who neverthless finds herself breaking loose, every which way in the exhileration of Woodstock, and then somehow reconciling that weekend with her return to her seemingly straight Jewish life.   

If Kennedy and King are noted in the museum, the fact is that Israel's Six-Day War miracle win in 1967 was as much as part of the Jewish messianic sixties that opened hearts, that thrilled millions of young, middle-aged and older Jews to the messianic possibilities, to the dreams and hopes that echoed that August weekend on Yasgur's farm.

Max Yasgur said at the time, "If the generation gap is to be closed, we older people have to do more than we have done." That was not a common sentiment in the Nixon years.

Yasgur was very much a Jewish guy. Not long after Woodstock he took a trip to Israel where, the story goes, he met Ben-Gurion, of all people, who didn't have to be told who Yasgur was.

There used to be a stone on the site of the festival,  the only commemorative marker on the Woodstock site before the creation of the new Bethel Woods Center for the Arts.

But if you're in the neighborhood, you might want to visit another stone where Mordechai Binyamin Yasgur rests in peace, in Liberty N.Y., on the grounds of Ahavath Israel.  

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Political Insider: Joe Biden: Good for the (Democratic) Jews?

Will Sen. Joe Biden's selection as Barack Obama's running mate have much of an impact on the Jewish vote on November 4?

Well, it depends on your perspective.

If you think that the continuing resistance to Obama's candidacy among a segment of Jewish voters is based on his relative lack of experience in foreign policy, then the Biden nomination might help somewhat - although studies show that despite the quadrennial hoopla, vice presidential nominees rarely decide elections.

As chair of the Foreign Relations Committee and a veteran legislator who has made foreign policy a specialty, Biden is well known to the pro-Israel community and could be a reassuring presence to Jewish voters who fear a sharp change in U.S. Mideast policy.

AIPAC lobbyists know him well and generally get along with him; although Biden has sometimes seemed to gravitate toward the more dovish views of the Israel Policy Forum, he's never been regarded as a problem by major pro-Israel groups.

But if you think the Jewish resistance to Obama has more to do with other factors - including race - then his nomination is unlikely to have a huge impact.

But if you think Obama's Jewish problem is the result of his stature as a non-traditional Democrat, Biden's nomination could help with many Jewish voters who are the very epitome of "traditional" Dems.

Biden's nomination may bring a seasoned foreign policy hand into the campaign, but it doesn't bring much in terms of political demography; Delaware isn't exactly a swing state.  Biden is also known for shooting off his mouth, which could be a problem for the highly disciplined Obama campaign.

In a conference call with Jewish reporters two years ago meant to reinforce traditional Jewish ties to the Democrats he brought up his differences with leaders of the Israeli right on peace process issues.

"I have a great relationship with Bibi Netanyahu, he is a close personal friend, but I have great disagreement with his assessment (of) how Israel should proceed," he said.

That may put him squarely in line with a majority of Jewish voters, but it's not the kind of talk the Democrats want to hear during this year's campaign.

In that same conference call he articulated a view on why the Democrats support Israel that could play well with many Jewish voters.

That support is "not based on the Christian Coalition notion that we're going to be there for the 'rapture,' that the reason to support Israel is that there will someday be the Second Coming," he said, a dig at elements of the religious right that support Israel because of Bible prophecies and the Republicans who court them.

So the short answer to the initial question about whether the Biden nomination will help Obama with his Jewish problem is this: it depends.

We should keep things in perspective here; Obama's Jewish "problem" consists of polls showing he will get a less overwhelming proportion of Jewish votes than Democratic candidates are accustomed to, but a larger share of the vote than he will get from just about any other group of white voters.

But the Republican Jewish Coalition, ever hopeful of a bigger swing in Jewish votes, was ready for the announcement; within hours of the Obama campaign's text message to supporters revealing his choice, RJC officials were blasting Biden as soft on Iran.

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Route 17: The Cossacks Are Coming 

Call me nostalgic, but my favorite part of the Russian-Georgian war was the Cossacks.

In the end, you need your enemy. If the Dodgers disappeared from the face of the earth, Giants fans would be the sorrier. Many college football fans hate Notre Dame but everyone wants to see them play. I'd like to see the Cossacks, provided I'm not dressed like Motle Kamzoil when they come galloping by.

According to the Guardian, early in the war, "Units of armed Cossacks from across the North Caucasus region that borders Georgia were poised to join the battle…. Under Russia law, Cossacks - the descendants of runaway serfs and outlaws who in the past were employed by the Kremlin to protect the country's southern border - are allowed to carry arms and carry out policing functions in cooperation with interior ministry forces.

"At the Vladikavkaz headquarters of the Terek Cossacks today a group of men sat under portraits of fierce looking warriors with drooping moustaches watching television coverage of Georgian artillery shelling Tskhinvali…. In Volgograd the leader of the Don Cossacks, Viktor Vodolatsky called on all Cossacks under 40 years of age to volunteer to fight."

The Terek Cossacks? The Don Cossacks? Who knew they had two teams? I guess Chmielnicki was out of town, in his August dacha.

Runaway serfs and outlaws? Warriors with drooping mustaches? Can't we get some Jews to challenge these guys to a rematch?

Viktor Vodolatsky, I'd like you to meet the sons of Vladimir Yevgenyevich Jabotinsky.

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A Rabbi's World:  Olympic Musings…

As the summer Olympics in Beijing draw to a close, it seems like a good time to reflect on the goings-on of past few weeks.  The big news (other than the Herculean feats of Michael Phelps and others), as reported by the people who determine what makes the news, seems to be that people actually watched, and in record numbers.

Being on vacation afforded my wife and me the chance to watch more than we would have otherwise, and I am obliged to admit that much of it was compelling.  The gymnastics competition, male and female, showcased athletes performing at the peak of their abilities, and one could only gape in amazement at what they were able to do (no matter how old or young they are).  In swimming and track and field, previous world records seemed significant only as markers for what used to be the "gold standard" in any particular event.  Records were rewritten just about every day, sometimes by significant amounts.  To use an overused word, it was awesome.

Two random observations on the games, one amusing, one definitely not so.

To begin with the innocuous, I take you back to the women's floor exercises in the gymnastics competition.  To this layperson's eye, the floor exercise looks like a series of dance postures and moves punctuated by tumbling sequences that send the competitors flying through the air, expected to land without a twitch.  And it's all set to music, which in some way is supposed to relate to the moves on the floor.

I wonder if some of you caught this moment.  One of the competitors from the former Soviet Union- I think it was a Russian woman- performed her floor exercise to a techno-version of the theme from Exodus.  Actually, I think more than one woman used the Exodus music.  The irony was too delicious for words.   I've heard that Paul Newman is quite ill these days; I hope he was watching.  Ari Ben-Canaan would have enjoyed knowing that gymnasts from the homeland of "Let my people go!" were finding inspiration from music whose Zionist lyrics proclaimed, "Until I die, this land is mine!" 

From the innocuous to the surreal:

I think I remember reading before the Olympics that the Chinese government was prepared to issue permits to those who wished to protest during the games.  Did you see any protests?  I didn't.  On the front page of today's New York Times (8/21) there's an article about an elderly Chinese couple being sent for "re-education" for having asked for a permit. 

The Chinese succeeded in sanitizing these games, and NBC played along. 

There were features on Beijing nightlife, where to eat, where to buy the best silk, and on and on.  But I don't recall seeing anything more than the most cursory mention of the Tiananmen Square massacre, or the repressive nature of the Chinese government (for all of its capitalist tendencies). 

People commented on how, contrary to pre-Olympics concerns, the air quality in Beijing was the best it had been in ten years.  Amazing.  That's what happens when you shut down all your factories within a suitable distance from the city.  They hid the pollution, they hid the poor people who live in Beijing and eke out a living hawking merchandise from their little wagons, they hid the protestors…. And the result, of course, is that Beijing seemed like a summer wonderland.

I'm told they hid the anti-Semitic propaganda in Berlin in 1936, too- not to mention the Jews.

China is not Nazi Germany, but it's certainly not Disneyland either.  Amidst our celebration of our athletes and their noble competitors, we owe the victims of Tiananmen Square to at least remember them.

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Political insider:  McCain Campaign Takes Up ZOA Refrain on Kurtzer

The John McCain campaign is starting to sound a lot like the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) in its efforts to win over Jewish voters.

This week the campaign reprised a favorite ZOA them when it went after former diplomat Dan Kurtzer,  a Barack Obama foreign policy adviser who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005.

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, the vanquished GOP contender who is now a McCain surrogate, and senior foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann held a special news teleconference to attack Kurtzer for visiting Syria last month and urging its leader, Bashar Assad, to move forward with peace talks with Israel.

According to Giuliani, last month's trip represented a "playing-out of (Obama's) negotiating with dictators and people like that without preconditions."

This week the Politico Web site reported that when JTA's Ron Kampeas asked an uncomfortable question about Scheunemann's recently reported lobbying on behalf of Georgia and the Giuliani law firm's ties to the Saudi government, he was apparently cut off in mid-sentence. 

The Kurtzer-in-Syria story was first revealed by the New York Sun,  which reported that Kurtzer was there as part of the American Bar Association's "Rule of Law Initiative," not as an Obama representative, and that the group of legal experts offered some tough talk to the Syrians about the need for an independent judiciary, something pretty much unknown under Assad's dictatorial regime.

But never mind; in a campaign in which every word and every event is studied under a microscope to determine its value in the fight for Jewish votes, Kurtzer's visit was deemed worthy of its own conference call by top McCain surrogates.

Kurtzer was a favorite target of ZOA's Mort Klein, who waged several campaigns against the former diplomat for what the group called his "long, documented record of history to and severe pressure upon Israel."

A ZOA press release in April reached all the way back to Kurtzer's 1976 PhD dissertation at Columbia University as proof of his unfriendly views.

But Kurtzer, with close personal and family ties to the Jewish state and heavy involvement in Jewish life here, has always enjoyed good relations with major Jewish groups and leaders. 

And when he was ambassador to Israel, he was carrying out the policies of a Republican administration whose foreign policy the McCain campaign is generally promising to continue.

So the question: will Giuliani's criticism fly with your average Jewish voters - who, polls show, support most of the things Kurtzer advocated when he was working for the State Department, including a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

J Street, the new pro-peace process lobby and political action committee, doesn't think so.

"It's not clear what John McCain gains by attacking both stated Israeli government policy and a leading American Jewish diplomat," said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the group's executive director.  "Is it really John McCain's policy to oppose Israel's efforts to end its conflicts with its neighbors diplomatically?"

But maybe the McCain campaign isn't worried about rank and file Jewish voters; instead, they are just hoping to move an extra few percentage points of "Israel focused" voters into the Republican column in November - a small change that could have a big impact in a handful of key states, if the vote is close enough.

ZOA president Mort Klein was happy with the McCain campaign move.

"I am pleased John McCain recognizes the hostility toward Israel and pressure toward Israel that Kurtzer has exhibited over the years," he said.

Klein added that he has had several "private meetings" with McCain during the campaign - and that he provided the candidate with ZOA press releases about Obama's advisers.

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Political Insider: Bad News for Jewish Dems: Carter Speaking At Convention

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Route 17: When Oz Landed On Kansas

"Well I dreamed I saw
A child of God,
He was walking along the road…"

 - Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock"

Last weekend, Aug. 15-18, was the 39th anniversary of Woodstock, at Yasgur's Farm on Hurd Road, right off Route 17B. I was in Camp Hili that summer, less than a mile away, across White Lake. One could hear Janis Joplin through the clouds in the night.
There was a kid who had a bar mitzvah scheduled that Shabbos in camp; some of his guests were stuck on Route 17 with Woodstock Nation, some of whom parked their cars on the road and walked.

They didn't realize that 17 was always like that on a Friday afternoon.

The day or so before, hitching back to camp from Monticello, I was given a ride in a van that had an 8-track in the glove compartment playing the first Crosby, Stills & Nash album. It was the first time I heard CSN and the first time I saw an 8-track.

In what was still the Castkills' Jewish heyday, the festival and its pilgrims spilled over into the nearby roads and towns. On Shabbos afternoon, bungalow Jews went for walks along the road. At night, after Shabbos, I, all of 17-years, went out to look for this Oz that landed on my Kansas. It was a night when you met people and were carried on a wave into someone's smoky, dimly lit  home, crowded with young strangers who didn't think they were strangers.

For decades there was only a stone slab, with a metal plaque marking the spot on Hurd Road. The stone named all the musicians, a surprising number of whom were obscure, some one-hit wonders, who performed on that 1969 weekend.

One August anniversary in the 1980s, in the last years of Grossinger's, that hotel tried to have a Woodstock weekend but not too many guests cared. They had invited media coverage and I was one of maybe three guys who covered what little there was to cover.

On my way home, I drove to White Lake. The old summer camp was in ruins, papers and color war placards strewn about in the old abandoned dining room. I drove to Hurd Road, to the shady area where the stone marked the spot. That Sunday morning it was as overgrown and empty as some of the abandoned hotel lawns down the road.

Then, when almost no one was around, John Sebastian drove by, alone in his car, from his home in the Hudson valley, wanting to see the old hillside.

If you're lucky, after paradise gives way to a parking lot, the parking lot gives way to a museum , and this one is worth a several-hour excursion the next time you're in the mountains.

Last week, the Allman Brothers and Bob Weir played at the Bethel Woods Center, the music facility built over Yasgur's place. The Jonas Brothers played there last week, too, which only goes to show you something or other.

Joe Cocker came back earlier this summer. And like a grown-up going on Facebook, The New York Philharmonic played there earlier this summer, too, saluting history by playing a surreal symphonic version of Jimi Hendrix' already surreal "Star Spangled Banner," giving proof through the night that our flag was still there.

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Political Insider: New Orleans: "Jewish Pioneering Country"

New Orleans is being rebuilt - with some notable and controversial gaps - and the devastated city's Jewish population is on the road to recovery, as well.

On Friday one of that community's leaders was in Washington, making the case that New Orleans Jews have come a long way - but still need outside help to finish the job.

Michael Weil, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, said his community is in the "third phase of recovery: the long term building of a community. This is a marathon, not a sprint. We are not going to get back to where we were before - that's not going to happen- - but perhaps we'll get to a better place."

Weil was in Washington to coordinate with disaster recovery agencies like FEMA and the Jewish groups that have provided targeted help to New Orleans' Jewish community, starting with the United Jewish Communities (UJC).

UJC, Weil said, played a critical role in a "financial stabilization plan that allowed our 19 synagogues and other institutions to continue functioning."

But New Orleans continues to need help from the outside because "What we want to do is beyond the ability of any individual community to do on its own," he said.

In his Washington meetings, Weil said he also focused on the issue of preparedness in case the devastated city faces another disaster like Katrina, and on sharing his community's hard-won expertise with other communities.

He was also on Capitol Hill, hoping to advance earmarked appropriations to help with the rebuilding process.

Before Katrina, New Orleans was home to about 9500 Jews; that dropped to 6000 at the start of 2005 but is up to about 7500 - in part because of a "newcomers incentive plan" that has lured "about 650 Jews, mostly young, many from the Northeast," he said. "And many are moved by the idea of Tikkun Olam; they feel, as we do, that today New Orleans is Jewish pioneering country."

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Political Insider:  Pelosi: Lieberman Could be Toast

Sen. Joe Lieberman is riding high as a top surrogate for his pal John McCain, but he could face rough going in the Senate next year if the Democrats pick up as many seats on November 4 as most experts predict.

This week House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) issued the strongest-yet warning to the former Democrat - not that Lieberman seems very interested in the opinions of his old colleagues.

Pelosi was infuriated by recent Lieberman comments that seemed to impugn the patriotism of presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

Lieberman, in a Pennsylvania interview, said this year's election is really a choice between "one candidate, John McCain, who has always put his country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate that has not."

That angered many Democrats, who are already inclined to rage at their former partisan colleague, and Pelosi, speaking on a California radio program, said publicly what many Democrats have been saying privately: if the Dems build up their majority in the Senate, Lieberman could be toast as far as his chairmanship of the critical Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee is concerned.

Lieberman has been an independent since he lost a reelection primary in 2006, but he caucuses with the Democrats, who treat him with extreme caution because they don't want to jeopardize their razor-thin partisan edge in the Senate.

"The Democrats in the Senate are in a tough spot," Pelosi said. "They have 51 votes. Joe Lieberman organizes with them.  In 85 days or something, they will have five more Democrats. They won't need him to make the majority. And it will be interesting to see what the leadership in the Senate, the Democratic leadership in the Senate, does at that point in terms of Joe Lieberman's chairmanship of his committee."

Pelosi, of course, doesn't make the rules for the Senate Democratic caucus, but she is an influential party leader who probably accurately reflects widespread Party sentiment about Lieberman.

Kean University political scientist Gilbert Kahn said Lieberman, if he gets the heave-ho from the Dems, could always remain an independent and caucus with the Republicans - or go all the way and join the GOP, although his chairmanship would be history.

And the whole scenario depends on big gains for the Democrats on Election Day; if the partisan balance remains anywhere close to the current 51-49 margin, Lieberman may still get treated with kid gloves no matter how angry he makes his former Democratic colleagues.

Meanwhile, speculation continues that Lieberman is still on John McCain's short list for vice president - part of a wave of vice presidential speculation meant mostly to provide fodder for pundits who are finding the political pickings slim in the dog days of August.

But McCain and Lieberman have a strong personal affinity, which could be a factor in the presumptive nominee's choice, and picking Lieberman would be a bold move that could bolster McCain's reputation as someone who isn't constrained by party lines.

But McCain's recent trial balloon suggesting he might pick someone who supports abortion rights - like Lieberman - prompted a furious reaction from many on the Christian right, a bloc he needs to turn out in large numbers if he wants to beat Obama.

That, political handicappers say, lengthens the odds against a Lieberman nomination - although in this topsy-turvy election year, anything is possible.

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A Rabbi's World:  When in Newport…

With all of our kids in camp or working elsewhere for a good part of the summer, my wife and I stole away for a precious few days alone, and, like God said about Tuesday a long time ago, it was very good.  Though our (four) children are increasingly independent and only our youngest will actually be living at home this year, your children are always your children, and coupled with the pressures of our jobs, it was wonderfully rejuvenating to be away with each other and no one else.

One of the places we visited was Newport, Rhode Island- a place we had long wanted to visit but simply had never gotten to.  Large portions of the coastline of Newport are not commercially developed.  I spent many of my childhood summers on the over-developed Jersey shore, and though I loved it, this was something else entirely, and much more special.  It was so refreshing to be able to simply bike along the coastline and stop where one wanted to read, listen to music, or just contemplate the natural beauty.  Newport is magnificent.

But being in Newport, of course, also provided us with the opportunity to spend Shabbat morning at the Touro Synagogue, one of America's oldest, dating back to colonial times.  It was to the leadership of Touro that George Washington wrote his famous letter declaring that America would, to bigotry, give no sanction.  If only for that reason, it seemed to be almost an imperative to daven there.  Our weekend coincided with the imminent onset of Tisha B'Av, so there was not a huge crowd, but that in no way colored the experience of being there, at least for me.

Earlier in my time off, I had indulged in watching the entire HBO mini-series on John Adams, and I loved every minute of it.  Rarely do we allow ourselves to consider what remarkable people the founding fathers of this country were, and what enormous courage (some would and did call it other) they displayed in staging a revolution for independence from all-powerful England.  Those were truly difficult and perilous times, and they discovered in themselves enormous reservoirs of wisdom and perseverance. 

Sitting in the Touro Synagogue, one could close one's eyes and imagine being back in the late 1700's, wondering as a Jew whether the promise of America and its freedoms would extend to the fledgling Jewish community as well.  The building looks and feels almost exactly as it did then, and it doesn't really require all that much imagination to think those thoughts, even all these years later.  Washington's iconic reassurances to the Jewish community of colonial Newport still resonate with us today.  The manifestations of hatred and bigotry ore more often than not more subtle than they were then, but the fact that America has provided such a welcoming home to us should never be forgotten.

It was so good to be away!

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Political Insider: Just In: McCain Winning the Kippot Wars

It being August, political journalists have to work extra hard to provide you with your daily dose of speculation about this year's presidential race and the all-consuming question of how the Jewish vote is shaping up.

Will Jews defy conservative columnists and stick with the Democrats? Will they embarrass the political scientists so often quoted in these pages and shift in large numbers to the Republicans and this year's GOP champion, Sen. John McCain?

Fortunately, there's some new data just in that may clarify matters: Sen. McCain, it seems, is winning the kippot wars.

Yes indeed, once again that subset of Jews who wear kippot and like to use them to flaunt their political preferences are flocking to a company that offers headgear with both Obama and McCain emblems.

The winner so far? Shmuly Tennenhaus, the Seattle businessman who cooked up this scheme, said his "McKippah" model is selling better than the "Obamica" version.

But not by much; among folks eager to wear political advertising on their heads, McCain is beating Obama 52-48 percent.

This may not be as good news for McCain as it seems, if you buy the notion that the vast majority of kippah buyers are Orthodox, a segment that was seen as his political base in the Jewish community.  Recent polls have shown that Obama has considerable strength among Orthodox voters, and now we have the absolute truth of the kippah count to prove it.

This guy's kippah blog is pretty amusing.  In one item, he attacks the continuing rumors accusing Obama of being a secret Muslim because of his middle name.

"So what about his name?" Shmuly writes. "Whoopi Goldberg isn't Jewish."

Check out his products at this site  and his blog here.

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Route 17: Hobo's Lullaby

There's nothing like August in Iowa.

If all the fussing over kosher cows in Postville, Iowa, has you in the mood for milchig, let's you and I drive the road just east of Des Moines to see the famous Butter Cow at the wonderful Iowa State Fair, going on now.

Every self-respecting trumbenick knows that August in Iowa also means the annual Hobo's Convention, on a road just outside Britt, and we hear it was quite a convention this past week. (At the Hobo's Convention, do they have a "plenary" and "breakout sessions"?)

If you think Route 17 doesn't run through Iowa, think again. There are Jews everywhere, even on the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Here's a hobo glossary advising bindle stiffs that  "goy" means: "a hobo who can work the Jewish agencies. Plural, goyim." Also "Rabbi: frequent moniker of a Jewish hobo." And, of course, "Trumbenick: A Jewish hobo."

Not all hobos stay hobos. One ended up giving $500,000 to the Jewish National Fund.

If this has you in the mood for riding the rails, hobos suggest a ride on these .

This brings me to a very big problem with John McCain. At a time when both the political and economic costs of importing energy from the Middle East are bordering on disaster, McCain has been as big an impediment as anyone in Washington to the revival of the American railroad. Train service has been rising considerably,
but infrastructure is hurting and Amtrak is lagging in buying new passenger cars. Insensitive cuts in train service, even to major cities, have hit bone.

For example, there's now only one train from New York to Cleveland and it arrives at the ungodly hour of 3:27 a.m., and that's the only train from Cleveland to Chicago.

In too many cities, trains don't leave, arrive, or come often enough to make trains a viable alternative to other forms of transportation, even if the public wanted. Too many Republicans, such as McCain, take the Marie Antoinette position that the public can drive or fly, that the lack of riders on the 3:27 means the public doesn't want to ride Amtrak, when the public is only answering an unfair question.

More American money is going to reconstruct Baghdad than to reconstruct American trains. McCain, when he was chairman of the transportation committee, killed billions of dollars that could have gone for train service, demanding that Amtrak be more self-sufficient and charging that Amtrak is a symbol of government waste. Imagine all the government waste in the last decade and imagine thinking Amtrak. That was McCain's kind of foresight earlier this decade, and few have been more shortsighted.

Today, with oil prices and airline chaos, there may be no greater wisdom than a decent national rail service, and no energy option so easily available. 

A recent Times editorial was right, the national rails deserve a fighting chance.

To leave you on a lovely Iowa summer night, gentle reader, here's Emmylou Harris singing "Hobo's Lullaby," , Arlo Guthrie singing the same  and Johnny Cash on the "City of New Orleans."

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Political Insider: Hikind, Huckabee Headed To The Holy Land

With speculation building about former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee  running alongside John McCain, the former presidential contender is bound for Israel courtesy of Ateret Cohanim, a group that wants to increase Jewish presence in Jerusalem.

Huckabee was the keynote speaker at the June dinner of Ateret Cohanim, run by Shani Hikind, wife of Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind. Dov Hikind is accompanying Huckabee on the trip, along with Ateret Cohanim chairman Dr. Joseph D. Frager.

According to a Hikind press release Huckabee's two-day whirlwind tour will include a stop in rocket-plagued Sderot, which has become de rigeur for visiting pols. They'll also tour the Jewish quarter of the Old City, where Ateret Cohanim purchases formerly Jewish property from Arabs and others, and meet with Likud prime minister contender Binyamin Netanyahu.

Hikind, a Democrat who is supporting Republican McCain for president, said Huckabee's commitment to Israel is "legendary," citing the evangelical pastor's nine previous trips to the Holy Land.

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Route 17:  The Games Of Tisha B'Av 

 This past Saturday night, Tisha B'Av, Eicha was read at the Beijing Chabad, with Israeli President Shimon Peres and other Olympics visitors in shul. Surely, they broke their fast at Dini's, the only kosher Chinese restaurant in China. They deliver throughout Beijing, even throughout China, but don't think they leave their menus in Forbidden City doorways.

NBC will probably miss this item on the Saudi Arabian ban against their women participating in the Olympics. (Check out the uniforms of their women's soccer team).

And here's a pair of items on an Iranian swimmer dropping out of the Olympics because he refused to swim in the same pool as an Israeli swimmer.  The swimmer later changed his story, saying he was sick, sick of Israel most likely.

This is more like the 1936 Hitler Olympics than most want to admit. Follow this link to a pdf that opens into a chart of the numerous Chinese forced labor camps within a shout of the games.

Yes, last Saturday night and Sunday was Tisha B'Av, the saddest day of the Jewish year, a time to mourn our victory over fascist Japan. According to Marla Feldman of the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism, it was very bad that we defeated Hitler's ally by nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki instead of… what? Having a dialogue? What's particularly perverse about this piece is that at a time when Iran is threatening to do a Hiroshima on Israel, Israel is not mentioned in this article whatsoever. Strange. Iran is mentioned, but only linked to North Korea, nothing about Iran  being a Hitler wannabe.

Of course, there was no hint in her article that the Holocaust lasted as long as it did because the United States had to fight simultaneous wars in Europe and the Pacific. No sense from her that American boys were dying in Nazi-level Japanese prisoner of war camps that were only liberated, and all the faster, because we took out Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instead of letting the war drag on for months at the cost of tens of thousands of American soldiers and POWs, Reform boys among them.

What did Reform Jews serving in the Pacific think of nuking Japan? Of course, Reform Jewish soldiers, back then, thought "social action" meant beating the bad guys (Japan), not that we, the Americans, were the bad guys.

Did you ever notice how for so many progressive Jews our Jewish holy days are never about Judaism but how the Jews and Americans are the bad guys? Tisha B'Av is really about how bad we were to Japan; Chanukah is really how bad we are about intermarriage; Pesach is really about how bad Israel is to the Palestinians; Succos is about how we don't take care of the homeless, even though we do; and Shavuous, well, no one really cares about Shavuous.

I'll help my progressive friends out. Let's see, how mean we were to Japan is already taken. How about tying Shavuous to the evils of the Louisiana Purchase or maybe the Pullman strike of 1894? Something, anything, it doesn't have to make sense, so long as Shavuous is not actually about Shavuous.

You'll see, by next year the custom of eating dairy on Shavuous will be turned a command to eat dairy as a way to show how progressives are so ethical and so angry at Agriprocessors and kosher meat and so much better than the Orthodox. Protesting kosher meat, of course, is the cause de jour of so many Jews who don't keep kosher in the first place, and so many rabbis whose congregants don't keep kosher, either. Some of these people are sincere, I know, and there's reason to investigate Agriprocessors. But Heksher Tzedek (the neo-PETA attack on Kosher meat) is also a hypocrite's delight. They say we need illegal aliens because they'll do work Americans won't do, but we're supposed to be angry at Agriprocessors for hiring them to do that work that American unionized workers won't do. We say we love illegal aliens but we don't want Agriporcessors to hire them. We say we love how industrious the illegals are but then we say it is bad that are given more than a 40-hour work week. Plenty of Julius and Ethel Ethicals will stomp their feet about how unethical kashrut and Orthodox Jews are, and then go out and get a non-kosher turkey sandwich or a burger about whose slaughter and slaughterhouse they know nothing and care less. 

There are, in fact, ways to bring the wisdom and beauty of Jewish holy days to reflect on modern times. The most brilliant example is Clal President Rabbi Irwin Kula's usage of the Eicha trop to chant the transcripts of the final telephone calls from the World Trade Center on 9/11. Why that works is, first of all, he is not mourning contributors to the Imperialist Japanese war machine, he is mourning total innocents, Jews and non-Jews together; and second because he does not imply that we can't understand Tisha B'Av without first understanding Hiroshima or 9/11. He is saying the opposite, we help the world and ourselves better understand the exquisite pain and love of those final calls from the highest floors by first understanding Tisha B'Av, and the holy blues of Eicha. (Here's a link for more on Clal).

If the mourners of Hiroshima get Tisha B'Av wrong, Rabbi Avi Weiss and Glenn Richter get it right, as they do every year on Tisha B'Av, with a prayer vigil "for Israel and Jews in Danger," at the Isaiah Peace Wall, across the street from the UN. They've been doing it for 31 years; back when Georgians were still Russians, back when yeshiva kids were on the sidewalks all through the year -- all through the '60s, '70s and '80s -- protesting on behalf of Jews behind the Iron Curtain.

Howard Jonas, of the IDT Corporation, said at the vigil: "In the past, we protested for Soviet Jews.  It seemed the Kremlin would never fall, but it did and the Jews came out.  Today, the situation is even worse.  Oil money is flowing to our enemies; Iran is trying to wipe us out.  But right and God are on our side.  It's right to protest and to pray."

"We're in the eye of a storm," said Rabbi Weiss. "To the north of Israel is Hezbollah, to the south Hamas… [To the east] Iran, with missile technology supplied by China, threatens genocide against Israel."

No one ate meat at this rally. Must have been some kind of protest.

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Route 17: First Draft Of A Love Story

Let's take a trip to Munkatch in March, 1933, five minutes to midnight .

First stop: The wedding of the Rabinowitz boy to Frime Chaye Rivke Shapira - daughter of the Munkatch rebbe, Eleazer Shapira. The bride was to become the mom of the present Munkatcher and Dinover Rebbes.

Newspapers say 20,000 well-wishers gathered in the crowded streets for wedding. Horses pulled carriages. Dozens ride bicycles. Who are they? Then, the Munkatcher Rebbe makes a speech asking Jews in America to keep Shabbos. Perhaps the rebbe, who himself will soon die, sees what the rest of the Jews in this video can not; that those at this wedding who won't be killed within the decade will likely renew their life in these blessed United States. The rebbe is speaking to the survivors and the unborn. What is there for the rebbe, father of the bride, to say, other than to hope the survivors remember Shabbos, to remember what Shabbos meant in Munkatch, once upon a yesterday.

In fact, the children of these Munkatcher chasidim, 75 years after this video, are indeed here in America. They drive up Route 17, exit on Route 42, and summer in an old Catskills hotel now named Camp Chaim V'Shulem Munkatch. 
 

We then go cross-town, a choir of little children is singing Hatikvah; coming across other, very differernt little children in the courtyard of a chasidic cheder; and from there along the streets, meeting an outdoor book peddler and weavers.

The visit ends with an extraordinary scene of more than a hundred men and women dancing together, exhilarated, in spirited circles.

The person I enjoyed most in the video was not in the video at all - the cameraman. Who was he? He must have appreciated all the Jews of Munkatch, from the chasidim to the Zionists to the street vendors. He must have felt comfortable enough with each of these people and scenes, sensing that everyone and every moment,  from wedding party to weavers, was worth preserving, if only on film.

That holy man with a camera, in his nine minutes of film, reminded me of something I've always loved about Jewish journalism; that we chronicle not just the leaders but the kaleidescope of Jewish lives. We shouldn't have to wait, we shouldn't need the haunting hindsight of this video, to sense the beauty of our neighborhoods, of each other. What I love about that cameraman is what I love about The Jewish Week: We're not just the first draft of history but the first draft of a love story, no matter how it ends.

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A Rabbi's World: Hekhsher Tzedek, Early Childhood Education and a Few Other Things




About two weeks ago, shortly after I posted a blog on the importance of Jewish Early Childhood Education (well received by most of the Jewish early childhood educators whom I know), someone posted a comment on the blog- anonymously. 


The comment actually conflated a few issues that I had written about over the past weeks, including my strong support for Hekhsher Tzedek, the Conservative Movement’s ethical/ritual kashrut initiative that has gained wide attention post-Postville.  It connected the chronically low salaries (and benefits) for Jewish educators in private institutions like synagogues and day schools with the movement’s current focus on ethical treatment of workers as it relates to the production of kosher foods.  It also criticized the disparity between salaries paid to teachers, and those to clergy.


For the purposes of this blog I will leave that last comment aside, because I don’t think it’s germane to the more compelling point at hand.  But I would like to comment on the connection between Hekhsher Tzedek’s focus on ethical treatment of workers, and our own employees with the Jewish community.


From a macro perspective, one could and should bring the concerns of Hekhsher Tzedek to bear on an eclectic variety of business concerns.  It is certainly true that Nike’s exploitation of child labor in foreign sweatshops comes to mind, along with numerous other egregious examples of corporate greed and corner cutting.  And it is certainly true that we need to be looking in our own communal mirrors even as we focus a critical gaze outwards.


I think, though, that what tripped the sensitivity wires in Postville was that the responsible organization was owned and run by religious Jews who clearly resented the implication of a connection between the laws of kashrut themselves and so-called “politically correct sensitivities” about treatment of workers.  Also, the laws of kashrut themselves are designed to be a vehicle to bring holiness even to eating, which when all is said and done is one of the more primal drives that we are endowed with as human beings.   The abuse of illegal immigrants for the sake of producing kosher meat at the lowest possible prices is such an offensive concept to so many of us- regardless of movement label- who take kashrut seriously, and try to encourage others to do so as well.  There is no over-estimating the Hilul Hashem involved in what happened in Postville.  It was bad for the cause of kashrut and bad for Judaism, and demanded a strong communal response- not a blind defense.


At its worst, the chronically low wages paid in too many Jewish educational institutions does not rise to the level of what happened in Postville, unhappy though the situation is.  Teachers do have vacations, they are offered the opportunity to buy into existing health care options… Yes, they work hard, for not enough money.  But they are not “abused.”


That having been said, there is one other aspect of this whole issue that is relevant both to the situation in Postville and, all too often, to Jewish institutions as well.  From where I sit, the constant and unrelenting pressure to pay the very least amount possible for Hebrew School and Day School tuitions, and, for that matter, synagogue dues, also contributes to the problem.


I am hardly unaware that we are living in difficult and painful economic times, and no one wants to pay more than he/she has to for anything.  But when parents threaten to pull their children out of schools if they raise their tuitions, even modestly, and when they essentially force a school to charge far less in tuition than what it costs the school to run well, they are essentially complicit in the underpayment of staff and teachers.  Of course it would be better for a school to provide health care for all of its faculty, but even factoring in fund-raising (an area in which the Jewish community is a little over-active), there is simply not enough money to always do what one would want to do- not for malice of lack of caring, but simply for economic stability.  My children have attended certain day schools that charged much, much more than our local day school did.  But I could hardly fault the school for wanting to pay its faculty a living wage, or have a real art and music program instead of a token of one.   Higher tuitions bring better conditions for faculty and students.  We need to understand our role in this, and not to reflexively always act as if a tuition increase is an act of war.


And in synagogues, it seems that every member wants dynamic and charismatic clergy who will attract new members and satisfy the eclectic needs of older ones.  But they, too, are supporting families, and dues play such a large part in the budget of most synagogues.  You can’t pa the best clergy and teachers on the lowest dues.  You just can’t.


Similarly. I also feel that if the cost of having kosher meat that is not produced on the backs of illegal immigrants is paying more, well, then, we should pay more.  End of discussion.  I’m not talking about the kind of price gouging that one too often sees around Passover, but rather a realistic price that reflects our obligation to workers, as well as consumers.  That’s what Hekhsher Tzedek is about.  Not “muscling in” on the kashrut industry, as some have ridiculously suggested, but simply remembering that achieving the goal of easy availability of kosher meat at the expense of fundamental human decency is hardly what kashrut is about, in my humble opinion…

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Route 17: Nothing 'Rare' About Holocaust Torahs

I've been subscribing to a news alert for the word "Holocaust" (amazing how much news there is about something that ended 63 years ago) and a variation of one headline keeps coming up: "Jewish temple in New Bern receives rare Torah scroll restored after Holocaust." (That from South Florida's Sun Journal, July 18, 2008).

About a year ago, I started keeping a file. A year ago someone e-mailed a story idea: "Breaking News. Tell the edtors. "A 250-year-old Torah brought to Israel." The Torah scroll, according to the e-mail, was "hidden during World War II," and was found in Krakow, 1998, by a Jewish tourist who brought it to the United States, and now was bringing it to Israel, as that tourist was now making aliyah.

And from The New York Times: "From Auschwitz, a Torah as Strong as Its Spirit" (April 30, 2008). The story begins, "The back story of how a Torah got from the fetid barracks of Auschwitz to the ark of the Central Synagogue at Lexington Avenue and 55th Street is one the pastor of the Lutheran church down the street sums up as simply miraculous. It is the story of a sexton in the synagogue in the Polish city of Oswiecim who buried most of the sacred scroll before the Germans stormed in and later renamed the city Auschwitz."

This past April, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who thankfully escaped from the Holocaust on the Kindertransport, paid to have a Torah restored, a Torah hidden in Germany by a Roman Catholic housekeeper at great risk. Returned to the family that owned it after the war, the Torah was used by the remnants of a congregation in Haigerloch until it folded, when it was then given to the Hebrew Tabernacle congregation in Washington Heights. In need of restoration to be kosher, this was done in the name of Manfred Westheimer, the late husband of Dr. Ruth, whose name is inscribed on the Torah.   

Each one of these stories is more beautiful than the next. One can't help being moved when imagining where each of these Torahs has been, the little kids who reached up to kiss it on Shabbos mornings lost to history, the people who danced with them on Simchas Torah, and the shuls they once called home.

Just one thing. A Holocaust-era Torah is hardly "rare." There are more Holocaust-era Torahs that survived the war than there are Conservative (700) and Reform (900) synagogues in North America.

There are 1,564 Torah scrolls in the repository of London's Westminster Synagogue alone. In 1964, those scrolls were purchased by a London Philanthropist from the Prague museum that was holding Torah scrolls confiscated by the Nazis (intended for a perverse Nazi museum on the Jews, after the Final Solution was finalized). More than 1,400 of those scrolls from that London congregation are loan to various synagogues, most in the United States.

On top of that, there have been numerous scrolls found by private individuals, such as the one found in Krakow and the one retrieved from Oswiecim, and the one restored by Dr. Ruth. On top of that, there are more than 400 other Holocaust-era Torah scrolls found in Ukraine and elsewhere in Eastern Europe that are now being restored in the Baltimore area. According to the Washington Post, more than 2,400 Torah scrolls survived the war.

Charlottesville, Virginia's Beth Israel Congregation has a page on their web site explaining how they got theirs.

At this point, is there any reader that has not seen a Holocaust-era Torah scroll on display in some synagogue's glass case?

Most Orthodox congregations haven't joined this phenomenon. Some reasons might be:  The London repository with the largest collection is Reform, and Orthodox shuls would be out of the loop that made these Torahs available; most Orthodox synagogue buildings are urban, smaller than Reform and Conservative buildings, and simply don't have the room. These shuls are less inclined to display any ritual items behind glass, in general.

An Orthodox Jew might also reason that if a Torah is useable it should be kept in the ark and not rolled open and kept behind glass; and if the scroll is not useable, perhaps it should be buried or retired to a more serious museum setting rather than kept in the casualness of synagogue hallways. If worn-out Torahs and siddurs are to be buried, than this may not be proper burial. It may be more akin to the "Bodies" exhibit, where dead people (how'd they die?) are put on display, their muscular and skeletal selves available for educational gawking.

It is a remarkable story, though, that thousands of Torah scrolls survived the flames of war. May they always have a home.

But the one thing these Torahs are not is "rare."

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Behind the Headlines: Covering Obama

Rob Goldblum, managing editor

The Jewish Week has heard from some readers unhappy about what they see as an imbalance in  our coverage of this year's presidential campaigns.  Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has been on the front page a lot in recent months; Sen. John McCain, his GOP rival, has not.

It's a fair criticism because at least in terms of the number of stories, there has been an imbalance.

But that is the result not of a pro-Obama bias by editors or reporters, but the way the campaigns have spun out in recent months and in particular the campaigns for Jewish votes - the special interest of Jewish Week readers.

Sen. Obama's campaign, surprisingly media savvy despite their champion's relative inexperience, has kept their candidate in the spotlight throughout the summer months, when the usual election-year media frenzy slows down.

Obama has made some real news of interest to our community, including his surprise announcement that he will support a variation of the Bush administration's faith based initiative, his clumsy remarks and subsequent "clarification" about an "undivided" Jerusalem and his recent trip to Israel.

The Obama campaign has a big and efficient Jewish outreach team; the McCain campaign's effort, as the Jewish Week noted in a story this week, has yet to gel, which means the GOP contender is not generating the kind of focused news of his rival.

John McCain is a known quantity to most Jewish voters, which is why he is doing better in the polls than recent Republican candidates. He isn't working hard to introduce himself to a political segment that already knows who he is and what he stands for.  Obama is slick but elusive.  His followers believe his campaign is full of promise, but to reporters it's also full of intriguing question marks.

The Jewish Week is not alone.  There has been an active discussion throughout the mainstream media of the difficulty of not seeming to take sides in the campaign when one candidate seems to be producing much more news than the other.

We can assure our readers of this: Jewish Week editors and reporters are aware of these concerns and will strive to avoid any hint of bias in our news coverage. But we will also continue to call the stories as we see them. If that produces more stories about one candidate than the other, well, that's the news biz.

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