We used to have a tradition — come in from the weekend and watch NUMB3RS on Sunday night (taped from Friday). Having a young scientist in the family very like the character played by David Krumholtz, we enjoyed the math and physics banter. It reminded us of home. But we especially enjoyed seeing a loving Jewish family talk about ideas — there are very few Jewish families on television (I can’t think of any other at the moment), and very few families that talk about anything but trivia.
All three actors who portrayed the family are Jewish — Krumholtz, Rob Morrow, and Judd Hirsch. Their Jewishness was never evaded but just a part of their lives. And the older brother, played by Morrow, was delving deeper into Judaism.
It was disappointing to see the characters marry outside of their faith, but maybe their new wives will embrace it as well as them.
At any rate, we’re sorry to see it go — unless, like Sherlock Holmes after the Reichenbach Falls, the fans protest so hard that it will be revived.
RKB
Previous Post: After the storm
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Jewish National Fund offers suggestions for Passover, with items available through its Web site.
The “Moriah Haggadah,” illustrated by Israeli artist Avner Moriah, tells the Passover story with traditional songs and colorful images. Water Cards for Passover or other occasions benefits JNF’s water resource projects in Israel. Osem Products for Passover supports Israel and JNF at the same time: For each purchase of Osem’s five pound matzoh the company will make a donation to JNF to plant a tree in Israel.
JNF has partnered with Tzora Vineyards and importer Israeli Wine Direct. Tzora will donate $1 from every bottle of 2006 Tzora Neve Ilan and 2006 Tzora Shoresh sold in the U.S. for JNF projects that help the people of Sderot. Through Passover, ground shipping is included when you order six bottles or more of Tzora Shoresh.
To order, visit www.jnf.org.
The Jewish Center of Teaneck offers pre-Passover Shabbat meals on the weekend prior to the holiday. There will be a dinner on March 26 at 8:15 p.m. and a lunch on March 27 at 12:45 p.m., at the shul.
It costs $18 per person per meal for adult members and $12 for children under 12, with a $70 family maximum. Non-members pay $21 per person and $15 for children, per meal, with a family cap of $100.
Reservations and payment are due Tuesday, March 23. For information, call (201) 833-0515 or www.jcot.org.
The Paramus Networking Group, for those in career transition and/or looking to expand networking opportunities, meets at the Jewish Community Center of Paramus on Wednesday, March 24, at 6:30 p.m. Dale Kramer of Lee Hecht Harrison, an outplacement firm, will discuss “How to Network Successfully.” The event is free and all are welcome. For information, call Joe Herrmann, executive director, at (201) 262-7691.
NEW YORK – The last time the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance organized a conference at Columbia University, in 2007, Israeli activist Tova Hartman electrified a crowd of several hundred with her call to “stop kvetching” and start acting until the plight of “chained women,” or agunot, was resolved.
“Let this be the last JOFA conference where we need to ask if there’s a halachic heter [permissive legal ruling] for agunot,” Hartman said of women seeking divorces from husbands refusing them a religious writ of divorce, or get.
The audience roared its approval.
Three years later, Hartman has her wish. Agunot activists are no longer asking if methods consistent with Jewish law exist to help such women; they know that they do.
But the anger and passion that once characterized JOFA’s work on the issue was noticeably absent at the organization’s conference Sunday, and not because the agunah problem is close to resolution. It’s not.
A reference to agunot during the conference’s opening plenary drew only polite applause.
Rather it was the appearance of Rabba Sara Hurwitz that brought the faithful to their feet — twice.
“I stand here, I’m filled with emotion,” Hurwitz said during the conference’s opening plenary. “The support I feel in this room is palpable.”
Hurwitz is, and may well remain, the world’s only rabba, a feminized version of the title “rabbi” that she was given by her mentor, Rabbi Avi Weiss. Weiss’ announcement of the title in January set off a firestorm of criticism that resulted in his public pledge this month not to ordain any more rabbas.
While some Orthodox feminists were disappointed by the move, seeing it as a step back from the eventual ordination of Orthodox female rabbis, Hurwitz still enjoys something akin to rock star status at JOFA. She represents, for now, the upper limit of what women can achieve in Orthodox communal leadership.
Hurwitz herself urged her audience not to despair.
“If it’s these words that will prevent women from greater acceptance in the community, rather than rejecting or losing faith in our rabbis, we must not give up,” she said. “Perhaps now is the time to create and shape language that is more in tune with the political reality.”
The issue of agunot has hardly faded from the JOFA agenda. It was the subject of several panel discussions, and the screening of parts of a documentary on the subject drew an overflow crowd. But the shift in focus was unmistakable, resulting at least in part from the fact that despite 40 years of activism and much progress, the agunah problem remains as intractable as ever.
“I think there is a sense that if you can’t move something, and you’ve tried, people just back off,” said Robin Bodner, JOFA’s executive director. Blu Greenberg, JOFA’s founding president and the inspiration for a generation of Orthodox feminists, noted during a session on the history of agunah advocacy that the organization’s president vowed years ago that the issue would be resolved on her watch.
“Here we are, six and a half years later, and we’re just as far from resolution of the problem,” Greenberg said.
Women’s leadership, on the other hand, has come a long way.
Along with Hurwitz, a handful of women are serving in rabbinic-type positions at other Orthodox congregations. Yeshiva University has a program dedicated to training and placing women in such positions. And Hurwitz herself is the dean of Yeshivat Maharat, which offers training and placement services to women comparable to what male rabbinical students receive.
JTA
 | From left, Jewish War Veterans Department Cmdr. Bernard Epworth presents a plaque to Jeanette Friedman and Philip Sieradski at last Wednesday’s Teaneck board of education meeting. With them is former Department Commander Carl Singer. The Sieradsksis were honored for 30 years of bringing Holocaust education to the Bergen County community and for donating a complete Holocaust and Genocide Studies library in honor of their parents to Teaneck High School. Dave Bicofsky, Teaneck High School |
Jeanette Friedman and Philip Sieradski were honored by the Teaneck school board and the Department of New Jersey War Veterans last Wednesday at a board of education meeting at Teaneck High School. The New Milford couple were thanked for donating more than 250 books and DVDs, as well as artwork by Otto David Sherman, to the Teaneck High School Holocaust and Genocide Studies Center. The president of the School Board, Henry Pruitt, presented each of them with a Teaneck Apple pin.
The Friedman-Sieradski Holocaust and Genocide Studies Library, created in honor of their parents, Peska and Wolvie Friedman and Daniel and Regina Sieradski, all Holocaust survivors, came from their personal collection. Department Cmdr. Bernard Epworth of Cherry Hill and Past Department Cmdr. Carl Singer of Passaic were on hand to present the Sieradskis with a plaque for community service as well.
Friedman founded the first Second Generation group in the state in 1979 and served on the first Holocaust Education Commission in the nation, founded by then- Gov. Tom Kean. Sieradski, her husband, is commander of the local Jewish War Veterans post, and is also a past department commander. The two worked with Stephen Tencer and Pnina Kaplan to bring Holocaust education and commemoration to Bergen County and other counties in the state.
The Sieradskis are consultants to the largest umbrella organization of Holocaust survivors in the country, The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, and have published and edited numerous Holocaust survivor memoirs, as well as other books, at their publishing company, The Wordsmithy.
In her remarks to the board, Friedman recalled the swastikas painted on Cong. Bnai Yeshurun 30 years ago as spurring her into action. Friedman said that her work with Ed Reynolds, one of the co-authors of the first Holocaust curriculum in the state and a teacher at Teaneck High, resulted, decades later, in the publication of her book “Why Should I Care?” Written with David Gold, it aims to teach students values and lessons learned from the Holocaust from a new perspective, one linked to the Internet.
“It is a journey that began at Teaneck High School 31 years ago,” she said, “and one that comes full circle this evening.”
WASHINGTON – Last summer, when the relationship between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations was getting off to what appeared to be a rocky start, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren was at pains — twice — to deny that he had been “summoned” to the State Department for a dressing down.
One such “meeting” was actually a friendly phone call, he said, and the other was a routine getting-to-know-you meeting. The distinction was key, he told journalists: When the State Department actually “summons” an envoy, “that’s serious.”
Welcome to the serious zone: Oren’s spokesman, Jonathan Peled, confirmed to JTA that the ambassador indeed had been “summoned” for a meeting last Friday with James Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state. The summons came as the controversy engendered by Israel’s announcement of new construction in eastern Jerusalem during last week’s visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden showed no sign of abating.
“It wasn’t a meeting,” Oren told the Washington Jewish Week in an interview at a fund-raiser for a Washington-area school on Sunday night. “It was a summoning. I was told it was the first time that any ambassador had been summoned at that level.”
Oren said he is “working hard to avert an escalation. We’re working very hard to get back to what we need to do to make peace and stop Iran from making the bomb. We have apologized publicly and privately profusely.”
Israeli media reported Monday that in a conference call Saturday night with other Israeli diplomats, Oren — a New Jersey-born historian who has gone out of his way to talk up the U.S.-Israel relationship — said that ties were at a 35-year nadir. The previous low presumably was the Ford administration’s threat to “reassess” the relationship with Israel because of perceived Israeli reluctance to make the necessary concessions to achieve peace with Egypt.
The controversy erupted last week with what both sides agreed was a humiliation for the U.S. vice president, considered to be Netanyahu’s best friend in the Obama administration. Biden had come to allay Israeli concerns that Obama’s outreach to Muslims would come at Israel’s expense; just as he was getting ready to meet with Palestinian officials as part of the administration’s push to restart peace talks, Israel announced plans to build 1,600 housing units in Ramat Shlomo, part of disputed eastern Jerusalem.
Biden, furious, condemned the announcement — several times — but went ahead with a speech that affirmed the unshakeable U.S.-Israel bond. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for the timing and said he would probe how the announcement was made without his knowledge.
“There was a regrettable incident, that was done in all innocence and was hurtful, and which certainly should not have occurred,” Netanyahu said in his statement. “We appointed a team of directors-general to examine the chain of events and to ensure procedures that will prevent such occurrences in the future.”
Israeli officials and leaders of pro-Israel organizations are asking the Obama administration to dial down the tension, in tones ranging from pleading to berating.
“The Obama administration’s recent statements regarding the U.S. relationship with Israel are a matter of serious concern,” the American Israel Public Affairs Committee said in a statement March 14, a rare direct broadside from an organization that generally operates behind the scenes. “AIPAC calls on the administration to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish state.”
The statement came just a week before the start of AIPAC’s annual policy conference, widely seen as the most important pro-Israel event in Washington.
Like an array of other Jewish groups, AIPAC wants the matter kept quiet: “We strongly urge the administration to work closely and privately with our partner Israel, in a manner befitting strategic allies, to address any issues between the two governments.”
That echoed a plea the morning of March 14 from Netanyahu, to his cabinet as much as to the Obama administration.
“I suggest that we not get carried away — and that we calm down,” he said. “We know how to deal with these situations — with equanimity, responsibly and seriously.”
But Obama administration officials, who accepted Netanyahu’s explanation that he had been blindsided by the announcement of new housing units for Jews in eastern Jerusalem, nonetheless were not ready to let the matter go.
In addition to the March 12 summons of Oren, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley described a conversation the same day between Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in exceptionally blunt terms. Clinton objected to the announcement “not just in terms of timing, but also in its substance,” Crowley said.
The Netanyahu-Clinton phone call reportedly lasted 45 minutes — and by most accounts sounded less like the “conversation” Oren says he had with Steinberg and more like a lecture.
Haaretz reported that Clinton, who is scheduled to speak at the AIPAC conference next week, wants three demands met beyond Netanyahu’s offer to check into how the announcement was made. In order to defuse the U.S.-Israel tensions, Clinton wants Israel to reverse the decision to add housing in eastern Jerusalem, make a substantive gesture to the Palestinians, such as a prisoner release, and agree to peace talks that encompass not only borders but final-status issues such as refugees and Jerusalem.
On March 15, Netanyahu told a Likud Party meeting that construction in Jerusalem would not stop. However, his defense minister and Labor Party leader Ehud Barak said more needed to be done to assuage the Americans. Barak hinted at a Labor Party meeting that failure to do so could lead his party to withdraw from the government. “Peace talks are a first priority for Israel and for the entire region,” Haaretz quoted Barak as saying. “The political process is in the interest of the state and it is a subject in which the Labor party believes. It is one of the things that anchors us in the government and drives us to work within it.”
In the past, the pro-Israel community has been able to rally against demands like Clinton’s. The Ford administration backed down from its threat of “reassessment” in 1975 after AIPAC garnered more than 70 signatures from the Senate signaling that Congress would override any presidential attempt to cut back funds. That was the lobby’s first signal victory, accruing to it the “don’t mess with us” reputation it has maintained.
Now, however, the president can count on a Democratic Congress less likely to break ranks with him in a Washington that has become much more partisan. Notably, Republicans — including Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), the minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives — have sided with Israel in the matter, but as of March 15, the only Democrat to speak out for Israel has been Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.), perhaps the most-pro-Israel stalwart in her caucus. Other more powerful pro-Israel reliables — like Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee — have been silent.
It’s unclear, however, what impact they would have if they did speak out. Unlike President Ford in 1975 or President George H.W. Bush in 1991, Obama is not threatening any cut in assistance to Israel, rendering Congress’ “purse strings” powers superfluous. By holding back on such threats, the Obama administration can ignore Congress and continue to reproach Israel.
In fact, it is Obama’s stated commitment to “tachlis” — increased assistance to Israel in the realm of military cooperation, such as missile defense, and ramped up pressure on Iran to make its nuclear intentions transparent — that has made the latest flap particularly upsetting to members of the president’s circle who are close to Israel and have been pushing Obama on these issues.
In a posting on the Daily Beast Website, Martin Indyk, a Clinton confidante and former ambassador to Jerusalem who maintains an informal advisory role to the administration, recalled that the last time Netanyahu led Israel in the late 1990s, Indyk’s boss, Madeleine Albright, then the secretary of state, was similarly embarrassed during a visit. She called Indyk, then the ambassador to Israel, and shouted: “You tell Bibi that he needs to stop worrying about his right wing and start worrying about the United States.”
It’s time to heed that advice, Indyk said. “There is one way to repair the damage to U.S.-Israel relations and to his own standing with the Israeli public,” he wrote of Netanyahu. “He could immediately declare that in order to boost the chances for negotiations, he is calling a halt to all provocative acts in Jerusalem — including announcements of new building activity in east Jerusalem, housing demolitions, and evictions. He should also establish a mechanism in the Prime Minister’s Office to ensure that his decision is implemented.”
The State Department sounded an Albright-sounding note on March 12, when Crowley stated that Clinton wanted to make clear to Netanyahu that “the United States considers the announcement a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship — and counter to the spirit of the vice president’s trip; and to reinforce that this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process, and in America’s interests.”
“The secretary said she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States’ strong commitment to Israel’s security,” Crowley said. “And she made clear that the Israeli government needed to demonstrate not just through words but through specific actions that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process.”
There are signs of a push-back strategy among Israel and its Washington supporters: Frame Palestinian provocations as more damaging than the announcement of building in Jerusalem.
Headlines in Israel on March 15 focused on calls by the Palestinian leadership to protest the rededication of the Hurva, an ancient Old City synagogue destroyed by Jordanian forces. P.A. officials reportedly have said that the building threatens the integrity of the Al Aksa mosque, although the synagogue is nowhere near the compound.
“If the Obama administration is pressing Israel these days over an untimely, but at bottom bureaucratic, step toward construction in Jerusalem, they must press the Palestinians harder over inciting their people with an inflammatory, but false, threat to their mosque on the Temple Mount,” the Orthodox Union said on its Website. “This is a present call to violence and danger.”
Berkley listed Palestinian violations in her statement: “Where, I ask, was the administration’s outrage over the arrest and monthlong incarceration by Hamas of a British journalist who was investigating arms smuggling into Gaza? Where was the outrage when the Palestinian Authority this week named a town square after a woman who helped carry out a massive terror attack against Israel? It has been the P.A. who has refused to participate in talks for over a year, not the government of Israel. Yet once again, no concern was lodged by the administration.”
The Obama administration routinely condemns Hamas terrorism and has chided the Palestinian Authority for dragging its feet on talks; the State Department’s most recent human rights roundup cited Palestinian incitement as an ongoing problem. However, Obama officials have not condemned the naming of the square after Dalal Mughrabi, a woman who died leading a 1978 terrorist attack that killed 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children. The Palestinian Authority postponed the official dedication until after Biden left to avoid embarrassing him, though less formal ceremonies reportedly did take place.
Meanwhile, the Israeli cabinet appeared to get Netanyahu’s message about the need to avoid future embarrassments of U.S. officials (and, for that matter, of the prime minister himself); the poorly timed announcement of the Ramat Shlomo building was believed to be part of a “more right-wing than thou” contest of wills between two ministers of the religious Shas Party, Interior Minister Eli Yishai and Housing Minister Ariel Attias. For his part, Attias was cowed, pleading on Israel Radio on March 15 to “look forward” and asking “experienced and wise people” in the United States and Israel not to let matters further deteriorate.
JTA
In response to the Obama administration’s stepped-up criticism of Israeli building plans in Jerusalem, Jewish groups are slamming the White House for failing to speak out more against Palestinian incitement.
Particularly galling, several Jewish organizational leaders said, is that the administration has ratcheted up its criticism of Israel while failing to utter a word about the decision of the Palestinian Authority to go through with plans to name a public square in Ramallah after Dalal Mughrabi, a terrorist who led a 1978 bus hijacking in which 37 Israelis, including 12 children, were killed.
In the middle of last week, pro-Israel organizations, including the watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch, pointed out that the official naming ceremony — timed to coincide with the anniversary of the terrorist attack — had been set to take place March 11, during U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories. It was quickly announced that the ceremony would be canceled, but a scaled-down version of the event did end up taking place that day, with the youth division of Fatah, the faction of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, playing a lead role.
The White House and left-wing Jewish groups say they are as concerned about Palestinian actions that undermine the peace process, especially the issue of anti-Israel incitement, as they are about Israeli settlement policies. But several centrist and right-wing pro-Israel groups have pointed out that U.S. criticism in recent days has been focused exclusively on Israel.
“This monstrous spectacle” — the ceremony for Mughrabi — “took place while Vice President Biden was visiting the region,” said the executive director of the American Jewish Committee, David Harris, in a statement echoing the sentiments of several Jewish organizations, including the Zionist Organization of America and the Orthodox Union. “Unfortunately, we have not heard a single word of condemnation from the U.S. administration.
“While the administration has focused its ire on Israel for clearly misguided steps taken by the Ministry of the Interior, and later apologized for by Prime Minister Netanyahu, the glorification of this terrorist sends a clear signal that Fatah, conventionally regarded as a moderate party, has no serious commitment to securing a peaceful resolution of the conflict.”
J Street, which supports the Obama administration’s recent criticisms of Israel, also issued a statement condemning the decision to memorialize Mughrabi.
In addition to the flurry of statements from Jewish groups, the Israeli government also is promising to launch an official effort to monitor Palestinian incitement. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly briefed the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee about his plans, promising regular reports on the issue.
“We will set parameters by which to measure the level of incitement,” Netanyahu told the committee, according to Haaretz. “People must know exactly what is happening on this issue because for a peace agreement, education toward peace and acceptance of Israel are needed.”
The issue has taken on added urgency in recent days, and not just because of the unrelenting U.S. criticism of Israeli building plans in Jerusalem.
On March 16, Palestinians rioted in Jerusalem as part of a “day of rage” declared by Hamas, in part to protest the rededication the night before of the ancient Hurva Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. But the Israeli decision to rededicate the synagogue also was seized on by PA officials with ties to Fatah, who attempted to portray it as part of a plot against Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount.
Khatem Abd el-Kader, the Fatah official responsible for Jerusalem, encouraged Palestinians to “converge on al Aksa to save it” from “Israeli attempts to destroy the mosque and replace it with the [Jewish] temple.” He called the synagogue rededication a “provocation,” cautioning that Israel is “playing with fire.”
The unfinished Hurva Synagogue, whose name means ruins, was destroyed in an Arab riot in 1721. It was rebuilt in the 1860s, but destroyed again after Jordan took control of the area in the 1948 war.
“At this very moment, 3,000 Israeli security officials are protecting Jerusalem because extremist Arabs are using the re-dedication of the Hurva Synagogue as an excuse to incite violence,” Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, president of The Israel Project, said in a statement. “Not once did we hear Biden ‘condemn’ the fact that Palestinians were planning — during his trip there — to honor a terrorist by dedicating a town square in her name.”
On March 15, U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley did use part of his daily media briefing to criticize Palestinian leaders over their comments regarding the Hurva Synagogue.
“We’re deeply disturbed by statements made by several Palestinian officials mischaracterizing the event in question, which can only serve to heighten the tensions that we see. And we call upon Palestinian officials to put an end to such incitement,” Crowley said, without prompting.
In answer to a subsequent question, he said the concerns had been conveyed to Palestinian officials but declined to offer more details.
The briefing appeared to validate at least one administration lament — that its efforts to focus attention on perceived Palestinian misdeeds are often ignored by the media. Reporters appeared to have trouble comprehending that the State Department’s concerns related to the Palestinian reactions, not the Israeli decision to rededicate the synagogue.
When it finally became clear that this is what Crowley was saying, reporters went back to asking about U.S. upset with Israel, but only after one accused Crowley of trying to head off criticism of the Obama administration by balancing out things with a complaint about the Palestinians.
Crowley brushed off questions about whether Israeli or Palestinian actions were most problematic.
“We’re not trying to achieve any kind of comparability here,” he said. “Anytime we have concerns about actions being taken on either side, we will not hesitate to say so.”
JTA
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Question: I’m gluten intolerant, but I know it’s a mitzvah to eat matzoh on Passover. Are there any gluten-free matzot for people who can’t digest gluten?
-Linda
Answer: Gluten is the common name for proteins found in all forms of wheat, rye, barley, and triticale. These days lots of people are discovering that their bodies have trouble digesting gluten, or that they have Celiac Disease, which means that any glutinous food they eat causes damage to their small intestine.
In many ways, Passover is a wonderful week for those who observe gluten-free diets. Many foods that normally contain wheat are made with recipes that leave out the flour, thus making them gluten free. There are kosher-for-Passover bakeries that function without flour completely, and many people with Celiac Disease have been known to stock up on Passover pastries to freeze and eat during the rest of the year.
However, on Passover, specifically at the seders, there is a mitzvah to eat matzoh, and matzoh is made of flour and water, which means it is chock-full of gluten. So what’s a gluten-intolerant person to do?
Enter the gluten-free oat matzot! Oats are one of the five grains that can be used to make matzoh, but they are generally not glutinous. (I say that they’re generally not glutinous because oats often are contaminated with tiny bits of gluten, and so some people with Celiac Disease refrain from eating oats just as a precaution.)
As far as I know, only one company is producing oat matzot, and it’s based in Manchester, England. The matzot, in addition to being kosher-for-Passover and gluten free, are also shmura (“guarded” against contamination with leaven), and quite pricey (think upwards of $25 a box, available at many kosher stores). But one box of matzoh can easily last a person who doesn’t like matzoh (i.e., anyone with two wits about her) for the entire holiday, so many consider it a worthwhile investment.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that my sources claim oat matzoh is just as tasteless and cardboardy as regular matzoh. On the upside, though, oats are good for lowering your cholesterol, and how many people can say they were lowering their cholesterol over Passover?
For more information about Judaism and Jewish life, visit www.MyJewishLearning.com.
Few scholars have been able to communicate with equal efficacy in both the beit midrash and the pulpit. Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm has long excelled at both.
A “rabbi’s rabbi,” he enjoys renown both as a talmudic luminary and a masterful darshan. When I received semicha from him 25 years ago — and in subsequent conversations over the years — he has always left me with the same charge and challenge: “Go be ‘me-chadeish.’” Bring novel dimensions to your deliberations.
Lamm has remained steadfast and insistent in this simple statement, yet difficult assignment. Certainly over this last quarter of a century, I have heard the rosh yeshiva in this rabbi exhort his students to toil in the fields of new and novel interpretations. In an address to Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary rabbinic alumni, for example, he lamented the rise of a generation of scholars who distinguish themselves more by what they gather and relate in the names of others and less by their own new insights and inspirations.
On Passover, we’re all looking for those new and different appetizers and entrees that aren’t the same old same old recycled boring ones. This year, shake up your Pesach menus with the following extra-special and fun recipes from the Orthodox Union.
Sweet Apple Matzoh Meal Pancakes (Dairy or Pareve)
1 cup matzoh meal
1 tsp. salt
3 eggs
1 tbsp. sugar
8 oz. club soda
3 egg whites
Oil, for frying
2 Granny Smith apples, cored and sliced in rounds
2 tbsp. butter or margarine
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
In a bowl combine the matzoh meal, salt, sugar, whole eggs, and club soda. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes. While the batter is resting, melt the butter or margarine in a skillet and sauté the apples with the sugar and cinnamon. Cook for 4 to 5 minutes until the apples are soft but not mushy. Place the slices in a bowl with the sauce. Do not clean out the pan but set it aside.
In a clean bowl, beat egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Fold the egg whites into the matzoh meal mixture. Heat a thin layer of oil in the frying pan. When the oil is hot, drop the pancake batter by the spoonful into the pan. Brown lightly on both sides. Serve with the apple rounds on top and drizzle a little of the syrup on top.
Serves 4.
Honey-glazed Roasted Vegetables For Passover (Pareve)
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1 tsp. minced garlic
Salt and pepper
1 tsp. dried thyme or more to taste
8 to 10 quartered red potatoes,
3 to 4 sliced zucchini
2 thickly sliced red onions
2 red peppers, cut into chunks
4 carrots, cut into chunks
1 large sweet potato, cut into chunks
1 eggplant, peeled and cut into 2-inch cubes, salted, placed in colander 20 minutes, rinsed in cold water
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a bowl combine the honey, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, crushed garlic, and thyme. Grease a roasting pan and then mix and add the vegetables. Drizzle the honey mixture over them and mix to make sure they are coated. Season with salt and pepper. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes to avoid burning.
Serves 8.
Passover Granola (Pareve)
3 cups matzoh farfel
1 cup pecans, chopped
1/2 cup slivered almonds
2/3 cup honey
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
2/3 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped apricots
1/4 tsp. salt
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Place all the ingredients in a large bowl, stirring with a spoon until well mixed. Grease a cookie sheet with sides and spread mixture evenly on it. Bake for 75 minutes or until the mixture browns. (Watch this carefully after 50 minutes to make sure it doesn’t burn.) Stir it occasionally.Can be made a week or two in advance. Store in an airtight container. Make 5 to 6 cups.
Passover Matzoh Crunch Candy (Dairy)
6 to 7 matzohs
1/2 lb. butter (margarine just doesn’t work here)
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup chopped almonds
2 cups (or enough to cover the matzohs) semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 cups mini kosher-for-Pesach marshmallows
1 cup white or dark chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cover a large cookie sheet with side with aluminum foil. Spray or grease well and then line it with parchment paper. Lay the matzoh in the prepared cookie sheets so that there is no space between the pieces, breaking the sheets if you need to. In a saucepan combine the brown sugar and butter. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Pour the mixture over the matzohs, making sure that the mixture covers all the sheets. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes until bubbly but not burning. Remove the matzoh from the oven and then immediately sprinkle the 2 cups of chocolate chips on top. Let the chocolate melt and then spread it over the top with a knife. Top the still-hot chocolate with the marshmallows and chopped nuts. Melt the remaining chips and then drizzle the chocolate over the marshmallows and nuts. Refrigerate for at least 20 minutes and then break into pieces.
Serves 8 to 10.
Savory Passover Rolls (Pareve)
2 cups boiling water
10 tbsp. oil
2 tsp. salt
1/2 to 1 tsp. black pepper
2 cups matzoh cake meal
6 eggs
In a pan combine the water, oil, salt, and pepper. Bring the mixture to a boil. Remove the mixture from the heat and add the matzoh meal, mixing well. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well after each addition. Let the mixture stand for about 5 to 10 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Wet your hands with water and make 8 to 10 large balls from the batter. Place each ball on the paper (not too close to each other) and bake for a full 50 minutes or fully risen and golden. DO NOT open the oven door to check on the rolls — they might deflate. Makes 8 to 10.
Passover Pizza (Dairy)
Crust:
1 cup water
1/2 cup olive oil
1 pinch salt
1 1/2 cups fine matzoh meal
2 tbsp. Parmesan cheese
1 tsp. oregano
5 large eggs
Topping:
1 to 2 large chopped and seeded tomatoes
1/2 to 1 cup chopped black olives
2 cups tomato sauce
2 cups grated mozzarella cheese
Oregano to taste
Parmesan cheese to taste
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spread parchment paper on a baking sheet. Place the water and oil in a saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil and then remove it from the heat. Add all the matzoh meal and oregano. Mix to combine and return to medium heat, stirring constantly for 4 minutes. Add the 2 tablespoons of Parmesan cheese and continue cooking and stirring for 1 more minute. Let the dough cool for about 5 minutes. Beat in 1 egg at a time until all the eggs have been added. I use an electric mixer for this part. Spread the dough onto the parchment paper in a large circle or 2 smaller ones. Bake for 15 minutes and then remove the crust from the oven. Spread the tomato sauce evenly over the pizza crust and sprinkle the chopped tomato, olives, and oregano over the top of the sauce. Sprinkle the cheeses over the top of the tomatoes. Bake for another 15 to 20 minutes, or until the cheese is golden and bubbly.
Serves 4 to 6.
Few scholars have been able to communicate with equal efficacy in both the beit midrash and the pulpit. Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm has long excelled at both.
A “rabbi’s rabbi,” he enjoys renown both as a talmudic luminary and a masterful darshan. When I received semicha from him 25 years ago — and in subsequent conversations over the years — he has always left me with the same charge and challenge: “Go be ‘me-chadeish.’” Bring novel dimensions to your deliberations.
Lamm has remained steadfast and insistent in this simple statement, yet difficult assignment. Certainly over this last quarter of a century, I have heard the rosh yeshiva in this rabbi exhort his students to toil in the fields of new and novel interpretations. In an address to Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary rabbinic alumni, for example, he lamented the rise of a generation of scholars who distinguish themselves more by what they gather and relate in the names of others and less by their own new insights and inspirations.
 | A Latina delegation to Israel meets with the Arison Group on March 8. Project Interchange |
JERUSALEM – For Sindy Benavides, a Hispanic community organizer from Virginia who was visiting Israel last week, the Jewish community is a newfound friend.
Three years ago, Benavides said, she had the “frightening” experience of seeing the number of anti-immigration bills introduced in the Virginia House of Representatives triple to 148 — a reaction, she said, to the influx of Latino immigrants in the area.
With funding and training from the American Jewish Committee, Benavides and her fellow Latino community members mobilized to defeat about 100 of the bills in the 2006-07 legislative session — all those whose passage ran counter to the interests of their community.
Benavides, now 27, called the help she received from the organized Jewish world “invaluable.” The collaboration is an example of the alliances Jewish groups are forming with the U.S. Hispanic community, now the largest minority community in the United States.
Last week, Benavides was one of about a dozen or so prominent Latina leaders who came to Israel under the auspices of Project Interchange, an educational institute of the AJC, in cooperation with the National Council of La Raza, the largest Hispanic advocacy organization in the United States.
“There is a great deal of commonality between the Hispanic and Jewish communities,” Latina political consultant Ana Navarro told JTA in Jerusalem. “It would do us all good to get to know each other better.”
For decades, the American Jewish and Hispanic communities have been indifferent to one another, says Dina Siegel Vann, director of AJC’s Latino and Latin American Institute. But the two communities share a history of immigration and their domestic interests often dovetail, particularly on civil rights issues. It behooves the Jewish community to seek a deeper relationship as the Latino community grows in numbers, she said.
The visit to Israel was a way to introduce Israel to several key Latina community leaders. The participants also met with women leaders in Israel, including Bank Hapoalim owner Shari Arison, and government leaders.
The Latina women traveled all around Israel, meeting Ethiopians in an absorption center in Safed, talking with Palestinians in Jerusalem, visiting religious sites in Jerusalem’s Old City, and taking in a tour highlighting the strategic value to Israel of the Golan Heights.
In a visit that had resonance for many of the Latinas, the group also visited Beit Hatfutsot, a Tel Aviv museum focusing on the Jewish diaspora, where they learned how Jews have kept their culture in exile while integrating into their host countries.
The Jewish state does not get a great deal of coverage in Hispanic media, Navarro said, and the trip enabled her to learn firsthand about Israel.
Navarro — who was born in Nicaragua and emigrated to the United States with her family during the Nicaraguan revolution in 1980 — said she was particularly interested in learning how Israel has assimilated Jewish refugees from so many countries around the world. She said she was struck by how Israelis are accustomed to living in “survival mode,” and that they are so dedicated to the defense of their homeland.
“Israelis are staunch, strong, and educated,” Navarro, 38, said. The trip underscored the need for Hispanic and Jewish communities in America “to foster further the understanding of each other’s experiences and challenges.”
Benavides, who came to the United States from Honduras at the age of 1, echoed that sentiment. She said she was impressed at how Israel and the Jewish community found “a place at the table, a place in the world,” and believes the Jewish and Hispanic communities have a lot to learn from each other.
She said her visit to Israel was “only the beginning. I see myself looking more closely when I get home.”
JTA
Few scholars have been able to communicate with equal efficacy in both the beit midrash and the pulpit. Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm has long excelled at both.
A “rabbi’s rabbi,” he enjoys renown both as a talmudic luminary and a masterful darshan. When I received semicha from him 25 years ago — and in subsequent conversations over the years — he has always left me with the same charge and challenge: “Go be ‘me-chadeish.’” Bring novel dimensions to your deliberations.
Lamm has remained steadfast and insistent in this simple statement, yet difficult assignment. Certainly over this last quarter of a century, I have heard the rosh yeshiva in this rabbi exhort his students to toil in the fields of new and novel interpretations. In an address to Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary rabbinic alumni, for example, he lamented the rise of a generation of scholars who distinguish themselves more by what they gather and relate in the names of others and less by their own new insights and inspirations.
“Sadly, we have become a generation of ‘me-laktim’ and not ‘me-chadshim,’” he said. In his new haggadah, he is clearly taking a stand against this tendency of “hunter gatherers in learning.” Absent from its liner notes are the commonly used pithy points that one can easily peruse and pick off the page as easy droplets to sprinkle onto the ongoing seder ritual.
While handsome in its layout and still easy to read, this is very much the thinking person’s haggadah. It is not set up for an easy appropriation of text and texture. Instead, it invites the reader into carefully considered discussions of the weighty subject matter that rightfully defines and distinguishes the haggadah as Jewish life’s signature pedagogy, and the seder context as the ultimate classroom and teachable moment.
Understanding the seder ritual as such, he uses his homiletical talents and intellect to provide the reader and would-be seder participant with brief but strategically composed essay-like presentations on many of the seder’s generative themes. He takes on the big questions of theodicy and human suffering, as seen in his comments on Jacob’s suffering and King David’s despair. The rabbi lends his own social commentary to diverse themes and ills in society, an example being his treatment of the dual nature of the plague of darkness. Humanism, history, and halacha are woven together in an integrated whole that brings the timely to the timeless.
One noteworthy example of his penchant for chiddush, of his ability to lend a novel approach and new voice to a text well-traveled in time, emerges from his commentary on Chad Gadya, perhaps the most quixotic of the seder songs.
Borrowing from the recurring thematic and typological associations we make throughout the Pesach rituals by our use of the number 4, he introduces the typology of the Four Fathers and with it a new level of profundity, for this highly favored but otherwise hardly understood seder ditty.
Throughout this haggadah commentary, while dutifully citing numerous sacred sources, Lamm expands upon each to better illustrate the lessons for life and the effective construction of community that — of necessity — must emerge from this annual exercise.
This is not the haggadah to simply go through for easy comments, but rather one that will pass through and rest on its readers, leaving a new claim to a serious consideration of our contemporary Jewish condition.
The author is religious leader of the Jewish Center of Teaneck.
Few scholars have been able to communicate with equal efficacy in both the beit midrash and the pulpit. Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm has long excelled at both.
A “rabbi’s rabbi,” he enjoys renown both as a talmudic luminary and a masterful darshan. When I received semicha from him 25 years ago — and in subsequent conversations over the years — he has always left me with the same charge and challenge: “Go be ‘me-chadeish.’” Bring novel dimensions to your deliberations.
Lamm has remained steadfast and insistent in this simple statement, yet difficult assignment. Certainly over this last quarter of a century, I have heard the rosh yeshiva in this rabbi exhort his students to toil in the fields of new and novel interpretations. In an address to Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary rabbinic alumni, for example, he lamented the rise of a generation of scholars who distinguish themselves more by what they gather and relate in the names of others and less by their own new insights and inspirations.
(tags):
passover,
pesach,
seder,
jeanette friedman,
what to put on the table,
kiddush,
wine,
elija’s cup
In addition to a formal setting — charger, dinner plate, appetizer plate, water glasses and wine glasses, four kinds of forks (salad, fish, meat, and dessert), two knives (one for fish, one for meat), three spoons (appetizer, soup, and tea), and dinner napkins — there are ceremonial foods and objects that need to be available to the seder leader.
Keep things as simple as possible. Use rectangular tables and get the smallest folding chairs you can find.
Where to start? Make a list of the things you will need for the ceremony itself:
• Candle sticks on a tray to catch melted wax. Use disposable aluminum bobeches to catch drips. After you light the candles, move them to the sideboard. It’s simply safer to keep burning candles away from a crowded table.
• Some people use a three-tiered matzoh holder that comes with a seder plate on top; some use embroidered matzoh bags with dividers. In either case, they are placed directly in front of the leader. The matzohs go underneath the seder plate, which is marked to let you know where to put what.
• Ceremonial foods placed near the leader so that s/he can assemble the seder plate. If you love your silver heirlooms, keep the horseradish, eggs, and charoset in porcelain or glass bowls. Saltwater should go in a glass dish, too. You can put potatoes, greens, and romaine lettuce in silver bowls, but you’ll work harder later trying to get out the water spots.
• Lots of bottles of wine, kiddush cups, and matzoh plates. Passover does feel special when everyone gets to make kiddush together and drink four cups of wine. If you don’t have silver cups, small wine glasses will do nicely. Well-balanced, stable glassware is best. Stemware tends to tip over when the table shakes. Be sure to put a saucer underneath each cup to catch spills. There’s lots of moving around and the saucers help, but don’t necessarily prevent accidents — so keep plenty of cheap paper napkins or paper towels nearby.
• Haggadahs. Each person needs to read from one. You may want to pick up some at the supermarkets or at Judaica outlets, or perhaps you have special editions; family members may have their favorites. Put the Haggadahs on top of the appetizer plate, under the dinner napkin.
• Elijah’s cup usually sits right in the middle of the table, where your flowers normally go. Put the flowers on the sideboard or in the living room, where they can be beautiful without getting in the way. Extra wine and the ice bucket can go on the sideboard, too.
When putting two tables together, make sure they are on the same level. If that’s impossible, use two separate tablecloths, or everything will tilt and fall if the cloth is pulled.
Make a matching cloth for a small TV table to set up next to the leader without interfering with your seating. It can hold most of the ceremonial foods, extra matzoh, and some of the wine bottles (which also can be placed on the floor below the table, along with other beverages).
Finally, the question de tutti questions: Should you put a plastic tablecloth over the fabric cloth?
A good white linen damask table cloth will be ruined forever by red wine. Stain-resistant fabrics are available, but you need another set for the second night, and you do spend time cleaning them. There are different grades of plastic, and you can sponge and wipe heavier kinds. Or use a thinner sheet, lift off, toss, and replace.
JTA
Jeanette Friedman is co-author with David Gold of “Why Should I Care? Lessons from the Holocaust.” She lives in New Milford.
Few scholars have been able to communicate with equal efficacy in both the beit midrash and the pulpit. Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm has long excelled at both.
A “rabbi’s rabbi,” he enjoys renown both as a talmudic luminary and a masterful darshan. When I received semicha from him 25 years ago — and in subsequent conversations over the years — he has always left me with the same charge and challenge: “Go be ‘me-chadeish.’” Bring novel dimensions to your deliberations.
Lamm has remained steadfast and insistent in this simple statement, yet difficult assignment. Certainly over this last quarter of a century, I have heard the rosh yeshiva in this rabbi exhort his students to toil in the fields of new and novel interpretations. In an address to Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary rabbinic alumni, for example, he lamented the rise of a generation of scholars who distinguish themselves more by what they gather and relate in the names of others and less by their own new insights and inspirations.
A few years ago I accepted an invitation to share a Passover seder at the home of my then-boyfriend’s parents.
Since we were becoming more serious as a couple, I was excited to experience this penultimate sign of family acceptance. I bought a cute new dress to wear and some gourmet kosher-for-Passover chocolates for his mom. I prepped by asking for short bios on second cousins I’d be meeting for the first time and, in case I was asked, I practiced the Four Questions.
Shortly after the seder began, it became apparent that this night indeed was going to be much different from all other nights.
I learned quickly that in this family, the actions of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh could spark a hot debate on current U.S. Middle East policy. I witnessed a Haggadah reading enhanced by the insertion of several scratchy musical recordings — a lovely albeit seder-lengthening touch. And not surprisingly, I discovered, no one makes kugel better than my mother.
In truth, it was a perfectly wonderful evening and few experiences provided as intimate a window into the theater of my boyfriend’s family. Their Passover hospitality, and peccadilloes, would set the bar for my relationships to come.
Hospitality is more than encouraged on Passover; it is required. We are commanded to leave the door open for Elijah the prophet as well as to invite all who are hungry to come and eat.
But when you are dating, the hungry can often interpret a come-and-eat invitation as more symbolic than the shank bone on a seder plate. And your family can become either a boon or a liability.
“For me it’s an investment,” says Tara Chantal Silver, 32, a publicist in Washington. “Passover is a very big deal in my family. I don’t bring every guy home, just the ones who are special.”
So how do you know if it’s the right time to extend an invitation to that someone special?
“The first question to ask yourself is, do I want this person sitting beside me?” says relationship expert Andrea Syrtash. “But it doesn’t have to be a specific answer, like I want them to be the mother of my children. It’s a gracious thing to invite someone for the holiday. No one normal or healthy would freak out being asked.”
Dating coach Evan Marc Katz says to consider “the strength of the relationship over an arbitrary timeline.”
If you think the relationship has the potential to become long-term or serious eventually, Katz says, at some point you’re going to have to meet the family — and Passover is as good a time as any.
Adina Matusow, 28, and her fiancé, Ben, took it slow spending the holiday together.
“As far as Passover, we weren’t so interested in sharing,” says Matusow, who lives with her fiancé in Stamford, Conn.
By the time she went to his aunt’s house for Passover, they had been dating for nearly two years.
Matusow says the experience was different from what she was used to with her family. His family was smaller and less noisy, and the seder plate looked amiss.
“I thought, where is the celery? They were using parsley [as a leafy green vegetable] instead,” she recalls. “I didn’t say anything; I didn’t want to be rude. It’s not a big deal and it was a really nice experience.”
Sometimes, though, a divide in ritual observance can be more significant than celery over parsley.
In 24 years of marriage, Robbie Wagner, 48, says most arguments with her husband stem from the differences in their holiday traditions.
Wagner, who lives in Dallas, grew up with an Orthodox seder conducted in Hebrew, a “command performance with 50 to 60 people there, everyone in their best clothes, both nights.”
In contrast, she says, her husband’s family held a small, intimate dinner with no extended family and no reading of the Haggadah. She recalls being particularly disappointed that the afikomen wasn’t hidden for the grandchildren to find.
Over the years, Wagner says she and her husband learned to negotiate and compromise to create meaningful Passover traditions for their children.
Syrtash, author of “How to Survive Your In-Laws” and the upcoming “He’s Just Not Your Type (And That’s a Good Thing),” says couples should try to “have an open mind and remember there’s no such thing as normal. What’s weird to you is normal for him.” Try not to be judgmental, she urges.
When he was unable to get back to his native Montreal for Passover, architect Ian Roth, 35, accepted an invitation to spend Passover with his girlfriend Katy and her family in Denver.
The seder was less traditional and more interpretative than his family’s and the meal was less extravagant than his mother’s, says Roth, but “it was nice just being welcomed. It helped me have a warm feeling towards her and her family.”
Syrtash suggests couples discuss in advance what Passover looks like in their family’s home. Give a head’s-up if expecting a nosy aunt and, if the relationship is serious, discuss what customs you hope to retain or discard in the future, she says.
For couples with a non-Jewish partner, this is especially important. Syrtash recommends preparing the non-Jewish partner on what to expect at a seder.
“Approach it with enthusiasm, and go over a few things like the rituals and story of Passover before he or she gets to the table for the first time,” she says. “It’s a fun, festive holiday and it should feel light.”
In preparation for hosting their own seder someday, Katz and his wife, a Catholic, took an introduction-to-Passover class as well as a Passover cooking class at a synagogue near their Los Angeles home.
“Different people make it easier to share your customs,” he says, “and those are the people you should be with anyway.”
When you are dating, navigating Passover can become a representation of the relationship, says Syrtash, and it can “signify a lot.” But she also says to keep in mind that “Passover is not a wedding. You don’t need a plus-one.”
Because if the relationship doesn’t work out, it’s important to remember there’s always next year in Jerusalem. And mom’s kugel.
JTA
Few scholars have been able to communicate with equal efficacy in both the beit midrash and the pulpit. Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm has long excelled at both.
A “rabbi’s rabbi,” he enjoys renown both as a talmudic luminary and a masterful darshan. When I received semicha from him 25 years ago — and in subsequent conversations over the years — he has always left me with the same charge and challenge: “Go be ‘me-chadeish.’” Bring novel dimensions to your deliberations.
Lamm has remained steadfast and insistent in this simple statement, yet difficult assignment. Certainly over this last quarter of a century, I have heard the rosh yeshiva in this rabbi exhort his students to toil in the fields of new and novel interpretations. In an address to Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary rabbinic alumni, for example, he lamented the rise of a generation of scholars who distinguish themselves more by what they gather and relate in the names of others and less by their own new insights and inspirations.
Rabbi Aryeh Levin was called the Holy Man of Jerusalem. He spent his adult life in Israel, where he visited prisoners, bringing them comfort, food, spiritual sustenance.
Once after Passover some of the Jewish prisoners told Rabbi Aryeh that although the seder had been good, something important was missing: Because they were in prison, they could not perform the traditional rite of opening the door for Elijah, an act that invites redemption, for Elijah is the herald of the messiah. Surely there was no enslavement more absolute than the inability to coax forth redemption.
Rabbi Aryeh replied, “Every man is in a prison of his own self. He cannot leave by going out of the house but only by passing through the door of the heart. And to make an opening for himself in his own heart, that anyone can do, even a prisoner behind bars. And then he will be in true spiritual freedom.”
At each significant moment during the year, each of us should seek to understand where we are enslaved and open the door to our heart. That door is the portal of goodness, repentance, and faith.
JTA
This is an excerpt from “Floating Takes Faith” by Rabbi David Wolpe and is reprinted with permission from its publisher, Behrman House.
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