NYC Triathlon Swim: My Hudson River Diary

New York City Triathlon, July 14, 2013, 6:45 AM

Minute Zero: Coming down the ramp onto the race-start-barge in the Hudson River at 99th Street.

Goggles, check; swim cap, check; stopwatch on zero, check. Interview with the race announcer over the public address, I’m Tzvee from Teaneck, New Jersey. Yes, it’s my first triathlon; yes, I’m on a relay team.

Line up, look into the river. Fourteen other swimmers in my wave and many of them sit down on the barge and jump in at the tone. So do I. It’s four feet from the barge to the water.

Minute One: I’m in the Hudson. It’s dark. I go in much deeper than I thought I would. It’s dark all around me. This was a mistake. I need to get out.

Wow, I now finally understand the psalm, “Out of the depths I cry out to you O Lord.” I do not like this at all. I’m back to the surface. It’s choppy. My heart is racing. My chest is tight. I’m not swimming. I need to swim. But where am I? Not sure. Start to do the breast stroke. Others around me are swimming. It’s cold. What a bad idea this was.

Minute Two: Still not swimming the crawl. Wetsuit. Should have worn one. Would float better. Another real dumb decision. Still doing the breast stroke and my breathing is too shallow. Realize that I am in full panic. Adrenalin starting to pump.

I’m not gonna make it. I see tomorrow’s obituary, “Teaneck Rabbi Drowns in Hudson… He always loved swimming, family recalls.”

I pray, “Shema Yisrael.” “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”

Okay, so how do I get out of here? I am dizzy and disoriented. Just in case, I pray some variations, “Our father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Oh heck, “Hail Mary full of grace.” Hey, you never know. Oh, cover those bases, “Allahu akhbar.”

Minute Three: Still floundering. Tell myself to take deeper breaths. Urge myself to start to do the crawl. You can do this! No I can’t. I will swim over to that kayak and hop on board.

“Put your head down and swim!” That tight chest feeling is just panic. Not a heart attack. You wimp, you have six stents in your coronary arteries. You will be okay. Breathe, just breathe. Stroke, just stroke.

Minute Four: I’m coming back to grips with my reality. Ha! I muse that I will call out to the lifeguard on the surfboard, “I made a pledge to the United Jewish Appeal and haven’t paid it yet.” Old joke. The UJA definitely will make sure I get out alive.

I’m swimming now but going sideways. A guy in another kayak is pointing and waving at me to go in another direction. I am zigging and zagging. I’ve been swimming nearly every day for thirty years but boy, am I sucking at this swim.

Minute Five: I’m starting to get awareness for where I am and where are the other swimmers. “How long O Lord?” I sure haven’t made much progress. A long, long way to go.

Guess I really don’t like open water swimming in the Hudson. A little late to think about that now. Okay. Just stroke, breathe, stroke, breathe.

Minute Six to the Exit: Okay wow, we are doing this. Holy moly, it is far. No turning every 25 meters at the end of the pool. Can’t see any lane markers on the bottom of the river. No plastic lane dividers to gauge the direction. I am still veering right and left. There are currents and wakes. Salty I don’t mind. But feh. It’s dirty water.

Starting to bump into other swimmers. That’s good. Seems like a very long time. Stroke, breathe. Heart is strong. Breathing is better. Panic is easing.

Seems now like forever. Finally see the exit ramp ahead at 79th Street and a crowd of swimmers in front of it. A New York moment. Traffic jam is slowing us down at the Henry Hudson River off ramp.

Get to the ramp, a strong hand grips my hand and pulls me up. I’m out! Alive. But oh crap, I never started the stop watch. And double crap, now I have to run barefoot on asphalt to the bike transition. It’s long, it’s annoying. I reluctantly jog over half a mile. Hey, I am getting happier anyway.

I give my chip to my teammate, our rally team biker. He rides off.

I am done.

Check off that one.

Halleluyah.

Rabbi Dr. Tzvee Zahavy, who lives in Teaneck and writes the monthly Dear Rabbi column for the Jewish Standard, was inspired by his triathlete son Yitzhak, who did the entire NYC triathlon and raised money to help victims of terror through Team One Family. Tzvee did the NYC Tri swim leg with help from his two Team One Family teammates, Harvey Lederman and Leiba Rimler, who did the biking and running legs.

Donate here to help the families.

Published in the Jewish Standard, July 26, 2013.

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Former Students File $380 Million Sex Abuse Lawsuit against Yeshiva University

This is a sad story about the school that I attended for eleven years, from high school through rabbinical school.

An attorney in New York has filed suit against Yeshiva University on behalf of a group of students who were sexually abused while attending the school.

The Forward newspaper reported on this legal filing, "Former Y.U. High School Students File $380M Suit Claiming Sex Abuse Cover-Up".

The 148 page legal filing is detailed and graphic and, as I read it, quite compelling. It can be read below.

Lawsuit filed by former Yeshiva University High School Students against Y.U.

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תפילה לירושלים מילים הרב שאר ישוב כהן Video: Chief Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen's Inspiring Prayer for Jerusalem

Aaron Reichel, my friend of many years, sent me this update about a video of Chief Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen's inspiring Prayer for Jerusalem and related matters:

Thanks to Rabbi Itzchak Marmorstein, whose work relating to the late Chief Rabbi Kook our Harry and Jane Fischel Foundation has supported, I just received a you-tube link to the Prayer for Yerushalayim, to be recited or sung annually on the Shabbat before Yom Yerushalayim, authored by the Chairman of the Board of our Foundation and President of the Machon and of Ariel, Chief Rabbi Emeritus Shear Yashuv Cohen (also former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem), chanted by a chazzan and a full ORCHESTRA! I don't know about you, but I can't think of ever having heard ANY prayer -- let alone a prayer intended for recitation in Orthodox synagogues (though not exclusively, of course) -- chanted with such an orchestra! I hope you will savor this you-tube presentation as I did. I'm not a music connoisseur, so I won't offer any comments of evaluation. The u-tube presentation (of course made on a weekday) speaks -- sings? -- for itself!

Cantor Avremi Kirshnbaum תפילה לירושלים מילים הרב שאר ישוב כהן from YouTube

Aaron adds:

While on the general subject of special prayers sung in Orthodox synagogues but composed in relatively recent times, a few weeks ago, the very prominent Rabbi J. J. Schacter spoke at the West Side Institutional Synagogue as the featured "scholar in residence" and guest speaker at the annual Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein Memorial Lecture (subdivided into three full-length lectures), in conjunction with the recent publication of the augmented biography of Harry Fischel, originally edited by Rabbi Goldstein. Rabbi Goldstein was the father-in-law of Chief Rabbi Cohen, who wrote the preface to this augmented edition. Rabbi Schacter was as eloquent and informative as ever, but among the things that stand out about his presentation is that despite the fact that, unlike me (who might be considered biased in favor of Rabbi Goldstein, notwithstanding the objective documentation in the biography I wrote), Rabbi Schacter would be expected to be biased AGAINST Rabbi Goldstein, having been the rabbi of a historically competing synagogue, on various levels, The Jewish Center, and having co-authored a book about Rabbi Goldstein's "nemesis" -- Mordechai Kaplan, the first rabbi of the Jewish Center and the founder of reconstructionist Judaism, and, to some extent, the CJI before it, of which Rabbi Goldstein became the first director. Yet Rabbi Schacter was extremely gracious in his praise of Rabbi Goldstein and Rabbi Goldstein's place in history, and even had some kind words about the biography of Rabbi Goldstein, which he cited extensively. These tangents now lead up to the main tangent to what I'm leading up to, in the context of the you-tube link.

At the Shabbat at the WSIS featuring Rabbi Schacter (referred to above), the Chazzan of the WSIS, Zev Muller, sang Avinu Shebashamayim, a/k/a the Tfila L'Shlom Hamedinah (the prayer for the country of Israel) a rendition composed by Cantor Sol Zim, with a solo at the beginning and at the end, which was absolutely mesmerizing, no less than what listeners of the you-tube link below are about to hear. Among the other compositions that Chazzan Muller sang was Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach's Mimkomcha. Rabbi Schacter, the guest speaker, began his primary speech -- the Shabbat morning sermon -- with some words about the synagogue and the current rabbi and the history of the synagogue and its founding rabbi, but he also said that had he come to the West Side just to hear this chazzan (Chazzan Muller) sing these two compositions, it would have been worth it! I've heard many guest speakers and many notable chazzanim, but I never before heard any guest speaker make such a statement about any chazzan!  I would hope that the readers of this email will come to the WSIS and/or encourage other people to come to the WSIS for many reasons, but now they can add this one!

Cantor Muller, by the way, is to be one of the guests of honor at the forthcoming dinner of the WSIS, and I'm sure that, PG, he will do more than a simple acceptance speech! So if you want to hear him during the week, this is an opportunity to do so.

--Aaron

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Was Shulamith Firestone Jewish?

Yes, the pioneering feminist Shulamith Firestone was at the brackets of her life an Orthodox Jew. She was brought up as an Orthodox Jew as a child, and she was buried in an Orthodox Jewish rite.

During her life, the radical feminist activities that she engaged in and the critical books that she wrote were as far from the values of Orthodox Judaism as day is from night.

The inspiring and haunting New Yorker profile, "AMERICAN CHRONICLES: DEATH OF A REVOLUTIONARY," BY SUSAN FALUDI informs the reader that "Shulamith Firestone helped to create a new society. But she couldn’t live in it."

It informs us, "Best known for her writings, Firestone also launched the first major radical-feminist groups in the country, which made headlines in the late nineteen-sixties and early seventies with confrontational protests and street theatre."

The article begins, "When Shulamith Firestone’s body was found late last August, in her studio apartment on the fifth floor of a tenement walkup on East Tenth Street, she had been dead for some days. She was sixty-seven, and she had battled schizophrenia for decades, surviving on public assistance. There was no food in the apartment, and one theory is that Firestone starved, though no autopsy was conducted, by preference of her Orthodox Jewish family. Such a solitary demise would have been unimaginable to anyone who knew Firestone in the late nineteen-sixties, when she was at the epicenter of the radical-feminist movement, surrounded by some of the same women who, a month after her death, gathered in St. Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery, to pay their respects..."

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Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's Haggadah for the Passover Seder by Rabbi M. Genack

Rabbi Menahem Genack published, The Seder Night: An Exalted Evening: The Passover Haggadah: With a Commentary Based on the Teachings of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. A Haggadah in English and Hebrew (2009).

We think it's a great book and happily added it both to our collection of Haggadahs and to our library of works about the teachings of my teacher, the Rav, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. It is a handsome and professional volume, clearly written and packed with content based on the Rav's torah teachings.

Genack was known as one of the best students in the class when I was in the Rav's shiur back in college and in rabbinical school. He's pursued a career of Jewish service and teaching and continues over the decades to shine as an exemplary disciple of the Rav.

Like most books that present the Rav's torah, this one approaches the task with great reverence and nostalgia. Those are great characteristics for me and for the other several thousand students who personally sat at the feet of the Rav and gave themselves over to him as his uncritical disciples. Genack writes his condensed accounts of the Rav's lectures with the clarity that I need to hear again the Rav speaking. He was a charismatic teacher with a wealth of learning that he imparted in many ways.

In his public talks, the Rav emphasized the experiential side of Orthodox Judaism. He often spoke poetically, I think to prove two important points.

First, he wanted to prove a personal point, to show the world that he was not a cold Litvak, not just a product of the Lithuanian Yeshivas who valued only factual erudition and cold logic.

Second, he had a program in his work, to create and express a form of Orthodox Judaism that was on par with the other great religions of the world. For him that meant in his time and place and out of his training in Europe that he had to demonstrate the validity and fecundity of Orthodox Jewish religious experience. He believed that he was the Jewish Rudolph Otto or William James and that from his teachings the world would see that Orthodoxy stands proudly next to any form of the esteemed Protestant religions of the Old or New World.

The Rav had another mission in his teaching and preaching. That was to transmit the Brisker Torah, the innovative conceptual insights of his own and his family's heritage of learning. So the Rav sought to investigate the phenomenology of Orthodox Judaism, to seek out and abstract the core idea from each performance of the numerous commandments and from each recitation of the many prayers.

Rabbi Genack succeeds in presenting all sides of the Rav in his publication, though he does so without the kind of self consciousness that I have just evoked above.

But now for the other question. How does this book play in Peoria? How will people who were not long-time students of the Rav react to this book? This book is not for the ordinary Jew who never studied with the Rav and it's not for the non-Jewish scholar or layperson. A Reform or Conservative or even an Orthodox Jew who never knew the Rav would need much more translated from the insider's notes and nostalgia of this book to the vocabulary and syntax or religious discourse in its more common and less private forms.

All told, this is a very good work in its genre. //repost from 2009//

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New Yorker: At His Birthday Party Philip Roth talks of Death

New Yorker has been churning out amazing content in the past few issues. David Remnick continues that flow with his account of Philip Roth's eightieth birthday celebration in Newark.

Remnick explains that death was Roth's main topic in his birthday remarks. An odd choice for a birthday festival for most folks but not for Roth.

Now, we usually don't dwell on the subject of death in our thoughts. But today we conclude our recitation of Kaddish for our dad. And that put us face-to-face with the subject. As we said in another post, we feel that through the public synagogue Kaddish ritual we firmly rooted our dad's soul into the community of Jews that he so loved and served with such dedication. As the community of Israel lives and flourishes, so does the energy of our dad live on. One form of immortality.

Dad's body rests in a cemetery in Israel on Har Hamenuchot overlooking the hills of Jerusalem. His presence there roots his soul in the Zionist dimension of our collective reality as a people. As the State of Israel lives and flourishes, so does the vitality of our dad live on. Another form of immortality.

Roth eloquently writes of the stones in a cemetery in New Jersey and the memory of his family. Roth has certainly rooted his soul in a public vital body of writing that will live on for a long time. A Rothian form of immortality.

Here is Remnick's teasing conclusion to his essay:

...Roth is the author of thirty-one books. His favorite, he has said, the one in which he felt the most free as he wrote it, is “Sabbath’s Theater.” Laughing a little to himself, Roth said that the novel, which was published in 1995, could easily have been titled “Death and the Art of Dying.” Its epigraph is Prospero’s line in Act V, Scene 1 in “The Tempest”: “Every third thought shall be my grave.” And within is the line from Kafka: “The meaning of life is that it stops.”

“The book is death-haunted,” Roth said. Mickey Sabbath, the turbulent, profane, and libidinous hero, is a man who is beyond discretion and taste, whose outrageous adulterous behavior is, Roth said, “his response to a place where nothing keeps its promise and everything is perishable.” As a boy, Sabbath lost the person closest to him in the world—his older brother, Morty, whose plane was shot down, in 1944, over the Japanese-occupied Philippines.

With that introduction, Roth read pages three hundred and sixty-three to three hundred and seventy of “Sabbath’s Theater,” one of the most stunning passages in all his work. He was not about to let us forget what eighty means. In the novel, Sabbath has gone south (“Tunnel, turnpike, parkway—the shore!”) to visit the Jewish cemetery where his grandparents, parents, and brother are all buried. I will not ruin it for you. To get the feel of the night, you must read the passage in full—or, better, read the novel entire. And imagine that this passage—with its great elegy of gravestones, with its memories of life lived, of a life cut short, and all of it in particular—imagine that this is what Philip Roth chose, very deliberately, as his birthday message, his greeting, his farewell. These were not his last words—please, not that!—but they were what he chose. Death-haunted but assertive of life. The passage ends with his hero putting stones on the graves of the dead. Stones that honor the dead. Stones that are also meant to speak to the dead, to mark the presence of life, as well, if only for a while. The passage ends simply. It ends with the line, “Here I am.”

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Helfgot and Perlman Take Brooklyn by Storm

Israel-born American violinist Itzhak Perlman, performed tonight with Manhattan’s Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. It was the new arena’s first Jewish event.

In November, 2006 we interviewed Helfgot for the Jewish Standard prior to his concert at the Metropolitan Opera House...

Internationally renowned Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot will perform “Helfgot Sings Cantorial Classics,” the first solo cantorial concert at the New York Metropolitan Opera on Sunday, December 3. At press time the event has nearly sold out the 4400 seating capacity of the Opera House. Dr. Mordechai Sobol arranged the music for the orchestra and choir. The orchestra will include members of the New York Philharmonic conducted by Matthew Lazar with Cantor Daniel Gildar on the piano. The choir will be coordinated by Cantor Azi Schwartz. The invocation prior to the concert will be offered by the chief rabbi of Israel, Yisrael Meir Lau.

Cantor Helfgot is 37 years old, married and the father of six children, ages 3-16. He is a Chasidic Jew born in Tel Aviv and from the Gur or Ger Hasidic community, one of the largest Hasidic groups in the world.  Gerrer Hasidim are active in Israeli politics and supportive of the State.

The Jewish Standard interviewed Cantor Helfgot at Lincoln Center. He has just returned from a concert tour of Australia. Helfgot was dressed in a dark suit with his pants tucked into the trademark-tall-socks that Hasidim of Ger call "hoyzn-zokn". He has a thin beard and prefers to speak in Hebrew or Yiddish over English. Most of this interview was conducted in Hebrew.

JS: Is this the first time a cantor will perform at the Met?

Not exactly. The cantors Richard Tucker and Jan Pierce performed many times at the Met. But they sang opera. So this is the first time that a cantor will perform cantorial music at the Met. We are fortunate that the Met has permitted us to use this great opera house for this concert.

JS: Will you be using a microphone for the concert?

Good question. We have not yet decided. The Met has wonderful acoustics so it is not essential that we amplify the music. On the other hand our audience is accustomed to the use of microphones and amplifiers. So we have a dilemma and have not yet decided.

JS: Why has cantorial singing fallen out of favor in many shuls?

In Europe every shtetl has a chazzan. Sometimes he also served multiple professional roles as a shochet and a mohel too. In America this type of community does not exist.

People think a cantor’s singing makes the service longer. That does not have to be the case.

JS: What can we do to help bring back the cantor?

People need to accept the cantor as an essential part of the synagogue. He is the shaliach tzibbur -- the appointed representative of the community for leading the service. The cantor has to work together with his congregation to make certain that he makes the singing in the service last as long as the congregation wants. He needs to know when they want to finish Musaf on Shabbat -- 12:00, 12:30? The congregation needs to know that the cantor represents their needs. Those steps will help bring the cantor back into a greater role in the synagogue.

JS: Do you think there is any competition between rabbis and cantors? Do yeshivas tend to frown upon cantors?

I have always had good relations with the rabbis in the synagogues that I have served. We understand each others’ roles and have mutual respect. It is true that there is such a thing as a yeshivishe davenin which does not feature cantorial singing. But there is no essential conflict between the cantor and the yeshiva.

JS: Tell us about an inspirational part of your work?

Sometimes, actually frequently, secular Jews come up to me after I sing and tell me that they were alienated from Judaism but that chazanut has inspired them to return. They say they now plan to attend synagogue and get more involved. That inspires me and fulfills me.

JS: What is your view of women cantors?

I am a Hasidic Jew so I have never heard a chazanit lead the service. I have no problem with women cantors. I can see that people would appreciate the drama and emotion of a soprano chazanit and that it could be inspiring and contribute to the aesthetic of a service.

JS: Have you ever wanted to sing opera?

I have listened at times to opera to hear the voices and the melodies. But I have never aspired to sing opera.

JS: Do non-Jews attend your concerts? Do you think they could appreciate your music?

I don’t know how many non-Jews attend. I expect that anyone could be moved emotionally by our music whether or not it was sacred to them – whether or not they understood the words.

JS: Will you be using the Met’s facility for electronic titles to provide the translation for this concert?

No, the Met is protective of their systems. We will provide texts and translations in the printed programs. We wish to build up our relationship with the Met, to show them the stature of our music and of our audience. That way, in the future, we hope to establish this wonderful hall as a regular venue for cantorial concerts of Jewish music.

JS: Why choose the Met? How did you manage to get the Met?

I am not originally and American so I did not fully appreciate the importance of this location. Our organizers want to have this concert here to make a statement. This is the best place and our music and heritage is good enough. We can perform it in the greatest of opera houses. This will make people proud and will be a great Kiddush Hashem – a sanctification.

As to how our sponsors managed to obtain the right to have this concert there -- that is nothing short of a miracle.

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New York Times Merges With Tzvee's Talmudic Blog

The New York Times announced that it has merged with Tzvee's Talmudic Blog to form "The New York Times Talmudic Blog."

The Times was already known as a premier Jewish newspaper in the city with high visibility Jewish editorial writers like Tom Friedman, Roger Cohen and Paul Krugman and Israeli news bureau chief Jodi Rudroren.

"We lacked Talmudic depth of analysis," said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Chairman & Publisher of the Times. "This merger with the Talmudic blog will fill in that lacuna in our content."

Tzvee Zahavy, Chairman & Publisher of the Talmudic Blog said, "Contrary to some popular opinion in the Talmud blogosphere, we always liked the Times' Jewish stories and its coverage of Israeli politics." In Talmudic style he added, "Sometimes we vehemently objected to the Times and everything that it stands for. This merger will advance the ability of the Times' Jewish writers to seek out new modes of conflicted Jewish identity."

In other Jewish media merger news, the three major Jewish comedy publications announced that they will join together, "The Jewish Press," "The Onion" and "The Borowitz Report." The new entity will be called, "The Everything Bagel."

In worldwide Purim news, our old friend the peripatetic master journalist Yori Yanover reports on major developments from Israel and Cleveland:

• First White Power Talmudic Yeshiva Opened in Ohio
• Defying Boycotts, Jagger, Stones, to Honor Israel’s 65th Birthday

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Avi Steinberg thinks Philip Roth gave Talmudic Advice to Julian Tepper

In New Yorker we learn that Avi Steinberg ("IS WRITING TORTURE?") thinks Philip Roth gave Talmudic Advice to Julian Tepper.

Steinberg describes a literary storm between Elizabeth Gilbert and Roth wherein Gilbert defends writing as a happy profession, contrary to Roth who allegedly did the following to Tepper:

Julian Tepper published a piece describing an encounter with Roth at an Upper West Side deli. Waiting on his hero’s table, Tepper tremulously presented Roth with “Balls,” his first novel. Roth warmly congratulated him, and then offered: “I would quit while you’re ahead. Really. It’s an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and you write, and you have to throw almost all of it away because it’s not any good. I would say just stop now. You don’t want to do this to yourself. That’s my advice to you.”

Steinberg thinks he knows that Roth really loves writing but was pushing away the young writer to test his dedication. This reminded Steinberg of the Talmud.

...[Roth's] newest message, we are told, is: “Don’t write. Get out while you can.” But what did he really mean by it? My guess is that he was joking. Which isn’t to say that he wasn’t serious. It was a serious joke. Roth’s cranky advice for the young writer is an old Jewish chestnut. The sages of the Talmud offered the same piece of advice to anyone who wanted to join the faith: don’t do it, it’s seriously not worth it, it’s just an objectively bad idea. The ancient rabbis suggest that you ask a potential convert, “Are you not aware that today the people of Israel are wretched, driven about, exiled and in constant suffering?” It’s a rhetorical question. But if the person replies that he or she indeed embraces wretchedness and constant suffering, you explain to him or her how taxing it is to practice the religion. You mention the gruesome punishments for breaking the Sabbath and other laws. You try very hard to dissuade any would-be applicants. You mess with them—and that is how you welcome them. Joining, in other words, happens through a process of opposition, irony, and dissent. If you’re going to join a messed-up club, you have to pass the messed-up entrance exam. You enter into the sect only when you push back, when you finally say, Listen, I don’t care what you tell me. I know it’s a bad idea, but I’m determined to do it, and I will do it.

That’s the kind of a person it takes to be a writer: someone who’s zealous and ready to argue, someone who has Philip Roth tell him, “It’s torture, don’t do it,” and replies, “You had me at ‘torture.’ ” You don’t enter into it because it’s a great lifestyle decision—it isn’t—you do it because, for whatever reason, you believe in it, and you believe in it because, for whatever reason, you need to believe in it. Roth was messing with Tepper; he was testing his faith and strengthening it. He wanted the guy to earn the title: author of the novel “Balls.”

My guess is that Tepper was heartened to discover that even the great Roth, it turns out, hates his life. For struggling writers, wretches that they are, that is inspiring.

If Steinberg is right then Gilbert was wrong about Roth when she, "launched an earnest defense of the scribbling life, declaring that writing is a “fucking great” job. This is a classified piece of information, she claims, kept secret by vain, jealous older writers."

Turning the question back on the rabbis, is it true that the conversion to Judaism must always be preceded by a Rothian "messed-up entrance exam"? If the answer to that question is always yes, we are sad. Surely there must be some rabbis who (like Gilbert does for writing) are willing to tell people that Judaism is a “fucking great” religion.

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Are mannequins kosher?

From The New York Times we found a Purim article published just a bit early: 

Modesty in Ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn Is Enforced by Secret Squads: "Shadowy committees have threatened shop owners over mannequins they don't like, and reportedly have invaded homes to seize computer equipment."

The Brooklyn shopkeeper was already home for the night when her phone rang: a man who said he was from a neighborhood “modesty committee” was concerned that the mannequins in her store’s window, used to display women’s clothing, might inadvertently arouse passing men and boys.

Some men are sexually aroused by mannequins! Definitely not kosher!

Ha ha ha, how funny is this!?

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Roman Vishniac Photographs Exhibit at the International Center of Photography

The photographs of Roman Vishniac are on display at the ICP at 6th Avenue and 43rd Street.

We don't expect that Vishniac's portrait of our dad is in the exhibit.



Portraits of Albert Einstein and Marc Chagall made it into the exhibit.

    

The portrait selections in the exhibit are just one part of a larger collection. The catalog describes the portraits this way:

Portrait Studio and Nightclubs, New York

Upon arriving in New York in 1941, Vishniac turned to photography to support his family, opening a portrait studio on the Upper West Side. Always resourceful, he mined his connections in the Russian and German-Jewish expatriate communities to secure famous subjects for portraits—Marc Chagall, Albert Einstein, and Yiddish Theater star Molly Picon among them. These photographs of well-known artists, intellectuals, and performers helped establish Vishniac's reputation in New York, attracting a broad clientele to his studio, including Jewish émigré dancers, actors, musicians, artists, intellectuals, and scientists. His success in portraiture ultimately allowed Vishniac to pursue photomicroscopy, biology, and scientific research—fields that would become his primary focus over the next fifty years.

Vishniac also turned his camera to the city's nightclubs, where war- weary New Yorkers, abetted by a swell of immigrant performers and off-duty servicemen, sought distraction at a frenzied pace. His dynamic and skilled work, focusing on jazz musicians, actors, comedians, and dancers, exhibited here for the first time, incorporated highbrow and lowbrow, popular and avant-garde, focusing primarily on three Jewish- owned nightclubs: New York's first integrated nightclub, Café Society, The Village Vanguard in bohemian Greenwich Village, and the burlesque joint Leon & Eddie's. Much like his earlier work in Eastern Europe, Vishniac's portraits of Jewish émigré intellectuals and performers capture the vitality and resilience of Jewish life, this time from the perspective of a different segment of the diaspora, facing its own set of challenges.

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כל מה שקורה, רק ביידיש - חינוך וחברה - הארץ Bella Bryks Profiled in Haaretz

כל מה שקורה, רק ביידיש - חינוך וחברה - הארץ

Our Manhattan Day School elementary school classmate Bella Bryks-Klein has been profiled for her work in promoting Yiddish culture in Israel.

פסטיבלים, הרצאות או שירה. אם זה ביידיש זה נמצא בעיתון "וואס? ווען? ווו?", שהוקם על ידי בלה בריקס-קליין ונודע כעכבר העיר של חובבי השפה

Hat tip to our mutual classmate Faye for letting us know.

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Bad News for Ezra Merkin and his Investors

According to a report from Bloomberg News a federal court will decide some aspects of the Madoff-Merkin settlements. Although legal matters like this one are hard to sort out, this development is potentially bad news for Merkin's victims, and good news for Madoff's victims, as the story explains:

...Last week's ruling doesn't answer the ultimate question of whether Picard can stop the Merkin settlement. It only means that Rakoff will decide critical questions underlying the dispute.

Schneiderman takes the position it would be "unprecedented for a federal court to enjoin the settlement of claims by a state law enforcement agency against non-debtors." Picard is suing Merkin for more than $500 million. If Schneiderman is allowed to settle, Picard contends Merkin won't have money left to pay his claims.

Whether Picard wins ultimately will decide who receives the $410 million from Merkin.
If Picard wins, halts the Attorney General's lawsuit, and recovers $410 million or more from Merkin, Picard will distribute the funds to Madoff customers and likely not include Merkin's own investors. The Attorney General, on the other hand, will turn over most of the $410 million to customers of Merkin.

The Madoff firm began liquidating in December 2008, with appointment of a trustee under the Securities Investor Protection Act. Bernard Madoff individually went into an involuntary Chapter 7 liquidation in April 2009. His bankruptcy case was consolidated with the firm's liquidation. Madoff is serving a 150-year prison sentence following a guilty plea.

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New Yorker: Guns in Israel and Gefilte Fish in Brooklyn

New Yorker sometimes is our favorite Jewish magazine. The editors unintentionally juxtapose two articles of interest in the 2012 holiday issue:

A JEWISH GEFILTE CHRISTMAS Posted by Anna Altman

...This year, I appended the Jewish holiday rites with a visit to the kitchen of the Gefilteria, a recently launched food company specializing in old-world Jewish foods. Started by three twenty-somethings living in Brooklyn, the Gefilteria sells gefilte fish with a pink layer of salmon gefilte topping each dun-colored loaf; jars of two types of horseradish, spicy-carrot and sweet-beet; and glass bottles of beet kvass, a probiotic fermented beverage. An Ashkenazi Jew, I was familiar with the idea of these items, but only in degraded factory form...

“A PROGRAM LIKE THEY HAVE IN ISRAEL” Posted by Hendrik Hertzberg, which we find worth reproducing:

According to Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association is demanding “a program like they have in Israel.” On “Meet the Press,” LaPierre, the C.E.O. of the N.R.A., said, “Israel had a whole lot of school shootings until they did one thing: They said, ‘We’re going to stop it,’ and they put armed security in every school and they have not had a problem since then.”

Oh, really?

A piece in Ynetnews.com, the English-language Web site of Yedioth Ahronoth (“Daily News”), Israel’s largest-selling newspaper, explains why Israeli officials were upset by LaPierre’s comments:

The statements were quickly proven to be false. Israeli guards were not placed in schools to tackle mass shootings. Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told the Daily News that the situation in Israel was “fundamentally different” from that in the United States.

“We didn’t have a series of school shootings, and they had nothing to do with the issue at hand in the United States. We had to deal with terrorism,” said Palmor.

“There is no comparison between maniacs with psychological problems opening fire at random to kill innocent people and trained terrorists trying to murder Israeli children,” said Reuven Berko, a retired Israeli Army colonel and senior police officer.

He further remarked that restrictions on gun ownership in Israel have been tightened in recent years, not relaxed.

“Israeli citizens are not allowed to carry guns unless they are serving in the army or working in security-related jobs that require them to use a weapon,” he said.

Tightening restrictions on gun ownership. Not letting people run around carrying guns unless it is in the public interest to have them do so. Now there’s “a program like they have in Israel.”

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Do people study the Talmud on the Subway?

A New York blog (The Underground New York Public Library - a visual library featuring the Reading-Riders of the NYC subways) has some graphic proof that yes, people do study the Talmud on the subway.

The Jewish Press reported on this in June 2012, "An Ultra-Orthodox man reading the Talmud on the subway from Underground NY Public Library. The photo blog is a project of acclaimed street photographer, Ourit Ben-Haim. In an interview, Ben-Haim said that when she takes a photograph of someone reading she sees 'people who are contemplating description of new possibilities. In this way, every book says that its reader is simply great.'"

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Our Great Grandfather Harris Epstein the Inventor

I am named after my great-grandfather, Harris (Tzvee) Epstein, aka, Epstein the Inventor, who lived in New York City and Spring Valley. I probably inherited my technical curiosity from him.

He was the inventor and patent holder of many practical items, a folding umbrella, an extension ladder, a double sided toothbrush, a vegetable grater and more. Here are of his patents with their links from Google Patent search:

SIGNALING APPARATUS US Pat. 1060898 - H. EPSTEIN. SIGNALING APPARATUS, APPLICATION PILED JAN. 26, 19.11. Patented May 6,1913.

EXTENSION LADDER US Pat. 949529 - Filed Feb 10, 1909

VEGETABLE GRATER US Pat. 1799963 - Filed Apr 4, 1930... UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE HARRIS EPSTEIN, OF ROCKAWAY BEACH, NEW YORK VEGETABLE GRATER

GAS-CONTROLLING DEVICE US Pat. 968457 - Filed Jan 11, 1910

FOLDING UMBRELLA Patent number: 1666692 Filing date: Jan 29, 1927 Issue date: Apr 17, 1928

TOOTH BRUSH Patent number: 1111144 Filing date: Oct 4, 1913 Issue date: Sep 22, 1914

Papa Epstein, as he was called by his grandchildren, sure would have liked the age of the personal computer and the Internet, especially the iPad and smart phone.

[Augmented repost from 12/17/06]

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How much is that Torah in the Window?

In an article, the Times describes a new Jewish fund raising craze, Underwriting Abraham - Synagogues Offer Sponsorships for Torah Texts.

Hey, it's kids, it's adults, it's a woman scribe, it's Brooklyn, it's money, it's so much more, it's a multi-faceted mitzvah (with a big ROI)...

On Page One of the Times' Metropolitan Section. Hmmm. Shouldn't it be in the Sunday Business Section?

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Is the Mayor of New York City Always Jewish?

No, the mayor of New York City is not always a Jew.

Though several of the past mayors were Jews, It looks like the next mayor will not be Jewish. The Times wrote today, "With No Major Jewish Candidate, an Unusual Absence in the N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race."

The Times reported on this matter:

In the 11 elections since a Jewish candidate, Abraham D. Beame, first won a Democratic mayoral primary in 1965, Jewish Democrats (Mr. Beame, Mr. Koch, Ruth W. Messinger and Mark Green) won the nomination six times. Jewish candidates were elected mayor seven times (Mr. Beame, Mr. Koch and Michael R. Bloomberg).

The last time no Jewish candidate of either party sought the nomination was in 1993, when David N. Dinkins ran for re-election and lost to Rudolph W. Giuliani. In 2001, when Mr. Green was facing Mr. Bloomberg, both major candidates were Jewish.

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NYTimes Video: Surviving in the Rockaways

Some of the immensity of the destruction and suffering in our area is evident from The New York Times N.Y./REGION: "Surviving in the Rockaways" -- "Life is still far from normal for residents in the Rockaways. Two weeks after Sandy, thousands are without power and heat and there are few services available in the neighborhood."

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Endless Summer Meets Endless Prayer

We like this pre-storm photo from the Times (Shallow Waters and Unusual Path May Worsen the Surge) of endless young daveners watching endless summer surfers in Long Beach, NY.

This reminds us of the book cover that we designed for our book about our search for the perfect prayer, God's Favorite Prayers.

We are fond of pointing out that we had this poster in mind when we designed that cover.

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