Jewish Journal archives February 10, 2006

Morton S. Shanok, the Cantor Emeritus at Temple Beth El of Swampscott (formerly Lynn), died on Jan. 30 at a local nursing home. He was 95.

Shanok was buried Feb. 2 in the Congregation Shirat Hayam Cemetery on Lowell Street in Peabody following a memorial service at the Stanetsky-Hymanson Memorial Chapel.

Shanok was a legendary figure on the North Shore, having arrived after World War II and going on to serve Beth El for 32 years. He later served as the High Holiday cantor at Temple B’nai Abraham in Beverly.

Following his retirement from Beth El in the early 1980s, Shanok continued to officiate at lifecycle events and to tutor Bar Mitzvah students at various local temples. He was the religious cultural coordinator at the Jewish Rehabilitation Center in Swampscott for several years.

“Morton Shanok was an unstoppable individual,” recalled Rabbi Edgar Weins-berg of Congregation Shirat Hayam, formerly Temple Beth El. “He never ceased being the cantor in the eyes of two or three generations of adults and young people whose lives he affected.”

Shanok was active nationally as a founding member of the executive board of the Cantors Assembly of the National Association of Conservative Cantors and was editor of its periodical, “The Cantor’s Voice.” He was among the developers of the H.L. Miller Cantorial School and College of Jewish Music in New York, which later honored him with an honorary doctorate, and served as president of the Cantors and Jewish Ministers Association of New England. He was a member of the W.W. II Chaplain Army Corps, the Jewish War Veterans Post 31 in Lynn, the Kiwanis Club in Lynn and Mt. Carmel Masonic Lodge in Lynn.

Born in New Haven, Conn., Shanok attended New Haven High School before receiving his B.A. from the Manhattan School of Music. He trained under Cantor Adolph Katchko and served as a U.S. Army chaplain during World War II. His first congregation was Temple Beth El in Rockaway Park, Long Island, which he served for four years before relocating to Lynn after the war.

Shanok was the husband of the late Dorothy (Rose) Shanok and the late Beatrice (Cohen) Shanok. He is survived by a son and daughter-in-law, Keith and Carol Shanok of Dover, NH; a nephew, Michael Shanok; and a niece, Tobe Shanok, of Gloucester.

In lieu of flowers, expressions of sympathy in his memory may be donated to the American Cancer Society, 30 Speen St., Natick, MA 01760.

Swampscott — Naomi Katz, a senior deputy to Israel’s state attorney, sparked a lively discussion on the role of religion in Israeli life at an appearance Feb. 7 at Congregation Shirat Hayam in Swampscott.

A former prosecutor with the Jerusalem District Attorney and presently a master’s candidate at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Katz painted a sobering picture of the tensions within Israeli society, citing liberally from statistics demonstrating that Israel’s secular majority is increasingly alienated from the religious minority, and from the Jewish religion more generally.

In particular, she lamented that, unlike America, which offers a range of possible avenues of affiliation, Israeli citizens have a choice only between Orthodoxy and secularism.

“We need your help,” Katz told her audience. “We need you and we need your vitality and experience … to show there is another way.”

Katz noted that in the United States, synagogue membership is the primary means through which Jews identify as Jews. In Israel, however, where more than three-quarters of the population is Jewish, religious ritual is unconnected to Jewish identity for most of the population.

“Paradoxically, we feel less Jewish,” said Katz, referring to secular Israelis. “In terms of religious heritage, secular Israelis know a lot less.”

The identification of secular Israelis as ‘Israelis’ rather than ‘Jews’ has engendered such hatred and mistrust that during the recent evacuation of settlements from the West Bank and Gaza, secular Israelis couldn’t even acknowledge the pain their fellow citizens felt being torn from their homes, according to Katz.

“That’s the biggest tragedy and also our biggest challenge right now,” she said.

Katz’s presentation, entitled “A Jewish Identity for a Jewish State,” is the second in a series of four lectures on Israel organized by the Jewish Federation of the North Shore and the North Shore Rabbinical Association. The next lecture is on the Israel Defense Forces and is scheduled for March 16 at Temple B’nai Abraham in Beverly.

MARBLEHEAD — Each Sunday since last September, the teenaged children of two local rabbis have been sharing joyous Jewish music with youngsters from Temple Emanu-El’s Hebrew School.

Tova Kelman, 17, is the Orthodox daughter of Rabbi Avraham Kelman of Congregation Ahabat Sholom in Lynn. Cory Meyer, 14, is the Reform son of Rabbi David Meyer of Temple Em--anu-El in Marblehead. With their acoustic guitars in hand, the teens migrate from classroom to classroom teaching the children Hebrew songs and sharing Jewish ruach (spirit).

It was Jed Filler, Education Director at Temple Emanu-El, who hired and trained Tova and Cory, whose father David also plays guitar, to engage the youngsters.

“I always look for teens to do music with younger kids, because kids really enjoy singing with other kids,” said Filler. “I had Tova shadow me at Camp Menorah last summer so she could learn the ropes. She’s just wonderful with the kids. And Cory is an excellent guitarist who must have music in his genes,” Filler says.

Both Tova and Cory have taken formal guitar lessons and each has been playing for about five years. They have an extensive repertoire of songs they can perform, and they often take requests from the kids. One of the children’s favorite songs is “David Melech Yisroel.”

Tova, who lives in Lynn, is a senior at Maimonides High School in Brookline. She learned about the Temple Emanu-El opportunity through her mother Liora, who teaches kosher cooking at its Sunday School.

“I really enjoy working with kids, so I applied for the position,” says Tova, who also volunteers every Thursday at the JCC preschool as a teacher’s assistant. She ultimately wants to study child psychology.

Cory is a freshman at Marblehead High School. “My dad wanted me to get involved. I enjoy doing this — it gives me the opportunity to practice,” he says.

In addition to the Hebrew melodies, Cory is personally drawn to classic and soft rock, and has even tried writing some of his own material. When he’s not strumming his guitar, he enjoys playing baseball and basketball at Marblehead High.

Next year, Cory will need to find another partner — or he may be on his own. Tova will be leaving the North Shore to study in Jerusalem. The two have appreciated their time together. “It’s interesting how both of our parents are in rabbinate positions. We are different, but we learn from each other,” he remarks.

“It’s neat that we have the children of two local rabbis singing with our kids. The fact that one is Orthodox and the other is Reform is really interesting. Now that’s a mixed marriage,” adds Filler.

His father Herbert Bamel had such fondness of the camp for Jewish boys in Middleboro that he and his wife spent their first married summer together there. Jonathan became a camper as soon as he was old enough.

“I started going in 1966 when I turned seven, and went for 15 summers in a row,” recalls Jonathan, 48. “Like my father, I was the head of waterfront, and ultimately became assistant director. Like my father, I serve on the board of directors — I’m in my third year of doing it.”

And like his father, Jonathan sent his own son Harrison, 10, to Camp Avoda when he came of age. “There is a lot of continuity there between fathers and sons at this camp,” says Jonathan. “Harrison started at age seven, just like me. There was never a choice for him to go anywhere else. He always knew he would wind up there eventually.”

The passing of summer camp experiences from one generation to the next is hardly uncommon. Avoda director Paul Davis, who himself has been associated with the camp for 40 years, estimates that more 95 percent of the staff are former campers. He points out that the camp boasts many multi-generational families like the Bamels.
Parents send their children to camps not only because of their own warm memories, but also as a potent means of transmitting Jewish identity.

“As a kid, I hated going to Hebrew school, yet I found Camp Avoda to be incredible,” says Jonathan. “It was not a religious place, but you picked up Judaism because it’s omnipresent there. Saying blessings before meals becomes matter-of-fact, and you attend services on Saturday morning. They made Shabbat seem really special because it was different from the rest of the week.”

Roberta Minkovitz of Saugus is similarly lavish in her praise for Camp Tel Noar, a co-ed Jewish overnight camp in Hampstead, N.H. she attended every summer from age 11 through 18. She still enjoys flipping through her cherished camp yearbooks, which rekindle wonderful memories for her.

“I absolutely loved camp,” says the 53-year-old mother of two who grew up in Lynn “All my camp friends were from Boston and Worcester. During the off-season, we would meet on the weekends and go shopping or out to lunch.”

When Minkovitz’s daughter Aimee turned eight, she followed her mother’s footsteps to Camp Tel Noar — playing on the volleyball team, participating in camp plays, and, like her mother, serving dinner to the head table.

Like Jonathan Bamel, Minkovitz believes Jewish camp played a huge role in creating a positive Jewish identity for her daughter.

“Aimee grew up in Peabody and was involved in all kinds of Jewish groups,” says Minkovitz. “She was bat mitzvahed at Temple Ner Tamid, and belonged to USY. But it was Jewish camp that made the biggest impression on her.”

Aimee, now 29, attended Tel Noar for nine summers and even met her husband Jason Stone at the camp.
“They are so perfect for each other — they were destined to be together,” says Minkovitz of Aimee and Jason, who married in 2003 and just welcomed their first child, Marlee Gabrielle, on February 5.

“I remember camp so fondly. I looked forward to it for the entire year,” says Aimee, who lives in West Roxbury. “Overnight camp is an amazing experience. It prepares you for going away to college and being on your own. It teaches you about making friends and living with others.”

Not surprisingly, Aimee plans to send her own daughter to Tel Noar when the time arrives.

“Jason and I will always have a special place in our hearts for Camp Tel Noar,” says Aimee.

While overnight camp arguably creates the strongest bonds, even day camps like Camp Menorah in Essex has its share of two- and three-generational families.

Barry Poretsky, 69, spent only one summer at Camp Menorah when he was 10 years old. Yet when he was in his 40s, the now-retired art teacher decided to get a summer job. “I didn’t know that what started out as a second job would grow into an extended family,” he says.

Although his own son and daughter attended different camps, three of his four grandchildren — including Jillian, 10, Jessica, 14, and Andrew, 3, — go to Camp Menorah. He is confident that his newborn grandson, Anthony, will attend when he is old enough.

“Many of the counselors there are former campers, and I’ve watched many kids go from childhood to adulthood,” he says.

Porestsky has served as the arts and crafts instructor at Camp Menorah for 21 seasons, and is still going strong.

He hopes to work at Camp Menorah for another 10-15 years, at which point he might see a fourth generation of Menorah kids.

Although Poretsky cites the lake and sports as big attractions at Camp Menorah, he is particularly happy about the Jewish programming offered by the camp. “My grandchildren, who are not affiliated with any temples, get their Jewish education through Camp Menorah,” he says. “Camp is their only link to Judaism, and it’s important,” he says.

Marian Gorman, the education director at the North Shore Hebrew School, has been awarded the JEA—Torah Aura Curriculum and Administration Award, First Place for “A Siddur Celebration,” a family education program focusing on personal connections to prayer.

The award was conferred by the Jewish Educators Assembly, a professional asso-ci-ation of educators and administrators affiliated with the Conservative movement, and sponsored by Torah Aura Productions, a leading publisher of textbooks for Jewish schools.

Established in New York in 1951, the JEA has developed into a dynamic network of over 450 members from all over North America and Israel that work to maintain standards of excellence in the field of Jewish education.

Israeli settlers battled police officers attempting to dismantle nine houses built illegally on a West Bank hilltop, leaving more than 200 injured, including several members of parliament, in what some have described as the worst confrontation between settlers and security forces Israel has ever witnessed.

According to news reports, thousands of officers were met at the West Bank outpost of Amona on Feb. 1 by mostly young religious Jews who hurled stones and cinder blocks in an effort to stop the house demolitions.

The houses were part of an unauthorized outpost that the government has long said it intended to tear down, along with dozens of others.

The Supreme Court issued a temporary injunction in the middle of the night, delaying the operation for several hours, according to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. Clashes began mid-morning, just moments after the court decided to uphold an earlier ruling permitting the government to dismantle the homes. The New York Times reported that settlers attacked the police with large pieces of concrete as well as light bulbs filled with paint.
Mounted police responded by beating back settlers with batons and opening fire with water cannons. Some 75 protesters were arrested and two people were reported seriously injured, including a 15-year-old boy who suffered a head wound.

Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has taken a tough line with the settlers and has thus far rebuffed calls for an official inquiry into the incident. Settler leaders claim the police used excessive force and they were joined in their call for an investigation by Aryeh Eldad, Efraim Eitam and Benny Alon — three members of the Knesset who were present at Amona during the demolition. Eldad and Eitam spent the night at Hadassah Hospital after being trampled by police horses.

Eldad was quoted as saying of the police, “They’re treating people like Arabs here.”

Tens of thousands took to the streets in downtown Jerusalem on Sunday, Feb. 5, to protest the demolitions.

After the relatively peaceful evacuation of the Gaza Strip settlements this summer, the intensity of the confrontation rocked the country and highlighted a profound rift between young settler radicals and the State of Israel. Some even go so far as to say they no longer feel any allegiance to secular Israel and want to establish a theocratic “State of Judea” in its stead.

The confrontation also brought to the surface differences inside the settler movement itself: The young radicals advocate uncompromising physical resistance to any further withdrawal plans; the moderates argue that the most rational thing the settlers can do is work with the government in drawing up new lines that take their interests into account.

The already-explosive situation is further complicated by the fact that Israel is in the throes of a general election.

For the young settler radicals, the evacuation of the Gaza and northern West Bank settlements was a traumatic experience. For many it caused a major shift in their attitudes to the State of Israel. From ardent Zionists, they became bitter critics, arguing that settlement is a central Zionist tenet, a step toward the coming of the Messiah and, therefore, any state that gives up settlements undermines hope for redemption.

“A growing proportion of the National Religious public is becoming post-Zionist,” said Avihai Boaron, a young lawyer who headed the Amona campaign against the homes’ demolition. “The State of Israel is no longer seen as the beginning of redemption. On the contrary, it is seen to be impeding the natural development of the Jewish people. Not very wisely, Israel is turning good citizens from lovers of the country into, dare I say it, enemies of the state.”

For the moderates, the lesson learned from the Gaza withdrawal is very different. For them, the state remains supreme, and the challenge is to prevent a schism between the rest of the people and the settlers.
JTA contributed to this report.

NITED NATIONS (JTA) — Sixty-one years to the day after the liberation of Auschwitz, the United Nations marked its first-ever Holocaust remembrance day, commemorating those lost in the genocide that was the impetus for the world body’s birth.

The acknowledgment was long overdue, said those who attended the ceremony in a packed General Assembly Hall.

“For us survivors, this commemoration under U.N. auspices is a muted triumph,” said Roman Kent, chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. “It is imperfect justice, for it took 60 years for the crimes committed during the Holocaust to be properly acknowledged by the United Nations.”

Even as speakers harkened back to Nazi atrocities of the last century, the ceremony’s relevance to the present day seemed to be a presence of its own in the large hall.

That’s because it came just a day after Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist group committed to Israel’s destruction, won a landslide victory in Palestinian legislative elections — and just weeks after Iran’s president called for Israel’s destruction and sought to deny the Holocaust.

Meanwhile, an Islamic journalists group reportedly is preparing to host a conference on the Holocaust that a spokesman said will include “those who have spent years of their lives in the study of documents related to the Holocaust and have come to the conclusion that the history books in schools and universities do not correspond to the truth.”

“We sound an alarm, a call to arms, and a wake-up call to the world,” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, told the audience of Holocaust survivors; Jewish, Israeli and other officials; and members of the general Jewish community. “A world in which a member state of this organization calls for wiping Israel off the face of the map. A world in which an extreme and evil regime denies the Holocaust while preparing the next one.”

In a Jan. 20 letter circulated to the General Assembly, a copy of which was obtained by JTA, Iran laid out its opposition to U.N. Holocaust commemoration, taking issue with the body’s recognition of the suffering of “a particular ethnicity or religion” and calling for the exploration of “different aspects of historical events without any arbitrary restrictions” — a clear nod to Holocaust denial.

“Regrettably, the Zionist regime has routinely attempted to exploit the sufferings of the Jewish people in the past as a cover for its crimes being perpetrated today against Palestinians in the occupied territories, including massacre, demolition of houses, properties and farmlands, as well as acts of state terrorism,” the letter states.
In a videotaped address to the memorial ceremony, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan did not refer to Iran by name, but took aim at comments like those of its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“Remembering is a necessary rebuke to those who say the Holocaust never happened or has been exaggerated,” Annan said. “Holocaust denial is the work of bigots. We must reject their false claims whenever, wherever and by whomever they are made.”

“Let us pledge ourselves to even greater efforts to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity,” he added.
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which helped organize the event, echoed Annan’s call for action.

“It’s not just Ahmadinejad,” he told JTA following the ceremony. “Ahmadinejad has given public expression to what’s going on every day in the Arab and Muslim press.”

Last year, the General Assembly held a session for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
The event marked the first time the body observed the new International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, which was mandated in an assembly resolution.

While the event was emotional and successful, the vast majority of those attending were survivors and members of the Jewish community, not representatives from U.N. member states, an Israeli official noted.

However, the official did note the presence of European representatives, including ambassadors.
The ceremony included a performance of music by Holocaust victims by Boston’s Zamir Chorale, along with remarks from the president of the General Assembly, Jan Eliasson of Sweden; Gerda Weissmann Klein, whose story was told in the Academy Award-winning documentary “One Survivor Remembers” and who offered a moving recollection of her Holocaust experience; and Yehuda Bauer, an academic and adviser to Yad Vashem.

“To all those today who hesitate to act against anti-Semitic propaganda, the question must be posed: Have you not learned your lesson?” Bauer asked.

Gillerman, the Israeli ambassador, concluded his remarks from the podium by removing a kippah from his pocket, placing it on his head, and quoting the Book of Psalms, in Hebrew: “May God Give His People Strength,” he said. “May God Bless His People With Peace.”

Ron Kampeas
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

WASHINGTON (JTA) — A Palestinian academic affiliated with Brandeis University dismissed allegations that he is linked to Islamic Jihad, and says he’s not worried about attempts to persuade Jewish groups to cut him off.

Khalil Shikaki’s employment at the Boston-area, Jewish-sponsored university came under fire from the Zionist Organization of America, which called on donors to reconsider their relationship with Brandeis. ZOA alleged that Shikaki distributed funds on behalf of figures associated with Islamic Jihad.

Shikaki, who heads the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah in the West Bank, co-teaches a course at Brandeis on peacemaking with an Israeli and an Egyptian academic.

He told JTA that the FBI interviewed him in 2003, showing him transcripts of 1995 conversations with Sameeh Hammoudeh, who was acquitted Dec. 6 in a Florida court of charges that he helped fund the Palestinian terrorist group.

Shikaki said the conversations, secretly recorded by the FBI, concerned funds for an orphanage in the West Bank city of Nablus run by his in-laws. The FBI never contacted him again, he said.

The government argued in its case against Hammoudeh and three others that “orphanages” was a code word for Islamic Jihad, an organization led by Shikaki’s brother Fatih until he was slain by Israeli agents in Malta in 1995.

The revelation of the tapped conversations in the New York Sun led the ZOA and some individuals to call on Brandeis, a university with a strong Jewish donor base, to cut off Shikaki.

The ZOA “urged donors to reconsider their support for Brandeis unless the university responds appropriately,” it said in a statement.

Brandeis says it is standing by Shikaki, noting that U.S. law enforcement never pursued any action against him.

“We believe that we still live in a country where people are presumed innocent until proven guilty,” Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz said in a statement. “If anyone has any real evidence against this individual, then they should bring it forward. The university has complete faith in the United States’ law enforcement agencies, and no charges have ever been brought against Professor Shikaki. Should something arise in the future, the university will take that into account and act accordingly.”

“The standard shouldn’t be ‘innocent until proven guilty;’ that’s woefully inadequate,” Klein told JTA. “There should be no taint at all.”

Shikaki, whose polls have uncovered strains of moderation among Palestinian voters, says he often has been the target of such campaigns by supporters of Israel who oppose compromise with the Palestinians.

Another such campaign did not prevent him from addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference in 2004, he said.

“I’m aware of people who have tried to prevent American Jewish groups from associating with me,” he said. “In all cases, they have failed.”

He suggested that such groups fear Palestinian moderation will hasten Israeli withdrawals from land the Palestinians claim.

“We’re upset about his being at Brandeis because the evidence is too strong he is involved with terrorist groups, and I’ve never heard him unequivocally condemning the Palestinian Authority for not dismantling terrorists,” Klein said.

Leslie Susser
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Hamas’ sweeping election victory is forcing all key players to reassess their positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has created a widespread sense of uncertainty about the future, with Israelis, Palestinians and outside observers raising a host of fundamental questions.

The big question is whether Hamas in power will moderate its radical positions or put Palestinian society on a collision course with Israel and the Western world.

There will be enormous pressure on Hamas to adopt a more pragmatic line. The European Union, which provides up to 90 percent of international aid to the Palestinians, is threatening to suspend its economic support unless Hamas recognizes Israel’s right to exist and renounces violence.

In the short term, cutting off these funds could leave a Hamas government unable to pay the salaries of 155,000 Palestinian civil servants, including the 30,000-strong Palestinian Authority security forces.

A militant Hamas also will face international isolation, giving Israel the moral and diplomatic high ground for tough responses to Palestinian terror.

Therefore, while it won an outright majority of 74 of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council, Hamas wants the defeated Fatah movement to stay on in the government to give it a semblance of respectability.
Still, Hamas for now probably will refuse to moderate its ideology, which calls for Israel’s destruction. Indeed, there are strong opposing pressures on Hamas to maintain its radical line.

Iran, for example, could make up for some funds the European Union withholds — on condition that Hamas remains militant. Fidelity to its ideology, and goading by other militant groups, also could shunt Hamas away from moderation.

The organization’s formal position is that there can be no talks with Israel until it withdraws to its pre-1967 boundaries, divides Jerusalem and takes in vast numbers of Palestinian refugees, positions that are unacceptable to Israel. Until then, Hamas says, all contacts will be through third parties.

For Israel, the growth of Iranian influence in the Palestinian arena would be dangerous. Hawks like the Likud Party’s Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, see a tightening of an Iranian-controlled terrorist belt around Israel, with the Lebanese-based Hezbollah to the north and Hamas and other Palestinian militants in the center and south.

A lot will depend on the choice Hamas makes between Iran and the rest of the international community.

The Israeli intelligence assessment is that Hamas will continue to observe the cease-fire that most Palestinian terrorist groups declared in early 2005, at least in the short term. What happens next will depend on the long-term strategy that Hamas, with all the constraints of power, decides to adopt. As for terrorist acts by other militants, such as Islamic Jihad, Hamas, with its radical ideology, will be in no position to condemn them.

Some Israelis are saying this will make it easier for Israel to cope. There will be no more masks or double talk, analysts say, such as when the Palestin-ian Authority condemned terror to the outside world but did nothing to stop it. With Hamas in power, they add, Israelis are likely to be more united in fighting terrorism and to get more international support for counter-terrorist activities.

What are Israel’s options? Government policy is shaping up as the following: No talks with Hamas, insistence on the “road map” peace plan’s demands for a renunciation of terrorism and disarming of militias, consideration of further unilateral withdrawals, rapid completion of the West Bank security fence, targeting of the Islamic Jihad militia and carrot-and-stick use of Israel’s economic leverage.

After a Cabinet meeting on Jan. 29, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced that the government would not hold peace talks with Hamas until it recognized Israel, renounced terrorism and accepted previous agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel also would refuse to hand tax money to the Palestinians until it was clear where the money was going, he said.

“We have no intention of transferring funds that will be used for terrorism,” Olmert declared.

Visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel was one of the first major world leaders to give the Israeli position her unqualified support. After meeting Olmert in Jerusalem on Jan. 29, she endorsed the three Israeli conditions: “If Hamas does not change, it would be unthinkable for the E.U. or for Germany bilaterally to support the P.A. government with money, as we do today,” she told waiting reporters.

WILLIAMSTOWN — A picturesque New England college town is finding it isn’t immune to racial intolerance and anti-Semitic slurs.

For the past month, local media reports have disclosed charges of bullying at Mt. Greylock Regional School District in western Massachusetts directed against Billy George, a 12-year-old boy who is a seventh-grader at the district’s middle school.

His parents, Kathi and Fred George, say he has been the victim of 11 assaults since the beginning of the school year, some of which include racist and anti-Semitic slurs and threats.

Mt. Greylock, nestled into the snow-covered Berkshire mountains, serves students in grades seven through 12 from Williamstown, home to prestigious Williams College.

Among the disturbing and ironic twists to the Georges’ story is the fact that the George family, longtime residents of Williamstown, is not Jewish.

But Fred George, Billy’s father, is a third-generation Lebanese American whose family has lived in Williamstown for 53 years.

Fred and Kathi George, who is white, now believe Billy was “picked on” because of Billy’s dark skin color.

The Georges have three daughters; the two oldest are adopted, a fact they note because they are white-skinned and never experienced any discrimination in the schools. Their biological daughter, a senior at Mt. Greylock High School, is also darker-skinned.

“At first, I didn’t even think of the racial comments,” Kathi George recalls during a recent conversation at the family’s kitchen table which, since Nov. 14, is also serving as Billy’s classroom, as he is now being home-schooled by his parents and a private tutor. “Then when we started looking to these instances, and there were more and more of them, it always seemed there was a nasty name that went along with the attack. It was like somebody slapped me in the face,” George says. “This is not because they think he’s small, it’s because they think he’s different. That was the most unbelievable realization for me.”

In a statement to the police on Nov. 15, Billy George wrote that among other incidents, two boys began kicking him repeatedly a day before while he was sitting down in a school corridor, tying his shoes.

Earlier in the day, Billy George alleges that one of those boys came up behind him and asked if he was a “[expletive] Jew.”

In recent weeks, the school department has responded to the Georges’ allegations in a variety of ways, according to William Travis, Mt. Greylock’s school superintendent, including expanding anti-bullying and tolerance-related programs into the elementary schools, a key to establishing a common framework for students as they enter middle school.

Travis asserts he has seen no anti-Semitism or racist patterns of behavior at the school, but acknowledges that comments such as those alleged by Billy George are unacceptable.

In a conversation at the Jewish Federation of Berkshire County, director Arlene Schiff says she wrote to the chairman of the school committee at Mt. Greylock, offering to help establish a program to combat prejudice, similar to one she and Travis created in Pittsfield when Travis was superintendent in that city. The chairman thanked her in a phone call, but declined her offer, Schiff says.

NEW YORK (JTA) — Betty Friedan, who died Feb. 4 at 85, was loud and sometimes imperious, yet she could be charming, funny, gentle, kind and winsome.

Though she exuded self-confidence, her vulnerabilities were there for all to see. She could fix her eyes and set her jaw in a ‘take no prisoners’ position, but she could also listen to opposite views, change her mind, and soften at the distress of others.

She was universal woman and particular Jew. The word Jewish does not appear at all in “The Feminine Mystique,” her seminal work, yet every heartbeat was a Jewish one.

Once, in her 50s, after fame, fortune and independence had filled her life, she asked one favor of friends — to find her a nice Jewish husband.

She wrote about drudgery and mindlessness of family work, yet her family was the sustained love of her life. She was totally invested in her children and longed for grandchildren well before they came.

She spawned the most profound social revolution of the last few centuries without a drop of blood being shed. She will go down in history as one of the great change agents of modern history; and for us, she will be a continuing source of Jewish pride, characterized in our own history books as one of the contributions we made to the world.

The underlying idea Betty Friedan offered the world was gender equality. This meant much more than the women’s vote. It meant equal access, equal talent and brains, equal dignity of women — and all of it a matter of justice.

She did not adequately answer for me the question of equal careers and who would make lunch for hungry toddlers, prepare for Shabbat dinner with guests, or meet the school bus each afternoon. But once she implanted in our minds and hearts the idea of equality of genders, once she posited this as ethics rather than as a battle between the sexes, each of us would work out the details in our own lives.

In 1963, I made no connection between feminism and Jewish religious life. But others did. These were a handful of Jewish women of the 1960s who were writing about or modeling the new values, women who mediated secular feminism into Jewish feminism. Once these pioneering Jewish feminists established the connections, I could apply them to my own community — not out of a sense of abuse for still I felt none, but out of a sense of ethics, of meeting the original biblical paradigm — male and female created as equals in the image of God.
Betty never denied her Jewishness. In fact she wore it proudly. She spoke of how Jewish values of justice had influenced her feminism, indeed her entire outlook on life. Later, we would learn that being a smart, Jewish girl growing up in Peoria, Ill., shaped her sensitivities as an outsider and sharpened her abilities to engage in confrontation.

She saw Jewish feminism as a logical extension of secular feminism — access, education, the need for “outside” or public roles as well as inside ones; freedom to control one’s destiny in marriage and divorce.

Jewish history is full of flawed models, sometimes more powerful because of their flaws, and certainly more accessible. Betty was straight as an arrow. What you saw was what you got, including anger or bruised ego. But that made the love, the caring, the creative mind, the generous spirit, the passion for justice all the more precious. May her memory be for a blessing.Blu Greenberg is founding president of JOFA, the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, and founding chair of One Voice: Jewish Women for Israel.

Susan Jacobs
Jewish Journal Staff

In the summer of 1944, when he was 14 years old, Imre Kertesz was separated from his assimilated Jewish family in Budapest and hauled off to a series of concentration camps where he spent a year struggling to survive. After liberation, he returned to Budapest and received a surprisingly hostile reaction from his former friends and neighbors, Jewish and Christian alike.
Kertesz, who won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002, published “Fateless” in 1975, a fictional account of a young survivor from Budapest named Gyuri Köves, whose experiences at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Zeitz were remarkably similar to his own.

Now, the story is coming to the big screen with the opening of the film version of “Fateless” in Boston on Feb. 17. The film is directed by acclaimed cinematographer Lajos Koltai, who read “Fateless” in 2001 and was impressed with Kertesz’s poetic treatment of a difficult subject. Although he had never directed a feature, Koltai could visualize a dramatic version of the material and, when he met the author, found they shared a similar vision for the film adaptation.

“There is no key scene in the story that the entire film could build up to,” said Koltai. “Instead, things happen quietly. In a film, it is hard to give up big, emotionally charged moments and quietly follow a soul. But this was our challenge.”

The soul in question is portrayed by Marcell Nagy, a 15-year-old actor who Koltai found on the set of a Hungarian-Italian TV movie and, after repeated auditions, cast in the lead role. Nagy agreed to a starvation diet to help Koltai — who insisted on accuracy — illustrate Gyuri’s physical transformation during his ordeal. Similarly, the filmmakers had special sets built to shoot the stark concentration camp scenes rather than rely on computer technology,

The film fares well visually, thanks to Koltai’s experience as a cinematographer working on the films “Mephisto” and “Being Julia.” He and cinematographer Gyula Pados altered the film’s lighting to mirror Gyuri’s reality. As the boy sinks further into the nightmarish world of the Holocaust, the color palate becomes more monochromatic and dreary. As the life is drained from the character, the color is literally drained from the film.

At 140 minutes, the epic is way too long, however the director says that was intentional. “Things happen step by step, leading the viewer beautifully up an emotional stairway,” explains Koltai, in defense of the slow pace.

The valiant film depicts the small kindnesses experienced by some camp inmates — the sharing of a chunk of meat discovered in the carrot soup, or a prisoner literally giving another the coat off his back. The atrocities are duly noted as well — Gyuri’s swollen knee infested with crawling insects, and the way he kept a dead man hidden under a blanket to secure an extra food ration for himself.

Though it contains several beautiful, haunting images, the film’s weakness is that it fails to bring to light anything new about the Holocaust. Thematic explorations of the will to live, or of kindness and happiness amidst tragedy, have been explored before in other films and books.

“Fateless” opens at Boston’s Kendall Square Cinema on February 17. Call 617-499-1996 for showtimes.

Oprah Winfrey’s recent selection of Elie Wiesel’s “Night” for her book club will introduce millions of Americans to Holocaust literature and give the entire genre a big readership boost.

I hope this means thousands more will read Eugene Pogany’s marvelous family saga, “In My Brother’s Image: Twin Brothers Separated by Faith After the Holocaust.”

Almost every writer has a personal reason for choosing a subject. Pogany told me in a telephone interview that he wanted “to probe the silences in my family story … I wanted to fathom the religious differences in the family.”
Both Wiesel’s and Pogany’s books deal with the lives of Hungarian Jews sent in the early 1940s to concentration camps where they suffered incredible mistreatment. Wiesel, in fact, describes the Pogany book on its cover as “power-packed and poignant….highly readable and deeply moving.”

And for me, moving it was. I read the book over three days, including 45 minutes on a treadmill at the Jewish Community Center, and another hour drinking coffee at Starbucks. I think I generated enough tears — though as a macho man I tried to hide them — to inspire concern from others in both locations. My heart and soul were touched.

Pogany’s grandparents were born Jewish and converted to Catholicism after they married in 1912. The grandfather converted in order to qualify for a veterinary job in the civil service; the grandmother was attracted to the spirit of her new faith.

The author’s father, Miklos, and his twin brother, Gyuri, were born and circumcised as Jews before their parents converted. But both were later baptized and were not unhappy to be part of the awe and majesty of the church.

When war came, being a Jewish convert to Catholicism provided no shelter from the concentration camps. The author’s parents, Miklos and Muci, barely survived. During their ordeal, they cast off Catholicism and sincerely reclaimed their Jewish identity before finally settling in the United States.

Twin brother Gyuri, however, became a Catholic priest and, through a lucky turn of events, spent the war years in a rural Italian monastery, untouched by the war.

The brothers reunited after the war but could not bridge the emotional issues aroused by the destruction of Hungarian Jewry. The priest never inquired of his twin brother’s concentration camp experience. Perhaps, says Pogany, he simply was unable to look beyond the Catholic Church’s party line that all that was done to save the Jews was all that could be done.

The book opens with the grandparents’ marriage in January 1912. It ends in 1996 when the author and his 84 year-old father return to Hungary, walk the area where the family home once stood, and find the gravesites of their forebears.
In between is a well-written tale of a family beset with religious doubts and dilemmas, living in one of the worst countries in the world during the worst ten years in modern Jewish history.

The conflicts and confrontations, the questions and answers, the baring of soul and spirit, the sober assessment of the Catholic Church — both its attraction as a saving faith and its shameful complicity with Nazi and Hungarian fascism — will keep you glued to the pages.

The final question I asked the author was whether the research and writing of the book has influenced his practice of psychotherapy.

Dr. Pogany replied: “It underscored how important unresolved grief is in our lives and how it can be transmitted from generation to generation. Parents and children need to reconcile before death takes away the opportunity; we need to say the unsaid before someone dies.”

Pogany, a Newton-based psychoanalyst, will speak at Temple Sinai, Marblehead, on February 12, at 4:30 p.m..

Cabaret Couple Showcase Original Music in Gloucester
Gail Lowe
Special to The Journal

Composer, pianist and former Gloucester resident David Alpher and his wife and lyricist, Jennie Litt, are looking forward to reuniting with fans and old friends on Cape Ann next week. The cabaret duo’s new show, “Songs in a Moribund Idiom,” is scheduled for Friday and Saturday, Feb. 17-18, at the West End Theater in Gloucester.

“I lived in Gloucester for 14 years, and there are a lot of people there I’m fond of,” said Alpher. “I’m looking forward to reconnecting with them.”

Alpher and Litt will showcase their original works on diverse topics such as the weaponization of space, the TV Food Network, driver-recognition technology and the timeless mystery of weight loss.
The performance highlights Alpher’s sophisticated, tuneful, humorous music, which embraces styles from jazz to blues to faux Dvorak. The show is in the tradition of another New England-bred talent, Tom Lehrer — humorous songs and social satire — to the tune of a virtuoso piano.

Alpher, a composer of modern chamber music and a classical pianist, creates works that are unique, eclectic blends of influences including jazz, American folksong, theater music and the classical tradition, many of which often enjoy repeat performances.

Music critics have called the husband and wife duo a “perfect musical ensemble.” Individually, Alpher has been compared to Leonard Bernstein and has received accolades for his brilliant playing. Litt has won rave reviews for her lovely voice and ability to “sell a song.”

Several of Alpher’s classical compositions have achieved international fame, most notably his multimedia work “Las Meninas: Variations,” inspired by Velazquez and Picasso paintings, and “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” a jazz-influenced setting of the Lewis Carroll poem.

Litt, a graduate of the renowned Iowa Writers Workshop, has been a featured performer at New York City clubs, including Don’t Tell Mama and Madame X, and has performed with New York cabaret favorite Frans Bloem and jazz artist Frederick Bush. Alpher is former musical director of Israel Horovitz’s Gloucester Stage Company and founder of the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, which he also co-directed for ten years.

For reservations, call 978-281-0680. Tickets are $15 ($10 for seniors and veterans). Performances are at 8 p.m.
Gail Lowe is a freelance writer and principal of WordPower, a marketing and event management company based in Danvers and Lynn.

Rhonda Rohtstein
Jewish Journal Staff

At a time when the rise of Internet dating and swelling ranks of career women have made finding a mate a whole new game, singles can use some up-to-date wisdom. Harvard grad Nancy Slotnick provides it with “Turn Your Cablight On: Get Your Dream Man in Six Months or Less,” a book filled with worthwhile — and refreshingly concise — advice.

Slotnick feels women are off track in their pursuit of a man and she instructs them to send out the right signal — to turn their cablight on — by appearing less intimidating and more vulnerable.

“I found this to be a struggle myself,” Slotnick confesses. “I did not have the best luck dating. When I was assertive things would happen, so I created this cool business.”

Slotnick did not set out to be a dating guru. The Boston native began her career as a headhunter in New York City after graduating from Harvard with a degree in psychological anthropology. “It was a great career and something I was good at,” Slotnick writes in the book, “but one day I realized I was often more interested in my clients’ love lives than their careers.” Thus began her new profession as a dating coach.

Her first move in the matchmaking industry was Drip Café, a coffee shop she opened on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in 1996, where the unattached would fill out dating profiles while enjoying coffee and treats. She admits the project was a bit extreme, considering her real motive was to find a mate of her own.

Though the café did produce many successful pairings, Slotnick and her husband Dan Aferiat were not one of them. Aferiat, a licensed psychologist, also imparts insight and commentary on dating throughout the book. “My husband is in the same business,” Slotnick told the Journal by phone from New York. “He knows people must strategize about these things. It is very clear there are tactics you employ; everyone uses tactics.”

The tactics Slotnick employed to catch her husband — she refers to it as ‘my program’ — lie at the heart of “Turn Your Cablight On.” Turning on the light entails anything from buying a pair of sexy jeans, to dispensing with high-maintenance friendships that drag on your social life, to just exuding confidence and openness. For instance, if a guy calls once you can call him back (light on), but don’t wait for him to call back (light off), and most importantly, don’t call him first (blackout).

“The idea is to appear not desperate, but available,” says Slotnick. Or to absurdly extend a metaphor, keep your lights on medium wattage rather than high beams.

Slotnick speaks with evident enthusiasm; she is clearly passionate about helping women find their dream man. But the program does require dedication and time, about fifteen hours per week, consisting of anything from attending a class (co-ed of course) to posting an online profile to going on dates. Slotnick surmises one would find at least that amount of time to spend with a partner, so why not devote the same amount of time to the process?

The first section of “Turn Your Cablight On” includes an espousal of traditional roles in courtship, an idea some might regard as anti-feminist. But as the book progresses, Slotnick conveys a more liberal attitude. She encourages her readers to have sex whenever they feel like it, even on a first date, but only if they are convinced he is not the one.
“Maybe I am an anomaly in a way,” she says. “When dating, I think feminist yet traditional roles work best; therefore, do what works best. Many career women would make great catches but these women’s personal lives have suffered — they have reached their professional goals but not their personal goals. Men are necessary. Women want men in their lives and it is crucial to their happiness.”

Slotnick intimates that the feminist movement inflicted a disservice by embarrassing or demeaning a woman for “looking.”
“This is serious stuff,” says Slotnick. “Now I am really helping people find their true happiness.”

The violence that greeted the reprinting of a number of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad has been rightly condemned by our government and those of our European allies.

But listen closely, and subtle cracks appear in the wall of disapproval. Britain’s foreign minister criticized the European media for reprinting the Danish cartoons. The Vatican went one better, saying “the right to freedom of thought and expression cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers.” And even our own State Department has waffled, calling the cartoons “unacceptable.”

Perhaps diplomacy requires moderation in the face of escalating tensions. But the line coming from London, Rome and Washington is fundamentally wrong. Freedom of thought and speech entails precisely the right to offend. If personal expression can be curtailed by the conservative sensibilities of those it might upset, it ceases to be genuine expression at all.

When the state-sponsored media of the very same countries whose citizens are now so unsettled printed cartoons of Israel’s prime minister with bloody fangs, no foreign minister found it necessary to caution against insulting another religion. That’s because Jews never took to the streets and destroyed the embassies of the offending countries.

Nor will Jews erupt in violence now that Iran, has upped the ante by having its largest newspaper solicit cartoons that question the Holocaust. “The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression,” explained an editor, “so let’s see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons.”

The real test of the West’s freedoms is not whether its newspapers print vile Holocaust denial, but whether its people burn Iranian embassies in protest. Freedom of expression — arguably the cornerstone of Western civilization — requires tolerating the non-violent expression of others, even when it offends — indeed, precisely when it offends.

It is fine for Muslims to express their outrage at depictions of their revered prophet. But the speed with which Islamic anger evolves into Islamic violence is something European leaders should roundly condemn, not indulge with warnings about offending the faithful.

In a recent speech to members of the Yankee Dental Congress in Boston, Jerry Seinfeld joked about the “trashification” of America. The moment we purchase something, he said, it’s already on its way to becoming trash. Our purchase takes its place of honor on the kitchen table, and then ultimately ends up on a shelf where it is soon forgotten.

Seinfeld made me think not only of the rampant consumerism in which some of us indulge, but also sadly of our Jewish community agencies. Have we put them on the shelf? Have we been so blessed by the range and quality of the services available to us that we no longer value them?

Having served for twenty years as a lay leader and now as a professional, I look at the comings and goings of our community with an experienced eye and I’m dismayed by what I see. Our Jewish community is bleeding. Our once healthy and vibrant community appears the latest victim of -trashification.

The signs of trashification are everywhere. Affiliation is on the decline, with many younger families living on two incomes saying they cannot afford the cost of being Jewish. The efforts of hard working professionals throughout the community are often trashed. Our buildings need investment and their infrastructure is crumbling. Synagogues are struggling to meet payroll and cannot fix leaky holes in their roofs. Agencies are living on lines of credit. And the younger generation is largely uninspired and uncompelled to participate Jewishly with their time and money.

This is not a new problem, but rather has been building for more than two decades. Twenty-one years ago the Federation campaign raised $3 million; today we are looking at less than $2 million. We have been under the illusion that all is well, but all is not well. We are standing on the shoulders of the giants who built this community, and yet we do not see how to move our community forward.

We are blessed to live in an era when the Jewish people enjoy full participation in all aspects of American life. What are we doing with the choices available to us? Are we seeking out the latest iPod for our children or trying to instill healthy values in a vibrant community? Perhaps we, as a Jewish community, have outlived our usefulness. After all, nobody needs to belong to the JCC any more, preschools exist everywhere, don’t they? And who cares about Jewish education? It is expensive, the public schools will do, and then we can afford golf and tennis lessons. And synagogues, well everyone knows they were built simply as a monument to someone’s ego. Let’s get rid of them.

I wish I had Seinfeld’s sense of humor and that this was a joke. But these are the issues our community is confronting today. Many of us think to ourselves, what can I do about it? Thankfully, we have some hard working people looking at these issues and asking for your participation.

Every member of this community has been invited to a series of meetings about Project Solel, the strategic planning effort aimed at nothing less than saving our community. Solel’s leaders have developed a series of recommendations aimed at revitalizing the community, and are now actively soliciting feedback. Come out, hear for yourself and speak up. Don’t sit home and complain you were never interviewed, or that the project is insufficiently transparent, or that the leadership or the methodology of the project is wanting.

We Jews are too few in number to leave the hard work to someone else. I urge you not to put our Jewish community on the shelf. This is a high stakes project. If nothing changes, we may be forced to sell the JCC to a developer, or to close Cohen Hillel Academy and send our children to Boston, or to continue to merge all our synagogues until we only have one or two in each community. Were that to occur, this community would no longer be defined by the strength of its Jewish identity.

We owe it to our grandparents as well as our grandchildren not to allow that to happen.

You’ve got to give credit where credit is due. Those Muslim SRZs (super-religious zealots) sure know how to manage a worldwide Spontaneously Planned Protest, perfectly timed to distract from other issues important to them.

Imagine being able to mount violent demonstrations in 20 or 30 cities, with the same slogans being chanted, the same over-the-head clenched fists and — here’s the biggie — a plentiful supply of Danish flags to burn. Who would have thought that Danish flags were in such good supply in all the Arab capitals?

The Muslim SRZs would have the world believe this violence is really about the cartoons published in a Danish newspaper, that these are a people’s spontaneous uprisings, and that they don’t know that Western governments do not control what gets printed in their newspapers.

By now most of us know that these offensive cartoons first appeared last September, some five months ago.

You don’t have to hold a Ph.D. in political science to see through the propaganda. To see that perhaps these violent demonstrations all over the world, fueled by self-righteous statements from the heads of many Arab countries, are designed to divert attention from two key issues, as well as to give the appearance of Arab power and solidarity.

The first issue, of course, is the possible United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran’s nuclear development, a program which, once attained, will threaten a dozen countries in the Middle East and beyond.

The second is the recent Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections and the continuing question of whether foreign aid will continue to flow to a country dedicated, in word and deed, to the destruction of Israel.

What a good job the Spontaneously Planned Protests have done in replacing these other issues in the worldwide media.

But even more important is the message these demonstrations send: If we can mount protests of such ferocity over a few cartoons in a small newspaper, in a small nation with an obscure language, imagine what we Muslims are capable of doing if sanctions fall upon Iran or Hamas.

So far, some newspapers have rerun the offensive cartoons as a sign of solidarity with their beleaguered Danish newspaper colleagues. For them, the issue is freedom of the press.

I like that idea, but must admit that political cartoons like those depicting Israel as a Nazi nation make me want to at least smash an egg on the head of the cartoonist. Regardless, most of us would not burn an embassy to protest an offensive item in a newspaper.

I like less the fact that some Western politicians are trying to mollify the street by showing sympathy with the demonstrators. Too bad that the Arab street is controlled by Muslim clergy and the demonstrators will not be listening to the simpatico Western pronouncements.

Rather, I would ask those Muslim leaders why demonstrations have not been launched against the suicide bombers and terrorist killers of 20,000 innocent Iraqi civilians over the past three years. My take is that the same Muslim leaders behind the cartoon uprising are the ones behind the daily murders in Iraq.

What about the attitudes and opinions of the citizenry at large in the non-Muslim countries around the world, particularly in North America and Western Europe? What will we think of all this? What will we remember? How will these events carry over to politicians and parties vying for power and votes in the future?

Or will the Super Bowl, to be played six hours from the time I sit here writing, be what most people remember six months from now?

Elie Wiesel must be heartened that Oprah Winfrey selected his 1960 book “Night” for her monthly book club. Anointment by Oprah sends a book’s sales into the stratosphere. Wiesel doesn’t strike me as a writer who is chasing either fame or money, but I expect he savors the opportunity to raise Holocaust awareness among millions of new readers.

I’d feel better, however, if the selection weren’t tied to Oprah’s spin control over the James Frey controversy. When an investigative website reported that Frey embellished the facts for his 2003 addiction memoir, “A Million Little Pieces,” Oprah, who had promoted the book in October, was unapologetic. Despite the author’s inventions, she wrote, “the underlying message of redemption in James Frey’s memoir still resonates with me.”

Frey’s fabrications set off a round of navel-gazing about the nature of Truth and autobiography, and Oprah upped the ante when she announced her selection of “Night.” For Wiesel, it may be a case of being careful what you wish for.

The choice immediately set off an old argument about whether to classify “Night” as fiction or nonfiction. Barnes & Noble and Amazon both said they were removing “Night” from their fiction lists and labeling it nonfiction. The Forward brought up a story from 1996 about Jewish studies professor Naomi Seidman, who found discrepancies between the Yiddish and French versions of Wiesel’s book — although the differences were more in tone and philosophy than the actual facts of Wiesel’s experiences at Auschwitz.

Wiesel himself was forced to clear the air in an interview with The New York Times. The book “is not a novel at all,” Wiesel said. “All the people I describe were with me there. I object angrily if someone mentions it as a novel.”

And yet, in the past, Wiesel hasn’t helped matters in this regard. In 1972, Hill & Wang packaged “Night” with two other books, “Dawn” and “The Accident,” which Wiesel clearly identified as novels. The set’s cover refers to the works as “Three Tales by Elie Wiesel.” In a later edition of the same volume, Wiesel refers to all three books as “narratives,” although he calls “Night” a “testimony,” and the other two “commentaries.”

I suspect that Wiesel is being neither coy nor deceptive, but in fact modest about the aspirations of memoir. He appears to be saying that “Night” is a true “testimony” about what he experienced at Auschwitz, but that all memoirs are by their nature subjective. In shaping raw material into a narrative, a writer must also decide what to leave out and leave in. Acknowledging this is humility, not post-modernism.

And it is a far cry from Frey’s deception, in which he inflated a brief detainment into a three-month incarceration and apparently altered details of his drug and alcohol rehabilitation in ways that can’t simply be chalked up to poor memory or a matter of interpretation.

Still, the person who seems to have suffered most from Frey’s deceptions is Frey himself. The stakes in a debate about Holocaust memoirs are infinitely higher. The Forward doesn’t mention this, but Seidman’s article has become, unwittingly, a favorite among Holocaust deniers. Anticipating this, some historians, like Peter Novick, suggest that survivors’ memories “are not a very useful historical source. Or, rather, some may be, but we don’t know which ones.”

Manhattan attorney Menachem Rosensaft, chair of the editorial board of the Holocaust Survivors’ Memoirs Project, rejects Novick’s thesis out of hand. “Novick and others who dismiss the survivors’ accounts basically are saying they rely more on German documents regardless of accuracy,” Rosensaft told me. “They give greater weight to the diaries of Goebbels or Eichmann than they do to the memoirs or diaries of the victims.”

Rosensaft’s Memoirs Project does submit the manuscripts it publishes to historians at Yad Vashem, where they are vetted for “glaring inaccuracies.” The testimonies’ worth, said Rosensaft, is what they reveal beyond the statistics and impersonal facts of history. “‘This is what it was like,’ they say. ‘This is what it felt like, this is what I experienced.’”

Of course, Frey uses a similar defense, defining a memoir as “an individual’s perception of what happened in their own life.”

So how do you decide when a memoirist breaks his pact with the reader and the truth? It’s a matter of degree. After allowing for simple mistakes or events that can honestly be interpreted in different ways by different witnesses, you need to trust that the writer attempted to get the “gettable” facts right — dates, locations, participants. I hesitate to compare Frey to Wiesel, but there is no question that Wiesel was at Auschwitz when he says he was.

Oprah blurs these clear distinctions. The timing of her choice seems to be a challenge to readers and reporters, as if to say, “Frey is no different from Elie Wiesel in that all memoirists shape the raw materials of reality in highly personal ways. I dare you to call ‘Night’ a fraud.”

Oprah is holding up “Night” — and by extension, the Holocaust — as a shield against her critics. If that was her intent, it’s incredibly, even obscenely, cynical. And if it wasn’t her intent, someone on Team Oprah should have anticipated that it could only be interpreted that way.

Parshat B’shalach/Shabbat Shira
Sing A Song of Gratitude

ROBERT S. GOLDSTEIN

Robert S. Goldstein is the rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Andover..

In this week’s parsha we learn about our ancestors’ dramatic departure from Egypt. After ten plagues and Pharaoh’s fickleness, when the Israelites saw an opportunity to escape, they took it.

The first leg of their journey to freedom was fraught with difficulties. The Israelites left in such haste, there was no time to take adequate food; even the bread dough did not have time to rise. And they did not take a direct route. Knowing the people would become dispirited if they had to defend themselves against the Philistines, God led them on a circuitous path, south from Goshen toward the Sea of Reeds.

If that wasn’t enough, when they reached the sea, the people saw Pharaoh’s army quickly approaching. They cried out to Moses, “What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt! Let us be … and we will serve the Egyptians, for it is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

Again, God came to their rescue and split the sea. The Israelites escaped the oncoming army. When Pharaoh’s army reached the middle of the sea, the wheels of their chariots locked in the mud, the two walls of water fell upon them, and they all perished. Grateful for their salvation, Moses sang a song of praise to God: Az yashir Moshe oov’nay Yisrael. “And then Moses and the Israelites sang.”

Rashi, the famous eleventh century commentator from Troyes, France, notes the unusual use of the word az, “then Moses sang.” What was Moses thinking in that split second before he began his song of praise to God?

Perhaps Moses’ hesitation reflected the Israelites’ acknowledgement of their close brush with death. What about the suffering of the Egyptians? Are they not, as a popular Midrash teaches, the work of God’s hands as well?

Contemporary commentator Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg points out the dialectic that runs through the song, which is known as Shirat ha-Yam (The Song at the Sea). It begins with Moses’ joy and his desire to praise God for his people’s rescue, but at the same time, reflects his trauma and resulting near speechlessness.

The entire Song is, in fact, a study in contrasts. There is the water and the dry land; life for the Israelites and death for the Egyptians. God is compassionate and redeems the Israelites, but dispenses harsh justice to the Egyptians. With the Israelites, God is indulgent, but in the body of the song, God is described in harsher terms as being an ish milchamah a man of war.
One of the lessons from the Song at the Sea is that life itself is full of contrasts, inconsistencies, incongruities, and mystery. One day you’re up, and the next you’re facing life-threatening challenges.

Moses’ hesitancy, as expressed in the first line (“And then Moses sang”) speaks to our own tentativeness whenever we face the unknown. The fact that ultimately Moses sang indicates that even in the midst of fear, anguish and disappointment, we can find the words to rejoice — maybe not right away, but eventually.

One of the most common sentiments expressed whenever I sit with a family prior to a funeral is, “We were so lucky.” With very few exceptions, even at the moment of people’s greatest despair and deepest sorrow, they are able to see the blessing in having shared their lives with the loved one they are about to bury. Whenever I hear people say those words, my faith in the remarkable strength and resilience of the human spirit is reinforced.

Life is filled with disparity. Sometimes it is smooth sailing; at other times the journey to realizing our goals and fulfilling our dreams is littered with stumbling blocks. Our own human redemption is to be found in our ability to find joy, happiness, and fulfillment in spite of the challenges we face, and then to learn to sing a song of gratitude for the extraordinary blessing of our lives.

Ron Kampeas
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Leslie Susser
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Susan Jacobs
Jewish Journal Staff

Rhonda Rohtstein
Jewish Journal Staff

Ron Kampeas Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Leslie Susser Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Susan Jacobs Jewish Journal Staff

Rhonda Rohtstein Jewish Journal Staff

Ron Kampeas
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Leslie Susser
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Susan Jacobs
Jewish Journal Staff

Rhonda Rohtstein
Jewish Journal Staff