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Harvard Close to Rejecting Sheikh’s Gift

BRETT M. RHYNE
Jewish Journal Staff

CAMBRIDGE — Officials of Harvard University and Harvard Divinity School may soon decide to return a $2.5 million gift they’ve already accepted from an Arab sheikh who funds anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli and Holocaust-denying research.
According to sources close to the university, Harvard is looking for ways to return the money without setting a precedent for future gifts, as well as helping all parties involved to save face.

In July 2000, Harvard Divinity School (HDS) accepted $2.5 million from Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, to endow a chair in Islamic religious studies.

When HDS graduate student Rachel Fish criticized the research done at the Abu Dhabi-based Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up, during a public panel discussion on global anti-Semitism, Harvard reconsidered its acceptance of the money.

Now, more than six months later, Harvard has yet to announce whether it is accepting or rejecting the gift. Several sources close to the university agree Harvard would like to return the money, but they say it is “a matter of precedents — what will we do about every other gift?” as one source put it.

HDS Dean William Graham declined to speak to The Journal, but Wendy McDowell, HDS media relations officer, said, “It’s one of those things where [Harvard] President [Lawrence] Summers will ultimately make the decision, with a lot of consultation.”

“We were not aware of the Zayed Centre when we negotiated the gift,” MacDowell says. “We did the regular research on the gift. At that time, the Zayed Centre did not have a public presence, a web presence.” McDowell points out that the terms of the gift were negotiated in 1998, before the Arab League approved the founding of the Zayed Centre in September 1999.
“The gift was not taken in full knowledge,” McDowell says.

Lucy McNeil of the Harvard University press office says a decision has not been made regarding the gift, nor does she know when a decision will be made. Talking to The Journal while on vacation, she says, “Even though I’m out of the office, I’m sure they would let me know if a decision had been made.”

The university issued an official statement on May 16, stating, “Harvard Divinity School has been engaged in a process of inquiry into a possible connection between the activities of the Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up in Abu Dhabi and the recent donor of a chair in Islamic Religious Studies at the Divinity School. Some of the activities of the center in question have been extremely offensive. Both the Divinity School and the University as a whole have historically sought to embody religious tolerance and diversity, and take this issue very seriously. We are carefully investigating the matter, and expect to make a decision soon.”

“Harvard Divinity School is very liberal, very pluralistic,” Rachel Fish says. “Except when you’re dealing with anti-Semitic sentiment. Then it’s not.”

Frustrated by Harvard’s apparent inaction, Fish started Students for an Ethical Divinity School, a group working to apply pressure on HDS to return the money.

Fish is concerned with how Zayed’s money will affect the intellectual atmosphere at HDS. “Harvard Divinity School needs $5 million to fund a chair,” she says. “My concern is, where will the other $2.5 million come from? And will Zayed have a say in who fills the chair?”

The Zayed Centre is an Arab League think tank that promotes Holocaust denial, anti-American conspiracy theories — such as that the U.S. planned the September 11 attacks — and hate speech in its lectures, symposia and publications, according to Charles Jacobs of the David Project, a pro-Semitic educational organization. “Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Wiesenthal Center says the Zayed Centre provides ‘the intellectual underpinnings for Jew-hatred in the Arab world,’” Jacobs says.

“Dean Graham should not just want to give the money back,” Jacobs adds. “He should stand with the Jews against religious hatred.”
Additionally, Amnesty International has repeatedly documented the human rights violations of Sheikh Zayed’s U.A.E., including “widespread political arrests, torture, use of the death penalty and trafficking of Bangladeshi child slaves for camel races,” according to Amnesty International USA Northeast Regional Director Joshua Rubenstein.

While Rubenstein will not comment directly on the Harvard gift, he does say, “We certainly think that when dealing with foreign countries, American institutions need to have a realistic and informed view of what life is like in those countries. It is always possible that a donation has been made in order to enhance the image of a government whose reputation does not deserve to be enhanced.”
Sheikh Zayed has ruled as the U.A.E.’s unelected president since 1971.

Fish credits the Anti-Defamation League as a supporter in her struggle with Harvard.

“The ADL is deeply concerned about this particular grant to Harvard Divinity School,” says Rob Leikind, executive director of ADL-New England. “The grant itself comes from a source that is closely tied to those who are involved in the propagation of the most virulent anti-Semitism. This isn’t just something we can turn our backs on.”

“We’ve had conversations with a range of people at Harvard, including top administrators, alumni, academics and members of the Jewish community,” he says. “This matter raises some complex issues within Harvard. Our discussions with people at Harvard have served to let them know the depth of our concern, as well as to provide them with information the ADL has about the Zayed Centre.”
Through those conversations, Leikind was “led to understand that when the agreement was entered into, Harvard was unaware of the Zayed Centre,” he says. “Much of the offensive activity took place after the agreement was made. There was some recognition on their part that the gift may raise issues for Harvard.

“My sense is, there is an earnest effort on their part to find ways to resolve the matter,” he concludes. “I’m hopeful that they will, but I don’t know that. Barring any information that would reassure us that the Zayed Centre would not have a clear connection to Harvard Divinity School, I would have to say the money is tainted.”

Fish, whose thesis looked at contemporary Jewish and Islamic thought comparatively, does not want to exclude Islam from HDS. “Harvard Divinity School definitely needs a chair in Islamic studies,” she says.

“It’s in all of our interests that we have scholars that help us better understand the world of Islam,” agrees Leikind.
Fish urges the Jewish community to “voice their concerns to Dean Graham and President Summers via emails and letters.” She encourages people to visit www.moralitynotmoney.com and sign a petition there.

On June 26, Fish met with American Jewish Committee-Greater Boston chapter Executive Director Lawrence Lowenthal.
“All we know is that the money is tainted,” says Lowenthal. “What makes it worse, Zayed is not some tribal chieftain in Afghanistan somewhere. This guy’s the head of a country.”

Fish maintains HDS’ tactics are typical of academia. “Either they’re waiting to make a decision until the summer and there are no students around to protest,” she says, “or they’re waiting for me to graduate and hope the issue dies with me.”

Fish graduated HDS in May with a Master’s degree in theological studies and will soon leave the Commonwealth.

“The organizational Jewish community is going to keep on top of the issue,” vows Lowenthal. “We’re not going to let go. This is why Jewish defense organizations were created. People in our New York office are plunging into the subject even as we speak. We’re going to keep monitoring the situation until it’s resolved.”

“I know awareness has been raised,” Fish says. “But I’m afraid I’m going to win the battle but lose the war. I just want Harvard to do the right thing.

“Especially Harvard Divinity School,” she adds.

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Fed Makes 2003-04 Allocations

GARY BAND
Jewish Journal Staff

Eight of the 14 beneficiary agencies and organizations of Jewish Federation of the North Shore will receive the same or less than last year, according to the allocations approved by the 15-member committee on June 19.

According to Allocations Committee Co-Chair Bruce Bial, all but three organizations and agencies applied for an increase; but only the Holocaust Center ($1,500), LGI Administration and Teen Programs ($1,000) and Jewish Family Service ($10,000) received one.
Though allocations are largely “flat,” or based on the $2,373,409 generated from campaign pledges by some 2,500 community members,

Bial says he and the committee try not to give a flat allocation to everyone; but, also consider other mitigating factors, such as changes to an agency’s or organization’s business plan.

For the complete allocations, see chart on page 3.
Bial has served on the committee for six years and as co-chair for four, first with Debbi Ponn and last year with Barry Beck, CPA. Bial says that over the last couple years, beginning in September, Federation has assigned liaisons who work with the agencies and organizations throughout the year to determine their needs.

“We spend many hours carefully weighing the information we have to make the available money work for the community,” Bial says. “Before, there was a disconnect between Federation and the agencies. We would just get reams of paper in a short time. Now we’re really in partnership.”

By February/March, the organizations and agencies present their plans, give a “state of the agency,” and in May, Federation liaisons and Allocation Committee chairs meet with each of them again to “ask the tough questions,” Bial says.

During a two-week period later in May, Allocations holds discussions with the Budget and Finance Committee to make the final determination of who gets what. “They [Budget and Finance] worked hard to give us roughly the same pool of money as last year. There had to be some cuts, but we wound up with $838,924 to allocate for the agencies,” Bial says.

Jewish Family Service terminated its sizable Russian Resettlement Program in September and is now focusing on adoption, home health care and elder service programs, Federation increased its allocation to help with implementation costs.

Other organizations, Bial said, institute their own revenue-generating measures. The Jewish Community Center in Marblehead asked for a significant increase for security purposes in response to FBI warnings that Jewish institutions are potential terrorist targets, but asked their membership for a one-time stipend to defray these extra costs.

The increase in allocation to the Federation’s teen programs was in response to increased participation.

The internal Federation budget dropped by $16,776 from $758,161 in 2002/03 to $741,485 in 2003/04. Overhead costs are 31.2 percent in the new budget, the same percentage as last year when the total amount allocated was $3,327 higher.

Bial says this was accomplished by reducing overhead expenses, bringing JFS into the same building and exercising “better buying power” in terms of purchasing supplies and health insurance, for example.

As Federation looks to next year’s campaign with new Executive Director Merritt Mullman and Campaign Co-Chairs Stan Black, Bob Livingston and Phyllis Sagan, Bial is optimistic about the numbers increasing.

“More dollars to the campaign means more dollars to the agencies,” he says..

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2nd Time a Charm for Rabbis Changing Careers

BRETT M. RHYNE
Jewish Journal Staff

After a decade practicing law, Tom Alpert realized, “I wasn’t having the impact on people’s lives I wanted to have. I couldn’t find legal work that united all the aspects of my life.”

As an alternative to his “segmented life,” Alpert “moved toward shalom, wholeness. I felt I had something more to contribute.”

That contribution, Alpert decided, was Jewish spiritual leadership. He, like an increasing number of disenchanted professionals today, joined the rabbinate for his second career.
Now officiating at Temple Tifereth Israel in Malden, Alpert also heads a national task force on second career rabbis for the Central Conference of American Rabbis. CCAR is the organizing body of Reform rabbis.

The panel considers “what second-career rabbis feel their issues are,” according to Rabbi Alpert, as well as “what people are doing and how they feel it’s working.”

While still in the “information gathering and consciousness raising phase,” Rabbi Alpert notes the panel has already learned something about rabbinical contentment. “Other careers did not provide the satisfaction of the rabbinate,” he says. “Second career rabbis are very satisfied with the work.”

Alpert notes the greatest number of second career rabbis come from the legal profession. “It’s either because they feel an affinity with the legal framework,” he says, “or because many people don’t like being lawyers.”

Other popular first professions include business and management, academe, psychology and engineering. There are exceptions. “Rabbi David Thomas, in Sudbury, was in the music business,” Rabbi Alpert adds.

For Rabbi Stephen Rubenstein of Conservative Temple B’nai Abraham in Beverly, the switch to the rabbinate was not so great a change.
“I started my career in the Jewish community by earning a Master’s degree from the [Brandeis University] Hornstein Program in Jewish Communal Service,” Rabbi Rubenstein says. “My first professional position was with the Jewish Community Centers Association in St. Louis, Mo. Then I became executive director for a Conservative congregation in my home state of Mass. After that, I worked in Washington, D.C. as an assistant executive director for a much larger congregation. Then I applied to rabbinical school at the Academy for Jewish Religion.”

Rabbi Rubenstein sees his change in careers as “not so much leaving one position for something completely different. I see each of my moves as part of a journey that was leading me toward rabbinical school, until I had the confidence to make that final step toward applying.

“Each of my professional postions helped me toward that final step,” he adds, “since each dealt with a different group within the Jewish community. While I enjoyed working with various clubs in the JCC and then committees in the synagogue setting, I discovered that I wanted to be more involved in the spiritual aspects of Jewish living than the secular side of things.”

A major issue for second-career rabbis, Alpert notes, is congregations’ expectations differing from reality. “There’s a ‘standard’ career path for rabbis,” he says. “You get your first job in your 20s. You learn the trade as a junior rabbi, working with a senior, more experienced rabbi. Then you move on to bigger and bigger congregations.”

“Since the number of people entering the rabbinate later is increasing,” Rabbi Alpert says, “this standard paradigm needs to be rethought.”

People becoming rabbis in their 20s tend to come from youth activity backgrounds, Rabbi Alpert maintains, while those becoming rabbis at a later age rarely follow the same career path.

“This difference between youth background and professional background raises many questions,” Rabbi Alpert says. “Should older rabbis work as assistants or solo? Should the junior rabbi always be given the youth programming? Are congregations hesitant to hire older rabbis?”

Rabbi Alpert sees wide ranging implications for the panel’s findings. “When the rabbinate began accepting women, this was the start of a major rethinking. Maybe the rabbinate needs to be reorganized. This is not a trivial thing. It’s a meaningful development.”

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Contributions Sought for Bulletproof Vests for IDF Soldiers

MARK ARNOLD
Jewish Journal Staff

Israel needs bulletproof vests to protect its soldiers, and a group — American Friends of Libi — has been started in the Boston area to raise money to buy them.

While many soldiers in potential combat situations are protected by such vests now, thousands of soldiers still need them, according to Retired Army Col. Moshe Elad, who spoke to a gathering of Swampscott and Marblehead Jewish leaders on Monday, June 23. The gathering, to raise consciousness and money to launch the effort on the North Shore, was held at the home of Stan and Emy Black of Swampscott.

Elad, a familiar commentator on Israeli television, is a former military governor of the Jenin Refugee Camp and has served as liaison between the Israeli Army and Palestinian Authority security forces. In commenting on recent developments in the Middle East, he said that unlike Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian Prime Minister, recognizes the futility of terrorism. He said he believes Abbas has concluded he can’t rein in the terrorists without help from Israel and is therefore cooperating more fully than Palestinian leaders at any time in recent years.

After 30 years in the Israeli Army, much of it spent in security positions, Elad retired and is now working as a volunteer for Libi ( website: www.libi-fund.org.il).

Libi is an Hebrew acronym for the Israeli agency that provides assistance to soldiers in the areas of Jewish education, medical support, and protection. One of the chief needs for protection is for ceramic bullet-proof vests.

While he declined, for security reasons, to say what percent of soldiers now have such vests, Elad told the community leaders there are not enough to protect all who need them. The need, he said, “is for thousands of vests to protect Israeli soldiers’ lives.” The vests, made in Israel to rigorous quality standards, cost an average of $1,300 each.

People interested in contributing can contact American Friends of Libi, a newly incorporated nonprofit group in Boston. Contributions are tax deductible. For further information contact Leah Jacobson, Executive Director of American Friends of Libi at Leahj01@attbi.com, or by phone: 781-596-3594.

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Journal Grabs Fourth Award of 2003

JEWISH JOURNAL STAFF

The Jewish Journal won its fourth award of the year when it was recognized June 26 by the American Jewish Press Association. Editor/Publisher Mark Arnold, attending the annual conference of the Association in Los Angeles, accepted a third place award in graphic design for newspapers with circulation under 15,000.

The award was based on the paper’s submission of its issues of December 6 and December 20, 2002, which featured Page One color and bold modular design elements.

In April, The Journal was granted three awards by the Association of Free Community Papers. Competing with publications throughout North America of more than 25 percent editorial content, the paper won a first place award for “Most Improved Publication”; a first place for “Cover Design: Black plus 1 Color”; and a second place for “Cover Design: Black and White”.

Arnold said he was delighted by the recognition accorded the paper. “We are having the impact we set out to have a year ago,” he said. A former Washington, DC newsman who came to the North Shore in 1977, Arnold became editor of The Journal in June 2002 and publisher two months later.

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Journal Makes Changes to Editorial Staff

The Jewish Journal welcomes new assistant editor Susan Jacobs to its staff. She previously worked for The Journal for a year as Production Assistant and Web Administrator.

Jacobs holds a degree from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. Prior to joining The Journal, she was employed by the Independent Newspaper Group in San Francisco where she worked on an assortment of weekly community-based newspapers. She has also done freelance writing and photography for a range of consumer magazines including The Yoga Journal and Vegetarian Times.
Additionally, Jacobs has extensive experience in marketing and public relations. For 15 years she published a monthly newsletter for Adecco’s corporate marketing division, and spent many years as Director of Marketing for a chain of natural food stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.

She currently lives in Swampscott with her longtime partner, Andrea Ring, a senior sales representative for Stiefel Labs. They have two children, Alexander, 6, and Ruby, 3. In her spare time, she enjoys gardening and cooking.

Jacobs replaces former Jewish Journal Assistant Editor Brett Rhyne who will become a contributing editor in September 2003. The change in status coincides with his accepting an assistant professorship in the Salem State College department of communications.
“I love teaching and am excited about getting back into the classroom,” said Rhyne, who received a doctorate in communication from the University of California, San Diego in 1995. “I hope my students find my integration of practical experience and theoretical knowledge helpful.” Rhyne has worked full-time as a journalist since 2000.

In his capacity as contributing editor, Rhyne will continue to write breaking news stories and investigative pieces

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International News

What Comes After the Cease-Fire?

LESLIE SUSSEER

JERUSALEM (JTA) — As Israel and the Palestinians begin a long-awaited truce, both sides are holding their breath — and wondering what the United States will do next to advance the “road map” peace plan.

Indeed, the late June cease-fire by the three main Palestinian terror groups, declared as the intifada approached the 1,000-day mark, underlined the vital importance of the American role. Without U.S. pressure on the Palestinian Authority to crack down on terror groups, and on European and Arab nations to cut off their funding, the cease-fire never would have been achieved, Israeli analysts say.

More importantly, the analysts agree that unless Washington keeps up the pressure on both Israel and the Palestinians, the new deal could quickly unravel. Then, instead of moving ahead on the internationally accepted peace plan toward a longer-term settlement, the sides could find themselves locked in an even-worse cycle of violence.

Much will depend on how the Bush administration handles a number of key issues:

• Will it force Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to go beyond a cease-fire and dismantle terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as he has agreed to do under the road map?
• Will it restrict Israel’s freedom of action if the Palestinians violate the cease-fire?
• Will it pressure Israel to release Palestinian terrorist prisoners as a goodwill gesture?
• Will it lean on Israel to dismantle illegal outposts and established settlements?
• Will it insist that Israel stop building a security fence it says is essential to keep terrorists from infiltrating from the West Bank, but which the Palestinians say is taking their land?

The cease-fire declaration coincided with a visit by Condoleezza Rice, the White House’s national security adviser. Her main purpose was to make clear to both sides what the United States expects of them, and to signal the U.S. determination to push the road map.

In her talks with Abbas in Ramallah, Rice was firm on dismantling terrorist groups: She used Abbas’ own slogan — “one authority, one command and one armed force” — and echoed Secretary of State Colin Powell and President Bush in insisting that the United States would accept nothing less than the disarming of the groups and the collection of their weapons.

Beyond the rhetoric, the United States reportedly is considering granting the Palestinian Authority as much as $1 billion, partly to help it disarm the militants. Some of the funds would be used to help build an alternative welfare system to Hamas’.

Through this money and other investment, the United States hopes to dramatically improve socioeconomic conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, showing that peace pays and encouraging further steps in that direction. Much of the money would be held back, pending convincing evidence that the Palestinians really are decommissioning illegal weapons.

The Americans also are exerting heavy, and apparently successful, pressure on European and Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, to clamp down on funding for Hamas as part of the struggle to strengthen the Palestinian Authority and weaken the fundamentalists.

One area of emerging disagreement between Israel and the United States is the security fence. Abbas told Rice that the Palestinians would have no problems with a fence along the pre-1967 border, but that the route Israel currently plans allegedly would leave only 45 percent of the West Bank in Palestinians hands, divided into three cantons” — hardly the viable state envisaged by President Bush.
Rice asked Sharon to reconsider the route. Sharon, however, argued that the fence would constitute a security line rather than a political border, and could be moved later.

Israel’s nightmare scenario is that the cease-fire will break down after the Palestinian Authority fails to disarm Hamas and the other terror groups. The question then will be whether the United States, after playing the honest broker, tolerates Israel moving back into the West Bank and Gaza Strip in self-defense.

Much will depend on whom the Americans blame for the breakdown of a process in which, by then, they will have invested so much.

Leslie Susser is the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Report.

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Features

JTA News Briefs

Sharon, Abbas Meet
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers met in Jerusalem to discuss implementation of the “road map” peace plan. Appearing earlier Tuesday before the Palestinian Parliament, PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas said he hoped at the meeting to lay down the foundations for a security agreement with Israel, Israel Radio reported. This would include the creation of sub-committees to address such issues as finance, economics, law, security and prisoners. In separate remarks ahead of Tuesday’s talks, Israel’s defense minister and the head of the Shin Bet security agency said Israel will withdraw troops from additional Palestinian areas only when the Palestinians begin to dismantle terrorist groups’ infrastructure.

Powell: Cease-Fire Not Enough
WASHINGTON (JTA) — U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the cease-fire Palestinian terrorist groups have begun “won’t be enough.”
Calling the agreement a “step in the right direction,” Powell said Monday that a cease-fire leaves intact the capability for future terrorist attacks. Speaking on CBS’ Early Show, Powell called the transfer of authority from Israel to the Palestinian Authority in part of the Gaza Strip “the important step over the weekend.”

Jews Visiting Temple Mount Again
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Some Jews are again being allowed to visit the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
The mount, the holiest site in Judaism, has not been officially re-opened to non-Muslims, but small groups of tourists, including Jews, have visited the holy site in recent days without opposition from Palestinian leaders.
The current round of Israeli-Palestinian violence began on Sept. 28, 2000, a day after Ariel Sharon, then the leader of Israel’s opposition and now prime minister, visited the site.

Fatwa Issued Against Jews in Iraq
JERUSALEM (JTA) — A religious edict was issued against Jews who buy any property in Iraq. Ayatollah Kazem Al-Husseini Al-Haieri said that any Jew who buys real estate in Iraq should be killed.
The fatwa, as it is called in Arabic, was reportedly issued after several Iraqis came to the Shi’ite cleric saying Jews from abroad had made inquiries regarding Iraqi property in recent weeks.

Holocaust Denier Loses Appeal
SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) — A Holocaust denier in Australia lost his appeal against a court ruling forcing him to remove his Web site. Fredrick Toben claimed on his site that the Holocaust had never taken place. Jeremy Jones, the president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said this week’s decision was “a significant victory for all those concerned with human rights in Australia.”

Buddy Hackett Dies at 78
NEW YORK (JTA) — Buddy Hackett, a Jewish comedian who got his start on the Borscht Belt circuit, died overnight Sunday in Los Angeles at 78. Hackett was best known for his rubbery face and his numerous television appearances in the 1950s and 1960s. He also starred on Broadway and in Hollywood films. He was known for his imitation of a Chinese waiter and for poking fun at himself for being short, fat and Jewish. Hackett, who was born Leonard Hacker in Brooklyn, is survived by his wife, a son and two daughters.

Jews Mixed on Gay Ruling
NEW YORK (JTA) — Jews from across the denominational spectrum greeted the Supreme Court’s rejection of prohibitions on gay sex with mixed emotions.
Liberal rabbis embraced the high court’s reversal June 26 of a 17-year-old decision allowing states to punish acts such as sodomy, ruling that homosexuals have a right to privacy.
“It’s one step farther out of Egypt and one step closer to the Promised Land,” said Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum of the independent Congregation Beth Simchat Torah of New York, one of the country’s largest synagogues for gays and lesbians.
But David Zweibel, executive vice president for government and public affairs for Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox group, blasted the ruling, saying it threatens to topple laws against incest, prostitution and other immoral acts.
“What happened today is the harbinger of challenges of laws that are designed to promote a vision of sexual morality,” he said.

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‘Plastics, Zvi, Plastics’

BRETT M. RHYNE
Jewish Journal Staff

Early in The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock receives sage career advice from, of all people, Mr. Robinson:
“Plastics, Ben, plastics.”

It seems Israeli inventor Zvi Yemini, 52, took this to heart when, a decade ago, he founded ZAG Industries. Headquartered in Rosh HaAyin, Israel, ZAG is a subsidiary of U.S. tools and doors manufacturer Stanley Works Inc., producing such do-it-yourself staples as toolboxes, workbenches, shelves, pallets and saw-horses.

“I felt the Israeli plastics industry lacked know-how in bringing value-added products to the market through good design, packaging and marketing,” Yemini says.

One of the startup’s first successes was the design of a high-tech air conditioner which for Elco that paved the way for its market leadership in Israel and Europe.
“Using design technology,” Yemini says, “we were the first to make air conditioners that were all plastic, remotely controlled, and placed high on walls rather than on the floor.”

Founded a decade ago, with first year revenues of $2 million, ZAG has seen business grow to $200 million annually. ZAG is Israel’s leading plastic products producer.

After studying industrial engineering at the Technion, Yemini held top R&D positions at Unitrol Amcor, Childcare and Keter Plastics before starting ZAG as a consultancy. In 1993, ZAG started producing its own plastic do-it-yourself products; today, ZAG’s plants in Karmiel and Migdal Ha’emek produce 100,000 items a day. ZAG exports 95 percent of its goods: 45 percent to the U.S., 40 percent to Europe and 10 percent to Asian states. In the U.S., ZAG distributes products to DIY chains including Home Depot, Lowe’s and Wal-Mart.

“We try to give added value,” Yemini says. He notes ZAG invests 6-7 percent of its turnover on R&D, compared with a 1-2 percent average in the plastics industry. Most of ZAG’s 60 products are patented.

“Design technologies move the market,” Yemini says. “Once, you could buy toolboxes for five to ten dollars. Today, in Wal-Mart, ZAG’s prices average $50-100. Moreover, we are moving to systems, not just toolboxes, so that one can equip one’s entire garage for $500.”
Yemini scoffs at the notion that non-electronic, consumer goods are low-tech. “Our raw materials are all high-tech,” he says. “Moreover, materials account for only 20 percent of our manufacturing costs. The rest is know-how.”

ZAG’s products and packaging win awards for innovation. In 2000, the Chicago Antheum of Design awarded ZAG with its prestigious Good Design Award for its adjustable saw-horse.

Most recently, Yemini’s start-up company, Hydro-Industries, developed and introduced a technology for water-powered propulsion with numerous potential industrial, domestic energy and agricultural applications. Sales of its first product, a garden hose that rewinds itself pneumatically, reached $2 million last year; Hydro-Industries’ order backlog for 2003 is $10 million.

“Israel is already the world’s third largest per-capita plastics consumer,” says Yemini, who chairs the Israel Plastic & Rubber Industry Association. He notes that Plasto Ispack, the 10th International Exhibition for Plastics, Rubber and Packaging, will be held at the Tel Aviv fairgrounds from September 1-4.

Yemini believes in local talent. “My vision is for Israel to be an international center of design and production, and we are already very close to being there,” he says.

“There are many, many, excellent factories and we have a lot to be proud of,” he continues. “Despite its current problems, the country has great advantages, and if we secure a chance for peace, it will change the atmosphere dramatically.”

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From Apple Pie to Pad Thai

ROSA RASIEL
Special to The Jewish Journa

From Apple Pie to Pad Thai, Neighborhood Cooking North of Boston (Commonwealth Editions, $24.95), by Linda Bassett, takes you with the author into home kitchens from Revere to Amesbury, from the coast to the Merrimack Valley, and chronicles cuisines from Yankee to Cambodian, with side trips to diners, restaurants, and country clubs. Everywhere Linda goes, she finds something delicious to eat, and she introduces you to the cook.

Long-time writer of the “Kitchen Call” column in North Shore Sunday, Linda grew up “in a melting pot neighborhood in the shadow of Lynn’s shoe factories.” There was nothing better than her Jewish neighbors’ latkes, she said in an interview, but her own family’s heritage was Italian, and Italian food was their everyday and holiday fare.

Like many Italian immigrants, her grandparents always grew vegetables, first in pots on the sunny porch of their apartment in a Lynn triple-decker, later in West Peabody, where they tended a huge garden full of corn, basil, oregano, tomatoes, bell peppers, Italian frying peppers, and zucchini. Her grandmother made tomato sauce from the garden, and on Fridays there was always homemade pizza for Linda and her friends.

Italian food is still what she likes best and usually cooks for her family. So, when she began testing recipes from other ethnic communities for her book, what exotic food surprised her the most? Vietnamese pho? Greek tsatsiki? Irish champ? Actually, she says, she was amazed to learn how satisfying old New England standbys like Welsh rabbit and grapenut pudding could be. Her husband, Tim, half-Irish, half-Yankee, was thrilled when she served him a shepherd’s pie for dinner one day, rejoicing as he dug in, “I haven’t had this in 30 years! “

Linda notes that the best-known foreign foods are Italian and Chinese, simply because so many early newcomers from Italy and China made their living running restaurants. One of her favorite discoveries from a less familiar cuisine is African peanut soup, a popular dish at Kwanzaa feasts. She chose to feature it on the menu at a book signing and tasting at the Wenham Tea House, where it was such a success that it is now on the regular menu of that very Yankee institution.

For an overview of local Jewish cooking, Linda interviewed Barbara Schneider of Marblehead, who describes the menus that are traditional in her family for Shabbat, Hanukkah, Pesach, and Yom Kippur break fast, along with some of her recipes. There are also recipes from Liora Kelman of Lynn, who cooks Ashkenazi dishes to please her husband, Rabbi Abraham Kelman of Congregation Ahabat Shalom, and Sephardi dishes from her own heritage. Zelda Tasman’s recipe for chopped liver is here, thanks to her daughter, Hope Zabar, and Nancy Rozen offered her mother’s sweet and peppery butterscotch kugel. The use of a bit of peanut butter in the liver and butterscotch bits in the kugel illustrate Linda’s thesis that all cuisines change when “yanked from their roots” and transplanted to new surroundings.

Many ethnic dishes from the North Shore’s immigrant communities can be used in a kosher kitchen without adaptation, while some, like the peanut soup, work well with the substitution of soy milk or vegetable stock, or the use of margarine for butter. I hope to try more of them soon, especially Linda’s marinara sauce with white wine, the summery lavender lemonade from the HERB FARMacy, and the walnut-gorgonzola tart from Ipswich Country Club, which looks as though it alone would be worth the price of the book.

A veteran teacher, Linda has taught for many years in the Culinary Arts curriculum at Essex Agricultural Institute, now relocated to North Shore Community College. She specializes in American regional cooking, international cooking, and front-of-the-house management. Her experience shows in the clarity of her recipes — no small accomplishment, since many of them come from home cooks who had never written them down before. More than once, Linda found that she had to rewrite them, and that the cook would look at her version and say “That’s not my recipe!” Fortunately, she could usually explain that it was. Throughout the book, her tips and refinements of technique are very helpful, as are the sidebars and list of sources.

Culinary historian and philosopher Joe Carlin of Ipswich told Linda that “the blend of nationalities and their food is no longer a melded stew, but rather a salsa or stir-fry in which each component adds its unique flavors to the whole while retaining its own separate character.” From Apple Pie to Pad Thai illustrates this perfectly.

Peanut Soup
Ingredients in parentheses are my adaptations to make this kosher. Use cayenne to your taste. For a special touch, Linda recommends warming the peanuts in a skillet, stir constantly for about 2 minutes; watch carefully so they don’t burn. Very rich and delicious.
Serves 6 to 8
2 teaspoons cornstarch
2 cups whole milk (or soy milk)
3 cups canned or homemade chicken stock (or vegetable stock)
2 cups creamy peanut butter
2 thin slices yellow onion
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Chopped roasted peanuts for garnish
1. Whisk together the cornstarch and milk in a large heavy saucepan over low heat.
2. Add the stock, peanut butter, onion, half the parsley, salt and pepper to taste, and cayenne. Raise the heat to medium-high and bring just to a boil, stirring. Reduce the heat and simmer for 15-18 minutes. The mixture will thicken.
3. Cool the soup for about 10 minutes. Pour into a food processor or blender and pulse until smooth. Rinse the pot and return the soup to it. Bring the soup just to the boil to heat through.
4. Serve with a scatter of the remaining parsley and the peanuts over the top.

“Little Ears” Pasta with Broccoli Rabe Orecchiette con Broccoli Rapi
Serves 6
Broccoli rabe is a somewhat bitter green that looks like slender, leafy stems of broccoli with tiny heads. What appears to be a large amount cooks down considerably (as with spinach). If you are not a lover of anchovies, please do not let their presence here dissuade you. Although they are important to the recipe, the flavors meld unrecognizably.
1 pound broccoli rabe
Salt
1 pound orecchiette pasta
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and cut in half
3 to 5 anchovy fillets, drained and rinsed
Crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
1. Set aside a bowl of ice water.
2. Wash the broccoli rabe. Coarsely chop the tops into pieces about 1“ long and discard the stems. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the broccoli rabe. Cook for 1 to 2 minutes, until it is bright green and tender. Remove the broccoli rabe with a slotted spoon or tongs, leaving the cooking water in the pot.
Immediately plunge the vegetable into ice water. Drain. Set aside.
Bring the cooking water back to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente.
3. While the pasta cooks, heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Swirl in the olive oil. Add the garlic and anchovies and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until the garlic is pale gold, not browned. Discard the garlic. The anchovies will soften. Mash them with a fork so that they dissolve into the olive oil. Add red pepper flakes to taste. Remove the skillet from the heat.
4. Drain the pasta, reserving 1 cup of the cooking water. Toss the pasta and the broccoli rabe directly into the hot skillet with the olive oil mixture. Sprinkle with the cheese and toss again. If the mixture is too thick, add a tablespoon or more of the reserved cooking water, until you like the consistency. Serve hot.

Ana’s Sweet Rice Pudding
Arroz Dulce
This Portuguese dessert comes from Ana Patuleia Ortins of Peabody, a former student of Linda’s, who went on to write Portuguese Homestyle Cooking, an acclaimed cookbook about her own Portuguese-American culinary traditions. Although made without eggs, the pudding is still a sweet and nutritious treat.
When Ana serves this, she sprinkles the top with cinnamon in the shape of a heart or cross or the initial of an honored guest. She makes a paper template of the shape for best results.
1 cup short-grain rice
2 cups water
1/4 teaspoon salt
Zest of 1 lemon, cut into strips
1 cinnamon stick
2 cups milk, scalded
1 cup sugar
Ground cinnamon for topping
1. In a saucepan, combine the rice, water, and salt. Bring to a boil. Lower the heat, cover, and cook until the water is nearly absorbed, about 10 minutes.
2. Add milk, lemon zest, and cinnamon stick. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently, for about 20-25 minutes.
3. Add the sugar. Cook until the rice is tender and the sugar is dissolved, about 7 to 10 minutes. It will continue thickening as it cools. Ana says it should be as thick as oatmeal.
4. With a slotted spoon, remove the cinnamon stick and lemon zest. Pour the pudding into small serving bowls.
5. Make a design on top with ground cinnamon. Ana rubs the cinnamon between her thumb and index fingers, holding them closely over the surface of the rice so the cinnamon doesn’t scatter all over. Chill until you are ready to serve.

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People in the News

Arts & Entertainment

Taking Stock of Summer Theater Options on the North Shore

SUSAN JACOBS
Jewish Journal Staff

This summer, all the world’s a stage — at least in Boston’s North Shore. From Marblehead to Gloucester, thespians are gearing up for a summer of exciting productions. From open-air Shakespeare to Broadway’s best musical comedies, there is something for everyone. Here, in alphabetical order, is a roundup of what we found:

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

Anna Smulowitz has been producing and directing original theatrical works and popular musicals in the Merrimack Valley for 25 years. Smulowitz Productions will present William Shakespeare’s comedy, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, at the Spencer Peirce Little Farm in Newbury July 12-13, 19-20, 26-27 at 2 p.m. Actors will use the farm’s meadows, ancient trees and historic manor house as the backdrop for the play. Whimsical and romantic, it offers midsummer afternoon entertainment for the entire family. Since it is an outdoor production, bring a blanket or chair. Rain dates Aug 2 & 3 at 2 p.m. Tickets: $12 adults, $10 students and seniors. Tickets may be purchased at www.annadrama. com, or at the door. For more information, call 978-463-3348.

BILLY BUDD

The North Shore Players will present this three-act drama at the Salem Maritime National Historic Site, a unit of the National Park Service, Aug. 1, 2, 15, 16 at 7:30 p.m. The stage will be the tall ship FRIENDSHIP, moored at Salem Maritime Historic Site. In this play, based on the novel by Herman Melville and set in 1798, FRIENDSHIP will take on the role of an English warship. The nonprofit North Shore Players have been presenting innovative local theater since 1958 and have won several awards for excellence. Ticket prices and availability to be announced. Contact the North Shore Players at 978-774-6442.

BLUE MAN GROUP

Kids especially love the interactive, vaudeville-like Blue Man Group because these three bald, blue men climb over furniture, throw paint, play music on invented instruments, and offer manic fun for nearly two hours without intermission. Blue Man Group performs in New York, Las Vegas, Chicago and, in Boston, at The Charles Playhouse on 74 Warrenton Street. For more information, visit www.blueman.com, or call the Charles Playhouse Box Office at 617-426-6912. Ongoing performances Wed. thru Sun. with varied show times. Tickets: $43-53, available through Ticketmaster or at the box office.

CATS

Broadway’s longest running musical, which hung up its whiskers after 18 years and a record 7,485 performances, leaps on stage at the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly from July 8 through August 3. The play, which contains no spoken dialogue, revolves around the antics of various feline characters. It won seven Tony Awards and is a ‘purrr-fect’ way to spend an summer evening. Every seat is a good one at the beautiful, “in the round” North Shore Music Theatre. Shows run Tues.- Sat. evenings with matinees Wed., Sat. and Sun. Tickets: $26-63. Children and students are half price; senior discount available. For details, call or visit the box office at 62 Dunham Rd, Beverly, 978-232-7200, or check online at www.nsmt.org.

JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS
PROOF
OFF-SEASON

The Gloucester Stage Company, founded in 1979 by award-winning playwright Israel Horovitz, is offering a series of intriguing plays this summer. They are currently presenting Jacques Brel, a musical review of satirical songs by the late Belgian artist. It runs until July 13. “Proof”, a Pulitzer Prize winning play by David Auburn about a brilliant but mentally unstable mathematician, opens July 16 and runs through Aug. 3. And Off-Season, a duet of world premiere plays by Terrence McNally and Israel Horovitz, is set to run Aug. 6-24. In “Off-Season”, each play uses the same cast and set, however McNally’s work is situated in Key West in the summer, while Horovitz’s is set in Gloucester in the winter. Performances: Wed-Sat at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 5 p.m. Tickets: $30. All performances are held at The Gorton Theatre, 267 East Main St., Gloucester. Call 978-281-4433.

MUCH ADO ABOUT BROADWAY

A fantastic evening of song and comedy. Thurs.-Sun., July 24-Aug 10, varied times. Tickets: $25. Stoneham Theater will also present its Resident Youth Ensemble Caberet July 16-18. This show features high school students performing scenes and songs from their favorite shows. 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $10. Students in the summer drama workshop will perform “Oliver!” Aug. 14-17. tickets: $12. Stoneham Theater, 395 Main St., Stoneham 781-279-2200 or www.stonehamtheatre.org.

TEN LITTLE INDIANS

The Firehouse Center on the waterfront in Newburyport was originally built as a market house/lyceum in 1823, but served as the Central Fire Station from the mid 1800s until 1980. A cooperative effort by the public and private sectors has restored the structure as a center for the arts. Agatha Christie’s murder mystery Ten Little Indians (originally titled, And Then There Were None) will be showcased in the 195-seat theatre from July 10-27. Performances Thurs.-Sat. at 7:30 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. Tickets: $14 Adults, $10 Students & Seniors. Firehouse Center for the Arts, One Market Square, Newburyport. Call 978-462-7336 or visit www.firehousecenter. com for more info.

THE PRODUCERS

Mel Brooks’ Broadway musical, “The Producers”, winner of 12 Tony awards, is drawing crowds to Boston’s Colonial Theater. Built in 1900, the Colonial is the oldest continually operating theater in Boston; and despite two major renovations, the building’s interior has changed little in nearly 10 decades. “The Producers” is the story of a desperate theatrical producer and his accountant who devise a scheme to create a surefire Broadway flop. Much to everyone’s surprise, their musical Springtime for Hitler turns out to be a big hit. The show runs Tues. thru Sun. evenings, with matinees on Sat. and Sun. Tickets: $87-97, available through Ticketmaster or at the Colonial Theater Box Office, 106 Boylston Street, Boston. Call 617-426-9366 or check www.broadwayinboston.com.

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German Film Shows World Outside Holocaust

ANDREW MARCHESSAULT
Jewish Journal Correspondent

Nowhere in Africa
Directed by Caroline Link
German with English subtitles .

Numerous films have attempted to authentically capture the state of European Jews during the Third Reich. Two of the best are certainly Steven Speilberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) and Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (2002), both of which were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, with Schindler’s List winning in its year of nomination.

Nowhere in Africa, based on Stefanie Zweig’s autobiographical novel and shot on location in Kenya, and the winner of this year’s best foreign film Oscar, shares the poignancy of these two films, but views World War II from a greater emotional and geographical distance.

Director Caroline Link presents the story of a Jewish family living in Kenya during the war years from the view of an outsider. She portrays characters who are confused by their place in this global conflict, as Link’s film is much less about the Holocaust as it is about trying to find an identity, and to live, not just survive, during times of turmoil.

Just before the outbreak of war in Europe, Jettel Redlich and her young daughter Regina (the film’s narrator) emigrate from Germany to join her lawyer husband Walter on the plains of Kenya. There he has found work as a farmer, and befriended another German immigrant, the serene but lonely Susskind. Though they have escaped persecution and death, the Redlich family also leaves behind their home and their loved ones, a transition that catalyzes a 10-year transformation.

In their isolated home, literally in the middle of nowhere, the precocious and sociable Regina quickly takes to her new surroundings. However, Jettel and Walter, already deeply rooted in the Rhineland, endure their own separate struggles in adjusting to their new environment, which only serves to exacerbate their surfacing marital strife.

The film takes place mainly during the years of the Second World War, and we feel its presence in letters from relatives, and reports of Kristallnacht and D-Day from foreign radio stations. One particularly funny segment of the film portrays the relative luxury of Jewish internment by the British in Nairobi. Except for these manifestations, the war is merely in the backs of the character’s heads, a constant presence, but one that is secondary to the challenges of life as a resident alien.

By the film’s conclusion, the Redlichs return to Germany, together as a family and hopeful for a happy post-war life. With so many relatives most likely dead, and uncertainty still looming, the viewer is left to wonder why. Perhaps it is a way of confronting the monster head on, much like Spielberg and Polanski tackled their own demons in returning to the place from which their demons sprang. However, the Redlichs do not return haunted, but instead rejuvenated, hoping to find the Germany which they once loved. They do not bear the cross of the terrorized Jews, but instead carry the burden of the nomad, as they try to find a place to lay down the home which they carry.

Nowhere in Africa will be shown at the Capitol Theatre in Arlington at 7 p.m. and 9:40 p.m. through July 10. As part of the Boston Jewish Film Festival, it will also be shown at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on Sun., July 6 at 3 p.m. and Thurs., July 10 at 3 p.m. Call the Box Office at 617-369-3306.

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‘Heroes of Jewish Comedy’ to Premiere on Comedy Central

ANDREW MARCHESSAULT
Jewish Journal Correspondent

With customs and a history that informs their own brand of self-deprecating, angst-ridden humor, Jewish comedians have become especially adept at making the world laugh.

It is to this tradition that Comedy Central will raise its glass when the cable network premieres its six-part documentary “Heroes of Jewish Comedy” July 7-11.

Jews and non-Jews alike should fully appreciate this retrospective, as the Jewish comedic sensibility has fully merged with America’s collective cultural consciousness, thanks in large part to the groundbreaking sitcom “Seinfeld.”

Affectionately narrated by Judd Hirsch, the topic of each half-hour documentary episode provides a forum for some of the most famed Jewish comedians to sound off with their own theories, anecdotes, and various words of wisdom. Luminaries such as Richard Lewis, Joan Rivers, Sandra Bernhard, and Jerry Stiller provide a sense of history, as much of the first two episodes, “Insult” and “Women,” focus on the progression from Don Rickles and Henny Youngman to Richard Belzer, Jeffrey Ross, and Robert Smigel; and from the pioneering Rivers to Bernhard, Fran Drescher, and Susie Essman. The remaining four episodes focus on more tropes of Jewish comedy (“Love & Dating,” “Angst”) and the life of a contemporary Jewish comedian, not only in and around New York City (the mecca of Jewish comedy) but on the national scene as well (“On the Road,” “New Faces”).

Although it is clear from the series that there are certainly deep-rooted social characteristics that influence the Jewish comedian (just watch female comics go off on their mothers), there is also a great deal of diversity within the Jewish comedy circuit.

Each comedian featured in “Heroes” has a unique approach to his or her comedy, with some overlapping in their shtick more than others. However, all of those featured in the documentary are influenced in some way by their Jewishness. All come across as proud of their roots, even as they seek to transcend them. Of course, many could not shake these influences if they tried.

Having found their niche as perhaps the funniest ethnic group in America, Jewish comedians are now aiming for a broader audience. And while “Heroes of Jewish Comedy” is not groundbreaking in its method of documentation, it is a great resource to see where comedy has been and where it’s going.

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The Producers: Funniest Show Ever?

MARK ARNOLD
Jewish Journal Staff

Like Mel Brooks himself, The Producers — the play he wrote, turned into a movie, and then 30 years later into a musical — is outrageous.

The Holocaust, after all, was no laughing matter.

But the play, which dates from the mid-60s, was a smash hit; the movie with Zero Mostel won Brooks an Oscar for Best Screenplay in 1969. And the musical — at Boston’s Colonial Theater through Sept. 13 — may be the funniest Broadway musical ever. Clever, irreverent, profane, witty, side-splittingly funny.

And the spectacular Boston production proves beyond doubt that there is life after Nathan Lane, whose unforgettable portrayal of impresario Max Bialystock on Broadway nudged The Producers to an unprecedented 12 Tony Awards two years ago.

Take it from me, you won’t miss Messrs. Lane and sidekick Matthew Broderick once you’ve seen their replacements: Brad Oscar, a 1986 graduate of Boston University’s School of Arts, as Max, and Andy Taylor as his hapless accountant and late blooming partner in crime, Leo Bloom. Both Oscar and Taylor are accomplished song and dance men with great comic skills.

The show’s perverse plot centers on Max’s search for the perfect Broadway flop, once the nerdy Bloom mentions offhandedly that the laws governing tax write-offs make it more profitable to lose money than to make money on a production. Leo, who harbors a suppressed desire to be a producer like Max, joins the hunt for a stinko of a script.

The pair find it in an obscure screen play titled Springtime for Hitler, an ode to the Fuhrer and his followers by an ex-Nazi and fawning Adolph admirer named Franz Liebkind. The scene where the flop-seekers persuade the goose-stepping Liebkind to let them produce his script — while his carrier pigeons give the Nazi salute in their cages on a dismal rooftop in Lower Manhattan — will have you howling with laughter.

By seducing old women out of their bank accounts, the roguish Bialystock, with Bloom in tow, mount their production, casting the worst actors they can find, with a preference for flaming/flaunting homosexuals. But their dreams — of failure — go up in smoke when Springtime turns unaccountably into a winner at the box office.

Having cooked the books to assure their success in failure, they go to jail, where they mount a second production before setting out on a string of successful sequels, in the musical’s last scene, with play-on-word Broadway names like Katz, Maim, She Shtupps to Conquer, A Streetcar Named Murray and High Button Jews.

Director Susan Stroman’s choreography (complete with old ladies prancing with tap-dancing walkers), Robin Wagner’s set designs, the costumes, lighting, acting, singing, even the sight gags — something we don’t get to see much anymore — are pure joy.

Brooks, who started his career in 1951 as a comedy writer on Sid Caesar’ legendary Show of Shows, proves his comic genius with this show, which he wrote, and for which he composed both the music and lyrics, garnering three Tonys and two Grammys for his labors – and a sure place among the pantheon of immortal Jewish comedians.

The Producers, in Boston, is a show not to be missed.

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Shir Hadash

MATTHEW S. ROBINSON

Zoom Golly — Let My People Go-Go (Roundlight)
“Echalutz leman avodah, baby!”

So begins the rhythmic call of liturgically minded electronica artist Zoom Golly. And the beats don’t stop through most of this baker’s dozen of tush-shaking shirim. In addition to his pioneering disco opener, Zoom offers a whole megillah of other toe-tapping tunes. From the barbershop backups of his soulful Shalom Aleichem and the brief acoustic power of Kol Dodi to the Funkadelic downtempo dance drops of Hava Nagila, the Clyde Stubblefield-inspired funky drums of Hiney Ma Tov and the harmonic Hammond washes of David Melech Yisrael, Zoom mixes it up on his mixing board, offering a variety of contemporary interpretations of this timeless religious music. Chad Gadya puts some tribal spice into your seder and Ketsad M’rakdin and Shalom Chaverim mix rabbis and ravers in a set of dance club davenings. Zoom’s beat poem Bar Mitzvah has a few forced rhymes, but swings cool nonetheless.

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Singles

The Manners Maven: Manners Maven: Letting the Wrong Catch Off the Hook

I have been on many blind dates of late. While most of the men were lovely, none was the right one for me. What are my obligations now? Do I tell them exactly why we are not a match? Do I just not return their calls? What if I bump into them again later?

—One Date Is Enough

Dear One Date,

Many daters are often unaware of basic dating protocol. The guidelines strongly encourage that you be mannerly. This means that if someone took the time to call you, you should take the time to return the call. You should also be kind. Therefore, a list of fatal flaws is not a good way to stave off a second date. You should be diplomatic. This way, when you bump into them later, you can have a friendly conversation, knowing you handled the situation well. Your tone should remain upbeat. Allow the fellow to save face while offering a different course of action. “Steve, thank you again for taking me to the new Asian restaurant in town. The meal was fabulous. Towards the end of the date, I got the feeling you felt the same way I did: that we would make good friends, but not such a great romantic match. I have a wonderful, attractive friend, and she likes Star Trek almost as much as you. Would you mind if I gave her your number?”

That is right. Daters should never sever a connection. Just because this person isn’t right for you doesn’t mean he isn’t right for anyone. Look at your friends’ significant others — would you want to be in a committed relationship with any of them? We all have different tastes and romantic criteria. Pass along a willing single to a friend or acquaintance. They will be happy you did. Hopefully they will return the favor and pass along some eligible men to you.

For answers to your etiquette emergencies, email the Manners Maven at editor@jewishjournal.org.
© 2003 Mannersmith Etiquette Consulting. All rights reserved.

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Editorial

A Noble Goal That Can Also Save Money

The heads of the major North Shore Jewish agencies have been meeting for several years to explore ways to work together more effectively. The discussions have been helpful, all parties agree, but so far, there’s been no tangible work product. There may be one, soon.

Grant Thornton, a Boston-based consulting and accounting firm, has just completed a $15,000 study, paid for by the Jewish Federation of the North Shore, aimed at identifying opportunities for the agencies to save money by collaborating on basic business functions. The agencies participating in the study are the Federation, Cohen Hillel Academy, the Jewish Community Center of the North Shore (Marblehead), The Jewish Journal, Jewish Family Service of the North Shore, the Jewish Rehabilitation Center, and the North Suburban Jewish Community Center (Peabody).

In its search for potential synergies, the firm interviewed key managers of each agency, studied their budgets, their spending patterns, and their missions and goals. They concluded that all the agencies run “relatively lean administrative and finance operations.” That’s good for the agencies themselves but it limits opportunities for dramatic savings. Rather than a potential home run, the consultants say, they went looking for ways to hit “singles and doubles.”

Further limiting the potential synergies are the fact that two-thirds of agency money goes for staffing and direct grants to recipients, and also the fact that a lot of the money spent for supplies goes for special purposes. The Jewish Rehab, for example, is the only agency purchasing bandages and other health-related products. The consultants say the JRC is already taking advantage of volume-related savings opportunities.

Still, combining buying power to maximize discounts could save $87,000 to $270,000 worth a year, according to the consultants. They recommend developing a preferred vendor program and pursuing joint efforts in some or all of these areas: security systems, auditing services, information technology support, printing and copier services, insurance, mailings, public relations, and health/medical coverage.
Finally, they recommend that one agency become an administrative services organization for all the agencies, centralizing “back office” functions that all perform separately now, such as accounting, credit checks, and processing of pledges and contributions.

Agency directors and boards will now turn their attention to digesting the report, prioritizing the opportunities, and planning how to carry them out. Later, the synagogues will be invited to join the collaboration — if indeed collaboration is what the agencies decide they want.
The recommendations are a good beginning. Now comes the hard part: translating opportunity into action.

MARK ARNOLD
Jewish Journal Editor/Publisher

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Local Columnists

Lies, Deception and Consequences

DOV BURT LEVY
Jewish Journal North of Boston

Dov Burt Levy is a Salem, MA based columnist. He can be reached at dblevy@columnist. com.

Ten days ago in Brockton a woman was found dead with more than 30 stab wounds. A man said he “accidentally” stabbed his girlfriend.
Thirty times? Accident? Perhaps he had read of the Houston woman dentist who last year ran her Mercedes three times over her dentist husband’s body and also claimed it was an “accident.”

Maybe “accident” is one of the few excuses for those caught in the act while those without a knife in their hand or their auto on top of the victim can deny having done the deed.

In Jerusalem, a dozen years ago, my upstairs neighbor completed renovations on his apartment, including moving his bathroom to the area above my bedroom.

A few mornings later I woke up to find a large round wet spot on my ceiling and in the middle a little bubble of water just waiting to be heavy enough to fall on my bed. I rushed upstairs, brought my neighbor down, showed it to him, to which he replied: “No way it could be coming from my house. Everything was checked. It’s your problem.”

One rule my neighbor did not know: Never render a writer speechless. Two hours later, outside the house, I showered him with my garden hose, police were called, negotiations commenced, the leak corrected. My friends called it “normal Middle East dispute settlement.”

Let’s move up 50 notches on the consequence scale to Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook” and Bill Clinton’s “I never had sex with that woman,” words that will some day be found in a book titled: “Sentences They Wish They Had Never Uttered.”

Philosopher Sisela Bok says liars usually consider only the immediate harm to others against benefits for themselves. Liars ignore or underestimate “two additional kinds of harm — the harm that lying does to the liars themselves and the harm done to the general level of trust and social cooperation. Both are cumulative; both are hard to reverse.” (Lying, Vintage Books, 1999.)

While the world can live with the fact that my neighbor and I never spoke again, the Nixon and Clinton lies have demeaned and diminished the respect, authority and power of the Presidency.

Public lies have led to cover-ups that become the larger story, the larger crime and caused the greatest punishment to the liar and to the institutions involved.

Today, previous denial and cover-up of clergy sexual abuse threatens the very essence of the Catholic Church in America.

Corporate heads have sorely damaged public trust in the business system and their companies as a consequence of personal greed filled with lies and cover-ups which literally destroyed people’s lives, retirement monies, careers and communities.

If you put it all together and conclude that capitalism, Catholicism and the presidency have all been severely damaged by systematic lies, bad actions, and high-level cover-up, you know we are tip toeing through an area of great importance and gigantic vulnerability.

And no institutions, including in our own Jewish community, should be so smug as to think that it could not happen to them and therefore do not take action to insure that expected high standards of governance are well-known along with serious ongoing vigilance.

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Of Housepaint and Bulletproof Vests

ELLEN GOLUB
Jewish Journal North of Boston

Ellen Golub teaches journalism at Salem State College. She may be reached at elkele@attbi.com

Children: The Torah commands us to have them, to be fruitful and multiply, but its first explanation of them is as a punishment to all women for eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge in Eden: tza’ar gidul banim, the pain of raising them up. Not exactly an inducement. In fact, the Torah never really warms up to kids unless they are part of B’nai Yisrael, the Jewish people. Maybe that’s why there are so few of us on the face of the earth.

And yet Jews tend to obsess about children. In a world whose continuity is defined by heirs, fertility plagues the matriarchs. Abraham waits faithfully into his nineties for the promised son, Isaac. And so discouraged is Sarah, so incredulous that she will never bear a child after menopause, that she laughs hysterically when she overhears that she will give birth in her eighties.

Every time we agonize over 200 million Arabs poised to crush our Jewish state, we should remember that it was Sarah who gave Abraham her maidservant, Hagar, so that he could finally become a father. It is Hagar, the fruitful and aggrieved Hagar, who is responsible for that teeming cauldron of testosterone known as “the Arab Street.”

More than 2000 years later, it is the Palestinians, the descendants of Ishmael, who have the world’s highest birth rate, and the Jews, with the exception of a few Haredis, the world’s most miniscule. That is why Jewish women are hugely over-represented in fertility clinics across the United States and Israel. Indeed, it may be why Jewish people are so well-known for their devotion to their children. Although Palestinian apologist Hanan Ashwari, tells us that Arab families love their children every bit as much as Jewish families do, it is impossible for us to imagine Jews tolerating — never mind celebrating—their kids becoming suicide bombers or honoring killers.

Every morning, I awake filled with trepidation and dread. Were any Jewish children killed during the night defending Eretz Yisrael—or just riding its buses? I switch on the TV with dread. If a soldier is killed, I go to my computer and read about it on Ha’aretz. I look for pictures, names, and towns. I see images of handsome young men, sometimes grieving Jewish parents at middle age, like myself, burying what yesterday had been their hope for the future.

These child soldiers are the same age as my own cute kids, barely into their twenties. God tells Cain in the plural that “The bloods of your brother cry to me from the earth,” which Rashi interprets as, “When you kill one person, it’s as if you kill a whole world of people.”
Whole Jewish worlds, then, are expiring in short bursts of gunfire, quietly, 6000 miles away, one Jew at a time. And I am wondering, this summer, what colors to paint the rooms in my house. I walk around with paint chips. I ask my kids whether they prefer linen or pure white, raindrop or a capella.

My eldest, Frannie, comes home from a meeting one night while I am poring over color chips. She takes me aside, gently. “Mom,” she whispers, “If Alex and Yoni (her brothers) were in Jenin and they needed bullet proofvests that cost $1,300 each, and if some American Jew knew about it and decided to spend a few thousand dollars painting her house instead of buying them vests, what would you think of that person?”

I understand immediately. I feel ashamed of my selfishness, proud of my daughter’s values, and frustrated that I am a Jew with more responsibilities than fun, more obligations than reward. Es schwer zu zeid a Yid (It’s tough to be a Jew) . Roughly translated, it means “Stir the paint yourself.”

So I write out a check for $1,000 to Libi, The American Friends of the IDF, so that one Jewish soldier, a world of Jews, may live.
I am not a careful painter; I drip and spill a lot. But every smudge in my paint will be a reminder to my family and me that Jewish lives matter, that somewhere in Israel, because of us, another seed of Abraham and Sarah can continue to grow.

Anyone wishing to help save the lives of Israeli soldiers is invited to contribute to Libi, the fund that supports the Israel Defense Force. Any donation is important; each bulletproof vest costs $1,300. On the web, you can find it at www.Libi-fund.org.il or, on the North Shore, you can contact American Friends of Libi through Leah Jacobson 781-596-3594; leahj01@attbi.com.

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Slice of Life
No Such Thing as a Jewish Toothache…

PHYLLIS DINERMAN
Jewish Journal North of Boston

@Phyllis Dinerman 2003. Phyllis Dinerman is a resident of Marblehead and Boynton Beach, FL. She may be reached at phyllis@dinerman.com

Did you ever have a toothache? Did you ever have a deadline to make? Well, I am lucky enough to have both a toothache and a deadline to make today.

When you have a toothache, you do not know where to put yourself. My toothache was kind enough to wake me at two in the morning. Now there are mornings when I wake at two o’clock, accomplish the objective that I woke at that ungodly hour for, and then go back to sleep. With a toothache, you do not go back to sleep. You do not know where to put yourself. Should you walk around? Should you turn over in bed? Should you go into the bathroom, close the door and scream at the top of your lungs?

I chose none of the above options. I woke my husband, Jerry (kind, aren’t I?). He is a retired periodontist, so I thought I should share my dental woes with him at that hour. He’s really a very kind man, and his advice was so professional.

“Take two Advil and we’ll call a dentist in the morning.”

In the morning? It is morning. I know he meant “at a civilized” time in the morning, but still… He, immediately, feel back to sleep and never even remembered my waking him while I was in the midst of a crisis. I, on the other hand, stared at the ceiling until daylight finally arrived.

I called my dentist, “calling in every favor” he ever owed my husband, and he saw me at his office at 7:30 a.m.

Jerry came with me. God knows why I shlepped the poor man but I did… for moral support?

The dental assistant came in the operatory and took a couple of x-rays to see if any fracture or decay could be seen. I should be so lucky.

Nothing could be seen on the x-ray.

The next step is the best: The dentist begins by klopping on the tooth and the adjacent teeth with the handle of the heaviest dental instrument in the tray. This is to determine which tooth is actually causing the problem. By the time he is finished banging on your teeth, the dentist actually believes you can identify which tooth is the problem tooth. All my teeth are screaming…after the klopping. My mouth feels like an army tramped through and set up an artillery base.

If I had an earache, the ENT physician would have just peeked in my ear, seen the infection and prescribed an antibiotic. If I had broken my foot, the doctor would have taken an x-ray and put a cast on the broken foot. But the dentist comes in with every possible instrument, sets up shop and starts banging on every tooth in your mouth.

In defense of my dentist and because every dentist on the North Shore is going to “kill me,” there really is no other way for the dentist to determine the “problem” tooth. I love the dentists on the North Shore. I really do. My husband was in practice 32 years here, and I have only the highest respect for them; but oy, a toothache is one’s worst nightmare.

The results: The dentist discovered the discomfort is caused by an infected nerve canal. (Don’t you love it when they say “discomfort?” It’s pain, Doc. It’s pain.) And I have this deadline today.

I know my articles usually have a Jewish slant, but I know no way to make this Jewish, except that my dentist is Jewish.

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Look Ma, We’re Ethnic — and Jewish Too!

MARK ARNOLD

Jewish Journal Staff

“The Governor wants to meet with the ethnic press,” said the voice at the other end of my phone, a public relations aide to Governor Mitt Romney. “Would you like to attend?” “Of course,” I answered without hesitation.

I never thought of myself, or The Jewish Journal, as ethnic. But at the meeting itself a few weeks later, I found myself flanked by representatives of an ethnic smorgasbord of Massachusetts newspapers and online services: Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, Finnish, Spanish, Russian, Irish, and Armenian. As we faced Republican Romney — listening intently under a portrait of James Michael Curley in the Governor’s Council Chamber at the historic State House — each of us described our goals and challenges.

Only then did I realize we have a lot in common.

All of us are trying to achieve financial stability, to strengthen community cohesion, to instill pride in heritage, and continuation of our tradition. When my turn came, I shamelessly handed out copies of The Journal’s May 23 special section on Jewish Pride. I talked enthusiatically about how we seek to inculcate Jewish values in our youth.

Later, the editor/ publisher of a bilingual Portuguese paper f