Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on June 25, 2022

TEANECK, NJ A Jewish social services organization in New Jersey has received a $25,000 grant from State Farm on Wednesday, to help support its Corner Market Food Pantry, a free food distribution site in Teaneck that serves more than 3,700 clients.

The Jewish Family & Children's Services of Northern New Jersey was one of 100 causes across 34 states, and one of six in New Jersey, to gain enough votes to receive the grant.

"Their ability to earn enough support to win this grant demonstrates the strength and commitment of our community, as well as our passion to help neighbors facing food insecurity," Closter State Farm Agent Anna Kim said.

In February, the insurance company accepted 4,000 applications for causes throughout the country that support communities in need, and 200 finalists were then posted online for the public to vote on.

"We are so excited to have been voted for and selected as a grant recipient," Katie Wolchko, the Jewish Family Services grant coordinator, said. "Food insecurity is a major concern, but we're here to help promote long-term health and well-being for our clients."

Several State Farm agents presented the check to the organization at Temple Emanu-El, a synagogue in Closter.

"We look forward to seeing the impact of this grant throughout North Jersey," agent Kim said.

Read the original:

$25K Granted to Jewish Organizations Teaneck Food Pantry - Patch

Category: Synagogue | Comments Off on $25K Granted to Jewish Organizations Teaneck Food Pantry – Patch
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 25, 2022

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

May is Jewish American Heritage Month, when we celebrate Jewish contributions to American culture, history, and society. People like Deborah Lipstadt (a historian confirmed as the State Departments Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism), Joan Rivers, Daveed Diggs, photographer Diane Arbus, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are just some of the notable Jewish Americans we can celebrate this month. When you think of Jewish Americans, many people tend to assume were a monolith: white and Ashkenazi (of European descent) when the reality is, we are so much more. Our histories, our ethnicities, and our cultures are varied, and recognizing this is important and I say this to my fellow Jews as well, as there is racism and lack of inclusion within our community, too.

Jewish American Heritage Month is a great time to read something new that touches on a topic or history we didnt know about before. Ive put together a list (which could have been much, much longer!) of picture books, middle grade and YA, and adult books to enjoy this month or any time, really. The books showcase Jewish Americans, highlight our diversity, explore aspects of our culture, or are just snapshots of Jewish life in America. There are so many great Jewish authors that I could have included on this list that Id recommend, too: Dahlia Adler (her forthcoming one is Home Field Advantage), Victoria Lee, Hannah Moskowitz, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, LC Rosen, and much more. In the meantime, heres a short list to get you started!

Book Deals Newsletter

Sign up for our Book Deals newsletter and get up to 80% off books you actually want to read.

Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox.

Twitty, a culinary historian, explores Southern food and food culture in this book, along with his Black ancestry. He is Black, Jewish, and gay, and in this hybrid memoir/history exploration, he delves into the past, and the intersections of history and food. He looks at the food his enslaved ancestors prepared and ate, looks through historical documents and recipes, and collects stories, illustrating the politics around Southern food and at the same time, the power food can have to bring people together. (His forthcoming book, Koshersoul, looks just as amazing!)

Gad, who is biracial, was adopted by a white family at 3 days old. Growing up, she found that she didnt quite fit into Black spaces as a Jew or didnt feel Black enough, and in Jewish spaces, she ran into racism. People in her own family were racist, and her parents cut those people out of her life, including her great-aunt Nette. More than a decade later, Nette is diagnosed with Alzheimers, and Gad can help her. What she finds is that the disease has changed Nette and allowed her to accept Gad, and so she lets her into her life, allowing a new relationship to take root and blossom.

If youre looking for even more Jewish books, check out this post on Jewish fantasy books, and if youd like to learn more, this post on books to teach you about Judaism is great.

Read more from the original source:

Books to Read for Jewish American Heritage Month | Book Riot

Category: Jewish Heritage Month | Comments Off on Books to Read for Jewish American Heritage Month | Book Riot
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 25, 2022

An insular Hasidic Jewish community in upstate New York officially formed their own town when the calendar rolled over to 2019, becoming the states first new town in nearly 40 years, reports said.

The former Village of Kiryas Joel in Orange County officially split from Monroe, NY on New Years Day, becoming the Town of Palm Tree, according to The Times Herald-Record.

Palm Tree named for the English translation of Kiryas Joel founder Rabbi Joel Teitelbaums last name springs forth from a 2017 referendum in which more than 80 percent of Monroe voters opted to branch off into their own town, the paper reported.

Palm Tree all 220 acres and roughly 20,000 residents of it becomes New Yorks first new town since East Rochester was formed in 1981.

But life in the new town is already off to a rocky start: The town has no elected justices to hear municipal court cases, including traffic tickets, because no one bothered to run for the position, The Times Herald-Record reported.

Several people received write-in votes, but the Orange County Board of Elections refused to certify the top two as winners because multiple people in the new town shared those names, the report said.

Follow this link:

Hasidic Jewish community creates new town in New York

Category: Hasidic | Comments Off on Hasidic Jewish community creates new town in New York
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 25, 2022

(New York Jewish Week) Lufthansa apologized for kicking identifiably Jewish people off a flight from New York City to Budapest last week after some Hasidic individuals on the plane had reportedly not worn masks on the first leg of the flight.

Lufthansa said in a statement Tuesday that it regrets the circumstances surrounding the decision to exclude the affected passengers from the flight.

The statement also said that the airline was still reviewing the incident and regretted that the large group was denied boarding rather than limiting it to the non-compliant guests.

What Lufthansa referred to as a group were 100-plus Hasidic Jews, many of whom did not know one another, flying to Hungary on a pilgrimage.

Most people were flying as individuals, passenger Usher Schik told the New York Jewish Week Monday.

Lufthansa also apologized not only for the inconvenience, but also for the offense caused and personal impact.

The statement said that the German carrier has a zero tolerance policy for racism, antisemitism and discrimination of any kind. What transpired is not consistent with Lufthansas policies or values, the statement said. We will be engaging with the affected passengers to better understand their concerns and openly discuss how we may improve our customer service.

In a video taken by a passenger, a Lufthansa supervisor in Frankfurt, Germany, where the first leg of the trip terminated, is seen explaining the expulsion by saying that everyone has to pay for a couple, adding, Its Jews coming from JFK. Jewish people who were the mess, who made the problems.

The video, first reported and shared by the discount travel website Dans Deals, was posted to YouTube and Instagram, where it sparked angry comparisons to the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust.

The Jewish travelers on their way to Budapest to visit the grave of Rabbi Yeshayah Steiner, a wonder-working rabbi who died in 1925 and is buried in a village in northeast Hungary. According to Dans Deals, an estimated 135 to 170 Jews were on the flight, 80 percent of whom wore visible Hasidic clothing.

Rabbi David Zwiebel of Agudath Israel of America, which represents haredi Orthodox interests,wrote a letter to Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr on Monday asking that he research the disturbing accounts about the flight.

People were being punished simply because they shared ethnicity and religion with the alleged rule violators, Zwiebel wrote.

Our nonprofit newsroom depends on readers like you. Make a donation now to support independent Jewish journalism in New York.

Lufthansa did not respond to the New York Jewish Weeks request for comment.

More here:

Lufthansa apologizes for expelling 'large group' of Hasidic Jews from ...

Category: Hasidic | Comments Off on Lufthansa apologizes for expelling ‘large group’ of Hasidic Jews from …
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 25, 2022

TOWN OF WALLKILL - A Satmar Hasidic group is preparing to sell the 17-acre former Crystal Run Village campus it bought three years ago with plans to convert it into a boys school.

Sheri Torah, one of three religious school systems for Hasidic students in and around Kiryas Joel, has signed a contract to sell the empty complex on Stony Ford Road for $2.1 million to a Manhattan-based nonprofit that serves children and adults with special needs, according to court papers filed in Orange County this week.

Sheri Torah leaders say in those filings that they decided against trying to open a school at the site after discovering it needed extensive upgrades and town approvals.

New site: Boys school planned on land bought from South Blooming Grove mayor

Bought: Satmar group buys Crystal Run Village campus to open boys school

The impending buyer is Community Assistance Resources and Extended Services, or CARES,which provides an array of services for people with developmental disabilities and behavioral and mental health issues. No CARES administrator could be reached on Thursdayto discuss the organization's plans for the campus.

The buildings and grounds were used for 60 years by Crystal Run Village, a nonprofit that serves about 500 people with developmental disabilities in Orange, Rockland and Sullivan counties. The campus has been vacant since the organization moved its offices to a new building it completed in Wallkill in 2018.

Sheri Torah bought the propertyfor $1.3 million in 2019, expecting to open a school for about 300 boys. But school leaders soon learned the buildings and infrastructure "needed significantly more repair and refurbishment than anticipated," including broken sewer pipes and a $162,000 water-system upgrade, according to court papers.

Moshe Ostreicher, Sheri Torah's administrator, filed the petition for approval by state Supreme Court to sell the campus, as state law requires religious organizations to do before buying or selling property. He outlined a litany of obstacles to opening a schooland said the pandemic would likely have delayed and increased the cost of construction materials.

He said Sheri Torah had bought the campus to relieve overcrowding at its schools in Monroe, which state records indicatehave about 4,400 childrenenrolled. Nearly 15,000 children in all attend Hasidic schools in Kiryas Joel and just outside the village.

The petition to sell the Wallkill property comes shortly after Sheri Torah secured another schoolsite near Kiryas Joel: a 21-acre property that South Blooming Grove Mayor George Kalaj sold for $4.6 million in March. The development plans for that property include a Sheri Torah boys school, according to an article published five days after the sale in the Yiddish-language KJ Weekly.

Chris McKenna covers government and politics for the Times Herald-Record and USA Today Network. Reach him at cmckenna@th-record.com.

Continue reading here:

Hasidic group selling Wallkill campus where it planned to open school

Category: Hasidic | Comments Off on Hasidic group selling Wallkill campus where it planned to open school
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 25, 2022

As best as I can tell, the puff-sleeve onslaught began in 2018. The clothing designer Batsheva Hays eponymous brand was barely two years old, but her high-necked, ruffle-trimmed, elbow-covering dresses in dense florals and upholstery printsbizarro-world reimaginings of the conservative frocks favored by Hasidic Jewish women and the Amishhad developed a cult following among weird New York fashion-and-art girls. Almost all of her early designs featured some kind of huge, puffy sleeve; according to a lengthy profile in The New Yorker published that September, the custom-made dress that inspired Hays line had enough space in the shoulders to store a few tennis balls.

Batsheva dresses arent for everyone. They can cost more than $400, first of all, and more important, theyre weird: When paired with Jordans and decontextualized on a 20-something Instagram babe, the clothes of religious fundamentalism become purposefully unsettling. But as described in that cerulean-sweater scene from The Devil Wears Prada, what happens at the tip-top of the fashion hierarchy rains down on the rest of us. So it went with the puff sleeve. Batsheva and a handful of other influential indie designers adopted the puff around the same time, and the J.Crews and ASOSes and Old Navys of the world took notice. Puff sleeves filtered down the price tiers, in one form or another, just like a zillion trends have beforestreamlined for industrial-grade reproduction and attached to a litany of dresses and shirts that dont require a models body or an heiresss bank account. And then, unlike most trends, it stuck around.

Four years later, the puff sleeve still has its boot firmly on the neck of the American apparel market. If you have tried to buy any womens clothes this year, you already knew thatthe sleeves are everywhere, at every size and price level, most of them stripped of the weirdness that made the originals compelling and ready to make you look like a milkmaid in the most boring way imaginable. At a time when most fashion trends have gotten more ephemeral and less universal because of constant product churn, some manage to achieve the opposite: a ubiquity that feels disconnected from perceptible demand. Right now its puff sleeves, but weve also seen cold shoulders, peplums, crop tops, pussybows, fanny packs, and shacketsa host of looks that have generated their own aesthetic feedback loops, iterated until the buying public cant stand them anymore. Americans now have more consumer choice than ever, at least going by the sheer volume of available products, but so much of the clothing that ends up in stores looks uncannily the same.

When you take creative decisions out of the hands of actual humans, some funny stuff starts to happen. For most of the 20th century, designing clothes for mass consumption was still dependent in large part on the ideas and creative instincts of individuals, according to Shawn Grain Carter, a professor of fashion business management at the Fashion Institute of Technology and a former retail buyer and product developer. Even most budget-minded clothing retailers had fashion offices that sent people out into the world to see what was going on, both within the industry and in the culture at large, and find compelling ideas that could be alchemized into products for consumers. One of these employees might see some weirdo dressed like a frontier bride at a bar in the East Village and later say in a meeting, What if we did a couple of pieces with puff sleeves? Development and design work still involved plenty of unglamorous business concernssell-through rates, product mix, seasonal sales projectionsbut the process relied on human taste and judgment. Designers were more likely to be able to take calculated risks.

At the end of the 1990s, things in fashion started to change. Conglomeration accelerated within the industry, and companies that had once been independent businesses with creative autonomy began to consolidate, gaining scale while sanding off many of their quirks. Computers and the internet were becoming more central to the work, even on the creative side. Trend-forecasting agencies, long a part of the product-development process for the largest American retailers, began to create more sophisticated data aggregation and analysis techniques, and their services gained wider popularity and deeper influence. As clothing design and trendspotting became more centralized and data-reliant, the liberalization of the global garment trade allowed cheap clothing made in developing countries to pour into the American retail market in unlimited quantities for the first time. That allowed European fast-fashion companies to take a shot at the American consumer market, and in 2000, the Swedish clothing behemoth H&M arrived on the countrys shores.

Fast fashion overhauled American shopping and dressing habits in short order. The business model uses cheap materials, low foreign wages, and fast turnaround times to bombard customers with huge numbers of new products, gobbling up market share from slower, more expensive retailers with the promise of constant wardrobe novelty for a nominal fee. Traditional brands, which would commonly plan new collections and develop products for more than a year in advance, couldnt keep up with competitors that digested trend and sales data and regurgitated new designs in a matter of weeks.

Read: Why urban Millennials love Uniqlo

Fast fashion has only gotten faster. Shein, a Chinese company that has existed in its current form since 2012, has grown at breakneck speed by marketing the wares of domestic garment factories directly to Western consumers, and by turning around new clothing in just a few days. A 2021 investigation by Rest of World found that, over the course of a month, Shein added an average of more than 7,000 new items to its website every day. The companys success, like that of Spain-based Zara before it, is built on taking the guesswork out of trends: By constantly creating and test-marketing new products, it can measure consumers immediate reactions and quickly resupply what sells. That is to say, it can just trawl the internet for anything that shoppers already find vaguely compelling, make a bunch of versions on the cheap, and track responses to them in real time.

Doing exactly that has made Shein very successful. The company generates new garments to capitalize on whatever is happening on the internet at any given moment, turning out pastoral frocks to maximize #cottagecores TikTok virality or cadging the work of independent artists and designers, as the company has repeatedly been accused of doing. To stay afloat, traditional retailers have had to become more like their fast-fashion competition, relying more on data and the advice of large consulting firms and less on the creativity and expertise of their staff. The days of the designer saying, Look, this is what Ive done, and this is your choice or forget about itthose days have gone, Grain Carter told me.

When enough brands and retailers begin using these inventory tactics and trend-prediction methods, the results homogenize over time. At the top of the food chain, a designer has an interesting idea, and bigger, more efficient retailers dont just copy itthey copy one anothers copies. The sameness persists on multiple levelsnot only do lots of companies end up making garments that look very much alike, but for efficiencys sake, theyre also often the same garments those companies made in past seasons, gussied up with new details. That these trend feedback loops often center on sleeves or necklines or trim is no coincidence, according to Grain Carter. Changing a dresss flutter sleeve to a puff or a blouses collar to a pussybow is unlikely to affect the garments fit or sizing. Those kinds of changes appeal to customers who want certain parts of their bodies concealed, making the trends marketable to the largest possible audience, across size, age, and income level.

Read: Ultra-fast fashion is eating the world

Bringing back old garments with new details is among the oldest tricks in the apparel book. But when you optimize that trick to wring every last dollar from itand do so at the expense of trying out new, unproven ideasyou get a perpetual-motion machine, generating dress after dress that is difficult to distinguish from the ones that came before. Even clothes from different brands will look almost exactly the same; in fact, they might actually be the same. As supply chains have become more dispersed and complicated, multiple brands can end up buying inventories of the same garment, from the same supplier, and putting their own labels in them. You, too, can sometimes buy (and then resell) wholesale quantities of that same garment on AliExpress, a website that aggregates stock from Asian factories for sale to international buyers.

The unglamorous realities of production have long been hidden from the public in order to preserve the magic of mass-market consumption. A century ago, this was achieved largely through cathedral-like department stores, but now the sleight of hand is a little differentlavish ad campaigns and sponsorship deals with celebrities and social-media influencers help elevate the vibes of largely dreadful clothing. Thats not just because shopping for clothes has become an ever more internet-centric pursuit. The garments in question, most of which dont exactly jump off the hanger in person and fit poorly once tried on, benefit from careful photography and liberal photo editingand from requiring shoppers to pay up front. Not only does this create an extra step between buyers and the realities of modern clothing design and production, but it opens a chasm between buyers and the clothes themselves. At a certain point, you are not really paying for a product, but for the hopeful experience of buying something new. Whatever dress eventually shows up at your house is largely incidental to the momentary rush of acquiring it.

For the average shopper, this opacity can magnify the sense that a particular style has become inescapable overnight, largely unbidden. Who asked for all these tops with holes in the sleeves? Were peoples shoulders getting too hot? An idea that would have been moderately popular a few decades ago, before petering out naturally, now sticks around in an endless present, like an unattended record that has begun to skip. Shoppers may encounter the farcical limits of algorithmic selling on a regular basis, but those limits are more plain when Amazon is trying to sell you a second new kitchen faucet, after interpreting your DIY repairs as an indicator of a potential general interest in plumbing fixtures. With clothes, the technology is less obviously stupid, and more insidious. We know you love these shirts, because youve already bought three like them. Can we interest you in another? Frequently enoughwhich may be just one in every 100,000 people who see the productthe answer is yes, and the record skips on.

This problem is not limited to fashion. As creative industries become more consolidated and more beholden to producing ever-expanding profits for their shareholders, companies stop taking even calculated risks. You get theaters full of comic-book adaptations and remakes of past hits instead of movies about adults, for adults. Streaming services fill their libraries with shows meant to play in the background while you scroll your phone. Stores stock up on stuff you might not love, but which the data predict you wont absolutely hate. You have too many fashion companies, both on the retail side and the manufacturing side, being driven by empty suits, Grain Carter said. Consumable products are everywhere, and maybe the most we can hope for is that their persistent joylessness will eventually doom the corporations that foist them upon us.

Here is the original post:

Fashion Has Abandoned Human Taste - The Atlantic

Category: Hasidic | Comments Off on Fashion Has Abandoned Human Taste – The Atlantic
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 25, 2022

Eat to fix the world.

Have you ever seen anyone meditating while eating a sandwich or a salad?

I didnt think so.

Eating doesnt seem like a very spiritual act to most people.

However, its supposed to be.

Allow me to explain.

Even though eating is usually something we do while were talking with friends or scrolling through our phones, Judaism teaches that the moment of eating is actually a very important moment, not just physically for our bodies, but spiritually as well.

In order to really understand this we need to take a quick look at a teaching from the Kabbalah, the teachings of Jewish mysticism, that gives us a peek into the spiritual behind-the-scenes of the moment the world was first created.

The Kabbalah explains that, before there was anything, there was only Gods light and when God wanted to create the world God created ten vessels, called sefirot, to receive that light and to be used in the creation of the world.

But then something cosmically tragic happened.

Gods light was too powerful for these vessels and they broke into countless shards, known in Kabbalah as holy sparks, and these holy sparks became embedded throughout the newly created world.

According to the Kabbalah, our essential work in this world is to elevate the sparks, through the performance of good deeds and other positive actions, and thereby fix the brokenness that is literally part of the world. This is where the well-known Jewish concept of tikkun olam, fixing the world, comes from.

So how does eating fit into all of this mystical talk?

The Kabbalah teaches that the food we eat is home to many of these holy sparks and, consequently, each time we eat we have the opportunity to elevate the sparks and thereby participate in fixing the world.

You heard me right. Fixing the world through eating. (Such a Jewish idea, no?)

This idea is illustrated through one of the very first stories of the entire Torah: Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden.

Now, the sin of Adam and Eve is traditionally understood to be that they ate what they werent permitted to eat.

But Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen (1823-1900), a prominent leader of the Hasidic movement first developed by the Baal Shem Tov in the 18th century, had a different take on this.

He taught that it wasnt what Adam and Eve ate that was the problemit was how they ate.

In fact, he believed, in classic Hasidic fashion, that the Tree of Knowledge wasnt even a tree or a thing at all. Rather it was a way of eating. Their eating was motivated by self-centered seeking of pleasure instead of recognizing the potential that the act of eating has for being a holy and spiritual moment.

And if this was the sin that caused Adam and Eve to be kicked out of the Garden of Eden then, as the teacher Sarah Yehudit Schneider teaches, the primary fixing of human civilization is to learn to eat in holiness.

But what does it even mean to eat in holiness? Bringing back our first teaching, what does it mean to eat in a way that elevates the sparks?

Bringing together different Jewish teachings and practices, I think we can say that it means the following:

Judaism is all about infusing the physical world with spiritual awareness. Thats one of the reasons the Jewish star, the main symbol of Judaism, is made up of two triangles, one pointed up and the other pointed down, one pointed towards the heavens (the spiritual) and one pointed towards the earth (the physical). When we choose to approach the very physical act of eating with spiritual attention we literally have the ability, as we have already seen, to change our lives and even the entire world.

View post:

Is Eating Supposed To Be Spiritual? - aish.com - Aish

Category: Hasidic | Comments Off on Is Eating Supposed To Be Spiritual? – aish.com – Aish
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 25, 2022

Born in Munich, Germany, to Holocaust survivors, Esther Macner regards this as the single most defining moment of her life.

Being a child of survivors colors my life, she says. It is the passion and the fire from which I derive my energy.

Macner has dedicated her life to following a single path: I always have felt I need to protect the oppressed from the oppressors.

This is what she means.

Formerly a senior trial attorney in the county Domestic Violence Bureau in Brooklyn, she moved to Los Angeles and founded Get Jewish Divorce Justice, a non-profit dedicated to the prevention of get (Jewish divorce) abuse.

Most recently she helped her first client under Californias relatively new Coercive Control statute win a get.

In the last 10 years, she has assisted 145 women and men in obtaining a get.

While Macner identifies as being retired from the practice of law, its only technical because legal strains continue to flow through her daily life.

Since the Coercive Control Act passed last year, she has carved out time to advise all attorneys and agunot under her umbrella about when and how to employ this strategy.

I have a caseload of 30 clients all over the world, she says. I do whatever needs to be done to strategize with each set of parties, whom she contacts on a precise schedule.

I get information and current status from the agunah. I get in touch with the get refuser (if he will speak to me), and anybody, all rabbis and family members, who may influence him.

Discipline is the guiding light of Macners daily schedule. I talk to clients about whatever needs to be done to strategize, such as which batei din we should we go to, she said.

She contacts beit din offices from Iran to New York and the agunah department in Israel. My principal focus is advocating on behalf of the agunah in each case, she says. Monthly, I contact each one. Wherever an agunah needs help, I investigate who the players are who can get us to our goal.

I liaison among all of the pieces who might be a catalyst for the get to be given.

This helps explain why, as the lone employee of Get Jewish Divorce Justice, Macner puts in as many as 80 hours a weekSunday through Thursday. I am working harder than I ever have in my life, she says. I am running an organization by myself, and I hate to say, without community support.

The owner does not draw a salary.

She readily acknowledges that her husband, businessman Chaim Plotzker, makes her professional life possible. Without him, Macner says, I would not be able to do my work. Literally and emotionally, he is supporting me by enabling me not to work for a living.

It became apparent this was the right path for Esther, said Plotzker, when it was clear our livelihood was not dependent, necessarily, on her. The passion she shows for this cause was just so wonderful.

His low-key personality is a comfortable fit for his business. For the last 20 years, Plotzker has owned and operated an assisted living facility for the mentally ill.

Macner, whose older brother and sister were born in Displaced Person camps, was just a few months old when her family arrived in this country. Raised in a Hasidic home where Yiddish was the only language, she is confident that her career paths have adhered to Gods intentions for her.

Let there be no doubt this scholarly woman is steeply and diversely educated.

As a young woman, she devoted years of study to rabbinic texts at Michlala and at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

After earning her bachelors in psychology from Hebrew University, Macner followed with a masters from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a JD from Cardozo School of Law, both in New York.

She trained as a divorce mediator under the auspices of the Association for Conflict Resolution, Peace Talks and at the Loyola School of Law Center for Conflict Resolution. She has been a principal at Get Divorce Solutions, a divorce co-mediation practice that specializes in religious divorcing couples.

Admitted to the New York State Bar 35 years ago, Macner, who moved across the country in 2009, was asked why she chose to enter the noisy field of agunah disputes and solutions for the second half of her career.

A pause followed.

I am passionate about Judaism and Halacha. I love rabbinic Judaism. The agunah issue always has been a blemish on my identity as a Torah-loving Jew. Esther Macner

I realized when I came here that I wanted to do something I am passionate about, something that my knowledge uniquely has prepared me for, she said.

I am passionate about Judaism and Halacha (Jewish law). I love rabbinic Judaism. The agunah issue always has been a blemish on my identity as a Torah-loving Jew.

Macner felt she needed to make change in the agunah universe from the inside.

After decades of study, she believes Jewish law is compassionate.

Solutions are there in Halacha to be used, and they are not being used to allow Jewish women to live their lives as the Torah intended, said Macner. As a rabbi said, we are not free as a nation unless all of us are free.

Her learning has convinced her that in ancient times, women were able to initiate a divorce.

The long record of disputes that has handcuffed agunot unfortunately is a blight on Orthodox Judaism.

Macner acknowledges that there has been improvement. Pre-nuptial agreements represent progress, she said.

Macner acknowledges that there has been improvement.

Pre-nuptial agreements represent progress, she said. I dont think [the agunah wars are] a matter of indifference. But this needs to be prioritized for all of us.

How much more progress needs to be made before a desirable place is reached?

Macner exhaled, pondering the question.

A great deal of progress has been made, but acknowledgement and acceptance of that fact has to be made by diverse strains within Orthodox Judaism.

Will the present generation live to see the ultimate goal reached?

I dont think this will be resolved completely in our lifetime, said Macner. Since the solutions are there, they just need to be used.

Read more from the original source:

One Woman's Life Dedicated to Aiding the Oppressed - Jewish Journal

Category: Hasidic | Comments Off on One Woman’s Life Dedicated to Aiding the Oppressed – Jewish Journal
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 25, 2022

Last week, Drake dropped a dancey new album, Honestly, Nevermind, and unless you live under a gigantic rock, you probably heard all about it. He also released a music video for one of his newest songs, Falling Back. In the video, Drizzy marries 23 different women in a wedding ceremony officiated by Toronto rabbi Ari Sitnik, whose small role made a big splash online. We tracked down Sitnik and asked about his overnight rise to rabbinical superstardom.

In the video, you officiate Drakes wedding. But you werent just acting. Youre the real deal, correct?Im an Orthodox Jew and Im ordained as a rabbi, but I dont officiate anything in real life. I actually work in tech support as a computer specialist, and I live with my wife and four sons near Bathurst and Sheppard.

So how does an IT guy land a role in a Drake video?Theres an entertainment group in Toronto called the Magen Boys. Its run by twin brothers who organize parties and bar mitzvahs. Theyre very nice guys. I met them when they put on an event in my community. Through them, I got connected to Director X, the director of the video. I guess Drake wanted a real rabbi for the production. They contacted me, and of course, I went for it. I was surprised and excited.

You had a few crucial lines in the video. Are you trained as an actor?Not at all. When people tell me, Good acting, I say, I didnt actI was being natural there. The director asked me to look Drake and his brides in the eyes and ask the questions, so thats what I did.

But, over the years, Ive been an extra in a few other shows, mostly made-for-TV stuff filmed in Toronto. In 2001, I was looking for work, and outside of a synagogue in Thornhill, I noticed an ad seeking men with beards to play Hasidic Jews in background roles. That led to doing a movie called Crown Heights with Howie Mandel in 2003. It wasnt a speaking role: I sat in a synagogue, watched a basketball game, and pushed a stroller down the block. For Drakes video, I was just expecting to stand there and look Jewish. When they told me I was going to be speaking, I got very nervous. Director X and I came up with the lines on the spot.

Did you get to talk to Drake?Not as much as I wanted to. We briefly talked about our lines and how we wanted everything to look. He was positive, nice and very professional. I really wanted to get to know him more, but he was in and out of the room very quickly. With all the takes combined, we were probably in the room together for an hour, but there was no time to make chit-chat. We were working. Hes tall, my goodness, about six feet. Im only five foot six. I was a little bit starstruck. I know how big he is in the music world.

Is it safe to assume youre a fan?Im more familiar with his work on Degrassi, but I didnt follow it religiously, if youll allow for the joke. In the 2000s, when the show was airing, my wife and I would watch it before bed. She taught me about the connection between Aubrey Graham the actor and Drake the musician. I did listen to his cellphone song, Hotline Bling, when it first came out. I dont know if I ever stopped to listen to the lyrics, but my kids certainly enjoyed it.

What was it like on set?They filmed my part on Sunday, May 29, in a ballroom at the Royal York. They originally wanted to shoot my part on Saturday and Sunday, but Im not allowed to work on Saturdays because of the Sabbath. So we shot both of my parts on Sunday, and for that, I owe some gratitude to Director X.

I was on set for 11 hours, from 1:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. the next day. There were probably 100 people on set, including extras and the production crew. And I wore my own outfit: standard slacks, white shirt, Borsalino fedora and a long black coat. The only things they gave me were a tie and shoes. They didnt like the ones I had. The production company also got me a Kosher dinnerpasta primavera from the Chicken Nest, at Bathurst and Lawrence.

Sounds pretty cushy. How much do you get paid for a gig like this?I cant disclose that. But lets put it this way: I dont think I can quit my day job. It was roughly the market rate for a background actor.

The video racked up more than nine million views in less than a week. Is it safe to say youre the most famous rabbi in Toronto right now?There are rabbis way more well-known than I am. But, certainly, I have the most media exposure at the moment. People are talkingIm getting lots of opinions, lots of feedback. Most of it has been positive. To my sons, Im the cool guy who got to interact with a big star. In the Hasidic community, Drake is known, but maybe a bit less than in the outside world.

I have seen some negative stuff on social media, mostly on Facebook. They say that Drake marrying 23 women, having a polygamous relationship, is demeaning to women. But its just a story. Drake wanted to express a connection to his Jewish roots, so he chose to put a rabbi in the video. Theres so much antisemitism and ignorance these days. I thought this would show Orthodox Jews in a positive light. Thats why I wanted to participate.

Is there anything in the Torah that says you can marry 23 different women at once?Theres something in the Talmud, an addition to the Torah, that discusses a man marrying multiple women at once. So is it possible? Yes, its possible. But would the final law allow it? Not really. Theres been a rabbinical decree for a thousand years that a man should be married to a single woman at a time.

There was also some negative reaction to the album being mostly dance music. What do you think of that?Isnt an artist allowed to change, innovate and diversify his work? I think art is all about new, novel ways of expressing your creativity. Kudos to Drake for doing that.

Since youre an ordained rabbi, is there a chance the ceremony was real and Drake is inadvertently married to those women?No, since Im not registered as an officiant in Ontario, it wasnt sanctioned by the province. As for the religious part, it was missing a few things necessary for an official wedding ceremony, like a proper witness, a proper declaration from Drake and his wives, and written contracts.

Thats probably a good thing. Imagine the alimony! So where do you go from here?I dont have any other gigs lined up. I know there are some limitations with my lookI will not shave my beard or take off my yarmulke. But whatever comes up, comes up. So far, Im back to normal life. I didnt expect it to be such a big deal. For me, it was a paying job. I was asked to go into a room and film a scene. Although it was a ton of fun.

Visit link:

Meet the real-life rabbi who starred in Drake's latest video - Toronto Life

Category: Hasidic | Comments Off on Meet the real-life rabbi who starred in Drake’s latest video – Toronto Life
Tags:

Posted By admin on June 23, 2022

JERUSALEM Israels governing coalition will dissolve Parliament before the end of the month, bringing down the government and sending the country to a fifth election in three years, the prime minister said on Monday.

The decision plunged Israel back into paralysis and threw a political lifeline to Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing prime minister who left office just one year ago upon the formation of the current government. Mr. Netanyahu is currently standing trial on corruption charges but has refused to leave politics, and his Likud party is leading in the polls.

Once Parliament formally votes to dissolve itself, it will bring down the curtain on one of the most ambitious political projects in Israeli history: an unwieldy eight-party coalition that united political opponents from the right, left and center, and included the first independent Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition.

But that ideological diversity was also its undoing.

Differences between the coalitions two ideological wings, compounded by unrelenting pressure from Mr. Netanyahus right-wing alliance, led two right-wing lawmakers to defect removing the coalitions majority in Parliament. When several left-wing and Arab lawmakers also rebelled on key votes, the coalition found it impossible to govern.

The final straw was the governments inability last week to muster enough votes to extend a two-tier legal system in the West Bank, which has differentiated between Israeli settlers and Palestinians since Israel occupied the territory in 1967.

Several Arab members of the coalition declined to vote for the system, which must be extended every five years. That prevented the bills passage and prompted Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a former settler leader, to collapse the government and thereby delay a final vote until after another election.

We did everything we possibly could to preserve this government, whose survival we see as a national interest, Mr. Bennett, 50, said in a televised speech. To my regret, our efforts did not succeed, he added.

Expected to be held in the fall, the snap election will be Israels fifth since April 2019. It comes at an already delicate time for the country, after a rise in Palestinian attacks on Israelis and an escalation in a clandestine war between Israel and Iran. It also complicates diplomacy with Israels most important ally, the United States, as the new political crisis arose less than a month before President Bidens first visit to the Middle East as a head of state.

Mr. Biden will be welcomed by a caretaker prime minister, Yair Lapid, the current foreign minister. The terms of the coalition agreement dictated that if the government collapsed because of right-wing defections, Mr. Lapid, a centrist former broadcaster, would take over as interim leader from Mr. Bennett.

Mr. Lapid will lead the government for at least several months, through the election campaign and the protracted coalition negotiations likely to follow.

In a show of unity on Monday night, Mr. Bennett and Mr. Lapid gave consecutive speeches from the same stage, both hailing the successes of an unlikely government that many analysts did not expect to last even for a year.

The fractious alliance was formed last June after four inconclusive elections in two years had left Israel without a state budget or a functional government.

The coalitions members agreed to team up to end this paralysis, and because of their shared desire to oust Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahus refusal to resign despite standing trial on corruption charges had alienated many of his natural allies on the right, leading some of them to ally with their ideological opponents to remove him from office.

The coalition was cohesive enough to pass a new budget, Israels first in more than three years, and to make key administrative appointments. It steadied Israels relationship with the Biden administration and deepened its emerging ties with key Arab states.

Its leaders and supporters also hailed it for showing that compromise and civility were still possible in a society deeply divided along political, religious and ethnic lines.

We formed a government which many believed was an impossible one we formed it in order to stop the terrible tailspin Israel was in the midst of, Mr. Bennett said in his speech.

Together we were able to pull Israel out from the hole, he added.

Nevertheless, the government was ultimately unable to overcome its contradictions.

Its members clashed regularly over the rights of Israels Arab minority, the relationship between religion and state, and settlement policy in the occupied West Bank clashes that ultimately led two key members to defect, and others to vote against government bills.

The new election offers Mr. Netanyahu another chance to win enough votes to form his own majority coalition. But his path back to power is far from clear.

Polls suggest that his party, Likud, will easily be the largest in the next Parliament, but its allies may not have enough seats to let Mr. Netanyahu assemble a parliamentary majority. Some parties may also only agree to work with Likud if Mr. Netanyahu steps down as party leader.

This dynamic may lead to months of protracted coalition negotiations, returning Israel to the stasis it fell into before Mr. Netanyahus departure, when his government lacked the cohesion to enact a national budget or fill important positions in the civil service, and the country held four elections in two years.

Through it all, Mr. Netanyahu is expected to remain on trial, a yearslong process that is unaffected by a new election, and which will likely only end if he either accepts a plea deal, is found guilty or innocent, or if prosecutors withdraw their charges. Despite the promises of some coalition members, the outgoing government failed to pass legislation to bar a candidate charged with criminal offenses from becoming prime minister.

Critics fear Mr. Netanyahu will use a return to office to pass laws that might obstruct the prosecution, an accusation that he has denied.

Political defections. The move to dissolve Parliament followed weeks of paralysis caused when two right-wing lawmakers left the coalition, one of whom said the government did not adequately represent Zionist and Jewish values. Their defections deprived the coalition of its parliamentary majority, making it hard to govern.

A spike in violence. A recent wave of Palestinian attacks in Israel, the deadliest in several years, also presented a stark challenge to the coalition. The violence spawned criticism of the government from both sides, but the coalitions ideological diversity constrained its options.

In a video released on social media on Monday, Mr. Netanyahu celebrated the governments decision and criticized its record.

This evening is wonderful news for the citizens of Israel, Mr. Netanyahu said.

This government has ended its path, he added. A government that depended on terror supporters, which abandoned the personal security of the citizens of Israel, that raised the cost of living to unheard-of heights, that imposed unnecessary taxes, that endangered our Jewish entity. This government is going home.

Palestinian Israeli lawmakers celebrated the governments collapse for opposing reasons because they said it had done little to change the lives of Palestinians.

Aida Touma-Suleiman, an opposition lawmaker and a member of Israels Palestinian minority, said in a statement: This government implemented a radical far-right policy of expanding settlements, destroying houses, and carrying out ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories. It threw crumbs to the Arabs in exchange for conceding fundamental political principles.

Mr. Lapid, 58, heads Yesh Atid, the nations second-largest party. (Mr. Netanyahus Likud is the largest.) After Mr. Netanyahu failed to cobble together a majority in the previous election in March 2021, Mr. Lapid was given the opportunity to form a government.

To persuade Mr. Bennett to join his alliance, Mr. Lapid allowed Mr. Bennett to take the first turn as prime minister even though he led a much smaller party, because Mr. Bennett was seen as more acceptable to the right-wing flank of the coalition.

A former journalist and popular television host, Mr. Lapid first entered Parliament and government in 2013 as the surprise of that years election, becoming finance minister in a Netanyahu-led government.

Many Israelis long considered Mr. Lapid a former amateur boxer a political lightweight, particularly with regard to handling complex security issues, including countering Irans nuclear ambitions. But he has since served as a minister of finance, foreign affairs, strategic affairs and as the alternate prime minister, and has served as leader of the opposition.

The son of Yosef Lapid, a former minister and Holocaust survivor, and Shulamit Lapid, a novelist, he has expressed support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But to secure the backing of Mr. Bennett, who opposes a Palestinian state, he agreed not to negotiate with the Palestinians over statehood for the duration of their alliance.

Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel.

Continued here:

Israels Government Collapses, Setting Up 5th Election in 3 Years

Category: Israel | Comments Off on Israels Government Collapses, Setting Up 5th Election in 3 Years
Tags: