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I’ve Listened To Racism Without Challenging It. After Being Taken Hostage In Colleyville, I’ll Never Let That Happen Again. By Jeffrey R. Cohen

The sign outside Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. (Courtesy Jeffrey R. Cohen)

(JTA) — If I have learned anything over the past month, it is that racist tropes are not harmless words. They must be actively and consistently challenged. You know them and so do I. The racist tropes peddled about Jewish people are plentiful. What you may not know is that antisemitic tropes caused my friends and me to be held hostage at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. Our Shabbat morning service on Jan. 15 began normally. I had just sat down after the morning Amidah. Within a few seconds, I heard that unmistakable sound of an automatic pistol chambering a bullet. A man we invited into the synagogue on that cold morning so he could warm up was screaming. He waved his gun at us and threatened to blow us up with a bomb. Without turning around, I picked up my phone from the chair next to me, dialed 911, and returned it, screen side down, to the chair. I stood up and faced our attacker. I slowly moved so that I was in line

with an exit. Many of you saw the headlines and are aware of the terror that unfolded over the next 11 hours. One of us was released after about six hours; the other three, including Rabbi Charlie CytronWalker and me, escaped by running out a side door five hours after that. We were fortunate. This man wasn’t like the attackers in Pittsburgh, Poway or Paris. Instead of a hate-filled white supremacist who wanted to kill as many Jews as possible, our attacker had a specific demand. He wanted to free a person being held in a U.S. federal correction center. And he thought we could get that done. “Jews pull all the strings. Jews control the banks. Jews control the media. Jews control the government,” he repeatedly told us. He demanded we get the “chief rabbi of the United States” on the phone. Both Rabbi Cytron-Walker and I explained that, unlike the U.K. where our attacker was from, there is no head rabbi in the United States – not that a chief rabbi would have that kind of power in the first place. Our attacker frequently told us not to worry because President Biden and former President Trump would listen to his demands rather than allow even one Jew to get hurt. He had clearly bathed in racist tropes about my community. People who say “sticks and stones may break my bones, but

words will never hurt me” do not know what Jewish people live with on a day-to-day basis. They do not understand what other marginalized communities live with either. Words have caused, and will continue to cause, harm. And those little throwaway tropes that we all endure may be the most damaging because, when repeated often enough, people begin to believe them. When not addressed directly, racist tropes make all of us bystanders to hatred and participants in another’s suffering. We expect them from the skinheads, and we hope good people will ignore them. We roll our eyes as our friend winces and apologizes for the crazy older relative whom everyone accepts is a racist. We live in a society where we hold onto the premise that racists are the minority. We say noth-

ing because we don’t want to bring attention to ourselves or to the comments. Sometimes we even tell ourselves that “we are stronger than those who hate us.” We very well may be. But that doesn’t mean that the actions of the hateful should be coddled or tolerated. I say “we” because up until recently, I didn’t speak up either. But racist tropes do not automatically dissipate. They must be challenged consistently and vigorously. How many of us have been taught that if we ignore the taunt and do not engage the bully the bully will go away? That didn’t work in elementary school; it will not work now. Words matter. Words influence. Repeated racist tropes See RACISM on Page

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RACISM Continued from Page

dehumanize. Unchallenged words signal acceptance. As I reflect on how to challenge hatred, here are several things I am committing to do: First, question what I hear, in the moment and on the spot. I will do better about asking, “Did I hear you correctly? What did you just say?” By making the speakers repeat what they say, I believe we can force them to acknowledge their words and confront social norms. It also empowers others to speak out as well. Second, inform the individual that their comment is unacceptable. I will do better about sharing in the moment something like, “Statements like that are not acceptable here.” I do not believe it is helpful to call the speaker a racist or antisemitic because I do not want people to shut down and not hear what I am saying. And third, respond to the trope with truth and appeal to the speaker’s sense of right and wrong. I might share, “Both the Fascists and the Communists used antisemitic

tropes as propaganda. They needed a scapegoat to blame for their failings. Don’t follow in their footsteps.” Will that approach keep the attacker out of the next synagogue or Black church, or from stalking another Asian-American woman? Probably not. But if we don’t challenge racist tropes, we have no hope they’ll ever stop. Far too many people will be threatened and harmed, and I don’t want anyone else to go through what I did.

By Shira Hanau

Bernie Madoff, pictured in 2009 ahead of his entering a guilty plea. (Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)

JEFFREY R. COHEN lives and works near Fort Worth, Texas. He is the vice president of Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas and was one of the four hostages who escaped a gunman on Jan. 15, 2022. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.

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Bernie Madoff’s Sister And Brother-In-Law Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide

(JTA) — The sister and brotherin-law of Bernie Madoff, the hedge fund manager who ran a $50 billion Ponzi scheme that counted a number of major Jewish nonprofits among its victims, died in an apparent murder-suicide. Sondra Wiener, 87, and Marvin Wiener, 90, were found dead at their home in Boynton Beach, Florida Thursday. The cause, local police said, was gunshot wounds. A motive was not made public. “Detectives from the Violent Crimes Division arrived on scene to investigate further. After further investigation it appears to be a murder-suicide,” the police said in a statement, according to CNN. Madoff, whose crimes were discovered in December 2008, died in prison last year at 82 after being sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2009. The investors defrauded in Madoff’s Ponzi scheme included Yeshiva University, elite Orthodox Jewish day schools in New York and Boston, Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, and other Jewish organizations and family foundations. Sondra and Marvin Wiener were among Madoff’s victims, having lost several million dollars in the

Ponzi scheme, their son told reporters at the time the scheme became public. Wiener was not the first member of the family to make a suicide attempt in the years following Madoff’s arrest. Bernie Madoff and his wife, Ruth, attempted suicide in Dec. 2008 but survived. Madoff’s son Mark, who worked with his father, died by suicide in 2010 on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest.

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Is Finance Giant Morningstar Boycotting Israel? A New BDS Battlefront Emerges In Investing World By Asaf Shalev

DowntownChicago, whereMorningstar’s headquarters is located, became the site of pro-Palestinian protests, featuring calls to boycott Israel, during last May’s fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas in Gaza. (Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

(JTA) – After brushing aside allegations of anti-Israel bias for nearly a year, a multibillion-dollar investment research firm has done an about-face, hiring an outside law firm to investigate the company’s practices. The change of tack at Chicagobased Morningstar came in early December, about two weeks before the Illinois Investment Policy Board was set to place the company on its blacklist, which would have barred state-run pension sys-

tems from investing in Morningstar. According to complaints first raised by Jlens, which advocates for Israel in the investing world, Morningstar’s subsidiary Sustainalytics steers investors away from Israel by improperly inflating the country’s risk and controversy ratings — which, for Jlens and its allies, amounts to an antisemitic boycott of Israel. “By its purchase of Sustainalytics in 2020, Morningstar has joined the anti-Israel and antisemitic boycott, divest, sanction movement, and is profiting from and promoting products and services that discriminate against and promote divestiture from Israel,” Jlens CEO Julie Hammerman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by email. The dispute between Morningstar and pro-Israel activists is the latest front in the battle against the Israel boycott. Investors who want to put their money into socially responsible companies look to

companies like Morningstar to screen for environmental, social and governance behavior, or ESG. Because Israel is the frequent target of United Nations condemnation and has been criticized by several human rights groups, most recently Amnesty International, Israel supporters worry that companies such as Morningstar, unwittingly or under pressure from the boycott Israel movement, will add Israeli companies and companies to business in Israel to lists of bad corporate actors, causing capital to flee the country. The only job of the seven-member Illinois Investment Policy Board is to ensure that state-run pension systems comply with an Illinois law against investing in certain companies doing business in Iran and Sudan, and prohibiting investments in companies that boycott Israel. “We would be wholly justified in adding Morningstar to the state’s list of prohibited invest-

ments today,” said Andrew Lappin, chair of the board’s Committee on Israel Boycott Restrictions, at its last quarterly meeting on Dec. 22, according to his written comments, obtained through an Illinois public records request. “Morningstar is, however, asking us to kick the can down the road once again.” Lappin called Morningstar’s announcement of a third-party investigation by the law firm White & Case “a striking departure from its public statements over the past year.” He said he agreed to delay the decision on Morningstar until the board’s meeting in March when the investigation’s findings are expected to be available. Lappin is one of three members of the investment policy board who have ties to pro-Israel organizations. All were appointed by Illinois governors. A fourth member was also a gubernatorial appointee, See MORNINGSTAR on Page

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Green Line and not Israel proper, the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel, known as and the three remaining seats are BDS, embraced the move as a vicfilled by representatives of Illinois’ tory. It also drew widespread consepublic pension systems. quences for the company as Illinois Morningstar would be the first and other states quickly triggered U.S.-based company to be placed their newly written anti-BDS laws on the list of companies that boyto punish Unilever. cott Israel, joining 40 other firms Increasingly, investors seeking from around the world. to “do well by doing good” are The most recent company to weighing their investments accordmake the list is the British coning to environment, social and glomerate Unilever, the parent governance, or ESG, factors. company of Vermont ice cream “With the tremendous growth in brand Ben & Jerry’s, which ESG investment, this is the BDS announced last year that it would tsunami we have to be focused no longer allow its ice cream to be on,” Jay Tcath, executive vice sold in the West Bank. Ben & Jer- president at the Jewish United ry’s said it was “inconsistent with Fund/Jewish Federation of Metroour values” for the ice cream to be politan Chicago, told the Jewish sold in Palestinian territory that Telegraphic Agency. “Ben and Jerwas occupied by Israel. ry’s leaves a bad taste in one’s The announcement from Ben & mouth. But the Israeli economy Jerry’s was one of the most promiand the Israeli palate really isn’t nent rebukes of Israeli policy by a threatened by Ben and Jerry’s.” major company. And even though it Tcath is part of a new task force was targeted at sales beyond Israel’s of Jewish organizations paying

MORNINGSTAR Continued from Page

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close attention to Wall Street’s tilt toward what’s also called socially responsible investing. Convened by the Jewish Federations of North America, the task force includes Hammerman of Jlens, representatives from Jewish communal organizations in states with anti-BDS laws, and staff from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a right-leaning think tank. The task force is examining to what extent companies engaged in the ESG movement are targeting Israeli companies and companies doing business in Israel. “Jewish Federations along with other Jewish organizations have been concerned about some ESG companies appearing to unfairly single out Israel when scoring investment risks,” Elana Broitman, JFNA’s senior vice president of public affairs, told JTA by email. “This could well violate various anti-BDS state laws.” In Illinois, Tcath has been advising Lappin and other committee members. Emails obtained through an Illinois public records request show that Tcath and Lappin collaborated to devise a list of demands Lappin presented to Morningstar at the December meeting. A senior official of the Chicago

Jewish federation, Tcath said he has devoted considerable time to his work on Morningstar amid his regular federation responsibilities. “But this issue merits almost any expenditure of time, and not just by me,” he said. Another member of the task force is Richard Goldberg, who See MORNINGSTAR on Page

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Israel To Allow Unvaccinated Tourists To Enter Beginning March 1 By Shira Hanau decline, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz announced Sunday. Tourists will still need to produce negative PCR tests before and after their flights, while Israelis will only need to take a test upon landing. The laxer rules mean that children under the age of five who are Travelers at Ben Gurion Airport, Dec. 22, 2021. ineligible to be vaccinated can now (Flash90) enter the country. Only fully vacci(JTA) — Israel will allow unvac- nated tourists have been allowed in cinated tourists to enter the country since January. The changes came as Israel’s beginning March 1 as the county’s COVID case numbers continue to government also ended its Green Pass program, which allowed only those who have been vaccinated or recovered from COVID to enter public venues. The government decided last week not to renew the program when it expires March 1 due to the country’s declining COVID rate. “This wave is breaking,” Bennett said, according to The Times of Israel. “We are seeing a decline in the number of severely ill.”

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MORNINGSTAR Continued from Page 5 works for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies as a senior advisor. He authored Illinois’ anti-BDS bill while serving as chief of staff to then Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican who lost his seat in 2018 to Democrat J. B. Pritzker. During his first year in office, Rauner appointed four members to the board. They included Mitchell Goldberg, the brother of Richard Goldberg; Lappin, a longtime acquaintance of Richard Goldberg who serves on the board of several Israel advocacy groups, and Alicia Oberman, then executive director of the Jack Miller Family Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to defending Israel. In 2018, the Rauner appointees set their sights on Airbnb after the company said it would stop listing vacation stays that are located in the West Bank. Later, however, Lappin began worrying that the push against Airbnb would fail, according to an email he sent to Tcath that turned up in an Illinois public records request. Lappin wrote on Dec. 12, 2018, that two things combined to make him fret: Airbnb presented a “robust” defense to the board, and Illinois residents voted Rauner out of office. A new governor could choose to replace the board members with his own people. In its defense, Airbnb said it opposes the Israel boycott and that it had been coming under continued attacks from BDS activists. The company noted that it did a lot of business in Israel and sees very little revenue from the few West Bank listings that appear. Lappin wrote that he and his fellow Rauner appointees, Goldberg and Oberman, could see through this defense. But he worried that new board members appointed by the incoming governor would not be “as fiercely committed to the principle and the nuance, within the context of the committee’s mission, of protecting Israeli sovereignty, and as regards to Judea & Samaria, appreciative of the dire strategic ramifications that would result from failing to do,” according to the email, which refers to the West Bank using its official Israeli name. Lappin never had a chance to find out. After Pritzker took office he proceeded to strip various commissions and boards of Rauner

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appointees, but he didn’t touch the Illinois Investment Policy Board. Later on, when Mitchell Goldberg resigned from the board to become a judge, Pritzker, a Democrat, appointed a Republican, Sidney Mathias. A former member of the Illinois House of Representatives, Mathias also once served on the board of Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. In the end, the Illinois board never had to make a decision about blacklisting Airbnb because the company backtracked in April 2019 and pledged in a letter to the board that it would not engage in a boycott of Israel. The campaign targeting Morningstar traces back to April 2020, when the Chicago company announced it was acquiring full ownership of Amsterdam-based Sustainalytics. The Dutch company is one of the main global firms offering ratings of companies based on their social responsibility, and Morningstar wanted a bigger presence in the fast-growing ESG market. A Bloomberg Finance analysis from last year projected that financial assets classified as ESG investments will reach $53 trillion by 2025. The announcement of the planned deal alarmed the pro-Israel group JLens, which shared its longstanding concerns about Sustainalytics’ alleged bias against Israel with Morningstar. The company ignored Jlens and closed the deal. A few months later, Jlens secured a meeting with Morningstar staff and began a dialogue that ended in January 2021 with Jlens placing Morningstar on its “Do Not Invest” list and publicly accusing the company of supporting BDS. According to Jlens, Morningstar was guilty of doing so in numerous ways. Jlens said the company pressures other companies targeted by BDS to cave and divest from Israel, and elevates the controversy ratings of certain companies, which causes investors interested in socially responsible finance to avoid doing business tied to Israel. It said the company disproportionately focused on Israel in its investments screens for human rights abuses. Also in January 2021, Jlens reached out to the executive chairSee MORNINGSTAR on Page THE

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MORNINGSTAR Continued from Page 6 man of Morningstar’s board of directors and raised the issue at the company’s annual shareholder meeting. The organization introduced a shareholder proposal that would require the company to produce a report on the risks of its ”economic activism.” Morningstar’s board shot down the shareholder proposal. In March 2021, however, the company announced it had carried out an internal review of the claims against it, and the review “found no systematic bias and concluded that the claims are false.” It was soon after that Morningstar landed in the crosshairs of the Illinois Investment Policy Board. Tcath, whose office at the Jewish federation is a short walk away from Morningstar’s headquarters in downtown Chicago, also got increasingly involved. He had been thinking about the jeopardy to Israel from the rise of ESG investing for years, and wrote an article about it in 2017, titled “The Next BDS Battlefield.” One of the challenges in tracking what is happening in the ESG market is the limited access to data.

The ratings produced by companies like Morningstar are proprietary, and clients who purchase reports from the companies often sign nondisclosure agreements. “We only know the little bit that we know because we’ve come across documents in a haphazard, happenstance way,” Tcath told JTA. One such document that Jlens chanced upon turned out to be important. Produced by Sustainalytics in 2020 for the Austrian asset management firm Erste, the report examined about 100 companies through the prisms of the environment, human rights, business ethics and labor rights. Tcath and Jlens presented the report as a damning piece of evidence when they met with Morningstar’s executive chairman Joe Mansueto in October. Tcath argued that Israeli companies were overrepresented in the report, noting that while Israel was one of 71 countries in a region encompassing Africa and the Middle East, it accounted for 50% of the companies on Sustainalytics’ radar. “There was no even attempted defense of that finding in my discussion with Morningstar offi-

cials,” Tcath said. He added that he didn’t think the company had been intentionally hostile to Israel, but that it had been led astray because it relied on information provided by the UN and its agencies, which have repeatedly — and unfairly, according to Tcath and other Israel advocates — condemned Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Morningstar declined to comment while the investigation by the law firm it hired was ongoing, but a spokesperson said that the company “takes seriously all questions and concerns around our research.” The December meeting of the Illinois Investment Policy Board, at which the board tabled the vote on Morningstar, drew a crowd. The normally sleepy quarterly gathering saw a lineup of speakers requesting to participate during the public comment period. The main topic of attention was Ben & Jerry’s, which was about to become blacklisted by the board. Representatives from a coalition of pro-Palestinian groups criticized Israel’s human rights record with some arguing that the Illinois law against boycotters of Israel is

being used to take away the ice cream maker’s right to free speech. “Ben & Jerry’s, as a privately owned company run by two Jewish men, is well within their right to stop selling their ice cream in illegal, violent Israeli settlements stealing land from Palestinians in the West Bank,” said Liz Bajjalieh, from the advocacy groups Peace Action and Just Foreign Policy. (Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield are the Jewish founders of the ice cream company but they sold it to Unilever in 2000 and have not run it since.) “This law is just another example of Palestinian exceptionalism, where Palestinians are told that when they demand justice, they’re going too far,” Bajjalieh added. A unanimous board ruled that the Unilever subsidiary had violated Illinois law and was therefore ineligible for investments by staterun pension systems. More than 30 states have passed anti-BDS laws and nearly 10 have taken action against Unilever following the announcement by Ben & Jerry’s. Up next, at the board’s March 22 meeting, is the matter of Morningstar.

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Israel’s Never-Ending, And Very Human, ‘Who Is A Jew?’ Saga By Andrew Silow-Carroll

Jared Armstrong, left, took part in a Birthright Israel trip in 2021. (Courtesy Jared Armstrong)

(JTA) — Jared Armstrong has an emotional story to tell, and he told it and hoped I edited it last week for our opinion section. Armstrong made headlines recently when the Israeli government refused his application for citizenship. Armstrong, a recent college graduate from Philadelphia, says he grew up Jewish, as did his mother. His grandmother, he said, embraced Judaism as an adult. For all those reasons he was

shocked when Israel’s Foreign Ministry rejected his initial application for aliyah, but he agreed to undergo a conversion with his rabbi, Rabbi Michael Beals, of Wilmington, Delaware. He completed a nine-month conversion course under Beals, a Conservative rabbi, and the rituals that normally seal a conversion. When he tried again to become a citizen under Israel’s Law of Return, he was again turned down. Armstrong suspects the government said no because they thought he only wanted to play basketball for a pro team in Haifa. Others note that his rabbi was Conservative, and that the Orthodox establishment that oversees most lifecycle and Jewish identity issues in Israel is adamantly dismissive of Judaism’s non-Orthodox streams. Armstrong is also Black; who can say how his background played into the government’s decision. What was doubly painful about editing Armstrong’s article was noting his surprise and disappointment

about a process that a lot of Jews in Israel and the Diaspora already know can be painfully but necessarily intrusive — or discriminatory, depending on your point of view. Armstrong is not the first Diaspora Jew to have his Jewish identity challenged by Israel’s Foreign Ministry. But sometimes it takes someone new to Jewish communal politics to make jaded veterans take notice. Close Israel-watchers know why Israel, and Jews, put up barriers to conversion and citizenship. It’s about identity. It’s about peoplehood. It is about theology. It is about politics. But as Armstrong wrote, “This was my identity we’re talking about here; my life they were doubting.” The “Who is a Jew” issues waxes and wanes as a communal priority; at the moment it appears to be waning. A coalition government in Israel that does not depend on the Orthodox religious parties to govern raised hopes among non-Orthodox Jews that the Orthodox grip on conversion and other identity issues

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might be eased. On the flipside, it may have eased Diaspora urgency about the issue. But some action is afoot. Today – literally today – an Israeli ministerial committee will consider a bill that widens the possibilities for conversion within Israel. Currently, the system is exclusively under the control of the Chief Rabbinate. The bill would allow Israel’s 150 municipal Orthodox rabbis to establish their own conversion protocols and standards, breaking the rabbinate’s monopoly on the process and ostensibly democratizing the process. The bill is supported by those in Israel, Orthodox and otherwise, who want to ease the process for many of the 400,000 or so people, mostly from the former Soviet Union, who qualify as citizens under Israel’s Law of Return but are not considered Jewish by the rabbinate under Jewish law, or halachah. Tani Frank, director of the Center for Judaism and State Policy at the Shalom Hartman Institute, discussed the bill during a webinar Thursday. He said the current minister of religious affairs, Matan Kahana, “understands that there is a problem when you present yourself as a Jewish and democratic state and you don’t allow different views of Judaism to be fulfilled through the conversion system.” The bill, which would increase autonomy for conversions among Orthodox rabbis, would not expand the possibilities for non-Orthodox conversions to be performed and recognized in Israel. In March 2021, the Israeli Supreme court ruled that Israel must grant citizenship to Jews who converted to Judaism in Israel under non-Orthodox auspices. The ruling did not, however, make them Jewish under halachah. That won’t change. Still, the liberal-leaning Hartman Institute, with feet in both Israel and the Diaspora, took a major part in shaping the new legislation. “We wanted to make sure that we are part of the legislative process, and we wanted to make sure it was safe being shaped in a manner that allows as many Jewish perspectives and views as possible and we want-

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Holiday Features Purim History How The Events Chronicled In The Book Of Esther Inspired A Holiday. By My Jewish Learning

The Book of Esther recounts the story of Purim, telling of how the Jews of Persia were saved from destruction. During the time of King Ahasuerus, one of his ministers, Haman, sought to destroy the Jews in revenge for being snubbed by the Jew Mordecai, who refused to bow down to him. With the king’s authority, he draws lots (pur) to determine the fateful day, which falls on the 13th of the month of Adar. Learning of this decree, Mordecai approaches the new queen, his cousin Esther, to intercede with the king. Esther, who has not revealed her Judaism publicly, fasts for three days in preparation for this task. At a banquet for the king and Haman, she denounces the evil Haman, who is eventually hanged.r Because a royal decree cannot be rescinded — including the decree ordering the extermination of the Jews — Mordecai must send another decree to all the provinces. This letter authorizes the Jews to protect themselves from their enemies. The days following the Jews’ struggle with their enemies (the 14th and 15th of Adar) are declared days of feasting and merrymaking, today celebrated as Purim. The Beginnings of Purim Although it provides the blueprint for the festival of Purim, the origins of the Book of Esther remain obscure. The text’s style of Hebrew and its lack of corroborating historical information from ancient Persia suggest that the Book of Esther was not authored until well after the time it claims to describe. Nonetheless, the Book of Esther does contain many parallels to various ancient Near Eastern and Greek myths, particularly those of the Babylonian gods Marduk and Ishtar. Some scholars argue that the Book of Esther adapted stories about these pagan gods — Marduk becoming Mordecai and Ishtar THE

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transformed to Esther – -to reflect The holiday of Purim is one of the realities of its own Jewish the Jewish tradition’s most beloved authors in exile. The period of communal celebrations. By the secGreek hegemony in the Land of ond century CE, Purim played such Israel seems to have offered the a significant role in the Jewish calsocial, cultural, and political cir- endar that an entire tractate of the cumstances for the development of Mishnah (the earliest compiled rabthis reinterpreted mythology. The binic legal work), called Megillah, actual text of the Book of Esther is was based on the discussion of thought to be of late Second Temple Purim’s proper observance. authorship, being amongst the latA festive meal, packages of food est books to enter the Bible, along- and other small treats offered to side Ecclesiastes, the Song of friends and family (mishloach Songs, and the Book of Daniel. manot), and gifts to the poor The Book of Esther reflects a (matanot la’evyonim) as cited in number of important features of the Esther 9:22 remain key components Persian culture, which are also of traditional celebrations until found elsewhere in the Bible, above today. Purim is a holiday where all in the Book of Daniel. These celebrants are obligated to be happy features, satirized in the Book of — and to drink until they are unable Esther, include a mock representa- to tell the difference between Mortion of Persian rites of gluttony, decai and Haman (Babylonian Taldrinking, exuberant public eroti- mud, Megillah 7b). The reading of cism, abnormal pomp and display the Book of Esther from an actual of richness, and bowing to idols or scroll, often an object of special men. decoration and care, is performed Other Versions of the Purim Story There are different versions of the story of Esther in addition to the one that appears in the Hebrew Bible. The Greek versions contain the name of God, which is absent in the biblical story. Josephus, a Jewish historian of the first century of the Common Era, paraphrases the story of Esther in Louisiana Alarm Watch (504) 780-8775 www.laalarmwatch.com The AntiquiSECURITY • FIRE • MEDICAL ALERT • CAMERAS • ACCESS CONTROL ties of the Jews. LAW_full Size_2019_print.pdf

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with distinctive cantillation on both the evening and morning of Purim. These readings include numerous ancient customs, among which are jeering and making noise each time the villain Haman’s name is mentioned, as well as reciting the names of Haman’s 10 sons in one breath. Contemporary Observances Sarcastic, humorous, and iconoclastic entertainment has become a universal component of Purim celebration. Although written evidence of the Purim shpiel (Yiddish for “Purim play”) exists in Europe only from the 14th century, Purim entertainment is likely of ancient origin as well. Since Jewish performers and musicians did not exist as a professional class until the 18th century, Purim shpiels and wedding entertainments are our only source of Jewish popular pursuits for cenSee PURIM HISTORY on Page

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Holiday Features PURIM HISTORY Continued from Page 9 turies. The biting content of Purim performances and the socializing, mockery, dressing up, and carousing surrounding them often provide an important forum for boundarycrossing on issues of gender, sexuality, authority, and relations with the non-Jewish world. Through sat-

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ires of the original story in the Book of Esther, Purim performances and religious practices provide an essential and fixed measure of creative release exploring some of the Jewish community’s most sensitive topics. From at least as early as the 10th century, the emergence of “Special Purims” — commemorative days instituted by local Jewish communities employing any number of Purim-related customs — demonstrates Purim’s effectiveness as a prototype for engaging larger Jewish concerns in the context of shifting historical events, particularly in the case of communities or families who escaped from serious danger. Both Special Purims and Purim itself have proven particularly useful for adapting traditional Jewish narratives and customs to the changing historical circumstances of the Jewish experience. Each generation has related its own understanding of the Jewish experience to this deceptively simple story of good versus evil and Jewish survival in a distant and hostile land. The myth of Purim lends itself to such reinterpretation because of its timeless and compelling nature.

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mainly to help current citizens who are part of the Zionist enterprise become part of the Jewish people. ed to make sure that liberal Juda- But who knows: maybe allowing “as ism’s values are being considered,” many Jewish perspectives and views said Frank. as possible” will become a habit. There will be strong opposition to the bill, which touches both on political power and some heartfelt concerns about Jewish unity. Defenders of the current system say a single standard for conversion leaves no confusion in the minds of adherents about who is and who ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL isn’t a member of the tribe. Oppo- is editor in chief of The New York nents say it consolidates religious Jewish Week and senior editor of and political power in the hands of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. the few, and narrows the possibiliThe views and opinions expressed ties of belonging to the Jewish in this article are those of the author people. and do not necessarily reflect the Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of views of JTA or its parent company, Israel’s Religious Zionist Party, 70 Faces Media. recently flew to Europe to meet with Orthodox leaders. He was trying to drum up opposition to proposed changes to Israel’s religious status quo, from conversion to the agreement for non-Orthodox worship at the Western Wall. (Britain’s Board of Deputies, a Jewish communal organization, called him a “disgrace” and told him to go home.) The bill won’t change anything for Jared Armstrong. It is meant

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Education

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In Miami, A Selective New Jewish School Hopes To Attract Top Students By Andrew Lapin

Arendering of the beit midrash at the future Jewish Leadership Academy. (Courtesy Jewish Leadership Academy)

(JTA) – A brand-new, $50 million campus. A month in Israel every year. And a program to help students turn their social-service ideas into fully fledged nonprofits. These are just some of the perks offered by the Jewish Leadership Academy, a new Jewish day school in Miami that aims to merge traditional Jewish learning with the trappings of the nation’s most elite private schools. The new school plans to open in 2023 with middle school and high school grades of up to 45 students each, and will initially accept appli-

cations for 6th, 7th, 9th and 10th grades. Unusually for a Jewish day school, those students will be handpicked based on their standardized test scores and other measures of academic ability — part of the school’s effort to combat what its founders say is “brain drain” in local Jewish education. “Too many Jewish families in the Miami area with kids who are highly academically able, academically ambitious, were opting out of the Jewish day school world for the elite private schools,” JLA head of school Rabbi Gil Perl told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The school is the brainchild of Daniel Ades, a partner at the Kawa capital management firm, and his wife Gisela Ades, an immigration attorney. The couple, Brazilian Jews who met in college in Boston, are funding the school’s operations for now. On the new school’s website, they explain that they considered funding teacher training, perfor-

mance pay and student scholarships at existing Jewish day schools before determining that what Miami needs is a school that caters to “those few that wish [to], or can, achieve more” than the community’s Jewish schools offer. South Florida’s recent boom in young Jewish families would seem to aid the school, but Perl said the roots of the project actually began pre-pandemic. Some Jewish families already in Miami saw a choice, Perl said, between “getting the academic experience they were looking for for their kids, or having them in a pro-Jewish, pro-Zionist environment. How do we take that choice off the table?” Miami is home to multiple Jewish middle and high schools that boast college-preparatory academics, Judaic studies and travel to Israel for their students. The Posnack School in Davie enrolls students from a range of Jewish backgrounds; Scheck Hillel Community School in North Miami Beach, one

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of the largest Jewish schools in the country, is Orthodox in approach and offers merit scholarships in its high school. In Miami Beach, Hebrew Academy Miami (Rabbi Alexander S. Gross) is a Modern Orthodox school in the midst of building a new $15 million middle and high school. Requests for comment to heads of school at all three institutions were not returned. But Paul Bernstein, the CEO of Prizmah, a nonprofit that supports Jewish day schools and yeshivas in North America, said JLA’s launch should be seen not as a threat to other schools but as “adding to the strength of our community,” in part because of the rising demand for Jewish education in Miami. He said Prizmah anticipates that other area schools will expand and other new ones could be created as the Jewish population there grows.

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JEWISH SCHOOL Continued from Page 11 (Enrollment in North American Jewish day schools grew by 3.7% between 2019 and 2021, according to the group.) Bernstein told JTA that his group “applauds the creation of the Jewish Leadership Academy,” saying it would add to “the tremendous diversity of approaches” among Jewish day schools nationwide. “Jewish day schools generally do not approach education as a competition with either schools, public or private, Jewish or not,” he said. “They embrace the opportunity to teach and nurture the whole child, and they provide a community of learning, both Jewish and secular, that enables students to thrive.” JLA hopes to distinguish itself from the other schools by, first and foremost, catering only to highachieving students. “We are being very clear that we are only going to be teaching at an honors level or above,” Perl said. “That’s what our school is here to do. And in this way, it’s pretty unique. I don’t know if there’s another Jewish day school that’s done this.”

Many cities, including Miami, have selective public high schools; several recent studies have found that attending selective schools may cause long-term harm to students. But Perl and JLA see their vision as the next logical step for Jewish education, after spending “the past 20, 30 years” investing in “that student population that has struggled… academically, struggled socially, emotionally.” “I don’t think our large Jewish communities have yet made the investment in the students who are on the other side of the spectrum, who have the potential to truly go beyond what a community school could possibly offer,” Perl said. Tuition, meanwhile, will be “need-blind,” meaning that students will be admitted without regard to their need for financial aid; what they pay will be determined by what their families can afford. (The cost of the full annual tuition is $42,000, about $10,000 higher than at other area day schools.) Perl says it is key that students have the opportunity to interact with Jews of varied socioeconomic backgrounds. The foundation will cover the cost of the need-blind tuition for around

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the first decade of JLA’s existence, plan to create affordable housing by which time the organization support for “Jewish community hopes to have established an endow- professionals.” Though its guiding principle is ment. Modern Orthodox, JLA is not a yeshiva — only about one-fourth of its curriculum will be religious, compared to the 50/50 breakdown students encounter at most Orthodox schools. But by having all students from eighth grade up begin their school year in Israel with nearly a month of Jewish- and Rabbi Gil Perl is the founding head of school at Jewish Israel-focused instruction just prior Leadership Academy. (Courtesy of Jewish Leadership to the High Holidays, the school Academy) also offers an immersive Jewish Initially, Perl — a longtime component. researcher of Jewish education who That Israel experience will be was previously the head of school covered as part of the cost of tuition, at Kohelet Yeshiva in the Philadel- and will be done in partnership with phia suburb of Merion Station, the Alexander Muss High School in Pennsylvania — had only been Israel, a school in the Tel Aviv subcontracted as a consultant on the urb of Hod Hasharon that typically venture. But the possibilities of the offers study-abroad programs to new school so excited him that he Jewish students from across the agreed to join JLA full-time. Diaspora. Perl envisions that the Now he is the founding head of annual trip will allow returning stuschool, as well as the CEO of the dents to expand on their Israel eduAdes Family Foundation, which cation each year in unique ways. shepherds the money for the school “So often a trip to Israel is a oneand other related initiatives includ- hit wonder” for Jewish schools, he ing a continuing education fund for See JEWISH SCHOOL 13 Miami-area Jewish educators and a on Page

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JEWISH SCHOOL Continued from Page 12 said, referring to programs such as semesters abroad or summer trips. If money were no object, he said, the ideal Israel education would involve multiple returning visits to the region. “Obviously it’s a logistical challenge — it’s a financial challenge for most schools,” Perl said. “But if we can solve the logistics and we can solve the finances, then there’s no question that we think this is our best shot at getting the educational outcomes that we’re looking for.” JLA’s multimillion-dollar campus, entirely paid for by the Adeses, will include a music recording studio, a “Fabrication Lab” with 3-D printers and an athletic facility with three full basketball courts. It’s currently under construction in Miami’s Pinewood neighborhood, the location chosen because it’s equidistant to the metropolitan area’s major Jewish population centers. Jewish day schools have been looking to innovate on their core model for years, not always successfully; an attempt in the past decade to operate a Jewish pluralistic boarding school in North Caro-

lina called the American Hebrew Academy ended with the school’s abrupt closure in 2019 due to lack of funding. But Perl says any comparison with the American Hebrew Academy falls short, both because JLA is focusing on local students rather than convincing them to board from elsewhere, and because his school didn’t have to take on any debt to get off the ground. Area families have expressed “extreme excitement” about the program, but some have their reservations, Perl said. “We have families for whom it’s, ‘Why [are] there only two Judaic periods [per day]? Can’t you do more?’ And there are others who are wondering, ‘Well, why is it Modern Orthodox? Am I going to be comfortable in a Modern Orthodox setting?’” Overall, though, he said, “we think that we’ve hit a sweet spot.” One thing Perl says he’s sure of: A Jewish school that tries to appeal to every student in its Jewish community is a losing strategy. “I do believe strongly that the desire, the need, to be everything to everyone is ultimately what creates mediocrity.”

World Of Wordle Inspires A New Game: Jewdle By Caleb Guedes-Reed

Aphoto of the Jewdle word board. (Screenshot)

(JTA) – In yet another addition to the world of Wordle offshoots, an Australia-based Jewish community organization has created Jewdle — a distinctly Jewish version of the wildly popular online word game. While versions of Wordle exist in other languages, including Hebrew and Yiddish, Jewdle offers words from English, Yiddish, Hebrew and Aramaic and is different in a few key ways. Unlike Wordle, which asks players to guess a five-letter word using codebreaker’s logic, Jewdle players have to guess sixletter Jewish words, increasing the game’s difficulty.

Jewdle also throws in a Jewish educational component, adding explanations and context once a player gets a word right. “This seemed like a really perfect way to create Jewish relevance within a very popular, secular context that so many people around the world are accessing right now,” Alon Meltzer, Director of Programs at the organization Shalom and the game’s creator, told J-Wire. After joining the more than 2 million people who have started playing Wordle, Meltzer decided to make a Jewish-themed version, which came with a set of unique challenges. “We decided to do six letters instead of five because of the phonetic differences in writing out many Hebrew and Yiddish words,” Meltzer explained. “You often need to use a ‘ch’ or ‘sch’ combination or an ‘ah’ suffix. Five letters was a bit too limiting.” Jewdle can be played at https:// www.jewdle.app

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Entertainment

Spielberg, Gyllenhaal, Garfield Among 2022 Jewish Oscar Nominees By Andrew Lapin

Andrew Garfield attends the GQ Men of The Year Celebration in West Hollywood, Nov. 18, 2021. (Leon Bennett/Getty Images)

(JTA) — Steven Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story” drew seven Oscar nominations Tuesday, including best picture and best director. Spielberg’s best-director nomination makes the Jewish Hollywood legend one of only four filmmakers in history to ever be nominated at least eight times for best director. (Two of the others are also Jewish; the third is Martin Scorsese.) He has won the award

twice before, for “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan.” With this nomination, Spielberg also makes history as the only director to have ever been nominated for the award across six different decades, beginning with his nod in 1978 for “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.” Spielberg, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Andrew Garfield were the most prominent Jews to nab Oscar nods this year. The year’s nominations also included a high-profile Jewish snub: “West Side Story” screenwriter Tony Kushner failed to score a best adapted screenplay nomination. Gyllenhaal got a best adapted screenplay nomination for her take on “The Lost Daughter,” based on the Elena Ferrante novel, which she also directed. (“The Lost Daughter” also received nominations for lead and supporting actress.) Gyllenhaal

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has received one other Oscar nomination: for best supporting actress for 2009’s “Crazy Heart.” Elsewhere in the acting categories, Jewish star Andrew Garfield was nominated for best actor for his portrayal of Jewish playwright Jonathan Larson in the musical “tick, tick… BOOM!” The movie was based on Larson’s own stage show and also received a nomination for best editing. It’s Garfield’s second acting nomination; his first was for starring in Mel Gibson’s “Hacksaw Ridge.” And Kristen Stewart, whose started her performing career by singing the Dreidel song at a school Hanukkah concert, received a best actress nomination for playing Princess Diana in “Spencer,” her first nomination. Jewish actress and rock musician Alana Haim, who was expected to be a contender for her debut lead performance in “Licorice Pizza,” did not receive a best actress nomination, though the film — about a young Jewish woman’s coming-ofage in 1970s Los Angeles — received three, including best picture. Veteran Jewish screenwriter Eric Roth, already an Oscar winner for

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“Forrest Gump,” was nominated again in the adapted screenplay category for co-writing the script to the sci-fi epic “Dune” with Jon Spaihts and the film’s director, Denis Villeneuve. “Dune” nabbed 10 nominations in total, including best picture. And David Sirota, a progressive journalist and former Bernie Sanders staffer who has tweeted about his Judaism as well as his criticism of Israel, was nominated in the original screenplay category for collaborating with Adam McKay on the climate-change satire “Don’t Look Up,” which received four total nominations, including best picture. In the music category, longtime recording artist Diane Warren received her 13th Oscar nomination for penning the original song “Somehow You Do” from the film “Four Good Days” (performed in the film by country star Reba McEntire). Warren, whose other hit songwriting credits include “Rhythm of the Night” and “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” grew up in See OSCAR NOMINEES on Page

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Arts & Culture

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‘Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ Star Caroline Aaron Made A Career Out Of Playing East Coast Jews. But She’s Proud Of Her Southern Roots. By Stephen Silver

Caroline Aaron attends "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" fourth season premiere in New York City, Feb. 5, 2022. (NoamGalai/Getty Images for Prime Video)

(JTA) — When she was cast as Midge Maisel’s mother-in-law in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” veteran actress Caroline Aaron had no idea that a series about a very particular slice of mid-20th century Jewish life would strike a chord around the world. But its popularity has gone far beyond Jews and the Jewish-adjacent. Much like “Fiddler on the Roof,” the show has found an audience even in countries where Jewish culture is all but nonexistent. “After the second season, we went to Milan, to do international press, and there were journalists from all over the world — from China, and India, and all of the European countries, and I was like, what could possibly be of interest?” Aaron said during a recent Zoom talk hosted by The Braid, a Southern California Jewish women’s theater. “But in this show, for people all over the world – and even though they were interviewing us – I had to interview them, just to find out what it was about this show that had enchanted audiences that had no cultural references.” And what did she learn? “I think first and foremost, family is a universal. I think no matter how it manifests itself, that deeply resonates with everyone,” said Aaron. She added that one journalist in Sweden told that her that “‘we’ve never seen a show with a young woman who is confident’…. Here is a young woman who is in possession of her ambition, and her dreams, and has a direction.’” Aaron’s talk at The Braid served in part as a preview of the fourth season of “Mrs. Maisel,” which begins airing on Friday after a nearly three-year hiatus. In it, she talked about her long career as an actress THE

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in films by major Jewish directors, her Southern upbringing, and her thoughts on criticism that “Mrs. Maisel” cast too many non-Jewish actors as Jews. In a career spanning 40 years, Aaron has appeared in multiple films from major Jewish directors such as Mike Nichols (“Heartburn,” “Working Girl,” “Primary Colors” and “What Planet Are You From?”), Nora Ephron (“Sleepless in Seattle” and “Lucky Numbers”) and Woody Allen (“Crimes and Misdemeanors,” “Alice” and “Deconstructing Harry”). On television, Aaron has appeared on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Transparent,” and since 2017 has been portraying Shirley Maisel. Along with the rest of the “Maisel” cast, Aaron won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Comedy Series, in both 2018 and 2019. She has also done notably Jewish-oriented work in the theater. She starred in a one-woman, twocharacter play about a Holocaust survivor called “Call Waiting,” later starring in the movie version as well. In 2016, she appeared in “Stories from the Fringe,” a play assembled from the voices of more than a dozen woman rabbis and presented at The Braid, then known as the Jewish Women’s Theatre. In the Zoom talk, Aaron defended the casting of “Mrs. Maisel,” which includes Rachel Brosnahan

as Midge Maisel, Tony Shalhoub and Marin Hinkle as her parents, and Luke Kirby as the legendary Jewish comedian Lenny Bruce. None of them are Jewish. “I’m very concerned that we are confining the art of acting to ‘you have to be it to play it,’” Aaron said during the talk. “When all of this sort of started to dust up, I wanted to write to every parent in the country who’s writing a check for a performing arts program, to rip up their check… I think that acting in its purest form is taking a walk in someone else’s shoes. And ultimately, isn’t that the definition of empathy?” When people ask Aaron if Brosnahan is Jewish, Aaron’s retort is that “if you’re asking, then she’s doing her job and she’s doing it

well.” She added it goes the other way, too. “I don’t want to be confined to only playing Jewish women,” Aaron said. “I want to play all kinds of women. And I think that acting is an art form like any other art form.” Shalhoub is Lebanese-American, but has played numerous ethnicities throughout his career, including Italian-American and Jewish characters. The casting, she suggested, also serves a dramatic purpose. Midge’s ex-husband’s family is played by Jewish actors (with Aaron and Kevin Pollak as the parents, and Michael Zeglen as Joel, the ex.) She added that while it may not have been intended that way, the See MRS. MAISEL on Page

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casting serves as something of a meta-commentary on the two families: Midge’s family, the Weissmans, are notably more assimilated than the Maisels. She also praised the show’s writing, and was clear that while the scenes of Jewish characters “living at the top of their lungs” often appear improvised, the show is scripted “down to the comma.” She contrasted that with her turn early in the run of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” in which “not a word is written down.” Aaron has been playing Jewish characters from New York throughout her career (she played Woody Allen’s sister in two different movies), but she actually comes from Richmond, Virginia, and as she made clear in the Braid talk, her Southern Jewish heritage is very important to her. “I didn’t even know, when I was growing up, of [the stereotype of the] New York Jewish mother, or a Jewish girl. I had no idea of where that was coming from, because it wasn’t around me.”

Born Caroline Abady, she took her father’s first name as her last name early in her career because her older sister, Josephine Abady, was already a well-known theater director and Aaron wanted to stand apart. After doing so, Aaron said, she went to see her agent, who told her “Now everyone’s gonna know you’re Jewish.” Aaron’s mother Nina Friedman Abady, born in Georgia and raised in Alabama, was widowed at a relatively young age. She later became a professor at an historically Black college and a civil rights activist. The Nina F. Abady Festival Park in Richmond is named for her. Her mother’s example inspired Aaron to write “The Mother Lode,” which was performed last month as part of “Sweat Tea and the Southern Jew,” a Braid production featuring stories of Southern Jews. It was held in person in locations across the Los Angeles area and broadcast live on Zoom. “I did have something special with my mother,” Aaron said. “And I still cherish it to this day.”

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a Jewish family in Los Angeles and has said her father changed their last name from Wolfberg to sound less Jewish. Despite her large stack of nominations, she has never won. Three of the five nominated composers in the original score category have Jewish backgrounds: Nicholas Britell, nominated for “Don’t Look Up”; Hans Zimmer, nominated for “Dune”; and Jonny Greenwood, nominated for his work on the moody Western “The Power Of The Dog” by director Jane Campion (Greenwood, also a member of the band Radiohead, is married to Israeli artist Sharona Katan, who has told Israeli media that the couple raises their kids Jewish). “The Power of The Dog” received 12 nominations in total, including best picture, and is considered a favorite to win. One under-the-radar Jewish snub came in the best documentary short category, where the animated documentary “Camp Confidential: America’s Secret Nazis,” about Jewish soldiers in World War II assigned to look after a secret Nazi POW camp on American soil, failed to make the cut.

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However, another short documentary with Jewish connections did score a nomination: “When We Were Bullies,” directed by Jay Rosenblatt, a longtime independent filmmaker who also currently works as program director at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. In Rosenblatt’s film, he explores his own complicity in a school bullying incident decade prior. Meanwhile, “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” the Shakespeare adaptation from writer-director Joel Coen, did not score any nominations for Coen but did earn three other nominations, including best actor for star Denzel Washington. Announced in a virtual ceremony co-hosted by “Black-ish” star Tracee Ellis Ross, whose dad is Jewish, the nominations made room for some guest appearances. One visitor who dropped in was TikTok star and movie enthusiast Reece Feldman, who also worked as a production assistant on the set of the upcoming fourth season of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and has made videos poking fun at his Judaism. THE

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Jessica Seinfeld Shows Us How To Be Vegan (At Least Some Of The Time)

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By Rachel Ringler

In her latest cookbook, "Vegan, at Times: 120+Recipes for Every Day or Every So Often," Jessica Seinfeld shares meat-, egg- and dairy-free recipes she has developed for herself and her family, including Easy Green Hummus (inset). (Gallery Books)

These days, Seinfeld’s dream bagel order is a toasted everything flagel (flat bagel) with scallion cream cheese, tomato, red onion — hold the lox. Her husband, Seinfeld said, enjoys his plain bagel topped with veggie cream cheese, Zabar’s doublesmoked lox, tomato and red onion with a big sour pickle on the side. In other words, being vegan “at times” means you don’t have to give anything up. As Seinfeld writes in the book’s introduction: “It’s time to eat, enjoy and live your life without fear of judgment.” Veganism, and even “part-time” veganism, like Seinfeld’s, is on the rise. While 9.7 million Americans identified themselves as vegan in a 2019 survey by Ipsos Retail Performance — a number that held steady from 2012 — Gallup found in 2020 that nearly a quarter of Americans reported eating less meat that year than they had previously. (Just this past weekend the news broke that New York City Mayor Eric Adams — an avowed vegan who credits his plantbased diet with curing his diabetes — was spotted ordering fish at restaurants.)

$162 billion in 2030. That’s not because more people are becoming vegans; instead, “non-vegans are helping fuel the plant-based boom by trying to cut down on their meat, fish, and dairy intake.” Seinfeld serves traditional foods for Shabbat and Jewish holidays: brisket, kugel and homemade, braided challahs coated with an egg wash for a beautiful finish. “I am not willing to give up on that flavor or that color,” she said. Aside from Sunday mornings and Jewish holidays, though, Seinfeld is mostly vegan. She writes that when she was in her 40s, she began to notice a connection between what she ate and how she felt. “I realized that what I ate could either drain me or invigorate me,” she writes. Once she considered how veganism is good for the planet and good for animals, Seinfeld was all in — well, mostly in. But Seinfeld didn’t immediately get on a soap box. Instead, she slowly experimented with recipes. The first vegan recipe that her family unanimously approved, which is in the new cookbook, was her eggand butter-free banana bread. She baked it, left it on the countertop in the kitchen, and returned not long afterwards to find just a few remaining crumbs. The kids didn’t know that they had just devoured one of mom’s vegan creations. “It’s through desserts that I got my children on board,” said Seinfeld, adding that they came to realize “vegan food does not have to taste like kale and spinach.” Other desserts in the book include

(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — Jessica Seinfeld’s parents were true children of the ’60s. They did yoga before it was cool and served their three daughters brown rice, tofu and wholesome cereal purchased in their local food co-p in Burlington, Vermont. The young Jessica, embarrassed by their focus on healthy eating, “always wanted regular cereal that you could buy on the shelves of typical supermarkets.” These days Seinfeld, 50 — the wife of comedian Jerry, of course, and a mother of three — is known for being a devotee of healthy food. Her first cookbook, 2007’s “Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food,” which included strategies for sneaking pureed veggies into meals, was a bestseller. Since then, Seinfeld has devoted much of her time to thinking about getting families to eat healthfully. In Like all of Seinfeld’s previous cookbooks, “Vegan, at Times,” which was published last November, is a addition to running New York Times bestseller. (Gallery Books) Good+Foundation, a NYC-based non-profit that aims to dismantle According to a January, 2022 multi-generational poverty, she’s story from Insider, in 2020, the authored four additional cookbooks. plant-based foods market was worth Each one tackles a different food- $29.4 billion and could grow to related problem and provides solutions. With her latest, “Vegan, at “Your Helpful Hardware Man” Times: 120+ Recipes for Every Day or Every So Often,” she shares meat, egg- and dairy-free recipes she has developed for herself and her family. And yet, Seinfeld insists you don’t have to be vegan to enjoy her Propane Gas • Ace Paints • Keys Made recipes. Eating vegan meals doesn’t Plumbing • Electrical • Garden Supplies mean you have to swear off a good Complete Hardware Supplies steak or a piece of fish forever — Visa • MasterCard • American Express Seinfeld herself certainly hasn’t. “My entire life, I have been havOpen Mon - Fri 8 AM - 5:30 PM ing bagels and lox every Sunday,” Sat 8 AM - 4 PM Seinfeld said. “When I married 7043 Canal Blvd. Jerry, we continued that tradition and my kids rely on it.”

a chocolate sheet cake, made with ripe banana and olive oil and iced with a combination of coconut oil and cocoa powder. There’s also a carrot cake with unsweetened applesauce and sweetened coconut and frosted with a vegan cream cheese which she happily would make for her non-vegan friends. The recipes are meant not only to be delicious, but easy-to-make (like her Easy Green Hummus) and affordable. “I keep perspective on how hard many people struggle in this country to afford – especially right now with inflation — groceries and dinner,” she said. “The ingredients are all accessible because we [Seinfeld and her coauthor, Sara Quessenberry] shopped at typical grocery stores. We did not go to fancy gourmet shops.” Seinfeld is a fan of the vegetableforward cuisine coming out of IsraSee SEINFELD on Page

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Hummus In Space? Joint Israeli-Nasa Project Aims To Help Astronauts Grow Chickpeas In Zero Gravity By Rachel Ringler

A photo of the chickpea greenhouse heading to space. (Avivlabs)

(JTA) — Like most Israelis, Yonatan Winetraub loves hummus, and its protein-packed main ingredient: the chickpea. But unlike most, Winetraub also has the ability to send chickpeas into space. Winetraub, 35, is one of the three founders of SpaceIL, an Israeli nonprofit best known for attempting to land a spaceship on the moon — the Beresheet vessel, named after the Hebrew word for the first book of the Bible, crash landed on the moon’s surface on April 11, 2019. Undaunted, Winetraub is teaming up with NASA for a more specialized mission. Until recently, astronauts have mainly eaten packaged, dehydrated food. As it plans missions to go deeper into space, NASA has been exploring fresh food production that requires minimal resources and results in minimal waste. While the U.S. governmental organization has succeeded in growing lettuce, cabbage, and kale in space, under a program named “Veggie,” it has never tried to grow

chickpeas. Winetraub floated adding chickpeas to the program for several reasons: They are a superfood, packed with iron, phosphorus and folic acid, in addition to protein. They are easy to grow, and they mature quickly. On Feb. 19, Winetraub and a team of scientists and engineers from Israel and Stanford University will send up a sealed miniature greenhouse on a NASA cargo shuttle. After a day of travel, the shuttle will reach the International Space Station (ISS), located 300 miles above the Earth. The greenhouse, the size of a quart container of milk, will be delivered to the American side of the ISS. Inside the white metal box will be 28 chickpea seeds from Israel that Winetraub and his team will attempt to germinate and grow — remotely, using special software — in an environment free of gravity and natural light. The plants in the greenhouse will be grown for one month and then will be refrigerated until they are brought down to Earth in June. To inspire the next generation of space enthusiasts, Winetraub has enlisted a cohort of young scientists on earth to help him with his experiment. Middle and high school students in 1,000 classrooms across Israel will grow chickpeas in boxes they have constructed. This key control group will compare the processes of growing chickpeas with gravity versus those grown in space without it. Some of the high school students from the Yeruham Science Center

in southern Israel have an extra important and complex assignment: remotely managing the plants’ growth in space with wavelengths of light, one of the tools in an emerging field of science called synthetic biology. Controlling the chickpeas’ growth is key, said Winetraub. “You can’t let plants grow wild because they could run out of water or oxygen,” said Winetraub. His team is also curious to see how the roots will grow. On earth, thanks to gravity, plant roots know to grow down. In space, where there is little or no gravity, will the roots grow down or up? Will they grow in circles? And of obvious importance: once grown, how will the chickpeas taste? Several international companies have played roles in the experiment. In addition to helping to fund the project, Strauss Group Ltd., the Israeli food and beverage company known for co-owning the popular Sabra hummus brand, selected the specific strain of chickpeas, known

as Zehavit, being used in the greenhouse. They selected the strain because it is a relatively small seed that grows quickly and survives in a range of temperatures.

Strauss Group Ltd., the Israeli food and beverage company known for its Sabra hummus brand, selected a specific strain of chickpeas to be used in the experiment. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Since the seeds are not growing in soil either on earth or on the space station, Winetraub and his team asked the Haifa Group, a company that produces plant-specific fertilizers, to create a nutrient-filled gel in which the chickpea roots will grow. In that gel, Winetraub’s team See HUMMUS on Page

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SEINFELD Continued from Page 17 el. “Tel Aviv is one of my favorite cities in the whole world,” she said. “I love Israeli food and I love that America is responding to it.” When at home on the Upper West Side in New York City — the family also has a home in the Hamptons — Seinfeld said they love to dine at Israeli chef Eyal Shani’s restaurants, Miznon and HaSalon. Like all of Seinfeld’s previous cookbooks, “Vegan, at Times,” which was published last November, is a New York Times bestseller.

And, Jerry’s response, according to Seinfeld, has been enthusiastic, too: He is “blown away by the book’s success and people’s response to it,” she said. But let’s get to the opinions of the people who really matter. Just how exactly do those “‘60s cats” — how Seinfeld describes her parents — feel about their daughter’s latest food foray? “My mom is obsessed with the book,” she said. “She sends me photos three or four times a week of dishes she is making. Her friends are cooking from the book, too.”

6 Purim Cookies That Aren’t Hamantaschen

Dip your hand into the global Jewish cookie jar this Purim. By Rachel Myerson

HUMMUS Continued from Page 18 installed a miniature camera to watch the roots of the seeds and see what direction they take. The lessons learned could have an earthly impact, too — as our climate continues to change, farmers will need to find ways to grow more with less and with greater efficiency, he said. “The challenge,” said Winetraub, “is not just how to grow as many chickpeas as possible, but how to control the way they are grown — so that we maximize our limited resources. The more we learn to grow food with fewer resources, the more prepared we will be for the challenges that await us on earth as well.” For inspiration while planning the experiment, Winetraub reached out to Ariel Rosenthal and Orly Peli-Bronshtein, two of the authors of the 2019 book, “On the Hummus Route: A Journey Between Cities, People and Dreams,” because they see the chickpea, a food eaten by young and old and beloved across nations, as a metaphor for peace. (The treatise on the food whose origins are often debated was

acclaimed by many — but even though it was a collaboration between Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and Egyptians, it sparked the usual controversy over cultural appropriation. One Palestinian chef who contributed said it “normalizes the occupation.”) “Hummus,” said Rosenthal, “is a perfect food. It will make the moon a better place. Imagine,” he continued, “if Eve [in the garden of Eden] had eaten a chickpea instead of an apple.” In addition to the 28 chickpea seeds, the team has installed a microchip inside the small greenhouse with a microchip filled with personal artifacts representing the people who worked on the project. Winetraub included family photos and photos of hummus. He also added Rosenthal’s recipe for the hummus he makes and sells at his Tel Aviv restaurant Hakosem. If all goes according to plan, could astronauts feasibly make hummus in space with their germinated chickpeas? Winetraub is hopeful the answer is yes. “We are working on it!” he said.

Experience has taught me that for every tender, generously filled hamantaschen is a dry, bland one. I feel like I’m rolling the dice every time I bite into one of these ubiquitous Purim cookies. Luckily for me, there’s a bounty of alternative Purim cookies hailing from Jewish communities from around the world — Iraq, France, and Turkey, to name a

few. Some are delicate and buttery, some are crisp and flaky. Some are perfumed with cardamom, and others with orange blossom water. Whether you’re a hamantaschen devotee or not, join me and dip your hand into the global cookie jar this Purim. 1. Hadgi Badah These Iraqi cookies are similar to macaroons, kept moist with ground blanched almonds (and often pistachios, too) and scented with cardamom. Slivered or whole almonds or pistachios are pressed on top of the cookie before baking. Gil Marks’ recipe in Encyclopedia of Jewish Food calls to moisten your hands with rose water or orange blossom water before rolling the cookie dough into balls for a subtle floral addition. See PURIM COOKIES on Page

Glynn Pichon COUNCILMANAT-LARGE Re-Elect

As your Councilman-at-Large I’ve been committed to serving you! I enjoy publicservice, and if re-elected I will continue to work tirelessly with city administration, my fellow council members, and the publicto develop long term plans that address the issues facing us, like publicsafety, flood protection, and strengthening our economy. I will continue to support ordinances and budgets that encourage responsible growth and defend and preserve our strong culture of faith, family, and community. I have great confidence in our citizens and with your support, we can ensure that Slidell continues to lead the Northshore as the flagship location to work, live, and raise a family for many years to come. Paid for by the Glynn Pichon Campaign Fund THE

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Jewish Federations Umbrella Releases New Document Adding Gun Reform And LGBTQ Advocacy Back To Policy Priority List By Ron Kampeas

(Alexander Spatari/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Less than a week after the Jewish Federations of North America removed hot button items such as addressing gun violence and defending LGBTQ rights from their annual priorities list, the umbrella group added them back into a subsequent and more

detailed policy document. The JFNA’s Working Public Policy Agenda, released late Friday, includes more than a hundred words on gun violence prevention. It encourages Congress to double funding for research into the causes of gun violence and calls for increased funding for the enforcement of existing gun laws and background checks. The document also includes substantial programming related to LGBTQ advocacy, including goals of rolling back faith-based discriminations in federal regulations and providing platforms for LGBTQ Jews. The agenda additionally includes

a sentence on pledging support for “bipartisan approaches to ensure voter access.” All three issues — gun violence, LGBTQ rights, and voting rights — were missing from the group’s public priorities document, which it releases annually to its constituent organizations nationwide. All three issues had appeared on that document in previous years. A JTA story noting the omissions triggered queries from multiple constituents to the national body. The JFNA said on various social media platforms the JTA story was “misleading” but did not explain why. A JFNA spokesman said the Jewish Federations #7 Public Priorities document was substantially revised this year to be more “abridged and broad” and that the longer and more detailed Working Public Policy Agenda released Friday was already in the works, due to be released this coming week. At 2,000 words, the Working Public Policy Agenda is four times as long as the Jewish Federations Public Pri-

orities. It’s not clear whether the JFNA has ever before released a more detailed document following up on its annual Public Priorities list. In an interview last week, Elana Broitman, the group’s senior vice president for public policy, said the broader public priorities list language this year was meant to make it “nimbler” for the state and federal level activists and lobbyists who use it as a guideline for advocacy. Broitman and another official emphasized that the JFNA was dealing with equity issues through, among other means, JEDI, a program for “Jewish equity, diversity and inclusion” that is preparing a curriculum for Jewish professionals on race, LGBTQ and other inclusion issues. Broitman emphatically rejected any notion that hot button issues like gun violence, LGBTQ advocacy, and voting rights were removed to appease political conservatives. JFNA has faced accusations recently that it is seeking to avoid controversy and identification with causes those political conservatives have objected to — such as the Black Lives Matter movement. There is a notable difference in how voting rights are addressed in See POLICY on Page

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POLICY Continued from Page 20 the 2021 Public Priorities list, and how they are addressed in the new Working Public Policy Agenda. In 2021, as Republicans on the state and federal level intensified efforts to make voting access more restrictive, the JFNA committed to “safeguarding voting rights and ending racial and religious profiling.” This year, the federations are committed to supporting “bipartisan approaches to ensure voter access.” The inclusion of the word “bipartisan” is new. There is currently no substantial bipartisan agreement on voting access. Ethan Felson, a longtime professional in the federations system who now leads the Jewish LGBTQ advocacy group A Wider Bridge, said in an unsolicited statement late Friday that he never doubted the JFNA’s commitment to LGBTQ equity. “As the current leader of a group that works in the LGBTQ community, people should know that JFNA and the federation system is part of our family,” he said.

on Issues

Roblox, Popular Kids’ Computer Game, Removes Virtual Nazi Gas Chambers By Shira Hanau

In this photo illustration, the Roblox app seen displayed on a smartphone screen and a Roblox logo in the background. (Thiago Prudêncio/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

(JTA) — Roblox, a collaborative computer gaming platform for children as young as 7, has faced serious criticism over the years for failing to properly moderate its content — with antisemitism and racism rife, according to multiple reports. Now the platform says it has removed a virtual Nazi concentration camp featuring gas chambers that users could operate. In a report published Saturday, the Daily Mail revealed the existence of the concentration camp game, which included tall watch-

towers, gas chambers, and train tracks apparently representing the cattle cars that brought Jews to Nazi death camps to be murdered. The game featured gas chambers which users could operate by pressing a button with the word “execute” or enter to experience death of their avatar, or the computer figure representing the player, by gassing. Roblox released a statement to the Daily Mail in which it said it had removed the concentration camp game and condemned extremism and antisemitism. “We have zero tolerance for content or behaviors that promote or glorify extremism, including antisemitism. We have removed the experiences in question and banned the individuals who created them. We work tirelessly to maintain a platform that is safe, civil and inclusive, and use manual and automated detection tools to swiftly remove experiences that do not comply with our community standards,” the

company said. Roblox experienced a major increase in popularity during the pandemic as more children began playing the game while at home during lockdowns and used the game, which allows players to interact, to stay in touch with friends. The growth means that more people are present to encounter and participate in illicit content that has plagued the platform for years, in a reflection of the internet’s wellknown tendencies. In recent months, the platform has been plagued with recurring game rooms in which players engage in sexually explicit conversations and in which their avatars engage in sex acts. The company has said it removes the games quickly, but they frequently reappear. The sexually explicit game rooms have also been reported to include avatars dressed in Nazi uniforms.

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14 Jewish Movies To Stream For Family Movie Night By Lior Zaltzman Here are 14 films for a Jewish family night — with suggested snacks included:

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Ever since I’ve become a parent, there were certain parenting milestones I dreamed of reaching — one of them was going to the theater to watch a movie with my child. And while my son is finally old enough for us to entertain that idea, and theaters have reopened here in New York, it looks like that mother-son theater date will not be happening any time soon. OCT 2012 With omicron infecting literally everyone I know, and with my child being too young to get vaccinated, we’re going to stick to in-home family movie nights for now. We SG/JDF/1/6V pull down the screen and projector set-up we got last year (it’s been YOURinvestment), such PLEASE a good CHECK pandemic CAREFULLY FOR(the movieget a AD tray of snacks SPELLING sized candy& GRAMMAR, packs areASso much WELL AS ACCURACY ADcheaper outside theOFtheater!) and DRESSES, PHONEtogether NUMBERS watch a movie as &a family OTHER (OK, so VITAL I halfINFORMATION. watch it, half look at my phone, but hey,run it’s better than Your ad will nothing). Thesechanges family movie AS-IS unless nights have been the are made and highlight of this pandemic. approved with your But if you, like me, are starting Account Executive by to draw a blank re: what to watch on movie nights, I’ve assembled a list of movies that will divert your entire family — and help you celNOON ebrate some9/7 Jewish pride as a bonus!

“The Prince of Egypt” One cannot have a Jewish movie night list without “The Prince of Egypt.” This animated retelling of the story of Moses and the exodus from Egypt holds up so well. The music is still just as wonderful and it is the most Jewish of stories. Plus, this movie features the voice of the queen of Mizrahi music, Ofra Haza (her memory and her music is a blessing). What a film. Watch if: you want an epic biblical viewing experience for the whole family! Perfect snack: A haroset bar! Watch it on Peacock or rent from other streaming services. “Fiddler on the Roof” Traditiooooon! Tradition!… is watching this movie with your family and seeing how far you’ll make it before someone falls asleep. “Fiddler” is three hours long, which may be a rough watch for some of your younger family members. You can always just watch the highlights (my son loves fast-forwarding to musical numbers!), or split it into two movie nights. I recommend scheduling an intermission and eating some Fiddler-themed snacks! Watch if: you’re Jewish. Duh. Perfect snack: your favorite Ashkenazi poor man’s fair, from borscht to kugel to gefilte fish. Watch it on Amazon Prime with a premium subscription on rent from other streaming services.

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PDF proof of your PLEASE CHECK YOUR advertisement AD CAREFULLY FOR (may not be true to actual size). SPELLING & GRAMMAR, AS It is property WELL AS ACCURACY OF AD-of Renaissance Publishing DRESSES, PHONE NUMBERS & (orVITAL the original creator) and OTHER INFORMATION. 866-0276 cannot be www.exteriordesignsbev.com Your adreproduced, will run AS-IS unless duplicatedchanges or used in any are made and other format. 22 Purim approved with2022 your2009, Copyright Account ExecutivePublishing. by Renaissance

“Wreck-It Ralph” and “Ralph Breaks the Internet” According to Sarah Silverman and the creators of the Disney franchise about the arcade game villain looking for a rebrand, Princess Vanellope from “Wreck-It Ralph” is Jewish, which means she’s officially the first Jewish Disney princess. And while Vannelope doesn’t really identify as Jewish in the movies themselves, and her last name is von Schweetz, you can — and maybe should? — keep pointing out her Jewishness to your kids, even if it’s just to irritate them. If you watch the sequel “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” you should also point out that “Wonder Woman” Gal Gadot voices racer Shank in the movie. Watch if: you enjoy feeling that gamer nostalgia and love a colorful 3D film. Perfect snacks: all the candy! Watch it on Disney+.

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“A Rugrats Chanukah,” “A Rugrats Passover” and “The State Representative Rugrats Movie” District 101 The “Rugrats” holiday specials are just the best — as well as their year-round content. Baby Tommy Pickles’ mom, Didi, is Jewish, and the way the show explores the stories behind these Jewish holidays is A+. These specials make for a fun, See JEWISH MOVIES on Page

In battles against constitutional amendments that sought to push the e l de rl y and d i sa b l e d into nursing homes, I fought on the side of our most vulnerable being provided adequate supports to live at home. During the fight for justice for Victor White III whom police claim shot #WeLoveDawn himself in the chest while handcuffed in the back of a www.DawnChanetCollins.com police car, I was there fighting si d e b y si d e wi t h h is f at h e r . When Walmart workers marched and fought for a li v i n g w a g e from a multi-billion dollar corporate employer that saw them as tools, not people, I fought with them.

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“Kronk’s New Groove” and “The Emperor’s New Groove” Kronk from “The Emperor’s New Groove,” the 2000 movie about an emperor who gets turned into a llama, is Jewish! Possibly! Yeah, that’s right, the buff but adorable henchmen released Kronk’s challah recipe last year. Also, this Disney franchise is kind of delightful? Watch if: you’re a lover of quirky Disney films. Perfect snack: Kronk’s challah?! Watch it on Disney+.

And as special interests seek to

under-fund and demoralize In battles against constitutional amendments that sought toour push the public schools, I have been here fighting while also g e tt i n g elderly and disabled into nursing one sthe ofd our #WeLoveDawn c hhomes, i l dr e n thI efought r e s ou rc t h eside y nee www.DawnChanetCollins.com in struggling schools. most vulnerable being provided adequate supports to live at home.

During the fight for justice for Victor White III whom police claim shot himself in the chest while handcuffed in the back of a police car, I was there fighting side by side with his father. When Walmart workers marched and fought for a living wage from a multi-billion dollar corporate employer that saw them as tools, not people, I fought with them. And as special interests seek to under-fund and demoralize our public schools, I have been here fighting while also getting children the resources they need in struggling schools. Paid for by the Dawn Collins Campaign Fund

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JEWISH MOVIES Continued from Page 22

them about the importance and amazingness of bees! Watch if: it’s a Jewish new year or you’re a Seinfeld lover. Movie time snack: apples and honey (locally sourced, not from a bear-shaped bottle!) or honey cake. Watch it on Netflix.

short movie night that is especially perfect with the very littles. Plus, the new “Rugrats” reboot is, in my opinion, pretty great. Here’s hoping for more “Rugrats” holiday specials! Maybe a Purim one? “The Princess Bride” Watch if: you love Jewish holiYes, “The Princess Bride” is not days and animation excellence Perfect snack: homemade Rep- technically a Jewish film. But also, tar bars! isn’t it? There are just so many JewWatch on Hulu. ish facts about this delightful fantasy movie that’s perfect for family “An American Tail” Is there a more Jewish animated movie night. Mandy Patinkin felt movie than “An American Tail?” his role as Inigo Montoya was an The 1986 classic tells the story of ode to his Jewish father, and Carl mouse Feivel Mouskevitz who and Rob Reiner created this amazescapes the pogroms in Russia and ing tribute to the movie shortly chases his American dreams. We’re before Carl’s passing, which you should watch post-movie night and so glad it exists. Watch if: you like “Fiddler on try not to weap. Watch if: you have a heart. the Roof” but want an animated, anthropomorphic version of it. Perfect snack: peanut butter cups. Perfect snack: a cheese platter. Watch it on Hulu. Watch it on Peacock. “Full-Court Miracle” “Oliver and Company” “Full-Court Miracle” is a HanukThis retelling of “Oliver Twist” kah-themed movie about an NBA featuring dogs in New York City is star coming to rescue a fledgling such a delight. It also features music group of basketball-loving Jews from the one and only Billy Joel, and becoming their very own modwho also voices Dodger, a terrier ern-day Judah Maccabee. Um, yes, mix, and Bette Middler as a spoiled it’s sometimes hard to believe this poodle. In the original novel, Fagin 2003 Disney movie exists, and it is is Jewish, but after the character cheesy, but it does get so many drew accusations of antisemitism, things right, and may actually be mentions of his Jewishness were the perfect Hanukkah movie. excised from the book by Dickens. Watch if: you’re in a mood for a In the movie, Fagin is a lovable very cheesy, but heartfelt, early petty thief whose accomplices are a group of mutts and is played by the 2000s Disney film. Perfect snack: latkes! delightful Dom DeLuise. Watch it on Disney+. Watch if: you love dogs, New York and Billy Joel. “Funny Girl” Perfect snack: a street New York Beanie hot dog or a slice of New York Feldstein pizza! is about Watch it on Disney+. to star in a Broad“Bee Movie” Is Jerry Seinfeld’s venture into w a y kids’ film explicitly Jewish? Not revival of really, but I mean, it’s Seinfeld this iconplaying a bee named Barry with ic musilots of chutzpah who takes on the cal about human race for exploiting bees for comedian their honey. Barry’s Jew-ish bee a n d parents are played by Kathy Bates B r o a d and filmmaker Barry Levinson, way legJewish dad Matthew Broderick e n d plays his best bee friend and Larry F a n n y King plays a fictionalized bee ver- Brice and sion of himself. It all just feels oh- her turso-Jewish. bulent Plus, “Bee Movie” is surprisingl o v e ly a lot of fun. It might leave your affair kids with weird feelings about the w i t h honey industry, but it will remind gambler THE

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Nicky Arnstein. This means it’s a good opportunity for you and your family to revisit “Funny Girl,” because musicals are the best family night films, as we all know. It may not please the younger crowd, but if your kids are 10 and older, it should make for a pretty great movie night. Barbra Streisand is just so good in this 1968 movie and the songs? They’re unforgettable. Watch if: you are a Barbra Streisand fan and you want to raise little Barbra Streisand fans. Perfect snack: some bagels and schmear on a plate of onion rolls. Rent for $2.99 on Amazon or any other streaming platform. “Yentl” Speaking of Babs, Barbra Streisand made history in 1983 as the first woman to win a Golden Globe for best director for “Yentl,” and don’t you want to expose your kids to more history?

This musical film based on a short Isaac Bashevis Singer story tells the tale of Yentl, a Jewish woman who pretends to be a man to go study in an all-male yeshiva. It also features an incredibly compelling (I mean, that’s one word for it) young Mandy Patinkin. Swoon. “Yentl” is probably not appropriate for the youngest viewers in your house, but it makes for a great movie night with older kids. Watch if: you’ve got angsty teens who like musicals. Perfect snack: again, we’re gonna go with bagels and schmear here. Love a good bagel night. Watch it on Pluto TV. “Crossing Delancey” “Crossing Delancey,” the perfect Jewish romcom, is leaving HBO Max at the end of the month. But don’t worry, it will be streamable elsewhere, and it is 100% worth the See JEWISH MOVIES on Page

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The New Florida? Record Number Of US Retirees Relocate To Israel In 2021 By Larry Luxner

Joel Tenenbaum, 81, and Marilyn Berkowitz, 84, enjoy the beach just north of Tel Aviv. (Courtesy)

TEL AVIV — A few weeks ago, Joel Tenenbaum, 81, and Marilyn Berkowitz, 84, arrived in Tel Aviv on an El Al flight from New York ready to start their new lives in Israel. They had met through JDate five years earlier. Each was widowed; Tenebaum had been married for 47 years, Berkowitz, known as Lyn, for 49. A retired New York trial lawyer raised in Brooklyn, Tenenbaum always had felt an affinity for Israel — fueled since childhood by

Hebrew school and the movie “Exodus.” Berkowitz, a former university dean’s assistant in New Jersey, had been a frequent visitor to Israel ever since her son moved here in 1991. Both are longtime volunteers for the Israeli nonprofit organization Sar-El. They now share a rental apartment in Tel Aviv’s trendy Florentin neighborhood, close to the ulpan where they will soon enroll in an intensive Hebrew language program. “A lot of our contemporaries have gone to Florida,” Berkowitz said. “But I think they should become sandbirds, not snowbirds.” In fact, more and more older American Jews are opting to spend their golden years in the Jewish state. Of the 4,478 new immigrants who arrived in Israel from North America last year, 762 — just over 17% of the total — were 55 or

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older. That’s up nearly 23% from the 580 who came in 2020, according to Nefesh B’Nefesh, the nonprofit agency that coordinates the aliyah process for U.S. and Canadian citizens. “Israel is becoming a more attractive place, specifically for people at the age of retirement,” said Marc Rosenberg, vice president of Diaspora partnerships at Nefesh B’Nefesh. “With increasing technology, cellphones and internet use, Israel is much more international now, especially with apps that allow people to get around, navigate and do their banking online.” The pandemic, Rosenberg said, has prompted people of all ages to recalibrate what’s important to them. “The pandemic really shifted how many people connect and stay close to family without being in close physical proximity,” said Rosenberg, whose organization works in partnership with Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, the Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael and the Jewish National Fund-USA. “And they

know the healthcare system in Israel is excellent. Israel handled the pandemic pretty well, and that’s been a significant factor.” The pandemic was a big factor in the aliyah decision of New York natives Howard and Mina Millendorf, who moved to Israel last July. The couple in their 70s settled in Jerusalem’s Katamon district, moving into the same building where their daughter, Sharon, lives with her husband, Shlomo, and their three sons.

Retired schoolteachers Yossie Ziff, 71, and his wife, Joanie, 67, moved to Israel from Los Angeles in 2021. They live in Modiin and frequently visit the beach at nearby Rishon Le’Zion, where Yossie surfs. (Courtesy)

“I think the pandemic kind of pushed us into making a decision,” said Mina, a retired elementary See FLORIDA on Page

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The Nosher PURIM COOKIES Continued from Page 19 2. Ma’amoul Ma’amoul means “filled” in Arabic and these tender cookies are filled with all sorts of delights, like dates or nuts. Pistachios and walnuts are popular Purim fillings for Jews of Syrian, Lebanese, and Egyptian descent. Ma’amoul are intricately decorated with patterns created by purposeful snips from a teeny tiny pair of tweezers or carved moulds, but if you’re short on time, this “lazy” version is still pretty fabulous. 3. Palmiers The French prove their culinary brilliance once again by opting to pay homage to Haman’s ears with this delicate, sugar-encrusted pastry. Yes, you read correctly: The two coils of the palmier are said to represent the Purim villain’s ears. This isn’t as random as it may seem; in Israel, hamantaschen are called oznei Haman (Haman’s ears), referencing the practice of cutting off or cropping a criminal’s ears prior to execution. Yummy. 4. Debla These sticky, fragrant cookies

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are popular in Libya, Algeria, and Morocco (where they’re called fazuelos). Strips of thin dough are wrapped into the shape of a rose, deep-fried until golden, then soaked in a sugar syrup, which is often flavored with orange blossom water. A final flourish of sesame seeds or crushed nuts that stick to the syrup adds extra crunch. 5. Nan-e Berenji/Nanbrangi Another way to use poppy seeds on Purim are these Persian cookies made with rice flour (which means they’re gluten free)! They are sprinkled with crunchy poppy seeds, said to resemble Haman’s fleas, before baking. Nanbrangi are flavored with rose water and are so light that you may finish the entire batch in one sitting. 6. Haman’s Fingers The Purim cookie of choice in Greek and Turkish communities are these flaky rolls, said to resemble Haman’s fingers. Phyllo dough is filled with chopped almonds and warm spices like cinnamon, then rolled into cigar shapes, brushed with butter or margarine, and baked until golden and crisp.

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FLORIDA Continued from Page 25 schoolteacher who had lived in the Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale since she and Howard were married 41 years ago. “Normally, we’d come to Israel several times a year and rent an apartment here. But with COVID, we were missing all the birthdays and anniversaries. It was not easy for us.” Six months after their arrival, Howard lists his main goals as “finding ways to do good, playing daily with our grandsons, cultivating new friends, restaurants and wines, and enjoying Mina’s special cooking and baking with family.” But he also aims to give back to Israel through his work with the telecom company IDT and the Howard Jonas Foundation. Projects include the construction of a new cancer center at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center as well as initiatives for severely disabled youngsters, autistic and hearingimpaired children, and people with terminal illnesses. In addition, Howard is involved in a long-term networking program, choosing his 27,000 LinkedIn connections to open doors and help secure job opportunities in Israel and elsewhere. Yossie and Joanie Ziff of Los Angeles arrived in Israel as new immigrants on Dec. 27, 2021. Both retired elementary school teachers, Yossie, 71, and Joanie, 67, had lived in Venice Beach in California for years, and then the heavily Jewish L.A. neighborhood of Pico-Robertson, but they decided recently it was time to make the move to Israel.

The pandemic was a big factor in the aliyah decision of New York natives Howard and Mina Millendorf, who moved to Israel in July 2021. (Courtesy)

“The situation in America really made us feel we wanted to come to Israel and be with the Jewish people,” Joanie said. Between the two of them, they have five children and 15 grandchildren. The couple already has bought an apartment in Modiin, which is a 25-minute drive from the beach at Rishon Le’Zion, where Yossie likes to surf. “We’ll probably go back and forth to America, but this will be our primary home,” Joanie said. “Modiin has such a beautiful Anglo community here. When we got here, there was a sign on our door from our neighbors welcoming us. We’ve been smothered by love wherever we go.” This article was sponsored by and produced in partnership with Nefesh B’Nefesh, which in cooperation with Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah, The Jewish Agency, KKL and JNF-USA is minimizing the professional, logistical and social obstacles of aliyah, and has brought over 70,000 olim from North America for two decades. This article was produced by JTA’s native content team.

JEWISH MOVIES Continued from Page 23 money to rent it. The romcom about an accomplished woman in her 30s whose Jewish grandmother tries to set her up (with the help of a quirky matchmaker) with a Lower East Side pickle purveyor is swoon-worthy. While this movie may not please younger audiences (though I mean, you never know), it is a reminder of how dreamy Jewish men who make pickles can be. Watch if: you believe in love Perfect snack: a pickle platter! Watch it on HBO Max.

Hunky silver-fox Moses played by Charlton Heston? Cheesy borderline camp 1950s melodrama? Yes, the 1956 film about how Moses got the 10 commandments has it all — including much drama. Watch if: you want to introduce your kids to 1950s cinema and either blow their minds or really test their patience. Perfect snack: matzah brei. Maybe drenched with jam for the BLOOOOD. Rent it for $2.99 on Amazon or any other streaming platform. “The Ten Commandments” © 2022 Kveller All Rights Pharaoh played by Yul Brenner? Reserved.

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Tel Aviv Is The World’s Here’s How To Help The Most Expensive City To Live Jews Of Ukraine By JTA Staff In, Study Finds supporting a network of Jewish comBy Gabe Friedman

An aerial view over Tel Aviv, Feb. 19, 2018. (Yossi Zamir/Flash90)

(JTA) — Tel Aviv is now the world’s most expensive city to live in — and the reason why is tied in part to Israel’s successful COVID19 vaccine rollout. The Israeli city rose from No. 5 to No. 1 in the annual Worldwide Cost of Living index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research arm of The Economist Group. The Londonbased media company also publishes The Economist magazine. The 2021 report explains that Israel’s world-leading pace in vac-

cinating its population helped the shekel reach a “soaring” value against the U.S. dollar, leading to steep local inflation rates in dollar terms. By Jan. 1, 2021, Israel had vaccinated over 10% of its population, earning international praise and attention. The price of about one out of every 10 everyday goods found in Tel Aviv, especially grocery items, “increased significantly,” the report said. The city is also the secondmost expensive place in the world to purchase alcohol and public transportation, the report added. The increased prices of household goods, cars and fuel are noted too. Tel Aviv’s real estate property prices also rose in 2021, but the EIU index does not factor those into its research. After Tel Aviv, the EIU ranking lists Paris, Singapore, Zurich and Hong Kong as the other most expensive cities in the top five.

Staff from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committeeat theborder betweenRomania andMoldova, preparing to assist Jewish Ukrainian refugees traveling through Moldova to Romania. (Ramin Mazur/JDC)

(JTA) — In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Jewish organizations are directing aid for tens of thousands of Jews living in the embattled country, assisting refugees who are fleeing the fighting and helping area Jews who have been trying or are hoping to immigrate to Israel. Below is a partial list of organizations that have ramped up ongoing efforts in the region or opened emergency mailboxes since the start of the war. –The Jewish Federations of North America has an emergency mailbox for helping people immigrate to Israel, securing the local Ukrainian community and its institutions and maintaining critical welfare services, among other needs -The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee has a longstanding presence in the country, assisting impoverished seniors and

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munity centers and social service agencies. -The Afya Foundation, in conjunction with UJA-Federation of New York, is preparing urgently needed wound care, surgical equipment and biomedical equipment to be shipped to Ukraine. -The American Jewish Committee’s emergency #StandWithUkraine fund is pledging to direct 100 percent of the funds to those meeting urgent needs in Ukraine, including IsraAID, the rapid response Israeli relief agency, which is assisting refugees of all backgrounds in neighboring Moldova. –HIAS is working through channels within the U.S. and throughout Europe to support the safe and speedy resettlement of those seeking to leave Ukraine. -Notes of support and friendship to HIAS and Jewish community center staff in Ukraine can be sent to general inboxes at partner JCCs that are located throughout the Ukraine. -The Jewish Agency for Israel has opened an emergency hotline to provide Ukrainian Jews with guidance and information regarding the immigration process, as well as general assistance. -The Chabad-Lubavitch movement has a Ukraine Jewish Relief Fund.

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