Brandeis Withdraws from American Studies Association

Becomes second university to do so after ASA’s Israel boycott

By Yair Rosenberg for Tablet Magazine

Brandeis University has become the second institution to withdraw from the American Studies Association, following the organization’s decision to boycott Israel. “We view the recent vote by the membership to affirm an academic boycott of Israel as a politicization of the discipline and a rebuke to the kind of open inquiry that a scholarly association should foster,” Brandeis’s American Studies Department posted on their web site. “We remain committed to the discipline of American Studies but we can no longer support an organization that has rejected two of the core principles of American culture–freedom of association and expression.”

Brandeis joins Penn State Harrisburg, which dropped its ASA membership yesterday. “As a prominent program in American Studies concerned for the welfare of its students and faculty, Penn State Harrisburg is worried that the recent actions by the National Council of the American Studies Association (ASA) do not reflect the longstanding scholarly enterprise American Studies stands for,” Penn State’s Dr. Simon Bronner, editor of the Encyclopedia of American Studies, said in a statement. “The withdrawal of institutional membership by our program and others allows us to be independent of the political and ideological resolutions issued by the ASA and concentrate on building American Studies scholarship with our faculty, students, and staff.”

During the run-up to the ASA vote on the Israel boycott, former Harvard President Lawrence Summers said he hoped universities would take such steps should the measure pass. “My hope would be that responsible university leaders will become very reluctant to see their universities’ funds used to finance faculty membership and faculty travel to an association that is showing itself not to be a scholarly association bur really more of a political tool,” he told Charlie Rose. It appears at least some institutions are following Summers’s lead.

Swarthmore Hillel Defies Headquarters on Boycott Israel Program Restrictions

Campus Group Condemns Guidelines for Constricting Jewish Student Debate

By Derek Kwait for The Jewish Daily Forward

Swarthmore College’s Hillel student board voted unanimously Sunday to defy Hillel International’s guidelines for Israel programming, condemning them for repressing free speech on Israel for Jewish students on campus.

The vote marked the first time a Hillel student board declared its intent to override the parent body’s guidelines, which prohibit a Hillel center from hosting or partnering with any group or individual that — among other things — supports sanction or boycott campaigns against Israel, or that “delegitimizes, demonizes, or applies a double standard to Israel.”

“This policy has resulted in the barring of speakers from organizations such as Breaking the Silence and [members of] the Israeli Knesset from speaking at Hillels without censorship,” the resolution said.

Breaking the Silence, a group composed of Israeli army veterans, has provoked intense controversy at Hillel centers for its focus on discussing ways in which it says the demands of military service in the Israeli-occupied West Bank corrode soldiers’ moral standards, and those of the Israeli Army itself.

Although the Swarthmore Hillel has not yet invited controversial speakers to campus, what is important is that the center can in the future if and when there is a student demand to hear the views of such speakers, said Joshua Wulfson, a Swarthmore undergrad and director of communications for the Hillel.

According to Wulfson, Swarthmore Hillel has little worry about regarding local censure or financial repercussions that might come from inviting speakers to campus who are not regarded as pro-Israel. “We had a fair amount of autonomy on this decision,” Wulfson said. “We are funded by our own endowment and have no board of overseers.”

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Professors' Group Calls on American Studies Association To Vote Down Israel Boycott

Vote of 5,000 Members Due December 15

By JTA


The American Association of University Professors called on members of the American Studies Association to vote down a resolution endorsing an academic boycott of Israel.

In an open letter to American Studies Association members published Dec. 6, two days after the ASA’s 20-member national council approved the boycott resolution, the American Association of University Professors, or AAUP, which says it opposes academic boycotts as violations of academic freedom, wrote that it “recognizes the right of individual scholars to act in accordance with their own personal consciences.”

“No scholar should be required to participate in any academic activity that violates his or her own principles. In addition, faculty members have the right to organize for or against economic boycotts, divestment, or other forms of sanction. However, an organized academic boycott is a different matter. In seeking to punish alleged violations of academic freedom elsewhere, such boycotts threaten the academic freedom of American scholars to engage the broadest variety of viewpoints,” read the letter signed by AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum; and by AAUP First Vice-President Henry Reichman who is also chairman of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

The AAUP, which calls itself the “principal and oldest organization of American college and university faculty defending academic freedom,” said that it does “not have the organizational capacity to monitor academic freedom at institutions in other countries, nor are we in a position to pick and choose which countries we, as an organization, might judge.”

If a majority of the ASA’s voting members do not vote to endorse the boycott resolution by December 15, the national council said that it will withdraw the resolution and determine next steps. Voting is being undertaken electronically by the body’s 5,000 members.

The boycott is not binding on ASA members, meaning it would apply principally to the activities of the ASA as an organization.

The Settlements Fallacy

Tom Wilson for Mosaic Magazine

Israeli settlements do not make peace less likely, nor is there any logical reason why they should. In many cases, the very opposite is true

At the beginning of last week the French President Francois Hollande was in Ramallah and, as is customary, he was calling on Israel to halt settlement building, “for the sake of peace and to reach a deal”. In doing so the French President was giving voice to the Settlements Fallacy.

Of course, it would be unfair to single out the French government as being uniquely misguided on this subject; which Western country doesn’t essentially take this line?

That, however, doesn’t change the fact that it is quite mistaken to assert causality between an increase in settlements and a decline in the prospects for peace.

Experience thus far certainly suggests that settlements do not make peace less likely, nor is there any logical reason why they should. In actual fact, those places that Israel has removed its civilians from, are today some of the most lawless, radicalised and dangerous areas in the region.

Presently within the West Bank, while Jewish communities sit on less than two percent of the territory, Jews constitute around twenty percent of the population there. Many of these people were born and raised in the communities they live in, they are second and third generation West Bank Jews.

In other words, this group, the so called settlers, are a well-established ethnic community, a reality that is not going anywhere, much like the Arab-Israeli citizens living within the rest of Israel.

For nineteen short years, during the Jordanian occupation 1948-1967, the West Bank was ethnically cleansed of Jews. Prior to that, there were ancient and flourishing Jewish communities throughout the West Bank, most prominently alongside the religious sites in Hebron and in the Jewish villages south of Bethlehem.

There were Jews in the West Bank continuously before the Jordanian occupation and there have been ever since.

What reasonable person could seriously advocate returning this area to its Judenrein status during the brief Jordanian occupation? The very fact that this is what the Palestinians have been demanding hardly speaks of an attitude towards coexistence and reconciliation.

Just as the Palestinian leadership refuses to officially recognise the Jewish State, if Palestinians are unable to countenance living alongside Jews as neighbours then what does this say of their willingness to end hostilities with the Israelis?

By encouraging Palestinians in their desires to see Jews exiled from settlement communities, the international community radicalises and emboldens Palestinian hopes of successfully waging a war for driving out all Jews and totally defeating Israel. In those places that Settlements have been uprooted the Palestinians have increased their support for hardline groups and Islamic extremists have taken control.

The most obvious example is Gaza. There, in August 2005, the Israeli government evicted nine thousand Israelis and pulled out entirely with the intention that this area would serve as the first step towards full Palestinian independence.

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For One Teen, Getting a Jewish Education Was a Form of Rebellion

Lilit Marcus' Quest Back to Her Roots — On Her Own Terms

By Lilit Marcus for The Jewish Daily Forward

Someone once asked Pamela Anderson — the regular Playboy centerfold and “Baywatch” star — what she thought her two sons would be like when they grew up. She joked that in order to rebel against her, they would probably become accountants.

Though the quote seemed like a throwaway comment, it creeps back into my mind occasionally when I think about my own upbringing. It’s normal for kids to rebel against their parents or try to make a dramatic turn from the way that they grew up. My parents have an interfaith marriage (Dad’s Jewish, Mom’s Presbyterian) and never encouraged me to be involved with a particular religion. No bat mitzvah, nothing. And yet somehow I grew up eager to learn about world religions, embraced Judaism as my spiritual path and eventually worked as a religion reporter.

For many of my close friends, though, exactly the opposite happened. Having grown up in kosher homes, declining invitations to birthday parties that took place on Friday nights and spending years in boys-only or girls-only yeshivas, many of them now rebel against Judaism. Most of the people I know who eat bacon for breakfast and are highly critical of Israel are people who grew up in Jewish homes and think that religion was “forced on them.”

Yes, this is all anecdotal evidence. But it also made me wonder if the best way to raise a child who embraces Judaism is not to spend thousands on summer camps, day schools, bat mitzvah training and confirmation, but to back off and let that kid come to the faith on her own. If kids are going to rebel, don’t you want to trick them into rebelling in the least rebellious way possible?

I reached out to people who work in Jewish education to ask them about my early-education theory. Unsurprisingly, I got a lot of blank stares and prolonged silences. After all, why would a person who makes his or her living teaching kids about Judaism want to say that his or her line of work didn’t really matter? It is like asking a reporter to say that newspapers are obsolete and that kids should never read books.

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Friend and Photographer to Frida Kahlo

By Renee Ghert-Zand for The Jewish Daily Forward

Many people are familiar with an iconic photograph of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo titled “Frida at the Barbizon Plaza Hotel, NYC 1933.” In the picture, Kahlo is seated, and a small painted self-portrait hangs above her and slightly to the left on the wall. Less known than the photograph itself is the name of the woman who took it. Her name was Lucienne Bloch, and she was Kahlo’s friend, and an artist in her own right.

The Jewish Community Library in San Francisco currently has an exhibition of photographs by Lucienne Bloch, along with some taken by her father, the famous Swiss-born Jewish musical composer Ernest Bloch (1880-1959). The show, titled “A Shared Eye,” highlights the father’s interest in artfully documenting nature, and the daughter’s preferred focus on people and what the camera can catch of their psychological make-up.

Some of Ernest’s photographs of life in the Swiss countryside grab the eye, including “The Mushroom Lady, 1912” featuring an elderly woman in a witch-like ensemble looking straight into the camera while holding a giant mushroom in each hand. Lucienne’s photos of social and political demonstrations in New York and Detroit in the mid-1930’s are well composed. Also of note is her rare photo of Albert Einstein playing violin in a musical group at Princeton.

However, it is Lucienne’s intimate portraits of her friend Kahlo in the 1930s that fascinate and steal this show. There are a few photos that include Kahlo’s husband, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, but a group of seven images of Kahlo alone command the most attention. One photo has Kahlo with a doily on her head, another with her biting her necklace, and yet another with her by a window.

One titled, “Frida with Cinzano Bottle” was taken in 1935. “Frida caught Diego having an affair with her favorite sister, Cristina. To rebel against him, Frida cut off her long black hair. The Cinzano Bottle she holds represents the unborn child she could never give him,” Lucienne Bloch wrote in her diary about the image.

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An Inter-Everything Conversation About the Pew Survey

A three-part response to the Pew Survey. Read all three responses.

by Derek M. Kwait for NewVoices

We might just be the last Jewish organization to respond to the big bad Pew Survey and we’re fine with that. It seems like every response so far is other people telling us what how we need to feel about it, whether we should be scared, take it as a a dare to engage singles in their 20′s suffering attrition, be optimistic, or think they got it all wrong. But here at New Voices, we (and by “we” I mean “me,” editor Derek Kwait) aren’t so into having other people doing our thinking for us. To this end, we’ve engaged two of the best and brightest Jews in academia and two of NV’s best and brightest student writers to participate in an inter-generational, inter-denominational, inter-gender, inter-orientation, inter-community, inter-national (we included a Canadian)…in other words, inter-human dialogue on the Survey’s results in the hopes that, after hearing all these varied perspectives, you will be able to find yourself a little in all of them, and be a little offended by all of them.

By engaging such different Jews in conversation with each other here, we hope to engender better conversations among different Jews in campuses and communities out in the world, thus bolstering what all agree to be the most important thing about Jewish life: a strong and vibrant Jewish community.

Meet the conversers:

Dr. Steven M. Cohen [SMC] is Research Professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College in New York, and Director of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive at NYU Wagner. He received an honorary doctorate from the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, the Marshall Sklare Award of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry, and a National Jewish Book Award. He had been cited as one of the Forward Fifty. In 2012, he was elected president of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry.

Dr. Sarah Bunin Benor [SBB] is an Associate Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Linguistics Department at the University of Southern California. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Linguistics in 2004. She teaches about the social science of American Jews, as well as about language and culture. She wrote the acclaimed book Becoming Frum, about the way Jews who become Orthodox later in life use language, has published many academic papers, and given lectures around the country about Jewish languages, linguistics, Yiddish, and American Jews. She edits the Journal of Jewish Languages and the Jewish Language Research Website, both of which she founded.

Eliana A. Glogauer [EAG] is New Voices’ chief editorialist. She currently studies government at IDC Herzliya, and is a co-founder of the Israel advocacy initiative, AskMeMore. She is the promised Canadian, from Toronto.

Jonathan P. Katz [JPK] is a New Voices contributor, and studies history and geography at the University of Chicago. Originally from New York City, he is also a polyglot and was a summer research intern for the Urban Land Institute.

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Lou Reed’s Rabbi

The rock star’s new tribute to his teacher, the writer Delmore Schwartz, illuminates their common genius

By Jake Marmer for Tablet Magazine

This piece was originally published on October 29, 2012. Lou Reed died Sunday, October 27, 2013.
Lou Reed is the indelibly hip version of Woody Allen’s Zelig: A human chameleon continually and thoroughly transformed by his surroundings. The difference, of course, is that while Allen’s film character grotesquely altered his physical appearance and worldviews so he would be liked, Reed’s radical shifts have been determined by desire to duck expectations, to shake up and subvert established forms of normalcy. As an iconic rock star, Reed has lived out his numerous rebirths and in the process popularized if not outright invented a number of musical genres—art-rock, avant-pop, noise, and punk, among others.

What remained constant throughout his transformations, however, is Reed’s rootedness in literature. His lyrics have always been filled with references that ranged from Shakespeare to the Marquis de Sade, from Edgar Allan Poe to James Joyce. And now, after over half a century of bona fide writing and composing, Reed has penned a piece that is among his very finest bits of writing to date—an introduction to the New Directions reissue of Delmore Schwartz’s collection of short stories In Dream Begin Responsibilities.

Schwartz, a star of the New York literary scene in the 1930 and ’40s, was a poet, innovative prose writer, cultural critic, and, at one time, a professor of English literature at the University of Syracuse, where Reed met him in the early 1960s. As is clear from the introduction to In Dream Begin Responsibilities, Schwartz’s impact on Reed’s life has not waned one bit over the years: “You were the greatest man I ever met. … Your titles were more than enough to raise the muse of fire on my neck.” Lovingly Reed recollects: “We gathered around you as you read Finnegans Wake. So hilarious but impenetrable without you. You said there were few things better than to devote one’s life to Joyce.”

Reed’s piece surges from descriptive to lyrical, from poetry to prose. At times reminiscent of Allen Ginsberg “Kaddish”—another epic tribute—Reed’s elegy is a tragicomic stream of consciousness and ecstatic excavation of memory: “Reading Yeats and the bell had rung but the poem was not over you hadn’t finished reading—liquid rivulets sprang from your nose but still you would not stop reading. I was transfixed. I cried—the love of the word.” The usage of em-dashes, as in Ginsberg’s work, intensifies the potency of the free-associative leaps. The incisiveness and vividness of the portrayal are tremendous: “Some drinks later—his shirt undone—one tail front right hanging—tie askew—fly unzipped. Oh Delmore. You were so beautiful. Named for a silent star dancer Frank Delmore.”

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Meet Diane von Furstenberg

by lkatz for The Conspiracy /newvoices

Legendary fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg’s mother was in Auschwitz 18 months before she was born. Born Diane Simone Michelle Halfin on December 31, 1946 in Belgium, her parents, Leon and Liliane Halfin, were both Jewish. Her mother’s greatest gift to her was the conviction that “fear is not an option,” Von Furstenberg said at an United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York event. At the same event, she added that she has tried to teach her own children that independence are among the first steps to freedom.

Von Furstenberg attended school in Switzerland, Spain and England, and in 1965 started at the University of Madrid. She transferred to the University of Geneva after one year, where she majored in economics. While there, she met Prince Eduard Egon von Furstenburg, who inherited the Fiat fortune. The two married in July 1969 – she designed her own wedding dress. Although she was not popular with her fiancé’s family due to her religion, she became Diane, Princess of Furstenberg. “I was this banal little Jewish girl who married this good-looking hotshot prince,” she told The Wall Street Journal. The couple had two children before splitting in 1974.

Following the break up, von Furstenberg promised herself she would become financially self-sufficient. She started out working for various large-scale production clothes manufactures. In 1972 she started her own business in New York City, and opened up a showroom on Seventh Avenue. Her father and a friend helped her get started financially. Her most successful piece, the wrap dress, has become an iconic fashion design. Her company’s sales topped one million dollars after only a few months. By 1976 over a million of her signature dresses had been sold, and she landed on the cover of both The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek, the latter dubbing her “the most marketable woman since Coco Chanel.”

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Dual Loyalities: Balancing College Football and Jewish Tradition

By Eric Steitz for NewVoices
A cool breeze rolls through campus and students everywhere know what that means. It’s that
time of year again. No, it’s not the High Holy Day season that comes to mind, but football
season. For Jewish college students, it’s the start of another potentially conflicted semester.
As Jews celebrate Shabbat each weekend, campuses around the country prepare for their biggest
event of the week, the football game. With football programs on over 1,000 NCAA campuses,
football is everywhere. For practically the entire fall semester, many alumni, faculty and students
look forward to the football game more than any other event.

Football is the most popular sport on campus, as seen in television ratings and attendance
numbers. On September 7, TV by the Numbers reported that ESPN averaged 3.8 million
viewers per hour of football programming. CBS Sports released a poll in January 2013 noting
that college football is the third-most popular sport in the United States behind only the National
Football League and Major League Baseball, respectively.
But how are Jews to celebrate Shabbat and be a part of the campus football culture? It
starts with understanding Shabbat tradition.

A closer look at those restrictions shows that Jews aren’t forbidden to partake in the Saturday football festivities. It just takes some planning.

Ashley Rosenberg, a student at the University of Arkansas Medical School, knows the
importance of football on campus. She mentions that she never misses a Razorback football
game and has friends that get creative with their scheduling conflicts.
“I have friends who are Jewish and keep Shabbat that have never been to an Arkansas football
game because they always start before the Sabbath ends. It is a huge deal to go to football games
down here so they usually record the games and watch them when Shabbat ends,” Ashley said.

You can buy tickets and arrange meetings with friends in advance, or walk to the game
rather than travel by vehicle. Shabbat tradition and college football suddenly don’t seem so
conflicted.

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‘Boycott Israel,’ says Jewish rapper

Reggae musician Ari Lesser reaches out to college students with a hip anti-BDS message

By Amanda Borschel-Dan for The Times of Israel

New hasbara YouTube sensation “Boycott Israel” could only have been written by musician Ari Lesser.

A political science BA from the University of Oregon, the 27-year-old ba’al tshuva reggae rapper is probably the only musician around capable of undertaking the long hours of research involved in making the extremely informative, catchy six-minute song.

“Boycott Israel,” sponsored by the pro-Israel campus advocacy group Here Is Israel (with the motto “get HII for Israel”), is a fascinating, rhythmically rhymed exposure of the double standards involved in the global BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) efforts against Israel.


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Binge Drinking With Noah and Satan

By Daniel M. Bronstein for Jewniverse
We all know that Noah was chosen by God to rebuild life after an apocalyptic flood. What gets less attention is that Genesis also tells how Noah planted a vineyard and used those grapes to get smashed. In a midrash, the sages trot out an unexpected character to warn about the dangers of such drinking: Satan.

As they tell it, Satan slaughters a lamb, a lion, a monkey, and a pig over Noah’s vineyard, and proceeds to “water” it with the beasts’ blood. They explain that Satan’s butchery of those particular animals in that particular order was symbolic of successive stages of intoxication:

A single drink makes one “meek” as a lamb; 2 drinks makes one feel mighty as a lion; 3 or 4 causes one to act like a monkey, “hopping about, dancing, giggling, and uttering obscenities in public;” and any additional drinks make wallow in waste like a pig.

The Sages use this midrash to stress that there is a big difference between drinking for a blessing and getting drunk. And they make it no secret which course of action is preferable. (Hint: It’s not the one that involves Satan.)

Where Are the Matchmakers?

Response to: "Intermarriage: Can Anything Be Done?"

Where Are the Matchmakers?
Jewish life—and love—on campus

By Benjamin Silver for Mosaic

I have high hopes that Jack Wertheimer’s ambitious and insightful essay will reach those Jews who are now, or soon will be, contemplating marriage. High hopes, but I fear misplaced hopes. As a college senior, I am one of those young Jews, and I want to offer not an excuse but an explanation for why some of us may be shirking what Wertheimer would call our responsibility to ensure the Jewish future.

On today’s university campuses, Jewish students are increasingly being offered two divergent versions of Jewish life. One is recognizably traditionalist; in denominational terms, it loosely resembles modern-Orthodox or Conservative Judaism. No doctrinal or ritual demands are made as a condition of involvement, and varying degrees and levels of adherence are embraced (for instance, when it comes to separate seating of the sexes at prayer). Nevertheless, this grouping is defined by the great pride it takes in the traditional principles and practices of Judaism.

The other form, loosely resembling what has come to be called Jewish Renewal, acknowledges that the traditional culture of Judaism is important and needs to be retained but believes that Jewish religious practices must be consciously and deliberately reinvented. The old way of doing things, it is said, is driving away members of the Jewish community—a premise accepted by many American Jews. This means that outmoded and esoteric bits must be removed and replaced by newer and more alluring ones. Interestingly, secular or “cultural” Judaism, which used to be the alternative to the traditionalist brand of Jewish life, is less of a presence on campus. In its stead, students who adhere to this second kind of Jewish life seem to find comfort and coherence in combining what Wertheimer refers to as a “strong residual emotion for the religion of [one’s] birth” with an emphasis on reinvention.

On my campus, although the divide between the two forms of Judaism is significant, they get along quite well together. Students seldom partake exclusively of one or the other, but instead mix easily and often.
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British Board Backs Prof in Spat With 'Zionist' Student Over 62 Grade

Grad Student Complained After Pro-Israel Thesis Was Panned

By JTA

An English review board has rejected bias complaints by an Israeli student against the University of Warwick but recommended the university apologize for being “insufficiently flexible.”

“The complaint is partly justified,” the Office of the Independent Adjudicator, England’s body for reviewing student complaints, wrote in its recommendation last month on how to handle the 2012 complaint by Smadar Bakovic, an Israeli master’s student, against her former thesis supervisor, Nicola Pratt.

The Office recommended the university apologize to Bakovic and compensate her $1,600 for not providing her with a new supervisor as she requested. Bakovic, a master’s student in international relations, cited Pratt’s outspoken views “against Israel, and with the people of Gaza and the West Bank,” as stated in a petition cosigned by Pratt in 2009, in arguing that Pratt was biased.

The Office rejected Bakovic’s claims that Pratt had displayed bias in grading Bakovic’s thesis.

“We are not persuaded that there is sufficient evidence to establish that Professor [Pratt] was biased because of the views that she held,” the Office wrote.

Pratt gave Bakovic a grade of 62 points out of 100 and wrote that Bakovic tended to “adopt Israeli/Zionist narratives as though they were uncontested facts.”

When Bakovic requested a blind regrade, a second marker graded her thesis “only slightly higher” than the grade given by Pratt, the Office said in its recommendation.

Holy Days And Women’s Empowerment

by Ruth Messinger, president of American Jewish World Service, for The Jewish Week

Each year when I sit in synagogue during Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, I’m struck by the complex stories we read about biblical women and by the wisdom these stories offer about ensuring the dignity of women and girls today.

The past year was one of paradoxes. At a time when Sheryl Sandberg, Malala Yousafzai, Wendy Davis and countless others reinvigorated conversations about women’s leadership, health and safety, rape and sexual violence continued to escalate all over the world. As I try to grasp these contradictions, I’m reflecting more deeply on what our High Holy Days readings illuminate about the condition of women and girls over the millennia.

To start, consider Sarah, Hagar and Hannah, female protagonists we meet in the Rosh HaShanah liturgy. In the eyes of the biblical narrator, the significance and self-worth of these women are defined solely by their ability to have children — in particular, sons. Yet each of these women exercises agency in different, albeit complicated, ways.

Initially, Sarah is unable to birth a child. Frustrated that God has not fulfilled the promise of giving her and her husband, Abraham, “as many offspring as there are stars,” as it says in the Bible, Sarah takes matters into her own hands. She chooses her handmaid, Hagar, as a surrogate mother and instructs Abraham to impregnate Hagar, so that Sarah can have the son she desperately wants.

Sarah eventually is able to have a biological child of her own, Isaac.

Hannah, also struggles to bear children but handles her infertility in a different way: She prays. Hannah pours out her heart to God and, ultimately, God answers her prayers by giving her a child.

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American Apparel’s Ongoing Love Affair with Hasidic Jews

The store’s Tumblr page has a fresh new face

By Romy Zipken - for Jewcy

American Apparel, famous for its sticky, sparkly onesies, is bordering obsessive in regard to Yiddish culture (see: American Apparel’s Black Nail Polish Color is Called ‘Hassid’). The store’s Tumblr page, typically adorned with heroin-chic models sportin’ side ponytails and see-through blouses, has a new face —a face with payos.

Meet Yoel Weisshaus. Yoel, a Chasidish Jew who grew up in a Yiddish speaking home in Brooklyn, attended Yeshiva at an early age. Yoel is a peasant with chutzpa known for suing the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey over its controversial toll hikes, at prices that exceed twofold what one earns per hour under the minimum wage. Yoel is talented and drafts his own pleadings because he cannot afford an attorney, his case is still ongoing. He freelances in sales of American made braidings and ribbons for local garments and hat manufactures. Yoel has an accent because English is not his first language, but he is still striving to learn English writing.

Props and daps to Weisshaus for a job well done in the garment industry. Maybe “Peasant with Chutzpa” will be the company’s next look—shtreimels and Deep V Tee’s.

The Israeli-American Music Mogul

Remember the Israeli keffiyeh controversy? Semitic Swag, the LA "lifestyle brand" behind it, is headed by Erez Safar, a DJ/producer who is perhaps better known for his non-sartorial endeavors. And he's just made another musical splash.
Safar, who performs under the moniker Diwon, has just dropped his first solo album. Called "New Game," the album fuses samples of Middle Eastern folk music with urban American hip-hop beats, creating a sound that would feel at home both in the Arab shuk and in a bouncin' Baltimore club.
These days Safar is probably best known as the founder of Bancs, a music and video production company, the founder of the Sephardic Music Festival, and the CEO of Shemspeed, which doesn't just sell kosher keffiyehs—it's also one of the only independent record labels specializing in Jewish music.
"New Game," which features a bevy of underground rappers sharing the mic over Safar's beats, is a notable addition to Safar's already bursting-at-the-seams musical resume. We're pretty psyched.
- Elie Lichtschein for Jewniverse

Ten Days of Apologies

By Heshy Friedman for JewishMag.com

The ten days beginning with Rosh Hashanah and concluding with Yom Kippur are known as the “Ten Days of Penitence.” Maimonides, codifier of Jewish law, describes how one should do teshuva (penitence). The individual must admit his/her sin, be ashamed of the transgression, and resolve never to do it again. If one has hurt another person physically or financially, paying the victim is necessary but not sufficient. The perpetrator must ask the victim for forgiveness and show sincere remorse. Apologies are an important part of these holy days.

Let us examine what is arguably the worst apology ever. It was on an episode of the classic television show, the Honeymooners. Ralph Kramden is apologizing to his wife, Alice, for calling her mother a blabbermouth:

Hello, Alice. This is me, Ralph. Alice, I'm sorry. I'm miserable without you. Please come back to me, Alice. I apologize for everything I said. I even apologize to your mother. I know she doesn't mean the things she says, Alice. It's just her nature. She doesn't mean to be mean. She's just born that way. When she says things about your old boyfriends and about the furniture in the apartment, I know that she doesn't mean to get me mad. She's just naturally mean, that's all. When she spilled the beans about the end of the play, I shouldn't have got mad at that. I should've expected it from her. I know how she is. She's never gonna be any different, Alice! She's gonna be the same old way, Alice! SHE'S A BLABBERMOUTH, ALICE! A BLABBERMOUTH!

Before apologizing, it might be a good idea to view this video clip so that you know what not to do. That is clearly not the way to show remorse. Neither is telling someone, “I am sorry you feel that way,” or stating that “If anyone has been hurt by my actions, I am sorry.” The fictional television character, Sheldon Cooper’s apology to Dr. Gablehauser, his boss, in the “The Big Bang Theory” is not much better than Ralph Kramden’s: “We may have gotten off on the wrong foot when I called you an idiot. I was wrong... to point it out.”

Remorse is about wishing the past mistake had not occurred and making sure it never happens again. Some use the acronym of the “Five R’s as a way to remember what needs to be done: Recognition, Remorse, Repentance, Restitution, and Request for forgiveness. According to researchers in the area, the main reason that people do not apologize is because they are afraid the apology will be seen as a sign of weakness and/or guilt. In reality, an apology indicates great strength as it is a munificent act that restores and rehabilitates the self-concept of the offended party.

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Roaming Europe in Search of Yiddish Joy

 To hear some people tell it, you'd think Jewish history was one long calamity: the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion, pogroms and, of course, the Holocaust. Didn't European Jews ever smile or sing or enjoy life?

Actually, yes. That's the message the Helix Project is passing on to young Jewish scholars.

Helix is a project of Yiddishkayt, a Los Angeles organization dedicated to spreading the joys of European Judaism. For too long, the group believes, students have been taught about Jewish loss, "but not what was lost. When Jewish culture is taught from its endpoints, the Holocaust is allowed to triumph over the memory of the vibrancy of Jewish life."

Last year, Helix sent 6 students to Europe to explore the richness of Yiddish culture, and this summer, they sent 12 more. One participant, Alana Fichman of Santa Rosa, California, felt a previous visit to European concentration camps only told part of the story. "It was not the barracks of the death camp that defined my ancestry. I want to meet the people."

Through this cool new project, students like Fichman can learn not how their ancestors died, but how they lived.

- Marc Davis for Jewniverse

New Jersey Senate Candidate Cory Booker Knows His Torah. So What?

How the Newark mayor’s adopted Jewish identity—shaped by his Orthodox mentors—reflects his unique brand of politics

By Yair Rosenberg for Tablet Magazine

Last May, when Cory Booker, the 44-year-old mayor of Newark, N.J., got up to address the graduating class of Yale University, he warned them he was going to do something out of the ordinary. “Today, I want to do something a little different than you were probably expecting from this Christian man from Newark, N.J.,” Booker began. “I want to do something that has probably never been done before at this university. I want to stand here as a Christian goy in all of my non-Jewish self and give you all a d’var Torah.”

It was a bold statement from a politician who may be most famous for rescuing a constituent from a burning building. Jews are no strangers to public officials appropriating the particulars of their faith for the purposes of political pandering, whether it’s former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin flashing a Star of David pendant, Texas Gov. Rick Perry lighting the menorah, or Vice President Joe Biden crediting Jewish social-justice activists with an outsized “85 percent” of the changes in popular attitudes toward gay rights. But this wasn’t a speech to a local Jewish Federation chapter or the annual AIPAC convention in Washington, where such rhetoric would be expected. This was a commencement address at one of America’s premier secular institutions of higher learning. And yet Booker decided to deliver it with a Jewish inflection, for seemingly no reason other than the fact that he wanted to.

Booker is often compared to another charismatic African-American Democrat: Barack Obama. In fact, the first person to have drawn the parallel may have been Booker himself. “Cory was obviously someone who was identified early on as someone who may be the first black president,” recalled Booker’s friend Ben Karp. “I was in the car with him in 1999,” Karp went on, “and I said to him, ‘Well, who do you think your rivals are? Harold Ford or Jesse Jackson Jr.?’ And Cory said to me, ‘Yeah, but there’s this guy in Chicago and his name is Barack Obama, and he’s super-talented.’ ”

On paper, the two men share many attributes. Both have distinguished academic pedigrees—Obama’s law degree is from Harvard, Booker’s is from Yale. Both began their political careers as community organizers. And both were deeply affected by their early encounter with the Jewish community. But like many of their surface similarities, this last one proves superficial. Each man found his way to very different parts of the Jewish world—a distinction that points to very real divergences in their personal and political outlooks.

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Quick Guide to Holidays 5774 - 2013

Rosh HaShannah, Yom Kippur, Succot, Simchat Torah and in between

Tishre is the name of the Jewish month in which Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Succot fall. Although Rosh Hashanah is the beginning of the Jewish year, and the first day of the Jewish month of Tishre, and is the first day of the year, Tishre is the seventh month in the Jewish year. The first month of the year is Nissan, the month in which Passover comes.

Tishre has more holidays than any other month, as we shall list:

S'lichot services begin for Askenazim on Saturday night, August 31th. It is traditional to begin the first service right after midnight. If it is not possible, S'lichot may be started on Sunday morning, September 1st. By the way, according to our Jewish tradition, it happens to come out that this year the date that G-d began creating the world falls on Saturday, August 31th.

Rosh Hashanah is the holiday that celebrates the Jewish New Year. It falls on the first and second days of the month of Tishre. The two-day holiday is the only holiday that is celebrated both in Israel and in the Diaspora for two days. All other major holidays are celebrated in Israel for only one day and in the Diaspora for two days. Rosh Hashanah is the Day of Judgment for the entire world not just the Jews. All souls pass before Him and His heavenly court to be judged for their actions and deeds of the previous year and to receive a decree for the coming year.

This year, 2013, Rosh Hashanah comes on Thursday and Friday, September 5th and September 6th. Remember the Jewish festivals begin when the sun sets so that means that we sit down for our festive meal upon returning from the synagogue on Wednesday night, September 4th

Eruv Tavshelin: Since this year the first two days of Rosh Hashanah come immediately before the Shabbat, and since it is forbidden to cook on the Yom Tov for the Shabbat, it is necessary to make an "eruv tavshelin" which is a process by which we begin to prepare for the Shabbat before the Yom Tov begins, and by virtue of this beginning, we are permitted to continue cooking even on Friday, the second day of Rosh Hashanah. To make an "eruv tavshilin", take a boiled egg (or other cooked food such as a piece of meat or fish) together with a loaf of bread that is to be eaten on the Shabbat and make the blessing, "...who has sanctified us by His commandments and commanded us concerning the precept of Eruv." This blessing can be found in most High Holiday prayer books. After this blessing, recite the following, "By virtue of this Eruv it is permitted to us to bake, cook, warm the food, light the candles and do all work that is necessary on the holiday for the Shabbat." This must be done before the festival and not on it.

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Jewish Student Killed In Egypt Was Activist For Peace

Andrew Pochter, the American student stabbed to death Friday during a protest in Egypt, was active in Hillel and motivated by a desire to encourage peace and democracy in the region.

“He went to Egypt because he cared profoundly about the Middle East, and he planned to live and work there in the pursuit of peace and understanding,” said a Facebook post reportedly put up by his family, according to Reuters.
Pochter, 21, of Chevy Chase, Md., was killed during a protest against the Muslim Brotherhood in Alexandria. He reportedly was teaching English there to children and studying Arabic.

He was to enter his junior year at Kenyon College in Ohio in the fall. The Facebook post said Pochter expected to study in Jordan next spring.
The Forward reported that Pochter had served as a co-manager of Kenyon’s Hillel, where he was asked to give a speech to fellow students marking Rosh Hashanah last year.

“Entering the New Year really resonated with him,” Marc Bragin, director of the Kenyon Hillel, told the Forward. “He was so excited just to go out and discover things. His passion really came out that Rosh Hashanah morning.”

Bragin added, “What really stands out to me about Andrew is how incredibly welcoming he was to different people and to different ideas. He had a passion for learning, for learning about other people and other cultures.”

Blogging Anti-Semitism

by Ilana Newman in Toronto for Global Jewish Voice

Yesterday my friend’s boyfriend said that Jews run the world.

Well, not quite in so many words. But the sentiment was there.

I made a brief (and perhaps ill-advised, in a non-Jewish context) joke about the mythical Zionist Occupation Government, but this guy didn’t seem to understand that it was a joke. He nodded, saying, “It’s true, there are so many Jews in positions of power- just look at Hollywood, and the banks!” An uneasy silence ensued, in which I, the only Jew in the small group gathered (ironically, at Aroma, the Israeli coffeeshop franchise), realized that I didn’t know how to call this guy out on his casual and awkward anti-Semitism.

So I didn’t say anything.

I’ve become more and more aware, in the last several months, of a burgeoning anti-Jewish sentiment in the world— there are, of course, obviously antisemitic events like hate crimes (which have, incidentally, been on the rise in the last few years), or the rise of Hungary’s über-nationalist Jobbik party (which is, tellingly, featured positively on the website of white supremacist organization Stormfront).

I am privileged to live in a country like Canada, where my rights as a member of an ethno-religious minority group are protected under the law. I remind myself every day that not everyone is so lucky, and that even my country, which can be very loud about its “salad-bowl” or “mosaic” culture (as opposed to the United States’ “melting pot” ideal) is nonetheless home to a distressing amount of Islamophobia and racism/colorism. And because of the internet and social media, we live in a world that has simultaneously become, paradoxically, ever-larger and ever-smaller. Everything is only a few keystrokes away, and that includes the darker parts of the world, the things people think they say in secret.

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Challah for Hunger through the Eyes of a Transitioning Founder

by Eli Winkelman for ejewishphilanthropy.com

As the founding executive of Challah for Hunger transitioning my primary affiliation to a Board role, I wanted to bring you into the world as I see it at this point.
Back in 2004, during my first year at Scripps College, I began baking challah with friends, just for fun. Others joined in, and week after week people came back, complaining that “their friends ate all their challah.” Something clicked: people liked learning to bake challah; others wanted to buy the loaves. And so the first chapter of Challah for Hunger was born.

Since then, we’ve grown, purely by word of mouth, to more than 60 chapters in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia. Our volunteers bake creatively flavored challah, sell it, and donate the profits to social justice organizations. Chapters give half their proceeds to one shared cause, and each chapter’s volunteers act as a giving circle to allocate the other half. Over the past nine years, we’ve raised nearly half a million dollars for organizations including American Jewish World Service, the Blue Mountain Humane Society, Sharsheret, and Projecto Jardin.

For the last nine years, I’ve had the privilege to serve as Challah Enthusiasm Officer. Many nonprofits declare a vision to put themselves “out of business.” Challah for Hunger is not one of them. Our volunteers practice teamwork, hone skills (from kitchen navigation to tzedakah allocation), build bridges within the Jewish community and beyond, and most importantly to me at this time, make meaningful connections. Why would we ever want to go “out of business”?

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Jesus 'Used to Be Jewish'? That's Not What the Gospels Say

by Bernard Starr for The Huffington Post

When I interviewed Christians and Jews for my book "Jesus Uncensored: Restoring the Authentic Jew," I heard over and over "everyone knows Jesus was Jewish." But when I dug a little deeper I discovered that "everyone knows he was Jewish" really means "he used to be Jewish." Then I found that many still believe that Jesus was born Christian and that he launched a new religion.

For example, Jane, educated in Catholic grade schools, agreed that Jesus was Jewish. But when I followed up with, "Did he remain Jewish throughout his life?" she said, "Oh, no. He became a Christian and started Christianity." "When did that happen?" I asked. "When he was baptized by John the Baptist," she answered confidently. "It says so right in the Bible."

Noah, a young Jewish college student, who attends a small New England college, asked his Christian fraternity brothers, "What was Jesus' religion?" They stared at him as if he were an idiot. He pressed for an answer. Unanimously they declared, "Christian, of course."

The fact is, Jesus was born into a family of practicing Jews dedicated to Judaism. As prescribed in the Torah, he was circumcised on the eighth day after his birth. Throughout his life he was thoroughly committed to Judaism, the Torah and Jewish practices. He prayed in synagogues and taught Torah to "multitudes" of fellow Jews. And John the Baptist only baptized Jews to purify them for the expected arrival of the Jewish Messiah. All this is stated clearly in the Gospels; Jane's quote is not.

Christians are astonished when I inform them that the word "Jew" appears 202 times in the New Testament and 82 times in the Gospels, while "Christian" does not show up at all in the Gospels and is mentioned only three times in later parts of the New Testament -- the first mention is when Paul is preaching in Antioch years after the crucifixion (Acts 11:26). Why is "Christian" absent from the Gospels, which span Jesus' life and ministry? Because there was no Christianity during Jesus' life.

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Graduation! And it Feels So…

THE CONSPIRACY BY H. B. RUBIN for newvoices.org

I went to my graduation. It was about as anti-climactic as I expected it to be: my gown was the same obscene shade of red as everyone else’s, I didn’t have enough time to shower before the ceremony, and the rain forced me to wear shoes.

I know, these are all material concerns. But in twenty years, they are the ones I’ll remember, right?

But in all honesty, graduation wasn’t so bad. It was actually kind of funny. All 800 of us graduates shivering slightly in the May rain, bound together by our shared… varieties of hangovers and sleep-deprivation. Some, I am pretty sure, were still drunk. The surrounding jittery faces made it clear that my friends and I weren’t the only ones that had attempted to stay up all night. I guess we had all thought that by not going to sleep, somehow, the night would never end, and in that way, our lives as we knew them would never end as well.

As we waited to begin the walking procession, I breathed in slowly, in the effort to clear my head and take it in, all of it. Restless, scared, excited, tired, loud. There was a lot of laughing, and a lot of silence. We began to walk. Today I Am Graduating. I said to myself, over and over, trying to imbue the words with some sense of meaning or finality. Today Is The Day I Am Graduating. But they just felt like words. I didn’t feel any different; there was no magical Disney woosh going through my insides. It was overcast and cold and I discreetly ate handfuls of Peanut Butter Puffins to stay the growling of my insides. Today. Graduating. As we walked in rows of two through the center of campus, with hordes of cameras and families grinning at us, I felt small pinpricks flutter at the edges of my eyes, but then they were gone.

What was my biggest take-away from graduation (other than the firm handshake I received along with my blank diploma holder)? The assurance that it is okay to have no idea what I am going to do with my life. This was corroborated enthusiastically by all of our graduation speakers, even the ones who seemed to have a semblance of what they were doing with their lives. One of my favorite professors, Elvin Lim, put it a bit more eloquently than I can. He spoke about uncertainty, contingency, and unpredictability.

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Sarah Silverman’s Better Half

The comedian’s sister’s protest of gender inequality at the Western Wall makes a case for holiness, not against 

By Rachel Shukert 

After more than a decade of rape jokes, d*** jokes, and sly inversion of all forms of racism, we’re all pretty used to Sarah Silverman and her comedy, which in this era of Girls, “hipster racism,” and hundreds of YouTube videos of the aspiring stars of tomorrow strumming folksy songs about their various bodily functions can seem both oddly prescient and oddly quaint in its resolve to shock.

So, it’s only fitting that another Silverman has emerged on the scene, intent on breaking down a set of very different boundaries: Susan, the comedian’s rabbi sister, who along with her teenage daughter Hallel Abramowitz was among the latest group of women to be detained by Israeli authorities to appease the unbending ire of a bunch of absurdly powerful men dressed as John Galliano. Their transgressions, committed as part of the social action group Women of the Wall, seem to be the usual ones of wearing tallit, reading Torah, and other acts of “gender-bending” that the ultra-Orthodox seem to think will turn the entire Temple Mount into something resembling an extra-fierce episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race (we should be so lucky). The comedian herself was quick to Tweet her support: “So proud of my amazing sister @rabbisusan & niece @purplelettuce95 for their ballsout civil disobedience. Ur the t*&s! #womenofthewall.”

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Academic Freedom Restricted in Name of Academic Freedom

NEW VOICES EDITORIAL, OPINION

It takes a lot for the Association For Asian American Studies to make international headlines. The AAAS is a group of academics within the fields of Asian and Asian-American Studies who work to advance the fields of Asian Studies and Asian-American Studies. Not exactly the kind of organization regularly covered by CNN. A quick Google search of that organization, however, turns up myriad articles from the past few weeks. Last month, they became the first academic organization in the United States to endorse an academic boycott of Israeli universities — and they did so unanimously.

We have a few questions:

• Why is an organization whose mission is to promote better understanding of “Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Hawai’ian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Pacific Islander, and other groups,” according to their website, taking a stance on Israel-Palestine?
• How did a large group of scholars unanimously agree on anything, let alone something so controversial?
• And how does the AAAS reconcile support for “the protected rights of students and scholars everywhere to engage in research and public speaking about Israel-Palestine” with advocacy work making that engagement more difficult for students and scholars in at Israeli universities (which, last we checked, are part of “everywhere”)?

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Jewz in the Newz

By Nate Bloom

Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star

JewishWorldReview.com | ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME The 2013 induction ceremony for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was held on April 18 and, on Saturday, May 18, at 9PM, HBO will broadcast ceremony highlights (many encore showings). Three tribe members were inducted: RANDY NEWMAN, 69; GEDDY LEE, 59 (as a member of the three-man Canadian rock band, "Rush"); and LOU ADLER, 79.


Newman, who began as a singer-songwriter, has mostly been a film score composer since 1981. He's been nominated for twenty Oscars (won twice)-- and while he has only had one pop hit ("Short People"), his songs (like "I Think It's Going to Rain Today") have been recorded by a who's who of pop/rock singers. His 1974 song, "Louisiana 1927," about a great flood, became virtually the theme song for Hurricane Katrina (2005) benefits.


Lee, the band's bassist and lead vocalist, is an icon for progressive rock devotees and there's been much grumbling about the band's wait to get into the Hall. Lee was born Gary Lee Weinrib, the son of two concentration camp survivors. He's referenced his parents' experience in a couple of "Rush" songs. In 1995, he accompanied his mother on a trip to Bergen-Belsen to mark the 50th anniversary of the camp's liberation.


Adler, inducted as a non-performer, has worn many hats. His record company discovered the Mamas and the Papas. He was a mentor to CAROLE KING, 71, who sang a song in his honor at the ceremony. He produced the great (for-charity) 1967 Monterey Pop festival, which showcased incredibly talented new faces in rock music, like Jimi Hendrix. On top of all this, Adler had the great sense (and great mazel) to buy up the rights to the stage version of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and turn it into a movie. Adler, by the way, is the guy who always sits courtside at Lakers' games, next to Jack Nicholson, and Nicholson was at the HOF ceremony.

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From Amy to Aviva: My Journey From Bullying Target to School Faculty

Two months ago, New Voices published an article about childhood bullying and its life-long effects. We put out a call for our readers to send in their own stories, of bullying and of what that bullying means to them now; of these stories, we chose the one that resonated with us most strongly. That story is what follows.  by Aviva Perlman

Then:

I can’t recall when or how the bullying started. I know something changed when I was nine and I had to start another school for fourth grade. I was finding it difficult to make friends. I was never wanted at lunch tables and in classrooms groups; I was rarely invited to birthday parties and rarely had play dates.  At first, none of this really bothered me.  I figured it was simply from being a new kid and that sooner or later things would fall into place.  But then the whispering started, and the laugh, and then the stares.  I don’t exactly know about of what they were making fun of me, but it didn’t matter.  My sentence had been written. I was marked. Once you are marked, it’s very hard to change that status.

My confidence and self-esteem—things I didn’t even know existed—plummeted, and my paranoia grew.  I no longer wanted to put myself out there or volunteer for anything, and whenever I saw someone whisper, I always thought it was about me.

Along came fifth grade; the whispers and sneering followed me. One summer away from school can’t erase the mark.  I quickly pounced on making friends with the new kids—being nice and offering them a place to sit at lunch.  However, once the other classmates deemed these new kids cool, they disappeared, having learned that being friends with me was social suicide.  I found myself wandering around the playground by myself during recess looking for people to play with.


By this point, the school administration was quite familiar with me, as I frequented their office, constantly expressing the troubles I was having with my classmates, in hopes that something would be done about it.  All I got was a figurative pat on the head and a sympathy smile.  And so, I reached a breaking point that year, writing a letter to my teacher, saying I couldn’t handle it and I didn’t know what else to do.  Naturally, it sounded an alarm and the school’s guidance department ordered me to see a psychologist.

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A House Divided

At apartheid’s end, the dorms of the University
of the Free State in Bloemfontein were integrated.At first it went well, then the students chose to resegregate. A story of the continuing battle against racism in South Africa.

Billyboy Ramahlele heard the riot before he saw it. It was a February evening in 1996, autumn in South Africa, when cooling breezes from the Cape of Good Hope push north and turn the hot days of the country’s agricultural heartland into sweet nights, when the city of Bloemfontein’s moonlit trees and cornfields rustle sultrily beneath a vast sky glittering with stars. The 32-year-old dormitory manager at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein was relaxing in front of a wildlife program on the TV with his door open.

Suddenly, he became aware of a new noise. Could it be the trees, rustling in a gust? No, it was heavier, more like trampling. Could it be his TV? He switched it off. The noise grew louder.

Ramahlele got up and poked his head out the door. There he saw the students of the dorm he managed, which housed about 100 black males, some of the first blacks to attend the historically white university since it had integrated four years earlier. And he immediately saw the source of the noise: His boys were stampeding out of the dorm entryway and running toward central campus. Some of them were singing militant songs from an earlier era, when blacks fought against apartheid rule, including one that went Kill the Boer, a nickname for white Afrikaners. Many were holding sticks or cricket bats.

They said they wanted to confront the white boys on campus. The whites, they claimed, refused to treat them as they should be treated in South Africa’s new democracy, and they wanted to put an end to their insolence once and for all. More than one boy opened up his jacket to show Ramahlele a gun tucked inside.

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With new luxury dorm, Orlando philanthropists offer Hillel evergreen funding model

Real estate developer Hank Katzen has a dream: If you build it, they will come.

Except this is no baseball field in an Iowa cornfield. It’s a $60 million, 600,000-square-foot luxury dormitory at the nation’s second-largest college campus, the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

When it opens in August, the new dorm will push the bounds of cushiness. Every room has en-suite bathrooms and flat-screen TVs. Suites have island kitchens with stone countertops, washer-dryers and walk-in closets. Duplex units feature spiral staircases and two-story atriums.

There is a resort-style swimming pool, 24-hour fitness center, sauna and game room. The parking garage is seven stories, ensuring that no student will have to take an elevator or brave the Florida elements on the way from their cars to their dorm rooms.

But what makes Katzen’s new facility noteworthy isn’t so much the lavishness as the idea behind it: to create America’s first self-sustaining Hillel. The ground floor of the seven-story building will include a 20,000-square-foot Hillel center with operations to be be funded in large part by rental income from the 600-bed dormitory.

The Jewish philanthropists behind this unique arrangement aren’t simply giving the 15-year-old Hillel at UCF a building; they’re giving it a permanent income stream.

“This is a remarkable gesture of philanthropy — the university desperately needs the beds, and Hillel could use this funding,” said Sidney Pertnoy, a Miami businessman and philanthropist who is chairman-elect of Hillel International. “There are some Hillels connected to some housing, but nothing even remotely resembling this model. It’s a unique cash-flow model and we’re super excited about it. We’re hoping this is a prototype for other communities.”

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