Boston

Rabbi could run for John Kerry's Senate seat

Jennifer Lipman — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 10:26:37 +0000

A rabbi could be in the running to replace John Kerry when he takes on the job of Secretary of State.

The Massachusetts senator and former presidential hopeful is leaving his seat to take over Hillary Clinton's role in the Obama administration.

According to reports, Boston rabbi Jonah Plesner is considering running for the seat.

The rabbi, a senior figure in America's Reform movement, told a reporter for The Phoenix that he had started "exploratory conversations" on mounting a Senate bid.

Should he run, Rabbi Plesner – a Democrat – could face Republican Scot Brown, who won a surprise victory for the other Massachusetts Senate seat in 2010 but was not re-elected last year.

Rabbi Plesner is senior vice president of the national Union of Reform Judaism and was a leading campaigner to bring in changes to healthcare provision in the state. The 2006 reform of care in Massachusetts is often cited as the template for President Obama's nationwide healthcare legislation.

Last year Shmuley Boteach attempted to become the first Orthodox rabbi to win a congressional seat, but lost by a large margin.

'No Jews' says spoof invitation to Harvard club

Jennifer Lipman — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 13:08:15 +0000

Harvard students have been criticised by university officials after invitations to a new exclusive society with the caveat "Seriously, no f***ing Jews. Coloureds OK" were given out.

The flyers were distributed on behalf of a group called "The Pigeon", which described itself as Harvard's newest final club.

Final clubs are prestigious societies that remain a time-honoured part of life at Harvard, with at least 13 in existence. Known for their exclusivity, in the film The Social Network Mark Zuckerberg's struggle to gain membership was depicted as one of the reasons he built Facebook in the first place.

According to the student paper, the Harvard Crimson, the flyers were not advertising a real group, but were a practical joke. But the dean of Harvard College stated that what they said was still "deeply disturbing".

Evelynn Hammonds said: "Even if intended as satirical in nature, they are hurtful and offensive to many students, faculty and staff, and do not demonstrate the level of thoughtfulness and respect we expect."

Rabbinical college criticised for Israel memorial email

Jennifer Lipman — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:51:39 +0100

The chair of an organisation dedicated to supporting the families of Israel's war casualties has expressed concern about a proposal by a US rabbinical college to "broaden" commemorative ceremonies.

In the run-up to Yom Hazikaron, Israel's annual day of remembrance for people lost fighting for the Jewish state, a dean at the Boston Hebrew College emailed his students suggesting a new way of preparing for the day.

According to a report in Commentary magazine, the email said: "Our kavanah [intention] is to open up our communal remembrance to include losses on all sides of the conflict in Israel/Palestine.

"In this spirit, our framing question for Yom Hazikaron is this: On this day, what do you remember and for whom do you grieve?"

Nava Shoham Solan, the chair of the IDF Widows and Orphans Organisation, said she believed the intention was good but that the idea still made her tremble.

Ms Solan, whose first husband died fighting for Israel, said she was shocked the college advised equating the remembrance of those who died in battle with "Israel's enemies, terrorists who acted in cruel ways with the intent of harming Jews, without any differentiation between soldiers, women, and children – in order to destroy the Jewish state".

She added: "Is it possible that such a deep lack of understanding can exist in our midst, such a short time after the establishment of the Jewish state, and while it is still struggling daily for its existence?

"Observing the memorial day of the Jews who were killed defending their homeland and their people from slaughter, together with the commemoration of those that, with knives in their hands, were on their way to carry out that slaughter – is a sin against truth," she said. "It is a sin against morality, and reflects a misperception that is no less than contempt."

The suggestion also prompted an outraged response from Daniel Gordis, the founder of a rabbinical school in Los Angeles and an award-winning writer. In a piece expressing concern that US rabbinical schools were distancing themselves from Israel, Mr Gordis wrote: "It is the rare email that leaves me speechless.

"What the students were essentially being asked was whether the losses on Israel's side touched them any more deeply than the losses on the side of Israel's enemies."

He said: "Could one even begin to imagine President Franklin Delano Roosevelt saying to Americans, while the Second World War was raging and young American men were clawing and dying their way across Europe and the Far East, that Memorial Day ought to be devoted in part to remembering those among enemy populations who died at our hands?"

Mr Gordis said he was told by the dean that the email was about "trying to engage with these issues".

According to the website of the Hebrew College, the institution is rooted in the "Hebraist-Zionist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries" and is dedicated to promoting promotes learning in "a context of communal commitment and concern" for Israel.

Payout for fake Holocaust memoir

Jessica Elgot — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 11:01:08 +0000

The publishers of a fraudulent Holocaust memoir must pay its ghost writer $10m because she did not realise Misha Defonseca’s story was a fake.

US author Ms Defonseca published “Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years” in 1997, telling a story of her survival from the Holocaust, roaming through Europe on foot, receiving food from a pack of wolves. It was a bestseller and the film rights were sold to Disney. Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel wrote the foreword for the book.

But it emerged that the author was not even Jewish and had, in fact, attended school in Brussels during the war, while her father was allegedly a Nazi collaborator.

After nearly a decade of litigation, a court in Gloucester, Massachusetts, found that Jane Daniel, the sole owner of Mt Ivy Press which published the book, did not have to pay Ms Defonseca more $22.5m for allegedly concealing profits from the sale of the book.

But Judge Gabrielle Wolohojian ruled that the publisher must pay ghost writer Vera Lee $10m, because she had not been given due credit as the book’s co-author, and because she was unaware the book was a fake, the Boston Globe reported.

Ms Lee said she had repeatedly insisted to Ms Daniel that the book’s facts needed to be more rigorously verified.

A court had awarded Ms Defonseca and Ms Lee the money in 2001 after Ms Defonseca sued Ms Daniel for concealing profits, and Ms Lee counter- sued her for not giving her proper attribution for having co-written the book.

When the Belgian press revealed the entire story was a fake in 2008, Ms Daniel appealed the awards against her, which she said were the result of false testimony.

Ms Defonseca admitted the story was fake but always maintained it had been Ms Daniel who had pressured her into writing the false story.

She said: “There are times when I find it difficult to differentiate between reality and my inner world. The story in the book is mine. It is not the actual reality; it was my reality, my way of surviving."

America's Next Top Model: Esther Petrack's mother hits back

Jennifer Lipman — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:04:01 +0100

The mother of an Orthodox Jewish reality show contestant has blamed bad editing for the “scandalous” suggestion that her daughter would give up Shabbat for the sake of her modelling career.

Esther Petrack, 18, is one of the candidates for the latest season of America's Next Top Model.

From a religious family in Boston, she was born in Jerusalem and attended a Jewish school.

But when asked about her religious identity by host Tyra Banks, Esther said first that she would honour Shabbat, and then that she would be willing to break the laws for modelling assignments.

However, her mother Marina has responded to a blog post on the subject and said she wanted to clarify what was said.

“The fateful words ‘I will do it’ in an answer to the question about working on Shabbat were the result of editing.

“Esther never meant or said that she would give up Shabbat for the show, neither did she do it.

"These words were taken from a long conversation about the principles and laws and how Esther was planning to observe them.

“The producers cut out these four words to create a more scandalous storyline; judging from the amount of reaction, they were quite successful.”

Mrs Petrack added that she hoped viewers would have given her daughter the benefit of the doubt about her religious observance.

She even revealed that Esther is so committed to Judaism that she koshered a cooking pot in the Pacific Ocean near the America’s Next Top Model house.

On this day: The end of the Salem witch trials

Jennifer Lipman — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:27:58 +0100

Nineteen men and women were hanged in 1692 for the crime of witchcraft in Salem. At the time, under British law, consorting with the devil was viewed as a crime against their government.

The events of that year and the characters involved formed the basis for Arthur Miller’s classic play The Crucible. Born to Jewish immigrant parents in New York in 1915, Miller, who was married to Marilyn Monroe for five years, started his career as a journalist. While still a college student in 1936 he wrote his first play, No Villain.

By the 1950s Miller had already had successes with Death of a Salesman and All My Sons, and had even earned his first Tony Award.

But after his friends and colleagues including Elia Kazan (who directed Death of a Salesman) was called before the anti-communist House Un-American activities Committee (HUAC), Miller decided to dramatise the Red Scare.

He went to Salem and looked into the witch trials, penning a play that warned against the McCarthyite hysteria sweeping America.

The Crucible has become perhaps Miller’s most performed play. In 1996 a film version was made, with the screenplay written by Miller and starring Winona Ryder and Daniel Day Lewis.

Arthur Miller died in February 2005.

What the JC said when it was first performed in the UK: It is a historical drama, retelling fully the extraordinary story of the hysteria which swept a Puritan colony, and, on mere suspicion, sent hundreds of innocent people, charged with witchcraft, to the hallows. The analogy with present-day conditions is, of course, evident, and Mr Miller pursues his theme with an unrelenting fervour and conviction, worthy of one of the ancient Hebrew prophets. Here the play has a weakness, for the author in his attack on bigotry, oversteps slightly into the role of a bigot

See more from the JC archives here