Tablet Magazine » Orlee Maimon

ADL Catalogues U.S. ‘Rage’

Orlee Maimon — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:00:25 +0000

The Anti-Defamation League released a report this week detailing what it calls the rise of rage in the United States. Who’s to blame for all this rage? That’s the fun part of the study: Abe Foxman & Co. finger Fox News host Glenn Beck, the “fearmonger-in-chief” and the “most important mainstream media figure … helping stoke the fires.” Beck is more dangerous than other right-wing hosts like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, the ADL says, because they attack the government on partisan grounds while Beck also engages and indulges conspiracy theories. A few of the conspiracy theories Beck entertains are Obama’s alleged creation of a civilian national security force and the preparation of FEMA-sponsored concentration camps for dissidents. But throughout the report, it is unclear what the ADL finds most troubling—the growth of this “rage” in the United States, or references Beck makes comparing President Barack Obama to Hitler. This being an ADL report, of course it finds plenty of those.

Rage Grows in America [ADL.org]

Chabad Camp

Orlee Maimon — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:00:44 +0000

Four thousand Chabad emissaries from across the country and around the world, known as shluchim, gathered last week for the group’s annual conference in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. While the shluchim were meeting, their sons had a camp-like gathering of their own. Organizers estimated that 577 boys, separated into age groups, took part. As they arrived Friday morning, Tablet Magazine checked in with a few of the 288-odd seven-to-12-year-olds who spent the weekend in sleeping bags at the Beit Rivkah School for Girls.

Chabad Conference Comes to Town

Orlee Maimon — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:00:53 +0000

The Chabad Men’s Annual Kinus, a conference for Chabad’s emissaries from all over the world, began yesterday in Brooklyn. Everything is staying local this year, with the enormous final banquet set for Sunday night at the Bedford Armory, at the edge of Chabad’s home neighborhood, Crown Heights. (Last year’s banquet at Chelsea Piers apparently required Herculean logistical support to get the several thousand attendees to the western shore of Manhattan.) The enormous armory, with 92-foot ceilings, will play host to 4,000 rabbis for the closing meal and require 7,000 square yards of burgundy event carpeting, 20 different kinds of lighting, and, somehow, an effective coat check for those 4,000 identical hats. Some other statistics on the banquet:

Months of prep work: 4
City licenses needed for the event: More than 10
Tractor-trailers needed to transport event equipment:5
Length of lighting and power cables used: 7 miles
Workers required to assemble and then break down the hall: 40
Simultaneous translations of the speeches: 3 (Russian, Hebrew, French)
DVD copies of the event that will be produced overnight for Monday morning distribution: More than 6,000

And what does it take to feed the 4,000 Chabad emissaries, known as shluchim, for the four-day conference? According to Bentzion Cohen Catering:

Total meat meals served: 15,500
Total dairy meals served: 6,500
Chickens used: 12,500 chickens
Pounds of margarine used: 55
Gallons of soup prepared: 2,500
Rugelach baked: 5,000

Close Up

Orlee Maimon — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:00:09 +0000

London-based photographer Frederic Aranda began taking pictures of Hasidim more or less by accident. While studying at Oxford and looking for a place to live, he stumbled across a house owned by a Lubavitcher rabbi. Aranda set up a studio in the house’s attic and started taking portraits of the rabbi’s family. Word spread and before long Aranda was taking pictures of Lubavitchers from both the immediate vicinity and beyond. (He has made three trips to Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, home of the Lubavitchers’ world headquarters.) Aranda estimates that in the last seven years he has photographed some 3,000 Lubavitcher rabbis.

The pictures form the basis of an exhibition opening today and running through December 2 at Theprintspace Gallery in London. The exhibition, provocatively titled Kosherface, offers an unusually intimate glimpse into the world of the Lubavitch, a movement that manages to be at once visible and insular. Aranda’s arresting shots depict Lubavitchers in unexpected settings: a rabbi rowing a boat, a family seated in a studio, a child covering his mother’s pregnant belly.

Aranda, whose work has appeared in Vogue, Vanity Fair, and GQ, is primarily a fashion photographer. And while the work he has done with Hasidim is different from his mainstream material, there is some overlap. “The first thing apart from the rabbi’s sunny countenance was what he was wearing,” Aranda said, recalling his first meeting with his future landlord. “For Hasidic men it’s a very simple but very classic formula: the hat, the black suit, the shirt. These are basic staples of men’s fashion.” Aranda’s exhibit also includes portraits of color-smeared faces, garments, and hair. “I always thought it would be fun to experiment with color on what is very monochromatic clothing for the men,” he said. “It’s refreshing to see the hasidic in the context of fashion and beauty photography. I don’t want this to be a show just for Jews.”

‘Jewish Week’: Bloomberg’s Jewish Vote Skyrocketed in ’09

Orlee Maimon — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:00:15 +0000

This week’s Jewish Week notes that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg received three-quarters of the city’s Jewish vote in his surprisingly narrow third-term victory last week, representing a huge increase in his Jewish tally since his first reelection, in 2005, which the paper pegs at 53 percent. This means that “extensive spending on campaign offices and staff, including Yiddish and Russian translators in Jewish communities … was well spent,” says the paper. We’re a little bit less convinced. The Jewish Week cites a New York Times exit poll for the 2009 statistic, and, sure enough, the Times data shows that 75 percent of New York’s Jews voted for Bloomberg. But the Jewish Week doesn’t provide any source for 2005 number. So we did some research, and we found a Pace University exit poll from four years ago. How’d Bloomberg do then? According to Pace, he got 72 percent of the Jewish vote. Which means all the “extensive spending” to reach Jewish voters netted the mayor only an additional 3 percent of them.

Big Jewish Turnout for Bloomberg [JWeek]
Profile of New York City Voters [NYT]
New York City Mayoral Election Study [Pace]

U.S. Religious Freedom Report: Israel

Orlee Maimon — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:00:53 +0000

The U.S. State Department released this year’s installment of its annual International Religious Freedom Report this week. Here are some numbers from the section on Israel and the occupied territories:

Estimated percentage of country’s Jewish population born outside the country: 30
Approximate number of Messianic Jews living in the country: 10,000
Immigration applications by Messianic Jews blocked by Ministry of the Interior and now in court: 3

Start date of Yom Kippur-related rioting caused by an Arab driving in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood: 10/08/2008
Number of legal permits for foreign workers issued during 2008: Almost 100,000
Number of illegal workers residing in country: at least 80,000

Number of recognized Jewish holy sites: 137
Number of recognized Muslim holy sites: 0

Approximate number of citizens who immigrated under the Law of Return but are not considered Jewish by the Orthodox rabbinate and cannot be married, divorced, or buried in Jewish cemeteries within the country: 310,000
Year that a law was passed requiring the government to establish civil cemeteries: 1996
Number of secular cemetery currently planned: 1

Yearly average number of Hajj pilgrims traveling from Israel via Jordan in order to receive papers on the way to Mecca: 4,500

Number of Jews per synagogue in Beer Sheva: 700
Number of Muslims per mosque in Beer Sheva: 5,000
Number of Bedouins per mosque in unrecognized villages: 80,000

Number of comparisons of women to clay “to shape and mold as husband pleases” in Orthodox marriage pamphlet distributed during marriage counseling necessary to marry in government-recognized ceremonies: 1
Number of suggestions to compliment wife regularly, even if untrue, in that pamphlet: 1
Number of couples that go abroad each year, mostly to Cyprus, to marry in civil ceremonies: at least 5,000

Minimum number of Israeli Muslims killed by Gaza rocket fire: 1

Reports of forced religious conversions: 0

U.S.: Israel Favors Orthodox Sects [JPost]
Israel and the Occupied Territories [State Dept.]

Amnesty Says Israel Is Denying Water to Palestinians

Orlee Maimon — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:00:48 +0000

Israel is hogging clean drinking water, providing settlers with almost unlimited supplies while providing insufficient amounts to Palestinians, according to an Amnesty International report released yesterday. The report says that most Palestinians don’t have enough water for the level of per-person daily use recommended by the World Health Organization. Israel’s Water Authority disputes the charges, offering evidence that Palestinians have more water than the Amnesty report details, but it hasn’t yet provided a solid defense to the human-rights abuses Amnesty International alleges stem from the large discrepancy in water usage between Israeli and Palestinian populations. (The report offers only scant criticism of the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian Water Authority, but it does note that around 40 percent of water diverted to Palestinians is lost through faulty infrastructure.)

Critics of the report maintain that it ignores the complexities of Israel’s history and geography, and international law, in order to portray Israel negatively. “Amnesty’s report manipulates the issue of water and ignores the complexities of history and law in order to again falsely portray Israel as a brutal regime,” NGO Monitor president Gerald Steinberg told the Jerusalem Post. “Rather than recognize that water supply is a complex regional issue, Amnesty focuses only on Palestinian shortages.”

Water Authority Blasts Amnesty on Report [JPost]
Israel ‘Cutting Palestinian Water’ [Al Jazeera]

Netanyahu Wants to Change Laws of War

Orlee Maimon — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:04:16 +0000

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week came up with a new gambit to bolster Israel’s reputation in the wake of the controversial Goldstone report, which charges that both the IDF and Hamas may have committed war crimes during last winter’s Gaza war. Netanyahu wants to change the rules of war. At a meeting of his security cabinet, he instructed government ministries to look into an “international initiative to change the laws of war in keeping with the spread of terrorism.” Goldstone doesn’t think much of the idea. “I think it’s sad,” he said in an interview with Al Jazeera, as reported in the Jerusalem Post. “Israel is clutching at straws. International law can’t be changed just because one side doesn’t like the laws of war.” And the paper quoted another expert on the rules of war, William Schabas of the Irish Centre for Human Rights said, “the fact that Netanyahu says he wants to change the laws of war is almost an admission that Israel violated them.”

But Victor Hansen, a professor at New England Law School and co-author of recently published The War on Terror and the Laws of War points out that there is in fact a mainstream but minority view that argues laws of war do need updating. “If a democracy decides they want to fight a war, they have to recognize that there are some limitations to the use of that law, and that there would probably need to be some changes and international agreements,” he told Tablet Magazine. “Terrorism has presented a different dynamic and recognition that maybe law of war as written doesn’t get to these issues,” Hansen maintains. For example, he said, many agree that the use of civilians in warfare, both as literal shields and as implicit supporters of terrorism, has not been effectively covered by the Geneva Convention and other existing laws. “But that hasn’t yet led to a groundswell of opinion that says we need to change laws of war.”

PM: Change of Laws of War to Deal With Terrorism [JPost]
Government Looking To Set Int’l Rules for Fighting Terror [Haaretz]
Lieberman Discusses Goldstone With Ban [JPost]
Expert: Plan to Change Laws of War Unrealistic [JPost]

Florida Students Live Like Anne Frank

Orlee Maimon — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:10:54 +0000

Eighth graders at Florida’s Bethany Christian School, which promises “academic excellence in a Christ-centered environment,” traded their iPods and cell phones for potatoes, bread, and carrots in an attempt to turn their classroom into Anne Frank’s attic for a strangely ascetic sleepover over the weekend, according to a report in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Save for bathroom breaks, the students remained in the room from the end of the school day Friday until noon on Saturday—an entire 18 hours or so—in an attempt to understand what life was like for Anne. Apparently it worked. “It really showed me just how hard it was to live in the Secret Annexe,” said one commenter on the Sun-Sentinel’s website, who said she was a student in the class. But Andrew Rosenkranz, the Anti-Defamation League’s regional director for Florida, suggested historical reenactments are perhaps not the best way to teach the Holocaust. “Anne Frank’s experience was not a sleepover,” he told Tablet Magazine.

Christian School Wants to Simulate Anne Frank’s Hiding with Sleepover [SunSentinel.com]

Has Neil Diamond Been Snubbed?

Orlee Maimon — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:00:37 +0000

Neil Diamond, sometimes dubbed the “Jewish Elvis,” is back in the spotlight this week with an upcoming Christmas album and a new book, Neil Diamond is Forever by Jon Bream, who debated the star’s merits with humorist Dave Barry on WNYC yesterday. They focused on the seemingly age-old question: Why hasn’t Diamond been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

Sure, bands like Kiss waited ten years before getting a nomination, but Diamond has been making music for 40 years, and his songs have been covered by more than 100 artists. Still, Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner’s selection committee passed over Diamond again in favor of other smooth favorites such as LL Cool J and Donna Summer. Love him or think his lyrics are pure cheese (or both), with 37 hit singles and 16 Top Ten albums, it is difficult to claim that he hasn’t contributed “to the development and perpetuation of rock and roll,” the Hall of Fame’s requirement.

Diamond’s rabid fans will have to comfort themselves this year with the schmaltz on his October 13 album, A Cherry Cherry Christmas. And in defense of his Yiddishkeit, it even contains one Hanukkah song, a “party-time” version of Adam Sandler’s “The Hanukkah Song” with DJ Ashba.

Neil Diamond: Are You a Believer? [WNYC]

Brandeis President to Step Down

Orlee Maimon — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:41:53 +0000

The saga of Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum reached one of its final chapters late last week, when the university’s president, Jehuda Reinharz, announced he’ll soon step down. The controversy started in January, when the Brandeis board of trustees, facing a steep plunge in endowment and fallout from the Madoff scandal, voted to close the 48-year-old art museum and sell a part of its collection, which includes famous works by Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein. In the months since, a series of botched PR efforts led to international criticism of the museum, the school, and Reinharz by everyone from art collectors to Brandeis professors. Now the museum, which was set to close in late summer, will stay open on the recently announced recommendation of a university committee. Reinharz, who’s been the public face of the messy decision, insists the decision has nothing to do with the museum brouhaha, and he’ll stay on through the end of the 2010-11 academic year, unless a successor is found sooner. “Every job that one does has great periods, and some periods that are more difficult,” Reinharz commented earlier this year.

University President Jehuda Reinharz Resigns [The Justice]