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The Stranger

A 24-year-old Jewish Upper West Sider helps run the most important Arab-American organization in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, home to 35,000 Arabs

By Boris Fishman|January 26, 2012 7:00 AM|75comments
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Jennie Goldstein in Bay Ridge, Jan. 25, 2012. (Rachel Barrett)

Though she’s lived in New York her entire life, Goldstein “thought Bay Ridge was in Queens” when she started working at the Arab-American Association. In her two and a half years there, she has become nearly as synonymous with it as Linda Sarsour. “This is the girl that I depend on for the whole life!” Habib Joudeh, a pharmacist who is the group’s vice-president, exclaimed to me one recent afternoon.

“Jennie keeps this place together,” Sarsour, the director, said. “She has a lot of energy and patience. I travel a lot, so I need to know it’s in the hands of a person like that. And there’s a mom thing about Jennie. She sees you’ve been working hard, she’ll go out and get you a rose. I’m not that mushy. We complement each other. People see two young women running this thing, one Jewish, one Palestinian.”

Goldstein would argue that she’s had the success she has had not because of what she’s done but because of what she hasn’t. The first time we met, in Crown Heights, where she lives, she was en route to smoke shisha in Queens. Don’t you get enough of that in Bay Ridge? I asked. “I don’t go into those,” she answered. “There isn’t a single woman in those places.” What would happen if she went in? “I’d get served. But they’d stare me down. People are so skeptical of my role here already that I try really hard to stay on the right side. If somebody on the street says something, I don’t answer, because I don’t know whose brother that person is.”

“If I said your job is to re-educate these people—” I began a question.

“False,” she replied. “And I learned early on not to call these people ‘these people.’ No one is successful in the world because they walk in and say my job is to re-educate. I am a guest in this community. The government doesn’t pay my rent—they do.”

***

When I visited Goldstein in Bay Ridge last week, she walked me around with a mother’s pride. “You know that Dave Chappelle bit about ‘gun store, liquor store’?” she said. “Well, here it’s nail salon, barber shop, halal butcher.” She could recite which neighborhood banks had been supportive of the Arab-American Association and which hadn’t. “That’s our congressman,” she said, pointing to a poster of Rep. Michael Grimm in a shop window. “He has the distinction of being the Tea Party’s first congressman from New York State. No thanks to us. The district also includes Staten Island. Without redistricting, we’ll never have a shot at one of our people in office,” she said. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

The Arabs of Bay Ridge love Jennie Goldstein back. According to Goldstein and Sarsour, few know that she’s Jewish—the name Goldstein isn’t the clear indicator to them that it tends to be to native-born Americans. But that makes her no less foreign. “They have questions about me as an American,” Goldstein said. “Is this person going to hate me because I’m Arab? Is this person going to look down on me because I don’t speak English? They’re very aware of the discourse in this country.”

“Jennie is one of the easiest things about working at the association,” Roweida Jaber, a 41-year-old case manager, told me. I’d had to call her from Goldstein’s cell phone because it would have been inappropriate for a man to call her directly. She kept calling me “sir,” in the over-respectful way of a new immigrant. Of Palestinian descent, Jaber passed through Kuwait and Jordan before arriving in the United States in 2009. “I have never felt the difference between me and her, inside or outside,” she said.

Goldstein told me that she responds to the apartness of the Arab-American community not least because she comes from a people apart. Or, rather, a people that used to be apart. “My grandfather Joe was a master electrician in Corona, Queens,” she told me. “He went out of his way to hire black electricians because he knew what it was like to be discriminated against.” But Goldstein wonders if Jewish prosperity, especially in New York, has distanced some Jews from circumstances that might have made them more empathetic to the Arab and Muslim immigrant experience. “Sometimes, there’s a real inability to imagine what it’s like for the other side,” she said.

Continue reading: Being female in Bay Ridge

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  • Borg

    This is one of the products of intermarriage. Just like the fact that descendants of intermarried Jews in the early 19th century Germany ended up serving in the Wehrmacht and SS. Mazeltov-
    “Mama, dont let your children grow up to be shaheeds…”

  • Bill Pearlman

    Borg is right. And the analogy is right. How exactly is she Jewish? And I’m not talking about her mother. Gabby Giffords is a case in point. Giffords chose Judaism. Goldstein went the other way and I predict will eventually become moslem.

  • Jojo

    “Goldstein’s father is Jewish and her mother is Protestant.”

    So she is not Jewish and all this article is pointless.

    “So, I found a synagogue. I figured I would be among my people, at least. But I wasn’t.”

    Exactly. French Jews are real Jews, not fake American Jews. That’s not her people because she is not Jewish.

  • sharon

    She is young and naive. It is outrageous that young women in the Muslim community are being under or uneducated. It is outrageous that they cannot go out by themselves. I also find it outrageous that women sit in the back of the bus in orthodox communities in Israel. This young women has not grown up to be a second class citizen, yet she surrounds herself with those who are. Religion is patriarchal and at its worse is killing and abusing women. At its best, they are still less then men. What a cosmic joke.

  • shavit

    yeah … i really hate the comments section on this site.

    but good article.

  • http://storypassage.com Corey Fischer

    The stunning lack of generosity of these three comments so far appalls me. Jennie Goldstein embodies the Jewish values I most cherish – chesed, tzedakah, kavanah, as well as intelligence and humor. I want no part of an exclusionist, rigid, myopic brand of Jewish identity. I don’t deny your right to identify as you please, but I grant you no authority to determine, on my behalf, who is Jewish and who is not.

  • http://storypassage.com Corey Fischer

    I am referring to the first three comments. And thank you Tablet
    and Boris Fishman for this wonderful article.

  • Marc

    Another example of a irrelevant article by tablet. This young mixed-up woman is decidedly NOT Jewish- so why does tablet continue to pretend to its readership that she is?

  • Marty Janner

    It fascinates me to see the discourse, whether she be Jewish, non Jewish! This indicates a mentality that misses the point!

    This young woman considers herself Jewish, which is accepted by the Reform Movement. I understand that other facets of American Jewry, Halachically do not accept this!

    The point is that with a name like Goldstein she is accepted, and respected by an Arab-American entity!

    The divisiveness exhibited has no foundation!!!

  • http://davidbarnahum.com David E Y Sarna

    This lady is a Christian. Why do you call her Jewish?

  • Marc

    Corey- so if Timothy Dolan decides that his chesed, tzedakah, etc qualifies him are Jewish values and wants to identify with the Jewish nation, would you accept him?

  • Marc

    Corey- so if Timothy Dolan decides that his values are “Jewish”and wants to identify with the Jewish nation, would you accept his declaration?

  • Joe Blow

    What a depressing article. Filled with inaccuracies as well. Let’s start with the number of “35000″ Arabs in Bay Ridge. That is wildly misstated. Even lumping together the huge Arab Christian population of Bay Ridge (which would horrify the Christian Arabs, who fled persecution in Muslim dominated lands)in with the less numerous (but more recently arrived) Muslim population, you won’t come anywhere near 35000. That number is simply wishful thinking on Linda Sarsour’s part. Moreover, it strikes me that Goldstein is simply a willing participant in perpetuating a totalitarian belief system that oppresses women. How pathetic to aid in the oppression of others.

  • Heh

    Feeling the hate here.
    A light unto the nations, indeed.

  • Gene

    Corey needs to be told who is Jewish because he doesn’t know. As to Arabs I don’t understand why “progressives” have such big respect for a religion which treats women as half-humans?

  • http://eaazi.blogspot.com Joachim Martillo

    A lot of the commentators here consistently confuse a Rabbanite Jewish religious heritage with an ethnic Ashkenazi/Yiddish cultural heritage.

    And BTW appreciating the cultural heritage hardly requires positive feelings toward the associated politics.

  • lyle

    what a strange article. I couldn’t find anything in the article that would qualify her as Jewish Am I missing something?

  • http://eaazi.blogspot.com Joachim Martillo

    Obviously Lyle does not understand the distinction between cultural heritage and religion.

  • http://eaazi.blogspot.com Joachim Martillo

    BTW, I have never understood Jewish hostility toward the Lord’s Prayer. Translated into leshon kodesh, it can hardly be distinguished from a Jewish prayer.

  • Dick

    Well the Jew police are busy patrolling the boundaries, as usual. I’m sure they will find 96 virgins waiting for them in Haredi heaven

  • Boris Fishman

    Dear Defenders of the Faith: This is Boris Fishman, the author, and I’d like to respond to some of your concerns:

    1. Re: JG’s Jewishness – technically, you’re right, she’s not, but if we’re going to be technical, why are you reading this publication? Why not keep to the wisdom of the sages? That way, you’ll never be discomfited by having to confront views other than your own. To my mind, JG’s Jewishness is both valid and interesting because she grew up with traditions that, for example, I, a full Jew on both sides, never did, having grown up in the USSR. Not only did she experience those traditions, she is ENGAGING WITH THEM on a daily basis, and not as a Birthright officer or Jewish journalist, but as something far more complex. That’s INTERESTING. It’s not right or wrong; just interesting.

    2. Re: Arab inhumanity toward women. Perhaps. Please keep in mind, however, that to the unaided eye the Jewish situation does not seem that different. You may insist that it’s not; fine. That must be because you have special insight that these unaided eyes don’t have; great. Would you afford another view the same consideration? No one is saying Islam treats women like gold. In the same way an Orthodox Jewish woman might say that she doesn’t feel oppressed by Judaism, quite a few Muslim women have explained to me they don’t feel oppressed by Islam.

    3. Above all, this article asks for nuance in response. For once, drop your knee-jerk fanaticism and try to think about views other than your own. Not because they’re right – only yours are, of course – but because nothing is going to get solved otherwise. And Bill Pearlman, if you drag the Holocaust into this, you need to attach your e-mail, cause we’ll need to take this off-site.

    4. In general, where is the non-shrill sensible majority that I KNOW is reading pieces like this one? Where are your comments? The comments of pieces like this are HIJACKED by lunatics. They have a right to their view but your voices are needed as well.

  • Boris Fishman

    PS: Dear Joe Blow: Your facts are off.

    1. The Arab community in Michigan (the largest Arab community in the US) is almost entirely Christian. The Brooklyn community is almost entirely Muslim. There are so few Arab Christians in Brooklyn (many of those that were here have moved to New Jersey) that the local Arab Lutheran church closed last year.

    2. As for the 35,000 figure: The Population Division at the New York City Department of City Planning estimates the number of Arabs in NYC at approximately 100,000; these are the least controversial numbers available, and Brooklyn has by far the largest Arab community in NYC. As discussed in the piece, at this point estimates have to suffice, but 35,000 is a conservative one for Bay Ridge.

  • David

    No Boris , it’s lunatics like you who have hijacked Judaism.

    What right does this self prophesed non-Jew have to represent us?

    This article shows exactly the sort of future that the left wing fanatics who fund this website seek to promote for Judaism.

  • Boris Fishman

    I do apologize for referring to holders of such views as lunatics. My frustration got the better of me. It was as shrill as the views I purport to criticize. And, by the way, I had no intention of implying that being a Birthright officer or a Jewish journalist isn’t complex work. It is — I can testify personally in the latter case, and with pride. That, too, was written too quickly; I meant Goldstein’s work is simply complex in a different way. I stand by everything else.

    And David, you are of course entitled to the opinion you share in your first sentence, but the facts you mention in the other two are incorrect. At no point does Goldstein profess to be a non-Jew. And you are incorrect about Tablet’s funders. Simply they believe in considering more than one viewpoint, even if it isn’t their own. Research your points before making them.

  • David

    Encourage more Islamic immigration.

    Working on the payroll of one of the most anti-Israel organisations in the US.

    Completely repulsed by Synagogues.

    Completely infatuated with Mosques.

    The wonderful new Jew.

  • Dude

    Boris, you poor lad, have certainly chosen a topic here. I look forward to this thread.
    Any chance of blocking the anti-semite Joachim Martillo from the site? Pretty please with sugar on top. That person has had so many comments taken down. It is about time he was shown the door.

  • David

    ” And you are incorrect about Tablet’s funders. Simply they believe in considering more than one viewpoint, even if it isn’t their own”

    I don’t think I’ve read more drivel since I started perusing this website.

    Almost every article is about
    1) subtly belittling Israel, or
    2) Glorifying the morphing of Judaism into a non-nation.
    3) an article about food.

  • Bill Pearlman

    Boris, I was referring to Borgs comment concerning guys like Erhard Milch. Jewish father, Christian mother. And the Luftwaffe chief of staff. And has much a Jew has this woman. And again, I wasn’t referring to having a Jewish mother. Gabby Giffords a case in point. This woman is simply not Jewish. Not according to Jewish law. But more to the point not in thought or deed. The Jewish people mean nothing to her. Her thoughts lie with the moslems.

  • PR

    A lovely, well written portrait of a delightfully open-minded, adventurous and responsible young woman. I’m happy she identifies as Jewish, I’m happy Tablet publishes such well written pieces, and I’m unhappy when readers let their yetzers run away with them in these comments! Sarcasm, meanness and reactive anger are terrible habits that lead no where good!

  • Alex

    She’s clearly not halachically Jewish. And not even by Reform’s watered down standards, she isn’t Jewish since she wasn’t raised Jewish. Sorry, but even for the assimilationist Reform Movement the 3 main Jewish Holidays include Yom Kippur. Within the Reform Movement their standards say that someone is Jewish if they are raised Reform Jewish even if they have a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother.

    Boris, you’re an opinion writer masquerading as a reporter. Just at least get the facts right. Call her half-Jewish. Call her American. Call her naive. Call her idealistic. Call her whatever you want but don’t call her Jewish because by no measure, not even the most charitable definition, is she Jewish.

    Boris, your comments about “Defenders of the Faith” is as comic as it is tragic. Maybe some of us care about real Judaism and understand that the traditions separate from a faith in G-d and Torah observance have a shelf life measured in 2-3 generations. This whole story is proof of that.

    Even bigger proof are your thoughts in the comments section. In your eyes, it’s praiseworthy for a half-Jewish girl who scoffs at Torah-observant Jews to work for an Arab group which is also openly anti-Israel. Fine, those are your values.

    But for Jews to practice authentic Judaism and care about that! Perish the thought, Boris. For Jews to keep Kosher! For Jews to keep Shabbos! For Jews to take prayer and their relationship with G-d seriously! For Jews to take the Torah seriously, this is to be scolded!?

    Ya tozhe rodilsya v CCCP, Borya. Podumai chut chut o chom ti pishesh v buduschem. Mi obo Russkiie Evrei, i ya nadeyus shto ti TOZHE naidyosh tvoi korni. Gut Shabbos, droog moi.

  • Jules

    The Bay Area has one of the most enlightened socio-political atmospheres of the lower 48 states. I used to have a lot of friends in both Oakland and San Francisco. Good to see people are keeping the old spirit alive because it’s never out of season or fashion as far as I’m concerned.

  • Jules

    Oh, excuse me this was Bay Ridge Brooklyn. Guess I was in the wrong neighborhood huh?

  • Christopher Orev

    Thanks for the article, Mr. Fishman.

    You get shrill yourself in the comments (and, to your credit, acknowledge that misstep), but your letting the invective and close-mindedness of the bulk of the commenters get your goat is exactly why “the non-shrill sensible majority that [you] KNOW is reading pieces like this one” don’t generally comment.

    I think those readers are put off by the bigotry and nastiness that reigns here. I’m not talking about the perspectives of the political right or the most frum Orthodox readers — political dissent is healthy and halacha is halacha (and must be wrestled with) — but rather their tone. It simply isn’t conducive to conversation.

  • Boris Fishman

    For those brave souls who are still hanging with this thread but don’t speak Russian, Alex’s comment concludes with: “I was also born in the USSR, Borya. Think a little bit about what you write in the future. We are both Russian Jews, and I hope you will ALSO find your roots. Gut Shabbos, my friend.”

    Thanks for your comment, Alex. Maybe you’re right and I should have been more literal, taking care to refer to Goldstein as half-Jewish. But – and I know this will be heretical – the halachic designations are not my only guide to Jewishness (if not Judaism). As I pointed out in an earlier answer, I propose – don’t insist, only propose – through the piece that Goldstein is an interesting case because here is someone who got a relatively faint Jewish upbringing, and yet it remains – according to her – a really important part of her identity. I found this hopeful, and even inspiring, because I fall roughly into the same category. But instead of encouraging this shoot of curiosity where none might have grown, you would like to browbeat the likes of Goldstein into following the Torah verbatim, or good riddance to her. And in what tone! Is this how you propose to preserve the Jewish people? If that’s your goal, you should know this kind of — yes, Christopher Orev — frothing, vicious stridency and absolutism is the reason why people like me have such a hard time getting inspired by Jews like you, Alex, Russian or not. You might learn something from Goldstein — “No one is successful in the world because they walk in and say my job is to re-educate.” No one is saying this kind of Jewishness is more pure than yours. I’m only saying it has a right to exist and explore.

    One other thing, since you accuse me of being loose with the facts. On what grounds is AAANY “openly anti-Israel”? Is it simply because they’re an Arab organization so they must be, or might you furnish us with actual evidence?

  • Jojo

    We are very happy that this girl is interested in her Jewish ancestry. It does not make her Jewish, and the fact that she chose to work for a Muslim organization does not speak in her favor. Would you be writing this article if she was working for a Christian group ?

    “Is this how you propose to preserve the Jewish people?”

    The Jewish people is preserving itself very well – in Israel. The only way to preserve the Jewish people is by not intermarrying. She represents exactly the failure of the Jewish people in America and that’s what is outrageous when you take her as an example – she is the end of the diaspora, by assimilation.

  • Jules

    Yeah Jojo…that’s the old stiff necked spirit..go Jojo!

  • Carl

    Lets not let political correctness run away with us here. The main reason that Christian Arabs leave their homelands is prosecution by Moslems. The fact is that the only country in the ME where the Christian population is increasing is Israel. In addition the Jewish population in Arab countries went from about 1 million to several thousand. Why? Because of ethnic cleansing by Moslems. To ignore the fact that the Moslem religion is extremely intolerant of other religions is just ignoring the facts.

  • Jules

    Carl, that’s a crock. I had a Maronite friend from Beirut who told me that’s a lot of hot air and hasbara.

    Tell that one to a tourist.

  • http://eaazi.wordpress.com Galen Sword

    Zionist propaganda reinterprets the Ashkenazi ethnic group as the pan-Judaic ethnonational group in order to make a ridiculous primordialist claim to Palestine just as German Nazi propaganda equated modern Germans to ancient Teutonic and Gothic tribes in order to claim that only pure Germans had a right to reside in German territories. Neither primordialist claim has a shred of truth, but it is worthwhile to remember that the basic ideas of both German Nazi and also Zionist primordialism developed together in the common fields of Central and Eastern European blood and soil nationalism. The poisonous weeds of German Nazism and Zionism cross fertilized each other.

    Modern Germans probably have more Celtic, Slavic and Turkic ancestry than they have ancient Teutonic or ancient Gothic ancestry.

    Ethnic Ashkenazim have no ancestral connection to Palestine. The culture, language and religion of Roman period Palestinian Galileans, Judeans, Pereans, Nabateans, and Idumeans were completely unlike those of modern ethnic Ashkenazim.

    Progressives should not give any legitimacy to Zionist (really ethnic Ashkenazi Nazi) terminology by using the racist language of Zionism. In 1948 racist ethnic Ashkenazim stole Palestine with concommittant plundering and ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian population. Today, racist ethnic Ashkenazim and racist Zionist colonizers manipulate the US political system to the detriment of the USA for the sake of Israel. These racists squander American wealth and lives to the benefit of their racist tribalism.

  • Jules

    But while we’re on the subject of Israeli ecumenity shall we revisit this subject again?

    http://972mag.com/could-it-be-the-start-of-an-ethiopian-winter/33961/

  • http://www.half-jewish.net Robin Margolis

    Dear Boris Fishman: Thank you for your article!

    As the Coordinator of the Half-Jewish Network, one of the largest organizations for adult children and grandchildren of intermarriage, I appreciate your portrait of Jennie Goldstein.

    I was gratified to see that a friendly and intelligent community organizer like herself is a member of the half-Jewish community.

    Her work with the Arab community is a mitzvah (good deed).It is nice that the members of her Arab organization get to meet at least one person from the Jewish community who treats them with courtesy and respect.

    To the commenters who made snide remarks that Ms. Goldstein is not a Jew because she had a Jewish father and a Christian mother — she said in the article that she was brought up in both faiths, but now identifies the Jews as “my people.” Didn’t you read the article?

    Mr. Fishman, the reason most reasonable and polite people who read the Tablet seldom comment on the articles is because we are repeatedly attacked by Jewish people with very rigid views in a very impolite manner.

    But anyway, Mr. Fishman, I will see that the people who get the Half-Jewish Network email newsletter will see a link to your article. Thanks again!

    Cordially,
    Robin Margolis

  • Robert

    I am not certain, but I think the term half Jew, “Halb Jude” was coined by the Nazi’s. There is no such person as half Jew, really. You’re either pregnant or you are not.

  • http://eaazi.wordpress.com Galen Sword

    I believe I have seen the equivalent of half-Jew in medieval texts.

    In any case it is hardly unusual for people to employ Jew where they should perhaps use half-ethnic Ashkenazi.

    In addition, Jew was a nationality in the Soviet Union and the legal definition had no connection to Halakhah.

    It is pure bigotry for Robert and his fellow racists to attempt to impose their prejudiced terminology on everyone else.

  • http://eaazi.wordpress.com Galen Sword

    While it is possible that Ethiopian Judaic groups are remnants of Hellenistic Judaic communities, they probably originate in one or more forms of Sabbatarianism.

    Many Sabbatarian groups passed into the ethnic Ashkenazi community in Eastern Europe.

  • Rob

    I read divisive, mean comments like these and think, thank god I’m an atheist.

  • Joe Blow

    To Boris Fishman who stated:

    PS: Dear Joe Blow: Your facts are off.

    1. The Arab community in Michigan (the largest Arab community in the US) is almost entirely Christian. The Brooklyn community is almost entirely Muslim. There are so few Arab Christians in Brooklyn (many of those that were here have moved to New Jersey) that the local Arab Lutheran church closed last year.

    Boris, you are patheticaly misinformed about Bay Ridge and the demographic composition of its population. First, Bay Ridge is far greater geographicaly than the tiny (geographicaly speaking) Muslim dominated enclave that has formed around the mosque on 5th Avenue and 69th street. Second, Bay Ridge is home to several long standing and thriving Arab Christian religious communities. For just one example, take a walk by St. Mary’s Orthodox Church one sunday morning. Or the Presbyterian Church on 4th and 68th. You don’t know of the existence of these Arab Christian communities because you are getting all of your information from Goldstein and Sarsour, who are hardly reliable sources on these matters. Third, the Lutheran Arabic church, which is a newly mission to the Arab community, closed its building due to financial problems. The Lutheran Arabic religious community continues to meet in one of the other Lutheran churchs in Bay Ridge. Fifth, your supposition about there being “almost no” Christian Arabs in Bay Ridge is laughable, and would come as quite a shock to the huge community (responsible estimates that I have heard recently are in the 5000+ range) of Lenanese, Syrians and Copts that live in Bay Ridge. These Arab Christian communities, which have blended very well into the overall fabric of life in Bay Ridge far out number the Muslim community, which is probably no more than 10 percent of the total population of Bay Ridge. Finally, your article is a prime example of lazy journalism. You simply repeated what you were told by your sources,who want to exaggerate their own importance.

  • http://storypassage.com Corey Fischer

    So discussion of a remarkable profile gets turned into a reductive, circular debate about who “deserves” to be called Jewish. Boris, I’m sorry that the resident Tablet Committee on Ethno-Religious Purity is trying to dominate this discourse. One of the things I treasure in the Jewish tradition I claim is its comfort with ambiguity and nuance. Your piece is all about paradox, shifting boundaries and the unexpected. But complexity and tolerance for complexity, curiosity and openness seem to drive dogmatists crazy and they rush in with their own scaled down narrative about who’s allowed in the club and who’s not. Perhaps they find this soothing in its banal familiarity. Perhaps it helps drown out the human music of a polyglot world. But I trust that each of us who piipes up in appreciation of your telling Jennie’s story represents many more who don’t feel safe in these parts.

  • dave

    While it doesn’t matter to me if the girl is halachically Jewish or not, I was chagrined to see the author’s comments in response.

    Namely, his retort that to the outside observer, Haredi women are as oppressed and subservient as any women in fundamentalist Muslim communities.

    That’s a defensive teenager arguing, not a journalist.

    And this piece really isn’t journalism. It’s a feel good fluff-piece.

  • Boris Fishman

    Dear Joe Blow –

    I’ll look into the Arab Christian issue further and if I’m misinformed, I’ll be happy to correct myself and prove you right. But if I’m misinformed, why must I be “pathetically” misinformed? Why can’t I just be misinformed? Why the bile? That is coming from somewhere other than your desire to correct the factual record. Maybe you feel I have an ulterior agenda that I’m not copping to; I wish you would find a way to at least imagine, if not believe, otherwise. I have no problem with people holding different views; I have no problem being wrong and correcting myself, though I do reserve the right to project my perspective in a piece I am authoring, as I would hope you would if you were the writer; my only problem is with the disgust with which certain commenters excoriate those opposed to them, as if they were sub-human.

    Thank you, Corey Fischer, Robin Margolis, and all those others who’ve been able to comment in a measured, open-minded tone.

  • Joe Blow

    Boris, you are supposed to be a journalist. Journalists check their facts before publishing. You made matters worse by responding very illogically to the points I made. Thta’s why I responded as I did.

    Actually, I don’t believe that you have an agenda, either hidden or overt. Rather, I think you were taken advantage of (“rolled”) by people with an agenda. It would have required very little effort on your part to fact check the propaganda that were fed, by you chose not to do so.

  • Bill Pearlman

    She DOESN’T identify has JEWISH. SHE ISN’T JEWISH. Witness her comment about getting one of our people into office.

  • MonkFish

    What does it matter that she’s Jewish or half-Jewish? The girl is a cheeky little cutie pie whom I would love to court and introduce to the beauty of Halakhic Judaism!

  • another Goldstein

    It doesn’t matter if she identifies as Jewish or not- to antisemites, she is perceived as Jewish because of her surname, which is my surname too. My family was randomly targeted for a hate crime now being prosecuted- we were chosen because of our name. Google “Cody Meyers”- he was murdered in Oregon in 2011 because his killers thought he was Jewish- because of his name. Neither case involved Arabs/Muslims. It is interesting that Jennifer Goldstein mentions that the immigrants she aids don’t know she is Jewish..she doesn’t seem to be in a rush to enlighten them. Does she wonder what they think of Jews, or is that irrelevant to her?

  • another Goldstein

    “The Arabs of Bay Ridge love Jenny back…but few of them know she is Jewish.” Um, maybe Jenny should try a little experiment and wear a Star of David around her neck to see if the Arabs of Bay Ridge respond to her with the same love. If they did, then this would be a really inspiring story. As she appreciates their culture so much- smoking shisha, Palestinian hip-hop posters, admiring the congregants at the Mosque as they gather to pray…perhaps she could introduce some of the immigrants to Jewish culture on the Upper West Side where she lives…a bowl of schav at the deli..a visit to the Shul..

  • another Goldstein

    Boris you have seriously been reading the NYTimes too much, as they hammer away at the Orthodox women kerfufel in Israel..hoping to create a false equivalence between status of women in Islamist states and Israeli women. Which evidently you are convinced of.

  • http://storypassage.com Corey Fischer

    I think the point of the “kerfufel” isn’t so much that anyone is saying that Israeli women’s status is equivalent to that of women in Islamist countries, but, rather, that some Haredi men in some parts of Israel would like it to be and are bullying everyone they can into buying their agenda.

  • ben

    Anyway, I was astonished to see that neither Tablet nor Forward wrote even a word about the incredible Beit Avi Hai study of faith and practices of Israeli Jews that shows that they are becoming increasingly religious (in the Orthodox way) and that the secular are now a minority.
    Weird that nobody here wrote about it.

  • Joachim

    While the vast majority of modern Jews belong to a single ethnic group that originates in historic Poland, Muslims belong to many ethnic groups with many diverse cultures.

    I am not sure what the phrase Islamist countries is supposed to mean because only one majority Muslim country (Iran) has a political system based in politicized Islam although several majority Muslim countries define themselves as “Islamic.”

    Anyway, generalizing about Muslim populations is quite dubious.

    The Polish-Lithuanian Tatar Muslim population was part of the Polish szlachta (gentry), tended to be highly Polish-nationalist with modernizing tendencies, and shared the general view of the Polish and Ashkenazi elites that Polish Jewry was backward and needed reform in many areas including the treatment of women.

  • Dave

    Thanks for the interesting and informative article Boris. Keep up the good work, and I’d advise you to just not reply to these meshuga commenters whose small minds were locked into place ages ago. No point in arguing with such people.

  • Sderot

    Boris is wrong on two fronts; Jennis is not a Jew and there is no “Palestine.” To Dave being pro-Israel and standing up for authentic Judaism means being small-minded. What an ignoramus.
    It seems that this article has attracted the usual anti-Israel, nazi nutcases. Not surprising that bigots like these are fans of this dreadful article.

  • Borg

    If Boris was around a few decades earlier, he would have fallen in love with Stella Goldschlag, who was Halachically Jewish

  • Bill Pearlman

    Martillo, Julius Streichers love child shows up. Like vermin.

  • http://www.jew-ish.com emily

    Boris, as a young Jewish journalist from a mixed-faith background turned modern orthodox, I appreciate your attempt at nuance. I see both sides here: one, the reality our generation deals with (intermarriage, Palestinians, mixed religious messages); two, the community’s real fear of historical patterns and the apparent erosion of Jewish identity. That you aroused these emotions in your readers means you did something right.
    Readers: As for Jennie, writing about her doesn’t change who she is. She may arouse fear and sadness in me, but why should we turn our backs on her and send her running toward the people who do seem to want to take her in? Take heed, this could be your son’s next girlfriend, your daughter’s best friend. What would you do? History has taught us this lesson, too.

  • John Zimmerman

    Very nice article. Regarding the negative comments – why? I hope she does not read the hurtful comments. Why not just look at the positives – a lovely young lady doing good & I’m sure building a bridge between 2 people. To condemn her as a hybrid abnormality is unkind – she did not choose to be born into that situation, although it appears obvious that her parents did a good job in raising her. And who are we to judge them.

  • http://www.buyamman.com/management Wasfi M. Acdo

    I wish of all the American Jews will be of the same spirit, attitude and a person should be respected for his person and his work and feelings towards other community members.
    This kind of relationships must prevail between all community members, without any discrimination. This is the case being happened in and between the Arab countries, including Palestine.

    I support and applause for her efforts and career.

  • http://hotchallah.tumblr.com/ Hotchallah

    So she isn’t “technically” Jewish, she is half Jewish as are so many American Jews these days (aka almost every other kid on my birthright trip). I think it’s great that she identifies as Jewish and is working with a Muslim population. This is PR that is undoing all the anti-Jewish sentiment out there.

    Why would anyone want to exclude someone with a Jewish parent from the Jewish faith? Are we too full so we are just turning people away? Honestly, it sounds to me like she is doing good work and helping a disenfranchised people. Try to put a little love in your heart, people.

  • Palestiniansareamyth

    Wasfi, There is no country of “Palestine.” It has never existed just like the so-called “Palestinians.” Arabs are the ones who should show love and compassion toward the Jews instead of hatred and violence.

  • bucky

    give her e few years, she will be wearing the hijab and have a clitorectomy. This child is jsut another useful idiot being trumped about as an example of Arab tolerance towards Jews. She is not a Jew, first and foremost, but a typical liberal fool, giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

  • Gene

    The answer to Boris comment regarding the fact that treatment of women in the ultra-orthodox Jewish community is not much different from the treatment of women in Islam. This might be true. However, for some reason, “progressives” have respect only to Islam.

  • Jesse M.

    Hey, she’s just as Jewish as Sarah Jessica Parker, Gloria Steinem, and Wolfgang Pauli, three examples of people with Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers. It sounds like she was raised with Jewish culture, as are many children of two Jewish but non-practicing parents in American culture (I wonder what the reactions to this article would be if she was a secular Jew with two Jewish parents); so if she identifies with it, why say she’s wrong to do so any more than other secular Jews? Traditional religious definitions of ethnic “Jewishness” should hold no particular sway for secularists who don’t believe these rules come from G-d, but were simply invented by ancient people as a pragmatic way of dealing with uncertainties in paternity (which no longer need to be an issue thanks to genetic tests). A person with one Italian parent can identify as Italian-American, a person with one black parent can identify as black, and so with Jewishness considered as an ethnicity/culture rather than a religion.

  • Ephraim

    I’m pretty sure Joachim Martillo and Galen Sword are the same person.

    At any rate, it is Joachim/Galen who is confused. Here and in other places he incessantly harps on his pet theme that Ahkenazim aren’t really Jews because he has decided that they are not genetically related to whomever he has decided were the “real” Jews who lived in ancient Israel.

    This is a specious argument and is entirely beside the point. He is applying goyish categories to us so he can define who he thinks we are, but since he is a gentlie, he does not understand what makes a Jew a Jew. It is not race or genetics or anything like that. This is the world of gashmius, or physicality. Jews exist in the realm of ruchnius, or spirituality. In spite of the fact the recent DNA research has established that various geographically dispersed Jewish communities, Ashkenazim included, are more genetically related to one another than they are to the gentiles among whom they live, it would not matter even if it were not true. The only definition of a Jew that matters is the halachic definition: a Jew is someone who is born of a Jewish mother or who is properly converted. Since Miss Goldstein does not fulfill these criteria, she is not Jewish. This is not a value judgment, it is a simple statement of fact. That she has a Jewish parent and has been influenced by Jewish culture to some degree is obviously true. But only the Jewish people as a whole, through their communal institutions (a Beit Din, or rabbinical court, in this situation) has the right to decide who and who is not a member of our community.

    If she wants to identify as Jewish in some way no one can stop her, but it does not actually make her Jewish. For example, I cannot just decide that I am, say, French. I could become French by fulfilling whatever conditions the French government has decided are the requirements of citizenship. Until then, I am not French, no matter how much I insist I am.

  • Jesse M.

    Ephraim wrote:
    “But only the Jewish people as a whole, through their communal institutions (a Beit Din, or rabbinical court, in this situation) has the right to decide who and who is not a member of our community.”

    This would seem to be a circular argument–are you *defining” “their communal institutions” in a way that rules groups like North American Reform Judaism (which says that a child born to one Jewish parent is Jewish regardless of the parent), and Karaite Judaism (which says that what’s important is whether the father is Jewish, not the mother)? And since “Jew” functions as both a religions descriptor and an ethnic one, it seems arbitrary to say that only religious “communal institutions” get to set the definition in the first place, I’m sure there are vast numbers of secular Jews (who qualify as Jewish under the matrilineal religious definition) who would make the judgment differently.

  • Ephraim

    Yes, what you say is true. Of course there are people who make the judgement differently. However, since I am Orthodox, I use Orthodox definitions. Being Orthodox means following Judaism as it has been defined by the rabbis and sages down through the generations. I am quite aware that many people, Jews included (or, should I say, Jews especially) disagree with us. Fine, so they disagree.

    There is no doubt that Judaism involves what most people would refer to as an ethnic component. I do not deny that. Nor do I deny that the fact of Jewishness has given rise to a distinct culture that appears, to some people at any rate, to be capable of existing separate from the religion. I think it can, for a short period of time, at any rate, but not for that long. Witness Miss Goldstein herself. At some point, no religion, no Jews.

    I am sure that there are many people in the Reform movement who are actually Jews. However, as a movement, Reform takes as its starting point the proposition that the Torah was not given by G-d and that Jews are under no obligation to observe its mitzvot (commandments). However, the entire concept of conversion is a religious one; once the religious basis of the existence of the Jewish people is denied, as it is in the Refom movement, the whole idea of a “Reform conversion” becomes preposterous.

    A Jew who is halachically Jewish is still Jewish even if he is completely secular, in the same way that one cannot sew one’s foreskin back on once one has been circumcised. It’s a shame that there are so many Jews who have turned their back on their religion, but they are still Jews for all that.

    I know this may be confusing, but as I said, how we define ourselves may contradict the normal categories that prevail in the gentile world. Jews are a religion and a people all at the same time. Those things that are commonly called “race” or “ethnicity”, which usually seem to denote things like skin color and physical features and such, are really not relevant.

  • otter354

    Perhaps a view of real history is needed:

    “Matrilineal descent is the rabbinic norm. It’s not 5,000 years old, however. The ruling really dates back to the time of the restoration of the Second Temple, to the Book of Ezra–which is more like 2,500 years ago. At that time, with the Jewish people facing the difficult task of rebuilding the Temple, Ezra annulled marriages between Israelites and “foreign wives.” Subsequent rabbinic thought builds on this foundation, and that leads us to today.

    But if we are talking about tradition, patrilineal descent in Judaism is actually much older than matrilineal descent…”

    Read more: http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/2000/04/Jewish-Genes.aspx#ixzz1lefQX68M

  • Ephraim

    The article speaks of Jewish “genetics”. As I have said, this just isn’t relevant.

    The problem in Ezra with foreign wives is plainly stated: the Jews were specifically forbidden to marry foreign women from clearly identified nations because of the cruel, inhumane, and revolting cultural and religious practices of these nations. The reason for this is also given explicitly in the Torah: marrying such women would inevitably cause the Jewish husband to forget G-d and adopt the religious pracices of the non-Jewish wife, with the result that the children would not be brought up in a Jewish household.

    This was not always the case, however. The article specifically mentions Joseph’s marriage to Asenath, an Egyptian, as “proof” that children of Jewish fathers and non-Jewish women were considered Jews (considering that all of the marriages the article mentions took place before the Torah was given, this point is, perhaps, a bit anachronistic). However, the Torah explicitly says that Ephraim and Menashe were Joseph’s children; that is, they were rasied in his spiritual tradition and were “his” children, not his wife’s, from a spiritual perspective. This can only mean that Asenath abandoned her Egyptian idolatry and, in a sense, “converted” to Judaism as it existed at that time (however that may be understood).

    The Book of Ruth describes what can only be a conversion ceremony prior to Ruth’s marriage to Boaz (Boaz’s declaration in the presence of the elders at the gate of the city), so if we are to believe that this story reflects the actual practices of the time there was obviously a way for such “foreign” wives to join the Jewish people.

    In any case, Judaism is what the rabbis say it is. It is not the same as it was 5,000 years ago and in 5,000 years from now it may very well be different from what it is now. But it will be changed only by people who accept the tradition, not by those who reject it.

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A 24-year-old Jewish Upper West Sider helps run the most important Arab-American organization in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, home to 35,000 Arabs