Well, that was then. Last week, just before Yom Kippur, the organization quietly removed one of the top ten vote-getters, Cecilie Surasky, the deputy director of the provocative Bay Area group Jewish Voice for Peace, from the ranks of eligible competitors. Federation spokesman Joe Berkofsky told JTA that Surasky was deemed ineligible because of her group’s support for the Israel boycott, sanctions and divestment movement (BDS), which Federation has invested heavily in countering. JVP countered that Federation changed its eligibility rules specifically to disqualify Surasky—and pointed out that the leader board currently includes Manis Friedman at number four, and that Friedman, a Chabad rabbi from Minnesota, made news in 2009 when, in response to a question about how Jews should treat Arabs, he told Moment:

I don’t believe in Western morality, i.e., don’t kill civilians or children, don’t destroy holy sites, don’t fight during holiday seasons, don’t bomb cemeteries, don’t shoot until they shoot first because it is immoral. The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle). The first Israeli prime minister who declares that he will follow the Old Testament will finally bring peace to the Middle East.

At the time, Friedman walked his comments back, saying they were “irresponsible.” His nomination statement doesn’t mention the brouhaha, focusing instead on a blurb Bob Dylan gave Friedman’s 1990 book on kosher sex, Doesn’t Anyone Blush Anymore?

Meanwhile, JVP is getting its own kind of award: a concrete example of the Jewish Establishment’s willingness to upset the apple cart when it comes to left-wing groups but not right-wing ones.

Here’s the thing: we all know that Americans generally, and Jews specifically, are splintering into ever-smaller interest and affinity groups. Instead of finding a way to make the case to younger, unaffiliated Jews for sustaining a single umbrella group that can claim to represent the broad interests of American Jewry, whatever they may be, Federation has instead, and with the best of intentions, succeeded in building a terrific soapbox ready for exploitation by the best-mobilized voices out there, however marginal or objectionable they may be to the vast majority of their fellow Jews.

Just look at the current top vote-getter in the volunteer category: Leah Rubashkin, who happens to be the wife of Sholom Rubashkin, who is currently serving a 27-year federal prison term for financial fraud in the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking scandal. Rubashkin has become a cause célèbre among Orthodox Lubavitchers, who believe he was unfairly sentenced, and it seems his wife’s nomination is entirely about getting some mainstream publicity: her brief nomination statement says she is a hero for staying positive through her husband’s incarceration, and adds that “we pray with Leah for the day when she will truly rejoice alongside her husband Reb Sholom Mordechai.”

This is not a way to increase Federation’s relevance to mainstream, maybe-observant Jews under 50—the people who the Facebook contest were presumably supposed to attract in the first place. Worse, it demeans the very real and very important accomplishments of other nominees, like Randy Gold, an Atlanta father who began advocating for more thorough genetic screening of Jewish couples after his daughter was born with a preventable genetic disorder. But, never mind, Federation has an app for that, too: the final winners won’t be picked by open online voting, but by a panel of judges that includes Tablet Magazine contributor Mayim Bialik and sister-of-Facebook Randi Zuckerberg.

JFNA Bumps BDS Backer from Heroes Contest [JTA]
Jewish Community Heroes
Related: Tribal Allegiance [Tablet Magazine]

When, a few years ago, Carolyn Hessel from the Jewish Book Council called me and said that Myra Kraft wanted me to call her, I said that I didn’t know anyone named Myra Kraft. “She knows you,” she said. “She even calls you Joanie.” Of course, it was Myra Hiatt with whom I had lost touch.

We had great fun reconnecting. Myra was an extraordinary human being, humble and so eager to help the world. As chairman of a national conference for Federation in Chicago, she had me showing people how to braid challah in the main lobby of the Hyatt Regency. When it came to the grunt work, Myra was right there in the trenches, helping me and others set up the room, rather then asking others to do it. That is what she liked.

A few years ago we were in Israel together. When my daughter Daniela told Myra she loved the Arab hookah that she saw in the Old City, one showed up at our hotel a few hours later from Myra; so did a check later for $10,000 for New Voices, the Jewish magazine that Daniela edited that year. The next day Myra and I trekked to an Arab village outside Jerusalem where Myra bought the olive oil that she got every year, often sending me bottles to use in my own kitchen. But with Myra, it wasn’t just about olive oil. She was deeply connected to this family, as she was to so many Jewish families the world over.

After 9/11, the Krafts invited my husband, Allan, and me to their box at a Patriots game. Not one to really follow football—nor was Myra, though she dutifully converted to the game—I spent the game talking to Jimmy Andruzzi, a brother of one of the players, who is a New York City fireman and a cook. Myra joined the conversation and confided to me that when Robert decided to buy the Patriots, she only wanted one thing: for there to be 150 or so tickets every game for the Boys and Girls Club.

Brandeis and Federation were Myra’s great loves in Boston. When one of my cookbooks came out, she hosted an event for Federation at her home in Brookline, Massachusetts. So many people wanted to attend that they had me giving a cooking class in the kitchen with a video team from Gillette Stadium broadcasting it to the overflow in other rooms (leading to the hilarious juxtaposition of professional videographers milling about as Robert came in from exercising). Then Myra had us all sit around talking about the transferring of cooking traditions from one generation to another.

We would often talk on the phone, me at my home on the Vineyard and she in her home in Mashpee. Myra would talk about cooking her tsimmes and other dishes for her children and grandchildren, the most important people in her life besides her beloved Robert. For her, the Jewish tradition was paramount. We fantasized about her coming over on her fishing boat. I told her she could dock it right near me. We never did. I will miss her greatly.

Philanthropist Myra Kraft, Wife of Patriots Owner, Dies [JTA]

Ari Y. Kelman, a professor of American studies at the University of California, Davis, is one of the study’s authors. He joined Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to discuss his findings, including the fact that the Internet is weakening denominational differences among Jews, that “non-establishment” young Jewish leaders come from surprisingly “establishment” backgrounds, and that the economics of Jewish life deserve a closer look. [Running time: 16:40]

• However, the new top U.N. nuclear inspector said he was amenable to turning a more focused eye onto Syria. [WSJ]

• Speaking on U.S. cable news, Prime Minister Netanyahu cautioned that Iran wants to control the region’s oil supply. [JPost]

• Opposition parties boycotted Jordan’s parliamentary vote; the results are likely to strenghten the monarchy’s allies while increasing popular disaffection. [NYT]

• Jewish federations, gathered in New Orleans, are concerned less about the current economy and more about their long-term futures as their biggest donors age, with younger people not replacing them. [JTA]

• Famed realist painter Jack Levine died at 95. [NYT]

Reported Daroff, “Clinton was accompanied by her mother and a bevy of staff. She read WP, NYT, SkyMall, & the ‘Mayo Clinic Women’s Health Source.’” Plus a book: How To Be The Mother of a Bride Who Has Just Converted to Judaism. Just kidding about that last one! Anyway, Twitter: It’s what’s for dinner.

Paper Linking Valley’s Jews to Fold, Leaving Void for Some [Las Vegas Sun]

UJC Taps Silverman as New Executive [JTA]

Jen Taylor Friedman. Tefillin Barbie (2007). Plastic, fabric and leather.

Spertus closed “Imaginary Coordinates,” which included both metaphoric and naturalistic maps of the Holy Land by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, on June 20, 80 days ahead of schedule, since “parts of the exhibition” were out of line with “aspects of [its] mission as a Jewish institution and did not belong at Spertus,” according to a museum release. In a conference call with the press that day, Spertus trustee Philip Gordon insisted, “This has nothing to do with censorship.” Howard Sulkin, president of the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, said of the developing news stories about the closed exhibit, “We would like to believe that there will be just a blip about that.”

To follow this show, Spertus could have opted for something tame—shtetl scenes by Chagall or colorful Agam designs—but instead it opened “Twisted Into Recognition: Clichés of Jews and Others,” an exhibit which was co-organized by the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Jewish Museum Vienna. “Twisted” is not as edgy as its predecessor—it has neither videos of a nude woman twirling a barbed-wire hula hoop while standing on Israel’s border, nor a driver asking ultra-Orthodox Israeli pedestrians for directions to the Palestinian city of Ramallah—but it is controversial in its own right, with works like Jen Taylor Friedman’s Barbie doll wearing a tallis and tefillin (Tefillin Barbie), and an installation of sculpted and painted noses by Dennis Kardon (49 Jewish Noses).

Tamir Lahav-Radlmesser’s installation includes samples of pubic hair he collected from friends and acquaintances in response to a 1939 exhibit that Josef Wastl, the Nazi curator of the anthropology department at the Vienna Museum of Natural History, created to demonstrate the racial inferiority of Jews. Wastl’s exhibit included plaster casts of faces and pubic hair taken from 500 “stateless Jews” who were subsequently sent to concentration camps.

Ernst Ludwig Hiemer. Der Giftpilz: ein Stürmerbuch für Jung und Alt (1938)

Perhaps the most controversial work in the exhibit is Der Giftpilz: ein Stürmerbuch für Jung und Alt (“The Poisonous Mushroom: an SS book for Young and Old”), a classroom textbook by Ernst Ludwig Hiemer which had a 1938 print run of 60,000. The Spertus exhibit shows an illustration from the book of four schoolboys, matching parts in their blond hair, looking on with their teacher as a fifth student holds a pointer to a blackboard that features chalk drawings of a Star of David, a hunched man who might be the wandering Jew, and the number six. The caption explains the last symbol: “Die Judennase ist an ihrer Spitze gebogen. Sie sieht aus wie ein Sechser,” or, “The Jewish nose is bent at its peak. It looks like a six.”

Spertus hopes the show will be “stereotype-busting,” and its release assures (perhaps both viewers and board members) that the show “does not intend to deny regional, ethnic, or cultural differences. Rather it explores how stereotypes about these differences are conveyed through images and objects, some of which communicate difficult or even brutal messages.” Yet most reviewers aren’t buying it, nor do they seem ready to forgive and forget the “blip.”

Manya Brachear’s review in the Chicago Tribune called “offending Jewish sensibilities” Spertus’ “new stock in trade,” and quoted Beth Gelman, the museum’s director of education, as saying that she expected some people to be offended, because “learning questions our assumptions.” Time Out Chicago’s Lauren Weinberg began her article with a discussion of the censored show, which she hailed as challenging and beautiful, before panning “Twisted” for being “so rigid that it doesn’t leave much room for surprises.” She wondered why Spertus’ show about stereotypes did not mention the museum’s own censorship.

Weinberg is surely aware that it is rare for any museum, let alone one funded by the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation, to criticize itself in its own exhibit, but she might be on to something in her critique that the show does not even attempt to respond to stereotypes of Israelis. She also questioned why there are “zero mentions of Palestinians” among the clichés of “others” included in the show: The only Muslim representative is Women of Allah: Rebellious Silence, a photograph of a woman wearing a headscarf and holding a gun in front of her face, which is covered with Arabic writing. The photograph was taken by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, whose work also appeared in “Imaginary Coordinates.”

Howard Zieff. You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s (1967)

As for a question Weinberg did not ask: Why doesn’t “Twisted” tackle stereotypes of Jews by Jews? If the museum really wants viewers “to closely examine stereotypes and clichés, and to reflect on them and discuss them,” wouldn’t it have been fascinating if the show included ads from the Yiddish press at the beginning of the twentieth century which were designed to assimilate Eastern European immigrants? What about cartoons from Jewish newspapers, in which Jews of one denomination denounce other types of Jews? Showing nineteenth-century walking sticks with noses that double as handles, which were later appropriated as anti-Semitic objects, is an important and ambitious move for a Jewish museum, but an institution that is quick to expose others’ stereotypes might try interrogating and exposing its own biases.

The subtitle of “Twisted” promises that the exhibit will explore not only Jews, but “others.” Instead of examining the philosophical and psychological processes of interacting with (and often forming stereotypes of) “the Other,” Spertus narrowly defines “others” simply as non-Jews. Had “Twisted” taken a closer look at the Jewish community, it would have had to address the fact that Jews are hardly homogeneous, and that members of one denomination often see Jews of different nationalities or levels of religious observance as “others,” too.

Before it tries to repent, Spertus needs to identify exactly where it fell off track. Steven Nasatir, president of the JUF/Jewish Federation in Chicago, told the Tribune that “Imaginary Coordinates” was “clearly anti-Israel” and that he was “very surprised” and “saddened” that a Jewish institution would host such an exhibit. Michael Kotzin, executive vice president of the same organization, added that a Jewish museum is the “last place the Jewish community should hear echoes” of anti-Israel sentiments. But if museums should avoid edginess and provocation, one wonders what venues the American Jewish community has set up to hear constructive feedback and new ideas.

Luckily the Jerusalem Post’s Marilyn Henry elevated the discussion with her observation that the censorship “inadvertently performed a great communal service: It opened the door to a long-overdue discussion on the role of American Jewish museums.” Henry recommended that angry viewers either close their eyes or go home. “I, for one, do not see the geopolitical balance of the Mideast shifting because an American Midwestern museum exhibits its map collection,” she wrote. Instead, Henry sees American Jewish museums as “cultural sanctuaries,” which “may be the only open Jewish space in the U.S. where traditional, ethnic, and disengaged Jews can meet with each other and with the larger community.”

Nasatir and Kotzin seem to think of Jewish museums as mirrors that ought to reflect what the community already believes, while Henry sees their potential to look forward. This is surely a struggle for all museums—not just Jewish ones—as they try to prove that their mandate as educational institutions necessitates some pushing of the envelope. Being on the vanguard does not just mean filling an exhibit with pop culture symbols like Tinky Winky (the allegedly gay character from Teletubbies), Aunt Jemima, and Michael Jackson, as “Twisted” does. It is refreshing to see Monty Python’s comical Life of Brian beside Franco Zeffirelli’s sobering Jesus of Nazareth, and Al Pacino’s performance as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice in an exhibit that also includes Howard Zieff’s ad campaign, You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s, which shows a Native American man with braids and a feather also wearing a black hat and holding a deli sandwich. But this subject begs for more than just clever juxtapositions of art and kitsch.

With “Twisted,” Spertus had an opportunity to distinguish itself from other Jewish museums, becoming self-conscious and thus vulnerable. Instead, it settled for being just another PR voice for American Judaism, piling up even more evidence that Jews are marginalized and oppressed. Until it manages to grapple more fully and honestly with the provocative topics it raises so promisingly, it will be hard to treat the museum as much more than a $55-million building with a great view of Lake Michigan.

Menachem Wecker is a writer based in Washington, D.C. He blogs about religion and the arts at Iconia.