SIMON DOES - Chicago Jewish News

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JEWISH NEWS
SIMON DOES
THE CHICAGO
January 2 - 8, 2015/11 Tevet 5775
www.chicagojewishnews.com
One Dollar
Michael
Simon
is reaching out
to Jewish students
and transforming
the Hillel at
Northwestern
University
Chicago’s new Jewish
theater company
Larry Layfer on the lives
of the patriarchs
Are Jewish parents today
raising slackers?
Kipah-wearing poker champ
2
Chicago Jewish News - January 2 - 8, 2015
Will Russia’s economic woes burst bubble for Jews?
By Cnaan Liphshiz
JTA
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia
– In the basement of one of Europe’s largest synagogues, 100
Jews are waiting to meet local
film star Boris Smolkin.
The crowd applauds enthusiastically as the 66-year-old funnyman, who gave his voice to
Master Yoda in the Russian-language version of the “Star Wars”
trilogy, sucks daintily on an electronic cigarette during a public
interview about growing up Jewish and chasing stardom in communist Leningrad, as this city
was called in Soviet times.
“As far as career moves go,
advertising one’s Jewishness was
not a very good strategy back
then,” Smolkin said in the appearance at the Choral Synagogue, drawing chuckles from
Jews who remember the virulent
anti-Semitism of Soviet governments.
“It’s incomparable with how
Jews are now free to practice
their faith and tradition in Russia, like we are meeting right
now,” Smolkin added.
Despite fears from a government increasingly intolerant of
dissent and supportive of illiberal
legislation, Jewish cultural life is
in full flower in Vladimir Putin’s
Russia. The evaporation of institutionalized anti-Semitism has
triggered a broad regeneration,
with dozens of star-studded
events hosted every month in
Moscow and St. Petersburg – a
far cry from the more religionoriented Jewish revival promoted
elsewhere by emissaries of the
Chabad movement.
At the Choral Synagogue’s
restaurant, casually dressed Jews
in their 30s, some carrying guitars, meet up before going out to
a pub or to someone’s home. At
one table, a few younger patrons
nibble on vegetables as they sit
in a semicircle around a laptop
playing a video of a TED lecture
on drone robotics.
“This a low-key and intellectual community that follows a
northern paradigm,” said Roman
Kogan, executive director of
Limmud FSU, which organizes
Jewish learning conferences for
Russian speakers. “The flashiness
and materialism that are associated with Moscow are less valued
here.”
In both cities, Jewish cultural life has evolved way past
the basic formula of lectures and
community-building events that
is helping Jews come out of the
shadows across the former Soviet
Union.
Boris Smolkin, left, and his co-stars on the Moscow set of the hit television series "My Fair Nanny." (JTA)
In addition to Moscow’s
celebrity-laden , which this year
drew a record 1,200 participants,
the capital this year hosted Rus-
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sia’s first Miss Jewish Star beauty
pageant, which was held at the
five-star Metropol Hotel for a
crowd of 400 spectators.
And in June, dozens of Jewish celebrities and oligarchs gathered at a Moscow studio to
record a three-hour of Leonard
Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in an attempt to break the Guinness
Book of World Records entry for
longest officially released song.
Russia’s Jews appear little affected by what Human Rights
Watch this year called a “crackdown on civil society and government critics.” Russia’s SOVA
watchdog on extremism meanwhile fingered government policy for “a notable surge in ethnic
violence” in 2013, when 21 people died and 178 were injured as
a result of racist violence, much
of it directed at Muslims and immigrants from central Asia.
“A shift in the government
policies inspired the ultra-right
to utilize more open and aggressive tactics against migrants,”
SOVA wrote.
The problem worsened after
Moscow annexed Crimea from
Ukraine in March, triggering
both surging nationalism and
Western sanctions. Coupled with
plummeting oil prices, the move
sent the Russian economy into
free fall and caused the ruble to
lose 45 percent of its worth
against the dollar.
Though they worry about
the economy, many members of
both Russia’s Jewish elite and the
community’s rank-and-file feel
largely insulated from rising
xenophobia, a situation that
many attribute to the government’s strong stance against antiSemitism. Putin repeatedly
invoked the need to combat
Ukrainian anti-Semitism to justify Russian intervention there.
“Despite hearing a lot about
xenophobia, despite seeing it on
the street even, we ourselves
don’t feel it,” said Raya Gutin, a
Jewish ophthalmologist who attended the Smolkin event. “I am
the only Jewish doctor in my deSEE RUSSIA
ON
PAG E 1 1
3
For poker champ Ari Engel, kipah works to his advantage
By Uriel Heilman
JTA
Ari Engel is homeless. It’s
been a decade since he last held
a regular job and two years since
he gave up his apartment.
But don’t shed any tears for
him.
Over the last 10 years or so,
Engel has grossed about $5 million playing poker.
The son of an Orthodox
rabbi, Engel, 31, has become one
of the world’s best professional
poker players – ranked No. 23
worldwide by the poker magazine
Bluff – and probably the only
top-tier player who wears a
kipah.
When Engel decided to give
up his Toronto apartment in
early 2013, it was to go on the
road to play the tournament circuit. In November alone, Engel
competed in Peru, St. Maarten
and the Dominican Republic,
where he won $136,500.
“I travel all the time – I’m
sort of homeless,” Engel said in a
recent phone interview from Atlantic City, N.J., where he was
competing. “I’m never in the
same place for more than a couple of weeks.”
Traditional Jewish law
frowns upon gambling, but
Engel, who keeps kosher and
often wears his kipah during play,
says poker isn’t gambling but a
learned skill. He concedes there
is an element of chance, but no
more so than with stock picking.
“To me it’s very unfortunate
that poker takes place in casinos.
It doesn’t really belong there,”
Engel said. “Poker definitely has
a lot of things that are beyond
one’s control, but it has plenty of
things within your control. I
don’t gamble at all. I’m trying to
get an edge when I play poker,
and I try to make a living out of
it.”
Sometimes the kipah plays
to Engel’s advantage, he says, as
it prompts opponents to underestimate his abilities. More commonly, other players or passers-by
will drop a little hint – perhaps a
greeting in Yiddish or Hebrew –
to indicate that they, too, are
members of the tribe.
Engel, who bears some resemblance to Jesse Eisenberg’s
portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in
“The Social Network,” says he’s
never gotten any negative reactions to his Jewish identity.
At tournaments, Engel prepares like an athlete. He tries to
get a good night’s sleep, eat a
healthy breakfast and work out
in the hotel gym. The card playing usually starts at about noon
and often runs well past midnight, so stamina is important.
He usually plays Texas
Hold’em, a game that starts with
two cards dealt face down to
each player and three common
cards face up, known as the flop.
Two additional common cards –
the turn and the river – are then
dealt sequentially as players
check, bet, raise or fold. The
5 poker tips from champ Ari Engel
By Ari Engel
1. Patience is a virtue. I
know you didn’t travel to the
casino or home game to fold,
but sometimes that’s what you
need to do. Playing bad hands
because you are bored is a
recipe for a losing session. By
being selective with the hands
you play, you will have a better
hand than your opponents over
the long run. Even though you
may get unlucky at times, in
general you will end up with
the winning hand.
2. Aggression is key. A
good question to ask yourself is
whether the hand you have is
good enough to play. If it’s not,
refer to point No. 1 and fold. If
it is a good hand, be aggressive
and raise. Either you will win
the pot right then (a good result), or you will force your opponents to put money in the
pot when you have a better
hand than them (another good
result).
3. Take your time and
think things through. Many a
time I’ve rushed through a decision only to spend my hourlong drive home wishing I had
taken a few extra moments to
think about all the factors before rushing into judgment.
Don’t rush.
4. Play within your means.
Poker is such an amazing game
when you are playing for the
right stakes. Ideally you want a
game where losing a buy-in
hurts a little but is not too
painful. If you aren’t winning,
don’t move up in stakes to
chase those losses. Instead,
drop down in stakes to where
the games are going to be easier (and therefore you will be
more likely to win). The game
is a lot more fun when playing
in games and with stakes where
you are comfortable.
5. Have fun! Poker is an
amazing analytical game whose
rules only take a short time to
learn. On the other hand,
there’s always someone better
than you, and you can never
fully master it. The game can
be humbling, so enjoy the ride
and make the most of it.
Ari Engel on the European Poker Tour in Prague (JTA)
players start with the same
amount of chips – buy-ins typically range from $300 to $10,000
– and remain in the game until
the chips are lost.
Competitors who finish in
the top 10-15 percent usually
take home some money, with the
champion winning the grand
prize of 15-25 percent of the total
buy-in money.
“Maximizing those top spots
can be the difference between
having a profitable year and not
having a profitable year, so it can
definitely be stressful if things
don’t go your way,” Engel said.
Engel declined to discuss the
particulars of his income, but according to Bluff magazine his
largest in-person career win came
a year ago at the Heartland Poker
Tour in St. Louis, where he finished first among 420 entrants
and took home $142,125. According to the online poker
forum Pocketfives, he also won
$187,669 in an online tournament in May.
Being a card-playing itinerant was hardly the life Engel envisioned for himself growing up.
Born in Toronto, Engel and his
family moved to South Africa
before his first birthday and then
to Australia, Jerusalem and Annapolis, Md., before ending up in
the Chicago area, where Engel
attended high school at the Hebrew Theological College in
Skokie.
Engel was 17 and a high
school senior when he played
poker for the first time. He continued into his gap year at an Orthodox yeshiva in the Jerusalem
suburb of Mevasseret Zion and
then in college at New York University.
But it wasn’t until his second year at NYU that he started
playing for real money. His roommate, Andrew Brown, was an
avid online poker player and
took Engel under his wing.
Though Engel majored in finance, he found online poker
much more compelling.
After graduation, Engel took
a regular job, but the online
poker he played nights and weekends turned out to be much more
lucrative – and exciting. So he
quit after a couple of months to
try poker full time.
“Finance was not what I
wanted to be doing,” Engel said.
“I figured I was 21, single and had
no real responsibilities, so why
not give it a real shot for a few
months and see how I did?”
To his surprise, his parents
gave their blessing. Soon Engel
was making enough money to
chip away at the college debt he
had accumulated. He started offering online courses in poker
strategy. He loved the independence and the freedom from job
responsibilities.
Then came April 15, 2011 –
Black Friday in the poker world.
The U.S. Justice Department issued indictments against
the nation’s leading online poker
firms and shut down their web-
sites, charging that they had broken Internet gambling laws and
engaged in bank fraud and
money laundering. Authorities
eventually settled with two of
the leading poker companies,
PokerStars and Full Tilt, but stipulated that they no longer could
serve U.S. customers.
That meant Engel, who was
living in Las Vegas at the time
and primarily playing online,
would either have to stop or
leave the country.
“Overnight,” he said, “my
profession was radically changed.”
Having had the fortune of
being born in Canada, Engel obtained a Canadian passport and
moved to Toronto. But he hated
the winters. By his second January he was ready to give up online poker to play exclusively in
live tournaments. Engel packed
up his Toronto rental and has
been living in hotels ever since,
chasing tournaments.
Though he sometimes plays
into Shabbat, he always takes off
the Jewish holidays, when he
usually goes to visit his parents in
South Florida. He also has a sister in New York and a brother in
Israel.
“I don’t know if I’ll be playing poker forever, but for the
time being I will,” Engel said.
“I’ve built a little bit of a nest egg
and I have the freedom to follow
different opportunities. I just
need to keep my eyes and ears
open and just be smart about it.”
4
Contents
Jewish News
■ Argentina’s president adopted a Jewish godson under a law
intended to counteract an old legend about werewolves. President Christina Fernandez described in seven tweets her meeting
with her new godson, Yair Tawil, a member of a Chabad-Lubavitch family. Tawil was adopted under a law passed in the 1920s to
counteract a legend that a seventh son born after six boys with no
girls in between becomes a werewolf whose bite can turn others
into a werewolf. Belief in the legend was once so widespread that
families were abandoning, giving up for adoption and even killing
their own sons. Under the law, the boys receive presidential protection, a gold medal and a scholarship for all studies until their
21st birthday. Until 2009, the law only applied to Catholic boys.
Shlomo and Nehama Tawil, parents of seven boys, in 1993 wrote
a letter to the president asking for the honor and were denied.
But this year, Yair wrote a letter to the president citing the 2009
decree and asking for the designation of godson. He became the
first Jewish godson of a president in Argentina’s history. Fernandez described Yair as “a total sweety,” and his mother a “Queen Esther.”
■ The Central Intelligence Agency offers guidelines for its operatives using false identities to get through a “secondary screening” at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport, according to a
secret CIA document uploaded to WikiLeaks. The document,
which is titled “CIA Assessment on Surviving Secondary Screening at Airports While Maintaining Cover” and dated September
2011, says Ben Gurion Airport is very thorough at screening international travelers. The guidelines on the secondary screening
– what the document calls “a potentially lengthy and detailed
look by airport officials at passengers not passing initial scrutiny”
– helps the CIA operatives maintain their alias. The report reveals several details about the security procedures at the airport.
“Security personnel at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel,
commonly refer military-aged males traveling alone with backpacks to secondary screening, regardless of their nationality or
skin color,” the document reads.
■ Arab media are reporting that Hezbollah uncovered a Mossad
spy in its upper ranks. The reports have named Mohammed
Shorbah, a Lebanese businessman who succeeded Imad Mughniyeh, the operations chief assassinated in 2008 in a Syrian car
bomb attack, as the agent for Israel’s intelligence agency. Hezbollah blames the Mughniyeh killing on Israel. Shorbah was arrested
recently. Hezbollah, the terrorist group that launched a war against
Israel in 2006, believes Shorbah was responsible for helping to plot
the assassination of Mughniyeh and another senior Hezbollah official in 2013, and helped authorities arrest Hezbollah agents who
planned attacks in Thailand, Peru and Cyprus.
■ Israel will halt almost all of its gas mask production due to a
decline in the threat of a gas or chemical attack. The decision
comes a year after the Defense Ministry decided to reduce production and stop distributing gas masks to Israel’s civilian population. Now, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon has also decided to
halt gas mask production for the Israel Defense Forces. First responders will still receive gas masks. Israel restarted mass distribution of gas masks last year in response to the threat of a
chemical weapons attack from Syria. But Syria’s agreement later
in the year to dispose of its chemical weapons stock sharply reduced that threat. Syria completed the disposal process in June.
When Israel stopped distributing masks to civilians, 60 percent of
Israelis were estimated to have gas masks.
■ A Jewish agency head who had been deeply involved with
caring for migrant children was found dead with her longtime
partner in what police are calling an apparent murder-suicide.
Rochelle Tatrai, the president and CEO of Gulf Coast Jewish
Family and Community Services, and partner Sean Ray were both
found dead of gunshot wounds on Thursday at Tatrai’s Largo, Fl.,
townhouse, according to a report by the Tampa Bay Times. Police
had not yet determined who was the shooter and had not released
a motive. The 16-year-old daughter of Tatrai and Ray discovered
the bodies. According to the Times, police were not certain
whether Tatrai and Ray were married, although Tatrai has been
identified in previous news reports as Rochelle Tatrai-Ray. Ray
did not live with Tatrai at the time of their deaths. The couple
also had a 20-year-old daughter. Tatrai had appeared prominently
in local news media over the summer as she and her organization
worked to shelter unaccompanied children who had fled to the
United States from Central and South America.
JTA
THE CHICAGO
JEWISH NEWS
Vol. 21 No. 13
Joseph Aaron
Editor/Publisher
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Arts & Entertainment
A ‘Continuum’ of plays
Jewish theater
fans get chance
to see new work
By Pauline Dubkin Yearwood
Managing Editor
Devorah Richards didn’t
necessarily want to start a theater
company. She wanted to do
more. She wanted to bring
Chicago’s Jewish community together through the performing
arts.
A start to that lofty goal is
Continuum Theater’s Chicago
Jewish Play Reading Festival
2015 – readings of eight plays on
contemporary Jewish themes, by
contemporary Jewish playwrights, at various venues around
the city and suburbs, each accompanied by a “talkback” on
the issues the play raises.
The first offering is “G-d’s
Honest Truth” by Renee
Calarco, a portrait of a contemporary synagogue’s quest – perhaps misguided – to remember
the Holocaust. It takes place
Sunday, Jan. 18 at Temple Chai
in Long Grove, followed by a
talkback on “The Holocaust in
Jewish life and education – regaining our balance.” (For a
complete list of plays, visit continuumtheater.org.)
Richards, the force behind
Continuum Theater and the
Play Reading Festival, is a theater major who appeared in many
shows around town before spending much of her working life as
an executive in the trade show
exhibit industry. But, with her
two children growing up, she
wanted to do something more.
“A few years ago I thought,
this is the moment of truth,” she
said during a recent phone interview. “I needed something more
meaningful in my life. I started
thinking about what was important and what came together for
me was that I was very concerned
about Jewish continuity, cultural
continuity in Chicago.”
She began wondering why,
after the demise of the National
Jewish Theater in 1996, Chicago
had no Jewish theater company
as some other cities do.
“Many plays downtown
have Jewish content, but I felt
Jewish theater was an opportunity to build a conversation and
create stronger ties among people, have deeper conversations
that would not come from mainstream theater,” she says. “Theater can be a portal into Jewish
life, a doorway for people who
might not go to synagogues or
lectures. Young people may be
more likely to go see a play.”
She started talking to Jewish
performing artists – actors, musicians, dancers – in the Chicago
area and discovered that “there is
no funding by the Jewish community for Jewish performing
arts” in Chicago. “The Jewish
performing arts community is not
raising its hand for funding. It is
so disjointed.”
She decided to try and do
something about this state of affairs. “We need to nurture our
artists and give them the opportunity to perform” she says. “Like
lawyers, doctors or other affinity
groups they too are part of the
Jewish community, but they’re
not organized.”
On the other side of the divide, Richards says, “Jewish organizations are looking for new
experience but they don’t get
much of the performing arts.”
She formed an organization
with the apt name of Continuum
Theater and began by launching
group outings to theaters that
were presenting plays with Jewish themes, at group ticket rates.
The outings “help build our community of arts lovers,” she says.
Last year when Richards
learned that the Jewish Federation was giving grants to support
new initiatives in the community, she conceived the idea of a
festival of contemporary Jewish
plays, applied and was one of 17
winners of a grant of $25,000. A
fellowship by JCC PresenTense
Chicago added an additional
$2,500.
For the festival, Richards decided that the plays would concern themselves with contemporary Jewish life and issues. “We
stayed away from historical and
Holocaust (plays) because people had seen those, and we
wanted to kind of balance out
the heavy emphasis on the Holocaust,” she says. “There were
other things we wanted to talk
about. Even when it’s a comedy,
it often brings up an interesting
strain or theme.”
The plays are winners or entrants in several Jewish playwriting contests and were chosen in
collaboration with the Jewish
Plays Project in New York.
A sampling of the plays and
the issues they deal with includes
Beth Kander’s “Scrambled,”
about a young Jewish woman
who proposes to become an egg
donor for an Orthodox woman,
bringing up issues of Jewish identity and choice. Reading is on
Sunday, Feb. 8 at Anshe Emet
Synagogue in Chicago.
“I’m Not Like You” by Itta
Chana Englander, Feb. 22 at
Stage 773 in Chicago, follows
two Jewish men, one gay and one
straight, both coping with the
AIDS epidemic from different
perspectives in 1990.
In Deborah Zoe Laufer’s
“The Last Schwartz,” March 8 at
Stage 773, four very different siblings gather to mourn the family
patriarch. David Rush’s “Estelle
Singerman,” March 10 at Temple
Sholom of Chicago, finds two
seniors probing the meaning of
life together.
“We want people who don’t
usually come out for Jewish
events to enjoy these,” Richards
says. “They are entertaining and
informative.”
She says she is pleased with
this year’s selection of plays and
is beginning to think about a
rerun for next year. But there’s a
problem. The grants she received
for this year’s festival are non-renewable, and Richards — like
many another small arts organization leader — is desperately
seeking funding.
“We’re looking for supporters – corporate sponsors and
donors to help us have another
year,” she says. “We’re starting at
ground zero in terms of fund-raising and we need to start to plan
for next year. We need some Jewish foundation money because
Devorah Richards
this is a community-building
type of initiative, another way of
connecting people.”
“G-d’s Honest Truth” takes
place at 7 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 18 at
Temple Chai, 1670 Checker Road,
Long Grove. For tickets ($10 for
each play), visit continuumtheater.org or call (800) 838-3006,
ext. 1.
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CANDLELIGHTING TIMES
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4:11
Jan. 9
4:17
Torah Portion
The uniqueness of Genesis
Patriarchs’ lives
set the stage for
all that follows
By Lawrence F. Layfer
Torah Columnist
Torah Portion: Vayechi
Genesis 47:28-50:26
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“And when Jacob made an
end of charging his sons … he expired, and was gathered unto his
people …” (Genesis 49:33)
With this week’s Torah portion the first book of the Bible,
Genesis, comes to an end. There
are very few commandments to
be found amongst its stories.
Rather, it seems, we are meant to
learn of our beginnings. But
Torah is neither a history nor a
science book, so what is given is,
as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says,
“silent on some of the most important periods of time.”
And in “Reflections of the
Rav,” Rabbi Abraham Besdin
agrees, paraphrasing his teacher,
the
late
Rabbi
Joseph
Soloveitchik, on the first chapter
of Genesis: “Why does the Torah
devote an entire chapter to the
story of creation when actually
Lawrence F. Layfer
all that emerges is a story which
is unclear, incomplete, enigmatic, half told and half concealed? The mystery of creation
is hereby magnified rather than
dispelled.”
So what was it we were supposed to have learned? Rabbi
Besdin concludes that “this elaborate emphasis in the Book of
Genesis on G-d’s creation was
meant to be converted into a
moral challenge to man that as
G-d created, so should man …
Man, like G-d, is often faced
with ‘tohu v’bohu,’ utter desolation, and he does not know
where to begin. He doubts his
ability to say ‘let there be light.”
Yet man is bidden to imitate G-d,
to be a partner in creation, fashioning form out of chaos … there
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journey through the challenges
of coping with his son’s life
threatening illness by using Judaism,
humor, perseverance and hope.
January 11, 2015 • 10:30 am
Beth Hillel Congregation B’nai Emunah
1st Annual Tu b’Shevat
Addiction Recovery Seder
Tu b’Shevat is the New Year of the
Trees, merging the spiritual lessons
of nature with our souls. Together,
we will enjoy a participatory evening
of learning, sharing, and experiencing
the stages of redemption, renewal,
and recovery.
February 3, 2015 • 7 - 8:30 pm
Temple Beth Israel
For more
info call,
847.745.5451
or visit us on the
web at jcfs.org
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JCFSChicago
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Jewish Community
Programs include:
• Jewish Center for
Addiction
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Safer Communities
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JCFS is a partner in serving our community, supported by the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation.
are diseases to conquer, rivers to
control, evil to extirpate. Thus
Genesis challenges man to create, to transform wilderness into
productive life.”
Therefore Genesis was given
to us not so much to teach us astronomy or genealogy, but rather
to display, through selected stories of the lives of our ancestors,
all the basic lessons of appropriate interpersonal interactions,
between each other and between
us and our Creator. The rabbis
say that the lives of the patriarchs foretell the lives of their
children. In Genesis are displayed the range and depth of
the moral and physical challenges humans face, and we are
offered an opportunity to consider how we will resolve them in
our own lives.
For instance, consider when
very early in Genesis Cain utters
the very first question asked by a
human being: “Am I my
brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9)
Is the answer an absolute yes, or
should we consider who is our
brother and how far do we go to
support him, with each encounter perhaps requiring an answer a slightly different shade of
grey? To this Rabbi Debra Newman Kamin teaches that at the
end of Genesis, Joseph will offer
to his brothers one clear answer
to Cain’s question: “I will sustain
you, and your little ones also, and
he comforted them, and spoke
kindly to them.” (Genesis 50:
21)
Another example: When
Adam and Eve sin, their punishments are given not only to them
but also to us, their children. We
still live with Adam’s punishment of the ground grudgingly
yielding its fruits, producing
famine in the world, and also the
punishment of Eve, the pains of
childbirth morphing into the
heartbreak of child rearing.
It is difficult to say goodbye
so soon to this book for another
year. After Genesis, the rest of
the Torah will be just codification and commentary on concepts of behavior taught to us
over the last two months. As if in
mitigation, a few verses near the
end may offer some consolation.
In them, the Torah will use a
unique description of the death
of Jacob, noting that he was
“gathered unto his people.”
It is a phrase that was also
used earlier in Genesis for the
passing of our other patriarchs.
The Torah never defines what
procedure is to occur when one
is gathered post mortem unto his
people. It may be that we should
consider it as describing a rethinking of a person’s life, part
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Libeskind-designed Holocaust
monument ‘collecting dust’
in Toronto warehouse
By Josh Tapper
JTA
TORONTO – Mere days
after the Wheel of Conscience
was unveiled in January 2011, it
broke down – something that
would happen to the Daniel
Libeskind-designed Holocaust
monument twice more within
the year.
In January 2012, the wheel
broke again and was sent from its
home at the Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, in Halifax,
Nova Scotia, for repairs at a
Toronto warehouse.
Ever since, that’s where
Canada’s first and only Holocaust monument outside a Jewish
community institution has been
sitting and, in the words
of Bernie Farber, former CEO of
the Canadian Jewish Congress,
“collecting dust.”
“It’s really a slap in the face
for Holocaust survivors,” Farber
said. (The Centre for Israel and
Jewish Affairs, or CIJA, absorbed
the Canadian Jewish Congress in
2011, but the wheel remains the
property of the CJC.)
Three years on, it is unclear
if the wheel will ever return to
Halifax – and the Jewish community is divided over whether it
belonged there in the first place.
The Wheel of Conscience,
which features four interlocking,
mechanical rotating gears, commemorates the doomed voyage
of the M.S. St. Louis, a ship carrying 937 refugees fleeing Nazi
Germany in 1939. Wandering at
sea for nearly a month, the St.
Louis was turned away at ports in
Havana and Miami before Canadian authorities denied it safe
harbor in Halifax.
The ship ultimately returned
to Europe, where 254 of its pas-
sengers died in the Holocaust.
The wheel’s four glass-encased gears are labeled with four
words: anti-Semitism, xenophobia, hatred and racism. As they
rotate, the gears slowly create
and deconstruct a black-andwhite image of the St. Louis.
Libeskind, the internationally prominent architect who designed the Berlin Jewish
Museum, has said the drawn-out
process is meant to represent the
bureaucratic “gears” of Canada’s
prewar government that rejected
the ocean liner. The back of the
wheel is emblazoned with the entire passenger manifest.
According to Farber, who
visited the monument at the
warehouse in mid-December, the
wheel has been in working order
for about a year. Still, it remains
closed to the public.
Marie Chapman, CEO of
Pier 21, a federally funded national museum, and Shimon
Fogel, CEO of CIJA, an advocacy organization affiliated with
the Jewish Federations of
Canada, have blamed the wheel’s
mechanical failures on coastal
environmental factors such as
humidity and constant shifts in
pressure and temperature.
Chapman said the wheel emitted
a burning smell while its gears
were rotating.
“It’s a beautiful one-off design that for whatever reason
doesn’t work when it gets here,”
she said.
The monument, which was
built with a $500,000 grant from
the Canadian government, has
also fallen victim to simple carelessness. It broke in January 2012
after workers lost control and
dropped the wheel while unloading it from a truck into the museum.
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The Wheel of Conscience monument commemorates the doomed
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8
SIMON DOES
Michael Simon is reaching out to Jewish students and
transforming the Hillel at Northwestern University
By Pauline Dubkin Yearwood
Managing Editor
It’s not easy being a Hillel
director these days.
Just ask Michael Simon,
who has held the job for the past
five years at Northwestern University’s Fiedler Hillel. There he
presides over an array of programs and services – from Israel
trips to service projects all over
the world to a Jewish a cappella
group – that bear little resemblance to the traditional Hillel
menu of Shabbat dinners and religious services, although the NU
Hillel offers those too.
Simon interacts with Jewish
freshmen during their rite-ofpassage “march through the
arch” and with their parents, and
possibly their grandparents too if
they’re alumni, and tries to keep
those students engaged in Jewish
life throughout their four college
years and beyond, to what he
hopes will be a lifelong journey
of Jewish learning, education and
spirituality.
And he does it well.
So well, in fact, that Simon
was one of eight Hillel professionals recently awarded the
Richard M. Joel Exemplar of Excellence Award – the Pulitzer
Prize of the Hillel world. The
award, Hillel International’s
highest professional honor, is
given to a Hillel professional
who “exemplifies an outstanding
commitment to their campus
Hillels.”
Among others nominating
him for the award was NU president (and observant Jew) Morton Schapiro, who called Simon
“the single best, most charismatic
and talented Jewish communal
executive director I have encountered in my 25-plus years …
in the Jewish community.
In addition, a press release
from Hillel International notes,
“at the beginning of his tenure,
Simon inherited significant debt
and had to drastically cut expenses to balance the budget.
Three years later, he ended the
year with a significant surplus,
endowing Northwestern Hillel
with the resources needed to hire
more staff and dramatically increase the quality of its student
programming. Simon has woven
Hillel seamlessly into the fabric
of the University ….”
Despite the praise, Simon
modestly states he’s not sure why
Michael Simon with Jewish students at Northwestern University.
he won the honor but allows that
he’s built up a track record in his
Hillel work – seven years as associate director at the Harvard
University Hillel, five at Northwestern – and praises his staff
and lay leadership for directing
an organization that he calls
“mission-driven, that is trying to
engage and inspire students to
develop Jewish identity while in
college.”
Of course that description
could fit just about any Hillel –
any Jewish organization, for that
matter. In a wide-ranging recent
phone conversation, Simon
talked tachlis, discussing how he
has nudged the 80-year-old NU
Hillel (Hillel itself is celebrating
its 90th) into a socially, spiritually and financially vibrant organization, one among many on
a campus bursting with diversity.
Simon himself grew up in
California and after college,
spent three years teaching elementary school, then completed
a master’s degree in public policy
at Harvard’s Kennedy School of
Government. He studied at Israel’s Pardes Institute from 2001
to 2003, then joined Harvard’s
Hillel as associate director, figuring it was a place where he could
have a direct influence on young
Jews at a pivotal time in their
lives, he says
Today, Simon admits that
his task is enormous. We live in a
time, he says, when “students are
very interested in and aware of
their various identities. You’re
not just one thing or another
thing – you’re where you’re from,
your ethnic connection.”
Many of the students he interacts with are from interfaith
families, and some of those, as
well as others from “100 percent”
Jewish families, don’t have a
strong Jewish background.
(Many do, of course.)
“Some haven’t had very
much grounding in Jewish history, education or spirituality but
they come with the potential to
explore,” Simon says. “The question is, are we going to have an
opportunity to connect with
them? The menu of opportunities
to explore their identity has only
multiplied in recent years. Jewish
life (on campus) is flourishing,
but it’s not just Jewish life. There
are dozens and dozens of organizations competing for students’
time and energy – religious, social, cultural, community service.
We are in the marketplace of
ideas, identity, exploration.”
To find out how Simon and
other forward-thinking Hillel directors around the country swim
in these new waters, it’s necessary
to take a peek at the Hillel world
of 20 years ago.
Moment magazine runs a
cover picture portraying Hillel
devotees as unpopular geeks; the
typical Hillel experience on most
campuses consists of Shabbat
dinners and religious services inside a designated building.
Perhaps recognizing that the
organization was not appealing
to large numbers of Jewish college students, beginning in the
’90s, Simon says, “there was a
push to make Hillel, not exactly
cool, but to recognize that if you
were just the place where you
have to have people come in the
doors, it would be a very closed
community. The tagline was,
‘Maximize the number of Jews
doing Jewish with other Jews.’
They needed to figure out ways
to go out and engage young Jewish students who weren’t necessarily going to come into the
doors. That began the push that
we call the engagement initiative.”
Today, the Hillel world
looks a lot different.
“The more effective Hillels
try to go out and meet students
where they’re at,” Simon says.
“We play a kind of parallel track.
We are out on campus; it’s not
just having a building. We have
staff and student leaders who try
to reach students where they’re
at, and we’re very fortunate to
have a lovely building (the
Fiedler Hillel Center near the
Evanston campus), a space, a
center of Jewish life on campus.
We encourage both of those aspects to flourish.”
Activities that, as Simon
puts it, “go outside the four walls
of the Hillel building” include
everything from Birthright Israel
trips every summer – Hillel partners with the Birthright organization and has sent more than
100 NU students to tour the Jewish state with their peers – to alternative spring break, serviceoriented visits to a range of countries, to something as elemental
as baking challah.
The NU version of Challah
for Hunger, a national program,
has in fact been a big success on
campus, Simon says. Every weekend some 20 to 40 students come
to the Hillel building to bake
challah, which they sell on campus and through a website. Half
of the proceeds go to the national organization and half to a
local hunger-related charity,
voted on by the students’ board.
About 100 challahs a week go
out.
This low-tech project fulfills
many students’ hunger, not just
for challah but for service-related
rather than educational or religious projects, Simon says.
Alternative winter and
spring break programs do the
same in a more concentrated
9
way. These are “service trips with
a Jewish lens,” he says, to parts of
the world as diverse as Poland,
Jamaica and Morocco. A 2015
trip to New Orleans will focus on
Jewish-black dialogue.
These service trips “tend to
attract students who might not
otherwise be engaged, and they
build a buzz,” Simon says, letting
students know that “Hillel is involved in service, cultural conversations, Israel exploration,
interfaith and intercultural activities on campus.”
There’s more. Simon ticks
off a number of lecture series –
the most recent, and very popular, speaker was Israeli author and
journalist Yossi Klein Halevi –
and other events that have
brought the likes of comedians
Sarah Silverman and Andy Samberg to campus.
Also: a Jewish theater company, partners with Hillel, that,
Simon notes, “puts on four or
five mainstage performances on
a campus where theater is really
important. And these are not just
religious or holiday celebrations”
but important plays that have
some connection to Judaism but
may not have religious experience as their main focus. (“Next
to Normal,” the quirky musical
exploration of mental illness, is
planned for next year.)
There’s a Jewish a cappella
group, ShireiNu, that, Simon
says, holds its own in a field of 17
or 18 a cappella groups on campus. A campus rabbi, Aaron
Potek, offers classes and other educational opportunities. There’s
an engagement associate, Emily
Kagan, who oversees a Campus
Engagement Corps that includes
eight students whose task it is,
Simon says, to “come up with
creative ways to reach unengaged
students and connect them to
Jewish opportunities.” There are
holiday-related activities. And
on and on. If there’s a Jewish or
even Jewishly-curious student at
Northwestern, Simon wants to
engage with her or him.
I
n many ways, Simon admits,
he’s lucky to be at NU. For
one thing, he feels comfortable in what he calls his adopted
home town of Chicago. (His
wife, Claire Sufrin, a professor of
Jewish Studies at Northwestern,
is a native, and both of their
sons, Jacob, 3, and Ethan, five
months, were born here.)
For another reason, NU has
largely escaped the anti-Israel
skirmishes, dissension, pro-BDS
(Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement) sentiment and
in some cases outright anti-Semitism that have roiled many another American campuses,
including neighbors Loyola and
DePaul universities. Simon is not
sure why, but doesn’t take any of
the credit.
“It may be simply that student government at Northwestern has not seemed to be very
interested in making political
statements, whether about Israel
or anything else,” he says. “Student government here tends to
focus a little more on their own
agenda, what happens on campus, improving campus services.”
In addition, he says, Students for Justice in Palestine, the
national organization that has
been largely responsible for promoting a pro-BDS agenda on
college campuses, “has really
pushed in some places to try to
have political messages coming
out of student government” but
not in others. (The organization
has not really been successful at
Loyola or DePaul, either, he
notes, as the administration has
rejected BDS as university policy.)
That may be changing,
though, Simon says, as he has
noted an uptick in SJP activities
– speakers and events – at Northwestern. He believes he, the Hillel and the campus are ready for
that activity.
“The campus is a bit more of
a conservative campus,” he says.
“That may be shifting a bit, but
we have literally hundreds of student organizations, a lot of student energy related to communal
service. ‘Global engagement’ is a
big catchword at Northwestern.
Until relatively recently that
hasn’t translated into ardent
anti-Israel activism.”
If it does, he says, “our students on campus would actively
oppose BDS activities.”
A formidable array of programs and services are in place
on campus to oppose any anti-Israel sentiment that may waft in,
Simon says. Wildcats for Israel, a
pro-Israel group loosely affiliated
with AIPAC, and J Street U, affiliated with that more left-leaning organization, “work very
collaboratively together to present a unified message related to
promoting Israel on campus,” he
says.
“The anti-Israel groups try
to make a linkage to social justice,” Simon says, a trend he
finds troubling. Pro-Israel groups
on campus make the same linkage in the other direction.
“We’re very strongly wanting to combat that message” of
anti-Israel groups, he says. “We
have programming that is very
proactive – speakers related to Israel, open to anyone on campus
to come, hear, learn, be challenged and raise challenging
questions. We try to bring a nuanced, sophisticated message related to Israel’s importance but
also the challenges Israel faces.
We see that as part of our educational role.”
He likes to point out to students that “in the course of the
previous century (Jews) were at
the forefront of social justice activities. It feels in recent years
that some of that relationship between Judaism and social justice
is not as prominent for some of
our younger generation. Our Hillel is very interested in continu-
Michael Simon with students at Hillel’s annual Latkepalooza party celebrating Chanukah.
ing to explore that linkage.”
He might point out the biblical text that commands us to
remember “the stranger, the
widow, the orphan, the poor.
That message I believe is part of
our cultural and historical DNA,
and we want to figure out ways to
see and express that in our role as
individuals. I think we can and
should be part of the SJP conversations happening in our communities, our campuses.” He is
“exploring how to be more effective in that realm.”
Similarly, the Open Hillel
movement, a student-run campaign that originated at Harvard
(after Simon’s time there) and
was designed to encourage more
discussion with perceived anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups,
has taken no hold at Northwestern.
“I don’t have much to say
about it,” Simon says. “It’s been
more of a conversation happening with Hillel International. We
haven’t had activity specific to
Open Hillel,” which has criticized Hillel International for allegedly preventing campus
Hillels from encouraging cosponsorship or dialogue with proPalestinian campus groups.
“Our Hillel has been and
continues to be and will be a
place that is open to students discussing and exploring their opinions on a wide range of topics,
including Israel,” he says. “The
message I hear is that our students feel, whether they are very
very strong supporters of Israel or
they feel they support Israel but
want to challenge Israeli policies,
across that spectrum students feel
Hillel provides them a place to
ask questions, to do that exploration,” he says.
Between himself, campus
rabbi Potek, student leaders and
leaders of organizations such as
Wildcats for Israel and J Street
U, students should have all the
resources they need to support or
to challenge Israel, he says.
“They feel our Hillel and
our Jewish community on campus is an open one,” Simon says.
“We would be aware if (students)
didn’t feel that way, and we
haven’t had any students affiliated with the Open Hillel movement.”
N
orthwestern was different
once. There may have been
a Hillel on campus for 80
years, but the university was also
for years known as one (among
many, including Harvard) that
abided by a quota system for admitting Jews.
“When I mentioned (the
80th anniversary) to Morty
Schapiro, he said, it’s going to be
the 50th (anniversary) of the lifting of quotas,” Simon says. “He’s
aware of the transformation in
two generations. There has been
Jewish life at NU for 80 years and
even in the time of the quotas in
certain ways there was vibrant
Jewish life, but there was a sense
it did not welcome Jews in the
way it does today.”
He sometimes hears about
those days from older grads in
what he calls “some of the really
meaningful interactions I have
had with alumni.”
The last three presidents of
the university have been Jewish,
but Schapiro, while a “deeply
passionate” Jew, doesn’t show a
preference for Jewish students or
activities, Simon says.
“His caring about and celebrating his own Judaism means
he is sensitive to celebrating and
enabling students to celebrate
their diversity,” he says of
Schapiro. “That’s really important to him. He recognizes the
importance of Jewish students
having resources and opportunities to express their Judaism and
feels the same way about Muslim
students.”
Schapiro made it a priority
to hire a Muslim chaplain,
Simon says, and praises that
chaplain, Pahera Ahmad, as “one
of if not the most talented Muslim chaplains” in an American
university.
“Morty (Schapiro) creates
space for students to be passionate and expressive of what their
identity is,” Simon says. “He is
committed to religious and cultural life on campus, and student
life is thriving.”
S
o is Simon and his family, he
says, praising the “giants” before him (such as former
longtime Hillel director Michael
Balinsky, now executive director
of the Chicago Board of Rabbis)
and the organization’s board and
lay leadership. And he sees his 12
years at Hillels as a continuum in
which he and others have built a
growing network that extends
beyond students’ four years of
college and out into the wider
world.
Hillel, he says, has given
him the opportunity to work
with students at a “pivot point”
in their lives, “when they’re asking questions – Who am I? What
kind of impact do I want to have
on the world? What role does Judaism play?” It is a real honor
and responsibility to be part of
that journey.”
10
Community Calendar
Saturday
January 3
Young Israel of West Rogers
Park presents Chasidic folk
rock band Rogers Park.
Complementary soft drinks,
ice cream and snacks. Pizza
available for purchase. 7:30
p.m., 2706 W. Touhy,
Chicago. Donation requested. (773) 501-4728.
Congregation Beth Shalom
presents Havdallah, Dinner
and a Movie featuring film
“The Flat” and review by
Reid Schultz. 5:30-10 p.m.,
3433 Walters Ave., Northbrook. $15 members, $20
non-members. RSVP, dfriedman@bethshalomnb.org or
(847) 498-4100 ext. 46.
younger and their parents
with interactive Magic by
Randy. 6:30 p.m., Route 83
and Hilltop Road, Long
Grove. $5 member family in
advance, $10 non-member
family in advance, $5 additional at door. Registration,
bethjudea.org or (847) 6340777.
Sunday
Sunday
January 11
Monday
January 5
Congregation Beth Judea
hosts dinner and discussion
on “Dealing with AntiSemitism on College Campuses.” 6-7:30 p.m., Route
83 and Hilltop Road, Long
Grove. $12. Reservations required, bethjudea.org or
(847) 634-0777.
Wednesday
January 7
Ezra-Habonim, the Niles
Township Jewish Congregation Sisterhood presents
Games Day Afternoon following lunch. 11:30 a.m.,
4500 W. Dempster, Skokie.
$15 members with paid
reservations by Jan. 2; $18
non-members or door. (847)
675-4141.
Friday
January 9
Congregation B’nai Tikvah
holds Musical Celebration
of Kabbalat Shabbat followed by Oneg. 6:30 p.m.,
1558 Wilmot Road, Deerfield.
presents member Renee
Klass speaking on “Disability Awareness” during
Shabbat service. 7:30 p.m.,
Route 83 and Hilltop Road,
Long Grove. bethjudea.org
or (847) 634-0777.
Saturday
January 10
Lincolnwood Jewish Congregation A.G. Beth Israel
shows film documentary
"Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness." 8:30
p.m. 7117 N. Crawford Ave.,
Lincolnwood. Donations appreciated. RSVP required,
RabbiGordon@LJCCong.org
or (847) 676-0491.
Jewish Child and Family
Services presents “The Broken and The Whole: Discovering Joy after
Heartbreak” with Rabbi
Charles S. Sherman. 10:30
a.m.-noon, 3220 Big Tree
Lane, Wilmette. ElizabethCohen@jcfs.org or (847)
745-5404.
JCC PresenTense Chicago
hosts 2015 Kickoff Celebration featuring introduction of new fellows, dinner
and keynote speaker, Lisa
Nigro, Inspiration Corporation founder. 6-8 p.m.,
Anshe Emet Synagogue,
3751 N. Broadway, Chicago.
RSVP, JCC PresenTense
Chicago or (847) 763-3629.
SPOTLIGHT
National Council of Jewish Women
Chicago North Shore Section, Spertus
Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership and Chicago Alliance Against
Sexual Exploitation show documentary,
“End Demand,” followed by panel discussion on fighting sex trafficking.
2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 11, Global Human Trafficking Awareness Day, 610 S.
Michigan, Chicago. Tickets $18, $10 Spertus members, $8 students.
Spertus.edu or (312) 322-1773.
January 18
Services presents
“Nechama: A Workshop to
Comfort the Bereaved
Among Us” for the newly
bereaved and their loved
ones. 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.,
North Shore Congregation
Israel, 1185 Sheridan Road,
Glencoe. ElizabethCohen@
jcfs.org or (847) 745-5404.
Illinois Holocaust Museum
and Education Center
shows film, “Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley, the Original Queen of
Comedy.” 1-3 p.m., 9603
Woods Drive, Skokie. Free
with museum admission.
Reservations required,
reservations@ilhmec.org.
Anti-Semitism” during
Shabbat service. 7:30 p.m.,
Route 83 and Hilltop Road,
Long Grove. bethjudea.org
or (847) 634-0777.
Saturday
January 24
Beth Hillel Congregation
Bnai Emunah presents Film
Festival Evening featuring
television episode hosted
by Bill Kurtis on notorious
Jewish gangsters in America followed by discussion.
7:30 p.m., 3220 Big Tree
Lane, Wilmette. $10. (847)
256-1213.
and Education Center presents anthropologist Dr.
Yolanda Moses and African
American Studies professor
Dr. David Stovall speaking
on “Race and the Economy: Jobs, Housing,
Poverty.” 5-8 p.m., 9603
Woods Drive, Skokie. Reservations required, RACEexhibition@ywcae-ns.org.
Saturday
January 25
Friday
January 16
KAM Isaiah Israel hosts sixth
annual Martin Luther King
Food Justice and Sustainability Weekend. 7:30 p.m.,
also 4:30-6:30 p.m. Saturday,
Jan. 17 and 10 a.m.-2:45
p.m. Sunday, Jan. 18. 1100 E.
Hyde Park Blvd., Chicago.
Registration, kamii.org/MLK
or (773) 924-1234.
Monday
January 19
Services holds parents support group. 7-8:30 p.m.,
Response Center, 9304
Skokie Blvd., Skokie. $15
couple. TraceyKite@jcfs.org
or (847) 745-5411.
JCC Chicago’s Theater presents “King Artie and the
Knights of the Rad Table.”
7 p.m., also 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 29, noon and 2:30
p.m. Sunday, Jan. 25 and
Sunday, Feb. 1, Mayer Kaplan JCC, 5050 Church,
Skokie. $16 adults, $11 ages
7-12, $6 ages 6 and under.
gojcc.org/theater or (847)
763-3514
Friday
January 23
Saturday
January 17
holds Magical Havdalah
Night for children 7 or
Services holds program on
“Helping our Girls Feel
Good about Being Female.” Grades 3-5, 9:15-10
a.m. Grades 6-8, 10:15-11
a.m. Temple Beth Israel,
3601 Dempster, Skokie. $15,
free for TBI members. Tracey
Kite@jcfs.org or (847) 7455411.
Thursday
January 22
presents American Jewish
Committee Regional Director Amy Stoken speaking
on “The Rising Tide of
Spertus Institute for Jewish
Learning and Leadership
shows 1953 television
episode of “This Is Your
Life” featuring Holocaust
survivor Hanna Bloch
Kohner. 7 p.m., 610 S.
Michigan Ave., Chicago.
$18, $10 Spertus members,
$8 students. spertus.edu or
(312) 322-1773.
Sunday
Thursday
January 15
general meeting featuring
author and design consultant Sallie Posniak. 12:30
p.m., Meyer Kaplan JCC,
5050 Church, Skokie. $3.
mortfinkel@hotmail.com or
(847) 675-5873.
and Education Center hosts
moderated discussion
with Holocaust survivors
of Auschwitz. 1:30-3 p.m.,
9603 Woods Drive, Skokie.
Free with museum admission. Reservations required,
reservations@ilhmec.org.
Temple Beth Israel presents
Pasta Dinner and Dessert
Auction, fund-raiser for TBI
Youth Israel Scholarship
Fund. 5 p.m., 3601 W.
Dempster, Skokie. $8, $25
household. tbiskokie.org or
(847) 675-0951.
Tuesday
January 27
Ketura Hadassah holds
January 31
Temple Beth Israel’s Sisterhood presents T’Fillot
Nashim (Women’s Prayer
Service) followed by luncheon. 10:30 a.m., 3601 W.
Dempster, Skokie. tbiskokie.
org or (847) 675-0951.
Sunday
February 8
Spertus Institute for Jewish
Learning and Leadership
shows new documentary
film, “Theodore Bikel: In
the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem” followed by discussion with music critic
Andrew Patner. 2 p.m., 610
S. Michigan Ave., Chicago.
$18, $10 Spertus members,
$8 students. Spertus.edu or
(312) 322-1773.
Temple Beth Israel Brotherhood presents “Midwest
Dueling Pianos” for adults
only with raffles, silent auction, desserts and wine. 710 p.m., 3601 W. Dempster,
Skokie. $25 advance, $30
door. Reservations,
tbiskokie.org or (847) 6750951.
11
Letters
Help for OCD
Abby Sher’s article about
her life long struggle with OCD
describes a chronic and at times
debilitating psychiatric condition that affect about 2.3% of the
adult population. It also impacts
on children and adolescents. It is
important to note that individuals can be treated to reduce their
distress with effective treatments. Cognitive therapy can
help people change their troubling thoughts and a specific
form of cognitive therapy called
exposure response prevention
helps to desensitize individuals to
the very thing they fear.
Medications can also be very
effective in reducing symptoms
especially when it is combined
with cognitive therapy. A very
useful book about this disorder is
called the “Imp of the Mind” by
Lee Baer. An additional resource
is the OCD Society which publishes a newsletter and there are
support groups in the Chicago
area.
Phillip L. Elbaum
Licensed Clinical Social Worker
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychiatry
Loyola Medical School
Russia
CONTINUED
F RO M PAG E
2
partment and, for the first time
in a long time, I’m not in the
least apprehensive about identifying myself as such.”
If anything, Russian Jews see
the worsening economic situation as the greater threat to their
well-being. Aliyah officials in the
Memorial
CONTINUED
F RO M PAG E
7
It had just arrived back in Halifax from Toronto after a round of
repairs.
Chapman said the wheel has
no doubt had a “difficult time” in
Halifax, but stressed that it will
always have a home on the East
Coast.
“I want it to work, it needs
to work,” she said. “If it can work
at Pier 21, that’s great.”
But, she added, “It’s not the
only place it could be.”
The question, then, is where
the Holocaust memorial belongs
– at Pier 21, its intended but illfated home, or another site, such
as the new Canadian Museum
for Human Rights, in Winnipeg,
or the outdoor National Holocaust Monument, which Libe-
Cool to
global warming
Thank you for your recent
feature about Laurie Zoloth using
Jewish concepts to promote belief in global warming. Zoloth
promotes the fact that global
warming is a religious belief and
not based in any scientific findings. That is why Al Gore and
his followers refuse to discuss any
of his findings, claiming “The
case is closed.”
When one states: “These are
the facts, there is no discussion,”
as Al Gore has done, that would
be a religious belief, not a scientific conclusion. That is why
global warming disciples are offended when their assertions are
challenged. The challengers are
labeled “Climate Deniers.”
In your entire article, not
once did Zoloth produce any evidence that anthropogenic global
warming is real, rather she focuses
on how religious practices can be
incorporated in the global warming beliefs. One technique she
uses is to refer to global warming
as “climate change.” This is because for the last 15 years, the
earth has not been warming.
Since the conclusion did not
agree with the hypothesis, the climate worshippers changed the
name of the phenomenon.
These climate fools use the
leftist tactic of creating a crisis
that requires a government solution. They simply state that the
problem is global warming but
never identify the climate baseline that we need to return to.
What they have done is demand
that our government pay billions
of dollars to other countries. In
December 2009, Hillary Clinton
addressed the Copenhagen Climate Conference, and pledged
$100 billion dollars a year to developing countries to fight “Climate Change.”
Where do you think that
money is coming from, U.S. taxpayers? Obama has stated that
the most serious threat that we
are facing today is global warming. It is nice of Hillary and
Obama to be so generous with
your money. It’s comforting to
know that with the nuclear
threats to the United States and
Israel from Iran and North
Korea, Obama’s primary focus in
on global warming.
The next time a climate
worshipper tells you that our extremely cold winter is due to
global warming, pose this question to them: “If warming causes
cooling, what does cooling
cause?”
IN F
CUS
The Israel Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) hosted its Man of
Distinction Gala in honor of Jeffrey Kreizelman, an immigration
lawyer in Chicago and a survivor of multiple myeloma who
has been in remission for over four years thanks to the drug Velcade that was developed based on research by ICRF Research Professors and Nobel Laureates Drs. Aaron Ciechanover
and Avram Hershko. Pictured are, from left, David Abramson,
Chair ICRF Chicago; Kenneth Goodman, National Chair of
ICRF; Sandy Rosen, Manager of Individual Gifts ICRF Chicago;
Jeffrey Kriezelman, Jennifer Flink, Director of Development
ICRF Chicago; and Eric Heffler, National Executive Director.
Robert Kandelman
Chicago
region speak of a compounding
effect in which the economic crisis combines with growing disquiet over the Kremlin’s politics
to tip the scales in favor of emigration.
“If the financial crisis continues for even another few
months, I may leave for Israel regardless of politics just to make a
living,” said Ilya Agron, a software engineer and businessman
from Moscow.
Howard Flower, the St. Petersburg-based director of aliyah
for the International Christian
Embassy Jerusalem, said the
enormity of the economic hit on
the country has not yet been
fully absorbed and he is bracing
for the fallout once it does.
“Once this sinks in,” Fowler
said, “I expect we’ll see a major
increase in aliyah from here.”
skind will design and is expected
to open in Ottawa next year.
There is little consensus,
however, as to where the Wheel
of Conscience’s frustrating journey should come to an end.
In an interview, Fogel,
whose organization is working
with Pier 21 to resolve the issue,
said the Holocaust memorial site
in Ottawa would be an ideal location. The federal Department
of Canadian Heritage said in a
statement that CIJA and the museum are “working to find a
home for the Wheel that is closer
to the manufacturer” and “provides a more appropriate environment.”
In other words, not Halifax,
home to approximately 1,500
Jews. (Pier 21 is currently closed
for renovations, but is slated to
reopen in May.)
But Sidney Zoltak, co-president of the Canadian Associa-
tion of Holocaust Survivors and
Descendants, said Pier 21 is the
only place for a monument remembering one of the darkest
moments in Canadian immigration history. Had the St. Louis
been permitted to dock in Halifax, its passengers almost certainly would have entered
Canada at Pier 21, which like
Ellis Island was a major point of
debarkation for thousands of immigrants to North America.
For Zoltak, a Polish Holocaust survivor who landed at Pier
21 in May 1948, the decision to
station a federally funded memorial to a failure of Canadian immigration policy at one of the
country’s historic immigration
hubs was a symbolic apology by
the government.
“If you take that monument
away and put it somewhere else,
that apology, as far as I’m concerned, is not there,” he said.
Rabbis from Lubavitch Chabad of Illinois celebrate Chanukah
with Governor Elect Bruce Rauner.
The personal accounts of Chicago-area Jewish refugees, forced to
flee their homes in Arab lands and Iran, were the centerpiece of
the first national day to commemorate displaced Jews, hosted by
the Consulate General of Israel to the Midwest, the Jewish
Federation, Stand With Us, and Jimena. The event was designed to raise awareness about the plight of the 850,000 refugees
who were displaced from their homes in 1948 and in subsequent
years, because they were Jewish. Pictured, from left, are Isaac
Cohen, retired Northwestern University professor and refugee
from Egypt; Roey Gilad, Consul General of Israel to the Midwest; and Jacqueline Saper, C.P.A. and refugee from Iran.
12
Chicago Jewish Parent
Raising the Jewish slacker
By Abigail Shrier
Los Angeles Jewish Journal
“The Triple Package: How
Three Unlikely Traits Explain
the Rise and Fall of Cultural
Groups in America,” has garnered a lot of attention. “Tiger
Mom” Amy Chua and her Jewish husband, Jed Rubenfeld,
argue that three cultural traits account for the disproportionate
success of Jews, Mormons and
other immigrant groups: a sense
of superiority, insecurity about
their place in American society
and the self-discipline parents inculcate in their children.
Mention of Jewish success or
superiority typically elicits equal
parts pride and unease among
American Jews. In this case,
however, both are unwarranted,
because whatever the merits of
claims about American Jews,
they no longer apply. Today’s
Jewish parents are so taken with
contemporary laissez-faire child
rearing and so unlikely to demand self-discipline from their
children that one wonders if
we’re not raising a generation of
Jewish slackers.
Here in the trenches, for instance, it’s not uncommon to
hear a permissive Jewish parent
offer this bit of wisdom: When
your children are ready to potty
train, they’ll let you know.
If this advice worked for
you, congratulate yourself.
You’ve raised a high-minded little sophisticate (i.e., a girl.) I
have twin boys, and though I
managed to successfully bribe
one onto the seat by plying him
with candy, his brother wasn’t
budging.
I waited for him to “let me
know,” while a drumbeat of con-
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Chua and Rubenfeld’s historical
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temporary wisdom thumped
through my brain: Don’t break
his spirit. Let it all happen “organically” (a favorite word of
contemporary Jewish mothers). I
met frustrated mothers telling
themselves the same thing, patiently changing the diapers of 4and 5-year-olds, who eat like frat
boys and defecate like farm animals.
As my son neared 3 1/2, I
began to fear his “Eureka!” moment might coincide with his receiving a driver’s permit. So, I
threw the approved orthodoxy to
the wind. I waited for his moment of desperation to rise.
Then, I grabbed the potty and
pinned him to it.
Mothers I’ve told this to
have reacted with horror. It’s
child abuse, they say, disregarding a child’s agency this way. To
say nothing of the harm to his
self-actualization.
But right after I let up on
Mr. Refuses-to-Potty-Train, he
stood up with a giant smile, did a
little dance, and we all celebrated with mouthfuls of gluten
and white processed sugar (formerly known as Snickers bars).
Over the next few days, his reluctance disappeared, and he announced his triumph to anyone
who would hear it – Grandma,
the mailman, all manner of visitors to our home. Whatever
small fortune I may have added
to his future psychotherapy bills,
I’d inadvertently given himself
something else, too: an opportunity to be proud of himself.
This was the central insight
of Chua’s first book, “The Battle
Hymn of the Tiger Mother.” I
was Chua’s student at Yale Law; I
liked her then, and I enjoyed
“Battle Hymn,” and was perplexed by the righteous uproar
that greeted it, all from people
who seemed to take a self-deprecating memoir far too personally.
Chua is exceptionally bright,
lucid and engaging, both in person and in print. But she also has
that rare quality I so appreciate
in a person: She never lies to
you.
Jewish parents today are a
different matter. Here’s another
Torah
CONTINUED
F RO M PAG E
6
eulogy and part ethical will, during which their unique and admirable characteristics, their
approaches to adversity and joy,
what principles they held most
dear, are remembered. All who
hear them may then carry away,
Amy Chua
lie I often hear from them: Rote
memorization is harmful to children. Gone are the Jewish parents who obsessively drilled their
kids before tests (producing the
cultural phenomenon Chua and
Rubenfeld describe). Today’s
Jewish parents are more likely to
prefer “organic,” child-directed
learning.
Call me a Jewish throwback,
a Yiddishe Tiger Mama – with
two totally potty-trained little
boys. Call me unenlightened.
But it’s pretty great for kids to
know their ABCs. If there’s an
interpretive dance method of inculcating them, I’d love to hear
about it. But I’m a reads-bookswith-a-pen kind of girl, a maker
of charts, so I made them. My
kids were just 1 year old when I
started drilling them on ABCs.
All in good humor of course, but
I kept drilling. More than one
Jewish parent informed me this
was “developmentally inappropriate.”
Maybe. But by 16 months,
something wonderful happened:
The world began opening up for
them. My boys spotted letters
everywhere and pointed them
out, always with shrill exclamations of joy. There was, quite suddenly, emerging sense in the
symbols they saw around them.
A vast code out there, and for
the first time, they were in on it.
Today’s version of Jewish
parenting purports to be more
compassionate than the old by
allowing “kids to be kids.” Parents hover but never discipline,
and they don’t demand self-discipline, either. We’ve all seen the
Hobbesian results: boys with
long, messy hair and no set bedtime, children whose spelling
and grammar goes uncorrected in
school (so as not to impede their
self-expression). Too shy to say
“thank you” or greet an adult.
Not to worry if they can’t construct, much less diagram, a
grammatically correct sentence.
Children are endlessly creative
little creatures, they say. Why
constrain them?
Future achievement? Perhaps that’s not a good enough
reason. But if Chua and Rubenfeld’s trifecta is to be believed,
American Jews have a choice:
They can either return to the
wise ways of their forebears, or
they can finally stop worrying
about how to react to reports
about disproportionate Jewish
success. In another generation,
there won’t be any.
gather to them some part that
made these people worth holding
on to, worth remembering and
learning from.
With the re-reading of Genesis each year comes the opportunity to re-engage with the
Patriarchs, with each of their
life’s triumphs and tragedies
again open before us. Then each
year we can gather anew those
feelings about aspects of life that
have touched us. The lessons of
Genesis are timeless, always relevant, and form the foundation in
which to interpret all the laws
yet to follow in the next four
books, allowing us to go from
strength to strength, and to
strengthen each other.
Lawrence F. Layfer M.D. is
vice chairman of medicine at North
Shore University Health System,
Skokie Hospital.
13
By Joseph Aaron
CONTINUED
F RO M PAG E
24 hour
peace
of mind
14
8) Suffering from ‘existential schizophrenia.’ “It’s the sickness of
those who live a double life, fruit of hypocrisy that is typical of
mediocre and progressive spiritual emptiness that academic degrees
cannot fill. It’s a sickness that often affects those who, abandoning pastoral service, limit themselves to bureaucratic work, losing contact
with reality and concrete people.”
9) Committing the ‘terrorism of gossip.’ “It’s the sickness of cowardly people who, not having the courage to speak directly, talk behind people’s backs.”
10) Glorifying one’s bosses. “It’s the sickness of those who court
their superiors, hoping for their benevolence. They are victims of careerism and opportunism, they honor people who aren’t G-d.”
11) Being indifferent to others. “When, out of jealousy or cunning, one finds joy in seeing another fall rather than helping him up
and encouraging him.”
12) Having a ‘funereal face.’ “In reality, theatrical severity and
sterile pessimism are often symptoms of fear and insecurity … be polite, serene, enthusiastic and happy and transmit joy wherever you go.”
13) Wanting more. When someone “tries to fill an existential
emptiness in his heart by accumulating material goods, not because
he needs them but because he’ll feel more secure.”
14) Forming ‘closed circles’ that seek to be stronger than the
whole. “This sickness always starts with good intentions but as time
goes by, it enslaves its members by becoming a cancer that threatens
the harmony of the body and causes so much bad.”
15) Seeking worldly profit and showing off. “It’s the sickness of
those who insatiably try to multiply their powers and to do so are capable of calumny, defamation and discrediting others … to show
themselves as being more capable than others.”
Yes, those are the words of the leader of the world’s Roman
Catholics, words addressed to those who run the Vatican. But the message is right out of Judaism, which condemns lashon hara, gossip; emphasizes putting your trust, your emunah, solely in G-d not in other
people, no matter how powerful; teaches caring for others, visiting the
sick, helping the needy; warns against focusing on the material to the
detriment of the spiritual; encourages cheshbon hanefesh, taking a
spiritual inventory of oneself; says to always live b’smicha, with joy;
and on and on.
They are words Jews should not be scared of because they came
from the pope, but words Jews should embrace because they show us
how to go about living our lives as Hashem wishes us to. Don’t obsess
about the source, focus on the message. If every Jew worked on curing the 15 ailments the pope lists, how much better Judaism would be,
every Jew would be.
One more thing. As much as I appreciated what the pope had to
say this week, so was I disgusted at what a Jewish group did this week.
At its annual international convention, United Synagogue
Youth, the Conservative movement’s youth group, voted to relax its
rules barring its teenage board members from dating non-Jews.
And Conservative Judaism wonders why it’s going down the
tubes.
Yes, I understand the reality that young Jews date non-Jews.
And indeed four in 10 Conservative Jews who have married since
2000 have married non-Jews, according to the 2013 Pew Research
Center survey of U.S. Jewry.
But the way to deal with that is not to give up. And it’s certainly
not to tell young Jews especially that something that is not okay is. I
understand young Jews will do what they wish, but I also know principles matter, the messages that are sent matter, holding tight to values sends a powerful signal. Instead, USY has chosen to wave the flag
of surrender.
Here’s what Jordan Dinkin, a USY board member had to say in support of lifting the ban. “I believe that as a progressive youth movement,
if we choose in our secular life to date someone who is not of the Jewish religion, I don’t see why there should be limitations within USY.”
Exactly. She doesn’t see, thinks it’s unfair, maybe even racist, feels
it impinges on her life, limits her choices. Well, Jordan, Judaism is
about limiting choices. We are not here to do whatever we feel like.
There is a power to USY telling those who would be its board members around the country that to hold such a position of influence
means you are a role model and that means you only date Jews because that sends a message to all those teens who belong to USY. It
tells them there is a reason Jews should marry Jews, and if they don’t
like that or think that’s wrong, first find out why that is, what difference it makes. Instead of just lifting the ban, USY should explain and
educate why the ban is there and why it is so right and necessary, why
dating within the faith, creating Jewish families, is key to a sustainable
Jewish future.
Jews can learn much from what the pope said. Jews should learn
much from what USY did. Only the lessons are very different, and the
pope’s is the one that is most Jewish.
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DELECIA ESFORMES
14
By
Joseph
Aaron
The pope’s Jewish words
www.
chicagojewishnews
.com
The Jewish
News place in
cyberspace
One of my absolutely favorite plays of all times is that great musical “My Fair Lady.” And one of my absolutely favorite songs in that
play is “Why Can’t a Woman be More Like a Man?”
Good question by the way. But the question I want to focus on
this time is why can’t rabbis be more like the pope?
Before I get into that, may I first ask you all to grow up. There’s
nothing wrong with a Jew admiring the pope, just as there is nothing
wrong, indeed a lot right, with Jews learning from other faiths.
I have never understood why those who think themselves the
holiest of Jews so freak out when it comes to anything Christian, as if
Judaism is so fragile, so weak that it can’t stand up to any contact with,
talk about another religion.
It’s nuts. Those who think themselves the strongest adherents of
Judaism, who think Judaism the faith with the strongest tie to G-d, act
the most frightened of any contact with other faiths, act as if Judaism
simply can’t handle having anything to do with, learning anything
from another religion.
And all this scaredy cat behavior reaches its peak this time of year
when so much noise is made about how Chanukah has nothing to do
with Christmas, when many won’t even say the word Christmas.
I went to a very religious school, went to a yeshiva headed by a
rabbi from a legendary rabbinic family and yet I really like Christmas.
I mean what’s not to like? People are in a good mood, much of the music is very catchy, and much of it written by Jews by the way. The lights
outside people’s houses are pretty, and you get a day maybe two off of
work. And the movie theaters have plenty of room.
So I don’t fear Christmas, know it’s not my holiday, but no reason I can’t enjoy the spirit and the sales.
All of which leads me to say that I really like the current pope. I
mean this is someone who is truly what a spiritual leader is supposed
to be. I love that he’s so upbeat, so accepting, so compassionate, so caring. Attributes I have found in very few rabbis I have known.
Indeed, there are very few rabbis I admire. Most are negative,
grumpy, cowardly, afraid to talk about G-d, judgmental, petty. I have
met a lot of rabbis and there are less than five that I think are what a
rabbi is supposed to be.
What I so like about Pope Francis is that in everything he has said
and done, he basically has tried to convey two messages: walk humbly
with the Lord, and don’t judge anyone else.
To me that truly is the essence of what Judaism is, and is a message we almost never hear from rabbis, and an attitude very few Jews
have. Indeed, those who most try to walk humbly with Hashem are
the most harshly judgmental of other Jews. And too many who don’t
judge other Jews, don’t devote themselves to following G-d’s lead.
My like of the pope only grew when I heard about his Christmas
talk to the staff who works at the Vatican. I won’t go into his entire
speech, but want to focus on what he called the “15 ailments of the
Curia.” The Curia is the cardinals, bishops, and priests who run the
central administration of the Catholic Church.
The list is something every Jew can learn from, would benefit
from taking to heart. Here are the ailments the pope listed, ailments
that too many Jews also suffer from.
1) Feeling immortal, immune or indispensable. Someone who
doesn’t criticize himself… doesn’t seek to improve, “is a sick body.”
2) Working too hard. “Rest for those who have done their work
is necessary, good and should be taken seriously.”
3) Becoming spiritually and mentally hardened. “It’s dangerous
to lose that human sensibility that lets you cry with those who are crying, and celebrate with those who are joyful.”
4) Planning too much. “Preparing things well is necessary, but
don’t fall into the temptation of trying to close or direct the freedom
of the Holy Spirit, which is bigger and more generous than any human plan.”
5) Working without coordination, like an orchestra that produces
noise. “When the foot tells the hand, ‘I don’t need you’ or the hand
tells the head, ‘I’m in charge.’”
6) Having ‘spiritual Alzheimer’s.’ “We see it in the people who
have forgotten their encounter with the Lord … in those who depend
completely on their here and now, on their passions, whims and manias, in those who build walls around themselves and become enslaved
to the idols that they have built with their own hands.”
7) Being rivals or boastful. “When one’s appearance, the color of
one’s vestments or honorific titles become the primary objective of life.”
SEE BY JOSEPH
AARON
ON
PAG E 1 3
15
Death Notices
Award-winning yet humble, Jewish culinary expert
Gil Marks nourished food lovers
By Hillel Kuttler
JTA
Gil Marks baked. He
cooked. He authoritatively discussed culinary traditions – traditions, period – of Jews from
seemingly every culture. Trained
as a rabbi and social worker, he
earned prestigious awards for
writing cookbooks yet remained
supremely humble. He had a
slightly high-pitched voice.
I knew none of this five
years ago when I came upon his
name, overwhelmed like a pinch
of salt in a bowlful of ingredients,
amid the prodigious clan produced by Harold and Beverly
Marks. “Gilbert Stanley Marks,
born in 1952 in Charleston,
W.Va., unmarried, no children”
was his one-line entry on a 19page family tree prepared by our
cousin in Washington state.
His brother referred me to
Gil, a resident of Manhattan’s
Upper West Side, when I sought
information for research on our
extended family. That led to our
long conversation that night,
two meetings, occasional phone
calls, periodic emails and multiple Facebook messages.
Many people consider
fourth cousins – our common
great-great-great-grandfather,
Zeev Alkovitzky, of Lithuania
was born in about the 1830s –
distant relatives. But Gil and I
connected immediately.
We reveled in genealogy
and Jewish history. We emailed
our articles to each other. We
both enjoyed cooking, I deign to
state in the manner of someone
painting by numbers proclaiming
that he, like Monet, is an artist.
Gil won the James Beard Foundation Award, for goodness sake,
for authoring “Olive Trees and
Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian
Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World,” and
contended for a second with
“The Encyclopedia of Jewish
Food,“ a masterpiece.
Jerry D. Schuster, beloved
husband of the late Elaine
Schuster, nee Wilhartz. Loving father of Richard L.
(Mary) Schuster and James
D. (Carol) Schuster. Cherished grandfather of Benjamin (Aimee) Schuster, Ann
(Brian) Sattin, Laura Schuster
and Jeffrey D. Schuster. Fond
brother of the late Jack
(Mary Lou) Schuster and Lois
(the late Edward) Fre-
“There were so many books
in him and a lot more he
could’ve contributed to the
world,” said Rita Rosenkranz, his
agent of more than a decade.
Gil’s death at 62 hardly
shocked those who knew him,
given his three-year fight with
lung cancer and his public sharing of the ordeal. While not a
smoker, he didn’t bemoan his affliction, just presented it matterof-factly. Numerous Facebook
posts on his medical treatment or
pharmaceutical regimen all
began thus: “The Saga Continues.”
Far more posts kvelled over
his beloved nieces and nephews
regularly visiting Alon Shvut,
where Gil lived in an apartment
at his parents’ home during extended stays in Israel. So many
more posts covered food: the
Shabbat dinner menu he’d just
prepared, Passover desserts he
baked, magazine articles, cooking
lessons given as bat mitzvah presents.
Last summer, as Gil’s condition worsened, some posts overlapped. On Sept. 1, he began
taking medical marijuana: dissolved in olive oil in the afternoon, in a capsule at bedtime.
“For weeks before starting
the marijuana, I was unable to
eat or function. Overnight –
with a single drop – my condition changed and subsequently I
have been able to eat and actually enjoy food. … The improvements in my life since I was
introduced to marijuana cannot
be overstated,” he wrote.
An ailing foodie appreciating taste once more, dayenu –
that would’ve sufficed. But Gil
couldn’t resist shifting to culinary-educator mode.
“By the way, for those of you
who asked about marijuana
brownies, here is the story” – he
began in a fascinating paragraph
covering Alice Toklas and a
Peter Sellers film involving pot
brownies.
Somehow, Gil performed his
culinary magic on a tiny stove in
undlich. Dear brother in law
of the late Marjorie (the late
Miller) Ullmann. Devoted
uncle, cousin and friend to
many. In lieu of flowers remembrances to Lakeside
Congregation or to the
Michael J. Fox Foundation
for Parkinson’s Research
www.michaeljfox.org would
be appreciated. Arrangements by Mitzvah Memorial
Funerals.
Gil Marks
a small kitchen “where you
couldn’t sit down,” said Barry
List, a longtime friend, who saw
pots stored in the living room
and platters cooling on the
couch in Gil’s Manhattan apartment.
In a telephone conversation
last spring, Gil told me he’d
begun giving away choice cookware to New York-area nieces
and nephews. He understood
that experimental drugs were a
long shot and said, convincingly,
“I’m not afraid of dying.” He
seemed gratified that loved ones
desired the tools of his trade.
Recently, a friend visited Gil
at a Jerusalem hospice and had
him autograph her “Olive” and
“Encyclopedia” books. She
posted a photo showing Gil signing while in bed wearing a hospital gown and a skullencompassing kipah. The autograph request pleased him, she
wrote.
As I penned this article, a
pot of soup bubbled on my stove.
There was no recipe – just
flanken bones, chopped carrots,
green beans, onions and potatoes; and lentils, barley, peas and
beans, a winter’s staple my mom
used to make.
I lowered the flame, and as
it simmered I discovered some
old emails from Gil. One carried
the subject line “Hillel’s soup
question” – about this very soup.
I’d asked what spices would provide richer flavor.
Gil offered a paragraph each
of suggestions for Italian mixedherb, Yemenite, basic and sweetspiced flavors.
“I hope,” he wrote, “this has
been of help.”
The soup, Gil, is comfort
food.
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IF THE FUNERAL ISN’T GOING
TO BE AT THE CHAPEL?
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Lloyd Mandel
• We provide the utmost in compassionate professional service.
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Founder,
also licensed in Florida
(no longer with
Lloyd Mandel Levayah Funerals)
• We will save your family $2000 to $5000 on a complete
funeral service and casket versus using a Chicago Jewish
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• If your synagogue has a discounted funeral plan with one of
our competitors, you can still select us instead. We guarantee a
minimum savings of 25% versus the funeral plan price.**
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If you have already pre-arranged through one of our competitors,
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Mitzvah Memorial Funerals
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500 Lake Cook Rd. Suite 350, Deerfield
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www.mitzvahfunerals.com
* Based on prices shown on our competitors general price lists
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Seymour Mandel
Lawrence “Larry”Mandel
847-778-6736
Homesteaders Insurance Agent
(Formerly with Piser)
William “Bill” Goodman
Homesteaders Insurance Agent
(no longer with Goodman Family Funerals)
I. Ian “Izzy” Dick
Gregory J. Lindeman
773. 505.3874
Director of Shmira
Jerry Sadoff
16

SIMON DOES - Chicago Jewish News

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