critical/constructive Volume 19 Number 2 / SUMMER 2018

Our Final Issue from the foundation critical / constructive Dear Reader, Welcome to the final issue of Contact, the magazine of the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life. Volume 19, Number 2 / SUMMER 2018 When we launched Contact in 1998, we wrote that “there must be free discussion and Eli Valley unrestrained debate about vital Jewish issues and the Jewish future. We hope to use Con- Editor tact to stimulate this conversation.” We believe we have ably fulfilled this mandate over the last two decades. We’ve explored is- Ari L. Goldman sues of Jewish unity, American Jewish demographics, the changing nature of families, the finan- Editorial Consultant cial crisis and the Jewish community, and the relationship between American Jews and Israel. Erica Coleman We tackled the looming crisis of personnel in the Jewish community, efforts at reinventing the Copy Editor synagogue, the challenges facing those who have left Hasidic communities, the importance and potential of Jewish service, the need for Jewish early childhood education, the importance of Yakov Wisniewski Design Director Jewish summer camp, and so much more. From Hebrew in America to Jewish life in the public sphere; from exploring opportunities to build Jewish infrastructure in emerging neighborhoods to reporting from global Jewish communities in Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and India, the Steinhardt Contact has helped shed light on the contemporary Jewish experience. Foundation We’ve been privileged to include a truly diverse array of writers, thinkers, activists, artists, for jewish life and commentators who have contributed to Contact since its inception. Eli Valley has Michael H. Steinhardt steered this ship expertly over the past 19 years, and we at The Steinhardt Foundation thank Chairman him for his professionalism and camaraderie. Sara Bloom In recent years, as opinions have exploded on blogs and social media, it has become clear Vice Chair to us that a print magazine is not the best way to reach our community. Thus, after 20 years of publishing Contact, we have decided to cease publication. In doing so, we are joining Rabbi David Gedzelman hundreds of magazines, journals and newspapers that have closed in the past decade. While President and CEO some print publications find new life in digital form online, we have decided to close the Eli Schaap magazine. However, this and all of our previous issues will still be accessible on our website, Senior Vice President http://www.steinhardtfoundation.org/publications/. Contact is produced and For the community of contributors and readers who have valued Contact and enjoyed distributed by The Steinhardt Foundation its pages, we know this decision is a disappointment. We hope to continue being in touch with for Jewish Life, 729 Seventh Avenue, our readership in new and developing ways to shape and stimulate Jewish communal debate. 9th floor, New York, NY 10019. We want to thank our readers for your time and feedback. It has been a pleasure to en- All issues of Contact are available for download gage with you over these two decades. at www.steinhardtfoundation.org/journal.html Sincerely, Individual subscriptions are free of charge and Rabbi David Gedzelman, President and CEO, The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life are provided as a service to the community. To subscribe, please send your name and editor’s piece mailing address to [email protected]. The Summer issue of CONTACT, and the final issue of its twenty-year run, explores a panoply of Phone: (212) 279-2288 issues, themes, and personalities central to the contemporary Jewish experience. We begin with Fax: (212) 279-1155 Shira Dicker’s reported feature on the growing phenomenon of single women rabbis. Often facing Email: [email protected] a multitude of preconceptions and expectations regarding both their gender and the rabbinate Website: www.steinhardtfoundation.org itself, these pioneers are charting new paths of Jewish communal belonging — and in the process For media inquiries about The Steinhardt reimagining the role of spiritual leader in the community. Foundation for Jewish Life, please contact Dan Contact then explores new expressions of Jewish ritual with a piece by Paul Golin, Execu- Gerstein at [email protected]. tive Director of the Society for Humanistic Judaism. Turning the Bar and Bat Mitzvah experience Copyright © 2018 by into a celebration of not only Jewish history and tradition but of a multiplicity of cultures and The Steinhardt Foundation experiences that define contemporary Jewish life, “Cultural B Mitzvahs” aim to make the coming- for Jewish Life. of-age ceremony more poignant, personal, and relevant for all involved. Ari Goldman then exam- ines the challenges and imperatives of secular education in the Hasidic world through a profile The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life is of YAFFED, which aims to spread secular education via internal Hasidic persuasion and via the dedicated to strengthening and transforming­ arms of city and state regulations. We visit three Jews deepening their Jewish connections through Ameri­can Jewish Life to ensure a flourishing, music, history and the rabbinate, and we excerpt from Ilana Kurshan’s If All the Seas Were Ink, a sustainable commu­nity in a fully integrated deeply affecting memoir that uses the Talmud to explore love, loss, heartbreak, and hope. Finally, free society. We seek to revitalize Jewish we share some of the beautiful and gripping art of David Wander, who uses imagery to penetrat- identity through educational­ and cultural initiatives that are designed to reach out to ingly analyze and reflect on Jewish narrative and text. all Jews, with an emphasis on those who as we end our run, CONTACT would like to thank our dozens of contributors over the course are on the margins of Jewish life, as well as to of the magazine’s history who have helped illuminate the most compelling, thought-provoking, advocate for and support Hebrew and Jewish and little-known reaches of the modern Jewish experience. Thank you to Ari Goldman for his literacy among the general population. invaluable input and experience. Thank you to Erica Coleman for her expertise in copy editing. Thank you to Yakov Wisniewski, our Design Director, whose elegant and streamlined designs Unless otherwise indicated, all photographs in brought an unmistakable visual allure to the magazine. Finally, we offer our heartfelt gratitude to this issue are courtesy of contributors. you, our readers, with whom we’ve learned, discovered, and shared so much in the way of Jewish life, history, culture, and memory during the past twenty years. May you continue to reflect on the thoughts, ideas, and perspectives Contact has helped stir for years to come.

2 lives Single. Female. Rabbi. What the Experience of Unmarried Women Rabbis Tells Us About Contemporary Jewish Life

by Shira Dicker

Rabbi Nina Mandel

abbi Raquel Fein faces an empty not only because of her gender but also and for the Jewish Women’s Archive, for sanctuary. Her hair is pulled back because of her marital status. newspapers, and for other publications. Rinto a careless ponytail, her face Like many of her real-life counterparts, A contributor to the anthology The Sacred scrubbed clean of make-up. Wearing run- Rabbi Raquel is professional, intelligent, Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rab- ning clothes, she squints as the early morn- accomplished, attractive, empathetic, binate (CCAR Press, 2016), she is especially ing light filters in through the stained-glass grounded, grown-up, caring, complex, outspoken about her singledom. windows. She begins speaking haltingly: loving. In an April 2017 column, “Shabbat is “Thoughts on Passover. You wake up with and single. a Two-Person Job,” Berkowitz writes about two words emblazoned on your chest. It’s Rabbi Leah Rachel Berkowitz of Con- the challenges of making Shabbat solo time. You’re gonna make a break for free- gregation Kol Ami in Elkins Park, Penn- while balancing pulpit responsibilities. In dom. You will not be a slave anymore.” sylvania, hails the creation of this fictional May of this year, she wrote a scathing ac- now she is outside, walking through character as an important sign that the count (“Dear Male Comedian”) of being at the woods. Her voice grows confident. story of the single woman rabbi is finally the receiving end of crude humor at a Jew- “Get out of bed, grab your things, run being told. She salutes Transparent for its ish conference: outside and then, there you are. Free.” ability to show the complexity and bless- “You’re a rabbi?” you asked. I nodded… Millions of people got to share the ings inherent in the lives and work of con- “Wow, you’re really pretty,” you said. experience of a rabbi drafting a sermon temporary female rabbis who are single. “Are you married?” My readers can tell owing to the fact that Rabbi Raquel Fein is “This show gets it right,” says Berkow- you that I don’t love that question. “No, a beloved character on the award-winning itz. In renderings of women who are rab- I am not.” I smiled through gritted teeth. series Transparent. Played with exquisite bis, “there’s a tendency to fetishize their You couldn’t read my body language, but sensitivity and nuance by Kathryn Hahn, sexuality or simply not view them as pro- I was shooting daggers at you with my she is both groundbreaking and relatable, tagonists,” she says. eyes. I didn’t like where this was going. Very much a protagonist in her own “Oh,” you said. “Maybe I’ll divorce my Shira Dicker is a restless writer-at-large and publicist publicly documented life, the 36-year- shiksa wife and marry you!” captivated by contemporary culture. She has specialized old Berkowitz, a Reform rabbi who was in promoting social causes, events, books, documentary ordained at Hebrew Union College in But Berkowitz also writes warmly about films, musicians, art exhibitions, religious leaders, and 2008, writes frequently about the experi- issues of pressing concern for the Jewish community. the gift of the network of single rabbinic Shira is currently working on a memoir entitled “The ences of being a young female rabbi on her gal pals she has cultivated who support one Adopted Wife.” blog, “This is What a Rabbi Looks Like,” another; the luxury of having long, lazy

SUMMER 2018 3 lives Shabbat afternoons to herself; and the abil- admits to being picky in her choice of part- second date. Reporting that her younger, ity to choose vacations that truly recharge ners. “I recently ended a three-year relation- single colleagues are anxious about dating, her soul, such as writing retreats. ship that just wasn’t right. I’m not willing to she adds that “they also have a huge thing “It’s not like I opted into a single place. settle. I’ve seen too many unhappy people in with getting touched,” validating the fact This is how life unfolded and it has its my field. I’d rather not be in a relationship that for female rabbis, broaching boundar- great and its hard parts,” Berkowitz said. than be in an unhappy one.” ies — physical as well as otherwise — is an although the pressures facing unwed as a single woman, Olshein serves a ongoing issue. rabbis are not confined to a single gender, unique role within a congregation where Like Berkowitz, Rabbi Eve Eichenholtz and single male rabbis face their own chal- many women are widowed. “The older is in her thirties. Though young, her unmar- lenges, the experiences of unwed women women who have lost their husbands are ried state has led congregants to speculate as rabbis are a relatively new phenomenon usually devastated. I talk to them about to her sexual orientation. Like all the rabbis that merits exploration. Although exact reinventing themselves as happy single interviewed for this article, Eichenholtz is numbers are not available (as the marital people,” she says. heterosexual, yet the assumption that an status of rabbis is not tracked by denomi- northwest of West Palm Beach, at Con- unmarried female rabbi must be a lesbian national organizations or social scientists), gregation Kol HaNeshama in Sarasota, Rabbi is common. Rabbi Nina Mandel, a divorced unmarried female rabbis are a noteworthy Jennifer Singer, divorced after a 31-year mar- rabbi ordained at the Reconstructionist and increasingly visible demographic. With riage, finds that she is serving a similar role Rabbinical College in 2003 who serves a women being ordained across the wide within her community. A 2017 ordainee of non-affiliated rural congregation in central spectrum of Jewish denominational life, ALEPH: The Alliance for Jewish Renewal in Pennsylvania, playfully posits that this is a their complex — and fulfilling — experi- Philadelphia, she says that “one of the ben- game congregations like to play. “I call it: ences are being shared now. efits of living in ‘God’s Waiting Room’ is that ‘Guess the Rabbi’s Sexual Orientation’,” she there are lots of ladies living alone.” says, “Or, ‘What’s the Story with our Rabbi?’” the split with her husband came with onlookers might also pin lack of a her move towards Judaism. Prior to enter- sexual life on a single female rabbi — and ing rabbinical school, Singer had been a sometimes they are correct. A 40-some- Jewish communal professional, working in thing, never-married, Conservative rabbi, endowments and major gifts for the Fed- who declined to be named for this article, eration of Jewish Philanthropies and the said that celibacy is often a sad fact of the Technion. But “at one point everything I life of a single female rabbi. “Nobody talks did was Jewish and it made him crazy,” she about sexuality,” she says. “For a good said, and they split up. With her kids going number of women in their 40s and 50s, off to college in 2011, there is now “no one their sex lives suck. It’s an issue.” at home. Just me and the dogs.” ordained at the non-denominational though Singer, at 61, is one of the Academy of Jewish Religion in New York youngest of the single women at Kol HaNe- in 2013, Eichenholtz arrived at her current shama, in her community she is “one of pulpit — Beth Israel Congregation in Fay- them.” As a survivor of aggressive breast etteville, North Carolina — the following cancer with a double mastectomy and no year. For Eichenholtz, the social fluidity of Rabbi Jennifer Singer reconstructive surgery, she is also a visible Fayetteville is key. “People lead single lives role model for those struggling with their here, even if they are married. I’m very “I have time for excellence in my ca- mortality. aware that that’s one of the reasons I feel so reer,” states Rabbi Cookie Lea Olshein, 50, Even with her accessibility, Singer ex- relaxed in this community,” she says. of Temple Israel in West Palm Beach, Flori- plains that she is still “The Rabbi,” and her Location can indeed influence the da. “I am not pulled by a spouse. I give my community has expressed concern about happiness of the single female rabbi, said heart and soul to my congregation. I believe her dating, she says, recounting a fascinat- a pioneering personality in the Conserva- in the mission of the Jewish people.” ing conversation on the subject of what tive Jewish world who also declined to be ordained 10 years ago from Hebrew stand it would take if she began dating a named for this article. Now in her 60s, this Union College, Olshein came to the rab- non-Jewish man. rabbi said that she sought out rabbinic op- binate after an 11-year career in law, a “When your first name is “Rabbi,” it portunities in major urban centers so she common trajectory. She reports having tends to desexualize and depersonalize would be one single Jewish adult among heard the timeworn advice about seeking a you a bit,” says Singer. Recently, an attrac- many. “There are different family configura- spouse while still in rabbinical school dur- tive widower slightly older than her began tions in urban settings,” she says. “I have ing her time at HUC. “People were wise in attending services at her synagogue. A never once felt the kind of isolation or so- telling me that,” she says, before detailing congregant, noting him, exclaimed, “Oh! I cial pressure that would have been preva- the challenges of finding a compatible part- have to hook him up with someone,” while lent in a suburban setting.” ner when one is a highly educated spiritual Singer stood there thinking, “What am I? this rabbi reflects on the difficulties and community leader. Chopped liver?” faced by some of the best and brightest fe- “I have four degrees; it is hard to find a Singer recounts several funny/not male rabbis in finding life mates. “The dirty man who is single, age appropriate, interested funny stories of dating debacles. One man little secret is that guys don’t want to marry in being heavily involved in Jewish life or at responded to the news that she was a rabbi us. I think that men figure that if they are least not averse to it!” she explains. by showing up with a manila folder filled going to spend their lives with a woman Yet as Olshein shares that she never with homework for his adult Bar Mitzvah who is married to her job, he might as well thought she would be single at 50, she also and then brought along a shofar on the pick a lawyer who will make serious money

4 lives

Rabbi Nina Mandel and command more status,” she opines. educate are like my children, too.” with it.” and while she speaks warmly about Even without biological children, those Regarding the ability of female rabbis colleagues who have loving marriages, who count themselves among Priesand’s to find mates, she notes that some men still she also reveals another dirty secret: some spiritual offspring are many. “None of us can tend to be intimidated by accomplished female rabbis end up marrying men who truly understand what it can be to be the women. “A lot of it is about power, but are far from their ideal mates because it is first,” states Rabbi Mary Zamore, head of the having women in these roles has allowed so difficult to meet someone ambitious and Women’s Rabbinic Network of Reform Juda- other men to be nurturing and to use that accomplished who is also willing to accom- ism. “The path she blazed was for us. At the side of themselves where before they hid it. modate the demands of his wife’s career. WRN, we appreciate the sacrifice she made I see on Facebook very often that some of For Rabbi Sally Priesand, whose name and feel that we are her daughters.” our male colleagues really want to under- is synonymous with “female rabbi,” com- thrust into the spotlight with her ordi- stand (the gender gap) better.” promise was never an option. nation, Priesand was a symbol of women’s Directly across the denominational aisle ordained from HUC-JIR in 1972, empowerment and achievement even as from Priesand, Rabbanit Esther (not her Priesand became the first female rabbi in she fulfilled the demanding daily tasks of real name) is a newly-ordained Orthodox the United States. Retired from the Mon- the congregational rabbi. “I will say that in rabbi from Yeshivat Maharat who is work- mouth Reform Temple, where she is rabbi my life, dating was just not important. Nei- ing at a large synagogue in a major city. emerita, she speaks frankly about what she ther was entertaining, though many rabbis Divorced after nearly 40 years of marriage, had imagined her life would be like as a think it is key.” with grown children and grandchildren, younger woman. Even without traditional hostess skills, she applied for her job wearing a head cov- “When I was in rabbinical school, I community and friends became an extend- ering and removed it months later when assumed I would get married and have ed family for Priesand. “Certain people be- her get came through. children, and I used to say that in my syna- came really good friends of mine. I always “It is different for me than other single gogue there was going to be a nursery next spent 36 years with the same family on Orthodox women; I don’t fit the mold,” to my study so I could bring my children Pesach and have travelled for the Bar/Bat she says, by way of understatement. “I’m with me,” she says. mitzvah of grandchildren. I have a group of 59, ordained one year ago. Four years ago, Priesand speaks about having dated people who have remained my really good I finished 30 years in high tech in Israel. I “some of my fellow students,” and having friends. In fact, one of the reasons why worked, raised a family and was married come “close a couple of times to getting when I retired I stayed in my community, is until half a year ago.” married, but always chose my career over that I feel they are all family to me.” Rabbanit Esther’s identity as a newly- that. Once I got into pulpit life, I realized Priesand reflects upon the choice faced divorced Orthodox woman has many di- that I could never have a family and a syna- by female rabbis of an independent or part- mensions, including that of lightning rod for gogue and do both well. I just had to know nered life. “This is very difficult for female congregants who are dealing with marital myself…it doesn’t mean others can’t do it. colleagues,” she says. “It’s hard to do both. difficulties, she says. It has also made her a bit I couldn’t do it. I give everything I have to I find that people really appreciate my will- of a curiosity. When she first arrived, “women the synagogue. I don’t regret it because I ingness to say that I had to make a choice. came over to me with questions: what’s the feel that all of the children I have helped It’s alright to make a choice; I still struggle story, is there a husband, children? They did

SUMMER 2018 5 lives to be myself,” she says. “I have a lot of agency in my life,” echoes Rabbi Jan Urbach, rabbi of the Con- servative Synagogue of the Hamptons and a faculty member at JTS. A high-profile, second-career rabbi who practiced law for about nine years, including a stint clerking for Judge Kimba M. Wood and a partner- ship at a Park Avenue firm, Urbach says that she arrived at her pulpit “with the ex- perience of singlehood,” and, like Priesand, doesn’t “know if I could have done it if married with children at home.” “On the one hand, it was scary to make choices alone; on the other hand, it was freeing,” she says. She left her law firm in 1997 and was ordained in 2003 at the Jew- ish Theological Seminary. During that time, she was involved in helping to found the congregation she now serves, so she never went through the initial interview process coming out of rabbinical school like most of her peers. Urbach speaks about how being a woman and a single person “created sen- sitivities in me.” Understanding marginal experiences and groups comes naturally to her, she says. And in a culture of two- by-two and traditional family units, “you might feel something is wrong with you if you are not that thing.” a keenly developed outsider perspec- tive is something Urbach has cultivated and refined. It informed her role as Associ- ate Editor of Siddur Lev Shalem in 2016, and guides her recent social-action work. Regarding being unmarried, Urbach says, “I wouldn’t say that I haven’t strug- gled with being single. There are times when I feel lonely and wish that I was part- nered in that way.” Still, says Urbach, we need to reframe Rabbanit Esther singlehood as more than the failure to mar- ry. “I think that if [marriage] was the first priority in my life, I would have made it it in a nice way. They were curious.” 2015 by rabbinical students, hilariously happen. Many men want someone less suc- With her level of self-confidence and lampoons the ongoing objectification of cessful, less smart. That was challenging. I grounding in the world, Rabbanit Esther female clergy by reversing gender roles. had an unwillingness to restrict my being. says that being publicly single in a frum “I invite people for meals. I don’t feel There was never a question of that kind of community is something that those who uncomfortable with men and women trade-off. “ have never been married may experience around my table, but sometimes I joke the fortyish rabbi who flagged celibacy very differently. Also, in instances where that I need a wife,” Rabbanit Esther says, a among her peers quipped that one of the boundaries were broached — she has had sentiment expressed by many other unmar- most interesting — and available — men “one or two uncomfortable situations with ried female rabbis. “The rabbinate is still she recently met was an imam at a confer- a congregant I didn’t like, including a guy structured imagining that there is a non- ence in Israel. my age, struggling with divorce, who said working spouse at home, taking care of “The part about being single that’s hard ‘if I could, I would give you a hug’” — she household needs,” concurs Berkowitz. is that it was never Plan A. Everyone, I has been able to maintain her equilibrium. Rabbanit Esther is candid about her think, wants to be in a committed loving People will often compliment her hair or interest in forging a new partnership. She is relationship,” she says. “It’s human nature to outfits, another common experience for also open, even elated, about her newfound continue to have desire and to want that.” female rabbis, married or otherwise. If Men freedom. “I carry myself. I feel liberated. I “Blessing doesn’t mean an easy life,” Rabbis Were Spoken To the Way Women Rab- do! There were things in my marriage that Urbach explains. “You learn in life that you bis Are Spoken To, a video made at JTS in I wasn’t happy with and I needed to be free don’t get everything you want.” n

6 lives

The Newest B’nai Mitzvah Trend is Older Than You Think by Paul Golin

magine a Bar/Bat Mitzvah program that most surprising — yet least-discussed — and celebration of all sides of the student’s is learner-centered, develops skills that findings from the seminal 2013 Pew Survey family. While the Cultural B Mitzvah Iwill remain useful beyond the ceremo- is that only half of American Jews have had educational program is about Jewish ny, and aligns with the values and beliefs of a Bar or Bat mitzvah. history, culture, and achievements, and the most Jews today. the Pew report did not break down ceremony is about young people affirming Must be a new initiative, right? Try the demographics further as to who forgoes their Jewish identities, we, as Humanistic fifty-five years and counting. B’nai Mitzvah; certainly, in older generations Jews, acknowledge and appreciate that When Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine founded few girls were granted the opportunity. everyone has multiple aspects to their Secular Humanistic Judaism in 1963, Still, it’s likely that the percentage of young identities. This is particularly true of many focused on what he discarded: a people who benefit from this transformative those of us in multicultural and interfaith God-centered liturgy. Few beyond the coming-of-age ritual is declining. Today’s households. Our students are encouraged movement considered what was gained parents are less likely than older generations to consider and, if they want to, honor all when youth stopped memorizing a to say, “Well, I had to suffer through it and aspects of their identities. lengthy Hebrew liturgy and were no longer now it’s your turn.” For example, one young man of Jewish assigned Torah portions based on the Continuing a ritual — any ritual — for and Irish-American descent presented on randomness of a calendar date. continuity’s sake is no longer motivation the Jews of Ireland. Although his Irish- What’s gained is the opportunity for enough. Today’s family must understand American relatives are not Irish Jews, his students to follow their own interests, to the meaning and benefit of doing it. Two interest and exploration of both sides of his genuinely explore and discover rather than major and related trends accelerate this heritage intersected. By educating himself simply memorize, and to connect to Jewish shift: intermarriage and declining American — and by extension, everyone attending subjects in a deeply personal way. religiosity. The B’nai Mitzvah experience his Bar Mitzvah ceremony — about the In recent years, the American in Secular Humanistic Judaism has always Jews of Ireland, his Cultural B Mitzvah Jewish community has seen several new addressed those trends directly. ceremony fostered warm feelings among attempts to reimagine the B’nai Mitzvah both sides of his family far more powerfully experience. That’s good news. One of the Celebrating Culturally and than had he simply acknowledged their Multiculturally attendance in a thank-you speech. And his Paul Golin is the Executive Director of the Society for Cultural B Mitzvah, an umbrella name deep dive into his full family background, Humanistic Judaism (www.SHJ.org), the congregational arm of a movement that combines a Humanistic for the Society for Humanistic Judaism’s not just his Jewish side, gave him a greater philosophy of life with Judaism as the cultural and programs (“B” is a gender-neutral understanding of where he fits, both in the historic experience of the Jewish people. abbreviation), allows for equal participation Jewish story and in the human story.

SUMMER 2018 7 lives

Cultural B Mitzvah at the City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism in New York City (above and previous page).

When the approach to Judaism is because people tell us: family members hero, examining their life, ideas, and deeds, cultural, not religious, we can offer a mes- from other denominations who first and describing why the person was chosen sage of genuine inclusion to intermarried encounter our movement through the B’nai and what they admire about the person. families, who now outnumber in-married Mitzvah of their relatives or grandkids Other communities encourage the students households in the United States. Multicul- regularly say, “I wish this was available to explore a Jewish topic of interest to turalism does not require a diminution of when I was a kid/when I had kids.” them. The projects are diverse and the any participating culture to celebrate them Ultimately, the difference comes presentations are creative and include all. Western theistic religions, by contrast, down to the institutional goals of B’nai multimedia, art, and musical expressions. require exclusionary boundaries to define Mitzvah education. Rather than having to a couple of Humanistic congregations themselves. train good “synagogue citizens” who can use the Torah. With guidance, the students participate in a minyan and chant trope — choose a portion that may or may not Critical Thinking and Belief knowing that only a tiny percent of liberal coincide with the portion of their birthday The Pew Research Center has been tracking Jewish students will ever find that skillset or Mitzvah celebration. The student reads the decline in American religiosity for relevant while potentially turning off many the portion in Hebrew then provides a years, and Jews have been in the vanguard more to Judaism forever — the Cultural B humanistic analysis in English. In other of that trend. Today, most Jews do not Mitzvah curriculum is intended to be just communities, a Hebrew poem is chosen believe in the God of the Bible. This as strong a Jewish identity-builder while and inserted into the presentation in lieu of inevitably makes B’nai Mitzvah — as also developing critical-thinking skills that reading from the Torah. religious ritual — a harder sell. Offering a provide our young people with a leg up in Most of our communities provide cultural B’nai Mitzvah can provide these their future endeavors. How do I determine individual ceremonies; others hold group households with a meaningful way of what is true? What is my connection to programs at the end of the Mitzvah year expressing their Jewish identity that also the larger world? By age 10 or 11, kids are that incorporate an individual presentation feels truthful to them. ready to grapple with the big questions and by each student. Community-service the message of such a program is: learn how to create meaning in their lives. projects, often related to a student’s you don’t have to say anything you don’t research topic, are regular parts of the believe — not during a ritual or ceremony, Creative Flexibility Cultural B Mitzvah process, and many and not in the rest of your life either. The Because the congregations in our programs include an exploration of the poetry, songs, and humanistic blessings movement have broad autonomy, a variety student’s own family history. used are neither anti-religious nor anti-God of Cultural B Mitzvah curricula and In a variety of formats over the past — they focus on the human experience, ceremonies have emerged. Many emulate half-century, the Cultural B Mitzvah evoking similar emotions of yearning, the program from The Birmingham program has provided a meaningful hope, inspiration, and wonder as theistic Temple, the first congregation for coming-of-age ritual that solidifies a services. The liturgy is, then, uniquely Humanistic Judaism, in suburban Detroit, Jewish identity into adulthood, through inclusive to theists and non-theists alike. where students work with a mentor to engaging cultural education without We know how powerful our approach is explore a Jewish historical role model or religious indoctrination. n

8 lives f Jewish children were being until he found himself in a dead-end job death because they know that once people denied a basic human right, like doing manual labor in a warehouse and learn that there are middle grounds, and free expression or assembly, there started at a college program to advance that the outside culture has much to would be an outcry from Jewish himself. Words like “semester” and “cred- contribute to our lives that is good, their religious, communal, and philanthropic its” were alien to him. He never heard of a world will begin to crumble.” organizations. We would not sit idly by. molecule. He didn’t know how to write an YAFFED has tried to go around the Yet, for decades, tens of thousands of essay; he didn’t boys in Hasidic Jewish families have gone even know what to school and learned virtually nothing an essay was. to prepare them to be economically self- “I realized sufficient or to have access to the broader that I was the world. Education is a human right. victim of educa- these boys, whose first language is tional neglect,” Yiddish, learn some English and arithmetic he said. Fighting Educational Inequity in elementary school, but even that stops Moster, who in high school. Once they are in their eventually got a by Ari L. Goldman teens, there is no English, no math, no sci- bachelors degree ence, no history, no physical education. in psychology from the College of Staten leadership of the Hasidic community and this situation is not only a moral fail- Island, still feels that he is hampered by reach out directly to parents who, they ing, but a legal one too. The failure to “major, major educational gaps.” But he hope, will in turn pressure the leadership. teach these children secular knowledge is has turned his anger into advocacy. In They’ve done this by placing large bill- in violation of state and city educational 2012, he founded an organization called boards in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods. guidelines. YAFFED. It stands for Young Advocates One asks: “Is your son receiving instruc- the larger Jewish community has for Fair Education and is working on two tion in English, math, science, history kept quiet about this scandal because it fronts: to get Hasidic schools to volun- and geography? He should! Even if he is respected the traditions of the Hasidim, tarily provide secular education and to get already in high school. Speak to his prin- thought there was something noble in the city and state to enforce its own edu- cipal or school administrator today!” their quest to maintain their way of life, cational regulations. another billboard has a quote in He- and figured that somehow they coped. Moster has become something of an brew from the Talmud. It translates: “A After all, don’t they own B&H? expert on state and city law. He quotes a man is required to teach his son a trade.” Politicians also kept quiet, but that New York State law that requires all non- Then it says in English: “It is your mitz- had more to do with the political power public schools to provide an education vah. It is the law.” of the Hasidim — they do, indeed, vote as “substantially equivalent” to that of public according to a census of Jewish schools a block. And they are growing at a rapid schools. The law specifies subjects such released by the Avi Chai Foundation in rate, especially in cities like New York. as English, math, reading, writing, music, 2013, there are nearly 80,000 children in But that is now changing, not because art, geography, history, science, and physi- Hasidic schools in New York City and its the Jewish leadership has awakened from cal education. None of these are offered in suburbs. Figuring that half of these are girls its slumber, but because some of these the boys’ Hasidic high schools. (The girls’ who get a secular education, the educa- children have grown up, moved away schools do, however, provide a limited tional crisis affects some 40,000 boys. from the community, and become advo- amount of secular studies through high In an interview, Moster noted that cates for change. school.) the ultra-Orthodox are “the fastest grow- naftuli Moster, raised in the Belzer For his efforts, Moster, 32, and his ing Jewish denomination” and then he Hasidic community in Brooklyn, gives his organization have been demonized by the quickly added, “the only growing Jewish own life as an example. “I grew up Hasidic ultra-Orthodox community. In an article denomination.” Projections based on a and I have the scars to show for it, at least last year in Hamodia, an ultra-Orthodox recent UJA-Federation survey data show in terms of education.” His elementary- newspaper, one rabbi, Avraham Y. He- that by 2030, roughly a third of school age school education was typical of some schel, wrote about YAFFED: “Let there be children in Brooklyn will be Hasidic. 40,000 Hasidic boys in the New York no misunderstanding: The real goal and Giving those children an education, area today. “We got 90 minutes of English agenda of this group isn’t to improve the Moster said, is urgent. “Everything is at and arithmetic four days a week,” he said. skills of yeshiva students. What they are stake here,” he said. Moster comes from “And it came at the end of a long school doing is using a backdoor attempt to drive a large Hasidic family. He is the middle day when no one took it seriously.” our youth away from Yiddishkeit through child in a family of 17. At the end of the Even that paltry amount of secular infiltrating and corrupting ourchinuch interview, I asked him why he didn’t just education came to a stop in high school, [educational] system.” leave the community behind and move on where religious studies took up the whole YAFFED and its supporters, Heschel with his life. day, from 6:30 A.M. to 8 P.M. Moster suggested, are rodfim, a rabbinic term for He responded: “I always wish that didn’t even know what he didn’t know murderers who must be stopped before 32 years ago someone said ‘enough is they do harm. enough.’ I would have the tools and skills Professor Samuel Heilman, a CUNY to pursue my dreams. I’ve got a ton of sib- Ari L. Goldman, a professor at the Columbia University lings, nieces and nephews. I cannot disap- Graduate School of Journalism, is an editorial consultant sociologist and supporter of YAFFED, said for CONTACT. He is the author of four books, including The in an interview that he was not surprised point the children now in the system. I am Search for God at Harvard and The Late Starters by the strong language. The Hasidic hoping that 30 years from now they will Orchestra. world, he said, “will fight AY FFED to the have a chance.” n

SUMMER 2018 9 lives

In this issue, we visit three individuals charting original and iconoclastic pathways to Jewish community via music, history, and community. profiles by Liam Hoare Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen Song from Shul to Stage et Opera Auditions Yield a Young as an opera singer,” Cohen explained, “and he talked Star,” declared an article in The New about the musicality and artistic freedom you have as “ York Times that changed the opera a hazzan — this material that you have to phrase and singerM Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen’s life and career. connect.” During his seven years as a trainee cantor and 3He was only 23-years-old when in March, 2017, afterwards, Cohen began to appreciate more and more the Times’s classical music editor Zachary Woolfe the heritage and the lineage associated with the material deemed Cohen — the “baby-faced countertenor he was singing — songs and melodies “passed down from Brooklyn” — to be a “complete artist.” Cohen, through the Jewish people over thousands of years. I Woolfe wrote, “already possesses a remarkable gift for found that very moving.” intimate communication … combined with a voice of Cohen has become distinguished for his velvety gentleness and a taste for adventure.” countertenor voice. The countertenor has a higher “My life changed overnight,” said Cohen (the son range than a male tenor, comparable to a female Richard of journalist Debra Nussbaum Cohen, who currently contralto or mezzo-soprano. Since the mid-20th serves as Haaretz’s New York correspondent) of Century, there has been renewed interest in this Tucker, who the glowing review. He had had a good season up particular singing voice, and modern composers are until then, having been one of the winners of the once again writing countertenor roles. “My favorite was a hazzan Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, compliment that I sometimes get is, ‘I’ve always hated a program designed to discover promising young countertenors but I actually like your singing,’” Cohen as well as an opera singers and assist in the development of their laughed. It’s a backhanded compliment — “but I’ll opera singer, careers. But to have that kind of notice in the paper of take it! I strive for a warmth in my voice — the kind a record, Cohen added, “provided a level of exposure mezzo-soprano would have — so it’s always fun when talked about throughout the industry that you can’t buy — that someone says that.” you can only dream of.” the forthcoming season has much in store for the musicali- When CONTACT caught up with Cohen, it was Cohen. He will be based in San Francisco, continuing over the phone from Cincinnati, where at the time he his training with the San Francisco Opera as an Adler ty and artis- was preparing to take on the role of Ottone in Claudio Fellow. He also has a number of concert engagements tic freedom Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea. “It’s considered and will be recording his first album. But perhaps the the first masterpiece ever written,” Cohen said.A t role he is most excited about is that of King David in you have as a the center of the opera is a love triangle involving the the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale’s new titular Poppea, the Emperor Nero, and the spurned production of George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Saul, hazzan — Ottone. While a history major at Princeton, from which which they will be performing in San Francisco as well this material he graduated in 2015, Cohen sang in The Coronation as at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. of Poppea, playing the part of Nero. “It’s a show I’ve Saul begins just as David has killed Goliath. “It’s that you have known intimately for a number of years and am about David’s rise and Saul’s descent into madness, as delighted to be revisiting from another angle,” he said. the adulation of David takes over the Hebrews. What I to phrase His remarkable rise and journey to the opera think is so fascinating about the way Handel writes it,” houses of Europe and the United States began in Cohen explained, “is that it’s very much based on the and connect.” Brooklyn: in the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, which Biblical text, but he delves into things that are more rehearsed a block away from the Hannah Senesh controversial by today’s standards,” such as David’s Community Day School he attended; and later, relationship with Jonathan. “The music Handel writes beginning at aged13, as a trainee cantor at the when the news comes to David that Jonathan has Conservative East Midwood Jewish Center. Cohen been killed is the most stunning lament. Musically, it concedes that it was “a lot of work” learning the High is clear how much this means to David. The depth of Liam Hoare is a contributor to Holiday liturgy and doing the afternoon prayers emotion is extraordinary.” Moment and writes frequently for every day, among his other duties, but that under the Cohen feels he is fortunate in that a great many , , and . He The Forward Tablet Slate stewardship of Cantor Samuel Levine he “learned a lot countertenor roles are to be found in oratorio, which is based in the United Kingdom and is a graduate of University artistically” that could be transferred from the shul to typically drew on Biblical stories as their source College London’s School of the stage. material. David is “a character I have a strong Jewish Slavonic and East European “One of the greatest singers of the 20th Century connection to,” he concluded, “and it’s an amazing Studies. was the tenor Richard Tucker, who was a hazzan as well piece.” n

10 Shari Rabin lives Frontiers of Jewish Life hen I was in graduate “I felt like I was discovering a whole school, I thought I would century of American Jewish life that was “ be working on post-Second really rich and important that had barely WorldW War American Jewish history,” the his- been touched — the surface had barely been torian and author Shari Rabin told me, when I scratched,” Rabin said. In Jews on the Frontier, asked about the origins of her award-winning she recounts the journey of Jews who ventured debut book, Jews on the Frontier: Religion and into the American West and South during the Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America (NYU 19th Century. Communities began to emerge Press, 2017), about how Jews forged their own informally, constantly evolving and inherently religious culture on the American frontier. unstable, and the book tracks the successes “And then I took a class on religion in the and obstacles Jews encountered as they American West, which focused a lot on the sought to take advantage of new economic 19th Century. Working on a paper for that opportunities and the challenges and “I felt like I was class, stumbling around in the library, I found complications this migration imposed upon Isaac Mayer Wise’s letters that he wrote from traditional Jewish life. discovering a a trip to San Francisco in 1877.” And thus the Central to Jews on the Frontier is the journey began. idea that mobility shaped Jewish life on the whole century of Isaac Mayer Wise, the eminent American frontier. B’nai B’rith fraternal lodges and American Jewish rabbi of the 19th Century who founded not Jewish newspapers were arguably more only the Reform Union of American Hebrew important than synagogues as a means of life that was really Congregations in 1873 but also Hebrew connecting Jews transiting from town to town. Union College in 1875, “is very well-known “You could be the only Jew in your town rich and important in American Jewish history,” Rabin said. [and] still subscribe to the Jewish newspaper,” But in these letters, Rabin explained she Rabin explained. The work of Wise was in that had barely found another Wise. “It’s him speaking in a part about creating a national framework for been touched — casual, upbeat voice — very different than Jews in the United States, “but their top-down what you see in his sermons and editorials. efforts were limited in their success” in the the surface had He’s describing going west, all the Jews he’s West, Rabin said. On some level, “the Jews in meeting along the way, and it just seemed to those communities liked being able to create barely been be something different than what I had read the Judaism that was suited to their particular about.” congregation and location. They didn’t want scratched.” a lot of the work on 19th-Century Jewish some rabbi or institution telling them what to history that Rabin had encountered up until do.” that point “was just about the rise of Reform at the same time, the inherently Protestant Judaism, and it was very synagogue-based. idea of Manifest Destiny and the expansion You didn’t get the texture of Jews living in across and conquest of the American West these far-flung places” — for example, life on became one of the means by which Jews the American frontier, which is the subject became integrated into the American story. of Rabin’s book. Breaking out of the Lower Rabin found that Jews took on the language East Side-centric view of American Jewish associated with Manifest Destiny, internalizing history, Rabin thought there was something it in order to talk about American Judaism more to say. “It’s not just that everybody was itself and its spread across the continent. in a synagogue, deciding whether or not to Although there were cases of anti-Semitism embrace Reform Judaism.” So Rabin asked here and there, “mobility and movement was herself: Who are these people that Mayer Wise one of the ways that Jews expressed their is meeting? What’s going on with them? And whiteness” in the 19th Century, Rabin said. how is Mayer Wise responding to these Jews as in the period captured in Jews on the he’s encountering? Frontier, today Jewish communities across the Rabin grew up in Shorewood, Wisconsin, country are experiencing tremendous change, and Marietta, Georgia before majoring in and therefore Rabin believes her book also religion at Boston University. She received her has a contemporary relevance. “American Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale University Jewish life has always been pragmatic and in 2015, thereafter joining the Yaschik/Arnold eclectic,” Rabin concludes. “There’s a lot of Jewish Studies Program at the College of anxiety now about post-denominationalism Charleston in South Carolina. Today, she is and [disaffiliation], but if we look at this pre- Assistant Professor of Jewish studies there and denominational moment in the 19th Century, Director of the Pearlstine/Lipov Center for we can see that on some level that was always Southern Jewish Culture. Jews on the Frontier, the case. Jews have always pieced together her first book, won the National Jewish Book their religious lives — it’s baked into American Award in 2017 in the American Jewish Studies life. Jews seek out Jewish identities, practices, category, and was a finalist for the Sami Rohr and ideas when they are meaningful and help Prize for Jewish Literature in 2018. them make sense of their lives.” n

SUMMER 2018 11 lives Rabbi Georgette Kennebrae The Pastoral Chaplaincy

his year, the Reconstructionist West It was in Colorado that Kennebrae End Synagogue on the Upper West become more involved with TSide welcomed a new spiritual leader: Reconstructionism, having discovered that Rabbi Georgette Kennebrae, who gradu- the movement — with its civilizational ated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical approach that “honors the evolution of College in 2017. She arrives at the West End religion” and recognizes that “halacha has a Synagogue — having previously served as a vote but not a veto” — sat in alignment with rabbinic intern at Congregation Beit Simchat her beliefs and practices. “One of the things Torah, the Reconstructionist Synagogue of I really love about Reconstructionism is the North Shore on Long Island, and Bristol that the umbrella is really large,” Kennebrae Jewish Center in Pennsylvania — at a time of explained, “and people can show up fully, ask tremendous change for the Reconstructionist whichever questions they want, and find a Movement. way in their community to have meaningful “I think of myself as Kennebrae was born in Japan into Jewish practice.” a military family and had a transitory the movement itself has undertaken a pastoral rabbi, in childhood, living in Turkey and France as important changes in recent years, both well as various cities in the United States structurally and philosophically. The that the pastoral after her father left the air force and went Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and to work for Boeing. She told me it was an Jewish Reconstructionist Communities chaplaincy is core to experience she loved, and she believes there rebranded earlier in the year as is a connection between her childhood of Reconstructing Judaism. In 2015, meanwhile, everything that I do. constantly meeting new people and becoming the rabbinical college voted to accept students immersed in other languages and cultures who are in interfaith relationships, making I think people want and her life and work today at the West Reconstructionist Judaism the first stream in to be seen and End Synagogue. “I feel very comfortable the United States to officially allow rabbis in creating spaces of welcome and inclusion for relationships with non-Jewish partners. heard, supported other people because I’ve known what it’s Kennebrae sees these changes like to have that and do not have that,” she as necessary to help individuals and and celebrated, and contemplated. “It makes me grateful for the communities remain engaged with Judaism time a community has together.” in a way that “celebrates the diversity of the when I can do that — a graduate of the University of Oklahoma Jewish community.” Jewish and American and Brandeis University, Kennebrae had civilizations are not static, she said, and the and do it well — then chapters in her life as a stay-at-home mother, ability to remain fully Jewish while embracing followed by a career in higher education other aspects of one’s identity is incredibly it allows people to at the University of Denver, before finding important. “A lot of harm has been done and her way to the Reconstructionist Rabbinical there are people in a lot of pain who have flourish and be who College. In addition to being born into a felt rejected from Judaism because of lines military family, she was later a military spouse in the sand that have ultimately hurt Jewish they are and grow.” herself. Kennebrae told CONTACT that it communities, families, and individuals’ ability was during this time that she discovered the to remain engaged,” Kennebrae concluded. importance of chaplaincy, which set her life “There are a lot of spaces in the world on a new trajectory — one which led to the in which one cannot bring one’s full self,” rabbinate. She had fallen in love with the she said. “To make synagogues meaningful, practice of leading services, providing pastoral people need to not be afraid to bring the care, and being part of congregational life. things that they’re afraid of, the things “I think of myself as a pastoral rabbi, they’re struggling with, or the things that in that the pastoral chaplaincy is core to are considered ‘taboo’ to talk about.” At the everything that I do. I think people want to West End Synagogue, Kennebrae talks about be seen and heard, supported and celebrated, this regularly from the bimah; these ideas and when I can do that — and do it well — of openness, inclusivity, and fearlessness then it allows people to flourish and be who are some of the values she believes her they are and grow,” Kennebrae explained. community embodies. “I love that, as a rabbi, I get to support my “I’m fully committed to celebrating the community in times of joy and periods of diversity of Judaism and Jewish peoplehood,” pain. I have a passion for death and dying — she said. “People come [to the West End conversation, education, advocacy, awareness Synagogue] and don’t have to worry about — and one of the reasons that I do is that what I look like, what race am I, what is my I deeply believe that when one is willing to sexuality, am I wealthy, am I poor. I want address one’s mortality and prepare for it, people to show up and know that they have they can make space to live life more fully.” gifts to offer.” n

12 loved greeting my twin daughters at the end of the day, but to avoid such behavior. Whenever Abayey would drink a cup layers I dreaded having to decide whom to pick up first. Some- of wine, for instance, his mother would immediately hold out If All Itimes I would be lucky — I’d arrive at their daycare and two more cups, one in each hand, lest he inadvertently drink Tagel would still be sleeping, so I’d pick up Liav and spend a just one cup more and become susceptible to demonic forces. the few moments alone with her before bringing her with me to If a person inadvertently stops after two cups and finds himself wake her sister in the back room lined with cribs where all the besieged by demons, the Talmud instructs that he should hold babies slept. But other days I’d show up to find the two of them his right thumb in his left hand, and hold his left thumb in his Seas sitting on the floor, each eagerly crying “Emma, Emma” (they right hand, and say: “You, my two thumbs, and I make three!” could not yet pronounce long vowels, so they pronounced the But even so, there is no guarantee that he will be protected. Were Hebrew word for mother, Ima, like the Jane Austen heroine). If the very same day that I learned about the Talmud’s fear of only I could swoop them both up simultaneously, but they were pairs, my friend Shira happened to forward me an article written Ink usually on opposite sides of the room. I wished that I could per- by the parents of twins. The article, entitled “25 Tips About the form a feat worthy of King Solomon — not to divide one child Horrors of Raising Twins That You Will Never Learn From Movies Excerpt from If All for two mothers, but to divide one mother for two children. and TV,” reminded me of the beginning of Anne of Green Gables, the Seas Were Ink Whenever I found myself forced to choose between the two when orphan Anne is told that she will be sent to taken care of by Ilana Kurshan. girls, I thought of the rabbinic principle that “One does not pass Mrs. Blewett’s two sets of twins. “Twins seem to be my lot in life,” Copyright © 2017 over mitzvot.” This principle, which appears in Pesachim (64b) Anne miserably laments. The article warned that with twins, the by the author and throughout the Talmud, means that if there is a command- pregnancy is harrowing, the early months of the babies’ lives are and reprinted ment that is right in front of you, you should fulfill it before going more than twice the amount of work, and the first year is so ex- by permission of to look for other commandments. Thus, when the priest walks hausting that the parents don’t even remember any of it. St. Martin’s Press. over to the altar to sprinkle sacrificial blood on its four corners, as I wrote back to Shira, I must beg to differ. Yes, parenting he should start off with the corner that is closest to him, because twins is exhausting and all-consuming. But the rewards are not “one does not pass over mitzvot.” I recited a version of this prin- double, but exponential. Each night after the girls were born I ciple in my head: “One does not pass over twins.” Like the priest watched them fall asleep in a single bassinet. I lay them down who may not walk past one corner of the altar to sprinkle blood beside one another, each with her head facing away from her on the next, I would not pass over one daughter to reach another. sister and toward one side of the crib. But invariably within the Inevitably that meant that her sister would burst into tears, and first few minutes of settling into sleep, they would each turn so then I would have to set down one twin to retrieve the other, by that they were facing one another, their noses just centimeters which point they would both be crying. apart. I thought about the cherubs in the Temple which would often when I described to my friends the challenges of face one another whenever Israel was doing God’s will, but turn parenting twins, I received expressions of sympathy and incre- away from each other when Israel had sinned. My angelic twins dulity, of the “I-Don’t-Know-How-She-Does-It” variety. Even wanted all to be well with the world. the Talmud seems to be wary of things that come in pairs, as and then there was the reward of knowing they had one we learn from the tenth and final chapter of tractate Pesachim. another. The article Shira sent recounted horror stories about Unlike the previous nine chapters, which deal with the Paschal mothers who could not go to the bathroom when they were sacrifice, this is the one chapter that covers the ritual of the home alone with their babies, or who went days without show- Passover seder: the four cups of wine, the eating of matzah and ering because they had no time alone. This never happened to bitter herbs, the recitation of the Hallel psalms, and the Afiko- me. When I needed time to myself, I lay the girls on their stom- men at the end. All is explained in a clear and orderly fashion achs facing one another, with a few toys between them. Tagel until the middle of the chapter, when the rabbis seem to get amused herself by trying to catch Liav’s eye and cracking up any drunk on seder wine as they break from the halakhic discussion time Liav looked in her direction; Liav mostly ignored Tagel be- of the seder to engage in several pages about superstition, de- cause she was intent on moving all the toys onto her section of monology, legend, and lore. the mat. Every so often I had to separate them because Liav did the rabbinic discussion of the danger of pairs begins with not realize that the “toy” she was yanking on with all her might the Mishnah’s statement that a person should not have less was actually Tagel’s hair. But for the most part, they played to- than four cups of wine at the Seder, even if he is so poor that gether quite nicely, at least for long enough for me to run to the he has to rely on communal funds. “Four cups of wine?” asks bathroom or jump in the shower. the anonymous voice of the Talmud. “How could the sages as they got older, we were able to witness their increased legislate something that is so dangerous? After all, we are taught interactions with one another. Tagel learned to crawl several that a person should never eat two of anything, or drink two of months before Liav, so she scrambled around the house search- anything” (109b). The rabbinic discussion reflects a prevalent ing for books and toys to deliver to her sister. Once they learned belief in destructive forces that we with our modern sensibilities to feed themselves, we sat them down in adjacent high chairs would likely dismiss as superstitious. One such belief was the and they passed food to one another. Liav placed her sandwich fear that doing things in pairs was hazardous. It was always safer on Tagel’s tray, and Tagel reciprocated with her cucumber slices. to do something an odd number of times. But if so, how could Yes, on one of those occasions when I took advantage of their we possibly be obligated to drink “two times two” cups of wine? camaraderie to run to the bathroom, I returned to find the two The sages offer various justifications. Rav Nahman suggests of them painting each other’s hair with strawberry yogurt. For that since the Torah describes Pesach as “a night of vigil” (Exo- a moment I began to wonder whether the Talmud was on to Ilana Kurshan teaches, dus 12:42), we need not worry, because Pesach is guarded from something in its association between pairs and demonic forces, translates, and writes about demons and harmful spirits. Rava says that the third cup, used but then I could only laugh as I took a wet washcloth and books in Jerusalem, where in the Grace after Meals, is a “cup of blessing” that serves as part wiped the pink streaks out of their hair. she lives with her husband of a mitzvah, and could never combine for evil purposes. And throughout those early months Daniel and I were often and four children. She was Ravina posits that since these cups are a symbol of freedom, beside ourselves with exhaustion, with food to cook, kids to awarded the Sami Rohr Prize they do not combine in pairs with one another, but each stands bathe, diapers to change, and no time to work or sleep — let for Jewish Literature for her independently in its own right. alone to enjoy a glass of wine. But the joy of observing our own memoir If All the Seas Were Ink, published by St. Martin’s these explanations notwithstanding, the sages remain pair grow and develop and interact with one another has been Press and excerpted here. preoccupied with the danger of doing anything in pairs and indescribable, and even if our cup is overflowing, we never go on to relate several stories about the lengths they would go doubt for a moment that it is a cup of blessing. n

SUMMER 2018 13 hrough vivid oil canvases and inspired Wander’s artistic gleanings, add- intricate hand-made books that ing layers of meaning and interpretation David T unspool to lengths as great as 50 to his art. Wander has also guided future feet, David Wander has illuminated Jewish generations in self-expression through his Wander texts and stories in a body of work that role as an art teacher, co-instructing with is both visually gripping and rigorously Art Department Chair David Friedman, at Journeys intelligent. In works ranging from the the Modern Orthodox SAR High School in Haggadah to depictions of the complete Riverdale, New York. In his class “Drawing Through story of Jonah, Wander adds an immediacy From the Text,” which Wander leads with to Jewish narrative, making ancient stories a Jewish Studies instructor, students create Narrative and traditions both new and familiar. art and writing inspired by works ranging For almost a decade, Wander has met from Song of Songs to Lamentations; the fi- and Text for a biweekly chavruta study session with nal results are compiled in a bound volume. David Kraemer, Librarian and Professor In both creation and instruction, David of Talmud and Rabbinics at the Jewish Wander is adding fascinating and thought- Theological Seminary. Their back-and-forth provoking contributions to the tapestry of discussions of midrash have motivated and Jewish culture and tradition. n

14 layers

Opposite page top to bottom: Samson Three books, detail; We Were Grasshopers In Their Eyes — The Spies, detail; The Rabbi And The Ugly Man, detail. This page top to bottom: Come My Beloved; Five Books Of David, detail; Haman In The Street, detail.

SUMMER 2018 15 The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life Non-Profit Org. 729 Seventh Avenue U.S. Postage 9th floor PAID New York, NY 10019 Rockville, MD Permit No. 800 Change service requested

Inside: The Art of David Wander

in this issue

Single. Female. Rabbi. THREE profiles 3 Shira Dicker 10 Liam Hoare

The Newest B’nai Mitzvah If All the Seas Were Ink 7 Trend is Older Than You Think 13 Ilana Kurshan Paul Golin

YAFFED David Wander: Journeys 9 Ari L. Goldman 14 Through Narrative and Text