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THEJEWISHWEEK.COM AUGUST 27, 2021 end YOUR DOWNLOADABLE, PRINTER-READY SHABBAT READ FROM THE NEW YORK JEWISH WEEK Observant Jewish residents of The Colony, a high-rise in Fort Lee, N.J., are suing the board for barring employees from pushing elevator buttons for those forbidden to do so on the Jewish Sabbath. (Screenshot from Google Maps) NEWS Must read New Jersey Condo to Resume 1 Arrested After Vandalism, Including Stolen Torahs, Discovered Shabbat Elevator Service at Long Island Synagogue / Page 2 50 Essential New York Restaurants After Settling With Residents and Attractions, as Chosen by the New York Jewish Week’s ‘36 Under Who Sued 36’ / Page 2 By Philissa Cramer Editor’s Desk / Page 3 The elevators at a Fort Lee, New Jersey, condo building will again stop on ev- Opinion / Page 4 ery floor during Shabbat after the condo board settled with Orthodox Jewish residents who sued over the service’s cancelation. Sabbath Week / Page 6 Musings, David Wolpe / Page 8 Dozens of residents charged in a June lawsuit that The Colony was discrimi- nating against religious residents by turning off the elevators’ Shabbat setting Arts & Culture / Page 8 and also barring building staff from pushing the elevator buttons for them. Orthodox Jews do not press electrical switches on Shabbat. Kveller / Page 10 Some Orthodox residents in the 32-story building were effectively trapped in Events / Page 11 their apartments between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday, the law- THE NEW YORK JEWISH WEEK AUGUST 27, 2021 suit alleged. and their silver adornments were taken, although some of the metal decorations were later recovered, Good- The conflict pitted some Jewish residents in the building man told Hamodia, an Orthodox news service. He said against other Jewish and non-Jewish residents, turning the vandalism had taken place sometime on Saturday The Colony into a battleground over religious accom- after the synagogue hosted a bar mitzvah during Shab- modations in shared public spaces, the New York Jewish bat services. Week reported in July. At the time, one of the lead plain- tiffs, Paul Kurlansky, said the solution was simple. Police announced on Sunday that they had arrested and sent for psychological evaluation a 23-year-old man “All The Colony has to do is turn on a switch,” Kurlansky whom they described as homeless, the Long Island Her- said, “and we’re done.” ald reported. That will happen now, according to the terms of the Chabad of the Beaches, which runs Chabad centers in settlement, which were spelled out in a letter to condo three towns on Long Island, launched a crowdfunding shareholders, NorthJersey.com reported Wednesday. campaign with a goal of $250,000 that it said would The elevators will stop on every floor for 9 1/2 high-traffic support security upgrades. The vandalism took place hours on Saturdays and major Jewish holidays; while the the same day the group began holding services in that lawsuit had sought damages, no payments are required building, according to the campaign, which has raised as part of the settlement, according to the newspaper. nearly $10,000 as of Monday afternoon. “All parties are pleased that this matter was expeditious- “We though we’d have a quiet, soft opening without so ly and respectfully resolved in good will and believe that much fanfare, but unfortunately we have this whole this resolution is in the best interest of the Colony,” the tragedy,” Goodman told Hamodia. He said he would be letter issued to Colony shareholders on Monday said, adding “more security, better locks, upgrading our secu- according to the newspaper report. rity system right now.” NEWS NEWS 1 Arrested After 50 Essential New Vandalism, Including York Restaurants Stolen Torahs, and Attractions, as Discovered at Long Chosen by the New Island Synagogue York Jewish Week’s By Philissa Cramer ‘36 Under 36’ Police in Long Beach, New York, have arrested one man in connection with vandalism that took place this week- By Jacob Gurvis end at a local synagogue that had just become part of For comfort food, Kylie Unell, a philosophy student and Chabad of the Beaches. comedy-show producer, heads to Izzy’s BBQ Smoke- Rabbi Eli Goodman shared photographs of the dam- house. The Crown Heights restaurant “is not distinctly age that showed one door of the Torah ark torn off and Jewish, but it is kosher BBQ that rivals the Kansas City prayer shawls strewn on the ground. Two Torah scrolls BBQ I grew up eating,” she says. thejewishweek.com 2 THE NEW YORK JEWISH WEEK AUGUST 27, 2021 Meanwhile, Rachel Figurasmith, the executive direc- local TV newscasts, does our reporting end up suggesting tor of Repair the World NYC, heads to Lee Lee’s Baked the world is more hostile to Jews than it actually is? Goods in Harlem, a decades-old rugelach joint operated by Alvin Lee Smalls, an octogenarian Black man original- I fret especially over the “one-offs” – the kind of isolated ly from South Carolina whose first encounter with the incidents that might be upsetting to the local victims but buttery Jewish pastry came while working as a chef in a don’t necessarily point to a wider wave of antisemitism. hospital kitchen. By treating, say, a swastika scrawled on a highway over- pass as newsworthy, do news outlets end up empower- Kelly Whitehead, a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union ing a 16-year-old with a Sharpie? Might an article about College, makes frequent visits to the Brooklyn Muse- the incident inspire a copycat? um, especially, she said, to see “The Dinner Party,” a room-sized art installation by the feminist Jewish artist Authors Whitney Phillips and Ryan M. Milner take on Judy Chicago. these dilemmas in a new book, “You Are Here: A Field Guide for Navigating Polarized Speech, Conspiracy The- And while Rabbi Ben Goldberg lives near the synagogue ories, and Our Polluted Media Landscape” (MIT Press). in Westchester County where he works, he heads to The book draws in part on Phillips’ 2018 study, “The Oxy- B&H Dairy in the East Village whenever he can. “For me, gen of Amplification.” Using case studies, she contended this place is heaven on earth,” said Goldberg. then that journalists accidentally propagated extremist Those are just some of the places that this year’s New ideology out of a well-intentioned impulse to expose York Jewish Week “36 Under 36” suggested when we manipulators and trolls. The 2018 paper is a catalogue asked them about their favorite places to eat Jewish of Trump-era hate-mongering: the rise of the alt-right food in the city and to take out-of-town guests. here and the far-right in Europe; the ascendancy of so- cial media trolls and social media sites, like 4Chan and View the map at https://bit.ly/3gxD9tK to explore the full set parts of Reddit and Twitter, where they lurk. of suggestions. Be sure to click on each pin on the map to see comments from the 36er who recommended it. Reporting on these trends, even critically, also gives the subjects a wider audience. The journalists Phillips spoke to tell themselves that it is better to turn over the rock and expose what’s underneath. But they also worry that EDITOR’S DESK by, say, amplifying a fringe politician’s musings about Jewish space lasers, they inject a new antisemitic idea Is Reporting on Hate into the public bloodstream. Good for the Haters? “The basic understanding that one’s reporting could end up benefiting extremists, or otherwise contribute to the How to cover antisemitism without spread of misinformation, was deeply concerning for al- giving “oxygen” to the antisemites. most every person I spoke to,” she writes. Phillips cites an example from 2016, when Time magazine By Andrew Silow-Carroll reporter Joel Stein shared his email exchange with avowed A big part of my job is reporting antisemitism – from the neo-Nazi Andrew Auernheimer, which ended when Auern- filth spilling out of the sewers of white supremacy, to the heimer declared that Jews deserved to be murdered. never-ending debate over when anti-Israel activity ends “Even if a particular article takes an overall condemnato- and Jew-hatred begins, to the isolated graffiti scrawled ry tone toward its subject, as does Stein’s, the manipu- on a synagogue door. lators’ messages are still amplified to a national or glob- It’s a job that comes with some responsibility, but frankly al audience, and the manipulators themselves still get one that can be abused. Does reporting on antisemitism exactly what they want”— that is, wider attention and only amplify it? Like the “if it bleeds it leads” journalism of greater recruitment power. thejewishweek.com 3 THE NEW YORK JEWISH WEEK AUGUST 27, 2021 “The Oxygen of Amplification” focuses mainly on online hate. But its advice applies to covering hate in all its man- OPINION ifestations. Focus on the victims, not the perpetrators. To avoid inspiring copycats, Phillips writes, “keep the story In Our Season of specific to the communities affected, focus on the impact of an attack, minimize sensationalist language and head- Reckoning, What to lines, and reduce antihero framings of the perpetrator.” Focus on the victims, not the perpetrators. Remember When “We should put antisemitism in perspective, recogniz- Abuse Stories ing its dangers even as we acknowledge the relative security and safety most Jews enjoy today.” Break in Jewish As for the “isolated” incident, Phillips is less helpful. Sometimes an event that seems isolated does fit a wid- Communities er pattern which isn’t at first apparent. When identifi- By Sheila Katz and Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg ably Orthodox Jews were reporting attacks in late 2019, it wasn’t clear whether these were random muggings or We are, once again, in a season of reckoning with sexual part of a larger trend of harassment.

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