Atoning Over Zoom: How Video Technology Will Connect Jews During High Holy Days

At the beginning of 2020, most people hadn’t even heard of Zoom, the video-conferencing application. By early April of this year, we were all using Zoom for work meetings, the kids’ school, funerals, shivas, Passover seders, Shabbat services, and to connect with family members during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a rabbi, I have officiated over a dozen bar and bat mitzvah services and two baby naming ceremonies using Zoom over the past six months.

Zoom has become the new normal for us as we learn how to best connect with each other virtually during the pandemic. Thankfully, 21st-century startups like Zoom have made tech advances making virtual meetings even easier than in prior years. Over the summer, knowing the High Holy Day season might arrive before synagogues were able to re-open, rabbis and cantors around the world began preparing for what would become the first all-virtual Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur season.

Some congregations will offer hybrid services with some participants onsite, while most congregations will be fully virtual. There will also be synagogues that have pre-recorded the holiday services and some that will offer a live-stream with some pre-recorded segments. In order for Zoom to work well with the needs of clergy for the High Holy Days, my colleague Rabbi Joshua Heller has been in direct communication with the video conferencing company to urge them to make some changes to accommodate congregations. I spoke with Rabbi Heller, who authored the teshuvah (rabbinic position paper) allowing synagogues in the Conservative Movement to offer virtual services on the Sabbath, about the changes Zoom has made as well as what he sees as the future of virtual prayer services. Rabbi Heller has a degree in computer science from Harvard, was the first full-time director of the distance learning program at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and has a local Metro Detroit connection being married to Wendy Betel Heller, a native of West Bloomfield.

Jewish Legal Matters in the Age of Coronavirus (Covid-19)

We are all learning what it means to live in communities in which we need to exercise social distancing and enhance our typical personal hygiene regimen to safeguard against the Coronavirus (Covid-19). Hillel Day School, the Jewish elementary and middle school I attended in the 1980s and the school two of my children currently attend (they will graduate in June), has suspended classes amid the positive Covid-19 test of a member of the faculty. In the Jewish community, the closing of synagogues has raised halakhic (Jewish legal) questions about how to constitute a minyan (quorum of ten individuals) so that those in mourning and observing a yahrzeit can recite the Mourner's Kaddish.

Thankfully, I just concluded my year of saying Kaddish for my beloved father, Gary D. Miller of blessed memory, so I don't have a personal need to recite Kaddish right now. This week, however, I have been asked by many people about the ability to have a "virtual minyan" (using video streaming services) because I have written on the subject in the past and helped my Talmud teacher, Rabbi Avram Israel Reisner, do research on the issue when he was drafting his teshuvah (rabbinic responsum) on the Virtual Minyan in 1998 and 1999. I think that if there has ever been a time when it is acceptable to offer virtual minyanim, that time is now. The technology has advanced so much since Rabbi Reisner first began to look into the matter back in the late 1990s so that many of his initial concerns about lagging video feeds and buffering internet connections are no longer concerns. Further, with so many synagogues shuttered until at least after Passover and people being self-quarantined, it will bring much comfort to so many in the community.

I learned so much from Rabbi Reisner in my first year of rabbinical school and his interest in the halakhic feasibility of the Virtual Minyan on the Internet helped me to begin my own quest to look deeper into the intersection of Technology and Jewish law. Another teacher who taught me so much that first year of rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary was Rabbi Robbie Harris. Rabbi Harris has written an important piece on how the Jewish community should proceed during this time when we're dealing with the implications of the Coronavirus (Covid-19). I think it's worthwhile to share his thoughts in their entirety below:

Pikuach Nefesh, Social Distancing and a Rabbi’s Case for the Need to Protect Life
Rabbi Robert Harris

A caveat before I begin:  I have hesitated from responding to the Coronavirus since news of it first broke, since I am neither a scientist nor a public health official, but now…  as a rabbi, a faculty member of the Jewish Theological Seminary and as a former member both of the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards and of the Israel Rabbinical Assembly Law Committee, I want to say clearly and unequivocally:  we must take drastic action to enforce social distancing, in the absence of clear governmental directives. Now is not the time to debate, for example, the fine points of use of electricity on Shabbat, or other, now trivial, matters that typically divide us one from another; we are talking about pikuach nefesh, the saving of human life.

I share these sentiments — not quite a teshuvah, for there is no time to calmly research one, but more than just an op-ed — with a great amount of respect for the various ways in which people of all faiths are struggling to respond to the virus and its implications for our individual, family and communal lives.  But at the same time, I want to shout from the rooftops:  rabbis and clergy people of all faith:  E-services, everyone!!!  Social distancing!  Virtual congregations!  All public religious worship should be set aside until the crisis passes.  If the NBA is canceling basketball games, out of its concern for the sanctity of human life, then how much the more so should we follow suit for the purpose of gathering in worship.

For those of you unfamiliar with the rabbinic principle of pikuach nefesh, let me describe it in the most general of terms:  the Torah states (in a context that has little meaning for the subsequent talmudic discussion or my purposes here): “you shall keep My laws and My rules, by the pursuit of which humankind shall live: I am the LORD (Leviticus 18:5).  A midrash, or rabbinic interpretation, teaches:  “to live by them — and not die by them!” (Babylonian Talmud, Treatise Yoma 85b).  The Sages considered many applications of the principle they found in verses like these; I will share just one of them here.  It is from the same section in the Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 84b:

Remembering Philanthropist Mandell "Bill" Berman

I first heard the name Bill Berman at Camp Tamarack when I spent a week of winter break staying in a cabin at Berman Village during Winter Camp one year in the mid-1980s. I later had a chance to meet the iconic Jewish philanthropist and nationally known home builder at a Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit event when my father served as the CFO.

That was just a handshake however. It wasn't until my first year out of rabbinical school that I actually had the honor of getting to know Mandell "Bill" Berman. I began working at University of Michigan Hillel as the assistant director in the summer of 2004. The Hillel Foundation is named for Bill and his wife in recognition of the decades of support they provided.

My first encounter with Bill Berman was at a Michigan Hillel board meeting that he attended. He usually had his driver bring him to Ann Arbor, but this time he decided to drive himself. He was 86 at the time and arrived to the meeting late. I saw him in the Men's bathroom and he told me got a speeding ticket on the way to Ann Arbor. Mr. Berman told me that calmly explained to the driver that he wasn't even driving his age and shouldn't receive the ticket. He then laughed at his own story with his memorable chuckle.

A few weeks later, Mr. Berman called to say he wanted to take me out to lunch (he had mentioned his intention after the first board meeting, but I was still pleasantly surprised to get the invitation). I offered to meet him in Detroit for lunch, but he said he enjoyed coming to Ann Arbor to see the campus. We had a wonderful lunch meeting in which he dispensed so much sage advice. I listened intently to each word. I had the distinct honor to have more private lunches with him over the next couple of years in which I got to know this legend. At that year's Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in Cleveland, Mr. Berman graciously took the time to speak to our student delegation sharing his thoughts on the Jewish community and inspiring these future leaders. Over the next days at the GA, I was amazed that every time someone saw I was from Michigan, they shared their favorite Bill Berman story with me (everyone had at least one).

2 Bills: President Bill Clinton with Bill Berman at a Hillary Clinton Campaign event in 2016

In Metro Detroit, Bill Berman's name was everywhere. Each year a Jewish professional in the community was honored with the Berman Award. When I would take Jewish teens to a youth group Shabbaton at Camp Tamarack, I'd be sure to let them know it was subsidized by Bill and Madge Berman. The beautiful Berman theater at the JCC has become a typical place to enjoy a concert, watch a film or be entertained with a musical or play. On a national level, the Berman name is likewise everywhere. He cared passionately about the Jewish future and understood the importance of surveys and statistics about the American Jewish community. Bill Berman was a builder when it came to homes, but he was also a visionary builder when it came to the Jewish community.

His volunteer leadership roles are too many to try to enumerate. Some of the more prominent positions included serving as president of the Council of Jewish Federations of North America, a co-founder of the Jewish Education Service of North America, a board member of the Jewish Agency and of the American Joint Distribution Committee. He also funded fellowships at Brandeis University and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He established the Fund for Research on Children with Disabilities at the Myers-JDC-Brooksdale Institute in Israel and chaired the 1990 and 2002 landmark Jewish Population Studies in North America. To further the study of the Jewish Community of North America he was the founder of the Berman Jewish DataBank, now at the Jewish Federations of North America, and of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive, now at Stanford University.

Learning to Be a Rabbi in the Pews

This past Shabbat was relaxing, spiritual and reflective for me. I wasn't "working" as a rabbi, so I had the chance to sit with my family in the congregation as I do on many Shabbat mornings. My oldest son and I arrived early to shul (the synagogue) because he wanted to get there in time for Shacharit (the early morning prayers) as he will be leading that part of the Shabbat services at his upcoming bar mitzvah. Rather than worry about the spiritual satisfaction of anyone else in the congregation (a common occupational hazard for rabbis), I was able to focus on my own spiritual needs.

As a rabbi who is not a full-time congregational rabbi, I have the luxury of being able to enjoy Shabbat services with my family on many occasions throughout the year at the same congregation in which I attended preschool, became bar mitzvah and celebrated my wedding. I lead services as a Visiting Rabbi in a congregation just enough times throughout the year for me to enjoy the experience without the tzuris (loosely translated from the Yiddish as "headaches") that usually come
with a full-time pulpit rabbi position.

When I was in rabbinical school at The Jewish Theological Seminary I was fully committed to spend my professional career as a congregational rabbi. However, I wouldn't trade my current lifestyle for anything because I'm afforded the opportunity to serve as a rabbi and still have many weekends to myself and to my family to truly appreciate Shabbat.

Rabbi Herman Savitz

I can point to many rabbis before, during and after my time in rabbinical school who served as positive role models for me to learn what it means to serve a congregation as a rabbi. There was one rabbi in particular who taught me both how to be a rabbi-congregant and why that position is such a blessing. In 2001 my wife and I moved to Caldwell, New Jersey where I served a rabbinic internship during rabbinical school. It was at Congregation Agudath Israel that we met Renee and Rabbi Herman Savitz. I immediately liked them both. Renee is a warm, caring and talented artist who made beautiful tallitot (prayer shawls) and Torah covers. Herm was a dedicated hospital chaplain at a prominent psychiatric hospital, the Veterans Administration Hospital a couple other hospitals. He was a big teddy bear who was very knowledgeable and enjoyed to kibbitz.

Rabbi Savitz went to shul when he wanted to and when he did attend, he often arrived late. I always enjoyed sitting with him and schmoozing during the service. He maintained a very nice and respectful friendship with the rabbi of the congregation. When he was called upon to help out in the synagogue, he graciously did. He was treated as a fellow congregant, but always with the respect that he deserved as a rabbi. I know that several people in the synagogue treated him as a friend and fellow congregant, but when the time came and they needed a trusted counselor, they went to Rabbi Savitz in his rabbinic capacity.

While I served that internship to learn from the rabbi of the congregation, I learned a great deal from Rabbi Savitz as well. I often look back on my time in Caldwell, New Jersey and reflect on what Rabbi Savitz taught me about being a rabbi who's also a congregant in a synagogue. It can sometimes be a challenging role, but he did it with class. I hope to emulate his menschlichkeit.

Rabbi Herman Savitz, z"l, died last Thursday and was buried yesterday. To his entire family I offer my deepest condolences. Hamakom yinachem etchem. May the memory of Rabbi Herman Savitz endure for blessings.

Conservative Rabbi Asks Hillary Clinton "What's in Your Pocket?"

In last night's Democratic Town Hall in New Hampshire, hosted by CNN, Rabbi Jonathan Spira-Savett of the Conservative synagogue Temple Beth Abraham in Nashua made headlines with his question to Hillary Clinton.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Rabbi Jonathan Spira-Savett (Salon.com)

Rabbi Spira-Savett, a Harvard graduate who was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, beautifully phrased his question about humility to Mrs. Clinton:

Another rabbi, Rabbi Simcha Bunem taught that every person has to have two pockets and in each pocket they have to carry a different note. And the note in one pocket says the universe was created for me. And in the other pocket the note says I am just dust and ashes. And I want you to take a moment and think about what you would tell us about your two pockets. How do you cultivate the ego, the ego that we all know you must have, a person must have to be the leader of the free world, and also the humility to recognize that we know that you can't be expected to be wise about all the things that the president has to be responsible for?

What Color IS That Dress?

After last week's big debate over the color of a dress, a lot of my colleagues were trying to use the story of #TheDress in sermons. It wasn't so difficult this past Shabbat as many rabbis looked at Parshat Tetzaveh and the intricate details of the garb of the Kohen Gadol (High Priest), including the specific colors.

Other rabbis opted to use the color debate of #TheDress to teach that we don't all see things the same way -- certainly a good lesson. I saw it as white and gold; not blue and black. However, after a couple glasses of wine the blue became visible to me. Interesting!

The discussions at my family's Shabbat dinner on Friday evening included interpretations of how humans see color (my father-in-law's a retired ophthalmologist) and the metaphysical questions of what color an object actually is if humans see it differently. These arguments, er, I mean discussions, continued at Sunday brunch. I don't remember the last time I found myself talking about rods, cones, neural connections to the visual cortex, and the philosophy of color perception with my cousins. Dare I say, that was both the first time and likely the last.

#TheDress

With Purim beginning tomorrow night, I'm sure that lace body-con dress made by the UK store Roman Originals will be the Purim costume of choice for many women (and likely a few men too). I especially like the way my friend and teacher, Rabbi Danny Nevins of the Jewish Theological Seminary, uses #TheDress as a hook to teach about the color of Queen Esther's royal dress in the Purim Story:

Purim is our festival of contradictions and hidden meanings. This year I suddenly noticed one detail that has been hiding in plain sight—the color of Esther’s royal dress? Was it blue, or gold? The Megillah itself is maddeningly ambiguous. We read in Chapter 5, “On the third day, Esther was garbed in royalty.” The ancient rabbis noticed something strange about the verse. It should have said that she was dressed in “royal garments” (בגדי מלכות מיבעי ליה), but instead says that she wore “royalty” (וַתִּלְבַּשׁ אֶסְתֵּר מַלְכוּת). What does that mean? What does that look like? In Esther Rabba 9:1 we are told that she was accompanied by two maidens, resting her arm on one of them, while the other walked behind and held up her golden train. This would imply that her dress was gold.

But read ahead in the Megillah to chapter 8, verse 15. There we are told that Mordecai wore “royal garments of blue” (בִּלְבוּשׁ מַלְכוּת תְּכֵלֶת), with white trim and a great golden crown. This implies that to wear royal garments in the Megillah is to wear blue. So what color was Esther’s dress—blue, or gold?

There is something strange going on here, something hard to pin down. In fact, the Talmud acknowledges this at B. Megillah 15a, where Rabbi Elazar, citing Rabbi Hanina, concludes that Esther “wore,” not a simple garment, but the holy spirit. Later midrash adds that King Ahaseurus couldn’t figure out what he was looking at—he tried to look away, but angels compelled him to look at Esther, and seeing her cloaked in the holy spirit itself, he could not resist her plea. Who has ever seen a garment like that?

Only this week a clue to the mystery emerged at a wedding on the Scottish island of Colonsay, where the mother of the bride wore a dress that has confounded millions. Some see it as gold and white, others as blue and black, and some, like me, have seen it both ways. Has this dress replicated the mystery of Esther’s royal garment? It was blue, it was gold, and ultimately, it transcended normal senses. Nonsense? Or, the holy spirit?

Happy Purim!

Are Rabbis Getting Trained In Entrepreneurship?

About a year ago, my teacher and friend Rabbi Hayim Herring asked me to submit a guest post for his blog about how well I think rabbinical school programs prepared us rabbis for the rabbinate and what was missing from that experience. I was honored he asked me to submit this essay, but too busy at the time to sit down and contemplate what was absent from my rabbinical school program.

Finally, I gave it some thought and realized that many of the "tasks" I perform today as a rabbi draw upon skills I honed during my years at the Jewish Theological Seminary, but others are what I attribute to having an entrepreneurial spirit. While I personally enjoyed a wonderful experience while a rabbinical student and feel indebted to my teachers for helping to shape me as a rabbi, I realized that entrepreneurship as a subject was not something I remember being part of the curriculum at the Seminary during my time there.

In fact, during my final year of rabbinical school at JTS (2003-2004) I served as president of the Rabbinical School Student Organization and found myself, together with faculty members, my peers, and the school's deans, on a committee to begin the process of reshaping the rabbinical school curriculum. My contribution to this process was in proposing to offer an option for rabbinical students to take a few classes at the business school down the street at Columbia University. The problem that we faced on that committee was that there were only so many courses to put into the rabbinical school curriculum along with the requisite fieldwork, rotations and internships. Further, the faculty members were all protective of their courses and their individual department's role within the curriculum.

Rabbi for a Decade, Macklemore and Jonah Pesner

Today marks my first decade of being a rabbi. Rather than wax nostalgic about the past ten years of my rabbinate in which I still had my rabbi training wheels on, I'd rather use that significant day in my life to comment on two events in the news this week.

First, Jonah Pesner, a Reform rabbi, traveled to London to be a guest of honor at the Liberal Judaism biennial there. What happened to him at the airport, however, is something that has happened to many non-Orthodox rabbis in the past. The Jewish Chronicle reported yesterday that after Rabbi Pesner told an immigration officer at the airport that he is a rabbi, she looked at Rabbi Pesner and remarked, "You don't look like a rabbi." Perhaps, this comment could just be written off as ignorance, but comments like that are too problematic to just ignore.

Jewish Theological Seminary Rabbinical School/Cantorial School Class of 2004

It would be highly offensive if I looked at a female police officer (or a female airport immigration officer for that matter) and said, "You don't look like a police officer" because she's not a man. The comment made to Rabbi Pesner was made because he is clean-shaven and doesn't wear a black hat. What's interesting is that there are thousands of clean-shaven, non-black-hat-wearing rabbis in this world. In fact, the majority of rabbis represented in movies and on television are non-Orthodox rabbis. Look above at the photo of my classmates at the Jewish Theological Seminary. These are rabbis and cantors who graduated on May 20, 2004. While these men and women don't look like the stereotypical rabbi, we are the leaders of the Jewish community today.

Before making her offensive comment to Rabbi Pesner, the female immigration officer at London's Heathrow Airport should have considered that she doesn't have the traditional look of a law enforcement officer. Rather than make a snide remark to Rabbi Pesner, she could have engaged him in a conversation by explaining that the image of a rabbi that she has in her mind is a different representation than how he looks.

And that brings me to Macklemore. I'm a fan of Ben Haggerty's rap music. Better known by his stage name "Macklemore," the 30-year-old has gained fame in the past couple of years for his chart topping songs. In the past, I've praised Macklemore for his gutsy song "Same Love" that advocates for gays and lesbians, and is the first prominent rap song to condemn homophobia in hip-hop and in pop culture in general. This past January I was a guest at a private concert in Las Vegas featuring Macklemore and Ryan Lewis where I was very impressed with Macklemore's performance, humor and stage presence (after his first song of the show, Macklemore looked out at all the cellphone cameras pointed at him and commented that he hadn't seen that many cellphone cameras at a concert since the bat mitzvah he performed at the week before).

Macklemore wearing an anti-Semitic Jewish costume at concert in Seattle

My Rabbi Myer Kripke Story

The first time I heard the name Rabbi Myer Kripke was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving in 1998. I had only begun my studies in the rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary three months prior and responded to an email message asking if any of the new students would be interested in guiding tours of the Seminary for visiting groups. My flight from New York City back to Detroit didn't leave until later that evening and I had nothing else to do before the Thanksgiving recess so I thought I'd check it out.

When I arrived to the Women's League Seminary Synagogue I met Rebecca Jacobs who at the time was in charge of arranging these tours for groups and donors visiting JTS. She gave the small group of us students a tour of the Seminary campus. Since I had done my fair share of research about the history of the Jewish Theological Seminary before applying to rabbinical school and since I had been living and studying there for the past few months, I figured there wasn't much I didn't know about it. Wow, was I wrong! Rebecca told some very interesting stories about the historical buildings that made up the Seminary campus -- the Schiff, Brush and Unterberg buildings as well as the Library building which was knows as the Boesky Library until Ivan Boesky was indicted for insider trading and the Seminary removed his name.

Rabbi Myer Kripke, of blessed memory

What really grabbed my attention was the way Rebecca told the story of the fire that ruined the Seminary's large brick tower that stood prominently on Broadway and had housed the Seminary's vast library collection. Rebecca spent a good twenty minutes talking about how the fire started, the NY Fire Department's response and the way the local Upper West community helped to save thousands of the books damaged in the fire. She explained that the fire had damaged many of the Judaica books that the Seminary had saved from Eastern Europe following the Holocaust. She concluded her story of the JTS Library fire by saying that the inside of the Seminary tower has sat vacant for the past thirty years with the charred remains of that fire inside.

Honoring Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Today is the secular anniversary of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the preeminent theologian of the 20th century (his yahrzeit on the 18th of Tevet is next week). Many of my teachers at The Jewish Theological Seminary were students of Heschel's and were highly influenced by his thinking and writing.

In Heschel's memory I share my favorite story of Heschel as retold to me recently by Rabbi Gordon Tucker, one of his students: Heschel was sent by the Seminary to a Conservative synagogue to give a speech at a fundraising event. He went on and on for over an hour about his theology of humanity's desire to conquer both Space and Time. It was highly intellectual and far over the heads of many in the audience who quickly lost focus. When Heschel was finally finished with his teaching, the president of the congregation got up and simply said: "You heard the rabbi, the Seminary needs more Space and there isn't much Time!"

Rabbi Autographs on Sports Balls

While I was in rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, I decided that I wanted a keepsake to remember the esteemed faculty. If it were high school, I suppose I could have asked my teachers to sign my yearbook. Since there were no year books around, I searched the house for something else to get autographed. A brand-new football caught my eye and with a white marker I began making my way around the Seminary in search of faculty members to put their John Hancock on my football. They were trilled to comply.

Prominent JTS faculty members like Chancellor Ismar Schorsch, Neil Gillman, Bill Lebeau, Burt Visotzky, Anne Lerner, Michael Greenbaum, Barry Holtz,  Aryeh Davidson, Stephen Geller, Robbie Harris, Raymond Scheindlin, Joe Lukinsky (of blessed memory), and Eduardo Rauch (of blessed memory). I placed the autographed football in a glass display case. When Purim rolled around I put it on display at the annual Purim Seudah with a note challenging, "Guess which professional team autographed this football."

Little did I know that I didn't have an original idea there. It turns out that a guy named Daniel Harris has been collecting autographs from famous rabbis for many decades. A recent article in Tablet, introduces us to Harris, who is the associate principal of Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Chicago. Harris explains that over time he outgrew his childhood role models and "realized he had exchanged players of physical brilliance for legends of spiritual grandeur—and that those were the heroes he wanted to recognize." He goes so far as to claim that he'd take a baseball signed by a great rabbinic leader over one autographed by the great Babe Ruth.

Harris's collection of rabbinicly autographed baseballs has grown recently and now includes ten baseballs from the leading Orthodox rabbis of our time including Rav Gedaliah Schwartz and Rabbi Berel Wein. Harris traded his signed Kenny Holtzman baseball to Rabbi Wein for his signature.

Autographed baseballs by prominent rabbis from Daniel Harris's collection

Harris explained why he uses baseballs to collect these esteemed rabbis' autographs. "Both baseball and, in a greater sense, Talmud, are full of nuance and great detail. Every time you enjoy learning a piece of Talmud you can come away with something new, as in baseball, where there is always some new play or game situation that you have never seen."

I'm not looking to begin a collection of autographed baseballs from respected Seminary luminaries and well-known Conservative rabbis any time soon. However, I might just begin to collect personalized autographed baseballs from rock stars. Here's my first in the collection from Vincent Damon Furnier, better known as Alice Cooper:

Alice Cooper autographed baseball

JTS Posts Warning in Beit Shemesh

Beit Shemesh, an Israeli neighborhood about 20 miles outside of Jerusalem, has been in the news quite a bit over the past year.

After the opening of the Orot Banot national-religious girls’ school in Beit Shemesh in September 2011, groups of radical Haredim gathered in front of the school, calling the girls names and spitting at them when they headed to and from school in clothing the extremists considered to be immodest by their strict standards. Some Haredi men were arrested on the suspicion of throwing eggs and tomatoes at students.

Why Jewish Summer Camp Remains Hot Investment for Donors

Professor Arnold Eisen, a scholar of American Judaism and the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, proclaimed, “Nothing I do to build Jewish life, Jewish education, or the Jewish community is more important than getting more kids to Jewish camps.”

Those are strong words from the ivory tower and quite the endorsement of Jewish summer camp. But Eisen wasn’t the only head of a major Jewish academic institution who lauded Jewish summer camping at the Foundation for Jewish Camp’s recent Leaders Assembly. He shared the stage with Richard Joel and Rabbi David Ellenson, the presidents of the Orthodox and Reform academies respectively, who both agreed that the answer to Jewish continuity can be found at summer camp.

All three academicians extolled the virtues of the summer camp experience for young Jewish children who seamlessly go from overnight hiking and canoe trips to Friday evening Shabbat services by the lake. The leaders of Yeshiva University, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Hebrew Union College took turns standing in front of 400 Jewish camping leaders at the FJC gathering – from camp directors to donors – to explain how their denomination would help to grow the Jewish camping phenomenon in the coming years. These schools train Jewish educators – most of whom discovered or strengthened their Jewish identity at summer camp – and with a $45 million investment from the Jim Joseph Foundation (divided among the three institutions) they will be able to prepare more young people who wish to work in the informal Jewish educational field of Jewish camping.

With over $90 million of philanthropic contributions coming through the FJC since its founding 13 years ago to benefit Jewish camping, it is clear that this is where donors are investing the most capital in what has become known as “Jewish continuity.”

Approximately 72,000 Jewish children currently attend a Jewish summer camp. The statistics show that the Jewish summer camp experience has a tremendous effect on children and their Jewish identity. A recent study by the renowned sociologist Steven M. Cohen commissioned by the FJC shows that Jewish campers grow up to be connected to Jewish life and identify proudly within the Jewish community as adults. “The analysis indicates that they bring, first of all, an increased inclination to practice Jewish behaviors in their lives, from Shabbat candle lighting to using Jewish websites, and to appreciate the value of Jewish charity,” Cohen concludes in the study. “Secondly, they bring an increased inclination to value and seek out the experience of Jewish community, whether in the immediate sense of joining other Jews in prayer or in the more abstract sense of identifying with fellow Jews in Israel.”

Most Jewish summer camps are nonprofits and, historically, have not been able to compete with the lavish facilities and stellar sports programs at the privately owned for-profit camps. But that is changing. Over the past decade the hottest cause for major philanthropists in the Jewish community has been funding the growth of Jewish summer camps, which means seeding new camps and ensuring there are ample need-based scholarships to afford all young Jewish children the ability to experience the magic of camp.

Camp leaders have long recognized that a main reason more young people don't make Jewish camping part of their annual summer experience has been because they choose to focus on one interest like drama or a particular sport and seek out camps that specialize in those activities. FJC has put its attention into funding such specialty camps that concentrate on one main interest category but also infuse the Jewish magic for which Jewish camps have been known. FJC was able to open five new camps in 2010 as a result of the first Specialty Camps Incubator – based on a business incubator model – and now the second wave of that program has been launched resulting from the $8.6 million investment by the AVI CHAI Foundation together with the Jim Joseph Foundation.

There seems to be something inherently Jewish about summer camp. Indeed, when Jewish adults gather the conversation inevitably turns to Jewish camp memories filled with nostalgia. When two adult Jews meet for the first time, the game of “Jewish Geography” ensues and “Which camp did you go to?” and “Did you know so-and-so who went to that camp?” are the unavoidable questions.

As Eisen has written about Jewish summer camp, “For once in these kids' lives, Jewishness is not something they are or do off to the side of life, in Hebrew school or synagogue. It is not a subject for debate but simply there, taken for granted, a part of what happens 24/7.”

No matter what the activity – from baseball and boating to crafts and campfires – the social aspects of Jewish camp all play out in a constant Jewish milieu. The benefits of those summer experiences are reaped over the course of a lifetime for the Jewish individual, and in turn for the Jewish community as well. Spring is upon us and we are now focused on Passover, but thousands of young Jewish children are already counting the days until school vacation and their own exodus to the freedom of another memorable summer at Jewish camp.

Warren Buffett Invests in Chametz

Usually when Warren Buffett makes a deal it is the big news of the day on CNBC and in the Wall Street Journal. But the Oracle of Omaha's recent deal probably won't get much attention and it certainly won't have to be reported to the Security and Exchange Committee.

The Omaha World-Herald reported today that Rabbi Jonathan Gross of the Orthodox Beth Israel Synagogue in West Omaha chose Warren Buffett to be the non-Jewish buyer of the congregant's chametz (leavened food products that are forbidden on Passover). Buffett, at 81-years-old, is the third-richest man in the world with a $44 billion net worth according to the recent Forbes list of billionaires.

Warren Buffett accepts the four 50-cent pieces from Rabbi Jon Gross during the chametz sale.

While Jews are required to rid their homes, offices and automobiles of all chametz products, there is a "legal fiction" that allows Jews to "sell" leavened goods that can't be thrown away to a non-Jew who then sells the goods back following the holiday. A rabbi usually serves as the agent who transacts the deal on behalf of the congregation or community.

Before transacting the chametz deal with Buffett, Rabbi Gross explained the custom to the famous investor and head of Berkshire Hathaway Holdings. According to the Omaha World-Herald, Gross said, "Price is low before Passover. Price is high afterward. It's a great short-term investment. So who would really appreciate this better than Warren Buffett?"

"The beauty of being an agnostic is that you are in no position to make any judgment about anything," Buffett said in an interview. "You can join in on anything."

Buffett said he decided to participate because the annual pre-Passover chametz sale is "a ceremony of enormous importance to Jews." The only problem with Rabbi Gross' planned arrangement with Buffett was that Passover begins this year at sunset on April 6 and due to his busy schedule, Buffett wanted to meet in late February (six weeks before Passover). Gross decided to keep the meeting with Buffett, because he wanted to raise awareness about the need for donations to the Food Bank for the Heartland.

To complete the ceremonial chametz sale Rabbi Gross gave Warren Buffett four 50-cent pieces along with a bottle of single-malt Scotch, a loaf of home-baked challah bread, and Buffett's favorite snack, a bag of Cheetos (which incidentally aren't kosher, but Gross wrote on his blog: "Cheetos are not kosher, but there is no problem buying a bag of them for someone who is not Jewish."). Gross also handed Buffett two sets of keys -- one to Beth Israel Synagogue and one to Gross' west Omaha home, where the box and drums of food are kept. (Buffett agreed to donate the food to the food bank.)

The Oracle of Omaha and the west Omaha rabbi shook hands to complete the deal and Buffett even returned the 50-cent coins to the rabbi. He joked that now that he knows the asking price — four coins — he'll bargain down to two coins next year. "Why didn't anyone tell me about this earlier? This is a great investment," Buffett said. "I could have been doing this for years."

Rabbi Myer Kripke with Rabbi Jonathan Gross in Omaha, Nebraska

Gross, an Orthodox rabbi, also included Rabbi Myer Kripke in the purchase agreement with Buffett and brought the 98-year-old rabbi along with him to Buffett's office. Rabbi Kripke is a retired Conservative rabbi who has been friends with Buffett for over 50 years, since the time they were were neighbors in Dundee. Rabbi Kripke's late wife, Dorothy, wrote a children's book series entitled "Let's Talk About..." and Warren Buffett's wife loved to read those books to her children. When she learned the author lived close by in Dundee she wanted to meet her. That is how the Kripkes and Buffets became dear friends. In the 1960s Buffett had the Kripke's invest a small inheritance they had received from a relative in Berkshire Hathaway and from that investment they became millionaires many times over. That fortune allowed Myer and Dorothy Kripke to donate $10 million to the Jewish Theological Seminary to rebuild the tower under which the couple had been married decades earlier. That tower, which originally housed the Seminary's library was severely damaged in a fire in 1966. Today it is known as the Kripke Tower.

On a personal note, Rabbi Kripke was very helpful in connecting me with Warren Buffett in 2009 when my uncle was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer and given only a few months to live. I called Rabbi Kripke and told him how wonderful it would be if my uncle could play a round of golf at Augusta National where Mr. Buffett is a member. Within ten minutes I received a call from Mr. Buffett's secretary Debbie Bosanek, who told me that she just asked Mr. Buffett (who was on a trans-Atlantic flight at the time) and he explained that Augusta National members were no longer allowed to grant such requests. Well, at least I tried and I'll always be grateful to Rabbi Kripke for his assistance.

Back to Rabbi Gross and his chametz sale to Warren Buffett. I think this was an absolutely brilliant idea that Rabbi Gross had because it will make the sale of chametz more widely known. Perhaps because of Warren Buffett's connection with this story, more Jews will make the effort to rid their homes of chametz before the Passover holiday and ensure that they include their name in their synagogue's chametz sale.

Jesus, We Can Finally Talk About Jesus

I've always said that the only times Jewish people mention Jesus are when they stub their toe, miss the bus, or tell you about their theater tickets to a certain Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera. Two new books will change that. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's Kosher Jesus and The Jewish Annotated New Testament (edited by Marc Z. Brettler and Amy-Jill Levine). The former discusses the Jewish life of Jesus of Nazareth and the latter is a newly revised edition of the Christian Scriptures with notes and essays from Jewish scholars in the hope of making the "New Testament" accessible to Jews.

In my final years of rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, I was living and working in Caldwell, New Jersey as a rabbinic intern. One of the congregants at the synagogue, Agudath Israel, was a professor at the College of St. Elizabeth in Morristown, New Jersey. She asked me to give a presentation about Judaism to the women in her undergraduate class. In preparation for my visit she asked the students to submit a list of five questions each that they would like me to consider. Without any exaggeration, a full 90% of the students included at least one question about Jesus Christ in their list.

I had received questions from Christians in the past concerning the Jewish view of Jesus, but that experience confirmed for me just how curious Christians are about how Jews understand Jesus in both historical and theological perspectives. Many of the women in that class at the College of St. Elizabeth were surprised to learn that Jews do not consider Jesus to be the messiah and the entire class was shocked to discover that Jesus' teachings were not part of the required coursework I was doing in my rabbinical school studies. By far, to this day the most frequent questions I receive from Christians all have to do with the Jewish understanding of Jesus.

The topic of the contemporary view of Jesus among Jews has long been stuck somewhere between taboo and "we just don't talk about it". But now, thanks to two new books it is front and center. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who refers to himself as "America's Rabbi" has written a new controversial book that will be released next week. For those who thought Boteach's Kosher Sex was too radical, his new Kosher Jesus is sure to ruffle feathers. With Boteach, it is difficult to know if he writes these provocative books and articles because he's genuinely passionate about the scholarly discussion it will generate or if he just lusts after the spotlight. Still playing up his friendship with the late Michael Jackson and very passively campaigning to be the next Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has been busy publicly questioning what all this fuss is about with his new book. In truth, Boteach knows that every Orthodox rabbi and scholar -- from Chabad Lubavitch to the Haredim -- who attack Kosher Jesus as blasphemous and its author as a heretic are only helping his book sales.

Mitch Albom's Having a Very Jewish Year

Last month when I encouraged my friends to attend the Michigan Jewish Sports Hall of Fame's annual induction dinner I made certain to tell them that local Detroit sportswriter Mitch Albom was being inducted. I figured that would be a draw. I was surprised by the response that many of them had -- "Mitch Albom's Jewish?" they asked.

Mitch Albom's Michigan Jewish Sports Hall of Fame plaque that will hang
in the Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit.

Apparently they hadn't read his most recent book "Have a Little Faith," in which Mitch Albom's childhood rabbi asks him to deliver the eulogy at his funeral. The book has been turned into a made-for-TV movie and will be broadcast tonight at 9:00 PM on ABC. Some of the movie was filmed at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield with many members of the local Jewish community in the seats as extras. The movie stars Laurence Fishburne (as the late Pastor Henry Covington), Martin Landau (as Rabbi Albert Lewis) and Bradley Whitford (as Mitch Albom).

Growing up in Detroit and reading Mitch Albom's sports columns since he arrived here in 1985, I have always known he was Jewish. It wasn't a secret, but it also wasn't something Albom discussed. I first met Albom in 1996 when he was honored by the Anti-Defamation League when I was serving a college internship there. I already owned all of his books which included several volumes of "The Live Albom" (collections of his sports columns) and his books about University of Michigan football coach Bo Shembechler and U-M basketball's Fab Five dream team.

Meeting Mitch Albom for the first time in 1996.

Albom was already well known on the national scene as a sportswriter through his frequent appearances on ESPN, but it wasn't until his autobiographical book "Tuesdays with Morrie" came out in 1997 that he gained international attention and local fame. There were only a few references to Albom's Jewishness in the book and even when he spoke about the book at Jewish book fairs around the country Albom didn't say much about his own faith. When I first met Rabbi David Wolpe in 1996 he told me that he had been a Jewish day school classmate of Mitch Albom's at Akiba Hebrew Academy in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania (and that he was currently reading the galleys of a book Albom was writing about his college professor who had died).

His "Have a Little Faith" book was Albom's first time publicly writing about his childhood in a Jewish day school and his relationship with his beloved rabbi, the late Rabbi Albert Lewis. While he doesn't belong to any local congregation, Albom developed a nice relationship with Rabbi Harold Loss of Temple Israel, a very large Reform congregation in suburban Detroit.

With Mitch Albom and Dave Barry at an event in 2009 to raise funds
for Albom's Hole in the Roof Foundation.

Perhaps due to the publication of "Have a Little Faith," Mitch Albom is now more amenable to be honored by Jewish organizations. The ADL event where I first met him was much less a Jewish cause at the time and seen more as a humanitarian organization whose main project was the "A World of Difference" institute in which anti-bias education and diversity training were at the core of its mission. This past May, Albom received an honorary degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary, the same institution where his beloved Rabbi Albert Lewis had been ordained some fifty years prior.

Earlier this month Albom was inducted into the Michigan Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. His speech (video below) began with an apology that he had not been more involved in the Michigan Jewish Sports Foundation during his long career in Detroit. He then used the rest of his time to speak about his college professor, Morrie Schwartz, and the lessons he learned while caring for him as he lay dying in bed.

Albom has become very generous in his philanthropic causes relating to homelessness in the City of Detroit (a main theme of "Have a Little Faith") and a mission/orphanage in Haiti. Albom's Hole in the Roof Foundation helped raise and distribute funds to fix the roof of a church/homeless shelter in Detroit (I Am My Brother’s Keeper) and also rebuilt the Caring and Sharing Mission and Orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti (where he has taken his childhood friend Rabbi David Wolpe).

The work he has done with his Hole in the Roof Foundation is certainly in line with Judaism's value of Tikkun Olam (helping to repair the world). Perhaps Mitch Albom will also become more involved in local and national Jewish causes as he lives out the lessons he's learned in life. He has certainly done a good job sharing the wisdom of his own teachers like Morrie Schwartz and Rabbi Albert Lewis.

Here is the trailer for tonight's premier of "Have a Little Faith":

Warren Buffett's Rabbi Myer Kripke

Giving tours of the Jewish Theological Seminary campus in New York City to visiting groups was certainly one of the highlights of my six years of rabbinical school. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving during my first year at JTS I attended a training session led by the director of donor relations Rebecca Jacobs. Rebecca shared the story of how the Seminary's library tower caught fire on April 18, 1966 damaging thousands of books and how thirty years later a JTS-ordained pulpit rabbi named Myer Kripke from Omaha donated the funds to renovate that same tower.

Rabbi Myer Kripke

I gave over 200 tours of the Seminary, but I never grew tired of telling the story of how a humble rabbi from the south amassed a fortune big enough to make a $7 million cash donation to name the new Seminary tower. The story is that this rabbi's wife, Dorothy Kripke, wrote a series of children's books entitled "Let's Talk About..." and another Omaha woman loved to read these books to her children. When she found out that the author lived close by she decided she had to meet her. Well, as fate would have it, this woman and her husband became dear friends of Rabbi Myer and Dorothy Kripke. This woman's husband even offered to invest the small inheritance left to Mrs. Kripke. That investment paid off big because it was invested by Warren Buffett, the second wealthiest American according to Forbes magazine.

I'll never forget the time I asked a group of school children if they knew how Rabbi Kripke became a millionaire. One of the little girls offered, "Maybe he gave really good sermons?"

Here's a JTA article about Warren Buffett who recently invested $4 billion in an Israeli company:

Long before Israeli deal, Buffett made his mark on Jewish community
By Chanan Tigay

Warren Buffett is not a Jew, and in fact describes himself as an agnostic. Still, the billionaire investment guru, who earlier this month made big news when his Berkshire Hathaway corporation bought an 80 percent share in Israeli metalworks conglomerate Iscar for $4 billion, for years has been making his mark on the U.S. Jewish community back home — though sometimes in a roundabout way.
“Proportionally, if you look at the number of Jews in this country and in the world, I’m associated with a hugely disproportionate number,” Buffett, the second richest man in the world, told JTA in a telephone interview Monday.
Among the first companies Buffett acquired after launching Berkshire Hathaway, the Omaha-based investment and insurance giant, was The Sun Newspapers of Omaha, then owned by Stan Lipsey, one-time chairman of The Jewish Press, Omaha’s Jewish newspaper.
“At the time, the Omaha Club did not take Jewish members, and the Highland Country Club, a golf club, didn’t have any gentile members,” Lipsey recalls. “Warren volunteered to join the Highland” — rather than the gentile club — “to set an example of non-discrimination.”
Buffett happily recalls the fallout from his application.
“It created this big rhubarb,” he says. “All of the rabbis appeared on my behalf, the ADL guy appeared on my behalf. Finally they voted to let me in.”
But that wasn’t the end of the story, Buffett tells JTA. The Highland had a rule requiring members to donate a certain amount of money to their synagogues. Buffett, of course, wasn’t a synagogue member, so the club changed its policy: Members now would be expected to give to their synagogues, temples or churches.
But that still didn’t quite work, Buffett recalls with a laugh, because of his agnosticism.
In the end, the rule was amended to ask simply that members make some sort of charitable donation, and the path to Buffet’s membership was clear.
“He’s an incredible guy,” says Lipsey, today the publisher of the Buffalo News. In 1973, The Sun won a Pulitzer prize in Local Investigative Specialized Reporting for an expose on financial impropriety at Boys Town, Nebraska.
“Warren came up with the key source for us knowing what was going on out there,” Lipsey says.
Buffett himself researched Boys Town’s stocks to bolster the story, Lipsey adds.
In the 1960s, Omaha Rabbi Myer Kripke decided to invest in his friend Buffett’s new business venture. Their wives had become friendly, he says, and the foursome enjoyed playing the occasional game of bridge together.
“My wife had no card sense and I was certainly no competition to Warren, who is a very good bridge player and a lover of the game,” Kripke, rabbi emeritus of Omaha’s Conservative Beth El Synagogue, told JTA. “He’s very bright and very personable and very decent. He is a rich man who is as clean as can be.”
Kripke, father of the noted philosopher Saul Kripke, bought a few shares in Berkshire Hathaway and quickly sold them, doubling his money, he says.
Recognizing a good thing when he saw it, he bought a bunch more shares in his friend’s company, shares that by the 1990s had made Kripke — who says he never earned more than $30,000 a year as a rabbi — a millionaire.
Kripke met his late wife, the children’s book author Dorothy Kripke, at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, the flagship institution of the Conservative movement, where Kripke was ordained as a rabbi in 1937.
In 1996, flush from their prescient investment with Buffet’s company, the couple decided to make a major gift to JTS — $7 million in cash to restore the building’s damaged tower, and a deferred gift of some $8 million, which the seminary will receive after Kripke passes away.
“Rabbi Kripke had the heart to make a donation to JTS, he had the will to make a donation, he had the desire to make a donation — but if he had not had the means to make a donation, the recreation of our tower would never have happened,” says Rabbi Carol Davidson, the seminary’s vice chancellor for institutional advancement. “It was really only possible because of their prior investment many years ago with Warren Buffett.”
Kripke — who says he’s still got a picture of Buffett’s late wife, Susan, on his bulletin board — concurs. Asked if he credits Buffett with his financial success, he doesn’t hesitate.
“Entirely, yes,” he says. “I never had much of an income.”
The Israeli government stands to reap about $1 billion in taxes on Buffett’s purchase of Iscar. Shortly after announcing the deal, Buffett says he was surprised to learn that a Berkshire subsidiary, CTB International, was purchasing a controlling interest in another Israeli company, AgroLogic.
In Israel — which Buffett plans to visit in the fall — the hope is that the deals will have longer legs: Buffett himself has not ruled out future purchases there and, considering his status as a leading investor, observers say others also may take a look at Israeli companies now that Buffett has done so.
“You won’t find in the world a better-run operation than Iscar,” Buffett says. “I don’t think it’s an accident that it’s run by Israelis.”
The Sun newspaper group was not Buffett’s only early purchase of a Jewish-owned company. In 1983, sealing the deal with a handshake, Buffett bought 90 percent of the Nebraska Furniture Mart from Rose Blumkin, a Russian-born Jew who moved to the United States in 1917.
In 1989, he purchased a majority of the stock in Borsheim’s Fine Jewelry and Gifts, a phenomenally successful jewelry store, from the Friedman family.
“He has many friends in the Jewish community,” says Forrest Krutter, secretary of Berkshire Hathaway and a former president of the Jewish Federation of Omaha.
Buffett’s former son-in-law, Allen Greenberg, is a Jew, and now runs the Buffett Foundation, much of whose work has dealt with reproductive rights and family-planning issues. Buffett’s personal assistant is Ian Jacobs, who goes by his Hebrew name, Shami.
Buffett himself counts the late Nebraska businessman Nick Newman and philanthropist Jack Skirball as among his “very closest friends.”
“He is very much honored in the Jewish community,” Kripke says.