Yeshiva University Student Wins $18,000 on Jeopardy!

You just can't make this up. An Orthodox Jewish student from Yeshiva University finished with exactly $18,000 on tonight's "College Championship" episode of "Jeopardy!" That's one thousand times chai for those of you familiar with the "Jewish math." What's more is that Netanel Paley, who obviously knows his Torah, was fortunate when the Final Jeopardy clue was a quote from the beginning of the Book of Numbers. Netanel answered correctly after another contestant wrote "The Book of Exodus." When I saw the clue I actually thought Netanel would write "Bamidbar" as his response.

Netanel Paley of Yeshiva University during Final Jeopardy

Unfortunately, the 21-year-old Yeshiva junior came in 2nd place despite recognizing the text from the Torah. According to an interview with the Algemeiner last month, Netanel says he was a state finalist for the National Geographic Geography Bee and a regional finalist for the Scripps National Spelling Bee in high school. He said that he prepared for the “Jeopardy!” match by poring over reference books and crash-course manuals on an array of topics. He told the Algemeiner he was "very humbled" to represent the Jewish community in the competition and that if he had been given a chance, he "would have liked to say something on air about how proud I am to be an Orthodox Jew and how proud I am to attend YU and learn Judaic and general studies at the same place. But I guess just appearing on TV with my kippah (skullcap) and payot (sidelocks) was nice. I hope I made a good impression."

Netanel Paley of Yeshiva University with Alex Trebek on "Jeopardy!"

Many contestants on "Jeopardy!" are Jewish and I've written about some of the more notable ones in the past like Matt Jackson, who currently holds the 4th-longest winning streak in the show's history. (Matt called me after I wrote about him to thank me and to elaborate on his Jewish beliefs.) I also wrote about the first female rabbi to have competed on Jeopardy!", Conservative Rabbi Joyce Newmark. Rabbi Geoff Mitelman, a Reform Rabbi and a fellow Rabbis Without Border alum, wrote about his "Jewish Approach" to being a contestant on "Jeopardy" in a recent Huffington Post column.

Female Orthodox Rabbinical Student Marianne Novak with Alex Trebek on Jeopardy

Marianne Novak, an Orthodox woman from Skokie, Illinois who teaches at the Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning and is studying to be a rabbi at Yeshivat Maharat competed in an episode of "Jeopardy" this past October. Unfortunately for Marianne, not only did she come in last place, but she wasn't able to have a viewing party the night her taped competition aired because it was yuntif. So, if you're ever on "Jeopardy!" and the clue is "This female Orthodox rabbinical student appeared on an episode of Jeopardy! that aired on the Jewish festival of Sukkot" the correct answer is: "Who is Rabbi Marianne Novak."

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.

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

Role of the 21st Century Rabbi

A recent editorial in The Forward demonstrates how much the American rabbinate has changed in the 21st century. The economy has made it difficult for many rabbis to find good jobs; and for them to keep good jobs when the synagogue or organization falls on tough financial times. A reduction in the number of congregations due to closures and mergers has also caused a dearth of desirable positions for rabbis in the U.S. and Canada. But there are other factors involved as well. New rabbinical schools (Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Ziegler at the American Jewish University, Hebrew College, and the Academy for Jewish Religion) have cropped up in the past fifteen years increasing the number of new rabbis looking for work. The Internet has also made it much easier for the laity to learn synagogue skills -- life-cycle officiation, prayer leading, and teaching -- that may ultimately reduce the need for a rabbi, although I don't believe that to be the case.

As the Forward editorial makes clear, "the role of rabbi is being challenged as never before." Some sociologists like Prof. Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis University predicted precisely such a change in the American rabbinate based on shifting demographics and the needs of the community. However, I don't see this as a crisis in American Jewry. Rather, I find this to be an interesting opportunity for rabbis to become more entrepreneurial -- both as a way to be necessary and to make a significant contribution to our people. Rabbis who see this as a chance to reinvent their rabbinate will ultimately be the most successful in the new era of Jewish life. And that holds true not only for American rabbis, but for rabbis throughout the Jewish world who have the entrepreneurial spirit.

Getting Chai on 'Weeds' - Jewish Themes Galore on the Showtime Hit Series

Fans of the long-running Showtime series “Weeds” know that writer and creator Jenji Kohan is not afraid to pepper the show with Jewish themes. While the show, now in its final season, has changed its flavor over the years and gained some critics, many devotees still enjoy the story about a marijuana-selling widowed mother from the suburbs and her family’s experiences.

Throughout the different webs of relationships, Kohan, who is Jewish, has managed to bring esoteric Jewish concepts into the series, including in a recent episode that featured ruminations on the power and purpose of immersing in the mikvah. Perhaps because the show is on the subscription-based Showtime network, its Jewish essence hasn’t been widely covered, but Kohan, who considered attending rabbinical seminary, has taken on some controversial Jewish subjects in the past eight seasons. Here are the top Jewish references:

* Unveiling (Season 1, Episode 8): It’s likely that many viewers thought this was a funeral service at the cemetery, but Jewish fans recognized the ritual as the unveiling of Judah Botwin’s tombstone. Once the family returns from the cemetery, Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) explains her day to the Drug Enforcement Agency agent who becomes her boyfriend: “It’s where they unveil the gravestone. It’s a Jewish thing. I know you’re thinking, ‘She doesn’t look Jewish.’ I come from Welsh stock … I’m not Jewish. My husband. He’s dead now. He was Jewish.”

Showtime

The episode also tackles the controversial topic of Jewish lineage when the Orthodox rabbi tells the Botwin boys, Silas (Hunter Parrish) and Shane (Alexander Gould), that they are not legitimately Jewish because their mother isn’t Jewish and they had never converted to Judaism. The young Shane is hurt by the news and takes out his aggression on his wrestling opponent, whose foot he bites after yelling “Sh’ma Yisrael!”

* Rabbinical School (Season 2): Nancy’s out-of-work brother-in-law Andy (Justin Kirk) decides the best way to keep from returning to military service will be to become a rabbi. He enrolls in the fictional Hamidrash L’Torah rabbinical school, where he falls in loves with the dean, the attractive Israeli Yael Hoffman (Meital Dohan). While much of the ongoing rabbinical school experience is silly, some rather serious issues are discussed, including Andy’s theological convictions, which come up while he is writing his admissions essay.

* Euthanasia (Season 4, Episodes 2 and 3): The Botwins leave the Agrestic/Majestic community after it burns and relocate to the home of Nancy’s father-in-law. There they find Lenny Botwin (Albert Brooks) and his mother, Bubbie (Jo Farkas), who is hooked up to a ventilator. The Auschwitz survivor regains consciousness and asks Lenny to kill her. The Botwin men discuss the wisdom and ethics of euthanizing Bubbie, but in the end Lenny agrees to have Nancy kill Bubbie.

* Sitting Shiva (Season 4, Episode 4): While shiva is one of the most well-known Jewish rituals, not many television shows have accurately portrayed it. This episode focuses entirely on the Botwin family sitting shiva for Bubbie at son Lenny’s insistence. Several laws and customs of shiva are mentioned during the episode, including the understanding that family members should not cook for themselves. A shiva candle is lit, and friends and neighbors come to pay their respect.

* Levirate Marriage (Ongoing): While Andy mentions the Jewish concept of a Levirate marriage to his sister-in-law Nancy at one point in the show’s history, the theme is an ongoing one. The Torah dictates that an unmarried man must marry his brother’s widow, but that applies only if the widow has not had children. So even if the law would not apply in Nancy and Andy’s case -- both because she already has children and she is not Jewish -- the constant and sometimes awkward attraction between them seems continually to remind the viewer of Andy’s enjoyment and frustration over the hunt.

* Bris (Season 5, Episode 8): Nancy gives birth to Tijuana Mayor and cartel leader Esteban Reyes’ baby boy, but the father (Demian Bichir) refuses to sign the birth certificate for fear of its effect on his political career. Andy signs the birth certificate as the boy’s father and insists on a brit for the baby, whom he promises to raise proudly as his Jewish son. At the brit, baby Stevie is given the Hebrew name Avi Melech (son of a king).

Showtime

* Mikvah (Season 8, Episode 5): At the end of this episode, Rabbi David Bloom (David Julian Hirsh), the rabbi/hospital chaplain, finally confronts Nancy, who has been secretly swimming in his backyard swimming pool. This is the same rabbi who talks theology with Andy at the hospital when he is concerned about Nancy’s well-being after she is shot in the head at the end of the previous season. When Nancy explains that swimming in the pool feels like a sort of rebirth for her, the rabbi explains the Jewish concept of tevillah (immersion in a mikvah). This is likely the most spiritual and New Age definition of the mikvah ritual that has ever been offered on television.

Kohan has said that she’s not afraid to take on inherently Jewish concepts on the show no matter how esoteric they may be. For the many Jewish fans of "Weeds," there have been many instances of surprise and pride over the years after unpredicted mentions of a Jewish ritual or theme. As the final season comes to a close, there may just be more Jewish references to come.

UPDATE: I just received word that the show filmed scenes for an episode at Adat Ari El synagogue in Valley Village, California last week. They used the historic chapel for one of the scenes. I'm thinking this can mean a Nancy-Andy or a Jill-Andy wedding... We shall see!

Originally published at JTA.org and cross-posted to the PopJewish.com blog.

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.