Treasury’s First Orthodox Chief

Jack Lew, Obama’s pick for Treasury secretary, is the highest-ranking Orthodox Jew in U.S. government history

By Yair Rosenberg

Jack Lew, President Obama’s current chief of staff and his pick for Treasury secretary, is the highest-ranking Orthodox Jew in the history of the U.S. government. It’s a distinction that imposes some unusual burdens—like having to dodge opinionated congregants who try to accost him about politics in synagogue. The 57-year-old New York native recently told me that he has developed a strategy for such situations. “Your friends protect you—they sit around you and make it a little harder for strangers to come and give you a hard time,” he explained. “I just tell people, ‘If I wanted to work on Saturday, I have this 24/7 job. I come to shul to pray.’ ”

Lew’s nomination to succeed Timothy Geithner as Treasury chief is the culmination of a distinguished career in public service. Over nearly four decades in and out of Washington, he has been a senior policy adviser to Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill; a special adviser to President Bill Clinton; the director of the Office of Management and Budget under the last two Democratic presidents; and since January 2012, President Obama’s chief of staff—the fourth Jew to occupy the post in the nation’s history. (The others are his predecessors, Rahm Emanuel and Josh Bolten, as well as Reagan official Kenneth Duberstein.)

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The Rise of Egypt’s Jon Stewart

The popularity of satirist Bassem Youssef may show that the government can’t stifle public debate

By Lee Smith|January 9, 2013

 

 

The Jon Stewart of Egypt, Bassem Youssef, is used to making headlines in Egypt for his popular late-night show. But in the past week the satirist has been in papers around the world for taking his criticism of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi too far. An Islamist lawyer has brought charges against Youssef for mocking the Egyptian president—describing him with epithets like pharaoh, or “SuperMorsi”—and he is now under investigation for “undermining” Morsi’s standing. In the episode in question, Youssef holds a red furry pillow stamped with Morsi’s likeness and speaks to it soothingly. “The president understands us,” says Youssef. “He understands us better than we understand ourselves.”

The Obama Administration has voiced its concerns over the legal action, as have other democracy advocates, seeing this, as well as a complaint that Morsi filed against the newspaper Al-Masry al-Youm, as a test case for the Muslim Brotherhood-led government. “[W]e continue to urge the Egyptian Government to respect freedom of expression,” said a State Department spokesperson, “which is a universal right as one of the harbingers of the kind of country they want to have going forward.”

Morsi insists he has nothing to do with the Youssef investigation. His office explained that the complaints against the TV host are “mainly individual initiatives” brought “by independent lawyers.” And indeed the lawyer who has instigated the proceedings is not a government employee. The peculiar reality of Egypt’s free-wheeling judicial system is that anyone can bring a case to court, regardless of how ludicrous the charges. Last year, the famous Egyptian actor Adel Imam was acquitted of blasphemy charges brought against him by an Islamist lawyer who objected to several roles in which Imam made fun of Islamists.

Since embarking on his media career in March 2011, in response to the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak, the 38-year-old Youssef has gone after the same crew. A cardiothoracic surgeon who still practices medicine when he is not filming his show, Youssef has won a huge audience that would have been unthinkable under the old regime, which frequently censored satirists, critics, and writers. And it wasn’t just Mubarak: The general tendency in Egypt, dating back almost 100 years, has been to freeze debates concerning major social issues, particularly the role of Islam. What the rise of Bassem Youssef indicates is certainly not that the Muslim Brotherhood is more tolerant, but rather that the government may no longer be able to stifle a debate that has long been in the making.
The question now is whether the consciousness raised by Youssef and his show can galvanize a political movement—or at least a debate about the future of an Egypt for all its citizens.
 

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How Jewish Is Lady Grantham?

Jonathan Sarna weighs in on 19th century Cincinnati Jewry

By Marc Tracy January 26, 2012

Last week’s Commenter of the Week unearthed that Lady Grantham, the American-born wife of Lord Grantham in the BBC Masterpiece Theatre seriesDownton Abbey (whose second season is currently playing Sunday nights on U.S. public television), is, according to the program’s official website, “the beautiful daughter of Isidore Levinson, a dry goods multi millionaire from Cincinnati.” In other words: unless she converted—and there is no allusion in the program, as far as I know, even to her background, much less to any conversion—she is Jewish.

But I wanted to know more, including whether Lady Grantham’s mother, too, was Jewish (and therefore whether her three daughters with Lord Grantham—and any children theymight have—are). I wasn’t going to let her being a fictional character stop me. I emailed Jonathan Sarna, a Brandeis professor, author of Nextbook Press’s forthcoming When General Grant Expelled The Jews, and co-author of a 1989 book called, yes, The Jews of Cincinnati.

First, Sarna explained, even if Isidore Levinson isn’t real, he’s based on reality. Start from the premise that Lady Grantham is probably in her 40s when the show’s first episode begins in April 1912 (you know the exact date because a certain event has occurred that morning). Meaning she was born in Cincinnati in the late 19th century. According to Sarna, one study pegged to 1860 reports, “The manufacture, distribution, and sales of men’s ready-made clothing and other apparel supplied at least a portion of the livelihood for well over one-half of Cincinnati’s Jews.” Sarna added, “Other Jews were in dry goods. Jews benefited enormously from the Civil War and by the 1870s numbers of them were wealthy. One need only look at Plum Street Temple (the former synagogue of Isaac M. Wise, built in 1867 and now a National Historic Shrine) to get a sense of the community’s wealth.”

So a wealthy Cincinnati-based Jewish dry-goods merchant makes sense. Would a theoretical Levinson have married a Jew? “Most of the Jews who were in their prime in the 1870s had arrived in Cincinnati as immigrants in the 1840s and ’50s,” Sarna continues. “Those Jews had overwhelmingly married Jews. Some of their children, of course, did not. The daughter of Charles Fleischmann (of dried yeast fame) married Christian R. Holmes and one of Rabbi Wise’s daughters also eloped with a non-Jew (but raised Jewish descendants). However, as late as World War I, the intermarriage rate was a paltry 4.5 percent.”

In conclusion? “‘Isidore Levinson’ would have been right at home in Cincinnati in the 1870s, his wife would have been Jewish, and perhaps his daughter was among those who married out—into faded English royalty.” Oh, hooray!

Report: Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary

The former senator has been a lightning rod for criticism

By Adam Chandler

The Cable’s Josh Rogin, who reliably does great work, reports that after seemingly endless weeks of speculation, former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel is expected to be named as Leon Panetta’s replacement for secretary of defense.

White House officials and sources close to Hagel declined to confirm to The Cable that Hagel is the president’s choice to be the replace Leon Panetta at the helm of the Pentagon, but several sources close to the process said have told The Cable that the White House and Hagel have been in touch on a regular basis and that Hagel is indeed the expected pick. Decisions about the timing and logistics of the announcement are being finalized now.

Speculation about Hagel’s nomination has inspired a maddening collection of responses from charges of Hagel’s anti-Semitism and anti-gay remarks to criticism of his positions on Israel and more comprehensive doubts about his temperament and ability to manage.

Hagel has also earned plaudits high-profile supporters too, including long-time ambassador Ryan Crocker and former colleagues from around the Beltway. Others called on President Obama to avoid letting Israel be the issue that derail Hagel’s nomination.

Should President Obama tap him, we should expect a contentious nomination process.

Obama expected to pick Hagel as opponents prepare for fight.

Forest in Beersheva to Memorialize Newtown Massacre

Over 2,000 people have donated money to plant a forest of over 3,000 trees in Be’ersheva in order to honor the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre. The trees will be part of the Be’ersheva River Park, a 1,700 acre environmental area being constructed by the Jewish National Fund in the Negev’s provincial capital city.

The idea to plant trees in Israel in order to commemorate the young victims of the Newtown Massacre came from Veronique Pozner, the mother of the youngest and only Jewish victim, Noah. Marcie Natan of Hadassah declared, “Everybody was so affected by the massacre and wanted to do something to express their solidarity with the families. Each of us have had the experience of non-Jews who have found it very meaningful when a tree is planted in the Holy Land. We felt no one would be offended by this and we thought it would be a very appropriate way to honor the memory of the victims.”

Marcie Natan planting the first tree in Be’ersheva

In recent days, a delegation of 15 representatives of Hadassah came to Israel in order to plant the first tree in honor of the Sandy Hook Massacre victims. Natan asserted, “A tree is the ultimate symbol of new life.The initial idea was to dedicate the forest in memory of Noah Pozner, who was among the victims of the massacre at the school in Connecticut and was Jewish, and then we realized that we would like to honor the memory of all the children who were murdered in this horrible massacre. Within a few days our members contributed more than $50,000 and I am proud to be the first person to plant the first sapling in the forest.”

Upon planting the first tree into the ground, Natan stated, “The roots of this mulberry tree will hold the desert soil, produce fruit, and give shade to the families recently under fire who will enjoy the park. Trees are a Biblical symbol of life, and the saplings donated will bloom, grove after grove, in the memory of the children and the staff in Newtown.” Around 7,000 Hadassah members reside in Connecticut, with 230 of them living in Newtown itself.

Veronique Pozner, mother of the youngest victim

In the Newtown Massacre, 20 children and 6 adults were murdered in cold blood by Adam Lanza. Governments around the world, including the Israeli government, have condemned what happened. An Israeli humanitarian aid organization had provided assistance in response to the first responders in Newtown. The residents of Be’ersheva have also suffered from attacks on their schools by Palestinian terrorists thus making the Negev provincial capital city a fitting location for a memorial to the Newtown Massacre victims.

Suha Arafat Exhumes Truth About Intifada

Widow of PLO leader says Second Intifada was premeditated

By Adam Chandler

Last month I had the very specific thrill of getting to see Yossi Klein Halevi in conversation with Leon Wieseltier at a shul on the Upper East Side. In addition to reminiscing about the days when Leon used to sneak into Jimi Hendrix concerts, the two public intellectuals talked a lot about the Middle East.

Both had their share of big insights–I highly recommend seeing them if they decide to tour–but, as some news made its way into my orbit, one comment made by Klein Halevi stuck out to me.

In walking the crowd through the recent history of Israel, Yossi Klein Halevi said that the First Intifada had birthed the phenomenon of “the guilty Israeli.” Klein Halevi didn’t expand on this much, but most likely he meant that this Israeli archetype most likely watched the Palestinian protests of the late 1980s and early 1990s and responded more sympathetically than ever to the Palestinian demands for statehood.

The very next thing Klein Halevi declared was that the syndrome of the guilty Israel had been summarily “cured” by the extremely violent Second Intifada a decade later. In other words, as their buses, cafes, and hotels were targeted in attacks, Israelis understandably no longer placed emotional priority on the Palestinian national quest (even if Israel’s long-term health ultimately relies upon it).

The Second Intifada also caused a new disconnect between Israel’s story and the world’s interpretation of it. I was three weeks into a gap year program in Israel when the violence began in September of 2000 and when I left ten bloody months later, there seemed to be nothing more certain to anyone around me than Israel’s virtue in defending itself against terrorism. But the narrative, unsurprisingly, was completely different everywhere else.

On the college campus, the Second Intifada hadn’t been an act of war unleashed upon an Israeli population whose leadership had just made a generous peace offer and been rebuffed. Instead, according to too many, the Second Intifada had been the response to Ariel Sharon’s offensive visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which had supposedly provoked a war that would last for five years and take nearly 4,000 lives.

The tactic worked. The Second Intifada lent the Palestinian cause countless symbols to massage public opinion with: disproportionate body counts, photos of civilian dead, the birth of an ugly security barrier, etc. A robust campaign to delegitimize Israel was waged, all of which started with a lie.

More than 12 years later, the lie surrounding the inciting cause of the Second Intifada has finally been put to rest. In a surreal interview with Dubai TV (translated by MEMRI), Suha Arafat, the widow of Yasser Arafat, bluntly boasted that the Second Intifada had been entirely premeditated by her late husband. Arafat told her interviewer of a meeting with her husband in Paris in 2000.

“Immediately after the failure of the Camp David [negotiations], I met him in Paris upon his return…. Camp David had failed, and he said to me, ‘You should remain in Paris.’ I asked him why, and he said, ‘Because I am going to start an intifada. They want me to betray the Palestinian cause. They want me to give up on our principles, and I will not do so.’”

The cause to be betrayed? A peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the expense of Arab rejectionism. Quoting him, she went on:

“‘I do not want Zahwa’s [Arafat’s daughter’s] friends in the future to say that Yasser Arafat abandoned the Palestinian cause and principles. I might be martyred, but I shall bequeath our historical heritage to Zahwa and to the children of Palestine.’”

The historical heritage Arafat bequeathed instead? Violence, death, corruption, graft, Palestinian poverty, and the worst casualty of all for Palestinian nationalism, a partner that could believe in it.

From pirates to dinosaurs, superheroes to baseball, the best of the year’s Jewish-themed children’s books

It was the best of publishing years; it was the worst of publishing years. OK, mostly it was the worst. But it was a remarkably good year for books aimed at the 8- to 14-year-old crowd. I can’t remember another year with such a diverse, well-written, and fascinating crop of books with Jewish themes. Here’s a list of the best of the lot.

PICTURE BOOKS

As usual this year, I thought most of the picture books were pretty meh. Why are so many Jewish picture books so didactic? Why do they feature tooth-achingly cutesy or smeary-sappy pastel art? Why are the texts so leaden, the rhyme schemes so awkward? Don’t ask why. Just celebrate and buy the few good ones.

How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Chanukah?, by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague. The holiday season can make wee Jews feel like the odd kid out. So, it’s nice to be able to give them a book from a series familiar to the majority culture but aimed specifically at Jewish audiences. Most will already know the gazillion-selling “How Do Dinosaurs” series by Yolen and Teague. In this installment, naughty dinosaurs model bad Hanukkah behavior (a Dracorex dances around maniacally, sticking out its tongue as the text tsk-tsks, “Does a dinosaur act up/on Chanukah nights/when Mama comes in/with the holiday lights?”). Good dinos, of course, sing along with the prayers, take turns with the dreidel, clear the table, and are gracious to Bubbe and Zayde. Charming, oversized, beautifully published. Teague’s illustrations are funny, and your kid will learn new scientific dino names (written in tiny letters alongside each creature) along with good manners. What more do you want? (Ages 2-7)

Jean Laffite: The Pirate Who Saved America, by by Susan Goldman Rubin, illustrated by Jeff Himmelman. How the hell did I not know the pirate was a Jew? Lafitte led a double life as a dashing privateer on the high seas and a handsome, respected Jewish citizen of Louisiana. He grew up in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in the late 1700s, then saved New Orleans during the War of 1812 by foiling a British plot to invade the city. In an author’s note, Rubin explains that after the Spanish expulsion of 1492, many Jews hated Spain and were happy to hire themselves out to plunder Spanish ships. (One pirate-rabbi even had a kosher chef aboard his vessel!) I loved learning about this swashbuckling Hebrew and appreciated Rubin’s thoughtful afterword about Jewish piracy and Lafitte’s ambivalence toward slavery. The book is utterly compelling even though the stately, slightly stilted illustrations (done with Photoshop and paint) are not my thing. (Ages 6-10)

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