Opinions

How Does Satire Influence Politics?

Wednesday, November 14, 2012 2:07:00 PM

The Intersection of Politics and Satire
A Moment Magazine Symposium

Robert Mankoff

Political satire is ridicule dedicated to exposing the difference between appearance and reality in public life. The justification for this mockery, going back to Aristotle, is that by holding bad behavior up to ridicule we might, as it were, “laugh folly out of existence.” Syllogistically, a la Aristotle, it might be put something like this:

1) Politicians behaving badly will be mocked.

2) Politicians don’t like to be mocked.

3) Politicians will stop behaving badly.

Now, how did that pan out? More than two millennia later, political folly is still as much with us despite the fact that political satire reaches more of the populace than ever before, as part of the entertainment industry. There’s now a veritable satiric-industrial complex. Furthermore, that populace is no longer just a passive recipient of Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Onion or an occasional New Yorker cover or cartoon, but is actively participating by blogging, Twittering and Facebooking their own material. Don’t get me wrong, I like political satire and would like to think that it has some effect other than tweaking the mighty and getting laughs. But I think that would be confusing appearance with reality.

Robert Mankoff is a cartoonist, cartoon editor for The New Yorker and founder of The Cartoon Bank.

Dave Barry

I’ve viewed our political system as a form of entertainment for a long time. When I go to the political conventions, I look around at all the real reporters and think, “What the hell are they writing? How can they possibly make this appear to be serious?” To be ponderous about it, most people have a pretty strong sense of skepticism about the people who claim to want to run the country for the benefit of the people. Skepticism is a good thing for the most part, and the tendency to mock the people posturing for us is probably pretty healthy. I’m always amazed that people can look at it any other way. Satire has probably gotten a little more vicious, immediate, constant and more partisan than it used to be. There was a time when political satirists tended to make fun of the whole process of politics, and that’s where I still feel that I am. Political satirists aren’t trying to do good—it’s just better than having a real job.

Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist and author of more than 30 books.

David Brooks

There’s a vast literary tradition that says satire is inherently conservative because it holds the manners of today up against the standards of the past. If you look at Jonathan Swift or Horace or traditional satirists, their general theme was to look at how heroic we used to be and how stupid we’ve become. Today, the people who most famously do satire are purportedly liberal, like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but they are objectively very conservative, because what they do is pick out the stupidest things happening in any given day and make fun of them, and for the people who watch, especially college students, politics is just one long parade of stupidity. As a result, college students begin to unconsciously distrust government and politics. I’d say the two cultural institutions that have contributed to mistrust of government are 60 Minutes—for 30 years it has been telling one story after another of institutional failure—and the Comedy Central guys, realizing that is the opposite of what they intend to do. If you want to elect libertarians and Republicans, it is pretty good: You have generations who don’t believe in government or government solutions.

David Brooks is a New York Times columnist and author of The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement.

Click here to continue reading this article on Moment Magazine.com

Klezmer Punks, Gangsta Rabbis: An Oral History of JDub Records

Wednesday, November 14, 2012 1:39:09 PM

by Daniel Arkin, <A href="http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/11/12/50511-klezmer-punks-gangsta-rabbis-an-oral-history-of-jdub-records-2002-2011/" type=external target=_blank>the Brooklyn Ink</A> “Music is spiritual. The music business is not.” —Van Morrison Ten years ago, JDub Records was a collegiate pipe dream. By 2006, it was the single coolest thing in Jewish popular culture. Five years later, JDub Records ceased to exist. <IMG style="MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" border=0 name=jdub_4641389580 alt="" align=left src="http://davidsvoice.org/getimage.asp?id=389580" width=200 height=199 caption="" originalWidth="200" originalHeight="199">Even if you’ve never heard of JDub Records, you may have heard of the Hasidic reggae-rapper Matisyahu, their flagship artist. But the story is bigger than him. It’s the story of a scrappy start-up that broke all the rules, revolutionizing Jewish music over eight years and thirty-six albums. It’s the story of the savvy innovators and radical artists who shook up Jewish popular culture at the dawn of a new millennium. And who better to tell that story than the people who were there: the founders, the staff, and the artists. Nearly 20 JDub principals spoke to The Brooklyn Ink’s Daniel Arkin about their decade at the forefront of alternative music. Aaron Bisman (Co-Founder; President and CEO): I studied music business at NYU. Ben Hesse (Co-Founder): Aaron and I were at NYU together in the late 1990s, early 2000s. Hesse: Aaron was a DJ and doing a lot of beat-making. I’d write songs to Aaron’s beats. We spent a lot of time in our apartment on the Lower East Side sampling and writing and recording music. Bisman: We both schlepped our turntables around and we would DJ parties. Hesse: We were into the downtown, Lower East Side experimental music scene. We were into the stuff John Zorn and Tzadik Records label were pushing out of Tonic. It was secular, abstract. At the same time, I was hanging out with a lot of Hasidim and Lubavitchers in Brooklyn, listening to a lot of old Eastern European Jewish music. Bisman: Ben holed himself up at home and taught himself to use ProTools, which back then was very expensive. He came out of it with a really interesting project. It was some songs, some soundscapes, some in Hebrew, some with Hasidic melodies. Hesse: Aaron and I saw there was a void between those two worlds: secular, esoteric sort of music and religious sort of music. There was really nothing in between. Bisman: We saw no one else doing anything like it, professionally or artistically. We got really excited about it. We asked ourselves, ‘What should we do with this music?’ Hesse: Aaron was very much interested in running a label. We started applying for grants. Bisman: I knew about Joshua Venture, which gives you 60,000 dollars over two years, plus training. I applied. We spent about six months during our senior year at NYU hashing out ideas for the grant application. Hesse: Aaron and I started kicking around the idea of JDub. It was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if Jewish music wasn’t just Hava Nagila and Fiddler on the Roof kitsch?’ Bisman: The American Jewish world had done a really crappy job of creating meaningful culture for young people beyond Jewish summer camps and a few other things. Hesse: Jewish music was just cornball. Bisman: The idea was, I want to make music that some high school kid in the Midwest can play in his car and bump and really feel: ‘It’s cool, it’s mine, it’s Jewish, and I’m totally proud of that.’ I remember being sixteen, working at Camp Ramah in California. One day I went to a Phish show at the Ventura County Fairgrounds. Fifty-thousand people there. Trey [Anatasio], who’s not Jewish, broke into ‘Avinu Malkeinu,’ singing in Hebrew, and doing a damn good job. I looked around and saw recognition on other people’s faces. It was a powerful, transformative moment. We wanted to create those moments for other people. Dan Greenman (JDub Label Manager and Administration Director): If you asked a room full of Jewish-American teenagers to describe Jewish music, they’d say Hebrew prayers, summer camp songs, Adam Sandler. Cheesy stuff that no twenty-year-old is gonna relate to. JDub changed that. In March 2003, Bisman began the two-year Joshua Venture Fellowship for Jewish Social Entrepreneurs. He conceived of a nonprofit record label dedicated to discovering and promoting “innovative” Jewish music. JDub was born. Deb Leipzig (VP, Strategic Planning and Development): Aaron made JDub his life. Bisman: We built this model, which was basically, ‘What are all the services artists creating innovative Jewish music would need to be successful? Record company, management, booking, marketing—really, everything.’ We saw the possibility of latent demand. Deb Leipzig (VP, Strategic Planning and Development): JDub was largely funded with foundation money. It was supported by twelve or fifteen foundations. Hesse: I was interested in the creative, musical side of the equation. Bisman: I was more interested in all the other pieces: the marketing, distributing the content, promotion, developing the label. Hesse: We tried really hard not to be the Jewish equivalent of Christian rock. We didn’t want some pedantic pontification of a belief system. We just wanted to be authentic. Bisman and Hesse found authenticity — or something like it — in young Matthew Miller, a Deadhead from suburban White Plains, N.Y. who had reinvented himself as Matisyahu, black-bearded Hasidic reggae-rapper. Bisman: Ben met Matt during our senior year. Hesse: We were both studying with Rabbi [Eliyahu] Cohen, the Chabad rabbi at NYU. Matt was attending The New School, which is right around the block from NYU. Bisman: The rabbi was like, ‘You’re both musicians. You should meet.’ Matt came to our apartment, we jammed, recorded some stuff. We’re like, ‘Oh, here’s another kid doing the kind of stuff we want to do.’ Hesse: We hit it off. <A href="http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/11/12/50511-klezmer-punks-gangsta-rabbis-an-oral-history-of-jdub-records-2002-2011/" type=external target=_blank>Click here to continue reading this article on The Brooklyn Ink.com</A>

Shades of Gay in Israel

Wednesday, November 14, 2012 1:15:55 PM

by Adam Rosner, Tabletmag.com

Tonight, a documentary I wrote and produced in Israel, The Invisible Men, will screen at the Other Israel Film Festival in New York City. The film tells the untold stories of gay Palestinians hiding in Tel Aviv, seeking refuge from the families and Palestinian security forces that want them dead and the Israeli authorities that want them out of the Jewish state. Five years after I moved to Israel and three after embarking on this project, these screenings present me with less a homecoming than a privilege: I return to my hometown more proud than ever to be Jewish, American, Israeli, and gay.

I grew up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and I was, to put it simply, your all-American Jewish kid with all of the attendant neuroses and privileges. I was educated at the Ramaz School and Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, two flagship institutions of Modern Orthodox Judaism and American religious Zionism. I excelled in school. Socially, I was in the middle of the pack—somewhat awkward, always chubby, but who cared. I was accepted to Princeton University and graduated with a degree in Russian Literature with high honors. I wrote a thesis on Woody Allen. In the competitive worlds I was raised in, was accepted to, I was a “winner.” To my parents, especially my father—born to Polish Holocaust survivors, shtetl Jews, in a German Displaced Person’s Camp in 1946—I was living the life that he had always wanted for himself but could never have had.

But there was one competition for which I wasn’t even eligible—a “BNB” as Modern Orthodox Jews call it, a bayit ne’eman b’yisrael, a loyal home among the Jewish people, which normatively means a wife and children. As had started to become clear to me around the age of 12, I felt “different.” At summer camp, I wasn’t sneaking off with girls—not that I was sneaking off with boys. As I lost weight, I justified my confusion with same-sex attraction for insecurity and a difficult relationship with my father. In the 10th grade, I distinctly recall Ramaz Principal Rabbi Haskell Lookstein’s well-known Jewish sexual-education course. One of the few biblical quotes we had to memorize was Leviticus 18:22: “You shall not lie down with a man as with a woman: This is an abomination.”

Real clarity about my sexual orientation didn’t emerge until late into my college years—held off, I think, by the unusual relationship between Princeton’s straightness and its “small but strong” Jewish community. Princeton’s active Jews are often sheltered from the dominant WASPy culture that pervades campus socializing. At least this was how I experienced it when I tried to bridge my Jewishness with the secular freedom I enjoyed as just another student on campus. I felt this life—part-partier, part-student, partly Jewish, partly secular—left no room for coming out of the closet.

As I neared graduation with vague ambitions of an academic career and no desire to become a doctor, a lawyer, or banker, I thought back to Israel. Earlier that year, I had visited a high-school friend who was living in Jerusalem. We spent a day in Tel Aviv, and I was struck by how gay the city is. I realized, if subconsciously, that I could go to Israel and figure out the part of me that I had flat-out ignored. No one would ask questions. And so I moved to the Tel Aviv under the guise of an academic fellowship.

It was in Tel Aviv that I began to confront myself. I recognized and resigned myself to two things: One, I didn’t “feel different”—I actually was. And two, my family could never find out. But months into my time in Tel Aviv, an openly bisexual friend said: “Rosner, you seem a little repressed.” I admitted I was. She gently continued, “Are you … a little gay?” Her own experience comforted me enough to reveal a kernel of the truth. “I am,” I told her. It would be our secret.

Click here to continue reading this article on Tablet Magazine.com

Q&A with Miri Ben-Ari, the Award-Winning "Hip-Hop Violinist"

Thursday, September 06, 2012 8:46:54 AM

by David Samuels, <A href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/music/111081/qa-miri-ben-ari" type=external target=_blank>Tablet Magazine</A> <TABLE align=left> <TBODY> <TR isCaptionTable="true"> <TD align=middle><IMG style="MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" border=0 name=Miri_ben_ari_316383663 alt="" align=left src="http://davidsvoice.org/getimage.asp?id=383663" width=350 height=235 caption="Photo Cred: Margarita Corol" originalWidth="350" originalHeight="235"></TD></TR> <TR> <TD style="FONT: 1em/1.3em arial; BACKGROUND: #fff; COLOR: #000" width=350 align=middle>Photo Cred: Margarita Corol</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Miri Ben-Ari’s spooky ability to make her violin talk in a multiplicity of voices, from classical, to jazz, to soul, to hip-hop, has made the classically trained cat-suited Israeli violinist a favorite of artists like Jay Z, Wyclef Jean, and Kanye West (she co-wrote “Jesus Walks” and produced many other songs on West’s debut, The College Drop-Out). Ben Ari’s mastery of technique is more than matched by a drive for emotional and musical openness that declared itself with unusual strength—accompanied by occasional tears, and a cappuccino—during a long lunch at Antica Botega del Vino, a wine bar near Central Park. I liked her combination of hard steel, softness, blatant self-involvement, and crazy. “Dim the Lights,” the first single off her upcoming album, is already out: The video features Ben-Ari flying on a violin, and Ben-Ari and a dog wearing identical sunglasses, and sounds like something you’d hear in a cool late-night club in Paris. The following is an edited version of portions of our conversation. When did you first pick up a violin, and what was your relationship to it when you were young? I was 5. It was a very difficult instrument, and I liked the difficulty. I liked the challenge of being able to play really fast. It’s a little bit of a sport, the violin. It’s an insane instrument. My brother and I were part of a gifted-kids program put together by Isaac Stern. And almost every single person or kid that was there, they were all like concert masters or soloists. The classical music bubble in Israel was a very intelligent group of people, coming from an intelligent group of parents, very nonviolent, it was a good situation, you know. I don’t get along with institutions. It’s not my forte. So there, I belonged to something. And it gave me confidence, it developed me. And most importantly, it gave me opportunity. To master an instrument like that especially as a child, it’s got to connect to such basic drives. In you, I feel that intense desire for mastery and that intense drive that blocks out everything else. Yeah, definitely. I dropped out of school. And my parents just went with the flow. Very modern, really amazing parents. They trusted me. I asked my dad not too long ago, “How did you let me do that, it’s insane.” And he said, “You were so focused as a kid, you knew what you were doing, I didn’t worry about you.” I liked to practice, to do my own thing, and then I was exploring other types of music, and I fell in love with jazz. Tell me about being this girl from the classical bubble, who didn’t like to follow instructions of any kind and gets thrown out of school, and then goes to serve in the Israeli Army. That sounds like a recipe for disaster. The army was a life-changing experience for me. Because I was in this bubble and I always was with people that played and knew me because we played. There it was basic training with a group of chicks from everywhere. And they knew me for who I was. And they loved me for who I was, without knowing anything about what I do. I made friends with girls because they thought I was cool. And nobody before thought I was cool. There is something that the army does where it doesn’t matter who you are, you are all one in the army. They’re training you to be one. You’re all equal. And because of that, it gives you that sensation that everything is possible. It just wipes you out, and then you move forward. Does that make sense to you? Your prior existence, personality, your assumptions about yourself, your context are all wiped clean, and then you realize, “I could be anyone!” You can start over again. And my problem was that I was very stuck on classical. I had to stop. And then you came to New York? Right after the army. I lived in a Christian dormitory on 14th Street with four college girls, and they kicked me out because I practiced. No matter what I did, I got kicked out. They failed me in music, and then they kicked me out of that Christian dormitory because I practiced music. And I was like, “Oh, my god, I’m homeless, no money, no communication skills, no family! No friends.” I didn’t have anyone to talk to. But always with musicians, we have a language in common, we have music. And there were also men that were after me. <A href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/music/111081/qa-miri-ben-ari" type=external target=_blank>Click here to continue reading this article on Tablet Magazine</A>

Room for Dessert - Four Rosh Hashanah Cakes

Wednesday, September 05, 2012 3:46:01 PM

by Paula Shoyer, Joy of Kosher

When these cakes grace your table for the final course, those last bites will certainly be the sweetest!

Chocolate Babka Bundt Cake
Everyone loves chocolate babka. Here is a way to make it look more like an elegant cake, but still have the soft and gooey experience of traditional babka

Red Velvet Marble Cake
Red Velvet Cake is a recent addition to kosher tables and probably has increased in popularity due to the prevalence of red velvet cupcakes in cupcake shops. It tastes like chocolate cake but not a very chocolaty one.

Coffee Crêpe Cake
The French call this a “mille crêpe,” implying that it has a thousand layers, like a “mille feuille,” the French name for the Napoleon dessert. Don’t worry: you will only have to make about 25 crêpes, but that will take some time. This cake has a velvety-smooth texture, and is definitely worth the time and effort. I like to make the crêpes and pastry cream one day, and then assemble the cake the next. If you do not like coffee flavor, you can omit it and have vanilla cream instead.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Mousse Cake with Peanut Praline and Caramel Sauce
This GIANT cake will remind you of your favorite candy bar. It has chocolate, peanuts, peanut butter, and caramel all rolled into one. You could make two 2-layer cakes— eat one and freeze the other.

Tip: Slicing Cake Layers

Use a knife to mark cake where you plan to slice. Hold the knife in one hand, and place the other hand on top of the cake. Cut about two inches into the cake while turning the cake with the other hand. Keep turning until you have cut in two inches all around the cake. Place the knife into one slit and slice straight across by joining the cuts.

Don’t miss two other Rosh Hashanah cakes from Paula Shoyer, the Orange Honey Cake with Orange Mousse and Fondant-Covered Almond Apricot Cake.

Israel Made My Parents Cool

Tuesday, August 07, 2012 12:29:52 PM

by Ari Teman, <A href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/108250/israel-made-my-parents-cool" type=external target=_blank>Tabletmagazine.com</A> <IMG style="MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" border=0 name="Teman parents_2724381067" alt="" align=left src="http://davidsvoice.org/getimage.asp?id=381067" width=350 height=235 caption="" originalWidth="350" originalHeight="235">Two years ago this week, my parents made aliyah, which is Hebrew for “abandoned me.” And then something weirder happened: They became cool. When my parents left America, they were objectively not cool. My dad’s definition of style was a polo shirt with Bugs Bunny on the pocket—judging by frequency of use, his favorite piece of clothing ever. My mom’s idea of going out was … just an idea. “Going out” in my family consisted of a strange game of verbal tennis where the paternal unit would serve with “What do you want to do?” and Mom would return with “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” My sister and I would sit on the sidelines, heads turning side to side, as they volleyed ideas about restaurants we could go to before dropping each one. Our mouths would salivate as we discovered Mom’s apparently endless cooking repertoire, as evidenced by her response to the suggestion of any cuisine: “I can make that at home.” My dad, an avid photographer, has abundant evidence that my parents used to be cool before my sister and I showed up and ruined things. In the 1970s, my mom looked gorgeous as a young college student, and my dad rocked a three-piece suit and facial hair that would put Teen Wolf to shame. They even smoked things like cigarettes and … let’s say, salmon. But my sister and I suspected those photos were posed. My dad’s most famous “war story” was that he had a friend in high school who could burp the word “Constantinople.” My mom’s stories seemed to begin and end in the ’70s, when she spent four years at the Stern College for Women. By the 1990s, their idea of “going crazy,” as we saw it, meant shopping with abandon at the Bead Stampede or Home Depot or throwing an extra pair of Kirkland Signature pants into the cart at Costco. To be fair, my parents were fun; I became a comedian from years of having to keep up with the rapid banter at our dinner table. And my parents were great and loving: We always ate dinner together, and they were always there for us, for which we were of course completely ungrateful. But they weren’t cool. They just seemed old. My mom took enough vitamins to revitalize a sick horse. My dad rode his stationary exercise bike in baggy Lands End boxer shorts, forever ruining the basement for me. And then it happened. These two old farts who never ventured far from home (Miami doesn’t count as travel for Jews) decided to go to Israel, “just to look,” and came back owning an apartment. My sister and I were shocked. Before that moment, my parents’ idea of risk was mixing a new salad dressing right into the lettuce—and they always had back-up lettuce. They were not the type to move their entire lives across the world. At first, we didn’t believe it. We were sure they’d change their minds. And then, the house where we grew up was sold. My mom sat on the floor of her empty bedroom where their furniture had been for 20 years, the longest she’d lived anywhere. Her eyes welled up with tears and she cried like I’ve never seen my mom cry. It was real. Life in Teaneck, N.J.—not that I’m admitting here that there is life in Teaneck—was over. In August 2010, my parents became Israelis. I watched them be welcomed by Prime Minister Netanyahu via web stream. They looked goofy, as usual, a little too proud of their complimentary tan caps provided by Nefesh b’ Nefesh, and I wanted my goofy parents to come back home. Of course, those Israelis had big signs up saying “Welcome Home,” confusing these old, sleep-deprived people as to where “home” was. <A href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/108250/israel-made-my-parents-cool" type=external target=_blank>Click here to continue reading on Tablet Magazine</A>.

The Forgotten Donor Demographic in the Jewish Community

Tuesday, August 07, 2012 12:24:01 PM

by Debra H. Levenstein, eJewishphilanthropy.com <IMG style="MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" border=0 name=eJewish_625368861 alt="" align=left src="http://davidsvoice.org/getimage.asp?id=368861" width=159 height=167 caption="" originalWidth="159" originalHeight="167">Everyone agrees that the economic woes of the past 5 years have affected Jewish nonprofits. Donations are down and the donor base is barely growing. Meanwhile, the absence of young Jewish adults active in the Jewish world is causing dismay among professionals in Jewish agencies across the country. The often overlooked answer to both of these problems is engaging young Jewish adults in Jewish life through meaningful acts of tzedakah. What has been done to capture the minds and hearts of the young Jewish adult? For years many are wooed with free activities focused on Jewish life: Friday night dinners on college campuses, trips to Israel, and even Purim bar-hopping celebrations. But the lasting value of “free” to the Jewish community is debatable. On the one hand, it is a positive step toward creating connections that might otherwise not have been made. On the other, it is ineffective in fostering an understanding of responsibility to the community. What is needed is a means to outreach that builds an attitude of paying it forward; a commitment to the future of the Jewish community. A Program Director for a local Jewish Graduate Students program told me that her program was experiencing a second year of serious budget cuts so steep that her role has changed from programming to fundraising to keep the program doors open. In this role she is attempting to raise basic funds from 1,100 alumni and current students of the program. The response that she is getting from graduate and graduated students is less than enthusiastic. While the program spends some $100 per student each year, its graduates can hardly find their way to contributing $18 to her program. It isn’t that they don’t have access to the modest funds the program needs; it is that supporting this Jewish organization is not their priority. So the question becomes: how do we help them to see the important role they have to play in the continuation of such valuable programs? The answer is that it is a matter of education. Isn’t that why we capitalize on teen philanthropy programs? Across the country extraordinary programs teach teens about philanthropy through a Jewish lens, giving their participants basic information about needs in the Jewish community and how to make informed donor decisions. Essentially encouraging them to become responsible members of the Jewish community as they become adults. In many places one can find similar programs for young adults at the college and university level. But we consistently come up short in reaching the post college demographic. There is a wide range of programming developed to reach the post college Jewish young adult, including but not limited to programs promoting social action, social activity, and philanthropy. Many of these programs are sporadic and do not build community. The philanthropic programs focus on the relatively wealthy – those who have access to funds to donate in excess of $1,000 – or don’t require that the participant contribute any funds at all. There is nothing reaching out to the Jewish young adult post college of modest or moderate means. This missing demographic is filled with global citizens who are good to the core, caring individuals. While they want to enjoy life they are still looking for some meaningful engagement. They are looking for a sense of community. To reach them I have designed the LEV GIVING Program. <A href="http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/the-forgotten-donor-demographic-in-the-jewish-community/" type=external target=_blank>Click here to continue reading on eJewishPhilanthropy.com</A>

U.S. Music Festival Set to Rock Israel Out in Summer of 2013

Tuesday, August 07, 2012 12:17:38 PM

by Uri Zer Aviv, <A href="http://www.haaretz.com/culture/u-s-music-festival-lollapalooza-set-to-rock-israel-out-in-summer-of-2013.premium-1.456031" type=external target=_blank>Haaretz.com</A> <IMG style="MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" border=0 name=Lollapalooza_722381066 alt="" align=left src="http://davidsvoice.org/getimage.asp?id=381066" width=350 height=263 caption="" originalWidth="350" originalHeight="263">Lollapalooza, the massive U.S.-based music festival, will be coming to Tel Aviv in the summer of 2013, the show's producers announced on Sunday, with dozens of international acts expected to take part. Expected to take place August 20-22, the festival's arrival was announced in a press conference in Chicago, the show's home for the last several years. Its slated Tel Aviv date would make Israel only the third country visited by the three-day extravaganza, following Chile and Brazil. The festival has been a perennial draw for big-time names in alternative, rock, hip hop, and electronic music, with performers such as Coldplay, Kanye West, Flaming Lips, deadmau5, Muse, the Flaming Lips. Lollapalooza was founded in Chicago in 1991 by Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell, who performed with his band in Israel last year. Speaking at the press conference, Farrell said that as "a musician, I really missed the days when we were on the move. In the last few years we've widened our scope, presenting Lolla to the 'festival generation' around the world. Next stop- Tel Aviv." In a statement, Marc Geiger of WME Entertainment said that "Israel is an incredibly sophisticated music market," Marc Geiger of WME Entertainment said in a statement. "Consumers have a voracious appetite for entertainment, yet there has never been a major music festival. To me, this combination screams Lollapalooza." <A href="http://www.haaretz.com/culture/u-s-music-festival-lollapalooza-set-to-rock-israel-out-in-summer-of-2013.premium-1.456031" type=external target=_blank>Click here to continue reading this article on Haaretz.com</A>

Local Cincinnatian Named President of Birthright Israel Foundation

Thursday, July 26, 2012 2:16:54 PM

by Lucy May, Business Courier <IMG style="MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" border=0 name="David Fisher_2413380086" alt="" align=left src="http://davidsvoice.org/getimage.asp?id=380086" width=86 height=108 caption="" originalWidth="86" originalHeight="108">Jones the Florist owner David Fisher is the new president of the Birthright Israel Foundation, the fundraising arm of a group that sends young Jewish adults on free trips to Israel. Fisher and his family still own Jones the Florist, and Fisher will remain CEO of the floral business. The company named Joe Rozier as president of Jones. “We are thrilled for David in his new venture,” Rozier said in an e-mail. “He was made for this role and will do a lot of good for thousands of young people.” Birthright Israel has sent more than 300,000 young Jewish adults on free educational trips to Israel since 2000. Fisher, 46, succeeds Robert Aronson as president of the New York City-based foundation. “David Fisher brings a unique background to this assignment and comes to us at a vitally important moment in the organization’s young history,” Daniel Och, chairman of the Birthright Israel Foundation, said in a news release. “David has a deep appreciation for building relationships to achieve successful results. Add to that his deep involvement in the Jewish community, willingness to raise the funds needed to support its growth and vitality, and his passion for Birthright Israel – I cannot think of a better person to lead us into the future.” Fisher has held major leadership positions in Cincinnati’s Jewish community. He spearheaded the effort to re-establish and build a new Cincinnati Jewish Federation/Jewish Community Center, a project that raised $45 million and was completed in 2008, according to the news release announcing his appointment. Between 2003 and 2009, Fisher held many leadership positions with United Jewish Communities/Jewish Federations of North America, according to the release. He co-chaired and led the organization’s strategic plan to refocus its Young Leadership department, was the National Young Leadership co-chair, the National Major Gifts chair and its youngest national campaign chair from 2008 to 2009, the release said. In the news release, Fisher explained why he wanted to move from the business world to the top post at the Birthright Israel Foundation. He recalled a leadership conference in Israel that he and his wife, Stacey, attended in 2011. “Each of the participants was asked to write two obituaries – one if they died today and one if they died in 25 years, with the intent being to focus on what we might want written about our lives 25 years down the road. I wanted to do something more, to contribute to our Jewish future and so I wrote my second obituary dedicating my life to connecting our young people to Israel,” he said in the release. “I never imagined then that I would be given the opportunity to lead the Birthright Israel Foundation and fulfill my dream. I am honored and thrilled to be given the opportunity to work with all of the Birthright Israel stakeholders in the U.S., Israel and throughout the Diaspora to grow Taglit-Birthright Israel for this generation and generations to come."

Making Motherhood Work - With Work

Thursday, July 26, 2012 1:59:02 PM

by Deena Fuchs, eJewishphilanthropy.com <IMG style="WIDTH: 208px; HEIGHT: 149px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" border=0 name="Mother and Daughter Hugging (2005)_305638383" alt="" align=left src="http://davidsvoice.org/getimage.asp?id=38383" width=358 height=239 caption="" originalWidth="358" originalHeight="239">In April 2006 I learned that my husband and I were expecting our fourth child. My first thought: thank G-d for another blessing. My second: this 2 bedroom rental on Manhattan’s Upper West Side was not going to cut it anymore. It was time to move to the suburbs. My third: how am I going to make this all work – with work? I was clearly not the first working mother to worry about that, nor will I be the last. In truth, I think the same thought almost daily. The truth is: being a hands-on mother with real career ambitions is just plain hard. The recent Atlantic Monthly article by Anne Marie Slaughter’s (yes, I read the whole thing – the one benefit of commuting from the suburbs!), the recent news about Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer and the recent eJewish Philanthropy coverage of the Jewish community’s leadership and succession crisis, have made me think anew about this issue. I wonder whether they are not all pieces of the same communal challenge. Let me explain. Six months after learning about our impending good news, my husband and I took the plunge and bought a house on Long Island. Our daughter was born soon after. I was officially panicking. I had four children under six, an hour and half commute each way, and I loved my job as the AVI CHAI Foundation’s Director of Communications. I was not alone at AVI CHAI dealing with these issues. We were at that point a young staff, many of us women, beginning families. My needs were not unique and AVI CHAI’s Executive Director, Yossi Prager, as well as the Chairman, Arthur Fried, recognized the challenges we were facing. They also understood that helping us address our work-home conflict might be the only way to keep some of us employed full-time at the foundation. They listened to us and came back with a proposal. We could work from our homes two days a week – Tuesdays and Thursdays, enabling the full office to be present on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We had to be set up to work effectively with both hardware (funded by AVI CHAI) and childcare. And, we had to be flexible so that if we were required to attend a meeting on either of our home days we could and would commute to the office, even on little notice. In all honesty, I knew Yossi was nervous. His unease required us to prove that this was doable. Intellectually he understood that “face time” was not essential for good work, but he worried about how to keep staff accountable. Initially, Yossi insisted that we provide him with weekly progress reports of what we were working on – both at home and in the office. At some point that requirement was lifted, as we proved that the new situation was working and that the amount of time spent accounting for our activities would be better spent working! He made his point, though. We were accountable for our work. We were offered a privilege and it was ours to maintain. I made sure that I had full-time child care, a home office with the requisite equipment including a webcam for skype meetings and a designated phone line that my office phone is forwarded to. No one knows whether I am home or in the office. I schedule my work flow to accommodate where I am situated. Conference calls and writing are scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays since it usually quieter at home and with fewer distractions. I schedule in-person meetings and strategy sessions on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays whenever possible. <A href="http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/making-motherhood-work-with-work/" type=external target=_blank>Click here to continue reading this article on eJewishphilanthropy.com</A>