May 17
Jeanette Friedmaneducation, local stories/community
Jeanette Friedman • Local
Published: 14 May 2010
Charles and Rabbi Moshe Rosenbaum traveled from Geneva and Jerusalem to Paramus last Thursday to watch the Yavneh middle school graduating class perform “The Unlikely Hero,” a play honoring their father, Pinchas Rosenbaum, who saved Jews in Hungary during the Holocaust. In this production, Pinchas the younger was played by Leora Hyman and the older by Philip Meyer. The script was written and the scenery was designed and painted by members of the graduating class.
The script was adapted from interviews commissioned by the two brothers and their sister Leah, lifelong friends of Yavneh’s Rabbi Shmuel Burstein. Though he knew the family, the teacher first heard the story 25 years ago at dinner honoring the memory of Pinchas Rosenbaum, who died in 1980. According to Charles Rosenbaum, his father rarely spoke about his rescue efforts. But as his children traveled the world, they were approached by those he rescued who told them their stories.
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May 12
Jeanette FriedmanHolocaust, education, history, israel, middle east
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN
Ali Shahata-author of “Demystifying Islam”, Jeanette Friedman & Chuck Dicaro
Nov 10
Jeanette FriedmanHolocaust, education
What were they thinking?
by Rebecca Boroson
We don’t want to shame anyone, so we won’t name names, but certain people should be ashamed. They have been using — or rather, misusing — the Holocaust, in one case as child’s play and in another (no doubt in many others) to win an election. But think of the original meaning of the word “holocaust”: “great or total destruction by fire, a conflagration.” We must not trivialize the “great destruction” of European Jewry. That is disrespectful to the murdered millions and to those who survived to live as witnesses. It is hurtful to their heirs, who are, in effect, klal Yisrael. It is damaging to the historical record and the pursuit of truth.
And yet some Jews do it, whether thoughtlessly, which we deplore, or intentionally, which we detest.
In the first instance, we’ve just learned that a certain Jewish federation — not in our circulation area, we’re glad to say — held a truly tasteless activity for children in grades four through six at a Jewish day school: building a model of the Warsaw Ghetto with Legos, those plastic blocks that can click together to form any number of edifices. We’ve seen Lego menorahs and Lego models of Jerusalem, which compel our admiration, but the only emotion a Lego ghetto compels is disgust.
A comment on www.jewschool.com points up the irony: “You know, when I think about the senseless slaughter of 10,000,000 innocent Jews, Roma, queers, political dissidents, and other undesirables, I think Lego. Because the sheer shock and stupendous horror of history’s most brutal, horrid genocide are so effectively communicated by children’s toys.”
This is not to say that in the hands of a gifted artist, Legos or other building blocks might not be used to communicate the horror or, perhaps, the banality of evil, in Hannah Arendt’s pointed phrase. But please — not as a “fun” school project.
As for the second instance, one of the most unpleasant political ads we’ve seen in this most unpleasant election season included a candidate’s photograph with Elie Wiesel, a Nobel peace laureate and respected Holocaust witness and chronicler. The clear implication was that Wiesel had endorsed the candidate and that Jews, therefore, should vote for him.
It’s unlikely that Wiesel would endorse any candidate, so we’ve put in a call to Wiesel’s office to ask what he thought of the ad and are waiting for a response.
Meanwhile, dear readers, while we got our usual boost out of voting amid other civic-minded people at the polls, we are glad to see the end of this election season. No doubt you are, too. RKB
Sep 29
Jeanette Friedmaneducation
By Jeanette Friedman | Published 9/29/06
RIVER EDGE – Students at the Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey were thrilled on Monday morning when they headed back to classes after the Rosh HaShanah break. The mitzvah scale in the main concourse, the centerpiece of a “Tip the Scale” program that teaches the children from grades one through eight about good deeds, repentance, and prayer, was weighed down by so many good deeds. For weeks, beginning in Elul, students had been loading the good deeds they’d done unto the scale, and the scale was tipped in their favor. The scale is the symbol of Tishrei, the month where God decides who is inscribed in the book of life, and people are urged to do a “din ve cheshbon” — an examination of their lives during the previous year, a balancing of the accounts, so to speak.
On Monday, just one day after Rosh HaShanah, the scale could have been tilted in the wrong direction! Jealousy, disrespect, arguing, and improper speech had appeared in big bold letters on the opposite side of the scale. Students did more mitzvot — good deeds — to bring things into balance.
Boys in the first grade at Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey are proud of the mitzvot they and their schoolmates have done to help “tip the scale.”
“The Tip the Scale” project was the brainstorm of school principal for Judaic studies, Rabbi Harvey Horn, who was inspired by a sermon given by Rabbi Dovid Feinstein of Mesivta Tifereth Jerusalem on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. In that address, Feinstein had offered concrete examples of how to incorporate teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah (repentance, prayer, and charity) into daily life, and Horn realized that among these activities were age-appropriate actions that could benefit all the students at RYNJ.
With character-building a critical issue at this time of year, each child was asked to incorporate one extra good deed into his or her daily routine. Parents were asked to send in signed mitzvah cards attesting to their children’s mitzvot. As the children dropped the cards into the baskets on the scale, the weight of their good deeds was interpreted as bringing the world back into harmony.
The scale was built by Dovid Nulman, a music teacher at the school. The boys in Honny Aron’s first-grade class made the paper flowers that decorated the “Good Deed” basket on the scale.
In addition to good deeds, students were also asked to express how they could improve or change certain character traits and to describe acts of chesed (kindness). The question posed to all the students was, “What are you doing to tip the scale?”
Eli Sadeck’s act of kindness was truly magnanimous. On Monday night, he went to the Mets game and caught one of the balls that popped into the stands. When his sister was upset because she didn’t have one, he presented her with his prize. Ezra Friedman, who recycles, says that since Rosh HaShanah is the Earth’s birthday, he is really helping out. Mordechai Glatter who practices giving charity via Tomchei Shabbat, which feeds the poor on Shabbat, hopes that everyone will have a sweet year with the sweet packages he distributes.
Horn saw Tip the Scale as a meaningful and educational project that was good for all age groups. “I thought the entire school could be concentrating on this project all at once, making it a more serious undertaking, with the older children setting examples for the younger children to see, as the older children also dropped cards in the basket. Even the teachers were dropping cards in the mitzvot basket as they accepted taking mitzvot upon themselves as well.”
Horn said, “During the month of Elul we wanted the children to think positive and to start doing acts of chesed to each other. Our goal for them was to enter Rosh HaShanah in a positive mode, feeling that they were on the right path to tipping the scales in honor of a good year. When they entered the building on Monday and saw the scale tipped in such a favorable way, it made them feel very good about themselves and the way they davened on Rosh HaShanah. I want them to feel that the time that they spent in shul was a terrific start and that by sitting and trying to daven and have kavannah [serious intent], they were off and running in the right direction. In fact, many students brought in tons of mitzvah cards on Monday that stated how nicely they davened.”
Until Yom Kippur, RYNJ teachers will encourage their students to keep up the good work. They have been emphasizing that each mitzvah a Jew does has a positive effect on the person doing it and sets an example that affects others.
Said the rabbi, “At our ‘kick-off’ assemblies, we emphasized the concept of achdut [unity] and kiddush haShem (sanctifying God’s name); that our positive actions have an effect on the entire people of Israel; that one mitzvah leads to another, and by doing mitzvot, we set an example for all peoples to look up to. I believe the purpose of Jewish education is kiddush HaShem, to create students who will internalize and be role models of true derech eretz [respect]. This has always been a goal of our yeshiva.”
Jun 06
Jeanette Friedmaneducation, local stories/community, people
First came this question on the halacha discussion list I’ve belonged to for eons.
>Would anyone like to comment (based on personal experience) on the
>ever-increasing trend of boys getting married who do not have any plans
>for parnasa, and are told by their rebbeim that they should just have
>bitachon and everything will work out?
and then my response–amazingly, for the first time in months, a post was actually posted!!!!
From: FriedmanJ@aol.com
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 07:04:04 EDT
Subject: Re: No Plans for Parnasa
When Hillel said go and study, he didn’t mean kvetch a benkel [sit on a bench in a Kollel--which is a "graduate school for Talmudic scholars] and become a welfare case. He meant quite the opposite. [Hillel responded to the Gentile who asked him to teach him the entire Torah as he stood on one leg--"Don't do anything to anyone you don't want them to do to you. Now go and study"]
No Plans for Paranassa sounds like a great name for R’ Shapiro’s new book, which excoriates going to work for a living.
In any event, one month after my first marriage, suddenly the person I was married to decided to quit working and sit and learn because his rosh yeshiva told him to. Having gotten pregnant on my wedding night, with no income to speak of, he decided I needed to go to work or sponge off my father, which he immediately proceeded to do (along with beating me…the beatings began during Sheva Brachot).
All I can say about this new trend of never going to work, and sitting and “learning” all day is that it has absolutely nothing to do with being a Torah Jew, it is the most misguided way of living anyone ever thought up, and I hope, I sincerely hope, that any American authorities who determine whether or not families get welfare money should 100% not grant those men a nickel.
As for the rabbis who demand that people not go to work, someone should straighten them out as well. We all know and have discussed the problems that this causes for men who aren’t “learners” and there have been enough suicides and people who have left Judaism altogether to prove it.
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