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Yeshiva education reform activist launching independent haredi news organization
(JTA) — Naftuli Moster, the founder and former executive director of Yaffed, the advocacy group focused on improving secular education in haredi Orthodox Jewish schools, is launching a news organization focused on what he sees as a news desert in the haredi world.
With a board that includes seasoned Jewish journalists, Shtetl: Haredi Free Press will launch online in 2023, and Moster said he is exploring a print option as well. Shtetl’s online announcement said it had seed funding for two years; Moster declined to comment on who the funders are but emphasized that the media organization would produce independent journalism.
“Every community needs a free press,” Moster told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Members of this community, my community, deserve a free media as well. Shtetl’s existence is an exciting development in the Jewish and media spaces, and we are looking forward to making a big splash in early 2023.”
Moster, who grew up in a haredi Orthodox family in Borough Park, Brooklyn, stepped down from his position at Yaffed in September after a decade as its founder and leader. During that time, Yaffed got the attention of city and state education officials as the group filed multiple lawsuits meant to increase access to secular education in haredi yeshivas. In turn, he drew the ire of haredi Orthodox leaders, who resented an ostensible insider inviting scrutiny of their educational institutions.
The haredi communities of Brooklyn and New York’s exurban Rockland and Orange counties are currently served by successful print and online newspapers, in English and Yiddish, that tend to be protective of community interests, including the yeshivas.
Elad Nehorai, an ex-Hasidic writer and progressive activist, said these sites are more akin to community newsletters than journalistic enterprises, publishing local interest stories like death and wedding announcements, notices about community events and stories about construction of new synagogues or schools. National and world news coverage tends to focus on the haredi community in Israel and syndicated news copy about events outside of the religious world.
“The haredi world in general is not used to the kind of journalism that exists in the secular world,” Nehorai said. “In the secular world, investigating wrongdoing of leaders is a normal thing.”
For example, it was a secular newspaper — the Israeli daily Haaretz — that in 2021 reported on allegations surrounding Chaim Walder, a once-celebrated Israeli haredi children’s author, who was accused of having sexually assaulted more than 20 women, and several underage girls. Only after the allegations became a prominent topic of conversation in haredi communities did the press there begin to cover them — often with apparent sympathy to Walder.
“Very often if you look at the press there, it’s more about building community,” Nehorai said of the haredi world. By contrast, “If you open the New York Times it’s generally a lot of negative stories.”
Leaders of the haredi community were incensed when, in September, the New York Times published a major investigation that found that in New York’s Hasidic yeshivas, “generations of children have been systematically denied a basic education, trapping many of them in a cycle of joblessness and dependency.”Backlash from the Hasidic and other Orthodox communities began before the story was even published, with people claiming the New York Times and the Jewish reporters themselves were biased and even antisemitic in their reporting.
Moster envisions a role for Shtetl that will foster “important discussions that are crucial for the well-being of the Haredi community and beyond,” according to an online announcement. At the same time, “it will produce content that other outlets are unable, unequipped, or unwilling to provide to their readers, whether owing to the lack of resources, cultural competency, access to insiders or Yiddish language proficiency.”
The project is currently recruiting board members, full-time and freelance reporters, editors and marketing professionals. Its founding board includes journalists Larry Cohler-Esses of The Forward and Ari Goldman of Columbia Journalism School, neither of whom is haredi, as well as Adelle Goldenberg, a recent Harvard University graduate who grew up in the Hasidic neighborhood of Borough Park. Goldenberg was the winner of the 2021 Yaffed Changemaker Award for her assistance to haredi students who want to go to college outside of the yeshiva system.
Goldman, a former New York Times religion reporter who attends a Modern Orthodox synagogue, told JTA he became familiar with Moster’s work with Yaffed about five years ago. He said he was impressed by Moster’s efforts to get haredi young people a strong secular education and believed that haredi communities could benefit from improved journalism, as well.
“I want to be supportive of an effort that tries to shine more light on a community about which a lot is hidden and unknown,” Goldman said. “I’m also very interested in good journalism, which I think is a cornerstone of our society. And I want to see it put to the best of use in the haredi community.”
Critics of Shtetl, purporting to be from within the haredi and Orthodox world, have already voiced their opinions on social media, claiming that the new media endeavor has some sort of agenda to undermine their communities.
The backlash echoes the one that Moster has received for a decade already, when his education advocacy even earned him the label of “moser,” reflecting a dangerous accusation that he had inappropriately involved secular authorities in Jewish affairs.
“The people who are reacting negatively don’t see it as, ‘Oh they’re just writing negatively about us,’” Nehorai said. “They see it as traitorous. They see it as someone who’s turned on us. And what’s fascinating about that is that it doesn’t matter if you are haredi or you are ex-haredi, what occurs then is you are labeled as an outsider.”
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The post Yeshiva education reform activist launching independent haredi news organization appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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How New York Jews made pickles a big dill
The Pickled City: The Story of New York Pickles
By Paul van Ravestein and Monique Mulder
Chronicle Books, 224 pages, $27
“Pickles are a favorite food in Jewtown,” muckraker Jacob Riis, referring to the Lower East Side, wrote in How the Other Half Lives, his seminal exposé on poverty. “They are filling and keep the children from crying with hunger. Those who have stomachs like ostriches thrive in spite of them and grow strong — plain proof that they are good to eat.”
Other thinkers from the turn of the last century disagreed, one lamenting, of the children of New York who got their meals from pushcarts, “it speaks volumes for their digestive powers that they don’t die at once.” That was Teddy Roosevelt.
But appropriately for a preserved foodstuff, pickles have had a remarkably long cultural shelf life. The Pickled City: The Story of New York Pickles, a new coffee table book about the ubiquitous cukes, reaches deep into the barrel to chronicle the rise of the pickling industry, giving pride of place to the Jewish immigrants who sealed the business for posterity.
The book is the work of Paul van Ravestein and Monique Mulder of the Dutch branding company Mattmo, and is a successor to their previous book De Zure Stad (The Sour City) about the pickle history of the Netherlands, pioneered by a different set of Jewish immigrants who were, overwhelmingly, murdered in the Shoah.
The Pickled City is a brighter work, though in the early going its emphasis on Jews, stated early and often, is a bit of a head scratcher. Going back to Mesopotamia for early pickling practices, and outlining the largely gentile-owned pickle businesses in the U.S. (the first American pickle outfit, the William Underwood Company, trademarked devilled ham) the Jews appear to be relative latecomers. It was Dutch settlers in what was then New Amsterdam who kickstarted the process of farming and preserving cucumbers.
An earlier wave of German immigrants brought pickle culture to Manhattan before Eastern European Jews took to their pushcarts. But the Jews brought a piquant innovation to their pickles, brining them not in vinegar, but salt water with dill and garlic: the kosher pickle we all know. That variety soon became a bestseller even among the goyische operations like Heinz, a business that was early to apply for kosher certification.
The Jewish love affair with pickles was itself not novel. The Talmud mentions pickled veg as a symbol of abundance and survival and, per van Ravestein and Mulder, the “transformation through pickling — turning a simple, earthy root into a tangy, vibrant dish — was often seen as a metaphor for renewal and the endurance of the Jewish people through adversity.”
We see the enterprise, in pages of archival photos and maps of the pickle shops of yesteryear alongside long-running institutions like Russ & Daughters and Katz’s.
At times, beyond the handsome packaging of the book, the branding agency origins of the authors stick out: A primer on B&G pickles reports their $2.16 billion in net sales, and calls it a “testament to entrepreneurial spirit and innovation in the food industry.” But there are just as many colorful stories that don’t read like investor reports.
We learn, for instance, that Izzy Guss, of Guss’ pickles, beat out the competition after a neighbor in his tenement offered to hook his cart up to electricity with an extension cord, giving the cart a light and allowing Guss to sell at night. (We’re told the cord was cut when Guss refused to marry the neighbor’s daughter.)
The book also touches on the pickling history of Long Island, with a mention of a Samuel Ballton — Pickle King of Greenlawn, a formerly enslaved man and Union veteran who produced 1.5 million pickles in a single season. The industry in Syosset was dealt a major blow with a blight called the “white pickle” disease, and subsequently pivoted to potatoes.
Even with these New York histories, the book often crosses Delancey into a wider world, making a kumbaya case for pickles as a conduit for cultural exchange.
Japanese pickled plums, Indonesian atjar and Indian chutneys are given space toward the back, but their current imprint in New York, on the same streets that once held tenements and peddlers, is oddly glossed over. (I could have tipped them off to the Astoria bagel shop that serves beef bulgogi and kimchi sandwiches.)
“For Jewish families fleeing persecution, pickling was more than a way to save food — it was a way to preserve identity and heritage,” the authors write.
This is not an exclusively Jewish phenomenon. There are 8 million stories in the pickled city. This book cracks the lid, but only skims the surface.
The post How New York Jews made pickles a big dill appeared first on The Forward.
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Israeli-American soldier Moshe Katz, killed in Lebanon rocket strike, laid to rest on Mt. Herzl
(JTA) — Hundreds gathered on Sunday night at Israel’s military cemetery on Mt. Herzl for the funeral of Moshe Yitzchak Hacohen Katz, an American-born Israeli soldier who was killed by a rocket strike on Saturday in southern Lebanon.
Katz, 22, from New Haven, Connecticut, is the fifth Israeli soldier killed in Lebanon since Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy in Lebanon, resumed attacks on Israel following a 2024 ceasefire, after Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran last month.
“With unspeakable tragedy I regret to inform you that my 22 year old son Moshe Yitzchak a*h a sergeant in the idf, fell in battle in Lebanon,” Katz’s father, Mendy, wrote in a post on Facebook on Saturday. “My oldest Son with a zest for life and jokes. Burial is tomorrow in israel. Maybe we only share good news. My heart is shattered and the wound is real.”
Mendy Katz had been in Israel when the war began and posted on March 7 about witnessing his son’s graduation from basic training with the Israel Defense Forces before returning to the United States via Egypt.
During the funeral on Sunday, Katz, who was posthumously promoted from corporal to sergeant and was affiliated with Chabad, was eulogized by a host of fellow soldiers who referred to him as a “true friend” who “always used to make sure that anyone around him was always taken care of.”
“Moshe was a brave soldier, we have proof of that, but more than that, he was a loyal friend, he was a hard-working son and a loving, caring brother,” Adina, Katz’s sister, said between tears during her eulogy. “Moshe’s body might be gone, but his legacy is not. He was a proud soldier and a proud Jew, and we are the proudest family.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered condolences to Katz’s family in a post on X and wished a speedy recovery to three other soldiers moderately wounded in the attack.
“Moshe z”l immigrated to the land from the United States, enlisted in the Paratroopers Brigade, and fought bravely for the defense of our homeland,” Netanyahu wrote. “On behalf of all Israeli citizens, we embrace Moshe z”l’s family in this difficult hour and wish a swift and complete recovery to our fighters who were wounded in that incident.”
On Sunday, Netanyahu announced that he had instructed the Israeli military to further expand its operations in Lebanon in order to “finally thwart the threat of invasion and to push the anti-tank missile fire away from our border.”
Menachem Geisinsky, a photographer and friend of Katz’s, also eulogized him in a post on Facebook, writing that he “forever will be my hero” for “his bravery in coming all the way from New Haven, Connecticut to fight for what he believed was right and also for being a man who wouldn’t tolerate a frown.”
“So be like Moshe. Be a hero. Make someone’s day. Make someone giggle or smile,” wrote Geisinsky. “Step up, and be the man Moshe was, and forever will be remembered as.”
Katz is survived by his parents, Mendy and Devorah Katz; siblings Adina, Yehuda, Shua and Dubi; and grandparents.
The post Israeli-American soldier Moshe Katz, killed in Lebanon rocket strike, laid to rest on Mt. Herzl appeared first on The Forward.
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A second poll of US Jews finds the same result: Most oppose the war in Iran
(JTA) — For the second time in a day, a nonpartisan poll has found that most American Jews oppose the U.S. military campaign against Iran — even as 90% of them say they oppose the Iranian regime.
The new poll, conducted by GBAO Strategies on behalf of the liberal pro-Israel lobby J Street, found that 60% of U.S. Jews say they oppose “the US military action against Iran.”
About the same proportion, 63%, said they believed “the most effective way to address U.S. and Israeli concerns about Iran’s nuclear program and destabilizing regional actions is through diplomacy and sanctions,” not military action.
And the majority of American Jews said they believed the war will not improve Israel’s security, with a third saying they believe the war will weaken Israel’s security.
As with the previous poll released earlier on Monday, the poll found a sharp partisan and denominational split in the results, with Republicans and Orthodox Jews more likely to support the war, which the United States and Israel jointly launched on Feb. 28.
A press release from J Street touted the survey as “the first methodologically sound poll of Jewish American opinion since the conflict began,” positioning the results as an antidote to findings from the Jewish People Policy Institute, which surveys “connected” U.S. Jews and has found that a majority of them support the war, even though the proportion has fallen since the war’s start.
“This data is a wake-up call for anyone claiming to speak for the American Jewish community while beating the drums of war,” J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami said in a statement. “Most American Jews see this war for what it is: A reckless, unforced error by a President who has no clear, achievable goals or an exit strategy. This poll proves that the ‘pro-Israel’ position is the pro-peace position – and that means stopping this war before more lives are lost.”
The survey of 800 Jewish registered voters was conducted March 24 to 26 and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
The J Street survey also asked respondents about other issues related to Israel. It found that 70% of U.S. Jewish voters said they are more sympathetic to the Israelis than the Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, compared to multiple polls finding an even split or slight edge for the Palestinians among Americans overall.
It also found that 70% of American Jews oppose unconditional military and financial assistance to Israel — reflecting a mounting political consensus that is at odds with the priorities of AIPAC, the traditional pro-Israel lobby.
The post A second poll of US Jews finds the same result: Most oppose the war in Iran appeared first on The Forward.