At Kosher Chefs’ Cook-Off, Forget Foie Gras

NYTimes

Culinary school had its frustrations for Seth Warshaw, the executive chef and owner of Etc. Steakhouse, a kosher restaurant in Teaneck, N.J. He had enrolled in a prestigious cooking school in Manhattan, but it quickly became clear that his religious restrictions rendered many hallmarks of fine French cooking — like rich creams and luscious crustaceans — off-limits.

"I sat there with my container of water, drinking while everybody ate," Mr. Warshaw recalled, sounding a bit pained.

"I didn't eat foie gras. I wanted to. I wanted to take it home and take a bath in it."

Mr. Warshaw, an observant Jew, had been asked to ruminate on this topic because he found himself in an unusual role on Sunday: a judge for the taping of an all-kosher cooking competition called "The Next Great Kosher Chef." It was held at a commercial kitchen in Long Island City, Queens. [...]

Religion's Secret to Happiness: It's Friends, Not Faith

Time Magazine

Religion can be good for your health, and especially your mental health, according to the latest studies, which show that church-goers are happier and more satisfied with their lives than those who don't attend services. But what exactly is it about religion that is so beneficial to health?

Some might argue that it is the power of faith in a being or power beyond ourselves. But according to a study led by Chaeyoon Lim, a sociology professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, the reason religion makes us happy may have more to do with friends than with faith.

Using data from the Faith Matters Study, a survey of U.S. adults conducted in 2006 and 2007, Lim and his colleagues found that 33% of those who attended religious services every week and reported having close friends at church said they were extremely satisfied with their lives, while only 19% of those who went to church but had no close connections to the congregation reported the same satisfaction.[...]

הרב ברלנד מדבר: 'ברחתי מרצוני. ביקשו לאשפז אותי'

Kikar HaShabbat

Adolf Busch: The Man Who Said No to Hitler

Wall Street Journal

Adolf Busch, the greatest German violinist of the 20th century, is now known only to classical-record collectors who treasure the searchingly eloquent 78s that he cut with Rudolf Serkin, his son-in-law and recital partner, and the Busch Quartet, the ensemble that he led for three decades. But there is another reason to remember him, one that in the long run may well count for as much as the music that he made: Mr. Busch's name is at the very top of the short list of German musicians who refused to kowtow to Adolf Hitler. This latter aspect of his life is described in detail in Tully Potter's "Adolf Busch: The Life of a Honest Musician" (Toccata Press), the first full-length biography of the violinist ever to be published. It is at once a stirring tale and a disturbing one.

Most of us, I suspect, like to think of artists as a breed apart, a cadre of idealists whose souls have been ennobled by long exposure to beauty. The truth, however, is that they are every bit as human as the rest of us, and that a certain number of them are self-centered opportunists who are perfectly willing to ignore evil so long as the evildoers leave them in peace to do their work. That was pretty much what many German musicians did when the Nazis came to power in 1933. Within a matter of days, Hitler and his henchmen started putting into place a policy of systematic persecution of German Jews. Numerous well-known Jewish musicians, including Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer and Emanuel Feuermann, either were forced out of their posts or quit in protest. [...]

Obama: From Audacity to Animosity

Wall Street Journal

We have not in our lifetimes seen a president in this position. He spent his first year losing the center, which elected him, and his second losing his base, which is supposed to provide his troops. There isn't much left to lose! Which may explain Tuesday's press conference.

President Obama was supposed to be announcing an important compromise, as he put it, on tax policy. Normally a president, having agreed with the opposition on something big, would go through certain expected motions. He would laud the specific virtues of the plan, show graciousness toward the negotiators on the other side—graciousness implies that you won—and refer respectfully to potential critics as people who'll surely come around once they are fully exposed to the deep merits of the plan.

Instead Mr. Obama said, essentially, that he hates the deal he just agreed to, hates the people he made the deal with, and hates even more the people who'll criticize it. His statement was startling in the breadth of its animosity. Republicans are "hostage takers" who worship a "holy grail" of "tax cuts for the wealthy." "That seems to be their central economic doctrine." [...]

Richard Ravitch: Gotham's Savior, Beaten by Albany

Wall Street Journal

In the pre-dawn gloom of Oct. 17, 1975, with New York City hours away from declaring bankruptcy, real-estate developer Richard Ravitch hosted a secret summit at his Upper East Side apartment. In attendance were Gov. Hugh Carey and teachers' chief Albert Shanker. "Ok, I'll do it," said Shanker, agreeing to invest large amounts of union pension funds in bailout bonds. The deal rescued Gotham.

In November 1979, Mr. Ravitch took the helm of the city's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (for no pay). The transit system was starved of capital; its decaying $50 billion physical plant was held together by glue and spit. Labor unrest exploded over pay cuts, culminating in an 11-day strike in April 1980. The next year, Mr. Ravitch began wearing a bulletproof vest to work after someone fired a .22-caliber bullet into MTA headquarters and struck a transit cop in the groin.

After relentless lobbying in Albany, Washington and on Wall Street, Mr. Ravitch prevailed: By 1982, he won approval to sell fare-backed bonds, coaxed new revenues out of tax-credit schemes with private businesses, and set in motion a multi-billion dollar "Marshall Plan" of capital improvements that kept the subways running.[...]

Full Wallets, but Using Health Program for Poor

NYTimes

AFTER immigrating to New York City from China in the 1970s, Z. Y. Tung and his wife worked hard — he as a bank manager, she as a public school secretary — lived frugally and saved every penny they could for the next generation.

Until five years ago, when his wife, Wen Mei Hu, racked by bone-marrow cancer, had to be put in a nursing home, where the bills ran past $100,000 a year, threatening to quickly drain the couple’s life savings of $500,000. The nursing home told him not to worry: If he signed a document essentially refusing to support his wife of several decades, Medicaid, the federal insurance program for the indigent, would pick up the bill.

“What about me, because I am responsible?” Mr. Tung inquired. He was told that only millionaires had to pay such high costs, and reluctantly, seeing no other choice, he agreed. [...]

Kissinger: Gassing Jews would not be a US problem

JPost

New tapes show Kissinger and Nixon opposed helping Soviet Jews escape Communist repression because it did not affect "US interests."
 
Henry Kissinger is heard saying the genocide of Soviet Jews would not be an American problem on newly released tapes chronicling President Nixon's obsession with disparaging Jews and other minorities.

Kissinger's remarks come after a meeting between the two men and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on March 1 1973, in which Meir pleads for US pressure on the Soviet Union to release its Jews.[...]

In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks

NYTimes

 Richard M. Nixon made disparaging remarks about Jews, blacks, Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans in a series of extended conversations with top aides and his personal secretary, recorded in the Oval Office 16 months before he resigned as president.

The remarks were contained in 265 hours of recordings, captured by the secret taping system Nixon had installed in the White House and released this week by the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. [...]

Madoff’s Elder Son Found Dead in Suicide

NYTimes

Mark Madoff, the older of Bernard L. Madoff's two sons, hanged himself in his Manhattan apartment on Saturday, the second anniversary of his father's arrest for running a gigantic Ponzi scheme that shattered thousands of lives around the world.

"Mark Madoff took his own life today," Martin Flumenbaum, Mark Madoff's lawyer, said in a statement. "This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy." He called the dead man "an innocent victim of his father's monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo." [...]

Debate Starts on Crown Heights Rabbis’ Gag Order

NYTimes

A debate on free speech is rippling through the Lubavitcher Hasidic community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Last week, the rabbinical court known as the Beth Din of Crown Heights ordered members of the Lubavitcher community not to speak to the police or the news media on a range of issues related to crime.

The one-page edict (see below) bars members of the community of 20,000 from giving the news media information about another community member that could lead to "an investigation or intensified prosecution by any law enforcement agency." [...]

Madoff Trustee Seeks $19.6 Billion From Austrian Banker

NYTimes

The trustee seeking money for victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s fraud has sued Sonja Kohn, an Austrian banker, seeking $19.6 billion in damages and accusing her of masterminding a 23-year conspiracy that played a central role in financing the gigantic Ponzi scheme.

Amid an avalanche of lawsuits filed in recent weeks as the trustee nears a Saturday deadline to file claims, the complaint against Ms. Kohn stands out for its stark allegations of criminal behavior and the size of the financial recovery sought.

“In Sonja Kohn, Madoff found a criminal soul mate, whose greed and dishonest inventiveness equaled his own,” the trustee, Irving L. Picard, said.[...]

Oy Vey! Belief in Santa used to bolster Jewish self-esteem

Jewish Week

My 3-year-old nephew, his voice raspy from a recent cold, has been directing a long-winded narrative my way. I catch only a few words, but they startle me: Santa will be sliding down chimneys, and then there will be presents.

“Oh really?” I say, my eyebrows rising, inwardly vowing to speak with my sister.

Although my sister and I did not grow up in a strictly observant Jewish home, Christmas remained a world apart. When the revelers caroled in our Queens neighborhood, I listened from a safe distance, peering behind porch curtains. When holiday lights twinkled through the windows next door, I stared, enraptured, envious. If I reaped some small compensation from my Jewish identity at Christmas time, it was the satisfaction of sharing in the adult secret. Santa Claus was a fake.[...]

Baruch Hashem! Stormy weekend ahead as winter finally arrives in Israel

Haaretz

Snow expected on Mount Hermon and Golan heights, heavy rains throughout Israel, accompanied by very strong winds and possible floods. [...]