The Surprising Jewish Message Behind ‘Into the Woods’

Alina Adams for Kveller

It’s earned over $100 million at the box office so far, charting the best debut of a Broadway-inspired musical ever, so Disney’s Christmas Day release of “Into the Woods” looks on track to become a record-breaking hit. As a Stephen Sondheim fan, I would agree that “Into the Woods” is a terrific musical (and for those concerned, fine for kids; mine had the soundtrack memorized in preschool, and they’ve seen the Broadway production, the Shakespeare in the Park version, and now the movie). As someone with a Masters degree in Media Analysis who writes on Jewish topics, I also see “Into the Woods” as quietly, subversively Jewish. Here’s why.

Stephen Sondheim is Jewish. Wealthy, assimilated, grew up on the Upper West Side of New York City Jewish. (Sondheim’s first Broadway job was writing the lyrics to “West Side Story.” When offered the assignment, he reportedly responded, “But I don’t know any Puerto Ricans. I don’t even know any poor people.”) In the book, “Stars of David” by Abigail Pogrebin, Sondheim confessed he also didn’t know how to pronounce “Yom Kippur” until his “West Side Story” collaborator, Leonard Bernstein, set him straight.

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Saving Jewish Graves

Salvaging a Pakistani-Jewish Identity

by Erica Lyons for AsianJewishLife.org
Karachi’s Magen Shalom Synagogue was demolished in July 1988, to make way for
the Madiha Square shopping mall. The majority of Pakistan’s Jewish community had already dwindled and left this now hostile environment and the remaining Jews there live in virtual
anonymity. While the history of the
community has been documented, there are few remaining monuments. There is perhaps though one seemingly unlikely champion for this lost community, Faisal Benkhal. He now chooses to be identified by the adopted name Fishel and he has taken on the task of attempting to preserve, clean and restore the Jewish cemetery in Mewah Shah Karachi.

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Testing Positive for Judaism: Unlocking a Family’s Genetic Secret

A genetic test for Tay-Sachs revealed surprising results—and helped my husband and me discover what Judaism means to us

By Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy for Tablet Magazine

Being tested for a genetic disorder is usually not a laughing matter, but that’s exactly what we were doing when my husband had his blood drawn to see if he, like me, was a carrier for Tay-Sachs. His being tested was a formality for us as Jewish prospective parents. We didn’t take it seriously because we didn’t have anything to worry about: Matt had been born and raised Catholic in a rural town in northeastern Pennsylvania. He converted to Judaism before we got married two and a half years before. He had told me that loving me meant loving everything about me, including my Judaism. He had told my parents that he felt a resonance in Judaism that he had never found in Catholicism. He had told our rabbi that he felt personally committed to helping ensure that there would be future generations of Jews in the world, to parent and raise Jewish children of his own. And yet Matt’s commitment to his new faith didn’t alter the statistical improbability of his being a Tay-Sachs carrier.

Which is why we were shocked, stunned, speechless when we learned that he was a carrier. Not just because of what that test result meant for our efforts to have children, but because of what it meant beyond that: My husband, the Jew-by-choice, had been Jewish all along. Genes don’t lie; a genetic counselor told us that Matt had, without a doubt, a specifically Ashkenazic version of the mutation that causes Tay-Sachs.

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If Chabad becomes more dominant, American Judaism will change

by Shmuel Rosner for jewishjournal.com

I was planning to write a post about Chabad way before the stabbing in NY last week, and without even remembering that last week was the "new year" of Chasidism according to Chabad calendar. I was planning to write about Chabad following my article on why the Jews of Miami are doing so great. The article was based on a study by Prof. Ira Sheskin in which one finding stood out as remarkable: 26% of Miami Jews have "participated in Chabad activity". That’s a lot. And it becomes even more impressive as one examines in more detail how Chabad got to this impressive percentage. Sheskin kindly shared with me some of the numbers.

For example, the following nugget: Chabad participants in Miami are not "Israeli" or "Orthodox". In other words: do not fall for the common prejudice about Chabad's constituency. According to Sheskin's study, 25% of them are indeed Orthodox, but 32% are Conservative, and 19% are Reform (23% are "Just Jewish" – more in line with common thinking). This means that more than half of the participants in Chabad activities come from a progressive Jewish background (you can add to that the 1% Reconstructionist). Think about it this way: a movement that is in many ways a part of the ultra-Orthodox world is able to attract Jews that are supposedly the arch-rivals of ultra-Orthodoxy. Of course, that is the genius of Chabad – without giving up on being ultra-Orthodox, it is able to convince other Jews that it is not really ultra-Orthodox. There is "haredi" – a term many Jews associate with groups that they find quite difficult to understand and work with – and there is "Chabad" – a brand with a positive image.

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Out of exile: Giving props to Jewish refugees from Arab lands

by dan pine, j. staff forjweekly.com

Daniel Khazzoom remembers long-ago family gatherings around the sopa (kerosene space heater), roasting chestnuts and enjoying chilly winter nights in Baghdad.

Those are the only happy memories he has of the land of his birth. In the span of a few years, through a steady campaign of violence and expulsion, Iraq rid itself of a Jewish community that had thrived for two millennia.

Khazzoom fled as a teen in 1951, vowing never to return to the country that perpetrated unrelenting oppression against his family and his fellow Jews.

Now a retired economics professor living in Sacramento, Khazzoom, 82, once served on the board of JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa), a San Francisco–based organization that advocates for Mizrachi Jews and helps preserve their history.

Khazzoom is one of the 850,000 Mizrachi Jewish refugees from Arab countries who were forced out of their homelands after World War II and the establishment of Israel, and for whom justice has been denied. By and large they built new lives in Israel, the United States and elsewhere, choosing not to dwell on their misfortune.

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Are the Ultra-Orthodox the Key to Israel's Future?

How a misunderstood minority can help spur the Jewish state’s economy and repair its tattered social fabric.

by Aharon Ariel Lavi in Mosaic Magazine

While much is known about the tough situation facing Israel externally, less familiar, even to Israel’s supporters, is the social and economic situation at home. Of course, Israeli exploits in the fields of science and technology are deservedly the stuff of legend; the Jewish state is indeed the “start-up nation” par excellence. Dig a little deeper, however, and one might also hear about special difficulties posed by two underperforming sectors of the society: Israeli Arabs, and haredi or ultra-Orthodox Jews.

It’s the latter of these two groups that will concern me here, and for a simple reason: socially and economically, the state of Israel is on the verge of either a leap forward or a crippling regression. To a large extent, the outcome depends on whether, and how, its haredi population can be integrated into the larger society.

In Israel as in the United States, the ultra-Orthodox constitute the fastest-growing sector of the Jewish population. In and of itself, this demographic success is a fascinating example of how a community can maintain a demandingly pious way of life in an era of boundless personal freedom. Yet, in Israel, the social and economic infrastructure of the haredi sector is exceedingly fragile, which—given that they now make up 10-15 percent of the Jewish population—makes their situation and their future a national test of the first order.

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Anti-Semitism Creeps Into Europe's Daily Routines

Signs for Continent's Jews Are Not Good

By Deborah E. Lipstadt, The Jewish Daily Forward

Ten years ago the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe convened a conference on European anti-Semitism. Last week it met to assess what had happened in the past decade. The signs are not good.

While a good part of the meeting was dedicated to official presentations by the participating nations,

it was what one heard in the hallway over coffee that was most significant. At one point the White House delegation, of which I was part, met with representatives of an array of European Jewish communities. What we heard left me shaken.

We knew about the murders in the Brussels Jewish museum, the children gunned down on the Toulouse schoolyard, the fate of Ilan Halimi, a young French Jew who had been lured by a group of Muslims who then held him captive, tortured and eventually murdered him. We were aware of the violent demonstrations, assaults on synagogues, and the aggressive rhetoric — including “Jews to the gas” — that had occurred in various European cities. We anticipated that this would be our informants’ main concern.

While they certainly worried about this type of violence, what weighed upon them more was a “changed daily routine” that leaves them feeling “under threat.” Schools and Jewish institutions are under heavy guard. While this reassured some people, other parents described how, when they deposit their children at the Jewish schools and see the visibly armed guards protecting the site, rather than feeling reassured, they are reminded of the Toulouse schoolyard and the murdered children.

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