Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry by Samuel G. Freedman, Paperback. Chapter One: Camp Kinderwelt, New York, 1. On those last stifling nights of June 1. Sharon Levine found herself wakeful in a familiar way. She left her bedroom in the Newark house shared by several branches of her extended family and repaired to the glider on the back porch, a Howard Fast novel in hand. The temperature had hung in the nineties all week, prompting kids all over the city to pry open hydrants, stirring Sharon's father Jack to install the window fans. Sharon herself thought the heat almost comfortable. Summer meant Camp Kinderwelt. And the prospect of two months at Camp Kinderwelt, as always, made her sleepless with anticipation. She was seventeen now, a week out of Weequahic High School, skinny and dreamy and often ill at ease as the daughter of Old World parents, immigrants with accents they weren't about to lose in middle age. Even in a Jewish enclave, her friends were the children of salesmen and doctors, people who played Perry Como records and served Twinkies for dessert. Her boyfriend, Richie, was a detective in his early twenties. It was Kinderwelt that reconciled Sharon to her parents' world — its Yiddish, its Zionism, its sense of Jewishness without religion — and instilled in her something like direction. He angled Sharon's footlocker into the trunk, tying down the hood with twine. In the back seat, his wife Pauline settled herself and a plaid cooler full of tuna sandwiches. Sharon took the front seat, next to Jack, her favoriteplace on these drives. She loved when he pushed the speed, making her mother cry over the rushing air, . She saw the would- be pioneer who subscribed to Yidisher Kemfer, the Jewish Fighter. The trip to Kinderwelt, though, was usually a fitful affair, sixty miles that could take four hours. First Jack stopped by his warehouse in Down Neck, across the city. Then he tried out the back roads through North Jersey, anything to avoid the crawl toward the mountains on Route 1. Eventually there was no choice but to join it, stopping halfway for ice cream and the bathroom at the Red Apple Rest, then climbing along narrow twisting roads into the Catskill foothills, past dairy farms and through hamlets like Central Valley and Highland Mills. Little Benji became a company commander in one of the elite commando units of the Israeli army. Diet Chick Pea Salad. Not as lucky was Egoz. It was rumored that the Israeli army was the perpetrator of the massacre. I went on a starvation diet that often left me weak-kneed.
Amid such unlikely environs sprawled 2. Farband, the Labor Zionist Order, with the land split between Kinderwelt and the adults' Unser Camp. Scattered along the fringes of Unser Camp, in turn, were bungalow colonies named Tel Aviv and Ra'anannah in solidarity with Israel. When the Levines' car pulled between the stone pillars and up the long driveway beneath arching trees, Sharon looked for the landmarks. The green shingled building — that was the Casino, Unser Camp's stage for Yiddish theater stars like Ben Bonus and Mina Bern. A couple hundred yards later, the old stone water tower came into sight, marking the entrance to Kinderwelt. From there, in a hillside meadow, Sharon spotted the social hall called Beth Sholom, the arts- and- crafts building with a map of Israel painted on the roof, the bunkhouses whitewashed and perched on cinder blocks, and the asphalt path separating the boys' side from the girls' that was called . As a junior counselor, Sharon waded into the mob, helping to sort the kids by bunk, finding her own contingent of nine- year- old girls, then trying to march the ragged line off to its quarters. There the scrambling began — for the trunks piled on the porch, for the cot with the softest pillow, for the movable cubbie instead of the nailed- in kind. By three o'clock, the entire camp, nearly four hundred strong, was thronging to the chestnut tree for afternoon milk and then racing to the lake for general swim. Gazing on the joyful chaos, the grown- ups shrugged and muttered Hefker- pefker, anything goes. In the hubbub, Sharon sought her cherished friends, her bunkmates from the last six summers. Tami Heringman had come again, all the way from Terre Haute, Indiana, and Myra Graubard from the West Bronx and Gloria Freed from Sheepshead Bay and Merry Levy from Kew Gardens and Judi Schulman from Merrick, Long Island. They had been the core, these five girls and Sharon, leading the volleyball team and setting their hair in curlers and harmonizing on . They all remembered the time Judi's mother had caught them smoking the summer they were fourteen and Judi calmly offered, . All their families had been Labor Zionists for generations. Tami's grandfather Hyman had helped found Kinderwelt in the twenties; he still summered in a bungalow nearby with his petite wife Minnie, whom everyone called . Sharon's older sister Lorelei and her future husband, Milt, began courting as camp waiters. And Judi's father, a longshoreman before he went into labor law, had raised money for Palestine among his companions along the docks. They were being raised for the cause, these girls, for the Zionist enterprise. Each summer at Kinderwelt followed a theme; two summers ago, on the thirteenth anniversary of Jewish statehood, it had been . Ahlay uvnay, went one chant, arise and build. In the Makelah chorus, she sang not only the Yiddish lullabies like . Still, the idea of making aliyah informed the very atmosphere of Kinderwelt, and if not actually emigrating then of serving as some kind of American partner. How A Gluten-Free Diet Could Increase Type 2 Diabetes Risk. Moshe Egoz, a longtime friend. He told Israeli Army Radio The Egoz unit consists of. Yonadev, or Yehonatan: Yonatan Netanyahu (1946 So many of the leaders of Israel — David Ben- Gurion, Itzhak Ben- Tzvi, Golda Meir — had emerged from the same cluster of Labor Zionist groups as had the Kinderwelt community. Parents of Jack Levine's age had heard Israel's founders speak at the camp. And now, with Israel a secure state and America a country of proven tolerance, what stood in the way of the triumph of a new Jewish culture, secular and liberal and enlightened? Just a few weeks before taking Sharon to Kinderwelt, Jack had attended a vast rally in Newark to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of Israeli statehood. Six thousand people filled the Sussex Avenue Armory, and many weren't even Jewish. There were Marines, black civil rights leaders, a Catholic church's drum and bugle corps. The mayor, both senators, and the governor attended. And they all heard the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations declare, . The summer of 1. 96. Morris Carnovsky essaying King Lear at the American Shakespeare Festival, Zero Mostel winning a Tony for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Menasha Skulnik mugging his way through Come Blow Your Horn in Westchester, Wasp Westchester of all places. Seventeen magazine, that bible of pop culture for teenage girls, had even recommended a record of Yiddish folk songs. Sharon Levine had surprised herself by convincing three of her girlfriends from Newark, all Jewish but none of Farband lineage, to pass up the traditional Weequahic summer at Bradley Beach for the quirkier charms of Kinderwelt. So if Sharon felt there was no reason to choose — between Israel and America, between Jewish identity and American birthright, between . On the morning after arriving at Kinderwelt, after all, she had lined up with the rest of the camp to pledge allegiance to two flags, first the Stars and Stripes and then, hanging ever so imperceptibly lower, the Israeli blue and white. All through Sharon's childhood, her father insisted on little. If anything, Jack struck her as compliant to a fault — living in his in- laws' house, working for their wealthy relatives, dismissing any hint of vanity by remarking, . He asks only for a hot roll every morning, and God and the angels hang their heads in sorrow at what life had done to him. On the subjects of Zionism and Yiddishkeit, though, Jack Levine suffered no hesitation. Each time Sharon entered the kitchen, she reached into her pocket for coins, and dropped them in the slot of the blue- and- white tin of the Jewish National Fund. Five afternoons a week, she attended a folkshul called Bet Yeled, the House of Children, where she learned Jewish culture, conversational Hebrew, and Zionist ideology. She resisted the place, a rickety frame house with crooked stairs, and she resisted the classes, so different from the conventional Hebrew schools her friends attended in preparation for splashy bar or bat mitzvahs. Yet, she would say later, some learning stayed with her by a function of osmosis, or perhaps by the force of a will Jack otherwise kept well hidden. He had embraced Zionism soon after emigrating from the Polish shtetl of Butka at the age of fifteen in 1. Orthodox ways he had learned both at home and in the one- room religious school called a cheder. He returned to his family once in the thirties, pleading with them to join him in America. Too irreligious, they replied. Their deaths in the Holocaust deepened Jack's belief in the necessity of a Jewish homeland. And Pauline's family, inclined toward the Communist party, brought into his life a fierce critique of religion. After the Nazi genocide, Jack didn't have to be Marx to wonder what had happened to God. The Levines believed in art and ideas. Jack quoted from Maimonides in Hebrew, and on the Saturdays when observant Jews went to synagogue, he set the family radio to the Metropolitan Opera. Pauline educated herself about vitamins and health foods, sneaking pureed green beans into her children's orange juice. Her brother David prepared for aliyah by training in agriculture at the hachsharah, the preparation camp in South Jersey. Molly Gen, matriarch of the extended family, was no bubbe in a babushka but a modern woman who flourished a cigarette holder and presided over a monthly salon in the living room. The Levines may have strained to pay the rent, needing money both from Jack's candy orders and Pauline's cottage industry peddling pajamas at flea markets, but they held themselves above the proster menschen, the common boors. In Newark, the Levines had company in their passions, particularly Jack's Labor Zionism. And Newark was a Jewish town, home in 1. Jews, the seventh- largest such community in America. Ancient Israelite cuisine - Wikipedia. Ancient Israelite cuisine refers to the food eaten by the ancient Israelites during a period of over a thousand years, from the beginning of the Israelite presence in the Land of Israel at the beginning of the Iron Age until the Roman period. The dietary staples were bread, wine and olive oil, but also included legumes, fruits and vegetables, dairy products, fish and meat. Religious beliefs, which prohibited the consumption of certain foods, shaped the Israelite diet. There was considerable continuity in the main components of the diet over time, despite the introduction of new foodstuffs at various stages. The food of ancient Israel was similar to that of other ancient Mediterranean diets. Sources. Other texts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, Apocryphal works, the New Testament, the Mishnah and the Talmud also provide information. Epigraphic sources include ostraca from Samaria and Arad. These lists indicate the potential foods that were available, but not necessarily how regularly the food was eaten or how significant it was in the cuisine, which needs to be derived from other sources. Animal bones provide evidence of meat consumption, the types of animals eaten, and whether they were kept for milk production or other uses, while paleobotanical remains, such as seeds or other carbonized or desiccated plant remains provide information about plant foods. Although there is much information about the foods of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the inferences that can be made are limited due to differences in topography and climate; Israelite agriculture also depended on rainfall rather than the river- based irrigation of these two civilizations, resulting in the preference for different crops. Ugarit and Phoenicia were closer neighbors of ancient Israel, and shared a topography and climate similar to that of ancient Israel. Thus, conclusions about the food and drink in ancient Israel have been made with some confidence from this evidence. On the other hand, vestiges of the cuisine and the practices associated with it continue to resonate in later Jewish cuisine and traditions that developed in Israel and Babylonia during the Talmudic period (2. CE . Date palm cultivation began in the Jordan River Valley, and the earliest date pits have been discovered at Ein Gedi by the Dead Sea. In the Golan, olives trees were grown and olive oil was produced there. Wine and oil were traded for wheat with the cities on the coastal plain, and for meat and skins with semi- nomadic herders. Wine and carobs were also exported to Egypt during this period. At Arad in the northern Negev, the remains of wheat, barley and legumes have been found, along with stone lined storage pits for grain from this period. Pottery was imported from Cyprus and Mycenae in Greece for the first time, probably for use as good quality tableware. After the Bronze Age collapse of urban culture, there was an increase in herding and the disappearance of smaller agricultural communities. Pastoralism and animal husbandry remained important, and walled open spaces in villages that probably served as paddocks have been discovered. The construction of terraces in the hills, and of additional plastered cisterns for water storage, enabled more cultivation than before. Storage pits and silos were dug into the ground to hold grain. Under the united Israelite monarchy, central store cities were built, and greater areas of the northern Negev came under cultivation. The Gezer agricultural calendar detailing the crops that were raised, dates from this period. Large food storage facilities and granaries were built, such as the city of Hazor. During the later Iron Age (Iron Age II) period, roughly the same period as the Israelite and Judean monarchies, olive oil and wine were produced on a large scale for commerce and export, as well as for local consumption. Seven basic agricultural products, called the Seven Species, are listed in the Bible: wheat, barley, figs, grapes, olives, pomegranates, and dates (Deut 8: 8). For example, rice was introduced during the Persian era; during the Hellenistic period, as trade with the Nabateans increased, more spices became available, at least for those who could afford them, and more Mediterranean fish were imported into the cities; and during the Roman period, sugar cane was introduced. Bread, wine, and olive oil were seen as direct links to the three main crops of ancient Israel . In the Bible, this trio is described as representing the divine response to human needs (Hosea 2: 2. Bread was eaten with every meal. Vegetables played a smaller, but significant role in the diet. The Israelites drank goat and sheep. Figs and grapes were the fruits most commonly eaten, while dates, pomegranates and other fruits and nuts were eaten more occasionally. Wine was the most popular beverage and sometimes other fermented beverages were produced. Olives were used primarily for their oil. Meat, usually goat and mutton, was eaten rarely and was reserved for special occasions such as celebrations, festival meals or sacrificial feasts. Game, birds, eggs and fish were also eaten, depending on availability. Fruits and vegetables had to be eaten as they ripened and before they spoiled. People had to contend with periodic episodes of hunger and famine; producing enough food required hard and well- timed labor, and the climatic conditions resulted in unpredictable harvests and the need to store as much food as possible. Thus, grapes were made into raisins and wine; olives were made into oil; figs, beans and lentils were dried; and grains were stored for use throughout the year. A typical daily meal is illustrated by the biblical description of the rations that Abigail brought to David. The staple food was bread, and it was such a vital part of each meal that the Hebrew word for bread, lehem, also referred to food in general. The supreme importance of bread to the ancient Israelites is also demonstrated by the fact that Biblical Hebrew has at least a dozen words for bread, and bread features in numerous Hebrew proverbs (for example, Proverbs 2. Proverbs 2. 8: 1. The bread eaten until the end of the Israelite monarchy was mainly made from barley flour; during the Second Temple period, bread from wheat flour become predominant. This mixture also formed the basis for cakes, to which oil and fruits were sometimes added before baking. These two grains are mentioned first in the biblical list of the Seven Species of the land of Israel and their importance as food is also seen in the celebration of the barley harvest at the festival of Shavuot and of the wheat harvest at the festival of Sukkot. By the Roman period, rice had become an important export, and the Jerusalem Talmud states about rice that . Furthermore, its significance to Israelite society, not only as a source of food, is illustrated by the biblical method for measuring a field by the amount of barley (rather than of wheat) with which it could be sown. It could be sown without plowing, and could therefore be grown on small plots of land that oxen or even donkeys could not reach, and it did not need artificial irrigation. It ripened a month earlier than wheat and was thus available to replenish supplies used up during the winter sooner than wheat, and also provide some food security if the more vulnerable wheat crop was poor or failed. Two- rowed barley was the older, hulled form; six- rowed barley was unhulled and easier to thresh, and since the kernels remained intact, store for longer periods. Hulled barley was thus the prevalent type during the Iron Age, but gruels made from it must have had a gritty taste due to the barley. It was high yielding, with large grains and relatively high amounts of gluten, and bread made from emmer wheat flour was thus fairly light in texture. However, emmer required time- consuming pounding or roasting to remove its husk, and during the Iron Age, durum wheat (triticum durum), a descendent of emmer, gradually replaced emmer and became the favored grain for making fine flour. Durum grew well in the rich soil of the larger valleys of the central and northern areas of the country, where rainfall exceeded 2. It could therefore be separated from the husk without roasting or pounding first, thus reducing the work required for threshing, and also leaving most of the grains whole, which was better for longer storage. The flour also had to be sifted repeatedly to obtain fine flour (such as the solet required in the Temple offerings). Thus, durum was primarily used for porridges, or parboiled and dried, or roasted and boiled, and barley flour continued to be used for making bread, until another hybrid of emmer, common or . The introduction of common wheat, which contained more starch and had a higher level of gluten, spread the use of wheat for bread- making and led to the production of loaves that were more lightly textured than barley and durum wheat breads. This usually broke most of the grain kernels, which limited their storage time because broken kernels spoil more quickly than unbroken ones. The development of the threshing- board, which was pulled over the stalks by oxen, left most of the grain kernels intact and enhanced their storage time. Numerous threshing floors and threshing boards have been discovered at archaeological sites of ancient Israel. Ripe grains of wheat were also parboiled and dried, like modern bulgur, and then prepared as porridge. Whole or cracked grain was also used to make gruel and in stews. Most frequently, grains were ground into flour to prepare bread. It was a difficult and time- consuming task, performed by women. Each household stored its own grain, and it is estimated that it required at least three hours of daily effort to produce enough flour to make sufficient bread for a family of five.
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