GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 1 GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 2 Five things Jews can do to stop climate change By Rob Eshman News The news from the United Nations on climate change is as daunting as it is depressing. The question is what can we, as individuals and as a community, do about it? The report’s key finding is that human activity has already raised the planet temperature by 1.1 degree Celsius — the reason for this summer’s intense wildfires, floods, perhaps even the die-off of gray whales — and that the planet could warm by 2, 3 or even 4 degrees Celsius, with even more catastrophic effects, over the next two to three decades. The (barely) good news is that cutting greenhouse gas emissions and removing carbon from the atmosphere can avert the otherwise inevitable planet-wide disaster. In other words, there’s hope, and where there is hope, there is a reason to act. Jewish organizations and leaders, with some notable exceptions, have not made climate change action their focus. The tendency is to focus on issues that are more immediate or more emotional, like antisemitism, Israel advocacy or Jewish continuity. But now we are faced with a report telling us that in order to survive on this planet, period, we must stall, and hopefully reverse, climate change. Otherwise, we face the very real option of eradicating antisemitism by killing off humanity as we know it. If we as humans get climate change wrong, it will make very little difference what we as Jews get right. Many climate experts warn that the time in which individual action can make a difference has long passed, and that only institutional and governmental change can make any meaningful difference. As a community that accounts for just 2 of every 1,000 people on Earth, it’s hard to feel like even universal action by Jews can have real impact. Still, our tradition calls for tikkun olam — for each of us, individually and collectively, to do what we can to repair our broken world. Here are five ways to start. 1. Take climate change as seriously as antisemitism. Climate change “has to go on the agenda of every single Jewish institution,” Nigel Savage, the founder of the Jewish environmental group Hazon wrote in response to news of the U.N. report. That means Federations, synagogues, the whole alphabet soup of Jewish nonprofits, need to define and enact a response as thoroughly as they did in recent years in addressing antisemitism. “A deeply serious public commitment, not to finishing the task, but to starting it as a central and systemic endeavor – that’s what we need,” Savage wrote, invoking a classic line from Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the Fathers. Some Federations, like Baltimore’s Associated, have acted on and invested in these issues (and, by the way, galvanized young people in doing so). Others are far behind. Savage and his successor at Hazon, Jakir Manela, are calling for “a community- wide seven-year commitment to environmental sustainability across the entire Jewish community” by the fall of 2022. 2. Sermonize. Rabbis have an opportunity during the upcoming High Holidays to spur their congregants to individual and collective action. Boring? Not Jewish enough? Listen to how Rabbi David Wolpe Sinai Temple in Los Angeles spoke about it on Kol Nidre in 2019. “If you can’t imagine the bad that would happen,” he said, “then you could never imagine the good you can do to repair it.” 3. Act Alone. The individual choices we make for sustainable living matter — what we eat, what we drive, how we power our homes, businesses and institutions. As for eating, keeping kosher isn’t enough. In 2008, Scientific America actually crunched the numbers on whether the diet of those who observe the laws of kashrut produces more or less greenhouse gases. The bottom line is that America’s 10 million kosher consumers (not all of them Jewish) represent a marginal slice of the market. But to the extent personal choices matter, eating a pound of beef, whose production releases 13.67 pounds of greenhouse gases, is far worse for the planet than eating, say, a pound of wild salmon, which releases less than .23 pounds. Eating a mostly plant-based diet with sustainably raised or harvested animal proteins is a start, though as food writer Mark Bittman warns in “Animal Vegetable Junk,” we are past the point where personal choice alone will forestall disaster. What if individuals not only made better personal choices but did so as part of a communal effort, multiplying the effect? If your Jewish institution doesn’t have a plan to offer sustainably-grown food— and cut back on food waste— now’s the time. 4. Support faux meat. The world needs solutions to climate change that can scale quickly, far faster than individual diets. This month, an Israeli start-up, Aleph Farms, announced it will increase production of its cellular meat to 5,000 burgers a day, an astonishing volume. Aleph is the leading company worldwide for creating meat by growing cells from otherwise living animals. The meat looks and Five things Jews can do to stop climate change GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 3 tastes like meat because it is. There are other Israeli companies at the cutting edge of faux meat production, including Redefine Meat that are poised to satisfy the world’s growing craving for juicy protein while all but eliminating meat production— which the UN report cited as a major contributor to global warming. 5. Use our leverage. As Bittman and others have pointed out, only governments and corporations have the capacity to launch the sweeping policies and practices that will forestall climate change. That’s why a Jewish community that has generations of expertise in leveraging its power to influence legislation and policy changes needs to take climate change on as a cause. Only two major Jewish groups, Hazon and Dayenu, have made this their focus — they need far more support. If your thing is lobbying for Israel, read this sobering assessment of the environmental and social disaster that awaits Israel in the face of global warming to understand that the country’s primary foe is unseen, and at its gates. It is at all our gates. – Rob Eshman is national editor of the Forward. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @foodaism or email eshman@forward.com. Jewish wisdom can help Cuomo apologize for real By Laura E. Adkins Opinion With virtually every party leader calling for his resignation, Gov. Andrew Cuomo had little choice but to step down. Yet it took Cuomo 89 seconds into his resignation speech on Tuesday to get to I’m-sorry-you’re-offended — which he followed with excuses, swipes at his accusers and denials of bad behavior. My colleague Mira Fox wrote that his apology was “a decent first step — especially considering that it was paired with a meaningful action.” I’m not so optimistic. Though 18 minutes in, Cuomo did finally give us something to work with. Addressing his daughters, Cuomo said, “Your dad made mistakes. And he apologized. And he learned from it. And that’s what life is all about.” I’ll assume this statement is aspirational — because the first step of learning from one’s mistakes is not issuing triumphant proclamations, but embodying quiet humility. As the Catholic scholar Marcellino D’Ambrosio writes, “seven deadly sins are identified from which all other sins flow. The deadliest of these seven is pride.” And as the Book of Proverbs puts it, “When arrogance appears, disgrace follows; wisdom is with those who are unassuming.” It’s very easy to say “I apologize” when you’re backed into a corner. It’s very hard to actually repent for bad behavior — to spend time in quiet reflection, out of the spotlight, thinking about what you’ve done wrong and how you’ll change your life to avoid repeating similar behaviors in the future. For Cuomo to have any hope at all of salvaging his legacy, it’s time to stop talking and start taking his own advice. In even the shortest version of the process of repentance, repairing the harm you’ve done to someone else takes a very long time. In the traditional Jewish framework, we must recognize that what we did was wrong, regret what we did, stop doing it, feel bad about having done it, sincerely apologize to the people we have harmed and ask for forgiveness, resolve not to do what we did again, increase our good behavior in other arenas, and actively work on becoming more self-aware in general. Even for the best of us, trying to change a deeply ingrained behavior or make up for serious harm might take years, if not Five things Jews can do to stop climate change To donate online visit Forward.com/donate To donate by phone, call 212-453-9454 The Forward is the most significant Jewish voice in American journalism. Our outstanding reporting on cultural, social, and political issues inspires readers of all ages and animates conversation across generations. Your support enables our critical work and contributes to a vibrant, connected global Jewish community. The Forward is a nonprofit association and is supported by the contributions of its readers. Create a Future for Courageous Jewish Journalism GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 4 a lifetime. It’s very likely that you might even die still trying. One 13th-century Spanish rabbi provides a poignant example. Rabbi Yonah of Gerona led the demonization of the rationalist rabbi Maimonides, even going so far as to burn Maimonides’ works in the streets of Paris. When the Dominican Catholics, inspired by Rabbi Yonah’s fervor, started burning cartloads of volumes of Talmud as well, he realized the terrible folly of his actions. Rabbi Yonah spent the rest of his life trying to atone for his behavior. He vowed to make a pilgrimage to Maimonides’ grave in Israel in order to spend seven days requesting forgiveness in front of ten witnesses; he was stopped by the Spanish authorities on the way there, and never made it. When he became a distinguished Torah teacher in Toledo, he deliberately incorporated Maimonides’ teachings into his lectures and curriculum. He wrote several thick volumes on atonement and regret, including the 683-page “Shaarei Teshuvah,” The Gates of Repentance, a severe and intense guide to the agonizing steps required to truly atone for what one has done wrong. Judging from Cuomo’s words and actions, he seems to view the process of moving on more as one of wiggling away: cast doubt on the accusers, vaguely apologize, remove yourself from the scene (sort of), remind us that you love your children and the accusations made against you hurt them, and insist that what you did was not really so bad, anyway. It wasn’t a great look. But the words he let slip when addressing his daughters reveal that he might know the real hard truth deep down. After sincerely admitting his behavior and apologizing, as Cuomo himself framed it, next must come the process of learning from what happened — and making this learning what the rest of his life is all about. – Laura E. Adkins is the Forward’s Opinion Editor. Follow her on Twitter @Laura_E_Adkins or email adkins@forward.com . Why retire? Catching up with the most-watched Jew in television history By Court Stroud Culture This isn’t a trick question. Who is the Jewish TV star who hosted the longest-running variety show in television history, airing for more than 50 years and watched by as many as 100 million viewers worldwide? If you answered Don Francisco, host of Univision’s “Sabado Gigante,” which signed off in 2015 after 53 years and 42 days (a Guinness World Record), give yourself a point. And if you said Mario Kreutzberger — or better, Mario Luis Kreutzberger Blumenfeld — add extra credit. A Chilean native and the son of German Jews who fled to that country, Kreutzberger recently penned his life story, “Con ganas de vivir. Memorias” (“A Desire to Live: A Memoir.”) His second memoir, it follows his 2002 autobiography, “Life, Camera, Action!” Both detail his journey from an early fascination with television to becoming the on-screen embodiment of international Hispanic culture. With no plans to retire, the 80-year-old Kreutzberger hosted a limited series on CNN in February, “Don Francisco: Reflexiones 2021.” That month he spoke with media writer Court Stroud. Their conversation originally appeared in Forbes. You’re one of the Spanish language’s most famous people, so it’s ironic that Spanish wasn’t your first language. Don Francisco: Yes, German was my first language. I lived with my grandmother and she spoke only German. When I went to school, I spoke Spanish. I’m the son of a Holocaust survivor. My father was in a concentration camp and my mother left the country after Kristallnacht. My father, he never wanted to talk about the concentration camp or that he suffered. One of his relatives told me that he was in Bergen-Belsen. I wrote some books with small parts of my story because my father never wanted to talk about this. That’s why I did a documentary about the concentration camps under the name “Witnesses of Silence” (“Testigos del Silencio”), because not only my father, but most of the survivors also never wanted to talk about this. Four or five months ago, during the time that I was writing my new book, “A Desire to Live” (“Con Ganas de Vivir”), I learned that my father was the prisoner 27770 from Buchenwald. Jewish wisdom can help Cuomo apologize for real To donate online visit Forward.com/donate Create a Future for Courageous Jewish Journalism To donate by phone, call 212-453-9454 GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 5 Your parents escaped from anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. That must have had a huge effect on you. Oh, yes, it has even today. Because I just did a small piece about Buchenwald Camp, what it means for me knowing — when I’m 80 years old — that my father was the prisoner 27770. This was when I knew it was very strong for me. Even though I knew that he was in a concentration camp, I never knew how it was he arrived. My colleague is a journalist. He wrote to that concentration camp. He found out the name, the number, the date when [my father] came in, the date when he came out. I could put together different pieces of my story and fill out this chapter about the concentration camp in the new book. At the end, I said, “Mein Vater hat es mir immer gesagt” — that means “my father always told me” — yes, forgive but do not forget. How did you start your career in television? My father sent me in 1959 to New York. I went to the technical university to become a men’s clothing designer. I was there for two years. But when I went into my very humble hotel room, I saw a radio very similar to the radio that I had in my home in Santiago but instead of having a piece of cloth in the front, this “radio” had a glass. When I put it on, you were able to see and to listen at the same time. I said, what I’m studying is yesterday. This is the future: television. I fell in love at first sight when I saw television, watching Jack Paar, Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson. I was inspired by these people. How did you get your start performing on TV? When I went back to Chile, that was the beginning of Chilean television. I went to the station to say to the people there, “You know, I saw more television than all of you. I was watching for two years.” “But who are you? You are nobody.” Oh, my perseverance. I was trying and trying for one year. They gave me an opportunity on Sundays for one hour. I was just married. At the week number eight, fuera. They fired me. You were let go? I was so depressed. At the week number nine, they took me back. The people kept calling for me. “Where’s the fat guy?” I was always heavy, even more than now. Were you already going by the name Don Francisco? I started acting because my mother was an opera singer. She was so depressed. She never could perform because of the Holocaust. She always thought that maybe I could be a singer and she promoted me always to study singing and to learn different instruments. But I was not able to do that. I started acting in a Jewish club and made the impression of a Jewish guy that couldn’t speak Spanish well. This guy had a funny name, “Don Francisco Ziziguen González.” I went one day to a contest to tell jokes. I was very good telling jokes. But before I went on, the host asked me, “What’s your name?” I said, “Mario Kreutzberger.” “What? That’s impossible.” I said, “Why don’t you call me Don Francisco?” I won and said [to myself], “This is a name that is for good luck.” About eight weeks after, I took out my name, and forever I’m Don Francisco. Of all the interviews you’ve conducted, which surprised you the most? Many. I interviewed all the Presidents of the United States: Bush, the father; Clinton; Bush, the son; Obama, and also the candidates running against them. Obama was a very important interview for me, and also Bush, the son. What happened with George W. Bush? With Bush, I have an anecdote. We drove to the place where he lives in Texas, before he was president. Very far. I arrived there and did the interview. At the end, I said, “Mr. Bush, maybe you’re going to be the president. You never will remember me because I’m from a humble television station in Spanish.” He said to me, “You’re wrong. I’m going to give you the first interview.” He won the election and was the president. He did a big party for the Hispanics. I was not invited. [Laughs] I was forgotten completely. After about eight days, they called me from the White House. The guy who was in charge of Hispanic relations told me, “The President told you he will give you the first interview.” He had only done press conferences. I flew to Washington, and he gave me the first interview. You just wrote your fourth book. You’re starting a new series with CNN en Español. You have so much energy that I’m hesitant to ask, but has retirement ever crossed your mind? No. This is like killing your soul. Why do you have to retire? There is a magic word: perseverance. Perseverance is the word that keeps me, at 80 years, trying to start something new. I was the captain of a 747 and now I’m building a Piper with one engine. Why? It doesn’t matter if it’s 1,000 feet, 5,000 feet or 7,000 feet. The altitude doesn’t matter. What’s important is flying. I like to fly. – This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Court Stroud has worked at Univision, Telemundo, TV Azteca and CBS Interactive, among others broadcast outlets. He runs The Cledor Group, a media consulting and training company and holds undergraduate degrees from the University of Texas-Austin, an MBA from Harvard University and teaches at Columbia. He may be reached at courtstroud.com Why retire? Catching up with the most-watched Jew in television history GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 6 Disney star Raviv Ullman is ready to be your new rabbi By Mira Fox Culture Raviv Ullman might have been your middle school crush when he starred in Disney’s “Phil of the Future.” Today, he’s probably more akin to your rabbi (not that you can’t have a crush on your rabbi). While Ullman still acts, he’s moved past goofy sci-fi comedies to more serious work, such as a documentary about the Dakota Access Pipeline. And, during the pandemic, he began a new podcast, called “The Study,” in which he dissects and interprets the weekly Torah portion along with various Jewish professionals and luminaries. Guests have included Ilana Glazer and Neshama Carlebach. Ullman’s maternal grandfather, Joseph Ehrenkranz, was a charismatic pulpit rabbi in Stamford, C.T. Ullman called him a “superhero” who everyone knew from his “incredible sermons,” so in a way, the podcast is nothing new. But Ullman takes a different approach to the text, looping in activism, environmental themes and even the history of smells. ‘I never forgot and I never again felt as safe’ — readers share the most antisemitic things that ever happened to them When we spoke, Ullman was warm and chatty, often going off into long, philosophizing spiels as he considered Judaism, art and his relationship to Torah — as well as comparing notes with me on biking around the city from his former days living in Brooklyn. “I often forget that I’m in interview mode and I’m just having a good time talking,” he said. Our conversation, edited lightly for clarity and rather heavily for length, is below. I have to admit that I grew up without cable and I have never seen “Phil of the Future.” You’re in the clear. It was a very specific moment, that show was not on for very long, and so it was a very small but mighty audience. I’m glad to talk about other things. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about what you’ve been up to recently? I know you’ve been working on this documentary about the Dakota Access Pipeline. When I started that project, a director friend said, “Oh, you’re making a documentary — have fun for the next six years!” And I said, “Ha ha, six years.” Anyway, it looks like that’s about how long documentaries take to make, so that’s still an ongoing project. I have also started working in the opera space recently, which is brand-new but really exciting. Boston Lyric Opera and Long Beach Opera commissioned an eight-part miniseries by James Derrah, the LBO artistic director, and Ellen Reid, who won a Pulitzer for opera, and they wrote this opera. I was invited to come act in it — it was a dual cast where they would record it in a studio and actors would act it on screen. I’ve since been roped into this opera world. Up until recently, I’d actually never been to an opera. Hearing opera singers, like [Metropolitan Opera star] Isabel Leonard, sing at full volume, feet away from you, is one of the most insane things I’ve ever experienced. It’s like being on a roller-coaster ride, you feel it in your toes. And how did the podcast fit into all of this? In the beginning of the pandemic, everything shut down, and everything that I do is collaborative. I really missed that. A podcast that was studying Torah with a rotating group of rabbis seemed like an incredible way to be in conversation with people about the world around us. It was born out of doing Shabbat dinners at home. In the pandemic, we kept it up and that was really helpful. It was really hard to engage with the world — we didn’t know what the heck was going on. There was a pandemic, and a whole new upswell of activism, and it was hard to look straight at it all the time, with perspective. Disney star Raviv Ullman is ready to be your new rabbi Photo by Getty Images GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 7 Torah gave us an in. Here’s what’s happening in the Torah, and what does that make us think of, and how do we reflect on it? That was a really useful tool that kept a big group of friends in deep conversation with each other at a time when we didn’t know where exactly to start the conversation. So I’m trying to be truthful to that with the show. How did those Shabbat dinners get started? I went to Israel with my brother for a few months and came back inspired to have Shabbat again, so I started hosting Shabbat for friends in both L.A. and New York, wherever I was. We weren’t a group of people that were looking to go clubbing on a Friday night, we wanted to spend it breaking bread, and everyone was welcome. I remember being nervous to get all of these non-Jews to wash their hands for challah and then stay quiet until they ate it. And then it was everyone’s favorite thing — people looked forward to that quiet moment at the end of the week. That kind of blew my mind. People are starving for this ritual! We need Shabbat to just take a break for a second, even if it’s the 20 seconds between washing your hands and the challah. Then I hosted Shabbat Zoom every week in the beginning of the pandemic and so many people showed up. Like, this was after they had been on Zoom all week long, and they still showed up. Who is the podcast’s audience? It’s very specific and very Jewish, yet on the other hand, it’s not – you talk to all kinds of people and connect the text to the environment, to Black Lives Matter, to activism. I recently had this realization that all of the different art that I want to make — the person that I want to make this for, the intended audience for all of these things, is me. I get really frustrated in the arts when people try to make something for everyone. I definitely don’t pretend or want to pretend that I’m speaking on behalf of all millennial Jews, or all progressive-leaning Jews. The journey of the show was me being curious to go through the Torah for the first time as an adult, and to do it with people who are way smarter than me. And that is seemingly resonating — we dip in and out of the number one spot on iTunes, which is wild. How do you approach all of the boring parts of Torah? You know, the bits you’re afraid to get as your Torah portion for a bar mitzvah, that say exactly how long the Temple should be or what kind of wood to use. We like to have fun with it. Leviticus can be a little dry sometimes, but why are these things so deeply specific? When I read this whole thing about acacia wood and the very specific incense that was used, that made me wonder why smell is so important, and how smell has been used in religions across the course of history. So we brought people in to talk about that. The other thing that’s even more difficult and more thrilling are the really problematic parts. Like, Pinchas is a problematic character but he’s written as a hero. And we find a lot of misogynistic writing in the Torah. On the show, we try to really look at that and tear it apart. What if we’re able to trace some modern bit of misogyny back to a line in Torah? Then we’ve actually uncovered something and can start to unravel it. It sounds like there’s a clear theme of interrogating stories in all of your work. That’s the Judaism I grew up with. Friends would come over for Seder, and they’d been used to reading through the Seder as fast as possible to get to dinner. But we sit around for hours and hours and hours and rip the thing to shreds, and we do it every year. It’s one of my favorite things to do, because it’s like this deep engagement with my family. I was taught that asking questions is one of the most Jewish things you can do. Israel means “to wrestle with God” — I’m leaning into that as hard as I can. I don’t have to blindly accept anything, the whole point is to wrestle with it and ask the hard questions. How has doing the podcast changed your relationship to Judaism? One of my favorite parts of making the show is sitting down with my producer Evan, and we read through the Torah portion together, and think about all of the conversations we could have, and then figure out how to do the episode. But Evan and I are in deep conversation around the text, and that’s our own chevruta. I’d never done that as an adult, not since I was at Hillel Hebrew Day School. Who is your dream guest? I’d love to study Torah with Obama, or to talk to [Secretary of the Interior] Deb Haaland about her spiritual journey and the importance of land and our relationship to it. Oh, or when I was a touring musician, I did a tour with Lizzo, very early on in her career. It would be fun to study some Torah with Lizzo. – Mira Fox is a reporter at the Forward. Get in touch at fox@forward.com or on Twitter @miraefox . Disney star Raviv Ullman is ready to be your new rabbi GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 8 Scrap the sermon: In the pandemic rabbis decide less is more By Louis Keene Culture A time to learn, a time to feel, a time to snooze: the rabbi’s sermon. For centuries it has given Saturday morning prayer services their character and depth — and their length. But last summer, when Orthodox synagogues across the United States held abridged outdoor services to limit the spread of COVID-19, the sermon — along with most singing and large parts of the ritual — became a casualty. Shorn of accoutrements, and with spaced-out seats keeping chatter to a minimum, services moved briskly, almost businesslike. Now, with congregations mostly vaccinated, synagogues reopened and the traditional service restored, some rabbis are trimming their sermons as part of a concerted effort to keep the service moving and congregants engaged. The pandemic taught what the people in the pews might have been too embarrassed to say to their spiritual leaders: talk less. The secret Jewish history of Jethro Tull Rabbi Kalman Topp, head of Beth Jacob Congregation, an Orthodox synagogue in Beverly Hills, Calif., said that his sermons occasionally stretched past 15 minutes prior to the pandemic. Now he keeps them between five and 10. “‘Less is more’ is the name of the game,” Topp said. The abbreviated sermon is far from the only change synagogues are making in the service of speed. They are also hastening the procession of the Torah scroll, eliminating misheberach blessings between aliyot and cutting out select singing parts — in some cases, enough to get congregants home 45 minutes sooner than they used to. But while some rabbis still cling to the old format, rabbis who shrunk the speech have encountered little pushback. They are all reckoning with a lesson many are now learning after more than a year of working from home and praying around the corner: people love convenience, and they hate to part with it. At B’nai David-Judea, an Orthodox synagogue in Los Angeles where this writer prays, Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky has replaced the full-length sermon with what he calls the “mini-drasha” — a five- or six-minute talk. Rather than precede Musaf , the concluding service of morning prayers, his sermon now follows it, more parting wisdom than fire-and-brimstone. Kanefsky said he adopted the new approach after gathering input from longtime synagogue members. “They enjoyed an experience of davening that had momentum,” he said. The change has helped reduce the overall length of the B’nai David service by around 45 minutes compared to pre-pandemic times. Congregants are now in and out of shul in less than two hours most weeks — a pace that would have been considered blistering before the backyard minyans made them commonplace. For congregants interested in going deeper, Kanefsky leads a 30-minute shiur, a text-based Torah class, most weeks after kiddush. Between the shiur and the mini-drasha, his total preparation time roughly equals the pre-pandemic amount. Shorter sermons are different by nature — more to the point, with fewer offramps to lose sleepy congregants. “In the old days, I would search for numerous sources that buttress a certain point,” Kanefsky said. “Don’t do that anymore — I got my one source. And then you wanted to weave in a story? Alright, so there’s no story. You have an idea, and you find a delivery mechanism for that idea that is straight and unadorned.” As long as there have been rabbis, there have been sermons. And there are no rules on sermons. But there are conventions. The Talmud contrasts the approach of Rabbi Abbahu, who favored a storytelling style, with Rabbi Hiyya Bar Abba’s expositions on Jewish law. But the sermon as centerpiece of the prayer service only dates back a few centuries, and is generally understood to have been borrowed from Protestantism. And before the standard length was 15 minutes, speeches typically lasted twice that. Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein, the rabbi of Congregation Kehillath Jeshurun from 1936 until his death in 1979, and who for decades taught homiletics — that is, the art of the sermon — to rabbinical students at Yeshiva University, was known for delivering sermons so meticulously organized you could set a watch to them. Between 11:00 and 11:30 — marked by the bell tower of the nunnery across the street from the synagogue — Lookstein would pack an introduction, three points and a conclusion, week after week. “When somebody was asked what he talked about, nobody would say, ‘He talked about 30 minutes,’” recalled his son, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein. In 1958, when he began giving sermons at his father’s synagogue every few weeks, he too spoke for half an hour, Scrap the sermon: In the pandemic rabbis decide less is more GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 9 reading from handwritten notes that filled about 10 to 12 pieces of paper, double-spaced. But the younger Lookstein, who inherited both his father’s pulpit and his homiletics class, said the speech gradually contracted. Around 30 years ago, he said he shortened his weekly sermon to about 20 minutes. And in the years leading up to his retirement from YU, he said, he taught his students to aim for 15. And since returning to synagogue, Lookstein’s successor at Kehillath Jeshurun, Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, has been speaking for only five to seven minutes. Steinmetz also delivers a longer essay each week — via email. Lookstein supported the change, and imagined his father would too. “People don’t have the same attention span anymore,” Lookstein, 89, said. “You gotta adjust to people’s needs.” Still, for many people — clergy and lay — the homily remains essential. Delivered after the Torah scroll is returned to the ark, a powerful sermon can inject relevance into the liturgy and build momentum toward the individual’s silent recitation of the Musaf Amidah. Rabbi David Wolkenfeld, who leads Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel, an Orthodox synagogue in Chicago said the segue from sermon to prayer was impossible to replicate over Zoom, let alone in an email, and is hard to capitalize on with a shorter speech. “My goal is, when you say ‘Please rise for Musaf, it’s like, bam ,” he said. “That’s your mic-drop moment.” He was not the only one wary of sacrificing too much on the altar of convenience. Lookstein, at least, has made peace with whatever might be lost as services and sermons get shorter. Were he called upon to give a sermon today, he said, he wouldn’t let it go longer than 10 minutes (that is, five or six pages of notes). Lookstein said he thought that as art of the sermon was lost to time, so would the Jewish capacity for a certain type of intellectual rigor. But losing congregants would be worse. “What may be lost is depth of thinking, and breadth of covering a subject,” Lookstein said. “But there’s no point doing that if people are not ready to listen. It is what it is. You can’t offer something to people that they’re not prepared to receive.” – Louis Keene is a staff reporter at the Forward. He can be reached at keene@forward.com or on Twitter @thislouis . Where the kitschy Holy Land theme park died, a medical facility will rise By Mark I. Pinsky News The end of days for Orlando’s Bible-based theme park, the Holy Land Experience was widely foretold. What no one expected was the form its afterlife would take. Consider: Holy Land was the vision of a Jew who converted to Christianity and became a Baptist minister. When low ticket sales and runaway operating expenses led to huge financial losses, the park was taken over by a controversial, scandal- plagued, Pentecostal television ministry. Then last week, the 14-acre property was sold to a Seventh- Day Adventist-affiliated health system for $32 million. The vest pocket theme park is likely to be leveled and turned into a regional health center. “AdventHealth will make a significant investment in redeveloping the property to bring enhanced health care services to the community,” Amy Pavuk-Gentry, an AdventHealth spokesperson, told the Orlando Sentinel. Holy Land was founded by the Rev. Marvin Rosenthal. Raised Jewish in Philadelphia, Rosenthal became a traditional Baptist. The dual goal of his ministry, Zion’s Hope, he said, was to educate Christians about the Jewish roots of their faith, and to proselytize Jews to abandon their faith. The latter drew criticism from local rabbis when Holy Land Experience opened in 2001. But their concerns didn’t materialize when few Jews went to the attraction. Rosenthal is an ex-Marine and former professional dancer with a circus ring master’s flair for showmanship, down to his pencil thin mustache. He disdained – but tolerated – modern evangelical outreach to Jews like “Jews for Jesus.” But he also disdained charismatic Pentecostal Christians. When Holy Land opened he famously said he wouldn’t hire a Pentecostal at the park, even to sell hot dogs. Rosenthal, who is ailing, did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment. Lower than expected attendance led to financial trouble and Rosenthal lost control of the attraction in 2005. His backers took over, cast him out, and sold the park to Trinity Broadcasting Network, headed by a flamboyant Pentecostal couple, Jan and Paul Crouch. Despite grandiose plans to expand Holy Land, after the couple’s deaths their successors couldn’t make a go of it. Scrap the sermon: In the pandemic rabbis decide less is more GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 10 Most of the staff was laid off before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now they have sold the property to AdventHealth, which is affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist church, considered by some evangelical and traditional Christians to hold a few questionable doctrinal stances. Orlando is a kind of fantasy heaven, where imaginative dreams become reality, thanks largely to sprawling Disney, Universal, and SeaWorld theme parks, located just down Interstate 4 from Holy Land, and a host of kitschy, lower-tier attractions like Gatorland, the Titanic Museum and “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” Less well known is that Orlando is also a place where ambitious dreams sometimes die hard, especially when entertainment and Christian religion are combined, as they were at Holy Land. Central Florida, despite being an evangelical heartland that supports numerous mega-churches, as well as being the home of national and international ministries like Campus Crusade for Christ, has been a graveyard of attractions with a Christian agenda. Previous casualties range from the low budget musical “The Rock and the Rabbi: The Story of the Powerful Friendship Between a Fisherman and the Son of Man,” to the multi-million dollar “Ben-Hur: The Musical.” The problem, observers said, was not a lack of faith, either on the part of locals or tourists. Major theme parks have conditioned audiences to demand high production values for their entertainment dollars. Yet spectacles are expensive to produce, which means high ticket prices. Orlando’s big three commercial theme parks charge more than $100 for a one-day pass. “Ben-Hur” spent eight million dollars designing a 2,600-seat theater, complete with eight animatronic horses for a chariot race, and a six-ton Roman galley. Still, both “The Rock and the Rabbi” and Ben-Hur closed after just a few months. Similar efforts for religious entertainment attractions never got off the ground. For the Holy Land Experience, Rosenthal hired a design company that worked with Universal, and its recreation of First Century Jerusalem drew praise. There were costumed shows with singing and dancing, but no rides. At one point Holy Land, although a much more modest attraction, was charging $50 a day. There is a subtle, symbolic logic to the purchase of Holy Land by AdventHealth. For years, Central Florida progressives have bemoaned the area’s reliance on the low-wage service and hospitality jobs – theme parks, restaurants and hotels. The poignant, 2017 film, “The Florida Project,” illustrated the plight of such workers, who often live hand-to-mouth. Recently, especially in the southeast part of the county, an economic alternative has been rising. These include new hospitals (Nemours and the VA) and a clinic affiliated with a new medical school at the University of Central Florida. Clustered around these medical facilities are a number of biotech companies, both established and start-ups. The prospect is for better paying jobs and some relief from the powerful hospitality industry, which now exerts a stranglehold on the local political system. So, Holy Land’s final irony: From the rubble of a theme park that – for inspirational entertainment – celebrated Jesus’ healing ministry through faith, will ris