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Buried

Three cemeteries belonging to Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in North America, are tucked away in Manhattan, a visible legacy of New York City’s long-ago Jewish past. 
By Adam Chandler

There’s a small Jewish cemetery tucked away on an unlikely block in Manhattan, behind some condominiums on West 21st Street. It’s just a few minutes from Tablet Magazine’s new office on Tin Pan Alley, and I recently stumbled upon it. As it turns out, it has two siblings further downtown, and, taken together, the trio offer a window into the history of both the city and its Jewish community.

The three historic Manhattan cemeteries belong to Congregation Shearith Israel, a Spanish and Portuguese synagogue in Manhattan and the oldest Jewish congregation in North America, established in 1654. They are perhaps the most durable legacy of New York City’s long-ago Jewish past. The Shearith Israel congregation was founded by 23 Jewish refugees, descendents of Spanish Jews, exiled during the Inquisition, who fled from Recife, Brazil, after it was taken from the Dutch by the Portuguese. They were fleeing anti-Semitism but were greeted coldly by Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch director-general of the colony of New Netherland. From 1654 until 1825, Shearith Israel was the only Jewish congregation in New York City. In its long history, membership of the congregation has included Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo, three founders of the New York Stock Exchange, and the poet Emma Lazarus, whose famous words from “The New Colossus” are affixed to the Statue of Liberty. Shearith Israel—the name translated is “Remnant of Israel”—owns a Torah that dates to the American Revolution.

Click here to read the full article from Tablet Magazine

Hoover Dam I Love Vegas

This past weekend, my parents, sister and her husband went to Nevada to prepare Lake Mead for my upcoming 7 mile marathon swim next month on September 18th, Hoover Dam this is a Long Swim. We checked out the marina at the lake where we are to rent a 10 person boat for my family who are my safety and support crew. I felt the temperature of the water and it could not have been better for a 3.5 hour swim. A surprising thing was the quantity of fish, particularly large carp, living and begging for food at the marina. From the marina we drove to the spot my swim is named for, the Hoover Dam. The Hoover Dam is a concrecte arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between Nevada and Arizona built from 1931 to 1935. A perk of visiting this amazing location was spending two nights in Las Vegas a mere 30 miles away. We roamed the Strip ate, gambled, shopped and laughed like madmen at the perfect stand up routine of living legend, Jerry Seinfeld at Caesar's Palace Colosseum. It was a good time.

On the road to Hoover Dam just outside of Boulder City, NV

Boat we are to rent for safety and support crew

Me at the edge of Lake Mead

A thousand large carp fighting for popcorn at the Marina

crossing into Arizona

The Hoover Dam from Arizona side

Video of Hoover Dam and Lake Mead from Arizona side

Looks like the perfect camera shot

Siegfried and Roy's memorial on the Las Vegas strip. I just wanted to pose next to it,

 but you guys know how aggressive those white tigers can be.

My sister, Donna Feldman, posing next to the Jerry Seinfeld show poster we are about to enjoy.

Jerry Seinfeld on stage, this is best image I could get without bum rushing the stage for a better one and setting off security.

I found this tall cactus in Barstow, CA on way back from Vegas to LA.

Beck vows to defend Israel against UN, NGO... JPost - Middle East

US broadcaster Glenn Beck announced at a Jerusalem rally on Wednesday that he is forming a new global movement that will seek to defend Israel from the United Nations and human rights organizations around the world. 

The “Restoring Courage” rally attracted more than 1,000 American Evangelical Christians and right-wing Israelis to the Southern Wall excavation site outside the Old City. Additional crowds watched the event at Jerusalem’s Safra Square and at more than 1,400 viewing parties in 60 countries around the world, including China and Cuba.

Speaking above the din of Peace Now activists protesting the event, Beck enthralled the crowd with his praise for the people of Israel and his condemnations of critics of the Jewish state.

“In Israel, there is more courage in one small square mile than in all of Europe,” Beck said. “In Israel, there is more courage in one soldier than in the combined cold hearts of all the bureaucrats in the United Nations.

“In Israel you can find people standing against incredible odds against the entire tide of world opinion just because it’s right, just because it’s just and just because it’s good.”

Turning to the UN, Beck said the “so-called leaders of the world” talk about human rights while they abuse the meaning of the concept by condemning democratic Israel while ignoring dictatorships that murder their own people like Libya, Syria, and North Korea.

“The cause of human rights has been taken over by individuals who share little with those who originally led those movements,” he said.

“These organizations have become bullies and grotesque parodies of what they claim to represent. They criticize free nations and they spare the unfree. They are nearly comical in their double standards.

Whatever moral force they had is spent, and so today, we dismiss them.”

Beck said his new global movement, which will be based in Texas, aimed to “take back the phrase ‘human rights,’ and put it back where it belongs.”

Read the whole Jpost article here

My super model sister's new billboard in West Hollywood

My super model sister Donna Feldman's is playing the part of Eve being tempted by a snake on a billboard for an LA based French bakery called Plaisir. The billboard is located over Robertson and Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood, CA. It is amazing to see my gorgeous sister tower above one of the busiest intersections in Los Angeles.

Hoover Dam This Is A Long Swim Introductory Video

Learn more about my marathon 7 mile swim for SAGE by clicking here or go to the Hoover Dam This is a Long Swim at sageusa.org

A novel about being Jewish and Gay by Wayne Hoffman

In Wayne Hoffman’s new novel, Sweet Like Sugar, a young gay man and an older Orthodox rabbi—who believes the Torah forbids homosexuality—find a way to bridge their differences and become friends

According to the Torah, homosexuality is forbidden. That injunction is what makes Rabbi Zuckerman, a frail old man, recoil when he learns that a new friend, a 20-something named Benji Steiner, is gay. These characters and their relationship anchor a new novel,Sweet Like Sugar, by Wayne Hoffman. It’s a story that takes on identity, personal secrets, and the search for connection. The novel is something of a departure for Hoffman, whose debut, Hard, took a much more explicit look at gay life, describing the personal and political engagement of a group of gay men in the late 1990s in Greenwich Village.

Hoffman is also the deputy editor of Nextbook Press, the book imprint affiliated with Tablet Magazine. He joined Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to talk about the book, how his two careers—novelist and editor—influence one another, and his own experience finding acceptance as a gay Jew.

Listen to podcast here