Interviews and Profiles

JERUSALEM - Not so long ago, few Israelis had heard of Rabbi Chaim Amsellem, a soft-spoken Shas backbencher in the Knesset.

Irving Bunim (1901-1980) is probably best known among Orthodox Jews for his best-selling, three-volume Ethics From Sinaicommentary on Pirkei Avos.

Reuven Poupko wears many hats, aside from a fur-clad shtreimel. A rabbi, lawyer and psychologist, the Baltimore native also served as chief rabbi of Curacao from 1998-2001, and has taught in colleges, rabbinical seminaries and day schools. But this Thanksgiving, Poupko is going to swap his bekeshe for an apron as he takes his wife and children to the streets of downtown Baltimore to share a Thanksgiving dinner with some of the city's most downtrodden residents.

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz is best known for his legal prowess, but he is also the author of two dozen nonfiction works and three novels, the latest of which is The Trials of Zion. Set in Israel, the book's plot tells the story of three lawyers who defend an alleged Arab terrorist while simultaneously trying to discover who set off a bomb that killed the American president and Israeli and Palestinian leaders at a peace-signing ceremony in Jerusalem.

Political intrigue. Backroom discussions. Revealing portraits. These and more fill the pages of a new memoir by Ambassador Yehuda Avner, The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership (Toby Press). Hailed as the "ultimate insider's account," this 731-page book reveals hitherto unknown stories based on recollections and notes Avner took while working for four different Israeli prime ministers.

In September I wrote in my Baseball Insider column (which appears the second week of each month in The Jewish Press) of my very positive reaction to an advanced screening of the new documentary "Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story."

Shomrim, volunteer citizen patrols, established in Jewish communities to handle quality-of-life issues, have been in existence for many years and are credited by local police forces for their key role in reducing crime. Not only are there active Shomrim patrols in Brooklyn's religiously concentrated neighborhoods of Boro Park, Flatbush, Williamsburg and Crown Heights, but also thriving patrols in the Jewish communities of Baltimore, Northwest London and more. While these patrols are designed to monitor suspicious activity and report any potentially dangerous activity to the police, the recent shooting of four Boro Park Shomrim members in September is a chilling reminder of the inherent danger these dedicated volunteers face on a daily basis.

All last week, Rabbi Yehuda Levin's name appeared in the news as the man behind gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino's widely-reported remarks opposing gay marriage and homosexuality. After a maelstrom of criticism, Paladino apologized to the gay and lesbian community, prompting Rabbi Levin to sever his ties with the Republican candidate.

When Yaffa Farjun graduated from the AMIT Florin Taman High School in Tzfat, Israel, in 1994, she never imagined that 15 years later she would return to her old school, to the very same building where she had once studied, not just as a member of the staff, but - at the tender age of 33 - as the school's newly appointed principal. After graduation, Farjun had been keen to discover the world that lay outside of Tzfat and spent over a decade teaching in the center of the country. But following the outbreak of the second Lebanon war, she felt a duty to return to the north and to her native city.

Of blogs there is no shortage (roughly 130 million, in fact, according to the latest statistics). Good blogs that address contemporary issues relevant to the Orthodox Jewish world, however, are harder to come by. Emes Ve-Emunah - haemtza.blogspot.com - is one such blog.

Daniel Retter's father, Marcus Retter, z"l, escaped from Vienna to England in 1938 on the Kindertransport. His father's parents and sister were deported from Vienna to Riga, where they were murdered by the Germans and Latvians. He says that since his father should have been the one asking some of the following questions, the interview is dedicated to his memory.

In the less than two years since he gave up his full-time job as a print and radio journalist, Uri Orbach, 50, has distinguished himself as an indefatigable parliamentarian for the Religious Zionist Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) party, which sits in Prime Minister Netanyahu's coalition government.

"From the age of 12," Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff told The Jewish Press in a recent interview, "I had one dream: to be a tzaddik, a gaon, and a melamed. I never became a tzaddik, I never became a gaon, but I did become a melamed, nodeh l'Hakadosh Baruch Hu."

A portrait of Ze'ev Jabotinsky may still adorn Likud conventions in Israel, but the ideas of this great Zionist leader - who passed away 70 years ago this week - are essentially forgotten and/or ignored.

JERUSALEM - Doron Sheffer, 37, one of Israel's greatest basketball players, shared his story of return to religious observance with a group of Jewish educators.

Sixty-five years ago next month - on August 11, 1945 - Polish-born Holocaust survivor Larry Wenig vowed to utilize all of his talents toward creating a Jewish state in Palestine.

The November midterm elections may well alter the political face of this country. Opponents of Obama administration policies have galvanized their forces and are eager to make their voices heard to the American electorate. One of those people is Jay Townsend, a GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate from New York who will be seeking to unseat incumbent Sen. Charles Schumer.

Many people knew him as Rabbi Hecht. His brothers called him Yank. To most of us he was J.J. - the man who, year after year, we saw standing at the Lubavitcher Rebbe's side for hours, no matter the weather, at the Lag B'Omer parade.

JERUSALEM - Rabbi Yehuda Amital died July 9 at the age of 86. He was among the heads of Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shvut, and among the creators of the Meimad political stream.

During the day, Shea Rubenstein works in real estate development. In the evenings he helps run the Jewish Community Council of Marine Park, an organization he helped establish, to meet the needs of the local community, as its executive vice president.

To some non-Jews, he is simply "America's rabbi." Rabbi Daniel Lapin - great-nephew of the widely revered mussarpersonality, Reb Elya Lapian - lectures across America to audiences both Jewish and Christian, produces audio CDs on such issues as marriage, the Ten Commandments, and the ill effects of vulgar speech, and disseminates a weekly e-mail called Thought Tools.

At the height of his musical success and while indulging in all the material abundance Hollywood had to offer, Yoseph chanced upon a Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch edition of the Chumash. Yoseph's life was transformed. He decided to reject the emptiness and egotism of the Hollywood lifestyle and embrace Yiddishkeit. Yoseph converted to Judaism and now lives in Brooklyn as an Orthodox Jew.

Perhaps it was inevitable. Ever since her address at the Republican National Convention two years ago, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has been popular among many Orthodox Jews. A month after the convention, a "Sarah Palin Wig" went on sale on Sheitel.com. Now, as worry increases in the Jewish community over President Obama's Middle East policies, a group of Jews have banded together to create Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin (JewsforSarah.com).

Yechiel Spira is part of a new breed of Internet-based Orthodox investigative journalist. The native New Yorker, who made aliyah in 1984, is on the front lines of Jerusalem's "almost anything goes" kosher-food industry via his Jerusalem Kosher News website (www.jerusalemkoshernews.com).

Rael Jean Isaac was in the right place at the right time. Forty years ago, she found herself in Israel together with her husband, studying the various activist groups that had sprung up in Israel in the wake of the Six-Day War. Some argued for returning the lands won during the war; others, for keeping them. While researching the different movements for her doctoral thesis, she and her husband met veteran right-wing activist Shmuel Katz. The rest is history.

Sherwood Goffin has had a storied career. The cantor of Lincoln Square Synagogue since 1965, Goffin started his musical career as a folk singer. From 1961-1995, Goffin sang on major stages worldwide, recorded six albums, and was known as the "Voice of Soviet Jewry," singing at all the major Soviet Jewry UN Solidarity Day rallies from 1964-1991.

The Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam, founded in May 2009, has held numerous political demonstrations, rallies and seminars aimed at bringing about a collective awareness of the perils of Islamic extremism. The Jewish Press sat down with Dr. Marvin Belsky, chairman of the board of HRCARI, to hear more about the goals and objectives of the group.

The New York Post called him "the nation's foremost journalistic expert on terrorism." Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief, called him the "Paul Revere of terrorism." For 16 years, Steven Emerson has been conducting research, reporting, writing, speaking, and testifying before Congress on the threat of radical Islam.

In 1947-1948 I lived in Boro Park where, against parental and rabbinic advice, I joined a Zionist group. By 1950 I was packing machine-gun parts for Israel in a home not far from the Young Israel. But what I did as a child does not compare to what my friend and colleague David Gutmann did for love of Zion at that very time on the dangerous open seas.

Have you read the blog Jewminicana? If you have, you are already familiar with Aliza Hausman, a recently converted Dominican-American blogger. She blogs about her childhood, upbringing, conversion, and a wide range of other topics. She and her husband, a semichah student at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, also speak about life as a religious interracial couple.