R&R For The Heart And Soul: Chabad-Style NY Welcome For Wounded Israeli Veterans

Israeli soldiers wounded in Gaza war visit the Statue of Liberty, top, and meet with Chabad leaders and Israel Embassy members here. Bentzi Sasson

Shining A Light On Older Teens With Autism

Dr. Fred Volkmar discussed the challenges in working with young adults with autism at recent conference here. Michael Fine/UJA-F

In the last 10 or so years, autism has exploded into the national consciousness. For parents with young children, the terms “autism spectrum disorder” and Asperger’s syndrome have become part of a new vocabulary to describe children who seem withdrawn, uncommunicative, anti-social or slow to pick up on social cues.

While the vast majority of the attention given to autism has focused on very young children, teenagers with the condition who have to navigate the difficult transition into adulthood seem to have received short shrift. For them, the passage can be a particularly trying time, as they struggle to achieve academically, adapt socially and excel in new careers — independent from the arms of the local school districts that oversee their care until age 21.

To shine a light on this underserved population, UJA-Federation of New York convened an autism symposium on April 22 that focused on adolescents emerging into young adulthood with a wide range of spectrum disorders, and how the community can better respond to meet their growing needs. The diagnosis rate of autism has surged in the past couple of years, rising from approximately 1 in 150 in 2007 to 1 in 110 in 2009, according to a Center for Disease Control journal publication presented at the conference by Marshalyn Yeargin-Allsopp, medical epidemiologist and chief of developmental disabilities at the CDC.

But research on the disorder has thus far focused primarily on children, leaving those who are striving to become independent young adults largely out of the picture.

“Sometimes in adolescence kids take off for the better; sometimes kids take off for the worse,” said Dr. Fred Volkmar, director of the Yale Child Study Center and a speaker at the conference. He laments the lack of resources that focus on autistic young adults. “This is unfortunate because this is often the group of people that want help the most.”

The conference stemmed from the UJA-Federation’s ongoing effort to promote research and community action for people with mental disabilities. In recent years the charity has poured about $7 million into the effort, channeling money from its Caring Commission to agencies such as the Jewish Childcare Association, the JCCs of the Greater Five Towns, Manhattan and Mid-Westchester, the Riverdale Y, the Samuel Field Y, the Sid Jacobson JCC and Westchester Jewish Community Services, among others. The money began flowing after a federation-sponsored study in 2006 analyzed the recent increase in autism cases and the impact of the disorder on the Jewish community. Agencies were then asked to develop programs to meet the growing need.

“A lot of our work has been focused on those young adults with autism who are not eligible and for whom there is no special funding,” said Anita Altman, deputy managing director of government and external affairs at UJA-Federation, who works with city and state governing bodies to bring public funds to the programs. “There’s very little money that goes into these kinds of services.”   Continue reading…

Grape Expectations

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

Swirl. Sniff. Swish. Spit.

Repeat 170 times. In four hours and change.

Welcome to the life of a time-stressed kosher wine taster.

In the basement of City Winery on a recent Thursday afternoon, five young wine connoisseurs made their way through 170 bottles of kosher wine — first aerating the wine with a gentle swirl, then swishing it around the palate, and ultimately spitting the liquid into silver wine-chilling buckets scattered across a table where they were seated.

The five men had gathered for an expedited wine tasting, where in 4 ½ hours, they’d plow through the daunting number of bottles and give each a ranking between 1 and 100. The point of the blind tasting — the labels were wrapped in white paper to conceal their provenance — was to determine which wines were the top 18 for The Jewish Week’s Kosher Wine Guide. Companies that planned to showcase their wines at an upcoming March 14 Grand Wine Tasting had sent over complimentary bottles to the group of judges.

“We’re going to try to do it fairly, quickly and give each wine a number — we’ll arrive at the top 18,” said Michael Dorf, owner of City Winery, who chaired the tasting group. “All we’re doing is getting a taste and spitting it out.”

Dorf instructed the others to refrain from jotting down notes and to try their best to stay within 50 and 100 points in their ratings, unless the wine was completely undrinkable. And then they embarked on a turbo-speed process essentially “emulating what the biggies do,” according to Dorf, a reference to high-toned wine tasters.

First up were the white wines, then the rosés, followed by the reds and finally, the sweet dessert wines. The reds claimed the majority of the table space, as reds are much more popular among consumers and get a much higher profit margin for producers, the tasters told The Jewish Week.

“Well, l’chaim, everyone,” Dorf said, officially kicking off the tasting, and sampling his first white wine.   Continue reading…

Young Iranian Jews Now Pushing Beyond Old Boundaries

New Persian blood: New York board members of the group 30 Years After, including Shannon and Lauren Hedvat, third and fourth from left, at their launch event in September 2008.

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

Arranged meticulously across a wooden dining table was a Shabbat meal that could have served 30 — fluffy gondhi, “Persian Meatballs,” still steaming from their broth, Middle Eastern salads and ghormeh sabzi, a green vegetable stew. A Shabbat candle hovered between a spread of tahdig, a crispy rice dish, and shirini polo, a sweet rice blended with almond slivers, orange peels and pistachios.

For the Hedvat siblings — Lauren, Shannon and Brandon — this was just another routine Shabbat meal in Lauren’s Manhattan apartment. It was winter break from Penn Law School for Shannon and Penn Engineering for Brandon, and they decided to cook up a traditional Persian Shabbat dinner for their friends, both Persian and not, many of whom have become frequent guests at the trio’s events.

“Growing up we became accustomed to our parents’ way of entertaining even though they have assimilated too much into the American culture. The warm hospitality of the culture is ingrained in us,” said Shannon Hedvat, 24, the middle of the three. “No matter who was coming over for whatever reason, my parents always had a huge bowl of fresh fruit, nuts and sweets on the table along with tea and coffee.”

Even as they hew to their Iranian heritage and their parents’ culture of hospitality, the Hedvats and other 20- and 30-something Persians, the first to be born in America, are transforming the famously insular Iranian community here in unexpected ways. Thirty years after the Iranian Revolution brought tens of thousands of Persian Jews to Great Neck, the gilded ghetto on Long Island’s Gold Coast, and to Los Angeles, a new generation is pushing beyond its parents’ tight-knit world.

Influenced by the cultural pluralism and openness of America, its  members are entering into mixed marriages with Ashkenazim, something that would have been unheard of a generation ago. They have taken up leadership positions in large Ashkenazi shuls in Great Neck. And they are thrusting themselves into philanthropic and political causes in America, in Israel and worldwide.

“In general, Persians have an attitude of doing their own thing and feeling like other outside factors don’t affect them,” said Bobby Shamsian, 28, a vice president at renewable energy hedge fund TerraVerde Capital Management.  Continue reading…

In West Queens, New Blood Raises Hopes for Jewish Revital.

Young Jews in Long Island City celebrate Sukkot on a condo rooftop. Rabbi Zev Wineberg

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

When Cara Bernstein walked down the aisle a month ago to meet her fiancé under the chupah, she knew her wedding day was a crossroads not only in her life, but in the life of her Queens synagogue, which had not hosted a bride and groom for 22 years.

Nearly the entire congregation at Astoria Center of Israel celebrated her marriage that day, whether or not they knew the couple personally.

“A fellow congregant told me that I’m part of a new wave of congregants,” said Bernstein, who is 38.

Astoria Center of Israel is just one pocket of many in northwestern Queens where residents say they are seeing a revitalization of their historic Jewish populations. For 20- and 30-somethings who crave cheaper rents in close proximity to Manhattan, Astoria has become somewhat of a mecca, with popular restaurants, shops and nightlife options.

In Long Island City, brand-new yet pricey condominiums are attracting a slightly older crowd — young families in their 30s and 40s who find the East River waterfront an attractive place to raise small children. Other young singles and families are choosing nearby Jackson Heights and Sunnyside, which offer even more affordable real estate than the riverside neighborhoods.

Yet as young people — both Jews and non-Jews alike — continue to flock to northwestern Queens, they often lack the infrastructure necessary to accommodate Jewish community, area experts agree.

“I felt very good about Jewish life beginning here, but I don’t see any push to set up synagogues there,” said Jeff Gottlieb, president of the Queens Jewish Historical Society. “I see a lot of young Jewish people there, but I don’t see any real sparkle of any organizational Jewish life.”

Spiritual leaders like the Astoria Center’s Rabbi Jonathan Pearl are trying to combat this notion and reinvigorate their aging populations by pulling in younger crowds.

“There was an amazing sense of revitalization coming back into the sanctuary when we had a marriage taking place here,” said Rabbi Pearl, who has been at the synagogue for a little over a year. “The place was full.”

Last Sunday, Astoria Center of Israel received landmark designation status from the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places, for its beautiful interior décor and history of civic leadership since the 1920s. Today, the Conservative synagogue is egalitarian with about 100 members, most of whom are the elderly remnants of a neighborhood that was once home to seven synagogues and multiple kosher butchers.  Continue reading…

Moving On To The Next Tragedy

Not forgotten: A woman who lost a firefighter friend in the 9/11 attacks touches a plaque honoring him at a local firehouse. Getty Images

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

Eight years after the Twin Towers crumbled over downtown Manhattan, rescue worker Charlie Giles still wakes up regularly with nightmares of the North Tower collapsing on top of him, enveloping his body his flames and in suffocating debris. One night recently, he even woke up to find himself throwing things.

“I said to my wife, ‘He’s in our room, he’s in our room,’” Giles remembers. “She said, ‘Who’s in our room?’ I said, ‘bin Laden.’”

Giles, now 42, was the director of Citiwide Mobile Emergency Medical Services during the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, and on that day alone he personally treated 14 victims of the attacks. Since that fateful day, Giles has accumulated 15 medical diagnoses, 30 medications and 17 hospitalizations — as well as an intense phobia of airplanes that prevents him from flying anywhere.

Debilitated by both the permanent physical damages and pervasive mental health problems from 9/11, both victims and first responders rely on a dwindling but crucial set of private foundations and government-funded programs that help cover their daily expenses. But in both the Jewish community and in all of America, 9/11-focused charities and support groups have become few and far between, with the exception of tiny scholarship funds named for individual victims. 

“There are very few organizations still providing funds/financial assistance to persons impacted by 9/11,” said Scottie Hill, director of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Center at Mount Sinai Medical Center. “Most of the organizations in the NYC area, including the primary source of financial assistance in recent years (New York Disaster Interfaith Services), have shut down their programs due to termination of funding.”  Continue reading…

At New Shul, Beyond Apples And Honey

Soapbox preacher: New Shul Rabbi Dan Ain, who brought his High Holy Days message to Washington Square Park, will be installed this week. Michael Datikash

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

Decked out in brown suede Nikes, distressed denim jeans and black Ray-Ban sunglasses, Rabbi Dan Ain stood atop a “kosher” soapbox in Washington Square Park Monday afternoon, extolling heresy and encouraging his listeners to break from tradition during these 10 days of awe and repentance.

“You guys didn’t expect a rabbi to stand up and talk in Washington Square Park,” he said.

At a first glance, most passers-by thought they were about to hear yet another testifying Evangelical minister. But Rabbi Ain, 32, sported a blue button-down bowling shirt with a bright yellow “Rabbi Dan” nametag embroidered above the pocket and a swooping New Shul logo silk-screened across the back.

Throughout this week, he has been delivering short soapbox talks just south of the Washington Arch, to discuss how we can reconnect with our thoughts and reinvent our spiritual selves during the days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. Meanwhile, the New Shul is hosting a nearby House of Awe and Repentance Café, with a variety of interactive multimedia displays, creative modes of repentance and a wine-coffee bar tended by Rabbi Ain himself.  

“I think we need this time at the end of the year to reconnect with who we want to be,” said the rabbi … Continue reading…

Video of Rabbi Ain’s talk: