On Patrol with North London's Orthodox Jewish Crime Fighters

By Tabby Kinder in Mosaic Magazine

It’s a wet Tuesday night in Stamford Hill and I’m on an impromptu stakeout with two Orthodox Jewish men wearing police-issue stab vests.

Shulem Stern’s roomy people carrier has three child seats in the back to accommodate his large young family. But tonight – like almost every night of the week for Shulem and his partner Michael Scher – it's our undercover surveillance vehicle as we cruise around north Hackney looking for any prospective criminals.

I lower the window to get a better look at the “IC1 male” spotted acting suspiciously around Clapton Common. We’ve killed the engine and the lights, and we all watch in silence as the suspect wanders back and forth in the rain. He walks off after a few minutes and Michael speaks into his crackling two-way radio: “Male no longer considered a threat, let’s conclude.” Three similar vans I hadn’t noticed peel off in different directions, their Orthodox drivers nodding to my co-passengers as they pass.

Shulem and Michael are members of Stamford Hill Shomrim (Hebrew for "guards"), a Jewish neighbourhood patrol group set up to assist the London Metropolitan Police (MPS) in reducing crime. It’s one of four Shomrim groups in the UK (there’s one in Golders Green and two in the Manchester area, plus a number in various US cities), but this is the largest.

The 22 volunteers are on call 24 hours a day and spend three to four hours each day driving, walking or cycling the streets of Clapton, Stoke Newington, Stamford Hill and South Tottenham in search of any crimes being committed. The only restriction to the patrol is once a week during Shabbat, a period of roughly 25 hours that entails refraining from any work activities, i.e. using a mobile phone or driving a car. “We’re like a very proactive neighborhood watch,” says Shulem once we’re back on the road.

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Mizrahi Nation

Long shut out of the country’s story, Middle Eastern Jews now make up half of Israel’s population, influencing its culture and its life in surprising new ways. Who are they?

By Matti Friedman in Mosaic Magazine

The story of Israel, as most people know it, is well trod—perhaps even tiresome by now. It begins with anti-Semitism in Europe and passes through Theodor Herzl, the Zionist pioneers, the kibbutz, socialism, the Holocaust, and the 1948 War of Independence. In the early decades of the return to Zion and the new state, the image of the Israeli was of a blond pioneer tilling the fields shirtless, or of an audience listening to Haydn in one of the new concert halls. Israel might have been located, for historical reasons, in the Middle East, but the new country was an outpost of Europe. Its story was a story about Europe.

This story was a powerful one, and it has not changed much over the decades, certainly not in its English version. A recent example is Ari Shavit’s best-selling My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, in which the characters, with few exceptions, are the usual pioneers, Holocaust survivors, lovers of Europe spurned by Europe, devotees of classical music forced to become farmers and fighters, and their children and grandchildren: Ashkenazi Israelis like the author, and like me. Other actors are present onstage, but they are extras or props, not the stars. An earlier example of the form was Amos Elon’s richly told The Israelis: Founders and Sons (1971; reissued 1983), which purported to peer into the soul of the country but had scarcely a word to say about anyone not from Europe. Everyone knew who “the Israelis” really were.

A confluence of interests has endeared this same narrative to Israel’s enemies, who have used it to increasing effect. In Israel, goes one variant of the story, Arabs were made to pay the price of a European problem. A less benign variant posits that Israel is not a solution to anyone’s suffering but instead a colonialist European state imposed by empowered Westerners upon a native Middle Eastern population: that blond pioneer is less a victim rebuilding himself as a free man or an agent of progress than he is a white Rhodesian rancher.

It is 2014, and it should be clear to anyone on even passing terms with the actual country of Israel that all of this is absurd. Israel has existed for nearly seven decades and, like most things on earth, has turned into something that would have surprised the people who thought it up. Half of Israel’s Jews do not hail from Europe and are descendants of people who had little to do with Herzl, socialism, the kibbutz, or the Holocaust. These people require not the addition of a footnote, but a reframing of the story. Hard as this is for those of us whose minds were formed in the West, this means putting aside the European morality play that so many still see when they look at Israel, and instead viewing non-Europeans as main characters.

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Why Israel is shifting eastward

Europe's stagnation, legacy of anti-Semitism, and constant condemnation of Israeli policies set it apart from East Asia.

By Moshe Arens in Mosaic Magazine

Slowly but surely Israel is pivoting toward the East. Years ago that would have been a most unexpected development. After all, most of Israel’s population originated from Europe, and most of its leadership had its roots in Europe. For many years Israel might have been considered, for better or for worse, an outpost of Europe in the Middle East. Whether Europe loved Israel or hated Israel, Europe remained Israel’s closest connection to Western civilization. But a change is taking place. Our prime minister has visited China and Japan, and it is a fair bet that he will visit India in the near future. Who knows, Korea may even be next.

On reflection this is not totally unexpected. For many years the economic development of the countries in East Asia has been outpacing the economic development of Europe. Japan made giant strides in the years after World War II. South Korea followed suit. China has become the economic wonder of the twenty-first century. There are, as well, indications of accelerated economic development in India, the world’s largest democracy. It is natural that Israel’s economic relationship with these countries would begin to rival its relationships with the countries of Europe, a Europe which seems to be in permanent economic crisis and lagging behind the Asian tigers.

But that is not the only reason for this turn to the East by Israel. Europe is the graveyard of European Jewry. They were slaughtered in the killing fields of the Soviet territories, now Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, and Ukraine, that the German army occupied during Operation Barbarossa. And they were gassed in the industrialized killing installations established on Polish soil. Almost all of Europe was involved, directly or indirectly, in the murderous scheme to exterminate the Jewish people. The French and the Dutch shipped their Jews off by railroad to Auschwitz, knowing full well the meaning of that destination.

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Spitting and Other Methods of Warding Off Canaries, Jinxes and Evil Eyes

Philologos Flips the Bird at an Ancient Custom

By Philologos for The Jewish Daily Forward

Forward reader Herb Hoffman writes:
“I was raised in Brooklyn with the knowledge that spitting three times (or at least making a ritualized spitting movement or sound, which I’ve always rendered as ‘ptu, ptu, ptu’) is an effective way of warding off a kinehore — or ‘canary’ in my native Yinglish. My mother especially used it when sewing something while I was still wearing it, with remarks like, ‘Oy, azoy sheyn, kinehore, ptu, ptu, ptu.’ What is the derivation of this?”

Although Mr. Hoffman’s mother undoubtedly did what he remembers, he needs to be corrected about one thing. You don’t “ward off a kinehore” (pronounced “kinnahora”), which is a contraction of Yiddish kayn, “none” or “no,” and Hebrew ayin hara, “the evil eye.” Rather, you say “kayn ayin horeh,” “k’nayin horeh” or kinehore — that is, “no evil eye” — in order to ward off the jinx, hex or bad luck that the evil eye is believed capable of causing. And since, in the traditional superstitions of Jews and countless other peoples, the evil eye is most dangerous when you have provoked its jealousy by boasting of your (or someone else’s) successes or flaunting your (or someone else’s) good fortune, saying kinehore is most imperative at such moments. Thus, “My grandson, kinehore, brought home a perfect report card last week”; “Kinehore, she’s the most beautiful little baby”; “The doctor, kinehore, says I have the heart of a young man,” etc.

“Ptu, ptu, ptu,” or “tfu, tfu, tfu” or “poo, poo, poo” — all simulated spittings, as Mr. Hoffman correctly observes — generally take the place of kinehore and are not, as a rule, uttered together with it except for special emphasis. Why Mr. Hoffman’s mother felt the need to be so emphatic when sewing a shirt or pants that were on him, I don’t know. Perhaps she was afraid that calling either him or his clothing azoy sheyn, “so handsome,” might cause her to jab him with her needle. The evil eye’s bag of tricks is inexhaustible.

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The Jewish Mother of Modern Acting

by Sheana Ochoa for Jewniverse

 Legendary actor and acting teacher Stella Adler was put onstage as soon as she could walk and never left. The newly released first biography of Adler (written by yours truly) explores how the daughter of Yiddish theater pioneers Jacob and Sara Adler grew up to star in and produce Hollywood films, while remaining identified with her parents' Russian Jewish roots and the social justice their plays promulgated. During WWII, she even ran guns for the Irgun, a militant group that helped establish the state of Israel.

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