A Jewish Pathbreaker Inspired by Her Countryman Mandela

By Samuel G. Freedman for the NY Times

On the Sunday in mid-June when a yeshiva in Manhattan ordained three women as Orthodox Jewish religious leaders, Nelson Mandela lay in a Pretoria hospital for the second week with a life-threatening lung infection. Six time zones and 8,000 miles separated these two events. One golden thread, however, bound them together.

That connection was Sara Hurwitz, the dean of Yeshivat Maharat, which had educated the women. She was the first woman ever to have been designated a maharat — an acronym from the Hebrew words for a teacher of Jewish law and spirituality — and to subsequently receive the title of “rabba” from the maverick Orthodox rabbi who had trained her, Avi Weiss. For Ms. Hurwitz, born and raised in South Africa during the turbulent years of apartheid, Mr. Mandela had long served as the inspiration for her journey to breaking the gender barrier in the Orthodox Jewish rabbinate.

“I looked at this person as someone who could have been so angry and so disappointed at the land that incarcerated him for so many years for civil disobedience,” Rabba Hurwitz, 36, said in a recent interview. “And he walked out of prison and formed a peaceful government. He could have focused on the injustice of it all, the time he had lost. But instead he saw this newfound freedom as a chance to make change and do what was right. Marching forward, one step after the other, toward justice, without anger.”

At one level, the story of Mr. Mandela and the maharat is idiosyncratic and unlikely. At another, it is richly, complexly suggestive of the Jewish experience in South Africa.

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When Borscht Belt Comedy Went to School

"The birth of modern stand-up comedy begins in the Catskills Mountains," so says When Comedy Went To School, a new film that traces the evolution of comedy as we know it. Narrated by Robert Klein, it's peppered with reflections from comedy greats like Larry King, as well as footage of a younger Jerry Seinfeld and Woody Allen, among others.

What is Jewish humor? the film asks. "You had to have a sense of humor—that's what got the Jews through it," Jerry Lewis suggests on why Jews tend toward laughter in the face of adversity. Klein says Jews have "jokes in the genes," and historian Joseph Dorinson suggests that Jews' survival is due to psychological alertness, and that that same alertness makes for great comedy.

Wherever humor comes from, it seems to have ended up in the Borscht Belt. As Joe Franklin says of the 1920s through 1960s, "The Catskills were the American Idol of that period," creating a comedy boot-camp, while serving as a haven for the general Jewish public—a place to be together, and a place to eat.

When Comedy Went to School is informational, it's nostalgic, and we're glad to report that it's very, very funny.

- Jessica Young

Pop-Up Museum pops up in small Portuguese town

For the past month, residents of Cabanas de Viriato, a small town in central Portugal have been greeted by a strange site outside a dilapidated old mansion: white tent-like structures with 30,000 embossed signatures of Aristedes de Sousa Mendes, one of the mansion's former residents.

Who exactly was Sousa Mendes, and what's up with his signature? Eric Moed, the young New York-based architect who dreamed up the pop-up museum, would like you to know.

In the 1940s, Sousa Mendes was Portugal's consul-general in Bordeaux, France. Though Portugal prohibited citizens from fleeing Hitler, Sousa Mendes granted visas anyway, even subsidizing those who could not afford the journey. He ultimately saved 30,000 people—10,000 of them Jews, 2 of them Moed's ancestors. His feat is considered "the largest rescue action by a single individual during the Holocaust."

Sousa Mendes paid dearly for his deeds, but though he would die in obscurity and poverty, he stood by his actions, saying: “If thousands of Jews are suffering because of one Christian [Hitler], surely one Christian may suffer for so many Jews."

Book your ticket to Portugal and check it out today!

- Jessica Young
 

The diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who is the subject of a new biography by French author Eric Lebreton (Le Cherche Midi Editions), was the only Portuguese citizen ever recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

The Mad Jews Behind Mad Magazine

 From Hillel and Shammai to Jagger and Richards, some of the greatest art in history emerged from collaboration. The partnership between illustrator and comic artist Will Elder and Harvey Kurtzman, the creative genius behind Mad magazine is one such example.

Born Wolf Eisenberg to a Bronx family that called him "Meshugganah Villy," Elder was, according to Mad publisher William M. Gaines, the "funniest artist." ("Much funnier than me," Kurtzman affirmed).

Some Mad artists chaffed under Kurtzman's tight editorial grip, but Elder transcended order via what he dubbed "chicken fat"—that is, comedic schtickery unrelated to storylines. Mad disciple Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame explained chicken fat as "jokes on jokes on jokes." Larding Kurtzman's scripts with layers of seemingly unrelated gags, Elder's dollops of schmaltz also reflected the New York Jewish milieu of his upbringing. Cartoonist Daniel Clowes put it best when he called Elder a "descendant of Bosch and Bruegel." Elder, he wrote, offered a "crystal-clear vision of a world gone mad"—a world that must be seen to be believed.

- Daniel M. Bronstein