A Conversation With Gillian Laub

The photographer talks about ‘Southern Rites,’ her HBO documentary and companion book project about racial tensions in small-town Georgia

By Elisa Albert for Tablet Magazine

For her HBO documentary Southern Rites, photographer Gillian Laub spent 12 years getting to know the community of Mount Vernon, Georgia, home of one of the last segregated proms in America. Laub was first sent to photograph the town’s segregated homecoming parade for Spin magazine, which had received a letter from a disgruntled high-school student begging the media to pay some attention. Many in town were not thrilled to have a photographer on the scene. The homecoming eventually integrated, but the prom remained stubbornly segregated. The situation so haunted Laub that she returned many times on her own over the following decade-plus. What unfolded thereafter—including the killing of a young, unarmed black man by a much older white man, and a campaign for sheriff that left a beloved black candidate mysteriously not victorious—came as a shock to Laub. Produced by John Legend, the documentary premiered in May. Jon Stewart called it “affecting,” and the New York Times said it was “riveting.” Now Laub has published a book with the same title, which, in addition to showcasing her nuanced photographs, uses artifacts, letters, transcripts, and narrative to further illuminate the story of a community rife with injustice, complicity, and occasionally some hope as well.

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The Twilight of French Jewry, the Twilight of France

French Jews are emigrating to Israel by the tens of thousands. Their departure isn’t just about them; it’s about the end of the French idea.

Alain El-Mouchan for Mosaic

“If 100,000 Frenchmen of Spanish origin were to leave, I would never say that France is no longer France. But if 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France. The French Republic will be judged a failure.” Thus declared Prime Minister Manuel Valls to the National Assembly in January 2015, within days of the homicidal jihadist attacks in Paris on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and at a kosher supermarket.

What prompted this impassioned declaration? It is true enough that increasing numbers of French Jews have been leaving for Israel. In the past five years alone, more than 20,000 have done so, and since 2012 the annual figures have been moving steadily upward. Still, the French Jewish population, standing at about 480,000, remains the largest in Europe, and the latest surge, following as it does upon earlier, smaller movements of French Jews to Israel, is a far cry from the Prime Minister’s alarmed figure of 100,000. Is so massive an outflow really imminent, and, no less important, is there a sense in which the departure of a cohort of 100,000 Jews would truly mean the failure of the French political model of republican governance—that is, of France itself?

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Jewish Routes // San Francisco

by Sala Levin for Moment Magazine

San Francisco, the gleaming mecca of all things tech, got its big break during another era of innovation: the Gold Rush of the mid-19th century. Before then, several hundred people lived in Yerba Buena, which became San Francisco in 1847, after the territory was seized by the United States during the 1846 Mexican-American War. After gold was discovered in 1848, the population began to explode. Jews were among the first people to arrive; coming mostly from Bavaria, they sought both to escape anti-Semitism at home and to set up new businesses in a just-beginning-to-boom town. “In many ways, they were the founders of San Francisco,” says Jackie Krentzman, executive producer of American Jerusalem, a documentary film about San Francisco’s Jewish history.

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Hospitality on Sukkot - Ushpizin

From the iCenter

One of the shalosh ha'regalim (שלוש הרגלים, "three pilgrimage festivals"), Sukkot is rich with customs, symbols and a long list of mitzvot to fulfill. Of these mitzvot, hachnasat orchim (הכנסת אורחים, "welcoming guests") and matan tzedakah l'aniyim (מתן צדקה לעניים, "giving tzedakah to the poor") – while important all year round – are given special importance during Sukkot.

Sukkot is associated with hospitality. We welcome friends, family, and the community into our sukkah and we visit others. We eat, we sleep, we study, and we spend seven days and nights in the company of neighbors and friends.

We also invite Ushpizin (Aramaic for "guests"). According to tradition, each sukkah is blessed with visits by seven honored guests, shepherds of the nation: Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron and David. A more modern tradition is to invite the Ushpizot: Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Avigail, Hannah, Huldah, and Esther. The Usphizot were chosen based on the Babylonian Talmud, which lists seven biblical women who were prophetesses.

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The Personal Prayer at the Heart of the High Holy Days

“Here am I, poor in deeds,” it begins. Where did it come from and, more importantly, what does it say to us?

Atar Hadari for Mosaic

Just before the start of the musaf (“additional”) service in Ashkenazi synagogues on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the prayer leader chants a personal entreaty begging God to be merciful to His people, gathered at this season in repentance of their sins. The prayer is known by its opening words hineni he’ani mimaas, “Here am I, poor in deeds. . . .”  In all of halakhic literature there seems to be only one reference to it, by Rabbi Ephraim Zalman Margolis of Galicia (1762–1828), who wrote:

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What millennials believe

By Cristela Guerra for The Boston Globe

FRIDAYS AT DUSK, Casper ter Kuile, 28, begins his “tech Sabbath.” He puts his iPhone away. He lights a candle and sings a song. From sunset to sunset, he unplugs from technology and reconnects IRL, “in real life.”

This ritual is how he resets after the work week. It’s a time to walk, read, and meditate. It’s also part of his training as a minister for non-religious people. In conversations and relationships, ter Kuile, a master’s candidate at Harvard Divinity School, seeks substance and depth beyond the digital realm.

Like nearly one in three millennials, ter Kuile is not affiliated with an individual house of worship. He loves to create communities of meaning and belonging, but hasn’t found a home inside an established church. He might find fulfillment in reading Harry Potter as a sacred text, as he will at a book club he’s leading every Wednesday starting Sept. 30 at the Harvard Humanist Hub. Or discussing the significance of gratefulness at Thanksgiving.

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For Orthodox, Addiction Is Unspoken Problem

Rachel X. Landes for The Jewish Daily Forward

On the surface, Asher Ehrman had a great childhood in Monsey, New York. Growing up in an Orthodox family, his parents loved him and his sister. It had its ups and downs, but until he was about 13 or 14, he really couldn’t complain.

But then he came home wearing a blue shirt instead of the usual white and his parents kicked him out of the house to protect his sister’s shidduch , or marriage prospects and future. Ehrman went to live with his friend, whose mother took him in for the next three years.

Ehrman says, “Life is a bit of a blur from then on.”

At 19, Ehrman smoked marijuana for the first time, and within six months he was popping Adderall pills, and then Oxycontin.

He says now that he fell into the wrong crowd, but at the time he really didn’t think so. After all, “they were all guys in yeshiva,” Ehrman said.

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