Oppenheimer and Israeli Nuclear Weapons

07/17/2023

A. South Africa provided the uranium which enabled Israel to power up the nuclear reactor.

B. Norway provided the heavy water that was needed for the reactor to operate.

C. The plans for the building of the nuclear plant were actually drawn up in the United States by some of the Jewish scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project. They received input from J. Robert Oppenheimer, though his role was not revealed until after his death in 1967.

D. The steam generator which is a major component of the cooling system was provided by Siemens, a German company.

E. Shmattes were sent to Israel from Jewish peddlers on the Lower East Side in New York City. These were strewn around the nuclear plant to fool United States officials who asked to tour the “textile factory” in Dimona.

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Ron DeSantis

07/10/2023

A. In an interview with the food writer for the Miami-Dade Jewish News, DeSantis learned that casino magnate and conservative Israel supporter Sheldon Adelson owned the Tel Aviv kosher restaurant West Side, considered one of the top restaurants in the country. “I did not know that,” said DeSantis. “But you can be sure that it’s now on my list of places to go on my next trip to Israel. That's a great incentive to go back.”

B. When DeSantis visited Israel in 2019, he was scheduled to visit the Church of the Nativity, located on the site in Bethlehem where purportedly Jesus was born. DeSantis, who was born Roman Catholic, had stated that “seeing the place where our Lord entered the world will make my trip to the Holy Land particularly meaningful.” However, because of a terrorist incident which took place near Bethlehem the day before DeSantis’s visit, the trip to the church had to be canceled for security reasons, with DeSantis noting that “The Church has been there for 2000 years. It will remain, and with God’s grace, I will surely be back again.”

C. Speaking to a private meeting of advisors and potential donors in early 2020, DeSantis said, “I plan to run for president, but I know that it won’t be easy to defeat Donald Trump if he runs again. But my record regarding Israel is far stronger and more consistent than his, including the fact that he advocated for a Palestinian state. I plan to go back to Israel early in the campaign where I’ll lock down the Jewish vote with my full-on support for the Jewish state.”

D. During DeSantis’s 2019 trip, he traveled with officials from the Walt Disney company, who were exploring the possibility of supporting the building of a theme park in the Negev under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism. DeSantis and Disney CEO Robert Iger held a press conference following their meeting with Yariv Levin, the Tourism minister, where DeSantis stated that he “looked forward to returning to the Holy Land for the grand opening of the Disney Negev.” Ultimately, however, Disney withdrew from the project, which is still moving forward as Negev Park, with plans to open by 2030.

E. On an earlier trip to Israel, DeSantis had brought back a bottle of water from the Sea of Galilee, some of which he used for the baptism of his son Mason in early 2019. But afterwards, a cleaning crew threw away the unlabeled bottle, not realizing what it was. Said the governor, “Now, we don’t have any bun in the oven right now. But I think we do need to go back to Israel to make sure we have a stock of that water on display.”

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Kosher Food

07/03/2023

A. Masuda Omakase, which had previously offered in-home kosher sushi catering, has now opened a dine-in location in midtown New York. The restaurant features fresh crispy hand rolls with fish flown in from Japan.

B. Guy Fieri opened a kosher branch of his restaurant chain Chicken Guy! in North Miami Beach. The fast food restaurant serves the chicken tenders and bowls that are offered at all of their locations; the primary difference is the lack of a cheese option in their sandwiches and bowls. 

C. Veal Chop Sticks, a kosher Chinese restaurant, opened in April in Lakewood, New Jersey, which is the home of Beth Medrash Govoha, the largest Yeshiva in the United States. The community had been without a kosher Chinese restaurant since the Cho-Sen Kitchen had closed during the pandemic in 2021.

D. Ee Efshar is a new kosher dairy restaurant that opened in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Ee Efshar is Hebrew for “impossible,” and the restaurant features menu items made with the Impossible Foods company products such as Impossible beef, Impossible sausage, and Impossible chicken tenders, all of which are plant-based products that can be served with dairy foods. Featured on the restaurant’s menu are lasagna, cheeseburgers, beef and cheddar casserole, and meat and cheese quesadillas, along with other traditional meat and dairy recipes which cannot normally be eaten by observant Jews.

E. Mocha Burger Lux opened in New York City, offering a “24K Gold Plated Golden-Burger” for $175, consisting of a 12 ounce short rib burger wrapped in leaves of 24-karat gold, topped with black Australian truffles, crunchy onions and pickles, and served in a smoke-spewing wooden treasure chest.

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Sheldon Harnick, z"l

06/26/2023

Sheldon Harnick by Rarmin is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

A. Prior to the writing of the song Anatevka, which comes at the end of Fiddler on the Roof as Tevye’s family and others lament leaving their village, there was another song that was proposed. The title was The Exodus, where each character sang about where they were going (to Israel, to stay with Uncle Avram in America, etc.). The chorus of the song included the lines, “When Israel was in Egypt Land/You led us through the desert sand/To Yisrael, the promised land/Now once again, please guide our hand.” But Jerome Robbins decided that it would be better to focus on where and what they were leaving rather than where they were going.

B. When Lazar Wolf met with Tevye to ask him for his daughter Tzeitel’s hand in marriage, Tevye replied, “Why should I give my daughter to a coarse, crude, butcher? A man like you, a man with no soul?” Lazar Wolf responded, singing a song titled A Butcher’s Soul. But Jerome Robbins decided that this scene needed to focus on Tevye, not Lazar Wolf.

C. At the end of Fiddler on the Roof, as everyone prepares to leave Anatevka, Tevye refuses to acknowledge his daughter Chava and her Russian husband Fyedka. Fyedka says to Tevye, “Some are driven away by edicts, others by silence.” Originally, Harnock and Bock wrote a short response to Fyedka that Tevye sang, including the lyrics “Chava has fled from us/Chava is dead to us,” reprising his words about Chava when Golde first told him she had married Fyedka. But Jerome Robbins felt that the verse was too harsh, and he replaced it with Tevye’s simple statement, “God be with you.”

D. If I Were A Woman, a duet featuring Perchik and Hodel, was a song in which the two were arguing, but clearly showed they were attracted to each other. Jerome Robbins cut the song, saying, “…the show is too long. And I can accomplish the same thing in 30 seconds of dance.”

E. Though Tevye had five daughters, the play focused on the relationships of the oldest three–Tzeitel with Motel Kamzoil, Hodel with Perchik, and Chava with Fyedka. Early in its production, the show featured a duet sung by the two youngest daughters, Shprintze and Bielke, complaining that they were being ignored. The song, entitled What Are We, Chopped Liver? was cut, because, yes, in the grand scheme of things, they were chopped liver.

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