Author Shmuley Boteach lecture draws large audience to synagogue; the truth about tent city's origins; Beitar football club receives a booster in the form of NIS 1 million
By GREER FAY CASHMANBeitar Jerusalem 311(photo credit: Beitar Jerusalem Website)
■ IT’S RARE for the women’s section of any synagogue to have more than a handful of congregants for Minha services on Shabbat. But last Saturday the women’s section of Hatzvi Yisrael Synagogue in Talbiyeh was half full for Minha and the men’s section had considerably more congregants than usual. The truth is that the extras hadn’t really come for Minha. They had come to listen to author, lecturer and syndicated columnist Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, whose column frequently appears in The Jerusalem Post.Boteach was in Israel with a Birthright group and said that although he had passed Hatzvi Yisrael many times on other visits to Jerusalem when going to or coming from the residence of Birthright co-founder Michael Steinhardt, this was actually his first time inside.He brought several of the Birthright group with him, and said that for some of them this was their first experience inside an Orthodox synagogue. Boteach devoted the major part of his address to refuting distortions in attitudes to Jewish tradition, not necessarily by gentiles, but by Jews, and sometimes by Jews who regarded themselves as very devout and pious. Pointing to differences in Jewish belief in comparison to some other faiths, Boteach cited the value of human life, and used hijacked soldier Gilad Schalit as an example. American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan have been taken prisoner, but outside of their families and the communities in which they lived, it is doubtful that anyone else in America would know their names. In Israel, said Boteach, everyone knows about Gilad Schalit.■ HISTORY WILL record the “tent city” epidemic as starting on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard, but in fact it started three days earlier in Jerusalem, when Yael Matzliah of Bat Yam, an abandoned mother of three in an advanced stage of pregnancy, set up a tent opposite the Construction and Housing Construction Ministry.Matzliah’s husband, who was deeply in debt, deserted his family several months ago, leaving her with a massive rent bill. The landlord agreed to forgo the debt on condition that she left the premises immediately. With nowhere else to go, Matzliah and her children aged from 10 years to 10 months, headed for the capital and a new lifestyle in a tent.In her financial position, her options were extremely limited. Last week, she gave birth and returned to the tent with her newborn son. Two other families in dire circumstances have tents alongside that of Matzliah, whose name means successful in Hebrew. One family comprises a single mother with two children with mental disabilities, and the other a family of five, in which the father, who used to work in a supermarket, was fired because he is epileptic.■ LIKE ALL the candidates for the Labor Party leadership, Jerusalem venture capitalist and social entrepreneur Erel Margalit visited tent cities around the country – but with a difference. He actually slept in them. The truth is, it wasn’t all that difficult. After all, he was born on Kibbutz Na’an.■ HE’S NOT the only tycoon who was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth.Rami Levi, along with Mayor Nir Barkat, was recently interviewed by Yediot Yerushalayim about the first apartments they bought after leaving the family nest.Levi’s first apartment, which he purchased 44 years ago, had two rooms and was all of 54 sq.m. It was located on Mem-Gimmel Street in Romema, which at the time was one of the least expensive neighborhoods in the city. Barkat also started married life in a two-room apartment – in Pisgat Ze’ev. Back in 1986, he paid only $37,500 for it, and worked cleaning the stairwell to pay for monthly maintenance costs. It took five years for him and his wife, Beverly, to save enough to move to a four-room apartment in Rehavia. Today, they live in a large, free-standing house in Beit Hakerem.■ AFTER THE much-hyped deal for the purchase of the Beitar football club by Adam Levin and Dan Adler fell through, a lot of dirty linen got washed in public.Even those who might not necessarily be Beitar fans are disappointed by the false hopes generated by Levin and Adler and what it cost to wine and dine them during and in the immediate aftermath of negotiations. With the letdown, Beitar was badly in need not only of a booster, but a miracle – and it came in the form of Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which has aided numerous projects and community welfare causes in Israel. Last week, in the office of Mayor Nir Barkat, Eckstein presented Beitar chairman Itzik Kornfein and coach David Amsalem with a NIS 1 million check earmarked for Beitar’s youth department and for imparting and strengthening the values of tolerance.Meanwhile, Beitar is reportedly giving serious consideration to suing Levin and Adler, who after making promises, invoking expenses posing for endless photographs for newspaper photographers and creating the impression that they were going to take Beitar to new heights, got cold feet. There are doubts now as to their true intentions, because despite promises, the two Americans did not inject a single cent into Beitar.
Related TagsShmuley BoteachYechiel Eckstein
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