Fred Friedman's Story

In our last post, Honoring Fred Friedman, we related how Adas Emuno set aside Friday evening, May 1st, as a special Shabbat to show our appreciation for Fred Friedman's service to the congregation and Jewish community, as well as the local community here in Bergen County. And that evening, in lieu of the rabbi's sermon, Fred was given the opportunity to come up to the pulpit and tell his story. 

Just a few weeks earlier, during the Shabbat evening service on April 17th, Fred's wife Maren shared her remarkable story of survival in conjunction with our observance of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Maren allowed us to publish her talk here on our congregational blog, which appeared in a post entitled Maren Friedman's Yom HaShoah Story.

How fortunate we are, then, that her husband has also provided us with his own address, which in its own right is absolutely noteworthy. And so, without further ado, here is Fred Friedman's Story:

First of all, I want to thank my friends on the Board and the Rabbi for this unexpected honor. I am delighted and proud. When I first heard of the plan for this evening I thought, “why me?” And that night as I was going to sleep I started to wonder, “How, as I approach my 84th year, did I get here? 

Well, the short answer would be “by boat”. But that’s not quite the story. By “get here” I mean how did I come to be a practicing Reform Jew, the President of my previous Congregation and a Board member of Adas Emuno. There was no Jewish experience in my first seven years, no Seders, no synagogue, no High Holy Days, nothing! My family going back at least 3 generations were totally assimilated German Jews.

I was born Fritz Bernard Friedmann in Wurzburg Germany in 1931. My father was a lawyer. My mother was a trained kindergarten teacher. When Hitler came to power one of his first acts was to forbid Jews to practice law. That took away my fathers profession, probably his self respect and made earning a living ultimately impossible as more such restrictions came about. It led to my father's suicide in January 1938. My mother and I moved in with my grandmother until July 1938, when mother and I left for England to join her brother and his family who had emigrated to the UK in the mid 1930s. Mom stayed in England for a week or so and left for America in order to find work and get established. I stayed behind and finally sailed alone to New York in October 1938. I was seven years old. I was a very happy kid. I was finally going to join my mother again!

Early on the morning of October 29th, I was woken up and taken on deck to see the Statue of Liberty and New York. The view was astounding. But it took second place to the thought of being together with my mother after our many months of separation.

I remember the passport and customs lines and formalities. Finally by noon I was ready, and waited for my mother to come. I waited and waited and waited some more, miserable and sobbing. By 5 PM I was the only passenger left, and the staff was about to turn me over to the police for safekeeping when my mother finally arrived. She had gotten the time wrong. That began some 4 1/2 years of disappointment and separation. Mother’s training enabled her to get a job as a sleep in baby nurse with a wealthy Park Avenue family There was no place for me. I was put in a foster home with the Oppenheimers, refugees like us who lived in Valley Stream, Long Island. I would be able to see my mother only on Sundays, her one day off. That was very far from the hopes and expectations of life with mother that I had when I boarded the ship “Deutschland” in Soutampton ten days earlier.

The Oppenheimers were kind, and in retrospect as good as foster parents could be. But a foster home was not what I wanted. I wanted a home with mother, like other kids. A four or five hour visit once a week was tough to deal with. I spent a lot of nights crying myself to sleep.

Money was scarce, of course. A birthday meant new socks or underwear. Everything else was hand me down. I had to earn my own spending money. I sold the Saturday Evening Post and Ladies Home Journal door to door, and in Valley Stream State Park. The money I earned was small but gave me some spending money like my friends who got allowances. And you got points for selling magazines. They could be redeemed for toys. That’s how I got my crystal radio set that allowed me to listen to radio programs under the covers at night when I was supposed to be asleep. I learned to speak English properly listening to that little crystal set.

Tommy Hayes, the school principal's son, and I became friends and I was often invited to the Hayes's home after school. That was an all-American family in my eyes—right out of Norman Rockwell. It was my first experience of what an American home and family could be like. I liked it a lot and vowed that if I could, my adult life would be like the Hayes's life, and my kids would not have to repeat the life I was living.

I also got my first Jewish experience with the Oppenheimers. They were Conservative Jews who kept a kosher home, went to synagogue, and sent me to Sunday school. They celebrated the Jewish holidays, a new experience for me. In Germany the only way I found out that I was Jewish was the Juden Verboten (Jews Forbidden) signs at hotels and restaurants and shops. I wasn’t allowed in a German school when the time came. I had to go to a Jewish school. The irony was that I was a towheaded blond kid with blue-green eyes who looked German. So much so that at parades, policemen and soldiers would hoist me on their shoulders so that I could see over the crowd. It gave my mother much mirth to see her Jewish son taken for a real German boy by the Nazis.

When I was nearly twelve my mother started work as a kindergarten teacher in a small New York nursery school. And when the owner wanted to retire my mother was able to buy the school with the money she had been able to save over 5 years of hard work. I was able to leave the foster home and live with my mother in the nursery school apartment. She slept in the living room. I had a small bathroom sized room just big enough for a small bed, a desk and a chair.

And so, my life as a more normal American kid began. And so did my Jewish life. Although my mother was not a practicing Jew nor a believer, she wanted me to have Jewish background, and I was Bar Mitzvah at a Reform congregation. That wasn’t important to me at age 13. But when I became an adult, met my wonderful wife Maren, and had a family, Jewishness became IMPORTANT (in capital letters)! We wanted our kids to be Jewish. And they are. And so are our six grandchildren who range from Shomer Shabbos to very Reform. 

In spite of my beginnings, Judaism triumphed, became a meaningful part of my life, and brings me great joy. Who would have thought it, 84 years ago? From Fritz to Fred. It’s been a hell of an interesting journey! I wouldn’t have missed it for all the world!

Honoring Fred Friedman

At our Shabbat service on Friday evening, May 1st, Congregation Adas Emuno honored Fred Friedman, who had stepped down as a member of our Board of Trustees this past winter. 

To show our gratitude for his many years of service, we asked fellow trustee Norman Rosen to draft a resolution in Fred's honor, which the board then unanimously approved. The resolution was then turned into a certificate by trustee Lauren Rowland, which we presented to Fred at our special service. And we are very pleased to share it here on our congregational blog, for all to see, and for perpetuity:

And because we at Congregation Adas Emuno were not the only ones who were grateful to Fred for his service to the community, not just the Jewish community but the local community as well, presentations were also made by local officials on behalf of the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey, and the Bergen County Board of Chosen Freeholders. Here are some snapshots taken of the two other certificates presented to Fred that evening:

Now, if you look closely at the wording of our resolution and that of these other certificates, you'll see that a certain resolution-gate scandal emerged from the proceedings. But it was all taken in good humor, and it was indeed an evening to remember, not the least because of the remarks Fred delivered, telling his own story. And we will share those remarks with you as well... in our next post! Stay tuned!

Penning Our Stories

The most recent op-ed in the Jewish Standard contributed by Adas Emuno President Lance Strate was published on May 29th, and entitled Penning Our Stories, and once again we are pleased to share it here on our congregational blog if you haven't had the chance to read it already in the paper or online, or don't care to click on the link and read it on their site:

“The last time I got a fountain pen was for my bar mitzvah.”

That line was uttered during the two-part season finale of the ABC television network’s popular series Once Upon a Time, which aired on May 10. It was a little inside joke inserted by series creators Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, who co-wrote the episode; both of them may well have received fountain pens as gifts for their own bar mitzvahs. There was a time when a fancy fountain pen was as commonplace a gift as savings bonds for bar mitzvah boys, so much so that an often repeated bar mitzvah joke was, “Today I am a fountain pen.” (This was a play on the cliché declaration “Today I am a man,” this being a time before the bat mitzvah was fully instituted as an egalitarian religious practice.) Michael Hilton, in his book Bar Mitzvah: A History, reports that “in July 1946, Barry Vine of New Haven Connecticut, received sixteen fountain pens as gifts”! Now that’s the write stuff!

Fischler as Jimmy Barrett

Once Upon a Time’s bar mitzvah boy was played by the actor Patrick Fischler, who perhaps is best known for his role as the Jewish comedian Jimmy Barrett on the recently concluded AMC series Mad Men, and who also appeared on the series Lost, a series that Kitsis and Horowitz previously had worked on as writers. Fischler’s character was introduced in March, during the final story arc of the series’ fourth season, first through references to a mysterious “Author” whose writings set the course of the series’ storybook characters, such as Snow White, Prince Charming, Rumpelstiltskin, Captain Hook, Robin Hood, Maleficent, and Regina (aka the Evil Queen, Snow White’s nemesis); as “The Author” he also had the power to rewrite their stories, and change their fate.

Fischler as Phil from Lost

By the end of the season, we learned that the “Author” is a title and status that has been bestowed upon many different people, that this particular Author is named Isaac, that his last name is Heller (possibly a tribute to Jewish novelist Joseph Heller of Catch-22 fame), that he was from Brooklyn, and that back in 1966 he was a novelist who was having great difficulty getting anything published, working to support himself selling television sets, a job at which he was also unsuccessful. Selected to become the next in a long line of magical authors, he is asked to select a pen to use, prompting his remark about his bar mitzvah. Although that comment was the only instance in which the character was directly identified as Jewish, his name, voice, place of birth, look, and manner all allude to his ethnicity, and presumably his religion.

Part of the humor of the bar mitzvah comment comes from the incongruity of inserting a bit of Yiddishkeit into a series that remixes characters from Disney’s animated films, most of whom are derived from European fairytales and folklore. (Disney owns Once Upon a Time’s television network, ABC.) After all, even during the two decades that Michael Eisner was CEO of the Walt Disney Company, the film studio added no characters to its pantheon like Fievel Mousekewitz of Stephen Spielberg’s An American Tail. And we certainly don’t expect to see anyone named Cohen or Levy in Cinderella, Peter Pan, Beauty and the Beast, or Frozen.

Fischler as "The Author"

There is, however, a long tradition of inserting inside jokes that only Jews could appreciate fully into Hollywood films. My all-time favorite is in the 1936 Marx Brother movie Animal Crackers, when the cast sings, “Hooray for Captain Spaulding, the African explorer,” and Groucho responds, “Did someone call me schnorrer?” I also love the subtle jab in the 1930 science fiction musical Just Imagine, in which characters from the future explain that people drive planes instead of cars, planes with names like Rosenblatt, Pinkus, and Goldfarb. In response, the distinctly Jewish character from 1930 remarks (in reference to the automaker’s anti-Semitism), “It looks like someone got even with Henry Ford!”

No doubt there also was a degree of identification between Kitsis and Horowitz, as the creators of Once Upon a Time, and their character, Isaac Heller, as “The Author” of the storybook tales that seal the fate of the series’ heroes and villains. And perhaps making Heller a villain involved a bit of self-deprecating humor. Certainly, it was ironic that Isaac’s status as “The Author” is revoked for changing the heroes’ and villains’ stories. That is exactly what Kitsis and Horowitz have done in the series, not the least by making both types of characters less black and white, more morally ambiguous, and therefore more realistic.


Still, portraying Once Upon a Time’s only Jewish character as a villain is more than a little problematic. There are echoes of Shakespeare’s Shylock in the explanation that Isaac gives to Snow White and Prince Charming, that it was “a lifetime of bad bosses” who “fancy themselves heroes, pushing around people like me,” that led him to resent the heroes and identify with the villains. The problem with having only one Jewish character in a popular narrative is that the character’s Jewishness becomes more than an individual attribute. Instead, the character becomes a representation of the Jewish people as a whole, in this case a negative representation, indeed, a negative stereotype.


But there is nothing negative about the Jewish connection to the role of “The Author” after all. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we pray that we may be inscribed in the Book of Life for a good year, and we wish the same for others. In our tradition, God is an author, indeed, The Author, an understanding that has been adopted by the other Abrahamic religions. Of course Moses, our greatest prophet, was also a writer, and through the Torah and the Tanach, we became the first people to write our own historical narrative. And the stories our ancestors wrote have changed the course of history for the entire world, and continue to capture the imagination of billions of people.


Upon doing a search for “Jewish authors” via Google, a listing of “authors frequently mentioned on the web” appeared, and cited 50 names, including Phillip Roth, Saul Bellow, Franz Kafka, Bernard Malamud, Sholem Aleichem, Anne Frank, Joseph Heller, Isaac Asimov, J. D. Salinger, Elie Wiesel, Isaak Babel, Ayn Rand, Primo Levi, Marcel Proust, E. L. Doctorow, Amos Oz, Arthur Koestler, Leonard Cohen, Theodor Herzl, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Gertrude Stein, Emma Lazarus, Art Spiegelman, Tony Kushner, and Boris Pasternak. No doubt a full listing of every Jewish novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, screenwriter, comics writer, and writer of nonfiction would strain even the Google search engine’s enormous capabilities. Interestingly enough, Google’s list also included King David, Josephus, Maimonides, and Paul the Apostle, and it is certainly worth noting in this context that the Christian Gospels are to a large extent the product of Jewish authors, their impact immeasurable.

So maybe a fountain pen isn’t all that terrible a gift to give on the occasion of a bar or bat mitzvah? Certainly, research indicates that in the classroom, learning and retention is greater for students who take notes by hand as opposed to on laptops and tablets, and there is much to be said for taking pen in hand in regard to creativity. Our tradition of writing extends from Torah and Tanach to Talmud and Zohar, from Maimonides and Karo to the writings of our modern rabbis and lay leaders, from the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist branches as well as the Orthodox, and to the secular, scholarly, popular, and artistic works of Jewish authors all around the world. With the magic of the pen, we can continue to be authors of our own history as a people. And with the magic of the pen, we can inscribe our own names into a personal book of life that we each can write for ourselves.

Maren Friedman's Yom HaShoah Story

This year, Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, began on the evening of Wednesday, April 15, and continued to the evening of Thursday, April 16. In conjunction with Yom HaShoah, we held a special Shabbat service here at Congregation Adas Emuno on Friday evening, April 17, at which time congregant Maren Friedman spoke about her experiences in Germany. We are very fortunate that Maren was willing to share her remarkable, and altogether unique story with us here on our congregational blog. Here it is:

When I meet someone new, it often goes something like this: 

1. Where  are you from?…  New Jersey.  

2.  No—I mean where are you really from—I notice a slight accent—I mean where were you  born?  Answer: Germany. 

3. When did you come here?—1951. How old were you?—12 .

4. If the person is Jewish and is not sure if I am Jewish, what usually follows is, "Ohh," with a hesitation and a slight moving away. They become leery. I have come to recognize to understand this distancing. In the Jewish community, Germany still has a history to deal with and so I have come to learn that I must use words and references that quickly identify me as being Jewish. It is very important to me to be identified as Jewish and not German.  This generally leads to the next question. 

 5. Where were you during the war? And then, always,  

 6. How did you survive?

Sometimes the question is very casual and if I don't know the person, I just answer, "We were very lucky."
 Sometimes, however, the question comes out of a genuine interest to understand, as well as a real surprise that some Jews really did survive in Germany without being in concentration camps or in hiding for the duration of the war. 

When I was asked to speak tonight for Yom Hashoah, about my experience, I said, "Sure." After all, I have spoken to schools as part of Holocaust education programs. My friends certainly know my history. But each and every time the telling is hard and the stomach gets tied into knots.  However I know my story is unusual since I have never met anyone else who survived. So here goes. 

My parents were married in 1930 and neither family was happy with the marriage.  My father was Gentile and his family were certainly not pleased. Even though this was before the Nazies were in power, anti-Semitism existed. 

My mother was Jewish, so her family certainly had their fears about her marrying a non-Jew. Although some of her family was observant, her own parents were assimilated Jews. My grandfather was a Zionist who emigrated to Israel in 1936. His brothers who felt that his fears of the Nazis were exaggerated held the mistaken belief that Jews would be safe in Germany .  They all ultimately perished. 

During the early years of the Hitler regime, my mother told of the difficulties that she as a Jewish woman encountered. She could not go to the movies or out to any public places or events. She was limited to staying in the house and was only able to shop in certain stores that catered to Jewish   customers. Most of all, she remembers the fears about her aunts and uncles who were being deported.  She always remembered that while she was in the hospital giving birth to me, no one came to visit. When she started to ask questions, she was reassured by the nurses and cautioned not to get herself upset lest it would affect her or her baby.  I was born on November 11th, 1938, and Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, was November 10th. Jewish homes and storefront windows had been broken and it really signaled the beginning of strong anti-Jewish actions. 

My grandparents and her brother had emigrated to Israel in 1936, and her sister left for Sweden on one of the last ships out of Germany, in 1937. As I said before, no one else of her family survived. 

My parents had their conflicts as a result of their mixed marriage. His brothers and mother did not welcome my mother in their homes. Of course my mother's restrictions frustrated my father, and he often pursued some of his own friends and interests, leaving her alone with her children,  feeling alone, angry, and scared.  My sister, who is seven years older than I, remembers their frequent fights and my mother crying much of the time. 

After my father entered the military, my mother, sister and I were really left to our own devices.  Money was very tight and her restrictions, limitations and fears increased constantly. Kiel, where I was born, was a small town at the end of a canal which connects the Baltic and North Sea. It is a ship and submarine building town in Northern Germany. Mom grew up in Kiel, and according to her, everyone knew her. She recalled being called to the Gestapo for questioning. But since no one had brought any complaints against her, and she had not broken any rules, such as shopping. in non-Jewish stores or going out beyond the curfew, she was released and told to go home. 

I had the usual bouts of childhood disease and remember my father coming home on furlough. I remember not wanting him to leave and his losing his patience and giving me a severe spanking on the Railroad Station Platform. Parenting in those days was very different than it is today, and my father was a typical German father who believed in spare the rod and spoil the child. 

My own memories really begin around the time of 1943-1944. As the bombings increased, the children in Germany were being evacuated. My sister had been sent with her school into the safety of the countryside, but her headmistress called saying that she could not stay because the Gestapo was visiting the school and her being Jewish was too dangerous. 

We were bombed out in 1944, and I was hospitalized with a severe concussion. Here again my mother talked of telling the doctor that we were Jews, and that his response was, "She's a child and I'm a doctor and that's all that matters." After we were released from the hospital we fled into the countryside and found shelter at a farm, but again only for a short while until the farmer realized we were Jews and had to leave.  

After our return to Kiel, my mother worked in a forced labor camp, a fish factory, but was able to come home at night. At that time one of my father's brothers helped us replace blown out windows in an abandoned apartment where we were able to stay. My father also came home on furlough and helped gather the few remaining pieces of furniture from our bombed out apartment.  

While my mother worked, my sister took care of me during the day and our lives in many ways were like that of our neighbors. There was no food, no clothing, no water, heat, nor sleep. I only remember wearing what we would call warmup suits all the time. Since the threat of air raids was constant, one never undressed because if the sirens came on, signaling an attack, we had to run to the shelter. The shelter we used had just recently been extended with a new emergency exit and a children's wing at the end near the door. This was to be used specifically for mothers and children.  One night a bomb had fallen outside the shelter and people were screaming to get in.  When the door was opened, gas from the exploded bomb seeped into the shelter asphyxiating everyone in the children's wing. Since my sister and I had come to the shelter on our own, without mom, we had been told to go the the new children's wing. However, my sister, who whiled away the time making figures out of the clay dirt available at the emergency exit. insisted that we stick to that end of the shelter. She also said that since our mother was used to us being by the emergency exit, that she would look for us there if she was let go from the fish factory. My sister's love of modeling saved our lives in that we all escaped through the emergency exit which had only been completed the week before. I  still remember the sea of empty carriages parked before the entrance. 

 Other memories are like all war memories. Fear, bombings, sounds of sirens, burned out buildings and rubble. And running.  Running, running, always running,  and I remember just not wanting to run anymore. Our skin was covered with scabs and blisters from phosphate bombs. 

As far as a sense of having a Jewish identity is concerned, I remember that towards the end of the war, my mother was getting dressed and I said to her, "When we win the war..."  She stopped and stood absolutely still, held my face in her hands. and said, "If the Germans win the war, we will all perish."  That was my first sense of being Jewish and that being Jewish was different and dangerous. 

As I said before, Kiel was heavily bombed out during the was because it was a ship and submarine building town. Also is was strategically situated at the Baltic end of the canal which links it through Hamburg and then Bremen into the North Sea and of course England, France and the Atlantic Ocean. As a result, it was a primary target and 80% destroyed. I recall at the end of the war that the munitions dump was blown us before the Allied Forces arrived. People crying in the shelter when the announcement came that Germany was defeated and that Hitler was dead. And then the soldiers, American and English coming in with candy, gum, chocolate, stockings, and cigarettes. 

Slowly, with the aid of the Red Cross and HIAS we were put in touch with my family in Israel and the US, who sent not only mail, but also M&Ms, and care packages with milk, flour, and clothing. 

After the war, many camp survivors came to Kiel. It was then that we learned first hand of the horrors of Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, and other camps. They were emaciated and needed help and time to heal and recover. HIAS, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee was involved in helping.  From them I also learned for the first time about Jewish things such as food, language and holidays, because of course there was none of that during the war whatsoever.  

My father, who had been captured by the Russians and been a prisoner of war in Siberia, returned to Kiel in 1949. I had yearned for his return and had the fantasy that now that the war was over and he was home, all would be well. That was not the way it turned out. My parents had grown apart and divorced in 1951. 

My mother, sister, and I emigrated to the US through the Displaced Persons Quota in 1951. 

My first memory of the US was arriving in New York harbor early on a June morning and seeing the Statue of Liberty. A ferry came by and my thoughts were that I wanted to be just like those people on that ferry. 

We were meant to go to Cincinnati but my aunt agreed to be responsible for us to keep us here in New York.  

I entered school in the 7th grade, and learned English from a girl who spoke Yiddish, and therefore understood German. She translated whole sentences for me, and I repeated what she said. I also learned, as I said at the  beginning, that America and particularly the Jewish community was understandably afraid, angry, and rejecting of anything German.  I had been the "Dirty Jew" in Germany and suddenly found myself in danger of being identified as German in New York. 

Growing up without any knowledge or training in things Jewish, still leaves a void in me. It's a lack of history, without  memories of holidays, family, and tradition. They simply aren't there. 

There is also a sense of guilt which many survivors struggle with.  I know we were meant to be on the next transport when the war ended. But fortunately the war ended before that happened.  The struggle to accept the Gentile part of my heritage is still ongoing.  I know that according to Jewish Law I am a Jew because my mother is Jewish, but I also know that many in the Jewish community do not trust  the Germans. I share that distrust.  However I am a little of both, and that isn't always easy.  

So, there is no clear  answer as to how I survived.  Perhaps it was because I am a mischling, a designation made up by the Germans to describe a child of a mixed marriage. Or because my father was in the military and did not divorce my mother, or perhaps as my mother said, "The laws were carried out by people and not all people are evil.  

Perhaps it was just plain mazel... 

I only know that I survived, and I have come to be okay with that. 

I had wanted to marry someone who was a full fledged Yankee with a large family. Instead, I married a wonderful man who is also a German Jew, who came to New York with his mother before the war.  While we have different memories, there is a common thread that I think helps us understand one another in a profound kind of way. 

We have two daughters, one of whom married a non-Jew,  but all of our grandchildren were raised and identify as Jews, and that is very important to us. 

I only wish them a world that is different than the one I grew up in. 

I wish them peace and freedom from persecution. 

—Maren Friedman

Screening "When Comedy Went to School"

Why are there so many Jewish comedians? When Comedy Went to School answers this question with an entertaining portrait of this country's greatest generation of comics—the generation that includes the likes of Jerry Lewis, Sid Caesar, Jackie Mason, Mort Sahl, and Jerry Stiller, all of whom make appearances in the film, telling jokes and telling their stories. The answer is also found in upstate New York's Catskill Mountains, aka the Borscht Belt, where Jewish immigrants transformed lush farmland into the 20th century's largest resort complex. Those Catskill hotels and bungalow colonies provided the setting for a remarkable group of young comedians to hone their craft and become worldwide legends. It was truly When Comedy Went to School.

Please join us on Saturday evening, June 20th at 7:00 PM, when we welcome writer/producer Larry Richards, who will show and discuss his documentary about Jewish comedians who came from the Borscht Belt, and about the culture of the Borscht Belt that nurtured them.





When Comedy Went to School has been shown at the Jewish History Museum and many other venues. 

$10 suggested donation. Light refreshments. Open to the public.

On Jon Stewart and The Daily Show

The Jewish Standard published an op-ed entitled, Thank You, Jon Stewart, written by Adas Emuno president Lance Strate, on April 10th, and once again we'd like to share it with you here on our congregational blog, although you are welcome click on the title above and read it there as well. The subtitle given to the piece is, "Why most of us trust him, and why we’ll miss him," and here is the rest of it:

The most trusted man in America.

The reality of Jon Stewart’s February 10 announcement that after 17 years he would be leaving as host of The Daily Show on the Comedy Central cable network did not quite hit home until the March 30 announcement that his successor would be South African comedian Trevor Noah.

Noah, who has some Jewish ancestry, in turn was quickly the subject of controversy surrounding some offensive tweets he made in the past, tweets that some consider anti-Semitic, not to mention misogynistic, and perhaps worst of all, simply not at all funny.

But more significant is the fact that Jon Stewart’s replacement is, for all intents and purposes, a nobody. A Noah-body. And this should come as no surprise, despite all the speculation about who might succeed him, with suggestions as varied as Daily Show alumni such as John Oliver, Larry Wilmore, and John Hodgman, and comics Amy Schumer, Chris Rock, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, her former co-star Alec Baldwin, and even MSNBC political commentator Rachel Maddow and disgraced NBC news anchor Brian Williams.

The simple truth is that Jon Stewart would be a hard act to follow. Close to impossible, really, no matter how big the name and reputation. No established star in his or her right mind would risk the inevitable judgments about having failed to live up to Stewart’s legacy, so the only alternative was to find someone with nothing to lose to serve as the sacrificial lamb. Only time will tell whether Noah will be able to survive the flood of comparisons that surely will come his way.

But the big question is how did a nice Jewish boy, born in New York City and raised in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, grow up to become the most trusted man in America? “The most trusted man in America” is a citation that previously was bestowed upon the longtime CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite. That Jon Stewart seems to have inherited the title would no doubt strike the comedian, born Jon Stewart Leibowitz, as both an honor and a disturbing commentary on the state of journalism today. It is consistent with Neil Postman’s observation, three decades ago, that the television medium requires entertaining content, and that journalists on television news shows cannot help but become entertainers. By the 1990s, it became a commonplace to note that most young people got their news from the late night monologues of Jay Leno and David Letterman.

What set Jon Stewart apart from Leno, Letterman, and other talk show hosts, including his predecessor on the Daily Show, Craig Kilborn, was the depth of Stewart’s humor, his intelligence, and the incisiveness of his critique of the news media, and the subjects they report on, especially politics. If the fourth estate is supposed to fulfill the function of the watchdogs of society, Stewart provided the answer to the question of who watches the watchmen, and he has done so with dogged determination.

To be sure, on the conservative side of the political spectrum, Stewart is not quite as well trusted as he is among liberal viewers. His political leanings are well known. As much as he has tried to be fair and balanced in his skewering of politicians and the media personalities who cover and comment on them, he could not help but direct a significant portion of ire and irony at Fox News, whose often blatant attempts at propaganda have made it all too easy a target. No doubt, given our current political polarization, we would be hard pressed to name someone who is equally trusted by those on the left and the right of the political spectrum, so it is enough to say that Stewart has gained the confidence of America’s moderates and centrists. And we also might recall that Cronkite was denounced as too liberal in his day, especially after coming out against the Vietnam War in 1968.

We might also recall that Cronkite was considered seriously as a potential Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 1972, and was urged to run for president in 1980. So it should not come as a great surprise that following his resignation from the Daily Show, there have been calls for Jon Stewart to run for the Democratic presidential nomination for 2016, as the only viable alternative to Hillary Clinton. The calls have come from a variety of sources, including longtime television critic and biographer Marvin Kitman, who notes, “Now I realize Jon will have to talk to his mother in Teaneck first. But I’m hoping he will put his country ahead of the cheap overnight thrill of making just another movie. Or a better chicken soup.”

Stewart run for president? Why not? After all, his friend and colleague Stephen Colbert did it in 2007. And the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear that they co-hosted at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 2010, which was attended by more than 200,000 people, demonstrated the strength of his popular and populist appeal, and the foundational values on which his comedy was built. The A Moment of Sincerity address that he gave at the close of the event was as good as any campaign speech made by any candidate now out on the stump. Toward its end, he declared, “We know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light we have to work together. And the truth is, there will always be darkness. And sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land. Sometimes it’s just New Jersey. But we do it anyway, together.”

Whether he actually runs for office, in a serious campaign along the lines of the one run by United States Senator Al Franken, a Saturday Night Live alumnus, or as a form of satire, as Colbert did, remains to be seen. But what is quite clear is that Jon Stewart was able to transform the Daily Show from just another low budget television vehicle for sophomoric humor into a significant source of news and opinion, commentary and criticism, and entertainment and education, and in doing so, transform himself from just another comedian to a worthy successor to the man who took us from John F. Kennedy’s assassination to the moon and beyond.

And is there any doubt that the secret to Jon Stewart’s success is the fact that his humor has been built on a foundation and rooted in a tradition of social justice, ethical conduct, and compassion for our fellow human beings? His values, the values of his upbringing, shine through his 17 years on The Daily Show. They make clear the fact that he is much more than a comedian—that he is nothing less than a mensch.

Passover in Leonia Life

To follow up on our previous post, Purim in Leonia Life, Congregation Adas Emuno again made the cover of Leonia Life on April 10th, with a photograph taken from our Congregational Seder:

The Congregational Seder, led by Rabbi Barry Schwartz, was held on the second night of Passover. And judging by the fact that our social hall was filled to capacity, and by the enthusiastic reception on the part of those in attendance, it was a smashing success!

Kudos to Ritual Committee Chair Virginia Gitter for initiating and organizing the communal celebration of our season of rebirth and freedom!

Another slice of life here in Bergen County!