Philip Berroll

By P.H.I.Berroll

Around 7:30 a.m., the men gather in the chilling December air at the corner of South 5^th Street and Bedford Avenue, next to the Williamsburg Bridge overpass, as they do every morning.  There are about 30 of them, ranging in age from twentysomething to early fifties.  Some stand alone; others cluster in small groups, chatting, making jokes.  But everyone keeps an eye on the street, watching the cars, vans, and pickup trucks that pass by — and waiting for the occasional vehicle that slows down.

The men are part of a sad tradition in American labor — the shape-up crew.  For generations, the unemployed have clustered on particular street corners in American cities, hoping to get a day-labor job for a couple of hours or even better, several days.  Because most of them do not possess a special craft or skill, they are of little interest to unions or conventional employment agencies, and so are left to their own devices.

At the height of the Depression, most shape-up crews were made up of native-born Americans.  Today, the crews are almost entirely composed of immigrants, legal and otherwise.  Mexican-dominated crews have long been common to Southern California.  Here in Greenpoint, two of the men waiting by the bridge are African-American and several are Latino, but most have emigrated from Poland or the former Soviet Union.

Zygmunt “Zygi” Lemond, a stocky, friendly man of 43, came from Poland — he is vague about the exact year, but it was some time after the fall of the country’s Communist regime in 1989.  Drawn to Greenpoint by its large Polish community, Zygi has lived for almost a year in a homeless shelter on Bedford and Atlantic Avenues, about half a mile south.

Wearing a patterned jacket, hightop sneakers and a painter’s cap, he is dressed a bit more colorfully than the others.  (Even more bizarre is a younger man who looks like a college student, wearing a backpack, a Walkman — and rollerblades.)  Zygi’s background is also unconventional.  Trained as a musician, he left Poland when he realized that work would be harder to come by in a capitalist society — “How many dance bands do you need?” he asks rhetorically.

But Zygi felt that the American music business, while equally competitive, offered more opportunity.  And he does on occasion play bass guitar with a band, working New Jersey towns such as Linden, Garfield, or Passaic, which have large Polish neighborhoods.  He plays both nightclubs and social events — weddings, christenings, baby showers.

But it’s not enough to make a living.  So every morning, he is out on the corner, looking for construction or warehouse jobs or “painting, sometimes.”  The pay isn’t great, but it’s better than minimum-wage — at least $6 an hour, and as much as $10 for more strenuous construction or demolition work.

The real problem is the length and frequency of the jobs.  When asked if he gets much work, Zygi makes a face and says only, “It’s not regular.”  Some of his jobs have been as short as two to three hours, but none have been longer than two days.  “Yesterday,” he says, “I worked nine hours, in a warehouse.”  He usually stays on the corner until noon before giving up for the day.

At one point, a station wagon pulls up, with two men in the front seat.  Everyone clusters around, gesticulating, talking in two or three languages, as those with better English translate for their friends.  Zygi joins in for a few minutes, then walks away.  Eventually, no one else decides to get in the car, and the men drive off.

Zygi explains that the men offered to pay $6 an hour for extensive wiring and carpentry work on a building that they were renovating — but were honest enough to mention that the building was unheated.  “For a job like that,” he says, “it’s got to be at least $10.”

Not everyone can afford to be so choosy.  Down the block, on the other side of the overpass, another group of East Europeans have staked out their own patch of turf.  One of them, Sasha, a Ukrainian immigrant who has been in the U.S. for three months, says with a laugh that he does “everything.”  Another in the group, Tibor, who comes from Bulgaria, lists his skills as “welder, electrician… and I put down tiles.”  They are less easily discouraged than Zygi — they usually stay on the street until 2 or 3 p.m.

At his end of the block, Zygi sniffs that there are “too many Russians out here” — some days, in fact, they outnumber the Poles.  Is he voicing ancient resentments, given the history of relations between Russia and Poland?   More likely, it’s a matter of numbers.  The more men on the block competing for jobs, the less chance any of them has of getting one.

Occasionally, Zygi says, the competition gets ugly.  When an employer announces two openings and four (or more) men are gathered around his car, push can literally come to shove.  But the disputes are generally forgotten, or at least set aside, by the following day.  The men have to face each other every morning, and holding grudges is a waste of energy.

From time to time, two uniformed policemen in a squad car circle the block, keeping an eye on the group.  But the men are careful to stay on their best behavior.  Until several months ago, the group had been gathering a few blocks away, at the intersection of Wallabout Street and Kent Avenue; they were chased away by the police, after local residents complained that some of the men were drinking in public and throwing bottles and other garbage on the street.  Zygi confirms the charges, although he personally claims innocence.

Now another car pulls over.  Before Zygi takes three steps in his direction, the Latino driver picks the first three men who approach, and drives away.  Zygi shrugs, takes a cigarette from a Marlboro pack, and lights up.

Most of the employers, Zygi says, are Latinos or Orthodox or Hasidic Jews.  The latter, he says, are sometimes a problem because they prefer to pay him in cash, off the books, in order to avoid paying social security taxes.  He would rather get a check.  “If you’re paid cash,” he says, “it could be as low as $3 an hour.  A check, if it’s six, you still keep $3.75 after taxes and Social Security.”

Zygi is familiar with the current American political debate about welfare and unemployment.  He has heard the claims that there are plenty of available jobs for any able-bodied worker who is willing to look hard enough.  (In New York, Gov. George Pataki recently announced plans to cut state welfare rolls by 25 percent.)

But Zygi prefers not to take sides in this argument; he will only speak of his own feelings and experience.  Welfare, he says, is not for him, but he does not judge anyone who takes that route.

What Zygi really wants is the chance to leave the corner for good.  He says he knows of “some people in the summer who go to upstate New York.  They get regular factory jobs and they don’t come back.”  And Zygi himself has an application in at a factory on Java Street, a few blocks north.

For now, though, he remains under the bridge, waiting for another car to pull up to the curb.

“Every day,” he says, “it’s the same situation.”
 

Originally published in Brooklyn-Queens Waterfront Week weekly newspaper, 1995.

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By P.H.I.Berroll

Say you’re a New Yorker whose friends or relatives from outside the U.S. are planning to visit. You’d love to put them up in your Manhattan apartment, but unfortunately, like many Manhattanites you barely have enough space for your own family.

So you try to think of other options for your guests. A hotel?  Manhattan has some of the most expensive hotels in Western civilization, with nightly rates of four figures not uncommon.  Even cheaper hotel rooms (and “hotel” in this case could mean a converted town house or apartment building) can go for as much as $300/night. A motel? Those are often located near the city’s three airports – where the sounds of airline takeoffs and landings have disrupted many a traveler’s sleep – and in other less-than-desirable locations where getting to Manhattan involves  a lengthy and often crowded commute.

In the past few years, however, some innovative entrepreneurs – combining the DIY esthetic with the growing “frugal traveler” movement – have introduced new lodging options to put the traveler near the heart of the city without busting his budget.

The most well-established of these is San Francisco-based Airbnb, which enables “hosts” – apartment owners or renters – to offer their homes as low-cost tourist accommodations. Travelers can browse listings (which include photos as well as “reviews” from previous guests) in over 19,000 cities in 190 countries, and contact hosts with any questions before booking a space…   for as little as a day, or as much as a month. It’s a new twist on the bed-and-breakfast concept, though unlike traditional b&bs, the host may not be on the premises and guests often have to provide their own food. But on the upside, the traveler gets a clean, safe, conveniently located place to stay, at nightly rates ranging from the low $80’s to less than $150.

Airbnb is the brainchild of three young entrepreneurs, Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczyk and Joe Gebbia. Chesky and Gebbia, who met as students at the Rhode Island School of Design, were sharing an apartment in San Francisco in 2007 when they had their “aha” moment: Hearing that many attendees at an upcoming design conference had no place to stay – all the local hotels were completely booked – they offered their apartment as an informal bed-and-breakfast.

The experience worked out so well that after taking on Blecharczyk as a partner, they decided to expand their one-time act of kindness into an ongoing business operation – both to make money and in Chesky’s words, “to disrupt the [hospitality] industry” with their new approach. (Chesky, the CEO, is so dedicated to the concept that he gave up his apartment last year and has since been staying in renters’ homes “to grasp the full impact and experience of Airbnb.”)

Not surprisingly, the success of Airbnb has inspired several imitators, including iStopOver, which is based in Canada, and Italy-based Wimdu. There are also other sites offering different alternatives to traditional hotel booking: HostelWorld enables users to book stays at hostels in New York and 112 other U.S. cities as well as in 180 different countries, while CouchSurfing is a kind of exchange program where members can stay in the homes of locals in other countries and open their own homes to visitors from abroad.

But Airbnb has the greatest number of listings for New York City – more than 6,000 as of this writing – and Chesky professes to be unfazed by the competition: “They may borrow our concept or copy our designs, but the keystone of Airbnb is the community behind it – and the relationships our community fosters can’t be replicated.”

There is one drawback to the Airbnb system for New York City hosts:  officially, the business is operating in a legal limbo.

In 2010, the New York State Legislature passed a law (which went into effect in May of this year) entitled “Clarifies Provisions Relating to Occupancy of Class A Multiple Dwellings.” In plain English, the law makes it illegal for a paying guest to stay in another person’s apartment for less than 30 consecutive days if their host is not also living in the apartment. The law was passed in response to complaints from apartment dwellers and coop and condo boards about “absentee owners” who bought or rented multiple apartments not for their own use, but as tourist lodging – a violation of the rules in many NYC apartment buildings.

The problem is that there is no way for law enforcement to distinguish between those multiple-unit owners and the single-apartment hosts of Airbnb. Hosts who stay in an apartment at the same time as their guests are not affected, but those who take in guests while living elsewhere are at least technically breaking the law.

To date, however, there have been no arrests or prosecutions under the law, and local Airbnb hosts aren’t worried. As Rachel, a renter in Chelsea – for personal reasons she prefers not to use her last name – observes, “It’s not like the city or the state has the money to hire ‘real estate cops.’”

Airbnb has also had to deal with the fallout from an incident in June, in which a San Francisco host returned from an out-of-town trip to find that her guests had ransacked and looted her apartment. It was the first such occurrence in the company’s history, and while Airbnb worked with the police to catch the offenders, it was a wake-up call to Chesky and his partners. “For two million nights, we’d seen this as a case study demonstrating that people are fundamentally good,” says Chesky. “We were devastated.”

But the company took steps to tighten security, including designing enhanced tools to verify user profiles and creating an “education center” to provide hosts with safety tips. They also began offering a guarantee of $50,000 to reimburse hosts in cases of theft or vandalism.

According to Chesky, their business has not suffered – “In fact,” he says, “we have received thousands of e-mails from users who told me that they still believed in our service” – and he anticipates continued growth for Airbnb in the foreseeable future.

Indeed, Airbnb consistently gets high marks from users, not only for the low prices but also for something more intangible: the chance for visitors to immerse themselves in the life of the city. Airbnb guests often speak of how staying in an apartment enabled them to experience the “real” New York, as opposed to the isolation of a typical hotel. “I love being able to feel like I’m living in a neighborhood,” says Sara, a traveler from Vancouver, “rather than dropping into a tourist zone.”

It’s an experience that Airbnb hosts are happy to provide. “I don’t think we’re cutting into the large mass of people who want maid service every day and don’t care if they have a kitchen,” says Rachel. “But if you want a kitchen and don’t need a maid, then why would you reserve for $375 per night at the Times Square Residence Inn instead of $125 at my apartment?”

Here are the websites for the lodging services mentioned in this article:

Airbnb                                      www.airbnb.com

iStopOver                                 www.istopover.com

Wimdu                                      www.wimdu.com

HostelWorld                             www.hostelworld.com

CouchSurfing                           www.couchsurfing.org

 

Originally published in New York International magazine, 2011.

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By P.H.I.Berroll

It’s easy to feel a bit disoriented when entering Eataly for the first time. Not just because of the crowds, which are plentiful at most hours of the day, or the noise, which is on the level of a Times Square subway station at rush hour. It’s the fact that Eataly is not a place that can be easily categorized. Part market, part tourist attraction, part festival – it really doesn’t resemble any venue typically found in New York, or for that matter in the U.S.

And that, as it turns out, is part of the plan. Eataly’s creators are attempting nothing less than the establishment of a high-class Italian culinary emporium in the heart of New York City. Located in Manhattan’s Flatiron District at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 23^rd Street, Eataly is based on another marketplace of the same name which entrepreneur Oscar Farinetti opened in the Italian city of Turin in 2007. For his New York venture, Farinetti took on a trio of culinary heavy hitters as partners: celebrated chefs and food-TV personalities Mario Batali and Lidia and Joe Bastianich. The group opened Eataly in August 2010, with the stated goal of making it “the ultimate culinary mecca for New Yorkers, visitors, gourmands and Italophiles alike.”

This explains why every aspect of Eataly is designed to appeal to three primary audiences: sophisticated Americans, Italians and people who wish they were Italian. Starting with the “Welcome/Benvenuto” banner that greets visitors at the entrance, all of Eataly’s signs are in both Italian and English – “We consider this to be a quintessential element of Eataly,” says managing partner Alex Saper. Helpful hints are posted for non-American customers (“In the U.S., leaving a tip is customary. Typically, 15 to 20 percent is sufficient”). Ask for “salami” and you’ll get a blank stare – what’s offered here is salumi. Walls are decorated with maps and other displays about the history and culture of Italy’s numerous regions.

But above all, there’s the food, a cornucopia of Italian national and regional specialties with an emphasis on artisanal (i.e. hand-made rather than mass-produced) products. Eataly includes seven full-service eateries, each specializing in a different food group: Le Verdure (vegetables), Il Manzo (meat), Il Pesce (fish), I Salumi e I Formaggi (salumi and cheese), Il Crudo (a raw bar), and of course, La Pizza and La Pasta.

Since no Italian meal would be complete without wine and dessert, there’s also Lavazza Café (named for Italy’s premier coffee company) and Eataly Wine. Lavazza offers gelato, pastries, chocolates and bite-sized dolci al cucchiaio (“spoon desserts”), along with espresso and cappuccino. At the wine shop, customers can choose from among nearly 1,000 bottles of vino from the major winemaking regions of Italy.

And for people who think “Italian beer” is an oxymoron, Eataly recently opened La Birreria, a 4,500 square-foot open-air rooftop beer garden, which offers a wide variety of both Italian and American craft beers.

Each section of Eataly has been staffed and stocked to appeal to consumers looking for something more than “typical” Italian fare. Le Verdure, for example, features a resident “vegetable butcher” who cleans, peels, chops and cuts the customer’s order – saving discarded peels and trimmings to be used as compost. Much of the pasta on sale is made fresh, by hand, every day. So is the mozzarella at the cheese department, charmingly named Il Laboratorio della Mozzarella.

Having a “laboratory” on the premises is in line with the overall mission of Eataly. Much of its agenda focuses on discovery, on education, on expanding the knowledge of the visitor. This is the idea behind Eataly’s on-premises scuola in which instructors – including Batali and the Bastianiches – offer regular classes in cooking and food and wine appreciation as well as nutritional, sociological and scientific topics relating to food.

Finally, there are the retail items – rows upon rows of shelves stocked with cured and fresh meats, cheeses, fruits and vegetables, fish, handmade pastas, desserts, baked and canned goods, sauces, olive oils, and coffees and teas, not to mention cooking utensils and cookbooks.  Customers can haul their bounty to the checkout line using lightweight shopping carts made from recycled plastic water bottles.

There’s no denying that the unique qualities of Eataly can be jarring to the uninitiated. It’s not the aforementioned crowds, which won’t shock anyone who has experienced lunch hour at Zabar’s or Whole Foods, or the prices (described as “fair” and “reasonable” by Eataly’s founders – which is another way of saying not cheap, but not excessively pricey by New York standards). It has more to do with the very nature of the Eataly experience.

Like most Americans, New Yorkers are used to buying pre-prepared food at salad or hot food bars and eating their meals at readily available restaurant tables. At Eataly, the first option doesn’t exist and the second only in truncated form. At each restaurant, it’s not uncommon for the customer to wait on line to order, wait again while the food is made, then wait again for one of the sparse number of tables to become available.  (There is the option of ordering to go, then finding a seat on a bench at nearby Madison Square Park.)  Nor is it easy to combine food categories; if you want a meat dish with your rigatoni, it will mean separate trips to Il Manzo and La Pasta. It’s appropriate that Eataly employs an international environmental organization called Slow Food as a consultant.

But customers who are willing to take a bit more time than usual will find the experience well worth the wait. (First-timers are advised to use Eataly’s main entrance on 23^rd Street, where an information booth is staffed by helpful employees who answer questions and hand out detailed floor plans.)

If Eataly proves to be a success, the partners are poised to expand into other major U.S. cities. “They have been scouting locations,” says Alex Saper. “Right now they’re considering L.A., San Francisco, D.C. or Boston.”

Though it’s too early to gauge how well Eataly has been received by the general public, it has made a positive impression on one particularly tough group of critics: the online “foodie” community. While describing Eataly’s layout as “daunting,” “a madhouse” and “a trip,” food bloggers have been nearly unanimous in praising the quality and variety of its offerings.

“I can’t say that it’s built for browsing, unless you come in right after it opens,” says Ann Newman, a New York food writer. “But the food is really high class, and a lot of it is different from the usual gourmet choices. That makes it a special place.”

Eataly is located at 200 Fifth Avenue, with entrances on both Fifth Avenue and 23 Street. It is open seven days a week from 9:00am to 11:00pm, though the hours of individual departments may vary.  For more information visit www.eataly.com or call 646-398-5100.

Originally published in NewYorkInternational magazine, 2011.

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By P.H.I.Berroll

The massacre began on September 28, 1941, and continued over the following two days. Scores of Ukrainian Jews were rounded up by Nazi storm troopers and their Ukrainian sympathizers, marched into a clearing in the middle of a wooded area, and shot, their bodies dumped into a mass grave.

As many as 35,000 men, women and children – the exact number has never been determined – were killed in the Babi Yar massacre, which could probably be called the first mass atrocity of the Holocaust.  It took some time for news of the slaughter to reach the world, and even longer for its full significance to be acknowledged by the Soviet leaders on whose territory it had taken place.

But the Soviet Jews who survived the war have never forgotten Babi Yar.  And those who have settled in Brooklyn have made a point of raising their voices in remembrance.

For the past seven years, they have gathered on the anniversary of Babi Yar to commemorate the tragedy.  This year’s ceremony, held this past Sunday at the East Midwood Jewish Center on Ocean Avenue, was a mixture of music, poetry, and dramatic testimony, expressing both the sadness of shared memories and the assertiveness born of survival.

About 600 people filled the EMJC sanctuary for the three-hour program, conducted mainly in Russian, which was organized by the Center, UJA-Federation, and the Association of Holocaust Survivors of the Former Soviet Union, a 700-member local group.  “Previously, they had held it at various other locations,” said Dr. Bernard Metrick, a former president of EJMC.  “But it kept getting bigger – that’s why they came here.”

Metrick had helped bring the program to EMJC for the first time last year.  At the time, admission was free; this year, it was $3, in order to raise money to expand the new museum of Jewish history in Battery Park.  The program’s organizers were hoping that with additional funding, the museum, which focuses on the European Jewish community before and during the Holocaust, would have more space for materials and exhibits about the fate of Jews in the USSR. Many of those Jews, if they were not sent to death camps, died in Warsaw-style ghettoes created by the Nazis or were killed by local anti-Semites who were happy to do the Nazis’ bidding.

This sad history was mentioned repeatedly during Sunday’s ceremony.  The stage was draped by a banner reading (in Russian), “Soviet Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day.”  And the ceremony began – after the singing of “The Star Spangled Banner” and “Hatikvah” – with a candlelight procession of about 30 survivors, bearing placards with photos of loved ones and names of various locations where thousands of Jews had perished:  Minsk, Odessa, Kishinev, Moldava, among others.

Later, Malka Budilovsky of the Soviet Holocaust survivors group, who was leading the ceremony, called on audience members to stand up and give their names and the towns where they had originally lived, in the hope that they could re-establish some long-broken connections. “Last year, two survivors from the Minsk ghetto recognized each other,” explained Lydia Vareljan, coordinator of the Russian division of UJA-Federation. “They hadn’t seen each other since the war.  When they saw each other across the room, they gave a great cry, and the whole ceremony stopped.”

Nothing quite so dramatic happened this year.  But there were still numerous poignant and dramatic moments, from the musical performances by popular singers Boris Pevsner (in Russian) and Marina Buchina (in Yiddish) to the address by Robert Kaplan of the Jewish Community Relations Council, who described his visit to the scene of the massacre.

“Most of my family had been buried in Babi Yar,” Kaplan told the audience.  “I don’t think there were enough tears among myself and the students I brought with me to fill Babi Yar, because Babi Yar is a valley of tears.”  But he ended on a note of hope:  “We (later) visited a refusenik family – I saw my mother’s face in one of the women’s eyes.  It turned out that they were my cousins.  Am Yisroel Chai.”

Other speakers included Rabbi Aaron Kass of EMJC, who said that Jews “must not give Hitler a posthumous victory by abandoning all that you and your parents struggled so hard to preserve,” and Assemblyman Jules Polonetsky (D-Brighton Beach), who praised the audience:  “The only way I and my generation can understand what happened is by sitting here and listening to you.  For that, I am deeply grateful.”

Indeed, the idea that survivors not be silent — so that the world will not be allowed to forget — echoed throughout the ceremony, as when two actual survivors of Babi Yar, Ludmila Tkach and Manya Greenberg, recounted their stories to the audience.  Tkach, who now lives in Los Angeles, was four years old at the time; she had been pushed into the mass grave by her mother’s falling body, and had later crawled out from under the corpses after the killers had left the scene.  Greenberg, now of Philadelphia, was twelve.  She was spared when a local policeman took her out of the line of march when he decided that she did not “look Jewish.”

The program ended with Pevsner leading the audience in a Russian song about peace.  The title roughly translates as “Buchenwald Choir,” after the inmates in the camp who organized a singing group.

But as much as the audience could feel a strengthened sense of group solidarity – and of progress in telling their stories to the world – they knew that one great challenge remains:  to get a full accounting of the tragedy from their former rulers.

The former Soviet government had for many years refused to acknowledge that most of those killed were Jews; the official line was that they were unspecified “victims of Fascism.”  But in 1962, the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko protested that policy in his now-famous poem, “Babi Yar.”  In the years that followed, the Soviets were increasingly pressured to change their version of the massacre; this finally happened during the Gorbachev years.  (Yevtushenko, who now lives in New York and teaches at Brooklyn College, was originally scheduled to appear at Sunday’s ceremony, but had to cancel due to a scheduling conflict.)

More progress has been made since the breakup of the USSR.  According to Russian-language journalist Joseph Richter, who attended Sunday’s program, Israel and Ukraine are currently negotiating the construction of a new memorial.  “The Ukrainians are saying, ‘we have a wonderful tradition of friendship with the Jews,’” said Richter, with a laugh.

Another reporter, Arkadiy Kagan of the Russian Forward – whose grandparents were among the 400,000 Jews who died in the Minsk ghetto – was even more hopeful.  “I have heard that Jews in Kiev have been able to do something similar (to Sunday’s ceremony),” he said.  “As recently as 1980, such commemorations were not allowed.”

Originally published in Jewish Week weekly newspaper, 1997.

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By P.H.I.Berroll

In the spacious conference room on the second floor of Queens Borough Hall, Claire Shulman speaks to a visiting delegation of Russian women about her job as Borough President.  The women, legislative aides in the former Soviet Union, are visiting the U.S. to learn about the workings of American government and politics (“Next, we’re going to see Bella Abzug,” says their interpreter).  One of the Russians asks Shulman how she deals with day-to-day problems, such as a poorly paved street.

“I call up the person in charge of roads, who is a mayoral appointee,” Shulman responds, “and I say, ‘By tomorrow, you’d better pave this street, or else.”  She pauses. “It usually works.”  The women laugh – “That’s how it is in Russia,” says the interpreter.

The performance is typical Shulman, combining the no-nonsense pragmatism of a veteran officeholder with the wry warmth of a Jewish grandmother.  It’s a style that an overwhelming number of Queens voters find appealing: the 71-year-old Shulman, currently running for her fourth term as Borough President, is so popular that local Republicans offered the lifelong Democrat their line on the ballot in November.  (She declined, not wanting to cause difficulties for other Democratic candidates in Queens.)  At this point, Shulman‘s only opposition is Conservative Party candidate David DiCasa.

Few would have predicted such success for Shulman when she took office in March of 1986.  Then Deputy Borough President, she was named to the higher post following the suicide of the incumbent, Donald Manes, who had been implicated in the city-wide corruption scandals of the mid-‘80s.  Shulman had never held elective office, and it was widely assumed by political insiders that her role was to “keep the office warm” for a few months while the powerful Queens Democratic organization chose a legitimate successor to Manes.

But Shulman says she “never paid much attention” to what others might have thought — “I decided what I was going to focus on and I went ahead and did it.” Gaining the support of Rep. Thomas Manton, the Queens Democratic leader, she was elected to serve the remainder of Manes’ term, then re-elected to full four-year terms in 1989 (with 86% of the vote) and 1993.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Shulman is now one of the most powerful Democratic women in New York City politics… which is why many observers were shocked when she recently decided not to support her longtime colleague, Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, for Mayor this year.  Against the wishes of Manton and other Queens Democrats, she crossed party lines to endorse Mayor Rudolph Giuliani for a second term (she had backed David Dinkins in 1993).

It had been rumored that Shulman’s endorsement was part of a quid pro quo in exchange for the offer of the GOP line to her.  But Shulman insists that only two factors figured in her decision:  she was impressed with the Mayor’s record – and less so with the campaigns of his opponents.

“It was not an easy thing to do,” she says. “I knew it would hurt the feelings of people I’ve worked with over the years.  But I felt it was my responsibility to endorse who I felt would be the best mayor for the next four years.  And I believed that Giuliani had done a good job – that the city has come back, that its reputation worldwide has improved, revenues have increased; the city just seemed to be in a lot better shape.”

Though Shulman asserts, “I still believe in the Democratic philosophy that we are responsible for the most vulnerable in our society,” she feels “that the way the Mayor is going about it, by trying to increase the tax base so that we can provide services for those folks, is appropriate and proper for the future of this city.”

As for the Democrats, “I wanted to give them an opportunity to say what their programs and positions for the future would be – and though I think they’re all decent people, in my opinion they have not yet done this. I don’t see what they would do to improve the city.”

Understandably, Messinger was none too pleased by her colleague’s choice. “I regret that she made this decision,” she said recently in an interview on radio station WNYC. “It’s a bad decision for the city and a bad decision for Queens.  Five of the six school districts in Queens are seriously overcrowded, and some classrooms are 110-120% over capacity.”

But Shulman does not share Messinger’s view that Giuliani’s budget cuts are a major cause of school overcrowding. “This problem didn’t just happen,” she says. “The reason Queens is so behind in the number of [classroom] seats that are required is that we get new kids into the system – a couple of thousand every year.  They’re all immigrants, coming here for a better life, and we want to make sure their kids get educated.

“There are things that we can do.  We’re trying to play catch-up with the construction of schools.  Also, the Board of Education and I have spoken to [teacher’s union head] Sandy Feldman about the idea of a 12 month school year, which will cut the overage by about 30%.  And keeping the schools open longer every day is another possibility.”

The problems of Queens’ immigrant population are a major concern of Shulman’s – particularly the large number of Bukharan Jews from the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan who have settled in the Rego Park-Forest Hills area in recent years.

 “There’s been a net decrease in the number of Jews in Queens over the last decade, as the population ages,” says Shulman aide Michael Rogovin, “butrecently there’s been a large Bukharan immigrant influx. (The group takes its name from the city of Bukhara, the Uzbek capital where many of them had lived.) The Bukharans have special needs, but they’re not unique to the Jewish community. They have the same needs as all immigrants — culturalization, language, making ends meet, educational issues.  And these are issues that involve government more than with other Jewish communities.”

Most of the Bukharans are Orthodox Jews, while many native-born Queens Jews belong to other denominations.   But Shulman feels that differences between the groups are a matter of “culture, not religion.

“For example,” she says, “in apartment houses, the Bukharans congregate in the halls.  If they have a party, sometimes that’s where it takes place — and some of the Jews that have been here a while don’t quite understand that.  So we’ve met with both sides, brought them together … and there now seems to be a kind of peaceful coexistence going on.”

Shulman’s office has also collected food for the Bukharans for the Jewish holidays, and provided English as a Second Language classes “so that they can learn the English necessary for naturalization.  I have over 400,000 seniors in this borough, and I think somewhere between 20 and 30,000 are not citizens, but legal immigrants.  And I was concerned that a lot of these folks were going to lose their benefits (under the recent changes in Federal welfare rules).”

Shulman’s traditional, grass-roots approach to government is rooted in her background.  Born in Flatbush (“across from Ebbets Field”) and a graduate of Adelphi University, she moved to Queens in 1945, working as a registered nurse at Queens Hospital Center, where she met her husband, Melvin, a physician.  While living in Bayside and raising two sons, Lawrence and Kim, and a daughter, Ellen, she became increasingly involved in school and community affairs: “I joined mother’s clubs and the PTA,” she says, “and I got to know a lot about education.  I did a lot of pro bono work in the education field, lobbying for more money.”

Shulman went on to become a member of Queens Community Board 11, then became board chair in 1968 “mostly because no one else wanted the job.”  Her new position gave her grounding – and a growing interest – in the city and state budgeting process. “So when my kids were old enough,” she says, “I thought, ‘Gee, maybe I should try government.’ I knew most of the elected officials (in Queens) through my work, and when they offered me a job as Director of Queens Community Boards at the end of 1972, I took it.”

Shulman went on to serve in the position for eight years, then was named Deputy Borough President by Manes. “By that time I’d learned the city government pretty thoroughly, but I was still an appointed official.  And then I got to be Borough President,” she says dryly, “in an unusual way.”

But her experience gave her the skill to deal with numerous challenges during her decade-plus in office – including a significant loss of power when the Board of Estimate was abolished in 1989. (Each of the five Borough Presidents had a seat on the Board, which functioned as a counterweight to the Mayor – a role that is now filled by the City Council.)

“I still have many discretionary dollars,” says Shulman.  “I still appoint a member of the City Planning Commission, and a member of the School Board.  And there’s something that’s not in the City Charter:  I get elected in a county of two million people.  I don’t mean to sound intimidating, but with those numbers, it’s very hazardous to take me on in an important issue if you’re a city-wide elected official.”

Under New York City’s 1993 term-limits law, Shulman’s next term will be her last.  Her agenda is ambitious:  it includes plans to expand Queens Hospital Center – “We have the largest senior population (in the city) which creates a demand that we cannot fulfill at the present time” – and to build the Technodome, a proposed sports and entertainment center, on 300 acres on the Rockaway Peninsula.

As for her future after leaving office, “Well,” Shulman laughs, “my staff thinks I’m immortal… Seriously, I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

Looking back on her career, Shulman feels that things are much easier for women in politics than when she entered public life, “and I’m delighted about that. I think people are becoming accustomed to the idea that women can function in government, and that they can function on a very high level.”

Does she see herself as a role model for younger women?  “I hope so.  I hope they find this to be a satisfying career – not only women, but younger people.”

One woman who has clearly been inspired by Shulman’s example is her daughter, Ellen Shulman Baker.  Dr. Baker is a physician and an astronaut, whose space career includes voyages on the Atlantis and Columbia space shuttles and the first docking (in 1995) of Atlantis with the troubled Russian space station Mir.

“My daughter is probably the most organized person I know,” says Shulman, almost in amazement.  “She’s got two little kids, and she does everything for them that I did for my kids – but I wasn’t working, other than pro bono things.  I’m just so impressed by her, and women like her. They’re doing everything.”

Originally published in Jewish Week weekly newspaper, 1997.

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My friend C., a fellow journalist, is emphatic about what he considers a true joy of our profession.  Is it a prominent byline, an exclusive story, an expose of wrongdoing? Guess again. “What I really like,” he says, “is all the chances you get to eat and drink for free.”

C. is talking about receptions – those mini-parties held in conjunction with an art exhibit, a panel discussion, or virtually any other kind of public venture.  It’s safe to say that in New York City, there is a different reception on just about every night of the year.  And it’s also true that you don’t have to be (or claim to be) a reporter in order to partake.  Au contraire – by employing some fairly simple strategies, you too can help yourself to a healthy amount of free eats and liquor, and even discover opportunities for personal and professional networking.

Note the word “free.”  I emphasize this because I am not talking about those get-you-coming-and-going affairs where, in addition to the price of entry, one is expected to buy $3-$5 tickets for food (i.e., hot dogs) and drink (i.e., beer).  This kind of gouging is especially common at political receptions, such as Democratic or G.O.P. “victory parties,” and it’s one more reason to be disillusioned with politics.  No, the kind of gatherings you’ll want to frequent fall into many different categories, but they all have one aspect in common:  something about them is free – admission, food, the bar, any combination of two, or all three.

Receptions in New York can be roughly grouped into three levels, each with its own distinct characteristics.  To wit:

Low End

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Examples:

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small-gallery exhibit openings; off-off-Off-Broadway productions; poetry, play, or other literary readings

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Food:

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crackers (Carr’s and Ritz), cheese (cheddar and Swiss cubes, a small wheel of Brie), fruit (grapes)

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Drink:

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jug wine (Gallo or worse)

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To Find:

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Check listings in Times, Voice, T.O.N.Y., New York, and your   neighborhood weekly.

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Admission:

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Exhibits and readings, usually free; productions, usually about $10-15  (advance reservations may be necessary)

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Comments:

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These are good for an occasional nosh-and-slosh, but if you find yourself  depending on them for regular nutrition, you’ve got a problem. Be aware that at some point in the evening, you may be called upon to shore up the  ego of the artist/playwright/performers whose work is on display, so come  prepared with a line or two of vaguely complimentary b.s. (see sidebar)

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Mid-level

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Examples:

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Panel discussions/seminars, alumni or professional association gatherings

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Food:

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Buffet featuring crudités, cutesy mini-sandwiches on baguettes, hummus & babaganoush with pita or French bread, cheese & crackers (see above), occasional hot items (e.g. buffalo wings)

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Drink:

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Mainstream domestic and imported beers (don’t expect any fruit-flavored or microbrewery products); red & white wine (no more than two varieties of each); Coke/Pepsi/Sprite (regular & diet); Perrier

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To Find:

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Ads in special-interest magazines; word of mouth; postings in your office, neighborhood laundromat, the Web; your neighbor’s discarded junk mail

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Admission:

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Free to members of sponsoring group

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For “association” events, that’s the rub – it generally helps to have attended the school or be in the profession in question.  The next best thing is to be involved with someone who is, or claim as much (“I was supposed to meet my date here.  Can I just stick my head inside for a minute and…”).  As for discussions/seminars, you may have to join the sponsoring organization for an annual fee of $25-$45 (not a bad deal – there will be a number of receptions in the course of the year, so you’ll earn back your “investment” several times over)

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High End

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Examples:

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Awards ceremonies; other “annual events”

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Food:

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Same as B) plus trays of hors d’oeuvres carried by circulating waiters; mixed nuts at bar; small baked desserts (cookies, brownies)

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Drink:

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Same as B) plus any traditional mixed drinks (a Kamikaze or Sex on the Beach is probably unavailable)

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To Find:

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Same as B), or have a connection, direct or otherwise (say, friend or relative of your ex, providing the breakup was amicable), on the inside

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Admission:

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Generally same as B)

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Once inside, there are a few simple rules of behavior to keep in mind for a successful evening:

1)         Watch your mouth.  You may have to make conversation at some point; and your reason for showing up – are you there to find career opportunities, meet that Special Someone, or just stuff your face? – will help determine what you say.  The occasional vague-but-convincing response (see sidebar) can help you avoid serious embarrassment.

2)         Be discreet.  Even if you haven’t eaten since that pathetic little croissant you had for breakfast, try not to show it – don’t blitz the waiters, don’t attack the buffet table like the fat relatives at your cousin’s wedding.  And while it’s okay to take a few goodies with you for later consumption, be subtle. (Wrapping some hors d’oeuvres in a napkin and slipping it into your purse or gym bag is okay.  Stuffing beer cans into your pants is not.)

3)         Sign that list.  If you forget everything else I’ve told you, remember this.  Getting on an organization’s mailing list is the key to future invites from that group… and others, because they tend to exchange lists (think junk mail).

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A final word:  if you ever get invited to a really important reception (as in, “For only $1,000, you’ll get the chance to meet Sen. D’Amato in person”), be advised that most of what I’ve told you here does not apply.  But then, if you were in that league, you wouldn’t be reading this.

— Phil Berroll

Sidebar:

Block That Gaffe!

It’s not uncommon for novice reception-crashers to feel more than a bit insecure, even paranoid.  After all, you know you don’t really belong; how long will it take for everyone else to find out?  Not to worry, however.  Depending on the situation, any or all of the epigrams below will discourage prying by your fellow guests, and help you avoid the embarrassing  faux pas.  (They’ll also enable you to recognize fellow crashers when they use these or similar lines.  What you do with that knowledge is entirely up to you.)

“I’m not comfortable making a judgment.  I work in a completely different style.”

“My wife (husband, boy/girlfriend) couldn’t make it.  She gave me her invitation.”

“We have a chapter in San Francisco.  Nothing like this, though.”

“Interesting use of color.”

“I honestly don’t remember.  I’m on so many lists, I lose track.”

“I’m not sure I agree with everything that was said, but there were a lot of interesting points… what do you think?”

“I’m with the Passaic County Courier … that’s okay, you wouldn’t unless you live in Passaic (laugh).”

“(Name) said it was okay.  You know – heavyset woman with glasses?  Frizzy hair?”

“Sorry… my English not so good.”

Originally published in  New York Values magazine, 1996.

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By P.H.I.Berroll

Gabrielle Glaser can identify with Madeline Albright.  Like the Secretary of State, Glaser, a freelance journalist, grew up believing that she was a Christian – in her case, a German Lutheran, like most of her neighbors in rural Oregon – before learning otherwise. While visiting Poland in 1984, Glaser found out that she was actually descended from Jews who had emigrated from that country a century earlier.

Unlike Albright, Glaser chose to return to Judaism, and formally converted.  One factor in her decision was her marriage to New York Times correspondent Steven Engelberg, the son of Holocaust survivors.  “When we had our first child, we had to make a decision,” she says.  “I didn’t want to my kids to be confused.”  Yet she found that her in-laws still had trouble accepting her as a member of their faith — they seemed to feel that “I wasn’t Jewish enough.”

Glaser began to wonder if there were other American couples who had experienced similar problems.  Her curiosity has resulted in a new book, Strangers to the Tribe:  Portraits of Interfaith Marriage (Houghton Mifflin), in which she profiles 11 interfaith couples and the challenges that they face in our multicultural – but still predominantly non-Jewish – society.

On Friday, November 17, Glaser discussed her book in an appearance at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Bayside’s Bay Terrace shopping mall.  Her talk was part of a weeklong program, Interfaith Week, sponsored by the Samuel Field YMHA of Little Neck. The Field YMHA had conceived Interfaith Week as a means of publicizing a new project, Interfaith Network, which it had developed with a grant from the Mazer Foundation (the grant was arranged through UJA-Federation).  This program includes monthly meetings for interfaith couples, a support group for their parents and grandparents, and a telephone “warmline” providing confidential responses to interfaith-related questions.

“We decided that what we needed was a way of getting the information out to the public that we were here and we were available,” says program coordinator Lynn Levy.  In addition to Glaser, the week’s speakers included Lynne Wolfe, director of the interfaith-outreach program at MetroWest, a Jewish community center in New Jersey.  “Lynne has really been a forerunner in interfaith outreach,” says Levy.  “She’s worked very closely with Dr. Egon Mayer of Jewish Outreach Institute (JOY) in Manhattan, who is one of the great spokesmen for outreach in the Jewish community today.”

Glaser told the Barnes & Noble audience that she hopes her book “will give people who feel lonely or isolated in the intermarriage experience something to think about.  It will give them models for how other people do it, how other people feel.” And she has tried to do this, she said, while maintaining a tone of objectivity, in contrast to what she calls the “judgmental” tone of previous books on the subject.

Some of Glaser’s subjects – ranging in age from 20s to 70s – are certain to raise eyebrows.

Take, for example, the Schandler-Wong family of Hawaii.  “The mother is from an Orthodox Jewish home in North Carolina,” said Glaser.  “She worked for United Airlines, and wound up meeting a very nice Chinese man from Honolulu.  He ultimately decided to convert, and they raised two kids in Honolulu named Ari & Sha’aloni Wong.  They have a drawer for kosher chopsticks.”

Such situations may sound amusing, but in truth, according to Glaser, intermarriage can often be a minefield of pain and confusion.  Especially tough, she said, are holidays and “life-cycle” events, which “may trigger heartfelt feelings about identity, and who we are, and how is this child going to be raised – what does it mean to me if I’m a Jew and I baptize my child?  What does it mean to me if I’m a Catholic and this child isn’t baptized?  What does it mean for the child in the future?”

Levy, who made a few remarks following Glaser’s talk, agreed that what she calls “the December dilemma” is a major issue for interfaith couples:  “The Christmas tree is often the center of a highly charged drama — particularly for a family which identifies itself as Jewish, except for this two or three weeks of the year when they put the tree in the window. This year it will be particularly rough, because (Christmas and Hanukkah) coincide on the calendar.  There’s no way of keeping them separate and distinct.”

Some families, said Glaser, try to split the difference, especially regarding their children.  She cited the case of a Catholic-Jewish couple whose first child was baptized at the insistence of the wife’s mother.  “The father (felt) he was railroaded into this decision.  And they decided at that moment that the next child would be Jewish.  So now they have a 12-year-old girl who’s Catholic, and an 8- or 9- year-old boy who’s Jewish.  And that’s unusual, I would say.  But it’s not something I would recommend.”

Nor does she advise intermarrieds to bring up their children with no religious identification.  When a woman in the audience asked about a niece who was raised in an interfaith marriage, without any religious education, “Will she wonder who she is?” Glaser responded, “I’m sure she will.  Studies show that children raised in this way wind up as agnostics, with no steady faith, with no strong, clear identity.  Is that a nightmare? No – I think in part, that’s America.  Everybody has a little bit of this, a little bit of that.  But for Jewish people, I think it’s something of a sad outcome.”

But perhaps the saddest people in these situations, the ones with the greatest sense of heartbreak and injury, are the couples’ parents.  Glaser has met a number of them.

“They feel wronged, and very, very hurt,” she said. “It’s your sense of identity, of your spiritual legacy being passed on.  ‘How could my children do this to me?’ ‘How could they have not known this was important to me?’ It’s very sad and very painful for everybody involved, especially those who feel that they’re the losers in the paradigm.  If your grandchildren don’t end up as you had envisioned, it’s very, very difficult.  And not everybody is always on their best behavior.

“The best way I found for people to work through these issues,” Glaser continued, “is the ordinary old hard way of talking, and confronting them head on at the very beginning of the relationship.  I think the worst thing was when people didn’t talk about them, when they just decided that somehow fate would help them decide, or the children would decide later, and they didn’t talk to their parents, they didn’t address the issues.”

Her sentiments were echoed by Levy, who told the audience that this was the purpose of the Field YMHA’s outreach program. “It’s very possible to create and maintain a good environment and healthy relationships,” she said.  “And we’re going to explore, in these groups, different avenues and ways of doing that. Because the reality is that we are experiencing a 52% rate of intermarriage in Jewish life, and it’s a reality that’s not apt to go away.  We have to deal with the reality of those numbers.”

Still, the good news, according to Glaser, is that surveys indicate that more than half of those 52% are couples raising their children as Jews.  Indeed, both women insisted, the conventional wisdom that intermarriage is a kind of conversion-by-default for the Jewish partner is not true.  Quite the contrary, said Levy: “Once [gentile partners] have become interested in learning about Judaism,” she asserted, “they are leaning towards Judaism – I can’t say for sure about conversions, but certainly in terms of rearing children and having a single-religion home, which is, I would say, the first step toward conversion.”

Interestingly, according to Levy, a gentile wife is often more likely to push for a Jewish home than her born-Jewish husband. “Very often a husband has taken a middle-of-the-road stance – he’ll refuse to have a Christian home, but won’t really be the force behind a Jewish home,” she said. “But once the non-Jewish wife becomes interested in Judaism, she is really in a position to make that a reality for the family. I think this might be because even in today’s society, the woman structures the home.  She’s there more with the children; she’s the one who introduces religion into the home, and certain rituals.”

This was certainly true for Glaser. “My husband, like many Jews his age, basically had no Jewish experiences between his bar mitzvah and his wedding,” she told her audience, “aside from Passover and Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I wanted our children to be raised as Jews in much stronger terms – ‘We are going to light Shabbat candles every Friday night. We’re going to synagogue every weekend.’

“My husband,” she said with a laugh, “sometimes raises up his hands and says, ‘How did this happen?  Who is this person?’”

Originally published in Jewish Week weekly newspaper, 1997.

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By P.H.I.Berroll

The relatives of several American victims of terrorism have tried to achieve some degree of closure by suing foreign governments, such as Iran, which sponsor terrorist groups. A number of plaintiffs have been successful, winning large court judgments.

But in a cruel irony, they have been prevented from receiving any of the money – by their own government.

The latest such case involves the families of Sarah Duker and Matthew Eisenfeld, the Americans killed in a Jerusalem bus bombing in February 1996. Because the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, the families sued the Iranian government for damages. On July 11 of this year, the U.S. District Court in Manhattan ruled in their favor, ordering Iran to pay them more than $300 million.

But when – if ever – they will receive the money is still uncertain.

The problem goes back to a sweeping law passed by U.S. legislators in the wake of the Jerusalem bombing and other acts of terrorism that claimed American victims. In April 1996, Congress enacted the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, designed to combat terrorism against Americans at home and overseas. One of its provisions gave plaintiffs the right to sue, in American courts, foreign nations named by the U.S. government as sponsors of terrorism – countries whom the State Department had previously branded “rogue nations,” but now describes with the more benign-sounding term “states of concern.” (In addition to Iran, the current list includes Cuba, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria.)

Then, in 1998, Congress passed a related measure calling for the U.S. State and Treasury Departments to assist terrorism-suit plaintiffs in recovering the money awarded them in court. There was just one catch: the President had the right to waive such assistance in the interests of national security.

Since then, the Clinton Administration has invoked the waiver in several high-profile cases. The family of college student Alisa Flatow – killed in a bus bombing by the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad on the Gaza Strip in April 1995 – went to court against the Islamic republic, and was awarded $247.5 million in March 1998. They have yet to see any of the money; the Administration has gone to court to block the family from collecting. And they have taken similar action in the Duker-Eisenfeld case.

According to Washington, DC attorney Steven Perlis, who represents the Duker, Eisenfeld and Flatow families, the award money is supposed to come from Iranian assets currently held by the U.S. government. These amount to “somewhere between $406 million and $1.5 billion” in cash, he says, and “probably another $25-30 million in real estate.

Mr. Perlis says that after he “moved to attach those assets,” the Administration claimed that “because this property is in the custodial control of the United States, it is not attachable unless the government of the United States waives its governmental immunity to attachment. They could have made the assets available – all they had to do was say, ‘We are immune, but we waive our immunity.’ They declined.”

Mr. Perlis notes that he was not told of the specific reasons for the Administration’s position – “All they have to do is assert their immunity,” he says; “they are not required to give an explanation” – and feels it would be “inappropriate” to speculate.

But some foreign policy experts have argued on national-security grounds that going after Iranian assets could be counterproductive. Harvard Law School professor Anne-Marie Slaughter and journalist David Bosco support this view in a recent article, “Plaintiff’s Diplomacy,” in the journal Foreign Affairs, generally known as the “Bible” of the foreign policy establishment.

Slaughter and Bosco write that suing Iran and other terrorism-sponsoring nations exposes the U.S. to retaliation against its own assets overseas; politicizes the courts, “mak[ing] American tribunals instruments of particular foreign policies;” and could make the target governments “defensive” while “discouraging dialogue, engagement, political reform, and integration… into international legal and financial regimes.”  The writers suggest an alternative: that the government set up a fund to compensate victims of terrorism, then negotiate “at the appropriate time” for terrorist-sponsor governments to make payments into the fund.

Mr. Perlis, however, is pursuing a more direct approach, on several fronts. He continues to negotiate with the Administration in the hopes of resolving the matter. But he is also working in support of legislation – the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, co-sponsored by retiring Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Connie Mack (R-FL) –that would allow the families to collect at least some of the damages awarded them in the courts.

Mr. Perlis is well-connected on Capitol Hill – he worked as a counsel to the Senate for six and a half years – and very determined.

“We’ll simply continue,” he says, “and eventually we’ll win.”

Originally written for Forward weekly newspaper, 2000.

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By P.H.I.Berroll

For most of her life, Susan B., now 51, has struggled with eating disorders of one kind or another.  As a child, she was a compulsive overeater; as a “size 16” teenager, she was taken by her mother to a doctor who prescribed diet pills. She spent most of the next decade on a dietary roller coaster – “I’d go up and down 20 to 25 pounds,” she says – but didn’t think she was abnormal until, at 28, she was diagnosed with hypoglycemia and told to cut sugar out of her diet.  She tried, but the “withdrawal” drove her into bulimia, the disorder whose victims compulsively purge their bodies of recently eaten food, usually by vomiting. Though she repeatedly underwent therapy and hospitalization, this condition plagued her for years.

By 1995, says Susan, “I knew I was going to die” from a heart attack, a common occurrence among bulimics – “They’d find me over a toilet bowl.”  But her daughter, herself a former bulimic, convinced her to again enter therapy, as well as a 12-step program.  (Because the program requests anonymity from its participants, Susan does not publicly reveal her last name.)  After another two years of struggle, she believes – or hopes – that she is finally on the right track:  “I’ve maintained my weight for nine months.”

Susan’s story was part of a seminar, “Eating Disorders: The Mirror Has Two Faces,” held this past Sunday at the Yeshiva of Flatbush elementary school auditorium. (The seminar was the third in a series organized by the Yeshiva’s ladies auxiliary; earlier programs had dealt with stress management and the problems of the “sandwich generation” in caring for elderly parents.)  A group of about 60 people, almost all of them women, came to hear a panel of speakers discuss the topics of  nutrition, dieting and body appearance, and how unhealthy attitudes in those areas can cause devastation to women’s lives — as they did to Susan’s.

The statistics in this area are disturbing – and they go beyond the more extreme disorders, such as bulimia and anorexia (self-starvation).

“Fifty percent of nine-year-old and 80% of ten-year-old girls in the U.S. have dieted,” said auxiliary vice-chair Flora Bienstock, the panel’s moderator.  “We must not allow these trends to continue.”

One of the panelists, Amy Wysoker, a psychiatric nurse who teaches at Long Island University, cited studies showing that “95% of people in diet programs such as Weight Watchers are women” and that “99% of the people who lose weight put it back on within two years.”

Wysoker emphasized the societal pressures on young women to lose weight at all costs that often contribute to their problems.  “Every time our children pick up a magazine, they see all these pictures of thin women,” she said.  “You pick up The New York Times and there’s the fashion section… We need to start getting to children when they’re very young.”  She asserted that “it will take a grass-roots effort to counteract these media images.”

Another panelist, social worker Ilene Fishman, founder of The Eating Disorders Center of Montclair (NJ), agreed with Wysoker that parents have to help their children develop a healthy self-image:  “What do you teach them about their own value and worth?  Is it based on achievement, or based on appearance?” She added that it was important for women of all ages to come to terms with their own appearance, to avoid perfectionist attitudes.  (“I’ll always have fatter arms than I’d like,” she joked.)

While Wysoker and Fishman spoke mainly about obsessive weight loss, panelist Rick Shields, a psychologist and nutritionist, emphasized the other end of the spectrum:  overeating, a particular problem in this country because of the unhealthy nature of the common American diet.

“Today,” he said, “the average American consumes about 130 pounds of sugar a year” – up more than 400 percent since the days of the early colonists – “and the equivalent of a stick of butter a  day” in unhealthy oils and fats.  Shields also noted that as much as 90 percent of the nation’s food supply has been processed and refined, thus removing many essential nutrients.

Like many American nutritionists, Shields spoke highly of the traditional low-fat-and-sugar Japanese diet, which emphasizes fish, vegetables and brown rice, and recommended something similar for his audience.

“Since I’ve been talking,” he said, “over one million red blood cells have died in each of our bodies.  The danish you had for breakfast won’t replace them.”

Shields flavored his presentation with several quotations from Rambam (Maimonides), whom he called “the first holistic physician” because “he understood the mind-body connection” and the importance of a healthy lifestyle.

“Rambam says, ‘Overeating is like poison to the body,’ even good foods,” said Shields.  “He says you should leave the table before you’re full.”

In the question-and-answer session which followed, some audience members wondered whether Shields, with his condemnation of certain foods, was contradicting the other panelists, who had spoken of getting away from the idea of “bad” foods (and of women thinking themselves “bad” for eating them).  Shields replied that he hadn’t meant to suggest there was no place for higher-fat and -sugar foods, just not on a regular basis – “I’m more concerned with (their) abuse and overindulgence.”

And Wysoker made it clear that she was not condoning overeating or obesity.  But the problem, she asserted, was that many women distort the concept of healthy weight loss, wanting to shed additional pounds for cosmetic rather than health reasons.  “They need to lose 10 to 15 pounds,” she said, “but they’ll try to lose 60.”

Most of the questioners were clearly worried about their own children – what, they wondered, could they do to have a positive influence? Fishman reiterated that it was important to set a good example: “If (children) see Mommy obsessing about her weight,” she said, “they’ll be affected.”

Shields added, “If parents know the harm they’re causing by putting bad habits in place at an early age, they’d try to change… It’s not that people don’t care, it’s that they don’t know.”

Bienstock, like the other women in attendance, was clearly impressed by what she had heard.  But she also spoke of the ongoing need to deal with these problems – which, she asserted, could be seen outside the walls of the Yeshiva any day of the week.  “We promoted [this program] within the local community,” she said, “and even the neighborhood pizza man thought it was a good idea.  He said teenage girls who come in to his place are constantly talking about their weight.”

As for Susan, her struggle goes on.

“I have to admit that I still want to lose more weight.  It’s always there,” she says.  “But I’m very grateful that I’m taking care of myself … and that there is help for everyone out there if you really, really want it.”

Originally published in Jewish Week weekly newspaper, 1997.

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Pierre Lehu is a polite, low-key fellow — not someone you’d expect to be giving advice about, say, the erotic use of onion rings.

But he does. The 48-year-old Bay Ridge resident is all-around “minister of communications” for the mother of pop sexology, Dr. Ruth Westheimer – on whose latest book, Dr. Ruth Talks About Grandparents (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), Lehu is listed as co-author. “It was her idea,” he says. “I didn’t twist her arm.”

Their relationship began in 1981, when Lehu’s p.r. firm took on Westheimer as a client. “She had a 15-minute, Sunday night radio show,” Lehu recalls. “I said, ‘Send her to me – I can get p.r. for a sex therapist!’” (He’d already represented a surgeon who “redesigned women’s genitalia.”)

As Westheimer’s career took off, Lehu’s duties expanded to include working on her newspaper column – finding “the best (letters) for her to answer,” he explains. “Then I’d pull everything together as a column — give titles to the letters, like that.”

Lehu performed similar work on two of her books, Dr. Ruth’s Encyclopedia of Sex and Sex for Dummies, but didn’t get co-author credit until the current project, which he describes as “sort of a how-to manual for children, on how best to (relate to) grandparents.”

Lehu, whose wife, attorney Joanne Seminara, ran unsuccessfully for City Council last year (they have two children), also continues to work on the column — dealing with relationship issues and what he calls “plumbing questions.”

“There are four basic problems,” he says, sounding rather blasé. “Men with premature ejaculation; women who can’t have orgasms; couples where the husband wants more than the wife; and where the wife wants more than the husband.”

But occasionally he gets something more exotic, like the onion rings bit (during foreplay, the man’s partner tosses the rings onto his, er, target). “That was a real story that Ruth got on the radio. She repeated it on ‘Letterman,’ and it cracked everybody up. I think they even brought in some onion rings from this little coffee shop at 30 Rock… Onion rings became the ‘theme’ of the show.”

– Philip Berroll

Originally published in Brooklyn Bridge magazine, 1993.

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