Violent demonstrations. Segregated buses. Nazi effigies. Degrading headlines. The chareidim definitely

have an image problem. How to respond when asked how a person can call himself

religious and spit on another person? How 21st century women can tolerate gender

separation? Or how Nazi imagery can be invoked against other Jews? A panel of media experts gives advice for

damage control and how to spin the news so that the religious/chareidi community

doesn’t come out looking like a cadre of backward fanatics

MAKE OUR

BY Binyamin Rose and Rachel GinsbergPhotos Yinon Fuchsillustrations Avishai Chen

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38 M ISH PACHA

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23 Teves 5772 | January 18, 2012 M ISH PACHA 39

air lapid announces his candidacy for the Knesset in a new party whose goal is to end the status quo, meaning on shabbos buses can run and all places of business and entertainment can be open, there are no more restrictions on imports of nonkosher food, and the chief rabbinate’s control over marriage is abolished. in response, a few days later, the major cities are plastered with posters depicting lapid in a

nazi uniform, with text saying “he’ll make this country Judenrein.” it’s the work of a fringe group of chareidim. how should the mainstream chareidim respond, if at all?

ISSAMAR GINZBERG: This reminds me of the tension between Neturei Karta, which is really a small fringe group, and Satmar, which has thousands of supporters. Neturei Karta goes out there with their campaign claiming they have 10,000 people behind them, when Satmar isn’t with them and doesn’t want to be dragged into it. A close Satmar friend of mine recently told me, “We suffer from Neturei Karta every single day. They claim to represent us, but we don’t go out and criticize them because that would be seen as sup-porting the medinah, which we don’t.”

So in our scenario, we chareidim have to respond, but in a very careful way. We have to be clear and state: “It’s true that Holocaust imagery is abhorrent to us, but the real story here is not about wearing the yellow star.” Our goal is to change the trajectory of the conversation. Yes, we condemn, but let’s not get misled by the side issues. We need to talk about the real issue. The real story is about the future of the state, where the very basics of Judaism, like mar-riage and kashrus, need to be preserved.

So our strategy has to be this: not to get bogged down by the mar-ginal abhorrent behavior, but to immediately refocus and get into the real issue in order to make a better future.CHARLEY LEVINE: Issamar, I respectfully disagree with that ap-proach. I’ll give an analogy that I admit is spurious and guaranteed

DaviD NorDelloriginally from Great Britain, David is CEo and

founder of new Global Markets and is a member of the Gerson lehrman Group, a privately held international consulting firm that provides sector-specific expertise on global trends to clients including investment banks, private equity funds, investment management groups, and industrial corporations. Formerly a leading jour-nalist at several israeli and international publications including the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and aP, he cur-rently specializes in economic and business communi-cations. he developed israel’s international economic image campaign at the israel Export institute and was the first advisor on the internet and information infra-structure policy at the Ministry of science.

Charley leviNeCharley levine is founder and CEo of lone star

Communications, a public affairs and media relations consultancy based in Jerusalem. From 1997 until 2006 he was CEo of ruder Finn israel, and before that he created and ran Charles levine Communications, one of israel’s largest Pr agencies with an international po-litical and corporate client base. Born in san antonio, texas, Charley made aliyah in 1978, becoming a media advisor to an eclectic list of political leaders in israel and the us, from both the right and left of the political spectrum. in his personal life he is modern orthodox, yet his professional clients range from shimon Peres, to Binyamin netanyahu, hillary Clinton, Mike hucka-bee, and even Ed Koch and arnold schwarzenegger. he has served corporate clients ranging from Bank of america to harley Davidson. he lives with his wife, shelly, in Maaleh adumim.

rabbi issamar GiNzberGrabbi issamar Ginzberg, a strategist and marketing

advisor, is a Brooklyn-born chassid who commutes between Jerusalem and new York for his diversified, international client base. he’s “the business guru in the long black coat” whose clients include companies and entrepreneurs of all faiths, cultures, and mindsets. he has also served as a strategist and marketing advisor for best-selling authors and speakers, and specializes in developing business, marketing, and public relations strategies and appropriate action plans for businesses and individuals looking to achieve business growth or other relevant objectives. in 2005, he was named one of inc.com’s 10 entrepreneurs of the year. rabbi Ginzberg, hailing from a line of chassidic rebbes, is also a certified mohel and spends his mornings learning at ohr somayach’s ohr lagolah kollel.

to rankle people — but let’s say every time an Islamic extremist commits a terror attack, the vast major-ity of professed peace-loving moderates are vilified, lumped in with the extremists. And yet, their ultimate response is, “Why are we being attacked? We’re good, democratic citizens.” But you know what? It could have been stopped at the source, within one hour of the at-tack, if a mainstream Muslim leader or organization had condemned the attack — which they very rarely do. Sooner or later they eventually get around to it, but they don’t come out frontally and forcefully at the be-ginning, when it counts. So they deserve that reaction, because they have bad public relations sense and they aren’t doing what they should be doing.

Now, what does that have to do with us? I’d like to say nothing, but to a certain extent the analogy applies to us as well. Yair Lapid might not be my cup of tea either, but let’s say he decides to enter political life and is look-ing for support, when Nazi images have been evoked to delegitimize him. Now, no amount of saying “of course it’s bad to do that, but you have to understand what the real story is here” is going to work.

I’m arguing on the level of effectiveness. The vast majority of chareidim and non-chareidim think Nazi imagery is a bad thing, a nasty thing to do. So the im-mediate response should be one-sided, forceful, and clear. “This is wrong.”

So if I were counseling a segment of the commu-nity on how to overcome the dark side of this, I would say, quickly, immediately, and effectively condemn the use of that particular messaging in this particu-lar context.

And after that, I agree with Issamar in terms of ul-timate goals and directions to pursue, but as a com-munications professional, the first thing is to organize rabbis and community leaders to condemn it, not to come from behind but to lead, and in so doing you will already have won half the long-range battle by showing people that you’re not who they think you are.ISSAMAR: Charley, I agree that if we’re talking about a product recall from a manufacturer, the CEO can get up and apologize and then talk about working on a long-term goal. But in a case like this, where the international media has pictures of everything and the response has to be instant and all-contained — no one is going to listen to what you have to say later, and the longer you wait the worse off you are. So when you come out immediately and you only condemn it, then it looks like you’re siding with the “enemy.” In my work, I deal with frum, secular, Jewish, and gentile, and today the first thing they say to me is, “Hi, what do you say about Beit Shemesh?” If all I do is condemn it, I’m in big trouble.

I was actually offered to be on CNN about seg-regated buses, but I declined. I knew there was no way I’d walk out of there making a Kiddush Hashem.

CASE #1an Francisco Vote to Ban Bris Milah.” “Hol-land Passes Anti-Shechitah Law.” “Chareidim Arrested in Beit Shemesh for Violent Dem-onstration.”

This is just a small sampling of the headlines that have attracted an unprecedented level of international media coverage.

The locales, and each continent in which the stories originated, are disparate in culture and thousands of miles apart geographically. But the common denominator is that they all either represent attacks on time-honored Jewish customs and mores, or stem from fundamental misunderstandings of cultural differences.

Just as crucially, they also present major challenges to those who find themselves on the front lines of public relations efforts on behalf of religious interests.

While the public relations and imaging campaigns are generally the responsibility of major organizations that represent the Jewish People, in this day and age, we are all on the PR front lines. Any man with a kippah and a beard, or woman with a modest outfit and a head covering, can find themselves confronted with difficult questions and a microphone pushed in their face. The way they answer can either be of great help, or cause immense harm.

How do we answer someone who asks us how a person can call him-self religious and spit on another person? What is the most effective answer when someone asks us how, if Judaism is a religion of mercy, we can conscionably cut the necks of little lambs to devour their flesh? How do we respond when someone asks us why a religious person will resort to the evil imagery of the diabolical Nazis in order to present himself as a victim of discrimination?

To try to gain some clarity, Mishpacha assembled a carefully selected roundtable of media experts who come with a broad base of interna-tional experience.

To sharpen the lines of the debate, the editorial board devised three scenarios — all dramatized — but all bordering on real-world events that have been played out gleefully in a media on the lookout for sen-sationalism and divisiveness.

Our scenarios, although perhaps exaggerated, reflect explosive situ-ations where, as we have all seen recently, something went wrong that allowed for exaggerations and befuddlement of issues. In our scenarios, we want to figure out how to effect damage control, how to spin them so that the religious/chareidi community doesn’t come out looking like a bunch of medieval fanatics.

Each participant was asked to create ideas for the publicity cam-paign he would propose on behalf of the embattled parties in a public dispute.

To make the panel more interesting, we have included representa-tives from the chareidi, modern Orthodox, and secular worlds.

“Remember,” we told our panelists, “we are hiring you for strat-egy. We’re not voting for you to be our councilman. So you can take your worldview into the picture if you want, but for now, we’re your client.”

Readers may agree or disagree with some of what was said, and some of it might make us chafe uncomfortably at the neck, or even make us angry. What strategy would you choose?

our PAnel

Continued on page 42

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40 M ISH PACHA 23 Teves 5772 | January 18, 2012 M ISH PACHA 41

Because the average viewer is going to see a modern-dressed guy next to someone who looks like he came out of an Isaac Bashevis Singer novel, and I would never be able to explain it in the sound bite they’d give me. If I did a good job, they would never air it, and if I sounded dumb, they’d play it over and over.DAVID: I actually liked Charlie’s analogy, because I’ve spent a lot of time in London where there is a large, extreme, and vocal Muslim population. The problem the mod-erate Muslims face is that most of them are afraid of their own extremists — they’re afraid of physical violence, afraid of being pushed out of the community.

This is basically the same problem the chareidi community faces in dealing with its extremists. The zealots seem to be “more holy,” “closer to the source,” so we can’t crit-icize them because they are “better” than us. The mainstream chareidi community has to learn to break away from this and re-act with a greater degree of moral courage, both toward its own extremists and also toward the rest of the community.

If I were a mainstream chareidi leader with sufficient authority in the community, I would first of all make a public statement in all the media, saying we completely con-demn this because to compare any Jew to a Nazi is completely unacceptable. Because

even if we don’t like Yair Lapid’s politics, his grandparents were killed by the Nazis.

I would go to Yair Lapid and apologize, and then I would say, “Look, we disagree with you on all the substantive issues of Shabbat, kashrut, marriage, etc., but we have to speak to each other in a civilized way because we are all part of the same country and the same people. Let’s cre-ate some dialogue, let’s use this as an op-portunity not to force halachah on the population, but to present it as something people will want, something that will add goodness to their lives, because it is an es-sential part of our culture, identity, and his-tory — and not because we have X number of Knesset seats.”

We should use this as an opportunity instead of considering it a threat.

It would also put Yair Lapid off balance, as he would have to respond appropriately. He must respond to the moral argument that the State of Israel has to define its Jewish-ness. And if the chareidi community takes the initiative, rather than remains reactive, it will score a lot of points.

MISHPACHA: Aren’t the mainstream chareidi leaders in a trap? If they dis-sociate from the “extremists,” they are publicly making a wedge and feeding discord within their own community,

saying, “We’re not a united front,” and that’s exactly what the secular media wants to hear. So it seems like a lose-lose situation.

DAVID: People do feel like they’re trapped when they won’t criticize their own extrem-ists for fear of causing disunity within their own camp.

But I think the chareidi leaders have to have more faith in the goodwill of the gen-eral population, more faith in their own strength, and have got to take a moral posi-tion of leadership and be able to say to the more extreme members of their own camp, “You are the ones responsible for splitting the camp, not us.”CHARLEY: This trap is an age-old prob-lem, a quandary of brinkmanship, but I would argue that one of the things Judaism holds dear is the “prophetic impulse.” What did the neviim do? When they saw a wrong, they spoke out, and they weren’t very popu-lar. But it’s part of who we are, even today. So covering up and giving into brinkman-ship is just wrong. We can understand why someone wouldn’t want his house burned down or his reputation besmirched, but it’s not the morally correct position to take. Silence implies consent. Are you going to give into bullying or not?

MISHPACHA: The media films this event, there are links to it all over the Internet, and the whole world is instantly talking about the Nazi uniform. So even if a response comes five minutes later, it still sounds de-fensive. It seems like we’re doomed, since we’re always reacting — meaning we’re al-ways apologizing.

CHARLEY: The idea that the first action has to necessarily win is just not true. We don’t always have the luxury of being the first one out of the block, but we can catch up. In a football game, when the first team gets the touchdown, you don’t say, “Okay, they have seven points, let’s pack up and go home.” Instead, you mount a defense and say, “Now let’s beat them.” DAVID: This is an instance where the chareidi community and its leaders should be looking for the opportunity to win respect, deflecting the disrespect that tends to categorize the secular majority toward them. Chareidim have to stop being afraid of the rest of the country. They should understand that they are not necessarily condemned to being the victims of other people’s dislike. It’s possible to win respect and consider-ation from other parts of the Jewish population here and in the Diaspora by breaking the mold, by willing to be self-critical, by being proactive, by looking for dialogue and closeness.

I will admit that in some cases this dialogue should be behind closed doors. The chareidi leader might call up Yair Lapid and say, “I’d like to talk to you privately, completely off the record. If you ever breathe a word of it we’ll deny it, but we need to find a way to work together. Other-wise we’re condemning the Jewish People to internal suffering and to looking bad in the eyes of the goyim.”ISSAMAR: Should we be self-critical? It’s a broader question because you have to understand how it works. Most chareidim in Eretz Yisrael don’t watch television, don’t have radios, their news resources are the phone news services and the frum newspapers. So it’s not that there is no discussion. It just takes place where the outside media doesn’t see it. There are many differences in outlooks and opinions under the very wide um-brella called “chareidi.” But when is the chareidi world exposed to outside viewers? Only when something really ugly or shocking happens and all cameras are focused on this aberration. So all you hear about the chareidi world are these huge problems. There’s no other news coming out.

CASE #2municipality decides to place a sports complex, with outdoor tennis courts and a pool, at the edge of chareidi area. some chareidim overnight erect a high cinder-block wall to block it from their view. it becomes a cause célè-bre. it’s ugly, against city zoning ordinance, and ordered to be taken down because it makes the neighborhood an eyesore (and blocks the mountain view from the swimmers). tzipi livni and shelly Yachimovich arrive to show their solidarity; the chareidim retaliate by chaining themselves to the wall, which the media dubs the “taliban Wall.”

Eventually all parties understand that they need to climb down from the tree. how do we help them?

DAVID: Speaking as your secular representative here, the problem secular Israelis have with chareidim is that the chareidim are always seen as imposing their values to restrict the freedom of movement, thought, and expression of the majority.

The politicians have to make the case that there are limits as to how far their lifestyle can be restricted. They can say, “We will endeavor a way to not offend you, but you can’t impose your standards on everyone else. You’re just going to have to put up with it. This is part of our lives. We’re open to proposals to square the circle. You come up with some-thing a little less offensive than this cinder-block wall so we can still see the mountains, we’ll try to come to a compromise. But we’re not going to give in and move just because there are people here who don’t like it.”CHARLEY: Before we tackle the problem, let’s analyze what’s going on with the two sides.

First, the politicians: They are showing up to make their point, and it’s a real problem, because they aren’t coming to solve the problem, and their goal is also not to communicate positively with the local residents. I think it’s realistic to say that their goal is speaking to voters instead of values. Their audience is not on the other side of the wall. It’s on the other side of the TV camera. And they’ll try to pick up support, gather strength for the next election or party primary by playing the anti-chareidi card.

Now, the chareidim: Their problem, in this case, is that they are really bad at symbolism — and walls are a bad symbol. Walls are division, isolation, and barriers, so this symbol being shown all over the world wasn’t very smart.

So, how do we get the politicians to back down? They aren’t listening to the chareidim — that’s not their constituency — but they will listen to people who vote for them, people who write them checks, reporters who write about them, etc. So somehow the message has to be gotten to them that it’s not a healthy situation to go around chareidi-bashing. There are many people in the country who may not be chareidi and may not even like chareidim, but they don’t want to attack chareidim. So those people have to communi-cate that message.

“I think it’s realistic to say that their goal is speaking to voters instead of values. Their audience is not on the other side of the wall. It’s on the other side of

the TV camera” —Charley Levine

Continued from page 39

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23 Teves 5772 | January 18, 2012 M ISH PACHA 43

For me, as a dyed-in-the-wool PR guy, I would attack the symbolism, to try to help the chareidim improve their position in the public arena.

I would say they should disassemble the wall and replace it — I know this sounds corny — with a barrier of flowers, something not as ugly, not as imbued with negative symbolism. You come one day and there is a wall of cinder blocks, you come the next day and it’s a wall of flowers. Then viewers would no longer say, “These are bad people building barriers,” but “These are people hurt by something and they’re trying to remedy it.”ISSAMAR: There is a Scottish entrepre-neur named Duncan Bannatyne who built an empire of spas and health clubs, and one of his less successful ventures was a health club he built on the shore of a lake. He ana-lyzed why it wasn’t doing as well as the oth-ers, and realized that usually people come from a five-mile radius — but when you build something on the water, you’ve eliminated your radius and half your potential custom-ers. So therefore, building a pool at the edge of the chareidi community is really a dis-service to those it’s intended for, because half their consumer base is cut. So this was ridiculous advance planning. Okay, so the pool is already here and probably not going away. Now what should we do? I would put a dome over the pool.

A dome is better than a wall. I’d try to get five chareidi wealthy gvirim to donate money for the construction of this dome and make it a positive PR spin. And in the future, there should be some sort of ordinance that within, say, a three-block radius of any neighborhood, there should be discussion of any structure built that might not be in the spirit of the neighborhood.DAVID: I think there is something

fundamentally wrong with making this no-man’s-land. We are all brothers, and we should learn to get along in close prox-imity. ISSAMAR: David, it’s pretty obvious that if you don’t do something, that side of the neigh-borhood will not be chareidi very much lon-ger. People will just leave the buildings facing the pool. They won’t be willing to remain in such an environment. This isn’t about poli-tics. It’s about principles and halachah.

MISHPACHA: We’re looking for a way to improve the chareidi position, a strategy that won’t make them look so reaction-ary. From a PR angle, is it advisable to explain the issue, which is, not that they don’t want contact, but that they don’t want to look at ervah? DAVID: I think the secular populace can also understand this. I think it is in the chareidi interest to say, “We aren’t supposed to be looking at all this. Whatever you want to do, fine, as long as it’s within your private terri-tory and we don’t need to be exposed to it.” That’s a perfectly reasonable position, and I think as a whole the secular community can accept that, as long as it’s not seen as an imposition on their freedom.

MISHPACHA: Will that position ever heard? The chareidim have been trying to explain this with the buses but the is-sues keep getting confused.

DAVID: I think it will, as long as the cha-reidim express their position in a much more subtle way, not from a position that “we are tzaddikim and you are reshaim with cor-rupt morals, and you need to do things our way.”

“The problem is that the press is looking for news, for sensation, and once the press is involved, it’s much harder for everyone to communicate what they really believe”

—Issamar Ginzberg

I think that the perception of the media as being intrinsically anti-religious or anti-chareidi is not correct. As someone who straddles be-tween secular and traditional, I don’t think the secular majority wants to hate chareidim. It wants to see them as brothers. It just doesn’t want to feel threatened.CHARLIE: In the PR battle, it’s about winning. You can lose in a blaze of glory, but if you want to win, and yet you say, “Our message isn’t get-ting through,” maybe the correct language isn’t being used. Almost any message can get through if you use the correct language.

As opposed to saying, “We’re right and you’re wrong,” as David said — which is a position no side should ever take if they want to win the PR battle and gain any kind of sympathy — instead use the symbols and language the other side relates to, such as “my sensitivities,” “my feelings,” “my rights” — as opposed to “why mixed swimming is bad,” or “why we shouldn’t be looking at unclad people.”

This position will always have a better chance. Use language and concepts that are user-friendly.ISSAMAR: Most of these battles actually have little to do with cha-reidi versus secular positions. Most of that is conducted on a munici-pal, low-key level. The problem is that the press is looking for news, for sensation, and once the press is involved, it’s much harder to get off the fence, much harder for everyone to communicate what they really be-lieve, because the media is looking for one thing: a story, a conflict. They aren’t interested in resolution. They aren’t looking to solve anything. They don’t want to hear, “Thank you so much for helping us accomplish something, now go away.”

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rassroots anti-shechitah forces begin nationwide demonstra-tions in the us outside of kosher shops such as Pomegranate, seven Mile Market, landau’s, and Meal Mart, with signs like “slaughterhouses are torture

chambers,” or “you’re eating the results of sin.” anti-shechitah legislation is not far behind. anti-shechitah groups post graphic videos of shechitah that go viral. Millions have viewed these bloody, graphic clips. What’s the ap-propriate response?

DAVID: Even though I’m secular, I keep kosher, and I know there are a lot of others like me. In this case we have to have com-plete unity between all parts of the Jewish People, to state unequivocally that kashrut is something fundamental to Jewish iden-tity. And it’s vital for all the Jewish leaders to come together and agree on this.

Regarding the actual substance of the is-sue, and all the anti-kashrut propaganda: We should be saying the entire concept of humane treatment of animals comes from the Torah, in their lives and in their deaths. For example, you must milk your cows on Shabbat so as not to cause them suffering, you must feed your animals before your-self, etc. We can come up with dozens of examples. The whole idea of shechting is to prevent unnecessary suffering to the animal. Our 3,000 year-old tradition, and today’s scientific knowledge, corroborate this.

In this case we have to marshal as much scientific evidence as possible, to show that the anti-shechitah forces are motivated by ideology as opposed to any real concern for the animals. We’ve got to get the message across that there is a great deal of hypocrisy involved — it’s got little to do with concern for animal welfare.

Furthermore, if you ban kosher shechitah,

you have to ban Muslim slaughter as well. Most Muslims in Western countries buy kosher meat. So we need to stress that this is not just a Jewish issue, but something that denies the rights of a big chunk of the wider community. CHARLEY: This is far from a theoretical case. Today there are half a dozen countries, maybe more, where shechitah is illegal. But David, I disagree with the approach. If the argument were, “Is kashrut a good thing or a bad thing,” I’d agree with every word you said. But this is a PR problem, and so we have to look at what will not work.

We cannot win this if our best argument is “humane slaughter.” The mass, unwashed public out there won’t be convinced that there is such a thing as “humane slaughter.” It’s a lost argument. You can never justify killing if your opponent is for life.

Now, even if we were to take the secondary approach, which I fully subscribe to — that

kashrut is a wonderful thing, a Divine thing — this is still a loser in the area of public opinion, because it’s weird, exotic, arcane. You never want to be in a position where you’re explaining 3,000 years of concepts, because you’ll have lost your audience in the first minute.

Also, you never want to build a case on self-interest. Self-interest, by definition, is too narrow. There aren’t too many Jews out there, and even less who care about kashrut.

What will work? The way to go is to stress the greater, broader good.

This is a clear case of where you have to build a coalition of like-minded people, com-munities, and organizations and you come out swinging. This way, you thump ’em on the head and send them off running. On my side, I want Christians, I want evangelicals, and I want Muslims and I want all of them saying: Faith is under assault, and we are not going to accept that.

Step two: Let’s forget those right-wing reactionaries, and go to the Democrats. Let’s talk about the Constitution. This is an essential constitutional guarantee. I have

the right to practice my religion the way it’s prescribed. This isn’t about how we kill animals, this is about how for thousands of years my people have been doing it. And if you tell me I can’t do it that way, then you are against the constitution. You’re against democracy.

A third approach: Talk about the Judeo-Christian tradition that we’ve given to the world. And here, you can get into the soft ar-guments — how kashrut is indeed humane — without using words like “slaughter,” which is intrinsically bloody. Talk about the divi-sion of the world into the profane and the divine, all that spiritual, sensitive stuff that appeals to another large audience.

And finally, you can go with the line that kosher is better. Many people have a gut belief that kosher is better, it’s cleaner, it’s worthier — they don’t even know what it is, but they know it’s better.

So in my campaign I want to be sur-rounded with all these people who share my beliefs, and then all of a sudden the few dozen protesters who are yelling “quit killing chickens!” are surrounded by thou-sands of people who are saying, “You guys

are nuts; we support the Constitution and we support freedom of religion, and your coterie of idiots are trying to stand in the face of that.”

Finally, even though I’m generally not a negative campaigner, I would encourage this message to get out as well: that these are not your simple well-intentioned nice folks. These are extremists. These are people who put the sanctity of a cow’s life higher than human life. You marginalize them, you vilify them, but mostly, you come out with your own positive values and beat this one back. It’s surely possible. ISSAMAR: There are really two groups here. There are the folks with the anti-shechitah agenda, and then there is the group I call the “Sheeple” (“sheep-people”). The agenda people will never come over to your side, but then there are the Sheeple, the vast majority who watch television, read the papers, and if they hear shechitah is bad, that’s where their opinions go. They’ll see a bloody video, a really gory scene, and they’ll say, “I’m with the other guys.” These are the ones you need to focus on.

I agree with Charlie 100 percent about

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KAJ Hashgocha

Dear Guest:

As you know, our Pesach program is a “Non-Gebrokts” program.

Consequently, guests are kindly requested to be careful that Matzo

should not come in contact with liquids. Furthermore, being that Egg

Matzo is not permissible on Pesach (except for the infirm on the advice

of a Rav), guests shall please be extra careful during the “Shabbos Erev

Pesach” meals to keep away the Egg Matzo –as much as possible- from

the Pesach dishes and utensils.

Thank you

KAJ Hashgocha

PESACH5772

APRIL 6 - 14 , 2012 | STAMFORD HILTON, CT

also featuring:Mrs. Tziporah HarrisClarity & Gateways Speaker

CASE #3

the multipronged appeal — go for freedom of religion, and then get the hunters and the National Rifle Association on your side. That’s huge. The NRA is very powerful, but they’re one step behind shechitah on the banning agenda.

I think it’s a mistake to focus the campaign on the idea that this is the most humane form of slaughter. The problem with it is that if tomorrow, someone invents a laser beam that painlessly kills cows with no blood, this is no longer the most humane slaughter, and your entire platform crumbles. Then you have to say, “Well, we do it anyway because it’s our religion.”

Now, we also have a responsibility not to feed the protesters with more fodder. So the awareness has to be made to the frum community to be prudent, careful, and considerate and not give the other side any excuses. Take kapparos, for example. You can retain the minhag of shlugging kapparos by having six chickens in a crate and keeping them hydrated. When you have 500 chick-ens smashed into a cage and a little kid is behind the desk collecting the money and then yanking out the chickens, this sends a message that Jews are not humane and abuse their animals.

MISHPACHA: How do you dispel those horror images that millions of viewers have been seeing? Nothing can coun-teract a visual image of an animal being strung up, slaughtered, writhing, the blood dripping down — like you said, a bloody mess.

CHARLEY: In this particular case, you don’t have to dispel the images, because here you have something very important going for you. Every animal that’s eaten has to get killed first, and a vast majority of people are carnivores — they eat meat — and they make a disconnect between those horrible pictures and their dinner steak. They say, “I know it’s not pretty, but it’s the price I pay for my hamburger.” If this were a minority thing and only Jews ate meat, we’d be in a different situation. But everyone eats meat. DAVID: It’s true. People have no problem pulling a fish out of a tank and bonking it on

the head to kill it, gut it, and grill it. And with meat, there may be an aesthetic issue, but nonkosher slaughter is just as unaesthetic. The problem we do have is that most people today don’t associate the food they eat as hav-ing come from an animal. Ask a kid in the US today if he knows where his milk comes from, and he says yes, the supermarket. No one drinks milk and thinks of a cow. ISSAMAR: Rubashkin was unlucky in that Agriprocessors was the first kosher slaughterhouse to face a YouTube genera-tion. I personally can’t watch such videos. Some people thrive on this stuff, they just go from one gory video to the next. It’s true that video is very powerful, but I don’t think a video going viral is as dangerous as it seems. The ones who will watch it are the people who love to watch those things anyway. The horror movie types. I don’t think it sways public opinion.

It’s interesting that in some fancy res-taurants there are fish tanks with live fish swimming around, and then they serve you fish. No place would serve you meat when right next to you they would slaughter the cow. Slaughter, kosher or not kosher, is a bloody business. If you’d sneak a video into a slaughterhouse, like they did with Rubash-kin, you really can’t tell which is the kosher animal and which is the treif one, except for the rabbi on the side with a plastic over his beard examining his knife.

MISHPACHA: The bottom line: Is it pos-sible for the religious/chareidi position to be strengthened in the media?

CHARLEY: To the extent that the chareidi community cares about strengthening its public relations position, they have to learn to play by the rules of the game. Yet they are at a disadvantage, because they are not your typical consumers of mass media.

But to ignore the media is to do so at their own risk. I’m not talking about frum media, but the media that 99 percent of society is paying attention to. In order to engage their position and to encourage others to support the principles and values they subscribe to, they need to play the media game. And that means having people within

the community who understand the rules and the techniques. It means media train-ing, and it means whether or not you have a television in your home, acknowledge that television and Internet news plays a role in the forming of opinions that very much concern you. Therefore, my sugges-tion is to figure it out, play the game, and play to win.

MISHPACHA: Is it possible to win, or are the cards stacked against us from the beginning? As Issamar said, he didn’t want to be interviewed on CNN because he knew he’d lose.

DAVID: I was a reporter for over 10 years, mostly for the foreign press. Every reporter is competing for space, so they’ve got to make everything look as juicy as possible. And this is an extremely important message for the chareidi world to understand. This is not all personal. The way chareidim are per-ceived and represented in the world media is not because they’re all anti-Semites, or because all of the reporters here have it in for the Jews and the chareidim. It’s because they’re looking for headlines.CHARLEY: My personal belief is that there is almost no hopeless case. Case in point: When Rabbi Ravitz z”l was first elected to the Knesset in 1988, all of a sudden, De-gel HaTorah plowed into the Knesset and everyone was talking about the “tide of Khomeini-ism sweeping Israel.” He said, “I must talk to these international press people who are calling me Khomeini.” So we organized a press conference for the international media soon after the elec-tions. Ravitz walks into the room, stern and serious-looking, and in front of 30 of the world’s top reporters, he sits down and eyes everyone, then finally says, “There is a saying that black is beautiful. I am beau-tiful.” He totally turned them around, go-ing on to explain his values and positions in a reasonable way. Did he win everyone over? No. But in answer to your question, that’s the approach to use. Human-level communication can win.

Saying “G-d is on our side, so why bother” never wins. —

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