A Passover Toast to a Rabbi Known for Social Activism, and for Kosher Coca-Cola

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

From: http://www.nytimes.com/

Published: April 22, 2011

Rabbi Tuvia Geffen, of blessed memory, was born in Lithuania in 1870 and educated in the renowned Slobodka yeshiva. In the wake of a pogrom, he immigrated to New York in 1903, and seven years later he moved to Atlanta to become the rabbi of Shearith Israel, a tiny and struggling Orthodox congregation meeting in the battered remnant of a Methodist church.

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Tuvia Geffen

During his early decades at Shearith Israel, Rabbi Geffen established Atlanta’s first Hebrew school and oversaw its ritual bath. He stood by Leo Frank, the Jewish man falsely accused of murdering a young Christian girl, and after Frank’s lynching in 1915, the rabbi urged his congregants not to flee the South in fear.

At Passover in 1925, he spoke eloquently and presciently against Congress for passing immigration restrictions that “have slammed shut the gates of the country before the wanderers, the strangers, and those who walk in darkness from place to place.” As early as 1933, he warned about the Nazi regime in Germany. Long before feminism, he advocated for Orthodox women who were being denied religious divorce decrees by vindictive husbands.

But all those achievements are not why we invoke the name and memory of Rabbi Geffen today, more than 40 years after his death. No, we come to honor his least likely yet most enduring contribution to the Jewish people and his adopted nation: kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola.

Yes, observant Jews of today, searching supermarket counters for those bottles with the telltale yellow cap bearing the Orthodox Union’s certification, and yes, Coke die-hards of any or no religion who seek out those same bottles for the throwback flavor of cane-sugar Coke, you owe it all to Rabbi Tuvia Geffen.

He of the long beard and wire-rim glasses and Yiddish-inflected English, a man by all outward appearances belonging to the Old World, he was the person who by geographical coincidence and unexpected perspicacity adapted Coca-Cola’s secret formula to make the iconic soft drink kosher in one version for Passover and in another for the rest of the year. To this day, his 1935 rabbinical ruling, known in Hebrew as a teshuva, remains the standard.

That ruling, in turn, did much more than solve a dietary problem. A generation after Frank’s lynching, a decade after Congress barred the Golden Door, amid the early stages of Hitler’s genocide, kosher Coke formed a powerful symbol of American Jewry’s place in the mainstream.

“Rabbi Geffen really got the importance of it,” said Marcie Cohen Ferris, a professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina, who specializes in Jewish life in the South. “You couldn’t live in any better place than the South to get it. To not drink Coca-Cola was certainly to be considered un-American.”

Or look at the interplay of Jews and America from another angle. Rabbi Geffen’s solution to the Coke problem was not to forget the kosher rules and melt into the melting pot. But neither was it to decry the spiritual pollution of modernity in the form of a fizzy drink. A half-century before the era of cultural pluralism, his answer was to have the majority address the distinct needs of a minority.

As a contemporary Orthodox rabbi, Adam Mintz, has written in an essay on Geffen and Coke: “Struggling to find their place in a land that was often hostile to their religion, American Jews respected and appreciated rabbis who sought to include them within the Orthodox camp rather than simply condemn them as sinners. Of course his approach would not have been possible had he not felt confident in his powers of persuasion.”

We can safely say, however, that this issue chose Rabbi Geffen rather than the other way around. As early as 1925, as the Orthodox authority in Coke’s home city, he was receiving inquiries from other rabbis about the drink’s kosher status. A few other rabbis had already given certification, without knowing the secret formula. And multitudes of American Jews were drinking Coke regardless.

“Because it has become an insurmountable problem to induce the great majority of Jews to refrain from partaking of this drink,” Rabbi Geffen wrote in his teshuva, “I have tried earnestly to find a method of permitting its usage. With the help of God, I have been able to uncover a pragmatic solution.”

Putting aside God’s props for a moment, we should note that Rabbi Geffen had some significant earthly help in the person of Harold Hirsch, a Jewish Atlantan who was Coca-Cola’s corporate lawyer. Through Hirsch, Rabbi Geffen was permitted to enter that industry’s Holy of Holies and receive Coke’s secret formula.

With it, the rabbi was able to identify the elements that rendered Coke nonkosher during the bulk of the year (oil of glycerine derived from beef tallow) and specifically during Passover (a corn derivative). Hiding the exact ingredients behind Hebrew euphemisms in his teshuva, Rabbi Geffen explained the needed corrections. Glycerine could be replaced by coconut or cottonseed oils, and the corn derivative by cane or beet sugars.

Kosher-for-Passover Coke is now produced under rabbinic supervision at bottling plants serving Jewish population centers in New York, Florida, Southern California and Houston, among other areas. A number of other major brands have followed Coke into the Passover market: Dannon, Lipton, Pepsi and Tropicana. There are tequila and blintzes made without forbidden grains.

“It used to be that for Pesach you were limited to matza and hard-boiled eggs,” said Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of the Orthodox Union’s kosher-certification program. “Now, I’ve got to tell you, I love those cheese blintzes.”

And, whether devout or debauched, Coke fans anticipate Passover for their own cultish reason: the usual sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup, is replaced by cane or beet sugar.

Moshe Feder, an editor of science-fiction and fantasy books, traveled to six supermarkets from his home in Queens before finding four two-liter bottles of Passover Coke. The subject of his quest happened to come up at a seder the other night. The host, a Jewish man, had never heard about the difference between Coke and Passover Coke. But two Roman Catholic guests, Mr. Feder reported, “knew all about it.”

Rabbi Geffen, of blessed memory, who’d have guessed you were so ecumenical?

E-mail: sgf1@columbia.edu

Meet Yuri Foreman: A Champion Boxer And......A Rabbi?

By Kevin Iole, Yahoo! Sports

From: http://sports.yahoo.com/

NEW YORK – Yuri Foreman climbs down the steps of the subway to await his train for the short trek from his apartment in Brooklyn to Gleason’s Gym to train. He’s greeted at the bottom of the steps by a billboard with a huge visage of himself, smiling, that is designed to promote his fight for the World Boxing Association super welterweight title on Saturday at Yankee Stadium against Miguel Cotto.

Yuri Foreman, WBA Super Welterweight champion, hits a speed bag in preparation for Saturday's fight.
(Bebeto Matthews/AP)

[Photos: Boxing at Yankee Stadium]

Foreman won the championship by stopping Daniel Santos in November in Las Vegas and will defend it for the first time on Saturday in his adopted hometown as part of the first card at the new stadium.

Nary a soul recognizes him. Foreman anonymously slips onto the train and makes the quick ride to Gleason’s where, amid the cacophony of a bustling gym, he quietly goes about his preparations for his first title defense.

The dichotomy in his life is stark, a world champion professional boxer and an Orthodox Jewish man studying to be a rabbi.

His bicycle is his normal mode of transportation to a fight, an homage of sorts to his simple needs and humble upbringing.

Foreman, 29, is living a life beyond his wildest dreams, despite the fact that there’s no bling hanging from him and his entourage usually just consists of his wife, Leyla.

He was born in Belarus in the former Soviet Union into a poor Jewish family. The family struggled to survive and were often treated like outcasts because of their faith.

Foreman was often harangued by bullies and began taking boxing lessons when he was seven at his mother’s urging in order to defend himself after he was beaten up at a swimming class.

When the family moved to Israel when Foreman was 10, the situation didn’t change much for the better. His father still had to scrimp for work and the family still wasn’t accepted into the community.

In the Soviet Union, the Russians regarded the Foremans as Jews, he explained. In Israel, the Jews regarded them as Russians.

That, though, was the least of Yuri’s concerns. He had become fascinated with boxing and wanted to continue, but couldn’t find a gym or anybody to spar.

He wound up training and sparring at a gym near Haifa with a group of Arab boys, who were all too eager to beat up the Jewish interloper.

“They weren’t really too welcoming,” Foreman said, deadpan. “You kind of had to work on your welcome yourself. You fight, you defend yourself through boxing and after that, you see that people respect you.”

Foreman became good enough that he won three national championships in Israel, but that meant about as much as being the best ice skater in Hawaii. By the time he was 18, he knew he wanted to be a professional boxer and he dreamed of becoming a world champion, but he knew it would be impossible to achieve had he stayed in Israel.

His mother, who urged his first boxing coach to make a man of her son, died and the family continued to struggle financially.

So as a 19 year old, Foreman opted to fly to New York to pursue his dream. He had no connections, little money, few possessions. He left Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel with little more than the clothes on his back and his dream of becoming a champion. The odds weren’t particularly in his favor, but it turned out the relocation to New York was the key move in a rags to riches story that perhaps tops all others in boxing, a sport built on such stories.

“There’s never been anyone with a story like this kid,” promoter Bob Arum said of Foreman.

Foreman quickly assimilated athletically. He won the New York Golden Gloves championship and showed the talent that made him an Israeli champion.

But he had no money and had to work doing manual labor in New York’s garment district, hauling around huge racks of clothes for very low wages in order to survive.

[Photos: Latest images of Yuri Foreman]

His luck soon began to change, though, even as the odds seemed to be stacked against him. He turned professional and had modest success. Training at Gleason’s one day, he spotted a striking blonde woman who interested him.

He approached her, and though she rebuffed his initial advances, she was interested, too. The woman, a Hungarian model and part-time amateur boxer, Leyla Leidecker, would eventually become his wife. She would encourage him in his boxing and push him to understand his spiritual side.

Leidecker searched the Internet for Kabbalah and found a service at a synagogue near their home in Brooklyn. Foreman and Leidecker attended a service by Rabbi DovBer Pinson, who spoke of the similarities between boxing and life.

In 2007, as Foreman was 21-0 and beginning to be noticed by the major boxing sanctioning bodies, he decided to undertake rabbinical studies under Pinson at Yeshiva Iyyun.

It was an incredibly challenging step that hasn’t always been simple. But Foreman’s studies help him to keep his sport in perspective.

And though his style – he’s a boxer who moves and is far better defensively than he is offensively – held him back, the irony of what happened in the last several months is not lost upon him.

When Arum was considering putting Foreman on the undercard of the Manny Pacquiao-Cotto fight on Nov. 14 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, there was much resistance from those who felt he didn’t deserve the spot.

Arum liked what he saw of Foreman and decided to give him the coveted primary undercard spot on the Pacquiao-Cotto card despite the media outcry.

“I always knew he was a good fighter and I wasn’t listening to the big experts who were saying ‘He’s so boring,’ ” Arum said. “We had one guy, one prominent boxing writer, who took it upon himself to call the networks and tell them that if they put (Foreman) on, he would blast them. It was crazy. He went out of his way to hurt the kid.

“I knew the kid was talented and if I could bring that out, get him a championship, a big victory, that I would have in him a tremendously unique story.”

And now he does. Foreman, who only headlined one minor card in the past, suddenly finds himself as the main event in his hometown in one of the biggest cards of the year.

Because of his religious beliefs, he can’t fight until after the Sabbath, which ends at 9:13 p.m. ET on Saturday. So Foreman will pray until 9:13, then leave his hotel and be taken by a police escort to Yankee Stadium while a helicopter with an HBO camera aboard televises the action.

“The change in my life has been incredible,” Foreman said. “To be here, to see my face on the scoreboard (at Yankee Stadium), it’s amazing. I was a young man with a dream. I believed in myself. I believed I could become a world champion. But what has happened to my life has been incredible. I’m very thankful, but it’s crazy. Who would have ever thought this would have happened to me?”

Rambo Rabbi Training Chosen Guns

Well, the New York Post earned its fifty cents today. Let's start with the cover, which at first glance seems like a work of fantasy but actually documents a real-life, tough-talking rabbi and his plastic pistol-packing "God Squad." Jewish security forces are hardly new to New York (Hasidic communities like the Satmar Jews in Williamsburg have their own private patrols, for instance), but none have produced a training video as uplifting as this one. A mix of Wes Anderson, Adam Sandler, and the "Sabotage" video, it depicts Rabbi Gary Moscowitz, who was an NYPD cop for nine years and holds a black belt in karate, training his fellow Jews to defend their synagogues. Enjoy!

Moscowitz is founder of the International Security Coalition of Clergy, whose mission is to train Jews in self-defense and advance fighting techniques in the event of a terrorist attack on a synagogue. He says business was slow for his Coalition until May, when the FBI arrested a group accused of plotting to blow up synagogues in The Bronx. But now Moscowitz's 100-hour synagogue self-defense course is in high demand. With his course, you'll learn how to:

• execute a somersault while drawing a gun
• use a table as cover from gunfire
• take down a terrorist by the neck

Moscowitz tells the Post, "Jews are not like Christians. If I turn my cheek, I'm coming around to make a kick." The rabbi says the NYPD isn't qualified to guard synagogues because they don't know members of the congregation, so they can't stop a terrorist who wants to put "a yarmulke on, say, 'Happy holidays,' and blow the place up." NYPD spokesman Paul Browne says Moscowitz was fired from the force in the early 1990s, but claimed not to know details. Regarding the Rabbi's criticism of the NYPD, Browne cryptically added, "Blessed are the tight of lip, for they shall resist speaking ill of the ill-informed."

By John Del Signore