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I never asked the late Senator Joe Lieberman directly about his favorite source of information about Israel and the Jewish world – but I am fairly sure he would have said it was The Jerusalem Report. He once took my personal copy of the Report from the prayer book and chumash holder in synagogue –and proceeded to spend the next hour reading it!

When we moved to New Haven, Connecticut in 2003, we joined the local Orthodox synagogue – which does not have assigned High Holy Day seats. To be sure I wasn’t sitting in a member’s coveted seat, I chose a seat two rows from the back, on the right, about seven seats in – right next to the mechitza – a seat sure to be near no one. I sat, put on my tallis, opened my machzor, and prepared for a long day of prayers. I unpacked the two pieces of reading material I had brought along in case of boredom – Jewish Education News and The Jerusalem Report.

To my surprise, a man with a great head of white hair and an even finer smile passes in front of me and sits right next to me. I was a bit star struck as it was obviously Senator Lieberman, the man who was on the ticket with Al Gore three years earlier and was contemplating a bid for the 2004 presidency of the United States of America! Instead of introducing myself or asking the obvious question of who he was, I pointed to my magazines and said, “If you get bored, feel free to help yourself.”

“No thanks, I will read my machzor,” he replied. Ten minutes later, the senator asked, “What have you got?” I showed him his choices, he looked carefully, and chose The Jerusalem Report. I vividly remember the cover – it was an in-depth look at the security fence whose first phase – around three parts of Jerusalem – was approved in March of 2003. Later proposed phases would separate the West Bank from Jerusalem. The senator, who moments earlier seemed intent on focused prayer, was now deep into a series of articles on the multitude of complex issues around the building of the fence.

Ironically, as I watched the senator read my Jerusalem Report, I had been writing fairly regularly for the publication – mainly providing interesting anecdotes from the Jewish World for the Up Front section. This was the “best article I could never write.” I needed to respect his privacy. This was congregant and community member Joe who was here to daven and celebrate the holiday with family and friends.

When the holiday ended, I raced to my computer to share this story with Sharon Ashley, who was at the time the deputy editor. I suggested she and the Report send an anonymous subscription to The Jerusalem Report to Senator Lieberman’s Washington, DC office.

I can only assume that he continued to read every issue cover to cover and that the fair, in-depth coverage of even the most complex issues continued to shape his views – and in turn, US government policy.

The hundreds of tributes following the senator’s sad and untimely death, on March 27 from all parts of the Jewish world – and from both sides of the aisle – captured what a sensible and good man Senator Joe Lieberman was. He was truly liked by all. Despite his ability to get along with everyone, I suspect he usually had to dress and act the part of an elected official.

In our Westville neighborhood of New Haven, Joe Lieberman will be remembered mostly as a member of the Westville Synagogue and a community member. He ate and socialized at the same Kiddush, danced with us at community simchas, and came to morning minyan when he was in town. He drove himself to shul in his car with tinted glass and even wore blue jeans and flannel shirts. He made the same 30-minute walk to shul through our quiet neighborhood each Shabbat and holiday when he was in town – though he was the only community member with Secret Service members walking with him and driving right next to him.

And he got through the boring parts of shul by reading such fine publications as The Jerusalem Report!

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The troubling story of Michael Laudor leaves many unanswered questions, including the central one: How do we respect the autonomy and decision-making of a person with serious mental illness?

When author Jonathan Rosen was growing up in the New York suburbs of New Rochelle in the 1970s, he had no idea that he and his friend Michael Laudor, two smart Yale-bound Jewish boys, sons of professors with similar backgrounds, would ultimately encounter such different life paths.

The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness and the Tragedy of Good Intentions is Rosen’s latest and longest book (by far), which reportedly took 10 years of time, research, and emotional energy to write. It is part memoir, part history of mental health and mental illness, and part psychology text.

Rosen and Laudor went on to graduate from Yale. Rosen then completed coursework toward a PhD in literature at University of California, Berkeley; married a rabbi; had two children; and began to write and edit for such publications as The New York Times and The Forward. He has written five books so far – two novels and three nonfiction books.  

Laudor, the more naturally gifted of the two, graduated Yale summa cum laude within three years. Subsequently, he worked for a year in a high-pressured job in management consulting at the prestigious firm of Bain and Company.

His life then took an unexpected turn when he began to experience auditory hallucinations and paranoia.Laudor was hospitalized for eight months in a locked ward at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Following a stint in a halfway house where it was suggested that he might ease back into life by working as a clerk at Macy’s department store, he surprisingly decided to attend Yale Law School.

1933 caricature of Aldous Huxley by cartoonist David Low. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Thanks to the support and kindness of professors, deans, and fellow students, Laudor managed to graduate, although he wasn’t able to secure employment as a lawyer in a firm. He did, however, achieve notoriety and an extremely highly paid book and movie deal when his story was featured in a 1995 New York Times article titled “A Voyage to Bedlam and Partway Back: Yale Law Graduate, a Schizophrenic, Is Encumbered by an Invisible Wheelchair.”

Laudor ultimately had difficulty making progress on the book and eventually went off his medication and experienced worsening symptoms of psychosis and paranoia.

In 1998, Laudor killed his live-in girlfriend and future wife, who, the reader painfully learns, was pregnant with their first child. Laudor was ultimately found not responsible for the killing “by reason of mental disease or defect” (also known as “not guilty by reason of insanity”). He has spent the last 25 years at the Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Center, a secure psychiatric facility 55 miles northwest of New York City, where Rosen has visited him on several occasions.


The Best Minds represents Rosen’s attempt to examine their unremarkable suburban New York childhoods, their mostly similar but ultimately very different paths, and the multiple ways the mental health establishment failed Laudor and society at large.

It has taken Rosen over 500 pages to chronicle this heartbreaking story, with an additional three pages of “notes on the sources” and a 21-page index, all well worth the time, effort, and emotional energy the reader will need to invest in this book.

Rosen’s former department in the literature graduate program at UC Berkeley might retrospectively consider granting him the PhD he never received when he failed to complete his doctoral dissertation.

The dense, heavy book contains beautiful prose and consists of four distinct parts, of eight to 15 chapters each.

The parts of the book

Rosen has a keen memory and an eye for detail and recounts many events small and large from childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, making important connections to world events, larger societal trends, and phenomena.

PART I: “The House on Mereland Road” poignantly and playfully recounts the two men’s childhood, capturing the sights, sounds, and smells of the late 1960s and early ‘70s with references to everything from Jim Croce and Jethro Tull to Annie Hall and Rosen’s anxiety-filled bar mitzvah.

Part II: “The House of Psychiatry” weaves his experience at Berkeley, describing brilliant creative types such as Aldous Huxley who lived life with mental illness, and recounts a period in psychiatry when schizophrenia was considered by some to be a “social construct,” and hallucinations were equated with genius. Rosen has clearly dedicated an inordinate amount of time to reading and learning about the history of mental health and policy in America, including deinstitutionalization [a movement advocating the transfer of mentally disabled people from institutions, back to their families or into community-based homes] and the community mental health movements.

Part III: “The House of Law” describes the supportive environment Laudor found at Yale Law School, the school he had deferred while in the hospital and in the halfway house. Rosen describes surprisingly supportive professors and deans (many who helped write decisions about deinstitutionalization which would impact mental health policy) while clerking for Supreme Court justices who were invested in making things work for Laudor but may have inadvertently done him a disservice through their coddling and protecting of him while in law school.Rosen writes, “Michael found an adoptive Jewish father behind every classroom door. These brilliant, egotistical, softhearted men, as impossible to please as they were idealistic, terrorize students without even knowing it.” 


Part IV: “The House of Dreams” details an important New York Times article about Laudor; his $600,000 book deal with Scribner; the movie in the works by actor and director Ron Howard, with Brad Pitt slated to be the lead actor; and Laudor’s life in Hastings-on-Hudson with his fiancée, Caroline Carrie Costello, known affectionately as “Carrie.” The harrowing story of Laudor’s time on the lam before being caught, featured on the cover of the New York Post with the simple caption “Psycho,” and his long-term fate are chronicled in this final part of the book.In many ways, the title of the book says it all and, at the same time, requires some rabbinic unpacking.  The reference to “best minds” refers to the brilliance of Laudor, as well as to the legal and medical experts, judges, Yale Law School professors, mental health advocates, the Beat generation who saw people with mental illness as misunderstood geniuses, and even New York Times writers, book publishers, and movie houses that embody what Rosen refers to in the subtitle as The Tragedy of Good Intentions.


It was their “good intentions” that led to the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill – even when there were not adequate community services available to support the formerly institutionalized. Their intentions also led to articles in leading papers focusing more on the accomplishments than the struggles of people living with and sometimes “battling” schizophrenia, such as Laudor and University of Southern California (USC) Gould Law School’s Elyn Saks, professor of law, psychology, psychiatry, and behavioral sciences.  

It was those with “good intentions” that helped create a system where psychotic people who refuse medication can only be “committed” against their will once they are a true danger to self or others – even while worried family members beg for police and psychiatric intervention.  

“Best minds” also refers to a line in a 1954 Allen Ginsberg poem titled “Howl” or “Howl for Carl Solomon.” Ginsberg met Solomon while both were hospitalized at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Ginsberg, no stranger to mental illness, grew up with a paranoid schizophrenic mother. “Howl” includes the line “I’ve seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.”

Rosen provides the reader with hours of material to read and digest.

In the end, however, the troubling story of Michael Laudor leaves many unanswered questions, including the central one: How do we respect the autonomy and decision-making of a person with serious mental illness – through the calm phases and when he or she decides to go off medication? And how do we protect family members and society from a person and a system that can do nothing until he or she is dangerous to himself or others?  

THE BEST MINDS: A STORY OF FRIENDSHIP, MADNESS, AND THE TRAGEDY OF GOOD INTENTIONS By Jonathan Rosen Penguin 562 pages; $25

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The original article is published in Relix Jan/Feb, 2023. Page 17


“Steely Dead started as a big ‘what if’ question,” explains founder and lead guitarist Dave Abear. “We’ve all been playing Dead songs forever,” adds drummer Chris Sheldon. “At the same time,” Abear jumps back in, “we were always big Steely Dan fans.” Sheldon, Dave, Dave’s brother Matt Abear (bass) and Dylan Teifer (keys) first came together five years ago. After drawing a few hundred fans to their initial shows in Colorado, the musicians had a break-through moment when they sold out Phil Lesh’s Terrapin Crossroads shortly before COVID hit.

Though Steely Dan’s tightly scripted songs and the Grateful Dead’s long-winding improvisational jams may seem like an unnatural match, those bands actually shared an intertwined history long before Abear started his project. The Steely Dan hit “Kid Charlemagne” even references Owsley “Bear” Stanley, the Dead’s legendary sound engineer and LSD chemist. “We like to say we Dead down the Dan and Dan up the Dead,” Dave says. “We stretch out the Dan stuff and tighten up the Dead.” The band pairs songs based on their feel. Classic combos like “Dealin’ in the Years,” a swirl of “Deal” and “Reelin’ in the Years,” “just work so well together,” says Dave, noting their perfect match of “grooves and keys.” The tune-which often serves as a set closer-starts and ends with “Deal,” sandwiching the Steely Dan melody in the middle. Other prearranged combos include “Fezeree” (“Fez” and “Sugaree”) and “Truck Friday” (“Truckin’ and “Black Friday”).

Similar to many jambands, their sets are determined on the fly, with band members using hand signals or audibles to indicate the next song. Some mashups are determined live onstage, so “you might not hear the same combo every time,” says Chris. And the fans are kept guessing about the second half of each number. Chris, though, is used to the challenge, as the longtime drummer in mashup band DeadPhish Orchestra. Does the band ever get stuck trying to find a perfect match for a given song? Absolutely, admits Dave, who
says there’s only one solution. “We just ask ourselves, ‘What would Jerry do?””

steelydead.com

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“Our key turning point was when Nate was a high-school junior, and I was a sophomore when we did experience some antisemitism.”

Two English brothers on the Brown University heavyweight crew team are making it fashionable to stand up for Israel on campus at a time when such support is not always in vogue.

Nathan (23) and Asher (22) Swidler, passionate Zionists and advocates for Israel, knew they needed to do something in the wake of the October 7 terrorist attacks and what they describe as the “worryingly hostile climate for Jews and Zionists” across college campuses.

The handsome, charismatic brothers, born 14 months apart and both seniors at the prestigious Ivy League school known both for its academics and its nationally ranked rowing team, had an idea that would make Israel “in fashion” around the Providence, Rhode Island campus. They designed a blue-and-white unisuit, a tight-fitting rowing and all-purpose exercise outfit, with the Star of David on the front and “Am Yisrael Chai” on the back – and made it easy for fellow rowers, classmates, and Israel supporters everywhere to sport the outfit.

Asher and Nathan – or Ash and Nate – each spent a post high school gap year in Israel on the Aardvark Israel program and drew inspiration for the unisuit from events they experienced living on both sides of the pond, including November’s March for Israel and a high school encounter with antisemitism.

“We were invigorated by the crowds of supporters marching in Washington, DC, but troubled that as varsity athletes, we could not attend. We felt desperate to champion the cause in a way we knew how to spread positivity both on and off the water.”

Brown University’s John Carter Brown library (credit: CHENSIYUAN/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)

Both boys attended the 1,300-student Eton College boarding school in England. Asher quickly points out an earlier inspiration for their willingness to stand up for Israel and Jewish causes.

“Our key turning point was when Nate was a high-school junior, and I was a sophomore when we did experience some antisemitism.”

He recounts an incident when a student hung a Nazi flag in his room. When Ash confronted him, the boy said, “It was just a joke,” and accused Ash of “taking himself too seriously.” The boys brought it to the attention of the administration, which, after an investigation, decided not to put it on the boy’s record.

“This is what happens when we don’t stand up and show up,” Ash adds.

The boys continued “showing up” throughout their years at Eton.

Nate notes that he was one of 20 students selected to serve as a school ambassador. Ambassadors were expected to wear waistcoats (vests) with a pattern or insignia of their choosing.

“Some wore waistcoats with their favorite football team or animal. I wanted to wear one with the Israel flag,” said Nate, who proudly added that Ash followed suit when he was elected ambassador the following year.

“It showcased our willingness to stand out,” though Nate lamented that there was some “student pushback.”

“The Sri Lankan and English flags were okay, so we pushed to wear the flag of our nation-state.”

While Nate rowed at Eton and his team won the prestigious Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup (the prestigious international high school rowing competition at Henley Royal Regatta), Ash was a latecomer to the sport. He joined the Brown team as a walk-on junior, a particularly impressive accomplishment as most rowers at Brown are recruited to join the team.

“I saw the joy and discipline that Nate endured from rowing at Brown. I love the fact that it is a humbling sport. The team is always so much more than the individual, and for Brown in particular, we are striving for a goal that is so much bigger than self-importance—a national championship.”

Nate’s memorable rowing moments include winning the Henley Royal Regatta in 2019, beating Harvard last year in the dual race, and rowing in the pair competition with his brother. He credits his father and an Eton housemaster for encouraging him to try rowing at age 15.

“The friends I’ve made and the bonds I’ve forged through the torturous pain, both the physical in the midst of training and the emotional in the wake of a loss, are some of the closest relationships I will treasure for the rest of my life.”

He also credits the sport for teaching discipline and loyalty.

At Brown, the Swidler brothers continue to team up both in the water and in their support of Israel and Jewish causes during what has become a difficult time for college students across the country to show support for Israel openly.

They teamed up to design, market, and distribute the uni and “got so much more support than we reckoned.” They assumed that the project would receive mixed support from the rowing team, so they polled each member of the team individually to see if they would consider wearing the uni.

“Thirty of the 50 team members said they wanted one – it warmed our hearts!”

A donor’s generosity allowed the whole team to don the pro-Israel swag

A donor enabled the Swidlers to give a uni to each member who wanted one. They are also available for purchase online [www.uniforisrael.com]; the website notes that they are for those who want to “show pride for Israel outside of the traditional ecosystem on college campuses” and for those who want to “stand in solidarity with fellow Jewish athletes in a sport that doesn’t typically offer ways to display it.” Ten dollars of each purchase is donated to Leket, the leading food rescue organization in Israel.

The Swidlers’ support for Jewish causes and Israel on campus includes Ash’s participation in NextGen and Start-Up Nation Mentorship, two projects of the World Jewish Congress. Both boys are also very active in Brown Chabad and have a close relationship with its directors, Rabbi Mendel and Chana Laufer, directors of Brown Chabad. They regularly eat Shabbat meals at Chabad and have proudly watched the number of weekly attendees grow during their time at Brown. Ash currently serves as the president of Chabad.

Rabbi Laufer praised both boys.

“They are amazing, very proud, committed and unapologetic Jews in our community. Ash takes being president very seriously. He is a great, active and compassionate leader.”

Nate and Ash note that Chabad has been a particularly important and safe place on campus for Jewish students in the aftermath of October 7. Fellow Chabad board member and president of Brown Students for Israel, Brooke Verschleiser, penned a March 10 editorial in the Brown Daily Herald entitled, “A Note to the Silent Majority” where she began, “The violent threats against the leaders of Brown-RISD Hillel have left the Jewish community sad, angry and disgusted. But even more troubling than the threats may be the absence of outrage from the campus community.”Verschleiser is proud of the Swidlers and their active pro-Israel stance.

“Seeing Ash and Nate stand up for Israel in the midst of adversity on campus is truly inspiring. It requires courage to boldly voice support for Israel in an environment where opinions may be unfavorable or misinformed. Their fortitude in defending Israel and proudly embracing their Zionism sets a powerful example for other students to advocate for the truth and stand up for what they believe in.”

Josh Swidler is also pleased with his boys.

“My wife and I always taught our children to be proud of being Jewish, but ultimately it is up to each individual as to whether or not they want to lead. I am incredibly proud of my boys for their efforts both on the water and in the community at large, showing how proudly displaying your Jewish identity can be an example for others and that we are not afraid, even in these dark and challenging times.”

For now, the Swidlers must continue to focus on their studies and their rowing. Both boys expect to graduate from Brown this May. Nate, an economics and political science major, hopes to work after graduation in political speech writing, and Ash, an international and public affairs major, will be looking for work in public relations.

The Brown crew team will be participating in the upcoming IRA Sarasota Invitational, competitions against Northeastern, Dartmouth and Princeton, the Eastern Sprints, and hopefully the IRA Championships.

There are still many opportunities to sport their unis and show their unwavering support for Israel in the water and around campus.

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