Park Slope Reader

interview

Slope Survey: Dave “The Spazz” Abramson

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The Slope Survey returns for its 18th installment with well-known local radio personality Dave “The Spazz” Abramson.

Dave Abramson aka Dave the Spazz has hosted Music To Spazz By on WFMU 91.1 FM (wfmu.org) since 1987. He edited The Best of LCD: The Art and Writing of WFMU in 2007. He is currently finishing his biography of Jerry Lewis impersonator Sammy Petrillo.

What brought you to Park Slope? 

When I first moved to Kensington in the early 80s, Park Slope was the closet outpost of cool shops, bookstores and fun restaurants. 

What is your most memorable Park Slope moment?  

I met my future wife at the (now closed) Great Lakes bar on 5th Avenue.

Describe your community superpower.  

I can jump over sidewalk-hogging baby carriages coming toward me in a single bound.

If you could change one thing about the neighborhood, what would it be?  

I would bring back Southpaw, which was a terrific live venue across the street from the Key Food on 5th Avenue. 

What do you think Park Slope will look like in 10 years?

The Pogo Stick revival of 2030, permanent outdoor dining and 6th Avenue will be closed to vehicular traffic.

What are you reading, would you recommend it?  

I’m reading Robert Caro’s first LBJ bio The Path to Power. I highly recommend it. Like Caro’s earlier bio on Robert Moses (The Power Broker), it unlocks the political machinations that brought this country to its current state of insanity.

What is your greatest extravagance? 

I’m one of those pesky vegetarian Keto people and Keto food is expensive. I’ll drop too much dough on Keto desserts.

If you couldn’t live in Park Slope or in Brooklyn, where would you go?  

Clinton Hill.

Who is your hero, real or fictional?

Buster Keaton. I first saw his feature Sherlock Jr. (1924) when I was a kid and his offhanded inventiveness stunned me. It was the first time that I realized that anything was possible.

Last Word, What’s is turning you on these days?

Early (late 50s to mid-60s) pre-reggae ska.

Slope Survey: Amy Fonda Sara

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The Slope Survey returns for its 12th installment with Amy Fonda Sara who owns and operates the community favorite Zuzu’s Petals on Fifth Avenue.

Born in Brooklyn, raised in Rockaway, went to college at 16. When I was in grad school, my bachelors older second cousin advised me to find something in my life that fed me and expressed me; something that would be mine no matter who left me or who died.

At the time I had no idea what he meant, I was headed to Long Island to teach art in the public schools.

Five years later having realized the pubic school system and I were not a good match, I was biding time managing a plant shop in Park Slope. Sadly…my cousin died suddenly, leaving his considerable estate to the children of his first cousin. There were 15 of us. In August of 1974, I bought the shop with the money he left me… Zuzu’s Petals.

So far, it’s been a wonderful life.

What brought you to Park Slope?

In 1972, my husband was a student at Brooklyn Law School. We had friends renting cheap apartments in funky old Park Slope brownstones, and we decided to move into one… Half a floor at 926 President Street between 8th Avenue and the Park for $200. He left a year and a half later, I stayed.

What is your most memorable Park Slope moment?

I have a lifetime of Park Slope moments but:

Best memorable moment: Buying my flowershop on 7th Avenue in November of 1974.

Worst memorable moment: My flowershop burning down in August of 2004.

Second best memorable moment: Re-opening on 5th Avenue in November of 2004 with the help of customers and friends.

Describe your community superpower.

Keeping a Mom and Pop business open for 48 years… without the Pop.

If you could change one thing about the neighborhood, what would it be?

Reasonable commercial rents so small business could thrive.

What do you thin Park Slope will look like in 10 years?

4th Avenue will be lined with wall-to-wall luxury high rises.

There will be chain stores punctuated by empty storefronts on our commercial streets.

What are you reading, would you recommend it?

Our neighbor Paul Auster’s latest: “4321”

“Beneath a scarlet sky.” Everyone should read it.

John Lewis… “Walking with the Wind”

Re-reading anything by Colette

What is your greatest extravagance?

Buying flowers at the flower market that I love and may not ever sell.

If you couldn’t live in Park Slope or in Brooklyn, where would you go?

Boulder, Colorado

Who is your hero, real or fiction?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Last Word, What’s is turning you on these days?

I am blessed with an incredible team of women who have made a space in their lives to work in my flowershop. Their energy, creativity, strength, intelligence, humanity, compassion, empathy, and openness give me hope for the future. I love being around them.

Park Slope Reader Presents: Slope Survey

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The Slope Survey returns for its 11th installment with John P. McEneny.

John P. McEneny is a teacher, playwright, director and long time resident of Park Slope.  For the past twenty one years, he has been the drama teacher at William Alexander Middle School 51.  His sixth grade play, Maddie Splinter and the Aluminum Chair Rocket Ship will go up at the end of the month.  His theatre company, Piper Theatre Productions, has been in residence every July at the Old Stone House since 2005.  Piper Theatre Productions has been creating theater for and with people ages 7 to 70. Through afterschool and summer drama programing for young people, to opportunities for emerging artists, to a professional stage company that performs free productions every summer; Piper supports artists at all stages of their development and, in doing so, creates a community of artists learning and growing together.  Past productions include Sweeney Todd, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Island of Doctor Moreau, Xanadu, Priscilla Queen of Desert, Wendy Darling, Splitfoot.  pipertheatre.org

What brought you to Park Slope?

Twenty one years ago, a young John P. McEneny, started his job as a drama teacher at William Alexander Middle School 51 and found an apartment for rent across the street on the first day and he’s been there ever since, making his daily commute exactly 50 seconds.

What is your most memorable Park Slope moment?

Any evening in July when Piper is presenting a play at the Old Stone House.  It’s beautiful in all kinds of ways.

Describe your community superpower.

I can make theatre happen – and I mean like a LOT of it.

If you could change one thing about the neighborhood, what would it be?

Bring back Press 195, Belleville, S’Nice.   If I had a wish, it would be to cast a spell over all our Fifth Avenue treasures – Leopoldi’s, Old Stone House, BAX, Miriam’s – with some protective mojo.  I love my neighborhood.

What do you think Park Slope will look like in 10 years?

Hopefully more artists.  Sadly more upscale condos.  And I’m thinking more of those little free libraries in front of houses.

What are you reading, would you recommend it?  

Lincoln at the Bardo by George Saunders.  And a biography on the  ctress Eileen Heckart.

What is your greatest extravagance?

Travelling.  I went to Romania last summer.

If you couldn’t live in Park Slope or in Brooklyn, where would you go?

I would probably return back to my people in Albany.  I have like eight generations of family history in Albany, NY.  I was the only one who got out  so it would be fitting to end up there with my Dad and siblings.

Who is your hero, real or fictional?

My heroes are all the actors and artists I get to work with – whether they be children or professionals – who stick their hearts out bravely into the dark world and make us feel, think, do.

Last Word, What’s is turning you on these days?  

My sister got me this roomba vacuum for Christmas and it is a very good robot.   It’s not exactly “turning me on”, but I am completely obsessed.  My cats are not.

The Reader Interview: Back to School – At the Eye of the Storm of Controlled Creative Chaos

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The Reader Interview with Liz Phillips, Principal of PS 321

 

P.S.321, which lays claim to a full city block off Park Slope’s 7th avenue, is — and long has been — one of the hottest tickets around. Desperate parents have been known to rent second apartments, or just fake their address, to enroll their child in what is widely understood to be one of the best public elementary schools in the city. And at the eye of this storm of controlled, creative chaos is the widely admired Liz Phillips, who’s served as principal for, as of this fall, 20 years. Along the way, she’s advocated for teachers, pushed forth policies in her own school as well as others, and seeded the city with an ever-growing network of mentees.

A former editor for Knopf and Pantheon, Phillips began working at the Feminist Press not long after her children were born, and while working on an educational series for high schoolers had her aha moment: she loved producing great books, but, she realized, “a really great teacher could make do with mediocre materials… I wanted to be in that position.” Phillips enrolled in a one-year program at the Bank Street College of Education, and secured a spot student teaching with education titan Carmen Fariña, who would eventually go on to serve as the New York City Schools Chancellor. Phillips had her eye on District 15 because of their “strong leadership and emphasis on the writing process,” but it was somewhere between kismet and calculation that brought her to P.S. 321, where her daughter was currently enrolled, to teach first grade. Soon, she was mentoring other teachers on the writing process, and when an assistant principal transferred out of the school, then principal Peter Heaney tapped Phillips to take her place. She agreed, on the condition she could return to teaching if she didn’t like it. Eight years later, she took over as principal.

Liz’s philosophy, official Parent Coordinator and my ad hoc tour guide, Deb, tells me — with clear awe for the woman who has helmed this hub of progressive, pint-sized learning since well before her own children matriculated — is to always say “yes, if you can.” We snaked through the labyrinthine hallways, passing bulletin boards of welcome greetings; a teacher who taught Deb’s son over a decade ago; a classroom of students on sleek Apple desktop computers, learning not how to use the tech (of course not), but how to be better digital citizens; and a young boy painting determinedly on an easel in what was either reward or engaging punishment. Eventually, we passed the office of the Assistant Principals. I told them about my chat with Liz and joked about her “enough already!” attitude about the retirement question. Seems like she’s not planning on going anywhere any time soon, I remarked. At that, one of the APs, already half way out of the door for a meeting, ran back towards her desk and rapped on it, hard. “I need to knock on something made of real wood.” 

Congratulations on another school year! What do you love the most about back to school? 

Liz Phillips: You know, I think one of the privileges of working in education, in a school, is that every year is a new beginning and you can start fresh, and it’s really exciting. You can build on successes from the previous year but, you know, avoid problems that you figured out. And certainly just everybody’s excitement, getting to know new teachers when we have new teachers and new staff members, and seeing the children coming into school and just really feeling great. There are some kids who have some separation issues in kindergarten, but most of the kids I see in the lobby just so excited about going upstairs, seeing their friends. 

Bye mom!

[Laughs] Right. In fact, it’s funny because we allow our kindergarten parents to bring the kids into the room and today — sometimes the first graders, the beginning of the year, because they’re not used to going up alone, are a little nervous. So I was in the lobby and I saw a kid with their parent, who I didn’t know, crying, and I thought, oh, this must be a first grader who wants to go upstairs with his parent. Turns out it was a kindergartener who didn’t want his mother to go upstairs with him. 

As principal, do you feel far away from your years of being in the classroom and teaching? Is that something that you miss? 

Well, I think one of the reasons that I never left the school and didn’t want to go to work in a district office or work at central [office of the DOE] was because I feel like when you’re based in the school, you can still be connected to the classrooms. I’m clearly not a teacher anymore, but I feel like the best principals think of themselves as teachers in some ways and spend a lot of time in classrooms, and I really enjoy that time. And so I think that’s one of the reasons I wouldn’t have left the school because I think if I had then I would really miss it. 

You said in an interview that having that foundation, having that experience as a teacher, informs the work of the best principals out there. 

Look, the heart of the school — there are a lot of things that make a school great — but the teachers are with the kids all day. Having great teachers and understanding how central that is, that as a principal you have to be able to support the teachers and also, you know, work on helping them improve, whether it’s by setting up collegial relationships and having many opportunities for intervisitation for people working together, providing really high quality professional development. But I think if you haven’t been a teacher, it’s hard to understand how central that is to the success of any school.

I was sifting through all these online comments about the school, and whether it was posted six months ago or 14 years ago, the word “community” came up over and over again. I can see that that’s such an important buzzword as to how you view yourself here. What makes this a distinct community and how do you work to keep it bonded and cohesive and collaborative? 

I think that there are a lot of things and I will say, you know, we’ve had in this school very consistent leadership. The previous two principles each were here 10 years. So in the last 40 years, there have only been three principals in this school, and both of the previous principals who I’ve worked under, both of them were principals who really respected teachers. I think there’s been a sense of this school as a place where teachers can take risks, can grow, want to be part of the community. You know, a lot of what I try to set up in terms of structures, are structures that allow that. We build grade meetings into the school day, last period so that the kids are in a grade recess. So teachers can meet together. I go to all those meetings. Often principals don’t go to grade meetings, but I feel like this school is really big, and that’s another thing. I mean very few elementary schools have over 1400 students and, you know, nine classes in a grade. And so I feel like it’s really important, in terms of building the community, for me to be in tune with what’s going on across every grade. We put a lot of emphasis on professional development that not only teaches certain, you know, pedagogic skills or content areas, but that builds community. For example, Monday professional development. All teachers work an extra 80 minutes on Monday for professional development, and our first one, which is this Monday, given the holidays we’ve had, is a community-building professional development. Really the main goal of it is for people to get to know each other better in smaller groups. We’re always thinking about how can we do that. We also have tremendous parent involvement. So a lot of it is also figuring out ways to work with parents effectively, figuring out ways to balance, you know, all the different needs, needs of teachers, needs of parents, to work collaboratively to do that. We have many “friend-raising” events which, you know, a potluck supper which we have in a week, which is for mainly families, but a lot of teachers come, too. So I mean I just, I think you can set structures into place that, that focus on the importance of community.

I imagine that a lot of these things are ways to combat the issue that the school has had with overcrowding, as you mentioned. 

I will say that it’s more to combat the school being a big school than overcrowding. We actually are not overcrowded… but we’re big. [Laughs] Because we have both our main building and the mini school in the backyard. So we have enough rooms. That’s not the issue. There are some schools that genuinely cannot fit their kids. That’s not our problem. But we a very big school. For both the children and the teachers and also the parents, that means you have to, I think, be more deliberate about community building because you know, you can’t just all be together. There are nine first grades, and nine teachers can’t plan together all the time. So I do think that yes, because of the size, I know principals at schools that are much smaller where it doesn’t have to be quite as deliberate because it happens more naturally. 

I know you’re famous here for your very active parent population, so where is that balance between encouraging them to be involved but then drawing the line so it doesn’t become too much?

Yes. And I am very aware of that part — I’ve been doing this a long time. When parents come to me with ideas, my first thought is always what’s the impact of this on the teachers? This is an example from many years ago. Parents wanted more enrichments, you know, chess, arts, music. We have a lot that are DOE sponsored, but that wanted even more. Teachers felt they had enough enrichments and they didn’t have enough time with their kids. So how do you balance that? So what I did at that point is I brought it to the school leadership team — we have a really effective school leadership teams of eight parents, eight staff members — and I tried to steer it towards doing afterschool programs where parents would feel their kids have an opportunity to have more enrichments, but teachers wouldn’t feel the school day was being taken over. And so we started what’s now called Kid’s Club, where we have all these different kinds of, it could be puppet making, theater, and we have some enrichments during the school day, but to be careful… When I mentor new principals, that’s what I’m always saying. Yes, you want parent involvement, but you do have to sometimes draw limits. And as the principal, think about what’s best for the school as a whole. I will say that we have amazing parents, and I spend a lot of time, probably more time than many principals, meeting with them. But I feel like it pays off because I feel like we’ve established really great relationships, and that the parents are respectful and understand that things have to be run by me, and that there are certain things that aren’t necessarily going to happen, that we’re going to compromise. Even something like volunteering in the classroom, we have very specific times when it works for parents, you know, kindergarten choice time, or helping at lunch recess, or certainly going on trips. But it’s not like, oh you can come and volunteer any time you want in the classroom. So, you know, I think putting structures in place that allow parents to feel welcomed, like Family Fridays, which was something that I started even before, when I was the early childhood coordinator. I went to the principal with this idea which has now taken often is in schools around the city, where the first Friday of every month, we open up the whole school to all parents. So there are thousands of people in the building, and they’re in the kids’ classrooms, and they’re either reading with kids, or playing math games, or doing a project. So it’s an organized way of parents getting to see the classroom. I think parents want to see what their kids are doing, but in a controlled way that isn’t like just, oh, I want to drop in and help out with reading time.

You were so outspoken at the time for not evaluating teachers based on test scores, and then to see that move into a moratorium, did that sense of getting involved, successfully in impacting policy ever give you the desire to become more involved in the political angle of the job? outfit or was that just need to step up? 

No, I feel like there have been many times since I’ve been principal that I have been outspoken about things. Many years ago after 9/11, I wrote an article about the pledge of allegiance. And I think there were things, whether it’s about immigration and protecting kids in school, about not having guns in school, you know, armed security guards — forget about teachers, that’s just ludicrous. Those are things that directly affect the school. I am sensitive to the fact that whatever my own personal political beliefs are as a school leader, for things that are outside of education, I might get involved when I’m out of school, but I think all kids need to feel supported in school. Even with standardized testing, that can get tricky because there are parents who are so anti-testing, and talk to their kids. So kids could tease another kid for taking a test. So when we have our testing meeting in March, which we always do, I always start by saying, look, you know, we believe in being a respectful school. We’re a no place for hate school, and that carries over to how we talk about, you know, different political perspectives on something like testing, and we have to respect that different parents and different kids — and kids are mainly reflecting their parents — are going to have different points of view on it. And I feel like it is possible to be outspoken about things that you really feel are detrimental to the school and to children and still maintain an atmosphere where different perspectives are allowed. 

What’s next for you and P.S. 321? It seems like you still feel invigorated and empowered by the work. 

I do, I do. People are like, are you going to retire? [Laughs] I’m not really interested in that right now. I’m having a good time. I’m enjoying this amazing community. I will say that for the last few years, one of the energizing parts of my job has been mentoring others and I’m very proud of the fact that my last maybe five APs [assistant principals] are now principals. One just became a principal a few weeks ago, and that feels really great. Also, Carmen Fariña started a Learning Partners Project. You could apply to be a host school, which is what we were, if you had practices you wanted to share, and then other people could apply to be partners. We were part of this for four years in different configurations, but at one point we had actually eight partner schools in Sunset Park and Brownsville and Park Slope and one year in far Rockaway. And that was an opportunity for not just principals but teachers to do intervisitation and learn from each other. I really enjoy that part of the job. Last year I facilitated a District 15 group of assistant principals who had the potential to be principals. I really feel like, you know, that’s very sustaining to me to feel like, as I’ve been doing this for a long time and some of it is easier than it is for a first year principal, to be able to share best practices. But I also feel like, you know, as I said when we started, each year is a new beginning. Each year has its own challenges and it’s, you know, and I enjoy that. I feel like as a successful school, it’s not like, oh, we have brand new things coming, we take what’s been successful and we modify it and we make it better. So math is an area right now we’re paying a lot of attention to. And so that’s a little new, you know, social emotional learning is something we’ve always been committed to, but now figuring out even better ways. We started a peace path, and it’s just a method of helping kids resolve their own conflicts. That’s new. So every year there are a few new things. I believe as a principal, you have to be growing, you have to do something new, but you can’t like throw in 20 new initiatives. It’s not effective. 

 

The Slope Survey: Daniella Stromberg

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The Slope Survey returns for its 8th installment with Daniella Stromberg, a native New Yorker, born and raised in the West Village and owner of d’mai Urban Spa on Fifth Avenue. Daniella opened the spa in 2004. Working with her team to provide a neighborhood sanctuary has been both a thrilling learning experience and a true honor as well.

What brought you to Park Slope? 

I moved back to NYC in 1994. I had been living in Amsterdam and somehow returning to Manhattan just felt wrong. Park Slope was beautiful, progressive, had a great Park and seemed close to “the city” (as we called it then).

What is your most memorable Park Slope moment?  

Before opening d’mai, friends and I celebrated my new lease by drinking champagne in the old fish market before construction. It was basically just all cement – a blank canvas filled with possibility.

Describe your community superpower.  

Kindness.

 If you could change one thing about the neighborhood, what wuld it be?

I wish more of our restaurants stayed open later.

What do you think Park Slope will look like in 10 years?

Things are always changing! It’s so hard to know what this next wave will look like…I imagine even more skyscrapers. To be honest, I find them jarring right now. In 10 years, I think the waterfront and canal restoration will bring the new and old together beautifully.

What are you reading, would you recommend it?  

I’m actually re-reading “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, by David Sedaris. I love it just as much as the first 4 or 5 reads.

 What is your greatest extravagance?  

Full length cashmere bathrobe; I’ve had it for many years and it still looks and feel amazing.

If you couldn’t live in Park Slope or in Brooklyn, where would you go?  

Easy—the North Fork of Long Island!

Who is your hero, real or fictional?

I’m blown away by the student activists. They’ve given us hope that our nation really will get through this.

Last Word, What is turning you on these days?

The fact that winter is over and SPRING IS HERE.

From Sardinia to South Brooklyn: A Conversation with Convivium Osteria’s Carlo and Michelle Pulixi

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In a sea of new restaurants that rapidly open and close at a one-year-or-less pace, Park Slope’s Convivium Osteria has kept things going on 5th Avenue since 2000. Co-owner Carlo Pulixi notes, “This part of the neighborhood, I would say we were the very first. There were Spanish bodegas but nothing of what you see today. It was totally different.” The rustic, Southern Italian restaurant brings a little slice of Carlo’s Sardinia roots to Park Slope, a menu filled with fresh Mediterranean pasta and meat dishes. “It wasn’t really that I invented anything, more re-created. We brought it back to its origins,” Pulixi says. Co-owner and wife Michelle Pulixi met Carlo while working at Il Buco in the East Village, and the two decided that her Park Slope neighborhood would be the second home to showcase Carlo’s own home roots, along with Michelle’s Latin American family background. Today, you can still find many of the same menu items from when Convivium Osteria first opened nearly 20 years ago. We chatted with the owners about their experiences in the food industry and what they each love about Park Slope. 

Can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you got involved in the food industry?

Michelle: I’ve been in the food restaurant industry since I was 12, where I worked on weekends at my best friend’s moms apple pie shop, sometimes at the counter, sometimes making pies. Since then I have always just been working my way up at different restaurants until I ended up in NYC and within 6 months of moving here I met Carlo at a restaurant I was working at and 1 year later we started looking for a place to open up together. 2 years later we had Convivium. I worked along side him all the way through, he is the main brain behind it all, and I am good a supporting and giving fresh ideas and adding artistic touches. We raised our kids in our apartment above the restaurant and it is really a family thing. Our son is just about ready to start working at Convivium in about 1 year, but they have always helped in setting up and doing little chores.

Carlo: Well I’m from Italy. Sardinia. I spend half of my teens to half of them in Roma before coming to the United States. And since I’ve been in the United States I’ve always worked in restaurants. And it’s not that hard for me, came kind of natural. With a number of partners, I opened a restaurant in the city before coming here to Brooklyn, which that’s the time that I met my wife Michelle. I don’t know, it just comes naturally to me, the restaurant business. 

 

How did you help decide to move Convivium to Park Slope?

Carlo: When I met Michelle, she used to live here in Park Slope. I had never set foot in Brooklyn till then. Came to this neighborhood, got off at Grand Army Plaza, and fell in love with it. It was spring, the trees were green and all that. The neighborhood and the tree-lined streets, the sloping streets, the beautiful townhouses, and then, after almost 10 years in New York City, the kind of quietness. We lived very close to the park. It felt very great. We were planning on moving to Europe then really fell in love with it so we decided to open the restaurant here.

Michelle: We ended up in Park Slope because I lived here since 1998 and we both loved the neighborhood. Also, it had become impossible for little guys to open anything in Manhattan. Rents were reasonable back then in Park Slope, haha! We had very little money and had to squeeze everything in order to open up shop. Park Slope had a very cozy neighborhood feel, we felt at home here.

What do you think makes Convivium stand out from other restaurants in the neighborhood?

Michelle: What I think makes Convivium stand out is how when you enter the front door of our restaurant, you leave the hustle bustle of the city outside and, like a time portal, enter into a very rustic and cozy embracing atmosphere, at least I hope people do, that was our goal. A place where people can feel loved and appreciated, from the love we put into the food, to the setting and the service. Carlo is very keen to details and consistency at every level, from the wines he chooses to offer, to where he places a copper pot to shine just right, to quality and freshness of the produce and meat we offer, to the very rare and special wild fennel pollen that he chooses to spice a special pasta with. He was raised by farmers and chefs in Italy, so he has a lot of knowledge of the old world to bring to us.

 

 

Spirituality, Social Activism and Spare Time

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A RABBI’S SEARCH FOR BALANCE

In 2015, Timoner relocated her family from Los Angeles, where she served as associate rabbi of Leo Baeck Temple, to take a position as senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim, a Reform Jewish congregation that traces its roots to the late 19th century and, since 1910, has gathered on the corner of Garfield Place and Eighth Avenue. In her brief time in Brooklyn, the long-time progressive activist and grassroots organizer has become a central force in not only the spiritual but political life of Park Slope, making headlines for her arrest protesting President Trump’s travel ban in February of 2017 and kindling the resistance movement #GetOrganizedBrooklyn with councilmember Brad Lander, among many other actions both within the congregation and in the wider community. 

As we sat in her cozy, book-filled office tucked behind CBE’s sanctuary, the rabbi engaged with off the cuff eloquence about relocating from the west coast, following the teachings of the Torah, and what to do about millennials. A theme of our conversation was the complexity of the human experience, and how challenging it can be to not only live with but try to embrace contradiction.

Perhaps we can look to Timoner as a model for such duality. She is commanding yet compassionate, emotional and intellectual. She is endlessly active, yet — this struck me most of all — she listens, carefully, thoughtfully. When you speak with Rabbi Timoner, you feel heard. Understood. Though this writer’s spiritual search continues, I left my conversation with the rabbi — as I did last time we spoke about her work — emboldened by another dialectic: spurred on to action and anchored by the great wisdom that exists in our own backyard. 

 

What makes your congregation such a unique and special place, one that would draw you to Park Slope all the way from California?

There’s a question right now in the Jewish world about what the future of the synagogue is going to look like. A lot of a lot of young Jews think about the synagogue as something that their parents or their grandparents were part of, and there’s a question of like, can and will the synagogue reinvent itself? And how? This congregation has been engaged in that for some time and really is open to experimentation. To engaging the larger neighborhood, not just the Jewish community. To being right there and relevant on whatever the pressing questions are at the time. And that’s the kind of congregation that I most wanted to serve. One where we could be talking about what’s most important in our society and in our lives. And one where we are having a really open boundary, like just really open to the rest of the community and looking actively for partnerships across lines of race, across lines of faith. And also one that is willing to be bold, and willing to try new things and willing even to fail in the pursuit of the kind of change that meets people where they are. 

It seems that a huge part of your life is defined by your commitment to social justice. Do you ever feel that there’s tension between that role and your role as a rabbi? Or does anyone from the congregation ever give you the idea that there might be tension there? 

In any congregation this big, we have like 900-something households, there’s diversity there. And there are a lot of people who really prize the role that we’re playing around social justice. It’s one of their primary points of connection. And there are other people who don’t want to see that here. Who feel like a synagogue should be mostly a place that feels calm and peaceful, where we don’t really talk about political questions. Where we don’t talk about things that are upsetting. There are people who feel that way. Or who feel like the direction our country is going in is OK, there are those. It’s a very small minority of people here, but there are some people who feel that way. So, the way that I feel about that is when I am aware of somebody being uncomfortable with the direction we’re taking, I really want them to know that I want to hear from them and I want to sit with them. I want to hear what’s been uncomfortable and want to hear, you know, I want to hear their perspective. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m not going to do what I’m doing or that I’m not going to lead the way I’m leading because I do feel like this moment requires that of us. I actually feel, beyond this moment, I feel that Torah and Judaism requires of us that we take a stand on the moral questions of our time. And then we take the political questions. Torah is actually a political text. It’s about society. It’s about how to create a just society. That’s what Torah is. So in my eyes, if I were to be silent or inactive on the injustices of our time, I would be betraying Torah. In order to fulfill Torah and be true to it, I have to speak. I don’t have a choice. 

As a society, we want to move beyond this idea of, “as a Democrat, I could never be friends with a Republican” and vice versa, but it sometimes feels like we’re creating divisions that are insurmountable. But we have to be able to reach across and have a dialogue…

Because we have more in common than we realize. One of the things that we’ve been doing this year, actually for the last two years, is creating a dialogue series here specifically hoping that people will come who don’t agree with each other. This year our focus is Israel. Within the Jewish community, there’s a really big range of feelings about Israel, and within this congregation there are. So we have a 12-part series we’ve been doing this year in which each time we meet, one of the hours is study, where we actually learn some history about Israel and Palestine and Jewish history and get grounded in some knowledge. And then the other hour is dialogues. So we have trained a group of congregants to be facilitators, and we have small groups and people come together and really are encouraged to open up and talk about how they feel and what they think and to disagree with each other. And to grow our capacity to be uncomfortable, to grow our capacity to listen to views we don’t agree with, to take a deep breath, to stay open, to stay curious, to see if there’s something we might learn. None of us has the answers. To develop a humility that, I need you and you need me and we need each other to be able to create a society together. And so I think that what that requires is two parts of the whole. One part is being able to speak and act with clarity on the things we are clear about. You were asking about social justice. So there’s a lot of things that are very clear from Torah about what should happen in a just society. When we see injustice, we must speak about it, we need to protest it, we need to stand for what’s right. Meanwhile, we also have to have the ability to listen to people who don’t agree and to be humble in that conversation and to be open and to be curious and to expect that we might have something we don’t know. And that’s a very challenging combination. Two different modes of being. But I’m trying to make both those modes of being happen here, both myself and my own leadership and for the congregation to have opportunities to do both things at the same time.  

It wasn’t that long ago that you joined the rabbinate, receiving s’micha from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2009. Since then, how have you grown in your spirituality? In your idea of what it means to be a rabbi?

I feel like my growing edge, the part that I’m always learning about is the relationship between spirituality and social justice, between having an active relationship with God, the source of life. Having an active relationship with the aspects of being alive that are more subtle and internal and with the part of my leadership that has to do with crying out for the role that should be. And those in some ways really obviously dovetail with one another and other ways can sometimes feel far apart from each other. Sometimes the work we do, when we are advocating for policies or doing community organizing or protesting things, can feel really secular. Really, really secular. I think that the integration of those two things, always remembering where the motivation comes from. I don’t just care about this as an American. I care about this as a Jew. I care about this as a rabbi. Where does that come from? It comes from Torah. Where in Torah does it come from? And where does Torah come from? Where does that feeling in us that pulls us to say, wait, I believe in us as, as human beings, I believe that we can do better than this. I must speak about this thing that’s wrong. Where does that pull come from deep within us? My feeling is that that comes from something beyond us. It’s also in us, and so just always connecting those two pieces. I feel like it’s possible to be praying and not thinking about the world or be in the world and not be thinking about God, and I’m always wanting to reconnect those two things to each other and integrate them. That is, for me, it has always been a very present challenge for me, and it continues to be. 

You also aren’t afraid to put yourself on the front lines of social justice. I know you’ve engaged in civil disobedience and written and spoken about that work. I was struck by something in a piece you wrote about the Muslim ban. You said that civil disobedience is what privilege should be used for. Could you take me back to that moment and elaborate on that sentiment? 

There were a group of rabbis, 19 of us, who blocked the road by Trump Tower in Manhattan, the Trump hotel on Central Park West and Columbus Circle. I was aware that night about how safe I felt, sitting in the dark in the middle of the road. I knew that the cars weren’t going to hit me because there were police there blocking them. I knew that the police weren’t going to beat me up. I knew that I wasn’t going to get locked up for days with no one coming to help me. I knew that if there was bail I could pay it. I knew that I wasn’t going to get put in Rikers Island. Given that I was doing something risky, I felt remarkably safe. And that is because of a lot of things. I have white skin. I have lots of contacts, lawyers who could help me. We organized this in a way where we made sure that we had what we needed to be safe. I think one of the interesting dynamics as white people become more and more aware of our privilege and more and more aware of systemic racism is to think about what to do with it. Because it’s not useful to sit around feeling guilty that you’ve gotten a leg up on everyone, all people of color around you, that you’ve gotten advantages that other people haven’t gotten. It doesn’t do anything to feel guilty about that. So, ok, instead, I’ve got this privilege, I’ve benefited from this privilege. I would like to dismantle this system, but in the meantime, what do I do with this privilege and the power that it gives me? If I can put my body on the line in a visible way that gets media attention for people who might be behind bars or might be in detention, or might be at risk of deportation or are being barred from this country because of their religion, et cetera. If I can do that, that is a great way to use my privilege. Whereas if I didn’t have these privileges, taking that risk is something that I still might do, but it would be much riskier. And so I do feel like for those who have privilege, I think one of the questions we ought to ask ourselves is: what is this privilege good for? What can I use it for, given that I have it, and how do I use it with tremendous humility? How do I make sure that I am acting in a way that supports the leadership of people who are targeted and oppressed that never brings attention to myself at their cost or expense, but that is strategic and makes that privilege useful.

Given all that you do and these different roles you play, how do you not only find time for yourself, but also for your family?

I think that people who aren’t involved in synagogues or churches often don’t have any idea how clergy schedules are. 

And I imagine in many cases, people need you, they don’t just want to chat. 

Yeah. So my schedule, like I tend to be completely booked, you know, 10 to 12 hours a day without a break. I’m booked six weeks out, for six weeks solid. And then if you go six weeks ahead, you can find that opening. I right now have kind of found my groove. When I started in this job, it was overwhelming to me. When I started in my last job, it was overwhelming to me, but in time you kind of get to know the rhythm, the game of Tetris that is the calendar [laughs]. And in terms of time with my family, I don’t have enough time with my family. I don’t. I just was away with them this weekend and really, really soaked up that time and enjoyed it. But in general, I don’t have as much time with my family as I would like. We make sure to have Shabbat dinner together every Friday night and make sure to have, you know, little snippets here and there late at night and sometimes on the weekends. But it’s part of what I agreed to when I decided to be a rabbi. I took that on, and I hope, I think that my children and my family are getting what they need. But yeah, it’s definitely a lot to balance. In terms of not going crazy or not getting too exhausted, I do keep my eye on that. Like I definitely work hard to find ways that I’m going to get enough rest, have some time when I’m not here, have some time when I have some days off. Because I would love to be doing this work for a really long time.

To make it sustainable. Well, to come full circle, there are various reports that say millennials are less inclined to believe in organized religion. What you make of that? Do you notice that in your own congregation? 

Well, one thing that’s incredible here at CBE is that we have this thing called Brooklyn Jews, which is for millennials, and it is thriving. There are hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of people in their twenties and thirties who are coming to things and who are connected to each other and making community. I think the issue is, if it looks like the older generation’s thing, like, who wants to be part of that? If it looks like it’s willing to adapt to meet you where you are, then it starts to become intriguing. Brooklyn Jews has Shabbat services, it has Shabbat dinners, it has holiday parties. It has all kinds of different things out and about in Brooklyn and at CBE. Increasingly we are combining things, with Brooklyn Jews and the general congregation doing things together. And it turns out that a lot of the 

people in their twenties and thirties, they really want to be an intergenerational environment, as long as it’s not just that they’re supposed to fit into what the older generation wants. It should be about them also. And we’re ready to do that. And we do that. And it’s really incredible. I would say that the polling data about millennials, I am not seeing that. I think that it’s overstated. 

I’m someone who is still figuring out my own path, but we all need community. There also are statistics that people are lonelier than ever and more addicted to substances than ever.

Yes. Yes, I think that millennials are very much looking for community.

And in real time. 

Yes, with other people, laughing, talking, eating, singing, being together. You know, I think millennials very much are spiritual. They might not think of themselves as religious, but they’re spiritual. They’re curious about, they’re wanting to engage with questions of meaning and questions of life purpose. I think I’ve talked to a lot of people who feel that they kind of are connected to something larger than themselves, and it’s mysterious, and they don’t know what that is, but they want to be able to pursue that and explore it. And so I don’t think really fundamentally millennials are different than everybody else. 

We just have a lot more confusing content to sort through. 

Yeah. And our world is… looking at our world right now could lead one to despair. And I think coming of age in this time is harrowing. So having other people to do that with, having people to do that with who will also be willing to talk and think about what makes you hopeful and what we could do together and where we could come together and are willing to laugh. I think everybody needs that.

 

Slope Survey: Olivia Williamson

By Filed Under: Olivia’s Kitchen, Slope Survey Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Slope Survey returns for its 7th installment with Olivia Williamson, owner of Olivia Cooks For You, Personal Chef and Catering Services as well as Olivia’s Kitchen, a regular column in the Park Slope Reader. 

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What brought you to Park Slope? 

No surprises here.  We were starting to think about a starting a family and the 6th floor tenement studio in the East Village felt like not a great spot for it.  Plus, after  almost 25 years, I was wearing a little thin on the Manhattan pace and was excited to move to a more leafy and slower paced place.

 

What is your most memorable Park Slope moment?  

I don’t have just one, but I will say the group of friends and support I found after the birth of my first child I will never forget.

 

Describe your community superpower.  

I keep a close eye on new openings, restaurants and events so I’m great at making recommendations on these type of things.

 

If you could change one thing about the neighborhood, what would it be?  

I wish the commercial rents would come down so that more people have the opportunity to open small businesses.

 

What do you think Park Slope will look like in 10 years?

I think it will be pretty much the same.  It’s so well established now as the wonderful place for families that it is, and so close to the best park ever, I can’t see it changing too much.

 

What are you reading, would you recommend it?  

Ugh.  I haven’t read that much since the arrival of our very high energy 6 year old, but I did recently read Lincoln in the Bardo and loved it.

 

What is your greatest extravagance?  

Hah!  Restaurants, of course!

 

If you couldn’t live in Park Slope or in Brooklyn, where would you go?  

New Orleans.  I love the architecture and the energy.

 

Who is your hero, real or fictional?

Right now, it Jose Andres.  The work he is doing in Puerto Rico is nothing short of amazing.

 

Last Word, What’s is turning you on these days?

I’m going through a bit of a growing period with my business, which is exciting.

Slope Survey: Diana Kane English

By Filed Under: Slope Survey Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Slope Survey returns for its 6th installment with Diana Kane English, owner of the Diana Kane Boutique on Fifth Avenue. Among many other things, Diana is the creator of the ubiquitous “feminist” t-shirt that you may have noticed around the neighborhood.

 

 

What brought you to Park Slope? 

Park Slope  was my landing spot in NYC in 1993 because I got to stay in a friend’s apartment while he was away.. then I moved to (gasp!) Manhattan, but I was back in1996 when I met my now husband (his place was bigger than mine).

What is your most memorable Park Slope moment?  Well.. both my kids were born at home .. those feel like a pretty Park Slope moments, and they were certainly memorable.

Describe your community superpower.  

I’m a talker and a connecter. Bringing people together is my superpower, and it gives me lots of pleasure.

Tell us what a good day for is.  

Enjoying all that my ‘hood has to offer: easy school drop off, yoga, or a walk in the park, coffee with friends, and then a day in the store hanging with my fun, friendly, smart, discerning customers. Seeing people wearing and living with things they bought at my store always makes me feel good too, and I’m lucky enough to have that happen pretty frequently.

What do you think Park Slope will look like in 10 years? in 20 years? 

I think PS will be pretty similar to what it is now, but more so. As long as we have brownstones, Prospect Park, and the Food Co-op,  we’ll still be us.

What were your childhood nicknames?  

Bird, shrimp. But you know, if you call me that I may kill you.

What is your greatest extravagance?  

Do the Cotton Candy grapes at the co-op count?

If you couldn’t live in Park Slope or in Brooklyn, where would you go?  

Rome.. or maybe Paris  or maybe a cabin in the back woods of Maine.

Who is your hero, real or fictional?  

Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Colin Kaepernick; Michelle Obama; anyone persevering in the face of challenges.

 

 

You can visit Diana at her boutique:

DIANA KANE

229 5th Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11215

718-638-6520

https://www.dianakane.com

Larger Questions: Our Conversation with Nicole Krauss

By Filed Under: The Reader Interview Tagged With: , , , ,

The characters in Forest Dark are neither “empathetic people from the first page,” as they were in The History of Love, nor are they quite those “who, from the first, were difficult people, as people are,” such as populated her Great House. They defy easy categorization while tempting you to draw connections between their own journeys through parts unknown with what you might think you know of Krauss. They include the elderly Jules Epstein, a wealthy and formerly gregarious New York attorney who has begun selling off his considerable possessions. On page one we learn he has disappeared from the rundown Tel Aviv apartment in which he had been living alone. And we have the protagonist of a parallel story that, in true Krauss fashion, is recounted in alternating chapters, a novelist living in Brooklyn with two sons, and a husband from whom she feels increasingly distanced. Ostensibly to research a new book, she, too, leaves for Tel Aviv. Her name is Nicole.

When asked just how autobiographical are those sections that feature a character who is a Brooklyn writer named Nicole? “Oh, I mean of course, it’s usually the first question people ask me,” the “real” Nicole says in response. The similarities between creator and creation are many: They share a name, a home, two sons, one religion, a friend named Matti Friedman (a journalist in real life, as he is in the story), and a failing or failed marriage (Krauss divorced from author Jonathan Safran Foer several years ago), among other details.

“I totally get it,” Krauss says of the desire to ascertain what is true and what is invention. “But my hope is [the book is] also tempting you to sit with the question of, why does it matter so much to us? It matters to me, too,” she’s quick to add. “I’m fascinated by where the supposedly real ends and the imagining begins.”

But a concrete answer she will not offer. Instead, and without referring to the novel specifically, she makes like Forest Dark — a book that traffics more overtly in abstract ideas through its discussions and inner monologues than its predecessors — and cites a larger concept. “When you write, for example, in the

first-person voice of an old man, like in The History of Love with [the character] Leo Gursky . . . if you’ve had the experience of sitting down and trying to write an old man, you would know that you’re going to draw from your own experience, and naturally you can only make him out of some aspect of you. Part of it is your observations of old men, but much of it, like the really deep value of it, is you. So once you understand, like, oh, I also contain an old man . . . you understand what is called ‘the self’ is largely something that is a construction and it’s an ongoing creative act.”

She continues, “I was aware when I was writing this that this would be a question that would be tripped, and I hope it asks a larger question.”

Large questions make for the foundations and furniture of all great fiction. Forest Dark explores what happens when two people reject their previous understandings of reality and begin to embrace the uncertain. For Epstein, this means engaging with Jewish mysticism and poetry; for the Nicole character, it means, among other things, acting with an uncharacteristic lack of planning. (“I didn’t want to see things as they were. I had grown tired of that,” the character says.)

The work of the Jewish scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel became important to Krauss as she was thinking through the book. In his Man is Not Alone, Heschel discusses “turning away from wonder, and what is lost when we live in a society that doesn’t value wonder, is almost afraid of wonder,” says Krauss. It was this line of thought that “woke up or fed” the questions she was forming: “why is it that we have made such a religion out of factual, rational knowledge, and in what ways is it good for us, and in what ways does it make us feel a little bit ill, and what do we lose when we can only think of the unknown or uncertainty with anxiety?”

Among the more mystical elements addressed within the narrative is Heschel’s idea of menucha, or, simply put, peace. Alongside this theory stand several others that allude to universal feelings, universal sensations, universal doubts and hopes, but which are described in terms of the characters’ engagement with religious texts and called by their Hebrew names: Tzimtzum, Tikkun Olam and Tikkun ha’nefesh, Gilgul. (With them, too, is the not particularly Jewish concept of the unheimlich, or uncanny, which was, however, first posited by the Jewish Freud.) These concepts so fundamental to the discursive book and its human evocations are rooted in a specific culture, as are the protagonists and the people whom they meet.

Krauss, who was named to Vanity Fair’s 2009 list of young Jewish authors the magazine deemed the “New Yiddishists,” recalls an event she once attended while a student in the mid ‘90s. The Polish film director Krzysztof Kieslowski “was talking about how he no longer was interested in making films anymore because under Communism there was a secret language, and a gesture could be made among his films that all his audience would

know what he was talking about,” says Krauss. “So what I would say about that is, in terms of being Jewish, there’s something really, really wonderful and profound to feel, on the one hand, that maybe you have a deep, deep language with a people.” However, although this connection is “rich,” when it comes to her readers, “I don’t feel like I’m thinking about Jews in the way that Kieslowski was thinking about only those people” among his viewers who could decipher his code. Krauss insists she’s “not here to serve any party line” nor to speak “for anyone except myself.”

“So I guess those feelings are in conflict with each other: one is gratitude to have that richness of cultural belonging and language, and the other one is an absolute instinct, the freedom often not to write about it.”

And yet there’s no denying both the richness and ambivalence associated with her heritage are things she is able to mine for emotional effect. Take, for instance, Forest Dark’s Israel, the country to which the novel’s two American protagonists flee. Krauss says she has always felt at home there. “I feel at home here, too, but it’s surprising to feel at home in a place where you didn’t grow up.” In thinking about why “some aspect of it feels native to me,” she muses: “is it some aspect of the Jewish upbringing that always teaches you about here and there, where there’s always a there to your here? . . . What is it to grow up in a culture that somehow at its core teaches you that you are from someplace else, and no matter how well you’ve assimilated or roots you’ve put down, that other place, that there, whether you’ve touched it or kissed it or not, will always draw you — is that true, you know?”

This notion of a “there to your here” recurs throughout the book, and not only as an echo of Jewish thought. The first time we meet the Nicole character she is recounting a childhood memory of watching television and feeling so certain that a girl in the TV audience is her, that is, that she is both there on that television set, as well as where she is, in her parents’ bedroom. Yearning for a state of being different from how you are is, for Krauss, indelibly human. “Have you ever known a person who hasn’t grown incredibly tired of oneself and one’s life and one’s limitations and just wouldn’t love to be free of all the constraints, both self-imposed constraints, of which there are always far more than the constraints that people place on you,” and those that “the life you live force on you?” It’s no wonder that as Forest Dark explores the theme of transformation, the writer of The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka, who also gives the work its epigraph, comes to play a prominent role.

Given the many themes, the many texts, the many ideas at play in Forest Dark, the novel may at first appear to stand apart from Man Walks Into a Room, The History of Love, and Great House as the most cerebral of the Krauss quartet. The narrative line is, perhaps, of less of a concern than ever it was. But though Krauss has sometimes been labeled “difficult,” cerebral is not how she would choose to describe her latest creation. Or, not only.

“I don’t know if it’s more cerebral. I mean, it feels emotional to me, but those things go hand in hand, cerebral and emotional.” Nor would she want to spoil the sense of the unknown that greets every reader at the onset of a new story by offering a neat summary of her Forest Dark. “In an ideal world, I would see that people are OK with the fact that it can’t be described . . . I would love it if it were OK to just say, here’s how the book made me think or feel, but I can’t really give you a synopsis of what it is, or what it’s about. You have to read it.”