12 truths I learned from life and writing...

0:12 My seven-year-old grandson sleeps just down the hall from me, and he wakes up a lot of mornings and he says, "You know, this could be the best day ever." And other times, in the middle of the night, he calls out in a tremulous voice, "Nana, will you ever get sick and die?"

 

0:30 I think this pretty much says it for me and most of the people I know, that we're a mixed grill of happy anticipation and dread. So I sat down a few days before my 61st birthday, and I decided to compile a list of everything I know for sure. There's so little truth in the popular culture, and it's good to be sure of a few things.

 

0:56 For instance, I am no longer 47, although this is the age I feel, and the age I like to think of myself as being. My friend Paul used to say in his late 70s that he felt like a young man with something really wrong with him.

 

1:12 (Laughter)

 

1:16 Our true person is outside of time and space, but looking at the paperwork, I can, in fact, see that I was born in 1954. My inside self is outside of time and space. It doesn't have an age. I'm every age I've ever been, and so are you, although I can't help mentioning as an aside that it might have been helpful if I hadn't followed the skin care rules of the '60s, which involved getting as much sun as possible while slathered in baby oil and basking in the glow of a tinfoil reflector shield.

 

1:50 (Laughter)

 

1:52 It was so liberating, though, to face the truth that I was no longer in the last throes of middle age, that I decided to write down every single true thing I know. People feel really doomed and overwhelmed these days, and they keep asking me what's true. So I hope that my list of things I'm almost positive about might offer some basic operating instructions to anyone who is feeling really overwhelmed or beleaguered.

 

2:23 Number one: the first and truest thing is that all truth is a paradox. Life is both a precious, unfathomably beautiful gift, and it's impossible here, on the incarnational side of things. It's been a very bad match for those of us who were born extremely sensitive. It's so hard and weird that we sometimes wonder if we're being punked. It's filled simultaneously with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, desperate poverty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart, all swirled together. I don't think it's an ideal system.

 

3:03 (Laughter)

 

3:06 Number two: almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes —

 

3:12 (Laughter)

 

3:14 (Applause)

 

3:18 including you.

 

3:21 Three: there is almost nothing outside of you that will help in any kind of lasting way, unless you're waiting for an organ. You can't buy, achieve or date serenity and peace of mind. This is the most horrible truth, and I so resent it. But it's an inside job, and we can't arrange peace or lasting improvement for the people we love most in the world. They have to find their own ways, their own answers. You can't run alongside your grown children with sunscreen and ChapStick on their hero's journey. You have to release them. It's disrespectful not to. And if it's someone else's problem, you probably don't have the answer, anyway.

 

4:10 (Laughter)

 

4:11 Our help is usually not very helpful. Our help is often toxic. And help is the sunny side of control. Stop helping so much. Don't get your help and goodness all over everybody.

 

4:27 (Laughter)

 

4:30 (Applause)

 

4:32 This brings us to number four: everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy and scared, even the people who seem to have it most together. They are much more like you than you would believe, so try not to compare your insides to other people's outsides. It will only make you worse than you already are.

 

4:50 (Laughter)

 

4:55 Also, you can't save, fix or rescue any of them or get anyone sober. What helped me get clean and sober 30 years ago was the catastrophe of my behavior and thinking. So I asked some sober friends for help, and I turned to a higher power. One acronym for God is the "gift of desperation," G-O-D, or as a sober friend put it, by the end I was deteriorating faster than I could lower my standards.

 

5:23 (Laughter)

 

5:30 So God might mean, in this case, "me running out of any more good ideas."

 

5:36 While fixing and saving and trying to rescue is futile, radical self-care is quantum, and it radiates out from you into the atmosphere like a little fresh air. It's a huge gift to the world. When people respond by saying, "Well, isn't she full of herself," just smile obliquely like Mona Lisa and make both of you a nice cup of tea. Being full of affection for one's goofy, self-centered, cranky, annoying self is home. It's where world peace begins.

 

6:16 Number five: chocolate with 75 percent cacao is not actually a food.

 

6:22 (Laughter)

 

6:26 Its best use is as a bait in snake traps or to balance the legs of wobbly chairs. It was never meant to be considered an edible.

 

6:40 Number six —

 

6:42 (Laughter)

 

6:45 writing. Every writer you know writes really terrible first drafts, but they keep their butt in the chair. That's the secret of life. That's probably the main difference between you and them. They just do it. They do it by prearrangement with themselves. They do it as a debt of honor. They tell stories that come through them one day at a time, little by little. When my older brother was in fourth grade, he had a term paper on birds due the next day, and he hadn't started. So my dad sat down with him with an Audubon book, paper, pencils and brads — for those of you who have gotten a little less young and remember brads — and he said to my brother, "Just take it bird by bird, buddy. Just read about pelicans and then write about pelicans in your own voice. And then find out about chickadees, and tell us about them in your own voice. And then geese."

 

7:51 So the two most important things about writing are: bird by bird and really god-awful first drafts. If you don't know where to start, remember that every single thing that happened to you is yours, and you get to tell it. If people wanted you to write more warmly about them, they should've behaved better.

 

8:10 (Laughter)

 

8:13 (Applause)

 

8:18 You're going to feel like hell if you wake up someday and you never wrote the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart: your stories, memories, visions and songs — your truth, your version of things — in your own voice. That's really all you have to offer us, and that's also why you were born.

 

8:41 Seven: publication and temporary creative successes are something you have to recover from. They kill as many people as not. They will hurt, damage and change you in ways you cannot imagine. The most degraded and evil people I've ever known are male writers who've had huge best sellers. And yet, returning to number one, that all truth is paradox, it's also a miracle to get your work published, to get your stories read and heard. Just try to bust yourself gently of the fantasy that publication will heal you, that it will fill the Swiss-cheesy holes inside of you. It can't. It won't. But writing can. So can singing in a choir or a bluegrass band. So can painting community murals or birding or fostering old dogs that no one else will.

 

9:39 Number eight: families. Families are hard, hard, hard, no matter how cherished and astonishing they may also be. Again, see number one.

 

9:52 (Laughter)

 

9:53 At family gatherings where you suddenly feel homicidal or suicidal —

 

9:57 (Laughter)

 

9:59 remember that in all cases, it's a miracle that any of us, specifically, were conceived and born. Earth is forgiveness school. It begins with forgiving yourself, and then you might as well start at the dinner table. That way, you can do this work in comfortable pants.

 

10:19 (Laughter)

 

10:22 When William Blake said that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love, he knew that your family would be an intimate part of this, even as you want to run screaming for your cute little life. But I promise you are up to it. You can do it, Cinderella, you can do it, and you will be amazed.

10:44 Nine: food. Try to do a little better. I think you know what I mean.

 

10:52 (Laughter)

 

11:02 Number 10 —

 

11:03 (Laughter)

 

11:05 grace. Grace is spiritual WD-40, or water wings. The mystery of grace is that God loves Henry Kissinger and Vladimir Putin and me exactly as much as He or She loves your new grandchild. Go figure.

 

11:25 (Laughter)

 

11:27 The movement of grace is what changes us, heals us and heals our world. To summon grace, say, "Help," and then buckle up. Grace finds you exactly where you are, but it doesn't leave you where it found you. And grace won't look like Casper the Friendly Ghost, regrettably. But the phone will ring or the mail will come and then against all odds, you'll get your sense of humor about yourself back. Laughter really is carbonated holiness. It helps us breathe again and again and gives us back to ourselves, and this gives us faith in life and each other. And remember — grace always bats last.

 

12:12 Eleven: God just means goodness. It's really not all that scary. It means the divine or a loving, animating intelligence, or, as we learned from the great "Deteriorata," "the cosmic muffin." A good name for God is: "Not me." Emerson said that the happiest person on Earth is the one who learns from nature the lessons of worship. So go outside a lot and look up. My pastor said you can trap bees on the bottom of mason jars without lids because they don't look up, so they just walk around bitterly bumping into the glass walls. Go outside. Look up. Secret of life.

 

12:58 And finally: death. Number 12. Wow and yikes. It's so hard to bear when the few people you cannot live without die. You'll never get over these losses, and no matter what the culture says, you're not supposed to. We  like to think of death as a major change of address, but in any case, the person will live again fully in your heart if you don't seal it off. Like Leonard Cohen said, "There are cracks in everything, and that's how the light gets in." And that's how we feel our people again fully alive.

 

13:38 Also, the people will make you laugh out loud at the most inconvenient times, and that's the great good news. But their absence will also be a lifelong nightmare of homesickness for you. Grief and friends, time and tears will heal you to some extent. Tears will bathe and hydrate and moisturize you and the ground on which you walk.

 

14:03 Do you know the first thing that God says to Moses? He says, "Take off your shoes." Because this is holy ground, all evidence to the contrary. It's hard to believe, but it's the truest thing I know. When you're a little bit older, like my tiny personal self, you realize that death is as sacred as birth. And don't worry — get on with your life. Almost every single death is easy and gentle with the very best people surrounding you for as long as you need. You won't be alone. They'll help you cross over to whatever awaits us. As Ram Dass said, "When all is said and done, we're really just all walking each other home."

 

14:54 I think that's it, but if I think of anything else, I'll let you know.
 

14:59 Thank you.

 

15:00 (Applause)

 

15:02 Thank you.

 

15:03 (Applause)

 

15:05 I was very surprised to be asked to come, because it is not my realm, technology or design or entertainment. I mean, my realm is sort of faith and writing and kind of lurching along together. And I was surprised, but they said I could give a talk, and I said I'd love to.

 

15:24 (Video) If you don't know where to start, remember that every single thing that happened to you is yours and you get to tell it.

 

15:31 Anne Lamott: People are very frightened and feel really doomed in America these days, and I just wanted to help people get their sense of humor about it and to realize how much isn't a problem. If you take an action, take a really healthy or loving or friendly action, you'll have loving and friendly feelings.

Despite 15 years passing since the sexual abuse allegedly began, when Mirlis was a sophomore at the yeshiva, the case could still be prosecuted under Connecticut’s statute of limitations.

State Investigates Greer Yeshiva’s Licensing

A student in one of the two yeshiva dorm buildings. WASSUPP WITH THIS YESHIVA BOY'S FINGERS?

Three weeks after losing a $20 million sexual abuse lawsuit, Rabbi Daniel Greer and the yeshiva he started in the Edgewood neighborhood may have new troubles at their doorstep.

The Yeshiva of New Haven

The yeshiva — where Greer allegedly abused minors for years, according to testimony in the recent trial in U.S. District Court in Hartford — remains open, allegedly under new management. Greer remains in the building, where prayer services take place on the second floor.

Two state regulatory agencies have now accused the yeshiva of operating a boarding school without proper certifications. Meanwhile, the state’s attorney’s office and local police have a file open on a possible criminal investigation of Greer, though it is not clear how active that investigation is. Experts said the state’s statute of limitations has not yet expired.

The scrutiny of the Orthodox Jewish high school ramped up in recent weeks after a federal jury sided last month with Eliyahu Mirlis, a student at the yeshiva from 2001 to 2005. The jurors concluded it was more likely than not — the standard used in civil cases — that Greer had sexually assaulted the teenaged Mirlis repeatedly over a three-year period, and that the yeshiva had demonstrated negligence and recklessness in allowing the sexual abuse to continue. To compensate for emotional and punitive damages, the jury awarded Mirlis a $20 million verdict — a sum that continues to balloon with interest, by nearly $4,400 a day. A second former student and school administrator also in a deposition revealed allegedly being sexually abused.

Meanwhile, on April 20, by letter, the State Department of Education informed the yeshiva’s director that he does not possess the special exemption required to legally operate a boarding school, violating state law.

Rabbi Daniel Greer outside federal court.

“It has come to the attention of the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE) that you may be operating a boarding school for young men in New Haven, Connecticut without proper authorization,” wrote Laura Anastasio, an attorney who oversees the Department of Education’s legal and governmental affairs.The letter served as an official notice to the Department of Children and Families (DCF), which has jurisdiction over the licensing, to review the yeshiva’s paperwork. ‘“By means of this letter, I am informing DCF of your school’s non-compliance with the statutory requirements for boarding facilities,” Anastasio wrote. The Independent obtained the state letter, titled “Notice of Violation and Opportunity for Compliance Meeting,” through a Freedom of Information Act request last week.

Despite a month’s time since the letter was sent by certified mail, CSDE had not heard back from the yeshiva as of late last week, agency spokeswoman Abbe Smith said.
DCF, which can bring a lawsuit against the yeshiva for non-compliance, plans to send a letter of their own this week, spokesman Gary Kleeblatt confirmed. That missive will tell the school that they needed to apply for the proper certifications immediately, he said.

Back In Business

The entryway to one of the dorms, littered with empty plastic bottles, cigarette butts..

Rabbi Greer created the not-for-profit in 1977 to open the yeshiva in the former Roger Sherman School at the corner of Elm and Norton Streets, according to a history of the institution written by Greer’s wife, Sarah Greer, in the newly published book Jews In New Haven Vol. X.  “The lion’s share of the effort from the very first parent meeting until the present was and is expended by Rabbi Daniel Greer. His vision and his high standards inform the entire institution,” she wrote. “Within a few short years of the school’s founding, Daniel Greer relinquished his private law practice to work full-time at Yeshiva.”She described the school’s “delightfully welcoming environment”: “Eschewing technology in the classroom and emphasiziing actual books, chalk and blackboards, students learn much in the mode of a bygone era.”

The school lost its students after the federal molestation case was publicly reported in May 2016. Since then new students have arrived from outside the state. Over two dozen students now take classes and reside at the school’s dorms.

The Independent spoke with current students on multiple visits to the Elm Street compound during the last two weeks. By their account, Greer shuttered his educational operation sometime last year. In its place, a Rabbi Avrohom Notis moved his yeshiva (started in Lakewood, N.J., and transferred to Deal, N.J.) to the New Haven building this academic year. Notis paid for the move, one teenager said.
The average boarder is 18 years old, students reported, but there are several minors on site. The youngest person living in the dorm is Notis’s son, a 16-year-old. The adolescents hail from Lakewood and Baltimore, Brooklyn and Monsey, N.Y., and as far abroad as London. Most will be leaving for vacation during the latter half of the summer, the students said.

Greer’s role in the new administration is limited, the students said. “He doesn’t have any power, if that’s what you mean,” one commented. “He’s kinda not involved.” Asked if Greer plays any part in the school, the student clarified that the rabbi often joins in prayer services. After all, “it’s his congregation we’re at,” the student explained.

When a reporter visited the yeshiva in person on a recent Thursday afternoon to try to speak to Greer, the school secretary Jean Ledbury buzzed him in. But as soon as he identified himself as a journalist, Ledbury immediately interrupted. “Out! Out! I thought you were here for services,” she said. “Please leave or else I’ll call the police.” She escorted the reporter to the front door. Upon being asked further questions in the doorway, Ledbury, now red in the face, trembled as she yelled, “Please leave! No!” Please! Leave!”

The Independent subsequently reached out to Greer, Notis and Greer’s lawyer William Ward for comment, leaving voicemails for each. None responded.

Boarding School Rule

YouTube/Larry Dressler

Larry “Noodles” Dressler speaking to camera after ambushing Rabbi Daniel Greer outside the federal courthouse in Hartford.

Private schools are largely untouched by the state, outside of submitting attendance reports once a year. (There are some exceptions for those that voluntarily seek state approval as a nonpublic school, as such New Haven institutions as Cold Spring School, Hopkins and St. Bernadette have all done.)But a different, complex regulatory regime exists for boarding schools. Technically, by housing minors, the yeshiva is considered a child-care facility, under DCF’s purview. Unless, that is, the yeshiva obtains a pass from the State Board of Education, proving it’s an educational institution. Without that certificate of exemption, the boarding school must have a DCF license.

According to representatives from the two state agencies, the yeshiva does not possess a DCF license or a certificate of exemption, nor has the school ever applied for either. In fact, the yeshiva hadn’t submitted any paperwork to the state since 2011, Smith said.

The yeshiva received a five-year authorization to operate a day school back in 2001, Smith noted. After that expired in 2006, the school was expected to seek accreditation by a state-approved agency. “The Gan School did not do that,” Smith said, using one of the several interchangeable names for the Yeshiva of New Haven. (For years the building’s elementary and middle school was called the Gan and its high school the Yeshiva of New Haven.)

Additionally, the school hasn’t submitted mandatory attendance reports since the end of the 2010-11 school year, when the school reported that seven staffers taught 62 students, according to Smith. Technically, though, state law holds parents responsible for that oversight, not the school. The statute indicates that parents or guardians are responsible for ensuring their kids attend a public school “or show that the child is elsewhere receiving equivalent instruction in the studies taught in the public schools,” until the child receives a high school diploma or turns 18 years old.

Because of that technicality, the two agencies are focusing on whether the yeshiva has its paperwork in order to run a boarding school.

State regulators reexamined the yeshiva’s filings after being inadvertently tipped off to the violation by blogger Lawrence Dressler, a former active member of the prayer community at the school who has followed the sexual abuse suit in detail on his blog, where he has written over 185 posts about the rabbi. (Greer’s attorneys attempted to get a restraining order against Dressler for allegedly “stalking” the rabbi.) This spring, Dressler notified the Department of Education that he has seen drunk teens outside the Greer-owned apartment buildings on Elm Street that house the yeshiva students.

Based on introductory conversations with the yeshiva over the past several weeks, Kleeblatt said he expects that the yeshiva will comply with DCF’s demands.

“We need to determine if, in fact, they have boarding students, and if they do, we want to see them take one of those actions” — obtaining either of the documents, Kleeblatt said. “That’s what the law requires, and we expect them to cooperate. If it’s necessary, we are prepared to enforce the statute by going to court, but we are expecting to receive cooperation.”

Criminal Prosecution Possible, Until 2020

Mirlis’s attorney Antonio Ponvert outside federal court.

Despite 15 years passing since the sexual abuse allegedly began, when Mirlis was a sophomore at the yeshiva, the case could still be prosecuted under Connecticut’s statute of limitations.

 Both the New Haven Police Department and the State’s Attorney’s Office confirmed that the case file remains open but they declined to share any further details about its progress. For a variety of reasons, no new activity has taken place for at least months in the investigation, according to local police, and no one has confirmed speaking with police since Mirlis initially contacted them.

Reworked by the legislature in 2002, shortly after the Boston Globe’s explosive stories about sexual abuse by Catholic priests, Connecticut’s revised law gives the state’s attorney 30 years from the date a victim turns age 18 or five years from the date a victim reports the case to authorities — whichever comes sooner. Mirlis filed a police report in 2015, he confirmed at last month’s trial, giving the state until 2020 to take up his case.

Connecticut was among the earlier states to reform its statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse, said Marci Hoffman, a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and research chair at Cardozo Law School. While it hasn’t gone as far as the roughly 15 states that have eliminated their time limits altogether, their decades-long window is “pretty generous,” she added.

Why is such a lengthy period of time necessary? “The science of traumatology is increasingly explaining why it is often victims need until their 40s or 50s to come forward. Trauma affects each individual differently, but it operates so that the victim is often disabled from either coping with it or understanding it. It really does take someone into their adulthood to understand that they didn’t have a childhood,” Hoffman explained.

And just because a case is old doesn’t mean it’s no longer a matter of public safety, she added. “One of the things that the public doesn’t understand is that child perpetrators often attack children well into their elderly years. Even if you identify someone in their 60s or 70s, you may still prevent further crimes against children,” she said.

To file a case against Greer, prosecutors would need to feel sure they have unquestionable proof of sexual assault — sufficient to meet the higher burden in criminal court to establish guilt.

Procedural differences from the recent trial will affect how easily the state can present their case to a jury. On one hand, law enforcement has more tools to obtain evidence. Greer, for example, refused to turn over credit card receipts for motel and hotel stays at his October 2016 deposition. A prosecutor could likely obtain those and other records.

On the other hand, Greer could choose to steer clear of the witness stand this time. His invocation of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination could not be considered by jurors — unlike in the civil courtroom, where the panel could draw an adverse inference for every non-answer. At his recent trial Greer denied one specific allegation of having abused Mirlis, then repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than respond to years’ worth of other allegations.

The state’s attorney could go for first-degree sexual assault charges if there’s evidence Greer plied the boy with alcohol, as Mirlis claimed the rabbi did during the civil trial, to the point that the teen was “mentally incapacitated to the extent that [he was] unable to consent to such sexual intercourse.” If not, the state could pursue second-degree sexual assault charges, which the law clearly states apply to incidents when “the actor is a school employee and [the victim] is a student enrolled in a school in which the actor works.”

Mirlis’s lawyer, Antonio Ponvert, declined to comment on whether his client wanted the state to pursue criminal charges.

Jewish Organizations Weigh In

Torah Umesorah’s directory lists two schools associated with the Yeshiva of New Haven, out of 11 Orthodox Jewish schools statewide.

Weeks after the civil case concluded, prominent Jewish organizations — both in the Elm City and nationally — have struggled with how to respond. What responsibilities do these organizations have to the yeshiva’s current students or future applicants?In a statement, the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven said its supports further investigation — with some reservations.

“It is not our role to call for a criminal investigation. However, should the authorities deem that an investigation is warranted, we would support it,” CEO Judy Alperin wrote in an email. She added that the organization “abhors the allegations made in this civil suit and would decry such allegations whether they occurred within the Jewish community or any other community.”

Torah Umesorah, an organization that supports Jewish education by providing in-person consultations to nearly 250 Orthodox schools in 90 cities, lists the Yeshiva of New Haven in an online directory of schools. Asked why Torah Umesorah is still advertising the school to students given the recent verdict, the group’s national director Rabbi Dovid Nojowitz said he would remove the yeshiva’s name from the site.

“The fact that it’s on the website, we’re not like the archdiocese. We just have a directory of schools. 

We have no real relationship,” Nojowitze said. “If you’re questioning whether we condone something, obviously not. If in fact he did what he did, lock him up and throw away the key.” He added, “If that school is still in existence, I would be very wary about having people attend.”

Nojowitz said he was unsure if the Torah Umesorah had provided any resources to the Yeshiva of New Haven.

 A representative from one of the organization’s seven Educational Resource Centers, which provide support to principals and educators in teaching the Torah, said no one would comment and hung up.

On Wednesday morning, the listing for the Yeshiva of New Haven was still up on Torah Umesorah’s site.

Beginning in the 1980s, Rabbi Greer oversaw the revival of the neighborhood around his yeshiva at the corner of Norton and Elm streets, renovating neglected historic homes.

Over the years, Greer has also crusaded against gay rights in Connecticut, at times played an active role in politics and government, and advocated for keeping nuisance businesses out of the Whalley Avenue commercial corridor. He and his family earned national attention for exposing johns who patronized street prostitutes in the neighborhood, for filing suit against Yale University over a requirement that students live in coed dorms, and then in 2007 for launching an armed neighborhood “defense” patrol and then calling in the Guardian Angels for assistance to combat crime. In the 1970s, Greer also led a successful campaign to force the United States to pressure the Soviet Union into allowing Jewish “refuseniks” to emigrate here and start new, freer lives.

On Monday night, around 7 p.m., as a mist wet the city streets, students gathered on the yeshiva’s second floor for their evening services. From the street, their voices blended, barely audible through an open window and a door to the fire escape left ajar. The sound of a dribbling basketball behind the compound’s gates hinted that one or two might’ve ditched, but the majority of the boys intoned their prayers upstairs.

At 9:10 p.m., a little over halfway through, Greer sat in a chair on the porch outside the student dorms. (He lives a half-mile away on West Park Avenue, according to state filings.) When a reporter walked by, Greer hobbled to the dorm’s front door and rang the bell. By the time the reporter circled the block, he was gone.

Previous coverage of this case:
• Suit: Rabbi Molested, Raped Students
• Greer’s Housing Corporations Added To Sex Abuse Lawsuit
• 2nd Ex-Student Accuses Rabbi Of Sex Assault
• 2nd Rabbi Accuser Details Alleged Abuse
• Rabbi Sexual Abuse Jury Picked
• On Stand, Greer Invokes 5th On Sex Abuse
• Rabbi Seeks To Bar Blogger from Court
• Trial Mines How Victims Process Trauma
• Wife, Secretary Come To Rabbi Greer’s Defense
• Jury Awards $20M In Rabbi Sex Case

Tags: Rabbi Daniel Greer, Eliyahu Mirlis, Yeshiva of New Haven, State Department of Education, DCF, pedophilia

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I’m rarely a fan of vigilante justice, but in this case, the courts ended up being okay with it.

Child Molester Walks By Father of Victim, Gets Exactly What He Deserves

An old case of dad justice from decades ago is going viral on YouTube.

I’m rarely a fan of vigilante justice, but in this case, the courts ended up being okay with it.

Leon Gary Plauche, a Louisiana native, gained fame back in the 1980s after taking televised justice on Jeff Doucet, a well-known karate instructor who had abducted and molested his child.

Plauche was initially charged with second-degree murder, but ended up getting only five months probation.

Watch below (warning: some may find content disturbing):

Read more: http://www.headlinepolitics.com/child-molester-father-victim-deserves/#ixzz4jEl3V3Vi

Sherman is the oldest Rhesus monkey ever recorded, nearly 20 years older than the average lifespan for his species in captivity. As younger monkeys were developing diseases and dying, he seemed to be immune to ageing. Even into his 30s he would have been considered an old monkey, but he didn’t look or act like one....

The secret to a long and healthy life? Eat less

 

Permanently cutting the daily calories you consume may turn out to have a profound effect on your future life, according to some tantalising scientific studies.

In a restaurant setting sometime in the not-too distant future, a man and a woman are on their first date. After the initial nerves subside, all is going well.

The man is 33, he says, has been single for most of those years, and, although he doesn’t mention it, knows he is looking to settle down and have a family. The woman replies that she is 52, has been married, divorced, and has children in their early 20s. He had no idea – she looked his age, or younger.

This is a dream of Julie Mattison from the National Institute on Ageing (NIA) in the United States. She envisions a time when chronological age ticks by with every year, but biological age can be set to a different timer, where elderly doesn’t mean what it does now.

It sounds far-fetched, but our society has already made great strides towards that goal, thanks to advances in medicine and improvements in healthy living. In 2014, for instance, the United States Health Interview Survey reported that 16% of people aged between 50 and 64 were impaired every day with chronic illness. Three decades earlier that number was 23%. In other words, as well as benefiting from longer lifespans, we are also experiencing longer “healthspans” – and the latter is proving to be even more malleable. To paraphrase and update a speech from John F Kennedy given at the first White House Conference on Ageing in 1961, life can indeed be added to years, rather than just years added to life.

Healthspan is proving to be even more malleable than lifespan  

So, what do we need to do to enhance the length and quality of our lives even more? Researchers worldwide are pursuing various ideas, but for Mattison and colleagues, the answer is a simple change in diet. They believe that the key to a better old age may be to reduce the amount of food on our plates, via an approach called “calorie restriction”. This diet goes further than cutting back on fatty foods from time-to-time; it’s about making gradual and careful reductions in portion size permanently. Since the early 1930s, a 30% reduction in the amount of food consumed per day has been linked to longer, more active lives in worms, flies, rats, mice, and monkeys. Across the animal kingdom, in other words, calorie restriction has proven the best remedy for the ravages of life. And it’s possible that humans have just as much to gain.

High calorie foods can be hard to avoid today (Credit: Getty Images)

The idea that what a person eats influences their health no doubt predates any historical accounts that remain today. But, as is often the case for any scientific discipline, the first detailed accounts come from Ancient Greece. Hippocrates, one of the first physicians to claim diseases were natural and not supernatural, observed that many ailments were associated with gluttony; obese Greeks tended to die younger than slim Greeks, that was clear and written down on papyrus.

Spreading from this epicentre of science, these ideas were adopted and adapted over the centuries. And at the end of the 15th Century, Alvise Cornaro, an infirm aristocrat from a small village near Venice in Italy, turned the prevailing wisdom on its head, and on himself.

If indulgence was harmful, would dietary asceticism be helpful? To find out, Cornaro, aged 40, ate only 350g (12oz) of food per day, roughly 1000 calories according to recent estimates. He ate bread, panatela or broth, and eggs. For meat he chose veal, goat, beef, partridge, thrush, and any poultry that was available. He bought fish caught from the local rivers.

Restricted in amount but not variety, Cornaro claimed to have achieved “perfect health” up until his death more than 40 years later. Although he changed his birthdate as he aged, claiming that he had reached his 98th year, it is thought that he was around 84 when he died – still an impressive feat in the 16th Century, a time when 50 or 60 years old was considered elderly. In 1591, his grandson published his posthumous three-volume tome entitled “Discourses on the Sober Life,” pushing dietary restriction into the mainstream, and redefining ageing itself.

With an additional boost of health into the evening of life, the elderly, in full possession of their mental capacities, would be able to put decades of amassed knowledge to good use, Carnaro claimed. With his diet, beauty became the aged, not the youthful.


Longevity trials


Cornaro was an interesting man but his findings are not to be taken as fact by any branch of science. Even if he was true to his word and did not suffer ill health for nearly half a century, which seems unlikely, he was a case study of one – not representative of humans as a whole.

But since a foundational study in 1935 in white rats, a dietary restriction of between 30-50% has been shown to extend lifespan, delaying death from age-related disorders and disease. Of course, what works for a rat or any other laboratory organism might not work for a human.

It may sound obvious, but what you choose to put in your trolley can have a profound effect on the length and quality of your life (Credit: Getty Images)

Long-term trials, following humans from early adulthood to death, are a rarity. “I don’t see a human study of longevity as something that would be a fundable research programme,” says Mattison.

“Even if you start humans at 40 or 50 years old, you’re still looking at potentially 40 or 50 more years [of study].” Plus, she adds, ensuring that extraneous factors – exercise, smoking, medical treatments, mental wellbeing – don’t influence the trial’s end results is near impossible for our socially and culturally complex species.

That’s why, in the late 1980s, two independent long-term trials – one at NIA and the other at the University of Wisconsin – were set up to study calorie restriction and ageing in Rhesus monkeys. Not only do we share 93% of our DNA with these primates, we age in the same way too.

Slowly, after middle age (around 15 years in Rhesus monkeys) the back starts to hunch, the skin and muscles start to sag, and, where it still grows, hair goes from gingery brown to grey. The similarities go deeper. In these primates, the occurrence of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease increases in frequency and severity with age. “They’re an excellent model to study ageing,” says Rozalyn Anderson, a gerontologist from the University of Wisconsin.

Sherman is the oldest Rhesus monkey ever recorded, nearly 20 years older than the average lifespan for his species in captivity  

And they’re easy to control. Fed with specially made biscuits, the diets of the 76 monkeys at the University of Wisconsin and the 121 at NIA are tailored to their age, weight, and natural appetite. All monkeys receive the full complement of nutrients and minerals that their bodies crave. It’s just that half of the monkeys, the calorie restricted (or CR) group, eat 30% less.

They are far from malnourished or starving. Take Sherman, a 43-year-old monkey from NIA. Mattison says that since being placed on the CR diet in 1987, aged 16, Sherman hasn’t shown any overt signs of hunger that are well characterised in his species.

Rhesus monkeys given a stricter, low calorie diet lived longer (Credit: Getty Images)

Sherman is the oldest Rhesus monkey ever recorded, nearly 20 years older than the average lifespan for his species in captivity. As younger monkeys were developing diseases and dying, he seemed to be immune to ageing. Even into his 30s he would have been considered an old monkey, but he didn’t look or act like one. 

The same is true, to varying extents, for the rest of his experimental troop at NIA. “We have a lower incidence of diabetes, and lower incidence of cancer in the CR groups,” says Mattison. In 2009, the University of Wisconsin trial published similarly spectacular results.

Not only did their CR monkeys look remarkably younger – with more hair, less sag, and brown instead of grey – than monkeys that were fed a standard diet, they were healthier on the inside too, free from pathology. Cancers, such as the common intestinal adenocarcinoma, were reduced by over 50%. The risk of heart disease was similarly halved. And while 11 of the ad libitum (“at one’s pleasure,” in Latin) monkeys developed diabetes and five exhibited signs that they were pre-diabetic, the blood glucose regulation seemed healthy in all CR monkeys. For them, diabetes wasn’t a thing.  

Overall, only 13% of the monkeys in the CR group had died of age-related causes in 20 years. In the ad libitum group, 37% had died, nearly three times as many. In an update study from the University of Wisconsin in 2014, this percentage remained stable.

The results show that ageing itself is a reasonable target for clinical intervention and medical treatment – Rozalyn Anderson  

“We have demonstrated that ageing can be manipulated in primates,” says Anderson. “It kind of gets glossed over because it’s obvious, but conceptually that’s hugely important; it means that ageing itself is a reasonable target for clinical intervention and medical treatment.”

If ageing can be delayed, in other words, all of the diseases associated with it will follow suit. “Going after each disease one at a time isn’t going to significantly extend lifespan for people because they’ll die of something else,” says Anderson. “If you cured all cancers, you wouldn’t offset death due to cardiovascular disease, or dementia, or diabetes-associated disorders. Whereas if you go after ageing you can offset the lot in one go.”

Calorie restriction involves a permanent reduction in a diet (Credit: Getty Images)

Eating less certainly seemed to help the monkeys, but calorie restriction is much tougher for people out in the real world. For one, our access to regular, high-calorie meals is now easier than ever; with companies like Deliveroo and UberEats, there is no longer a need to walk to the restaurant anymore. And two, gaining weight simply comes more naturally to some people.

“There’s a huge genetic component to all of this and its much harder work for some people than it is for others to stay trim,” says Anderson. “We all know someone who can eat an entire cake and nothing happens, they look the exact same. And then someone else walks past a table with a cake on it and they have to go up a pant size.”

Ideally, the amount and types of food we eat should be tailored to who we are – our genetic predisposition to gaining weight, how we metabolise sugars, how we store fat, and other physiological fluxes that are beyond the scope of scientific instruction at the moment, and perhaps forever.

But a predisposition to obesity can be used as a guide to life choices rather than an inevitability. “I personally have a genetic history of obesity running through my family, and I practice a flexible form of caloric restriction,” says Susan Roberts a dietary scientist at Tufts University in Boston. “I keep my BMI at 22, and [have calculated] that that requires eating 80% of what I would eat if my BMI was at 30 like every other member of my family.” Roberts stresses that it isn’t hard – she follows her own weight management programme using a tool called iDiet to help her eat less but avoid feeling hungry or deprived of enjoyment. If this wasn’t possible, she adds, she wouldn’t practise calorie restriction.
Not only has Roberts seen the problems of obesity first-hand in her family, she knows the benefits of CR better than most. For over 10 years she has been a leading scientist in the Comprehensive Assessment of Long-Term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy trial, also known as Calerie. Over two years, 218 healthy men and women aged between 21 and 50 years were split into two groups.  In one, people were allowed to eat as they normally would (ad libitum), while the other ate 25% less (CR). Both had health checks every six months.

Unlike in the Rhesus monkey trials, tests over two years can’t determine whether CR reduces or delays age-related diseases. There simply isn’t enough time for their development. But the Calerie trials tested for the next best thing: the early biological signs of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.

Published in 2015, the results after two years were very positive. In the blood of calorie-restricted people, the ratio of “good” cholesterol to “bad” cholesterol had increased, molecules associated with tumour formation – called tumour necrosis factors (TNFs) – were reduced by around 25%, and levels of insulin resistance, a sure sign of diabetes, fell by nearly 40% compared to people who ate their normal diets. Overall, the blood’s pressure was lower.

Significant health benefits may be garnered in an already healthy body, but further trials are needed  

Admittedly, some benefits may come from weight-loss. Earlier trials from Calerie had included people that were obese as well as those with a healthy body mass index (BMI) of 25 or below, and slimming down would have certainly improved the welfare of the heavier participants. “One thing that’s been very clear for a long time is that being overweight or obese is bad for you,” says Roberts. Diseases and disorders previously thought to be age-associated diseases are now popping up in the obese population, she adds.

But the latest results suggested that significant health benefits can be garnered in an already healthy body – a person who isn’t underweight or obese. That is, someone whose BMI lies between 18.5 and 25.

Despite these results, evidence from further trials will be needed before someone with an already healthy BMI should be advised to reduce their calorie intake. (And anyone wanting to change their diet would be advised to consult a medical professional beforehand.)

Elderly life need not be one of disease and illness (Credit: Getty Images)

In the meantime, the scientists will be hoping that their rhesus macaques may help us to understand exactly why calories restriction may have these effects. With nearly 30 years of data on lives and deaths, and blood and tissue samples, from nearly 200 monkeys, the work at NIA and the University of Wisconsin aim to shine a light into the black box of calorie restriction, illuminating just how it delays ageing.

With less food, is the metabolism forced to be more efficient with what it has? Is there a common molecular switch regulating ageing that is turned on (or off) with fewer calories? Or is there an as of yet unknown mechanism underpinning our lives and deaths? The importance of monkeys like Sherman far outspans their lives.

Calorie restriction may be one of the most promising avenues for improving health and how long it lasts in our lives

Answers to such questions might be long in coming. “If I cloned 10 of myself and we all worked furiously, I don’t think we’d have it solved,” says Anderson. “The biology is inordinately complicated.” It’s a worthwhile undertaking – understand how CR works and other treatments could then be used to target that specific part of our biology. Ageing could be treated directly, that is, without the need of calorie restriction. “And I think that’s really the golden ticket,” says Anderson.

Although lacking a neat explanation, calorie restriction is one of the most promising avenues for improving health and how long it lasts in our lives. “There was nothing in what we saw that made us think caloric restriction doesn’t work in people,” says Roberts, from the Calerie trial. And, unlike drug-based treatments, it doesn’t come with a long list of possible side effects. “Our people were not hungrier, their mood was fine, their sexual function was fine. We looked pretty hard for bad things and didn’t find them,” says Roberts.

One expected issue was a slight decrease in bone density that is often tied to gradual weight loss, says Roberts. But as a precaution, volunteers were provided with small calcium supplements throughout the trial.

Even with such promising findings, “this [the Calerie trial] is the first study of its kind, and I don’t think that any of us would feel confident in saying, ‘okay, we’re going to recommend this to everyone in the world,’” says Roberts. “But it’s a really exciting prospect. I think that delaying the progression of chronic diseases is something that everyone can get behind and get excited about, because nobody wants to live life with one of those.”


http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170601-the-secret-to-a-long-and-healthy-life-eat-less?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits

There is a sophistication to Shenker’s compositions that is a substantive cut above the popular run-of-the-mill neo-Chassidic music of today....

Ben Zion Shenker: The Unsung Composer of the Songs We All Sing

Ben Zion Shenker, z”l, 1925-2016

By David Olivestone

This past November, on the Friday evening of the week in which Ben Zion Shenker, z”l, passed away, my wife and I were guests in the home of a Sephardi family. Expecting a different type of Shabbat experience, I was taken by surprise when the host led us in singing Eshet Chayil to the melody with which we are all so familiar. He dedicated it to two kallot (new brides) who were present. I made another suggestion: “Let’s also dedicate it to the memory of Ben Zion Shenker, who composed that melody and who died this week.” But it turned out that neither our host nor anyone else around the table had ever heard of Ben Zion Shenker. “I assumed that niggun was a hundred years old or more,” said our host. And, of course, when I told him that Shenker was also the composer of the most familiar tunes we sing for Mizmor leDavid and Yassis Alayich, besides more than five hundred other niggunim, he was amazed.

I only met Ben Zion Shenker once, at a presentation he gave about his work, but you could not but be struck by his modesty, even though he was revered in Jewish musical circles as the leading contemporary exponent of Chassidic music. Having been an avid Shenker fan for many years, I asked him for an autograph, and he was clearly taken aback. Given this humility, perhaps his anonymity among the larger Jewish community is unsurprising.

Unlike most other singers, chazzanim, and even many composers, Shenker could not be classified as a “performer,” apart from on his recordings. His appearances on the concert stage were extremely rare, though he was unstinting in giving of himself to lead hours of singing at Chassidic events. And when you listen to any of the many albums he recorded, or watch him in action on YouTube videos, it is evident that he was never simply trying to show off his warm and vibrant voice (what the New York Times, in its obituary, described as a “reedy tenor”). His concern was with how the melody could convey the message contained in the words, how one’s deveikut (attachment to God) could be intensified through the song. Famed Chassidic entertainer Avraham Fried says there was “a soulful transcendental feeling of prayer” in Shenker’s singing.

Even in a professional environment, he never stepped out of character. Veteran Jewish music publisher and historian Velvel Pasternak, who produced many of the early Chassidic albums, once told me about the difference between Shenker and other Chassidic singers. “When the others walk into the studio,” Pasternak related, “they bring throat sprays and inhalers, and all sorts of props. First they do their vocal exercises and warm-ups, and only then are they ready. Ben Zion comes in with a siddur, and simply starts to sing.”

Shenker was born in Brooklyn in 1925. Music was his passion since childhood. In a 2011 interview, he told Charlie Bernhaut, longtime host of a weekly online program of chazzanut and other Jewish music, that his mother never had to give him toys to play with. “She would put me down next to the phonograph with a pile of Yossele Rosenblatt records,” he recalled, “and I would sit there entranced for hours on end.”

He joined the choir of Cantor Joshua Weisser at twelve years old, and soon began studying with the well-known Jewish music teacher and conductor Seymour Silbermintz. When he was about fifteen, his father took him along to a tisch of the second Modzitzer rebbe, Reb Shaul, himself a prolific composer, who had just arrived in America. Picking up a book of music notes of niggunim that happened to be there, Shenker began humming the songs. The rebbe was amazed that the young boy could read music and thus began a lifelong relationship, with Shenker acting as musical secretary to the rebbe. To make a living, even though he had semichah, Shenker was involved in his family’s sweater business, and later in a diamond company, but music was his real occupation.



Shenker’s creativity and influence spanned many decades. He composed the tunes for Mizmor leDavid and Eshet Chayil in 1946 and 1953 respectively, sang in the first-ever album of Chassidic niggunim in 1956, and was still composing, and even recording his latest compositions, together with klezmer musician Andy Statman, in his nineties. He inspired several generations of Jewish singers and musicians, including Shlomo Carlebach, who became a close friend.

There is a sophistication to Shenker’s compositions that is a substantive cut above the popular run-of-the-mill neo-Chassidic music of today. Often relatively simple, at other times complex in the Modzitz tradition, his compositions touch every emotion, with joy being by far the most common. He loved to sing marches, his right fist banging unceasingly on the table to the tempo. Prayerful pesukim from Tehillim or the Prophets inspired him to compose tender, poignant melodies that touch the recesses of the heart. Not infrequently, he would transform into a traditional chazzan, mining the depths of his soul for plaintive musical phrases that would uplift and inspire.

According to Yossi Green, also a leading contemporary composer of niggunim, “Ben Zion Shenker was the trailblazer of a new genre of Jewish music—the American niggun, with a modern syncopated rhythm, a low first part, and a high, exciting second part.” Pasternak points to one quality of Shenker’s compositions that characterizes them all. “He had a great ability to write a melody that people can sing.”

That is so true. Is there any shul anywhere at which his Mizmor leDavid is not sung during seudah shlishit? But besides his own compositions, he popularized dozens of Modzitz niggunim, such as Lo Tevoshi that enlivens our Kabbalat Shabbat, Ein Kitzva that energizes our Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Mussaf, and Shoshanat Ya’akov that entertains us on Purim. Melodies like these have become so much a part of our lives that it is hard to imagine a Shabbat or yom tov davening, or a wedding, without them. Shimon Cramer, popular singer and chazzan of the Riverdale Jewish Center in New York, grew up on Shenker’s music in London. “Everyone was using his melodies for parts of the davening,” Cramer recalls. “I’m sure that still today there are some tunes that I sing that I don’t even realize are his.”

Pasternak has taken on the huge task of notating, and ultimately publishing, all of Ben Zion Shenker’s songs, so that his genius will live on and can reach ever wider circles. Yet how will their composer be remembered? Like Carlebach and some others, perhaps his reputation will become that much greater after his passing. But surely he himself would want his legacy to be measured only by how much his music continues to inspire us in our prayers and to uplift us in our celebrations of life.


David Olivestone, formerly senior communications officer of the Orthodox Union, lives in Jerusalem and is a member of the Jewish Action Editorial Committee. His most recent contribution to the magazine was a tribute to Cantor Sherwood Goffin.


Listen to Ben Zion Shenker’s niggunim at: http://www.benzionshenker.com/index.html; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi9yX87ReoM&t=5s; and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B-kAFls9MU.

The inability of linguists to reach a consensus have led some to decry that the mystery of where Yiddish came from will never be solved. But now for the first time a pioneering tool that converts genome data into ancestral coordinates, is helping to pinpoint the DNA of Yiddish speakers...

Uncovering ancient Ashkenaz – the birthplace of Yiddish speakers

Did Ashkenazi Jews descend from ancient Turkey?

At 1,000 years, the search for the location of Ashkenaz – thought to be the birthplace of Ashkanazic Jews and the Yiddish language – is one of the longest quests in human history. It is perhaps second only in length to the search for Noah’s Ark which began in the 3rd century AD.

The place name Ashkenaz occurs three times in the Bible, but by the Middle Ages the exact origin of Ashkenaz was forgotten. Because of the migration of the Ashkenazic Jews it later became associated with Germany. This led to all German Jews being considered “Ashkenazic”, a term which was then applied to central and eastern European Jews who follow Ashkenazic religious customs and who speak Yiddish.

The Yiddish language – which consists of Hebrew, German, Slavic elements and is written in Aramaic – has been spoken at least since the 9th century AD, but its origins have been debated by linguists for several centuries. While some have suggested a German origin, others believe a more complex beginning for the language, starting in Slavic lands in Khazaria – the Middle Age Khazar Empire that covered present-day southern Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and parts of the Caucasus – and followed by Ukraine, and finally Germany. Although the language adopted a German vocabulary it retained its Slavic grammar – which is why Yiddish is often referred to as “bad German”.

The inability of linguists to reach a consensus have led some to decry that the mystery of where Yiddish came from will never be solved. But now for the first time a pioneering tool that converts genome data into ancestral coordinates, is helping to pinpoint the DNA of Yiddish speakers.

In the largest genomic study of Ashkenazic Jews, and the first one to study Yiddish speakers, we applied our Geographic Population Structure (GPS) tool – which operates in a similar way to the sat nav in your car – to the genomes of more than 360 Yiddish and non-Yiddish speaking Ashkenazic Jews.

DNA of Yiddish speakers could have originated from four ancient villages in north-west Turkey.

Surprisingly, our GPS honed in on north-east Turkey, where we found four primeval villages, one of which was abandoned in the mid-7th century AD.

These ancient villages identified by the GPS tool are clustered close to the Silk Road – the ancient network of trade routes – and are named Iskenaz, Eskenaz, Ashanaz, and Ashkuz. And it is likely that these are the villages that mark the location of the lost lands of Ashkenaz.

The history of a people

Located on the cross roads of ancient trade routes, this region suggests that the Yiddish language was developed by Iranian and Ashkenazic Jews as they traded on the Silk Road from the first centuries AD to around the 9th century when they arrived in Slavic lands.

Putting together evidence from linguistic, history, and genetics, we concluded that the ancient Ashkenazic Jews were merchants who developed Yiddish as a secret language – with 251 words for “buy” and “sell” – to maintain their monopoly. They were known to trade in everything from fur to slaves.

By the 8th century the words “Jew” and “merchant” were practically synonymous, and it was around this time that Ashkenazic Jews began relocating from ancient Ashkenaz to the Khazar Empire to expand their mercantile operations.

Two Jewish merchants in medieval dress

This Jewish migration led to some of the Turkic Khazar rulers and numerous eastern Slavs living within the Khazar Empire to convert to Judaism so they didn’t miss out on the lucrative Silk Road trade between Germany and China.

But the demise of Khazaria due to continued invasions and finally the Black Death devastated this last Jewish Empire of Khazaria. This led to the Ashkenazic Jews splitting into two groups – some remaining in the Caucasus and others migrating into eastern Europe and Germany.
The two groups still called themselves Ashkenazic Jews, however the name Ashkenaz became more strongly associated with Germany and the the European group – for whom Yiddish became their primary language.

A secret language

Since north-east Turkey is the only place in the world where the place names of Iskenaz, Eskenaz, Ashanaz, and Ashkuz exist this strongly implies that Yiddish was established around the first millennium at a time when Jewish traders moved goods from Asia to Europe. This was done by developing the language of Yiddish, which very few can speak or understand other than Jews.
Further evidence to the origin of Ashkenazic Jews can be found in many customs – such as the breaking of a glass at a wedding ceremony and placing stones over tombstones, which were probably introduced by Slavic converts to Judaism.

By studying the origin of Yiddish using our GPS technology, combined with a citizen science approach, we were able to shed light on one of the most forgotten chapters of history and demonstrate the use of bio-geographical genetic tools to study the origin of languages. For Ashkanazic Jews these are the ties that bind their history, culture, behaviour, and identity.

University of Sheffield provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.

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