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https://www.aish.com/h/hh/rh/shofar/Shofar-in-the-Year-of-Corona.html?s=mm
Shofar in the Year of Corona
Sep 3, 2020  |  by Rabbi Shlomo Buxbaumprint article
Shofar in the Year of Corona
Let this year’s shofar blast take on a whole new meaning.

Most of us take breathing for granted. It's something that just happens on its own. But as we approach Rosh Hashanah and look back at some of the takeaways from the Jewish year 5780, there has been a focus on breathing.
This year will be remembered as a year of Covid-19 ventilators and masks that inhibit our breathing. This year will be remembered as the year that we were forced to slow down from the rapid pace of our daily lives and just breathe. And with every breath we learned to humble ourselves, to relinquish control, to take each day as it comes, and to live a little more in the present.

For the many who suffered losses, trauma, or disappointments, 5780 will be remembered as a year of challenges and pain. But many will remember this year as one that snapped them out of the trance of daily repetitive living, giving them a chance to learn how to focus on what matters, to get to know their families and themselves a little better, a year that taught them how to truly breathe.

On Rosh Hashanah there is a commandment to blow the shofar, a unique mitzvah in that it is fulfilled by using our breath. The shofar blasts mark the birthday of mankind when God "blew" into man's nostrils his soul, giving him the "breath of life" (Genesis, 2:7). Breath is symbolic for the soul, as the two share a common Hebrew root. The word for soul, "neshama", is almost identical to the Hebrew word “neshima”, breathe. It's no wonder that one can become more aware of the higher levels of their soul by slowing down and focusing on their breathing.

Blowing the shofar teaches us how to discover our soul. The shofar is nothing more than a hollow shell, yet it transforms a fleeting breath into a powerful victory cry. When we make ourselves hollow, letting go of our egos and relinquish the false sense of control, only then can we fully experience the spiritual essence that is inside of us.


 
Commenting on the verse "Lift up your voice like a shofar" (Isaiah 58:1), one the early Hassidic masters, Rabbi Avraham Chaim of Zlotchov, known as the Orach L’Chaim, writes: When we view ourselves like a shofar that has no voice besides for what is blown into it, in that we have no power outside of what God gives us, we can awaken the Divine love and bring upon ourselves great kindness and compassion.

This past year we learned how to do just that. We saw how quickly our entire life can change, and how the entire world can be thrown into chaos. We saw that most of the external structures that we build are really hollow and powerless, like a shofar. We learned that without breath – without a spiritual connection, without meaningful relationships, without personal growth – our lives can turn very empty very quickly.

As the virus first began to spread, many took note of its name corona, which means crown, pointing out how this virus would wake up the world to realize how dependent we are on the King of Kings to protect us and to keep world order. Jewish tradition teaches us that the shofar is the very instrument that we use to coronate God as King, proclaiming that everything we have is dependent on God Who is constantly breathing life and sustaining us with His Divine energy.

As we look back on a year when we learned how to pay attention to our breath, when we saw the hollowness and fragility of our control, when the word corona became a household word, perhaps we can view the entire year as one great shofar blast, one great reminder of who is really in control.



The Origin of Life
Sep 7, 2020  |  by Harold Gansprint article
https://www.aish.com/ci/sam/The-Origin-of-Life.html?s=mm
Explaining how life began is the biggest unsolved question in science today.

The raging water screamed down the narrow canyon in torrents. The dark rocky landscape was momentarily illuminated by a flash of lightening followed by rolling thunder. But there were none to observe it; not an animal, bird, insect nor any living organism. The world was lifeless, as was the entire universe.

And then, something remarkable happened: life began. A mix of lifeless chemicals became alive. But how? This is the biggest unsolved question in science today. Scientists have a well formulated theory that explains much of the mystery of how the universe began, but when it comes to the origin of life, they do not have a clue.

Scientists have many (conflicting) ideas of the circumstances surrounding the origin of life, but there is no scientific theory of how it actually began. For example, one idea is that a mix of lifeless molecules in a warm pond spontaneously sparked life, perhaps precipitated by a stroke of lightening. This ignores the fact that a stroke of lightening is more likely to destroy any organic compound that might be present rather than make it come alive. Another idea is that life began near deep sea thermal vents. All these ideas, each without any evidence, address the question of where life might have formed and what the required energy source might have been, but they do not address the question of how did lifeless molecules become a living organism? That is the ultimate mystery.

One of the things that I discovered early in my research on this topic was a website for the “Origin of Life Prize” (the web site no longer exists). There was a $1,000,000 prize offered to anyone who could come up with a scientific theory describing in detail how life began. The website explained that the prize was suspended on October 26, 2013 because over a period of thirteen years, since the prize was first announced in the prestigious scientific journals Nature and Science, not a single submission was approved by the screening judges to be passed on to higher level judges. The website goes on to say that all origin-of-life literature either “ignored” the key issue or “deliberately swept it under the rug”. The key issue described by the website was “How did pre-biotic nature prescribe or program the first genome” [italics mine]. The genome is the DNA of an organism. It is essentially a list of instructions, much like a computer program, that encodes every detail of a living thing. This would include the kind of organism (e.g., an E. coli bacterium, a rose, a monarch butterfly, a crocodile or a human) as well as specifics such as color, size, strength, intelligence, etc.

The structure of DNA consists of a sequence of smaller molecules called base pairs or nucleotides that are linked together to form a long molecular chain, sometimes billions of base pairs long. In most cases, two such molecular chains are linked together to form a double helix. The choice of specific base pairs and the order in which they are linked is critical for this long molecule to define a living organism. If the sequence of base pairs is random, the results will be a molecule that does not define anything, much like a random sequence of letters contains no information. Even if only one base pair out of billions in the DNA of an organism is incorrect, the resultant organism is likely to be fatally flawed. This is substantiated by the fact that a multitude of serious or fatal diseases (e.g., ovarian, colon and breast cancer, sickle cell anemia, Tay-Sachs disease and certain types of diabetes) are caused by a single error in the human genome, which is over 3 billion base pairs long.


It follows that the key question concerning the origin of life is, how did a meaningful DNA form spontaneously from a random selection of base pairs, even assuming the base pairs were somehow available in the environment? Clearly, it is theoretically possible that the required base pairs could link together in the correct order to form the DNA of some viable organism just by chance. The issue is, what is the probability of that happening somewhere in the universe any time since creation?

Many comments made by highly regarded scientists indicate that the probability of DNA forming spontaneously is very small. Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle is reported to have compared this probability to “the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boing 747.” Similarly, Belgian biochemist and Nobel Prize laureate Christian René de Duve, when referring to the spontaneous genesis of RNA (similar to DNA but with only a single chain of base pairs), called for a rejection of events with such miniscule probabilities that they may be called miracles and are not amenable to scientific inquiry. Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the helix structure of DNA referred to the origin of life as “almost a miracle.”

Consider this: If I were to mix up a very large pot of alphabet soup (the kind that you might find in a commercial kitchen) and pour it out onto the floor, what is the probability that thousands of letters would line up in a long linear sequence? And that the letters would form correctly spelled words? And that the sequence of words would have correct syntax and make sense? The probability of this all occurring is clearly exceedingly small and it is theoretically (but impractically) computable. With DNA, we are dealing with thousands to billions of “letters” and minute errors are usually fatal!

It seemed that in order to really understand the problem of DNA forming spontaneously, I would have to accurately compute the probability of such an event taking place by chance. Fortunately, having worked for the US Department of Defense as a Senior Cryptologic Mathematician for 28 years, I possessed the necessary skills to make such a computation. I started by considering the virus Phi-X-174 which infects the E. Coli bacteria. Its DNA has a little more than 5,000 links (base pairs) and it is the shortest, meaningful DNA known to exist. It is also simpler than most DNA because its structure forms a single helix (like RNA) instead of a double one.

In addition to calculating the probability of the DNA of Phi-X-174 assembling itself by chance, it was also necessary to account for the fact that potentially, other similarly small and viable DNA might theoretically exist, even if they are not found on Earth or anywhere else. Furthermore, such a spontaneously created DNA would have many places in this vast universe where it might have had its genesis, and much time to do so; according to the latest science, some 13.8 billion years. The calculation yielded a probability that is incredibly small; it has 3,999 zeros to the right of the decimal point! This probability far exceeds any standards of significance used in any of the sciences. It is as unlikely as a person playing Russian roulette 50,517 times and surviving! (Russian Roulette consists of spinning the cylinder of a six-chamber revolver containing one bullet, pointing it at one’s head and pulling the trigger.) Would anyone believe that someone had done it and survived? Would any sane person try it? After all, the odds of surviving only six trials are about two to one. Imagine what the odds are after 50,517 trials! (If you are having trouble imagining it, you are not alone. The odds would be represented by the word “trillion” written 333 times followed by “to 1”.) These odds are the same odds as the DNA of Phi-X-174 or a similarly sized viral DNA forming spontaneously anywhere in the universe since the beginning of time.

It is important to note that DNA, by itself, is totally nonfunctional. It is like a phone app without a phone. In most natural environments, it cannot even maintain its complex structure before disassembling. In a living cell, the DNA is protected inside the nucleus. In a virus, it requires a sheath of proteins to protect it and to insert it into a living cell so that it can reproduce. For Phi-X-174, this protective sheath consists of 192 proteins made up of 42,276 amino acids (the simple building blocks of proteins). Were we to include the required genesis of this sheath in the calculation of the probability of the DNA of Phi-X-174 forming by chance, we would have to include another infinitesimally small factor; one with 26,589 zeros to the right of the decimal point!

The probability of the origin of life having been a natural chemical event is so small, that it tells us that it is illogical to assume that it was. Yet, DNA-based life does exist!
For all practical purposes, the spontaneous formation of the simplest viral DNA anywhere in the universe since the beginning of time is impossible. This is true even without accounting for other factors that make the probability even smaller, such as the fact that DNA cannot possibly form inside stars, on planets that are too close to a galactic center or in the intergalactic medium. This conclusion prompted organic chemist and molecular biologist Alexander Graham Cairns-Smith to write, “But, you may say, with all the time in the world, and so much world, the right combination of circumstances would happen sometime? Is that not plausible? The answer is no, there was not enough time, and there was not enough world”.

The scientific question concerning the origin of life thus remains. There is no scientific answer to the question, nor can there be, because it represents an intractable mathematical conundrum. The probability of the origin of life having been a natural chemical event is so small, that it tells us that it is illogical to assume that it was. Yet, DNA-based life does exist! Our conclusion is that it did not happen by chance. The only alternative is that it happened by design.

In 1952, American chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey built a chamber that contained a simulated pre-biotic atmosphere within it. They passed electrical sparks through this mixture of chemicals to simulate lightning and were successful in causing the spontaneous formation of amino acids, the simple building blocks of proteins. Two years later, American biologist and Nobel Prize laureate George Wald wrote an article in Scientific American expressing the view that it was just a matter of time before the fundamental structures of life, such as RNA, DNA and proteins, would be spontaneously created in simulated pre-biotic conditions in a laboratory as well. In the article, Wald wrote that the hero of the origin of life was time. Since life had billions of years to develop, what we would consider impossible based on our everyday experience, is not only possible, but even probable or “virtually certain” and that “Time performs the miracle.”

Wald’s expectations that proteins, RNA or DNA would be produced spontaneously in pre-biotic conditions in a laboratory were not met. This was so even though the experiments were arranged so as to vastly reduce the time that would normally be required for the desired result. Sixty-two years after writing that article, no one has succeeded. In 1979, an introduction to a collection of Scientific American articles entitled Life: Origin and Evolution which included Wald’s article, stated that although his article was stimulating, it was “one of the very few times in his professional life where Wald has been wrong”. After much of a life time analyzing the molecular structures of living organisms, Wald had a change of heart. Writing in the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry in 1984, he explained that “with some shock to my scientific sensibilities”, he had concluded that a magnificent “mind” had created the universe and life. Perhaps it was the realization that there was not nearly enough time, nor enough space in the universe to spontaneously produce anything resembling the simplest viral DNA.

But what kind of “mind” can Wald be referring to? If it existed before any life and before the creation of physical reality, then it is not a physical being or mind as we know it. Rather, it must be the supreme Intelligence ̶ the Creator that created both a universe that is designed to support the existence of life, as well as life itself.

This article is adapted from the book, The Cosmic Puzzle: A Scientific Investigation into the Existence of God by Harold Gans (Feldheim Associates, 2020). Click here to order.

https://www.aish.com/ci/a/Anti-Semitism-in-Two-Hit-TV-Shows.html?s=mm
Anti-Semitism in Two Hit TV Shows
Sep 6, 2020  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Millerprint article
Anti-Semitism in Two Hit TV Shows
The Umbrella Academy and Lovecraft Country trafficked in damaging anti-Jewish slurs.
Two popular television shows have recently included troubling allusions to anti-Jewish stereotypes. While not overtly anti-Semitic, Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy and HBO’s Lovecraft Country have used anti-Jewish tropes.

The Umbrella Academy depicts a family of superheroes who must come together to protect the world from an evil group of “lizard people” who seek to harm others. One of the languages the handler of the evil “lizard people” speaks is Yiddish. This echoes the bizarre anti-Jewish conspiracy theories of former soccer player and BBC sportscaster David Icke, who has written books claiming that many prominent Jews are actually secret “lizard people” seeking to world domination.

Despite the patent absurdity of this claim, Icke and his works have received a warm reception. Alice Walker, the famous author who is also a noted anti-Semite, told The New York Times in 2018 that she keeps a copy of one of Icke’s books by her bed to read at night. On August 29, 2020, Icke was cheered by thousands of anti-lockdown protestors when he addressed a rally in London criticizing public health precautions. “The world is controlled by a few tiny people (who) impose their agenda on billions of people,” he told the over 10,000 strong crowd in a seeming nod to anti-Jewish slurs that falsely claim Jews somehow control the world and force others to do their bidding.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews wrote a letter protesting this anti-Jewish slant in the program, saying “Whether intentional or not, this makes for very uncomfortable viewing. Netflix should take action to remove the racism from this scene.”

Lovecraft Country, HBO’s hit new series, has only aired a few episodes, but it’s already gained over a million viewers – and raised troubling questions about its recent use of anti-Jewish tropes.


The show is based on Matt Ruff’s bestselling 2016 novel about a group of Black Americans travelling through the US during the Jim Crow era. In addition to the monstrous racism the characters encounter from prejudiced White Americans, they also have to contend with actual monsters as the book and show veer into horror. It’s a clever conceit, stressing racism’s gruesomeness and horrifying nature. “With its atmospheric blend of supernatural and societal menaces, Lovecraft Country (uses) horror filmmaking as a form of social commentary on American race relations,” noted Salamishah Tillet in a recent New York times review of the show.

Lovecraft Country producers include J.J. Abrams, Misha Green and Jordan Peele. It’s a high-quality, well-acted, suspenseful show and that makes its recent veering into anti-Jewish stereotypes all the more startling.

(Spoiler Alert below: the next paragraph divulges details of Lovecraft Country’s third episode.)

On August 30, the series’ third episode aired. Titled “Holy Ghost,” it showed the character Leti buying a dilapidated old Victorian Mansion in a mostly White Chicago neighborhood. As she begins to fill the house with Black tenants, her White neighbors turn menacing – eventually turning on her and burning a cross on her front lawn. This horror outside is matched by horror inside, as restless spirits threaten the tenants. Eventually, Leti finds out the root cause of these angry ghosts: a scientist with the very Jewish sounding name Hiram Epstein apparently kidnapped eight Black people years before. He conducted gruesome experiments on them, murdered them, and buried their bodies underneath the house. It’s their souls that cause some of the mayhem in the hour-long episode.

Lovecraft Country subtly peddles a blood libel.
In a show without any other Jewish characters, the introduction of such a Jewish-sounding name, particularly one who is so bloodthirsty and destructive, is startling.

Philissa Cramer, Editor-in-Chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, is a fan of the show, and wrote about her reaction watching the episode: “I was surprised Sunday night to hear a typically Jewish name applied to a character whose only appearance was as a ghost – and whose story instantly evoked one of history’s most durable antisemitic stereotypes.”

That stereotype is the accusation that Jews somehow are driven to kill non-Jews: the “blood libel” that’s plagued Europe and the Middle East for centuries. The first blood libel occurred in England in the 1100, when a boy named William was found dead in the woods outside of the town of Norwich. A local monk accused the local Jewish community of torturing and murdering him. Despite widespread anti-Semitism at the time, local authorities could find no proof that any Jews had harmed the boy. Nevertheless, the baseless lie that Jews had murdered the child gained believers. William was even made a Saint and remains venerated as St. William of Norwich to this day.

Jews were accused of needing the blood of non-Jews in order to bake matzah, or to make the hamentaschen. Sometimes Jews were falsely accused of drinking blood.

Blood libel accusations spread throughout Europe and even into the Middle East. Between 1100s and 1500s, historians have documented about a hundred blood libel trials, most of which resulted in massacres of Jewish communities. In 1840 a major pogrom against Jews occurred in the Syrian city of Damascus after local Jews were charged with kidnapping and murdering a Christian priest. Thirteen Jewish leaders were tortured to extract confessions (four died), and 63 Jewish children were seized from their parents in an attempt to make their Jewish mothers and fathers confess.

In 1928 the blood libel even came to America. When a four-year-old girl disappeared from home in the upstate town of Massena, New York, local townspeople began claiming that local Jews had murdered her. The police chief ordered a local rabbi, Berel Brennglas, to come to central police headquarters and asked him whether it was true that Jews killed Christian children in order to use their blood in Jewish religious rituals. Outside, a threatening crowd gathered, convinced that local Jews were to blame. It was only later when the little girl was found safe and well that a potential pogrom prevented.

Shockingly, blood libels thrive today. In 2018, Facebook removed pages devoted to “Jewish Ritual Murder,” populated by users who repeated this baseless slur. Amazon continues to sell some books that present blood libels as fact.

In 2016, Russian-backed RT television quoted Palestinian officials who falsely claimed and Israeli “rabbi” had said it was permissible for Jews to poison wells that Arab people use and kill them. The 2003 Syrian hit tv show Ash Shatat portrayed Jews engaging in murder so they could use blood in religious rituals. Similar allegations have been featured in other popular shows across the Muslim world, including the 2002 Egyptian blockbuster miniseries Horseman without a Horse, which aired across the Middle East, and portrayed Jews secretly plotting to rule the world and oppress non-Jews.

After an earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, 2010, Israel sent one of the largest delegations of aid, and established a fully functioning hospital on the island. With the anti-Jewish suspicions that centuries of baseless blood libel accusations have spawned, it seemed natural when a member of Britain’s House of Lords reacted to Israel’s aid not with admiration, but with suspicion and hatred instead. Baroness Jenny Tongue, the Liberal Democrats’ Health Spokesperson in the chamber, demanded that Israel set up a committee to answer accusations (that only she was making) that Israeli doctors were working in Haiti only so they could harvest the organs of local residents.

Repeating these horrible slurs only serves to heighten dislike, suspicion and hatred of Jews. It has no place on American television.
The ancient blood libel contributes to a pervasive feeling that Jews are somehow untrustworthy, dangerous and evil. So do untrue slurs that Jews somehow seek to control others. Those negative feelings towards Jews have real consequences. A 2019 poll found that large numbers of Europeans believe Jews exercise a malevolent power over non-Jews, much like the “lizard people” in The Umbrella Academy. In the recent ADL study 71% of Ukrainians, 71% of Hungarians, 56% of Poles and 50% of Russians agreed with the statement that Jews “have too much power” in the financial and business world.

Jews are the most frequent targets of religiously-motivated hate crimes in the United States: despite being less than 2% of the population of the United States, Jews are the subject of nearly 60% of all religiously motivated crimes.

It’s likely that the writers of Lovecraft Country and The Umbrella Academy never thought of their recent episodes as anti-Jewish. But giving a character who secretly lures, tortures and kills non-Jews an unmistakable Jewish-sounding name has a terrible history. Creating characters who echo extreme anti-Jewish conspiracy theories perpetuates the false belief that Jews are alien, different, strange, and somehow seek to control or dominate others.

Repeating these horrible slurs only serves to heighten dislike, suspicion and hatred of Jews. It has no place on American television, or any place else.

https://www.aish.com/f/mom/Battles-Are-Won-Within.html?s=mm
Battles Are Won Within
Aug 30, 2020  |  by Emuna Bravermanprint article
Battles Are Won Within
The Marines articulated life's primary challenge.

I recently visited the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. Coupled with a trip to West Point a few years ago, it was an opportunity to evaluate a possible road not taken. Not only are both campuses situated in extremely beautiful spots and dotted with architecturally stunning buildings, but they cultivate values that speak to my heart – discipline and loyalty and perseverance and teamwork – to name but a few.

Additionally, the married couples living there are frequently called upon to “adopt” the single midshipmen or cadets, providing them with a home away from home. It’s a role I could imagine myself playing, shades of a university outreach rabbi. Whether it’s something I would have actually chosen or not, there is much to learn from the ethos of these two branches of the American military.

And a billboard I saw out my window a few weeks ago highlighted another lesson. It was an advertisement for joining the Marines that caught my eye: “Battles are won within” it said.



Never having followed that other path and never having been a Marine, I can’t testify to the slogan’s accuracy on the battlefield but I can certainly recognize its truth in life. The real tests come not from external enemies but from internal ones. The real challenge is the inner struggle, the war against the voice within us urging us to be self-indulgent and callous, to be takers and not givers.


I imagine that if I was a marine (quite the stretch, I know!) that voice might tell me to give up, it’s too difficult, it’s too risky, it’s not worth it. And if I was marine, I would learn to push back against that voice reminding myself about principles and bonds of trust and going beyond my potential and never ever giving up or giving in.

Whether inside or outside the Armed Services, the voice is the same, the struggle is the same. It’s life’s challenge, life’s struggle and we all have to lift up and recognize that the truly important battle is the internal one.

Like the marines, we too need training and preparation. We can’t fight the battle without a strategy and a plan. The battle with our internal enemies is no less relentless than that with our external ones. We won’t succeed without a plan, without determination, without consistency and constancy.

I’m not sure why the Marines chose these words as their recruitment slogan; I’m not sure that would encourage me to sign up! But it is definitely an expression of truth, of reality; a description of how to achieve success. And like all carefully conceived battle plans and strategies, it just needs to be implemented.

https://www.aish.com/jw/me/Danny-Danons-Five-Years-at-the-United-Nations.html?s=mm
Danny Danon’s Five Years at the United Nations
Aug 29, 2020  |  by Rabbi Shraga Simmonsprint article
D
Middle East Dynamics
Aish.com: Israel’s new peace deal with the UAE is a seismic shift – opening up Israeli technology and export to the second-largest economy in the Middle East. The UAE agreement also weakens the BDS movement as Arab countries move away from boycott. Most of all, the agreement puts to rest the myth that peace in the Middle East revolves around first solving the Palestinian issue.

How do you envision Middle East dynamics unfolding over the next few years, and how does the UAE deal impact the Palestinian stalemate?


 
Danon: Unfortunately, I don't see a Palestinian leadership willing to negotiate directly with Israel. So today we have to speak about a new paradigm. In the past, in order to advance Israel regionally, the paradigm was to first solve the Palestinian conflict. Today it's the exact opposite. We are working with the Arab world and they will help us negotiate with the Palestinians. Today we have full diplomatic relations with Jordan, Egypt, the UAE – and other countries may follow soon. Then maybe we can sit down together and try to resolve the Palestinian conflict.

Voting Blocs
Aish.com: The wall of U.N. headquarters is engraved with the visionary words of Isaiah – "They shall beat their swords into plowshares" – hearkening to the U.N.'s original, noble mandate to promote peace and justice. Yet the entire apparatus has been hijacked by corrupt Third World forces – a voting bloc that results in Israel being condemned by more U.N. resolutions than any other nation in the world. Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Abba Eban once said that if the U.N. introduced a resolution declaring that “the earth was flat and Israel flattened it,” it would pass by an overwhelming majority.

Over the past five years, how did you manage to shift sentiment toward Israel in such a hostile environment?

Danon: When the U.N. was established after the Second World War, it had a clear agenda to prevent war and to promote dialogue. Unfortunately, the U.N. today is not the U.N. that was established 75 years ago. Today you see anti-Israel resolutions in a proportion that doesn't make sense. Twenty-two resolutions every year condemn Israel, and only one resolution condemns Iran. This is absurd.

By focusing on three pillars – Judaism, Israel, and innovation – we changed the reality at the U.N. The best example is when I ran for chairmanship of the U.N. legal committee. It was a secret ballot, and I received the support of 109 member states. Only 44 voted against me. I became the first Israeli ever to chair a permanent U.N. committee. This is proof that change is possible.

Danny Danon with then-U.S. Ambassador the U.N. Nikky Haley. On the right: U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.

U.S-Israel Relations
Aish.com: At the U.N., the United States and Israel vote in concert 88 percent of the time; by contrast, other Mideast "allies" like Egypt and Saudi Arabia vote with the U.S. less than 10 percent of the time. In fact, U.S. State Department figures show that for decades, Israel votes with the U.S. more than Great Britain, France, Canada or any other country in the world.

Yet Israel has always walked a fine line in asserting its own national priorities. Ben Gurion defied American pressure by declaring statehood; Levi Eshkol boldly defied the U.S. with the 1967 preemptive strike; and Menachem Begin was condemned by the U.S. for annexing the Golan Heights and destroying the Iraqi nuclear reactor.

In the past, you’ve spoken against appeasing the United States, saying that “U.S. pressure on Israel hurts Israel and does nothing to advance peace.” This was a theme of your 2012 book, Israel: The Will to Prevail. Having spent five years in such a sensitive diplomatic post, working closely with three American ambassadors to the U.N., has your view of this matter evolved?

Danon: Whenever Israel makes decisions by itself without asking permission from friends and allies, in the long run we gain the respect of the world that these were the right decisions. Aside from the examples you mention, Prime Minister Olmert, whose political positions I don't support, deserves credit for his decision in 2007 to attack the Syrian nuclear reactor. President George W. Bush writes in his memoir about the day he told Olmert not to attack – yet after Israel demolished the reactor, Bush’s respect for Israel increased.

So you don't always have to appease your allies. We have to do what's good for Israel and the Jewish people in the long run.

Biblical Rights
Aish.com: In 2010, the U.N.’s cultural arm, UNESCO, voted to declare Rachel's Tomb a mosque, and decreed that preserving it as a Jewish site is a violation of international law. Then in 2016, the White House helped orchestrate the passage of Resolution 2334, saying that Jewish presence in the Old City of Jerusalem – including the Western Wall – flagrantly violates international law.

In response to such hateful denials of the truth, you donned a kippah and delivered a speech at the U.N. – which subsequently went viral – speaking about the land of Israel as the cradle of Jewish identity. You read in Hebrew from the Bible, then held it aloft and declared: "This is our deed to the land."

Also, during your tenure as Israeli Ambassador, you brought over 100 U.N. Ambassadors on trips to Poland and Israel – first showing them gas chambers in Auschwitz, then Hamas terror tunnels in Israel’s south and Hezbollah terror tunnels in the north (dug under the nose of U.N. peacekeepers).

How does Israel’s religious and historic identity impact your approach to global diplomacy, and how does that all affect Israeli security?

Danon: From a Jewish perspective, I led a new wave at the U.N. First, I am a very proud Jew. So I brought Judaism into the halls of the U.N. I brought kosher food to the cafeterias, got Yom Kippur to be recognized, and educated other ambassadors about Jewish holidays, traditions and culture.

Not only did I bring Israel to the U.N., but I brought the U.N. to Israel. Together with these 100 U.N. ambassadors, I traveled the land and walked through the Old City of Jerusalem. In seeing these Jewish historic sites, I asked them, “How can you now say that we have no connection to the land, as claimed by U.N. resolutions and the Security Council?”

I gained the respect of many U.N. ambassadors, including Muslim ambassadors, because I proved our rights to the land. I spoke from my heart and read the biblical account of God’s promise to Abraham. Whether Christian, Muslim or Jew, it is the same scripture, so you can't argue with that. This is our deed to the land. If you have something else, prove it.

Aish.com: Over the past five years, Israel’s relationship with the U.S. has had its ups and downs. Take us behind the scenes.

Danon: During the vote on Resolution 2334 that condemned our presence in Jerusalem, I felt alone with so many of our friends voting against us. On the other hand, I had the support of millions of Jews, Christians and even Muslims who believe in our rights to the land. And I knew that we will overcome this shameful resolution.

Look at what has happened since then – the U.S. Embassy has been moved to Jerusalem, the U.S. recognized Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights, and we are now cementing our presence in the region with the UAE peace treaty. So I think we should be optimistic and continue to speak about our rights to the land.

Some people in Israel think that we can appease others by apologizing all day long. We should not apologize for our birthright, our connection to the land. We need to proudly speak out more.

Danny Danon at the U.N.: "This is our deed to the land."

Global Ambassador
Aish.com: How does Israel as the “start-up nation” aid in the cause of international diplomacy?

Danon: When I brought the ambassadors to Israel, I showed them not only the security challenges, but also the opportunities – the innovation, technology, and start-up companies. We Israelis sometimes make the mistake of focusing too much on security. Most people around the world are lucky and don't have to constantly deal with terrorism. People care more about sustainable development – water, food, health. So we have to change the narrative and show the world our capabilities on those soft issues. We can do a real tikkun olam by sending our technology and innovation to the entire world, to build bridges and help them with our know-how.

Aish.com: You brought these ambassador delegations to the rooftop of Aish HaTorah, overlooking the Temple Mount, Mount of Olives, and Western Wall. How would you describe the experience?

Danon: One of the highlights of the trip is coming to Jerusalem and feeling holiness in the Old City. When you stand on the Aish rooftop, one of the most beautiful spots in Israel, you feel the presence of God. You cannot ignore it.

Aish Rabbi Etiel Goldwicht speaks to a delegation of U.N. on the roof of Aish HaTorah.

Jewish Refugees
Aish.com: Since the founding of the State of Israel, hundreds of U.N. resolutions have dealt specifically with Palestinian refugees. Your father left Egypt in 1950, among the 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries following the establishment of the State – yet no U.N. resolution has ever referenced the plight of these displaced Jews. What progress is being made at the U.N. to recognize these forgotten Jewish refugees?

Danon: There are more Jewish refugees from Arab countries than there are Muslim refugees who left Palestine. My father left property in Alexandria, Egypt, and many people left everything they had behind. We are not seeking compensation. Rather we demand recognition that this will be written in the history books. So I drafted a resolution about this. Unfortunately, with Covid-19 everything got shut down at the U.N. But I'm certain that Israel will continue to push forward the resolution I drafted.

Danny Danon with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.

The Gaza Strip
Aish.com: Throughout your career, you’ve staked much political capital on Israeli policy in Gaza – opposing Ariel Sharon’s 2005 Gaza Disengagement, and in 2014 you were fired as Deputy Minister of Defense for criticizing the handling of Operation Protective Edge. Yet the problem remains unsolved – last year, your hometown of Moshav Mishmeret was hit by a rocket from Gaza, and arson-balloons are used daily in cross-border attacks. How would you solve the Gaza situation – both from the security and humanitarian standpoints?

Danon: I distinguish between the people of Gaza and the Hamas regime that rules Gaza. I feel bad for the people in Gaza, and I pray for the day that there will be a real Palestinian leadership we can negotiate with.

Ironically, at the U.N. I occasionally found myself fighting for the rights of Gazans – against the Palestinian Authority representatives. For example, there was a crisis of electricity in Gaza and some countries wanted to transfer funds to assist, so I helped coordinate this with the U.N. professionals. But the Palestinian representatives of President Abbas in Ramallah tried to block the initiative, hoping to deny the people of Gaza more electricity. That’s who we are dealing with.

Threat of Nuclear Iran
Aish.com: Iranian leaders have threatened to “wipe the Israeli cancer off the map.” The UAE deal gives Israel a better geographic launch-point for any future attack against Iranian nuclear facilities. On the other hand, the Europeans have now allowed the lifting of an arms embargo to Iran. In today’s complex geopolitical environment, what should be Israel’s strategy for stopping Iran from moving full-force to develop nuclear weapons?

Danon: We will do whatever is necessary to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, and this is not only Israel. U.S. leaders speak forcefully about this, and when I visited the UAE three years ago, most of the discussions focused on the threat from Iran. So it is a regional issue, and we are very determined to stop Iran.

Aish.com: There is talk about Iranian “sleeper cells” operating across the globe. How concerned should the United States be about the Iranian nuclear threat?

Danon: Today with globalization, if you have a nuclear bomb, you can pack it in a suitcase, fly to South America, and within two days it will be in California. So yes, I think everyone should be worried. No one wants the leaders of Iran to have nuclear weapons, because we saw what they did in the past. Look at the attempted attacks on multiple Israeli embassies, and the deadly bombing that destroyed the Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina – the explosives and terrorists were all from Iran. So, God forbid, if they get nuclear weapons, just imagine what they might do.

Danon in an Israeli campaign video as the maverick "new sheriff in town."

Political Future
Aish.com: In both 2007 and 2014, you challenged Bibi Netanyahu for Likud party leadership. Now that you’re back in Israel, how are you positioning yourself in politics?

Danon: I’ve returned to Israel with a lot of passion, knowledge, experience and connections. I am eager to continue to serve my people as a public servant. I support the prime minister, and I stand behind him. But we all know that he will not stay forever, and when the day will come, I definitely see the option of running for an even higher position that I had as a government minister. In the same way I was able to win in the U.N. halls, God willing, I will be able to win also in the political halls here in Israel.

Aish.com: When you were appointed to the role of UN Ambassador in 2015, Haaretz listed "six reasons to worry” – saying that "Danon's appointment throws Israel off the diplomatic cliff." What do you regard as your biggest achievement to silence the critics?

Danon: Because I come from the right side of the political spectrum and my ideology is clear, they doubted that I will succeed. I don't expect them to apologize, and actually I should thank them. Because of the low expectations, it was very easy to prove them wrong. I showed that you can stay loyal to your values – supporting our rights to Israel and being a proud Jew – and still gain the support and respect of the nations. That is the lesson we taught the many skeptics.

Aish.com: What do you regard as a particular challenge you encountered at the U.N., where in retrospect you could have handled the situation differently?

Danon: One issue I regret is that we didn't run for a seat on the Security Council. When a seat became available in 2018, I lobbied for that and tried to convince my colleagues in Jerusalem to give me the support to run for the position. At the end of the day, they decided that we don't have the budget and the manpower. Looking back, we should have pushed more for that. It's about time that Israel, a full member state of the U.N., deserves a seat on the Security Council.

https://www.aish.com/sp/so/Rabbi-on-Ventilator-for-4-Months-is-Leaving-Hospital.html?s=mm
Rabbi on Ventilator for 4 Months is Leaving Hospital
Aug 30, 2020  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Millerprint article
Rabbi on Ventilator for 4 Months is Leaving Hospital
An interview with Sarah Dukes, whose husband nearly died from Covid-19.

Yudi Dukes is coming home. After five months being hospitalized for Covid-19, God willing, Rabbi Yehudah “Yudi” Dukes, 39, will soon be able to leave NYU Langone Medical Center, where he’s been hospitalized since March 2020. His next stop will be a rehabilitation center and then, ultimately, home to join his wife Sarah and their six children in Cedarhurst, New York.

“There’s a happy ending on the horizon,” Sarah Dukes hopes. In an exclusive Aish.com interview, she explained how she’s managed to keep her faith and inspire countless others around the world during the long months her husband was gravely ill.

It wasn’t easy. Yudi, the director of the online Jewish learning network JNet, is used to being active and teaching others. But for the past five months, he couldn’t talk, walk or even move.

The fact that Yudi is breathing on his own is nothing short of a miracle.
He spent four months in a coma, and four and a half months on a ventilator. (When I told my husband, a doctor, that I was writing about a rabbi who spent over four months on a ventilator, his first reaction was that it’s virtually impossible to survive such an ordeal.) For nine weeks, Yudi was so ill doctors put him on an ECMO (“Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation”) machine, which completely bypasses a patient’s heart and lungs. Used only for the most seriously ill patients, it’s extremely rare for anyone with this level of damage to spend so much time on an ECMO machine and live. While he was ill, Yudi suffered a stroke, a hole in his lung, and had his lungs collapse four times. The fact that he is now breathing on his own is nothing short of a miracle.

Sarah and Yudi celebrating the Bar Mitzvah of their son


Sarah remembers the date that Yudi first felt ill: March 29. Covid-19 was already a concern and the family was quarantining. Yudi was just 38 and in good health; there was nothing to indicate that Covid-19 would harm him so seriously. Yudi began to feel ill and cough; before long, he couldn’t even talk because he was coughing so much. Then he couldn’t walk. An ambulance rushed him to the hospital where his breathing continued to deteriorate.

Sarah wasn’t able to visit him in the hospital because of quarantine restrictions. A few days later she received a phone call from a weak-sounding Yudi. His breathing was so bad doctors were going to intubate him. Patients on ventilators are kept sedated; Sarah wouldn't be able to speak with her husband.

With everyone in their city quarantined, Sarah found herself at home taking care of six young children ranging from three to thirteen. No one was allowed to visit to help out. “On the second or third day after Yudi was in the hospital, I was doing laundry and I thought ‘I can’t do this’,” Sarah recalls. It was an awful moment. But the necessity of taking care of her family forced her to push through. “I said, ‘No - I can do this’ because I have no other choice. ‘God willing, I can and I will.’”

Much of her strength to go on came from Sarah’s training as a mental health counselor. For years, she’d has helped patients using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT); now she found herself using these techniques on herself. “CBT is all about stopping negative or destructive thoughts and replacing them with positive thoughts,” she explains. She tried pushing away her own fears and despair. “I had to do a lot of negative thought-stopping because it was very scary times.”

A classically trained musician, Sarah also turned to music to help her cope. She composed a moving orchestral work with her son Baruch. Called “Once Again,” it captured her yearning that one day Yudi would be able to rejoin his family.

3 Ways Covid-19 Changed My Life
Aug 23, 2020  |  by Sara Debbie Gutfreundprint article
https://www.aish.com/sp/pg/3-Ways-Covid-19-Changed-My-Life.html?s=mm
3 Ways Covid-19 Changed My Life
I don’t know how or when the pandemic will end, but I know that the miracle of life is now.

When Elul began last week I was so shocked that I took out a calendar and stared at it in confusion. I had been so pre-occupied with our summer plans and the question of if and how each of my children’s schools would open this year, that I lost track of time completely. I thought this would all be over by now. I can’t believe we’re beginning the school year like this.

Instead of asking, “When will this all end?” I’m asking: “How can I grow from this?”
During the Vietnam War one of the highest-ranking naval officers, James Stockdale, was held captive as a prisoner of war for over seven years. When asked how he and other prisoners of war survived, he explained what later became known as the Stockdale Paradox: The prisoners of war who fared the worst were actually the most optimistic ones. They believed that they would be home by Thanksgiving and when Thanksgiving passed, they said they were sure they would be free by Christmas. Eventually, when these prisoners still found themselves in captivity by the deadlines they had set in their minds, they gave up hope and died. Paradoxically, the prisoners who fared the best were the ones who acknowledged the reality of their situation while simultaneously believing that everything would work out in the end. They didn’t know how and they didn’t know when, but they knew that someday they would be free. They had a faith that was able to somehow embrace the reality of their situation without losing hope for the future.

So this Elul I’m looking back at the past year and into the next few months with a new question. Instead of asking, “When will this all end?” I’m asking: “How can I grow from this?” Because I’m no longer thinking that this will all be over by Rosh Hashanah or Sukkot or even Hanukkah. One day this global pandemic will be over and we’ll take a step back and evaluate the crucial lessons we’ve learned and how we changed our lives.

Here are three lessons that I have learned from the past year.

I learned how to say thank you even when I wasn’t feeling grateful. There have been so many days in the past few months when all I wanted to do was complain. Endless things weren’t working in my life. Schools closing, and the kids zoning out during endless Zoom classes. Holiday plans canceled. Sudden fear and panic everywhere. Riots and storms and stressful summer plans. And it was exactly this confluence of challenging external circumstances that led me to make a radical, internal shift within.

If I started complaining I’d never stop, so I learned I could say thank You even during the times I felt frustrated and disappointed.
I knew that if I started complaining I’d never stop, so I learned I could say thank You even during the times I felt frustrated and disappointed. Even during the hardest of times there was still so much that I could authentically be grateful for. I woke up and said thank You, God, for air. For light. For the ability to see and hear and smell. Thank You for this day. For the gift of life. For giving me the chance to begin again. And even if it was for just a few moments a day, I felt so grateful for the tiniest details I noticed around me. For shelter. For sunrise. For food. For clothing. For this day.


I learned that if something is important, do it now. We all had so many plans and events that we couldn’t have fathomed being canceled when 2020 began. There was a bar mitzvah trip to Israel that I took in February with my son, my mother and two of my daughters that would never have happened if it had been postponed. I remember hesitating to choose a date, and my mom decided just to book the tickets. Because of my mother’s lack of hesitation, we watched my son organize a minyan all by himself in the lounge in the airport. We watched him put on tefillin at the Kotel. We spent Shabbos in Jerusalem. If we had postponed the trip even by a few weeks, that trip would have never happened.

This year has taught me that if something is important, do it now. Today. Because tomorrow there is no guarantee that the opportunity will still be there.

I learned not to take my family for granted. I’ve always been the type of person to keep looking for the next big thing to accomplish. Whether it’s a new career goal or a more challenging marathon, I tend to think of my life in terms of the rungs of a ladder, and I’m constantly trying to find a way up to the next step. But for many of us, this past year has knocked that ladder out from beneath us. We thought the office was where we should be and then it closed. We thought we should be transforming our bodies at the gym and then all the classes were canceled. I was on an elite running team that won the first race of our season and then suddenly, the races for the rest of the year were gone.

And as I tried to find a new rung to climb, I realized that maybe right now just wasn’t the time for climbing. Maybe it was time to look around me and treasure the most important people in my life. Maybe it was time to pause and realize how fortunate I am to be a mother and a wife. How often have I taken the people I love for granted?

This year has taught me that it is the quality of the relationships in our lives that determine the quality of our lives.

Last month, our family experienced a personal miracle. My husband and I were woken up at by the phone at 4AM. Those 4AM calls are never the ones you want to receive. Our daughters were calling us. They had been caught in a rain storm and their car spun 360 degrees around into the divider of the highway. The car was completely totaled but miraculously they emerged with just a few scratches.

When they returned home, my daughter hugged me and began to cry. “It’s the first time in my life that I realized that I could die,” she said. And as my own tears of gratitude fell, I wondered how we all forget this so easily each day. We forget how precious life is. We forget what a gift each and every day that we are given is. But most of all, I think we forget the miracles that have brought each of us to the end of this year.

I don’t know how or when the pandemic will end, but I know that the miracle of life is now. Thank You for the gift of life. Thank You for bringing us all to this day. Last Rosh Hashanah none of us could have imagined the year to come; for many of us, it is the first time in our lives that we are grateful just to be alive.

Being a Black, Jewish Woman: A Blessing and a Curse
Aug 22, 2020
by Billye Tziporah Robertsprint article
Being a Black, Jewish Woman: A Blessing and a Curse
I define myself as a Black Jewish woman. Which of those words most reflects who I am depends on the day.

No one has ever called me the "n-word," even though the color of my skin is a nice medium coffee au lait and I am a descendant of slaves.

I’ve lived through all the politically correct words that my race has been called in my lifetime: colored, Negro, Black, African American. And most recently back to Black.

I have always thought of myself as Black because, in the same way you can get stuck on the hairstyles and music that were popular during high school or college, the same thing can happen with words. And in college Black was the word – Black Panthers, Black Power, and Black and Proud.

And today, Black Lives Matter.

It’s a word that, depending on who you are, can mean either extremely positive things or extremely negative things.


Today, my self-definition is much more complicated, though it still includes the word Black. At this point in my life I define myself as a Black Jewish woman.

Which of those words most reflects who I am depends on the day.

Some days I’m mostly a woman
It was my mother's dream that I go to college, but the primary expectation of my family – and society – was that I would get married and have babies. I didn't have any problem with the first, but, for various reasons, I determined early on that I would never do the second.

Just because I was sure it was the right thing didn't mean it wasn't a struggle to go against the expectations I was surrounded by. It was years before I came to realize that it was okay not to want to be married or to have children.

What I wanted was to help other women. So I took meals to the local women's shelter and started a charity to make quilts for the homeless women who arrived there with nothing.

Doing all these things allowed me to become the woman I wanted and needed, and am grateful to be.
What I wanted was to travel. So I drove across the US, lived in six different states, and visited England, Scotland, and Israel.

What I wanted was to create. So my writing has appeared on Jewish websites and has been warmly received.

What I wanted was to learn. So I put myself through college, and it was one of the reasons I chose to become Jewish. And doing all these things allowed me to become the woman I wanted and needed, and am grateful to be.

Much of the time, it's the word Jewish that is most definitive.
One of my best friends, and the mother of my god-daughter, wanted me to move to Spokane when she was relocating there for her job. I love her and that child (both her daughters actually), and I've lived across the US from the left coast to the right, so, what the heck, I considered it. Or more specifically, I googled it: Jewish Spokane.

And then I had to try to figure out how to explain to a non-Jewish, non-any-kind-of-religious woman that I wasn't willing to live in a city where there was basically no Jewish life. No synagogues, no Jewish Community Centers, no classes, no lectures, no community.

For me, being Jewish means waking up with a blessing on my lips. And throughout the entire day, I am reminded to be mindful of, and grateful to God, expressed through prayers and blessings recited throughout the day.

For me, being Jewish means attending classes, women's prayer group and book club discussions; art shows and lectures and concerts at various synagogues (today much of that is now available online because of the pandemic).

For me, being Jewish means going to Shabbat services and kiddushes, and being a guest at the homes of the families who are kind enough to invite me. It means feeling surrounded by God all the time, and there is nothing better than that.

But sometimes (and more and more lately) Black is most important.
I think back to a few years ago, when I went down to Selma, Alabama. I was driven to walk across that same Edmund Pettis Bridge that Martin Luther King Jr. and his folks, still in those days called Negros in polite circles, walked upon and were beaten.

I was a teenager living on the other side of the country when the first walk happened, and there was no way I could have been there. But in the back of my mind, somewhere deep in my heart, I always felt bad that I wasn't.

It took me decades to finally get there, and Rev. King, and to some extent the movement he led, are long dead, but on that day, walking across that bridge (that was so much smaller than I had always seen it in my mind) I felt the ones who had walked there before all around me. And on that day Black was definitely the most important.

It has also recently risen in importance when there are so many Black people, my people, out protesting in the streets, because of a black man whose last words were “I can’t breathe” while a white man, a representative of law and order, leaned on his neck, completely unconcerned.

I am Black and Female and Jewish
It can be hard to be the three parts of me when they are separate. It can be harder still when the three parts come together.

My experiences in synagogues have been, relatively speaking, non-confrontational about my race and my gender.

I’m not saying that I’ve never been in Jewish spaces where people have obviously wondered what I was doing there; questioned if I knew what was going on; or in Judaica shops, looked hard at me to figure out if came in because I needed Shabbat candles, or if I was there to steal.

I also cannot say that there are not parts of being an Orthodox woman that I struggle with accepting. I settle for attempting to understand them, and being impressed by the enormous amount of respect the women in my community are treated.

Most people assume I must be a convert, but since I am a convert, that doesn't bother me much. There are Jews of Color who were born Jewish, and the “automatically assuming” bothers them very much. I can understand why.

Of course, people do ask me the question: Why in the world would you decide to convert to Judaism?

I've always taken it to mean that the folks asking know that being Jewish isn't easy, and they just want to understand why you would take it on if you didn't have to. Truthfully, sometimes I wonder that myself. But I know with complete certainty that this is my path to God. I spent my whole life looking for it, and now that I've found it, I also know I have to follow it.

Still I've read a lot, over the years, about Black people who walk into Jewish spaces and they’re treated very badly. They are asked if they’re the help. They’re subjected to other mean-spirited questioning. They’re met at the door with skepticism.

I have a friend who tried to go to a Passover Seder at synagogue near where I currently live and Jews there were so rude to her and her child that they just left.

Nobody’s ever been that rude to me in a synagogue.

My worst experience was at one synagogue at the end of one service. As I was leaving, I heard a man talking negatively about how he felt about Black people. I was taken aback. For a moment, I considered confronting him. But he was an older man, settled in his thinking, unmovable in his opinions. I couldn't imagine that anything I said would have even penetrated, not to mention influenced him to change his mind.

I ended up taking a deep breath and walked past him out the door.

I’m quite certain he didn’t mean a word of it, but he did apologize.
I later learned that the President of the Board of Directors and the Rabbi of that synagogue confronted this man and demanded he apologize to me. And he did. I’m quite certain he didn’t mean a word of it, but he did do it.

More important to me though was what the shul President and Rabbi did. I am so grateful that they stood up for me immediately, conclusively, and with enthusiasm.

Words that Made me Cry
I recently read in the Torah: "Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse" (Deut.11:26), and I teared up. I realized I feel like that about being a Black, Jewish woman: it's a blessing and it's a curse.

I am not asking anyone to feel sorry for me. I have a good life. God has truly blessed me, especially because I am certain I am on the right path on my journey through this world to grow closer to God.

But the fact that my life could have been so much worse doesn't mean that there have not been down sides.

I am the Court Negro because, like the Court Jew of history, I’m the only person there who looks like me.
I walk into unfamiliar spaces, including white Jewish spaces, where I am, as I have been known to call myself, the Court Negro because, like the Court Jew of history, I’m the only person there who looks like me. And people treat me well, even respectfully. It seems they take me for who I think I am (a Jewish woman visiting) as opposed to who I look like I am (a random Black woman who wandered in).

And that is my blessing.

On the other hand, I never completely fit into those spaces. I am never just like everybody else. I am almost always "the only one." Although I don’t usually face much overt hostility, I do sometimes get very tired of being the only one who looks like me in a room.

And that is my curse.

Oddly, I am grateful for both my blessing and my curse.

I can't say I planned to end up who I am, or where I am, today. I am Black. I am Jewish. And I am a woman. And all of those things have upsides and downsides, alone and even more so, in combination.

My life is fairly simple: I work (remotely these days). I live contentedly alone in a small apartment. I attend synagogue. I am invited for meals with families in the community. I learn and I teach.

I am the Court Negro, but I am also myself and accepted as myself by those around me.

And although I sometimes have a touch of anger, as well as a touch of guilt, I am beyond grateful that God has blessed me with the great gifts of having a home, living in an inspiring and supportive community, and being mostly happy, most of the time.

Photo credit for graphic above: David Holifield

https://www.aish.com/sp/pg/The-Month-of-Elul-Corona-Style.html?s=mm
The Month of Elul: Corona Style
Aug 22, 2020  |  by Rabbi Binyomin Weiszprint article
The Month of Elul: Corona Style
The pandemic has enabled us to encounter our selves with a dose of honesty.

The world for many of us has shrunk.

For those who find themselves in quarantine - or worse - that's pretty clear. But people everywhere are living with sudden limitation in their movement and their social interactions. For once, our homes have become where we live our lives.

It's a strange place, this shrunken world.

People are struggling to find their feet and - with loneliness, boredom and anxiety becoming new norms - it seems that modern life has left us unprepared for existence here.

In the old world even when staying home we felt safely anchored to the big outside; all options were always open. The world had us enchanted with its endless streams of action and distraction. And potential activity gave us the placating illusion of real activity.


Until now.

Suddenly we meet a state of inertia - of alone - that cannot be rationalized as a 'choice'. We are with ourselves or our immediate families for far longer than we might ever choose. Welcome to life without the options...

And that's not easy!

Being in this new place certainly reveals our strengths, our ability to connect and our resilience. But it also exposes the painful holes in our lives. Habits, confusions and emptiness that regular life elegantly glosses over are now here in undeniable 4-D. Likewise the limitations, flaws and self-deceptions we so often ignore.

Corona has enabled us to encounter our selves.

Every situation and every challenge is there to help us thrive. Let us reflect for a moment on the pivotal place we stand in the Jewish year. We are entering Elul, the Hebrew month designated for inner searching, for returning to what is real. The time we reconnect to God and the spiritual meaning in our lives.

As we enter these special days this is exactly what we need: to focus inward with a dose of honesty.

We find ourselves guided away from the superficial and the incidental, towards focus, towards integration, towards essence.
For many, corona has stripped away travel, sport, entertainment, eating out, retail therapy – the activities that so often pull us away from self. Away from presence and self-knowledge, from living life with meaning and dedication to higher ideals. Indeed, the virus has shut down exactly the interconnected, external world that powered its spread across the globe. It has taken humanity in the opposite direction: inward.

When borders and businesses close, when travel and tourism become something of the past, countries become populated by their citizens; nations rely on their own resources. Homes have just their families. We find ourselves guided away from the superficial and the incidental towards focus, towards integration.

Towards essence.

In this world I stand alone, as me. With whatever of my life I have succeeded in rooting into reality. All that still exists within me when detached from the world of the external.

And this is the goal of Elul. Elul leads us steadily, day by day, towards Rosh Hashanah. It gives us time to introspect, to clarify what we stand for – and to return to our true selves. So that when we arrive at the grand Coronation of the King we will find ourselves able to reunite with our essence, both as individuals and as a nation.

We will know to place the crown where it truly belongs.

I believe this microscopic virus has achieved something cosmic. It's hard to imagine anything that could trigger such dramatic changes in such a short amount of time. Being careful not to rose-tint the suffering and the worry, it seems that a new opportunity is unfolding for mankind. And yes – for myself too.

The situation calls us to be present with ourselves without running away. Starting with simply experiencing our reality this moment. With appreciating more deeply what we do have – basic gifts like health, four walls and family. And ultimately: facing my strengths and my weaknesses. The things I have planted well and those I have yet to plant.

Because in the quiet of this place I finally hear the voice that was always there – its whisper now amplified with the arrival of Elul:

Who are you and What do you live for?

Twenty years down the line some may look back at these times as dark, sanitizer-imbued wells of loneliness and confusion. Some may remember how they binged on Netflix series till they felt sick or stayed glued to endless contagion bulletins. Others the unease of stagnation. These might be days they prefer not to recall.

There is another way.

We can remember hard days but good days. Days which helped make us the better people we became. Yes, we distanced socially, but inside something came together. It was a time we thought about our wants and about what's really worth valuing. When we found the courage to face the holes in our lives - and decided to plant in those holes something new, held firm by fresh conviction and wiser habits.

We can look back and see how we entered an era of clarity and stepped up to higher purpose. We got to know a deeper self. And that's why, when we finally took off our masks and went back to the big outside, our actions had more focus. Our days somehow had more meaning and our relationships were more real.

We didn't lose ourselves again.

So this year, with so many parts of our lives on hold, maybe we can welcome the month of Elul with self-honesty – and a deeper approach. As we stay rooted within our four walls, let’s allow corona to guide us to a smaller, somehow truer world. The season has come to search inward. To plant the seeds that can grow who we really are.

9 Common Jewish Symbols
Aug 1, 2020  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Millerprint article
And the history behind these common Jewish emblems.
Is there a universal Jewish symbol? Around the world people associate a plethora of signs with Jews and Judaism, from the Star of David to the menorah to the hamsa hand symbol. Here are some symbols that are commonly identified as Jewish, along with their history and symbolism.
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/9-Common-Jewish-Symbols.html?s=mm
Star of David
https://www.aish.com/jl/sp/k/48942436.html
The Star of David, the Magen David, is one of the most recognizable Jewish symbols. It appears on many Jewish tombstones and is the central symbol on the Israeli flag. Surprisingly, given its widespread popularity, the Star of David is fairly recent and has only been associated with Jews for a few hundred years.

While the six-pointed Star of David might be more recent, the term Magen David is old. The Talmud mentions Magen David – literally, the Shield of King David – protecting King David and his descendent, the Messiah (Pesachim 117b). This beautiful image is also found in Jewish liturgy: each Shabbat after we hear the Haftarah read in synagogue, the reader refers to the Divine as Magen David, the protector of David and the Jewish people.

There is a legend that King David indeed did carry a six pointed star with him, in the form of his shield and the shields his soldiers carried. These were said to comprise two triangles, one pointing up and one pointing down, joined in the middle, forming a six pointed star. This construction is said to have made King David’s shield more sturdy than his opponents.

Some symbolic explanations for the six-pointed star being identified with Judaism include Kabbalistic explanations of it representing two arrows, one pointing up to heaven and one down to earth. The Star of David also has twelve individual sides, corresponding to the twelve Tribes of Israel. It also can be seen as a correlation to Shabbat, with a central core (corresponding to Shabbat) surrounded by six points, corresponding to the six other days of the week.


 
Six pointed stars have been found in Jewish settings for hundreds of years. A Jewish tombstone in southern Italy dating from the Third Century CE is decorated with a six pointed star. In 1354, King Charles IV of Bohemia bestowed a red flag with a six pointed star on it to the Jews of Prague, and the star was adopted by the Jews of Prague as their symbol. A Jewish prayer book printed in Prague in 1512 features a beautiful Jewish star on its cover with the quote “Each man beneath his flag according to the house of their fathers...and he will merit to bestow a bountiful gift on anyone who grasps the Shield of David.”

The Jewish star soon spread to other Jewish communities, and synagogues and Jewish tombstones featured Jewish stars as ornaments. During the Holocaust, Nazis forced Jews to wear yellow patches of the six pointed Star of David. Yellow had long been used as a distinctive, humiliating color that European Jews were forced to wear in some European communities, and the Star of David was by then seen as the quintessentially Jewish symbol.

Menorah
The official emblem of the State of Israel, the Menorah is a key Jewish emblem. The Torah relates how God Himself gave Moses instructions for building this holy seven-branched candelabra on Mount Sinai: “You shall make a menorah of pure gold…” (Exodus 25: 31-40)



The golden menorah was placed in the Mishkan, the very first Jewish house of worship. When Jews conquered Jerusalem and built the ancient Temple there, they moved the menorah to the Temple, where it was kept lit all the time. The holiday of Hanukkah commemorates re-lighting this precious candelabra after it was desecrated by occupying Greek soldiers and Jewish soldiers recaptured and restored the Temple in the year 139 BCE.

111 years later, in 70 CE, Roman soldiers, led by Titus, sacked the Temple and took the beautiful Menorah with them back to Rome. To this day, the Arch of Titus stands in the center of Rome, depicting that day and showing the menorah being carted away.

The Arch of Titus

When the State of Israel was declared in 1948, the new country asked artists to submit ideas for a national symbol. Maxim and Gabriel Shamir were celebrated graphic designers. Born in Latvia, they each studied art in Germany before moving to the Land of Israel in the 1920s and establishing a popular graphic design studio in Tel Aviv. They suggested the emblem that is familiar to millions of Israelis today for the national seal: a modern rendering of the ancient menorah.

“After we decided to use the menorah,” Gabriel Shamir later recalled, “we looked for another element and concluded that olive branches are the most beautiful expression of the Jewish people’s love of peace.” They flanked the menorah in their design with olive leaves, reminding the world of the Jewish people’s ancient heritage in the Land of Israel.

Priestly Blessing Hands
This distinctive two handed symbol is sometimes found on tombstones of Jews who were members of the Cohen priestly clan, descendants of the Cohanim who were descended from Moses’ brother Aaron, and who served in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. It reflects the unique hand positioning used by Cohens both in ancient times and today when they recite key beautiful blessings on the Jewish people.



Cohanim continue to bless the congregation in synagogues around the world, just as their ancestors thousands of years ago did in the holy Temple in Jerusalem. Making this ancient sign with their hands, they bless the congregation using the very same words that God told Aaron to recite soon after the Jewish people’s departure from slavery in Egypt: “May God bless you and safeguard you. May God illuminate His countenance for you and be gracious to you. May God lift His countenance to you and establish peace for you” (Numbers 6:22-26).

Since it’s customary to refrain from making this hand symbol unless one is a Cohen and actively reciting the Cohens’ blessing, this ancient Jewish symbol has remained rarely used, and is mostly seen on Jewish tombstones and in books.



Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock in Star Trek, took this gesture and used it for the Vulcan salute.

Hamsa


This depiction of a single hand has many names: Hamsa (from the Arabic word for “five”); Yad (the Hebrew word for hand); Hand of Miriam; and Hand of Fatima. Hamsas have been popular throughout the Arab world since the Middle Ages. Though it’s primarily seen as a Muslim symbol, hamsas have also been embraced by Sephardi Jewish communities and today are a popular symbol for Jews and others worldwide. Some hamsas today contain pictures of eyes to ward off the “evil eye”. Some say hamsas bring luck or ward off the “evil eye”. This isn’t a Jewish world view, as the Torah cautions us against believing in lucky talismans or omens, and explains we ought to place our faith in God instead.

Grapes – Israeli Ministry of Tourism Symbol


The symbol of Israel’s Ministry of Tourism is a stylized depiction of two men carrying a bunch of grapes that is so large they have to use a pole with one man holding up each end to transport it.

This picture depicts the famous Biblical story of The Ten Spies. After God brought the Jewish people out of Egypt He led them to the borders of the Land of Israel, the Jews asked for permission to scout out the country. Twelve men slipped into Israel and were amazed at what they saw: pomegranates, figs, grapes and other delicious fruit grew throughout the area. They brought back an enormous cluster of grapes to show their brethren. Ten of the spies in the end brought back an evil report, showing the grapes as proof of giants living in the land, whereas and Joshua and Caleb, the other two spies, brought back a positive report.

Lion of Judah – Jerusalem City Council Logo


The official crest of the city of Jerusalem is a lion pictured against a background of the stones of the Western Wall, surrounded by stylized olive leaves, representing peace. It refers to the tribe of Judah, one of the twelve ancient Jewish tribes.

When our Biblical patriarch Jacob was about to die, he bestowed one final blessing on each of his twelve sons who founded the twelve tribes of the nation of Israel. When Jacob blessed Judah, he compared him to a lion and said that one day his descendants would be among the most prominent Jews: “A lion cub is Judah; from the prey, my son, you elevated yourself. He crouches, lies down like a lion, and like an awesome lion, who dares rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah nor a scholar from among his descendants” (Genesis 49:8-10).

After the reign of King Solomon in the 10th Century BCE, the ten northern tribes split off from the nation of Israel and were eventually lost. Only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin remained and were known in later antiquity as the kingdom of Judea. The area of the tribe of Judah encompassed Jerusalem, which was its capital, making the image of the Lion of Judah a particularly fitting emblem for the city of Jerusalem today.

Chai


Chai means “life” in Hebrew. This uplifting word is often found in Jewish jewelry and other Judaica objects, affirming one of the most important values in the Jewish religion: preserving and celebrating life. A common toast on Jewish occasions is L’Chaim, meaning “to life!”

Spelled with the Hebrew letters chet and yud, the word chai has the numerical value of 18 (Chet=8, yud=10). Because of this it’s common for Jews to give gifts or donate to charity in amounts that are multiples of 18.

Tree of Life


The Torah and its commandments are compared with a “Tree of Life”. King Solomon wrote “It is a tree of life to those who grasp it, and its supporters are praiseworthy” (Proverbs 3:18). The term is first used in Genesis when God tells Adam and Eve that they can eat from any fruits in the Garden of Eden, with two exceptions: the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Seduced by the evil snake, Adam and Eve broke this command and ate fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. (The Tree of Life remained untouched.)

In later works, the Tree of Life is used as a metaphor for the Torah. The famous 16th Century book Etz Chaim by Israeli Rabbi Chaim ben Joseph Vital is a classic work of Jewish mysticism and expounds on the relationship between the spiritual and material worlds.

Dove and Olive Branch


In Genesis, the Torah describes a mighty flood that covered the entire Earth, wiping out almost all life. The only people and animals to survive were those saved by Noah, who built a mighty ark and gathered together his wife, his sons, daughters in law, and pairs of every type of animal into the ark with him. For forty days and nights a horrendous storm flooded the earth; when it was over not a single spot of land or piece of vegetation was visible.

One can only imagine the misery and despair Noah and the others with him on the ark felt. He tried to find land, sending out a raven to see if the bird could see a place to land and rest. The raven circled in vain around the ship, never finding land. Noah waited another week then sent out a dove to find a place to rest and food to eat: the dove could not and returned to the ark empty handed. Finally, Noah waited another week and sent out the dove again to scout the land for vegetation. This time, the dove returned with a piece of an olive tree in its beak. At last, the earth was habitable once again (Genesis 8).

The image of a dove holding an olive branch in its beak recalls this moment of profound hope and joy, when Noah realized his many long months of living in a dark cramped ark were behind him and life could begin again.

https://www.aish.com/ci/s/Orthodox-Jew-Falsely-Accused-of-Treason.html?s=mm
Orthodox Jew Falsely Accused of Treason
Aug 8, 2020  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Millerprint article
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Orthodox Jew Falsely Accused of Treason
For years Dr. David Tenenbaum has worked to clear his name.

Dr. David Tenenbaum, an expert in armor and survivability, worked for 14 years as a civilian engineer in the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) in Warren, Michigan, researching ways to improve combat vehicles’ ability to withstand blasts. An observant Jew, he stuck out at work as one of the only identifiably Jewish employees on the base, where he was subjected to anti-Semitic comments and actions.

Once, he found pork rinds on his desk. Another time, a colleague gave him literature about Christianity. A woman at work once patted him on his head and asked why he wore “that thing,” gesturing towards his yarmulke. But all that is minor compared to the false accusations leveled against for spying for Israel, and the ensuing nightmare that he and his family went through. Dr. Tenenbaum details the abuse in a shocking memoir, Accused of Treason: The US Army’s Witch Hunt for a Jewish Spy (Post Hill Press, 2020). He recently spoke to Aish.com.

As the rumors spread, malicious coworkers speculated that David was spying for Israel.
In the early 1990s, some of David’s colleagues began to make up bizarre rumors behind his back about the unusually large knapsack he brought to and from work each day. Since David brought a kosher lunch and Jewish books to study during his lunch break. Noting the hefty bag David carried with him, some of his colleagues began to spin untrue rumors that his knapsack contained classified documents. As the rumors spread, malicious coworkers speculated that David was spying for Israel.

In 1992, a disgruntled colleague made a secret complaint about David, alleging that his knapsack was stuffed with classified documents. The colleague had heard David speaking with an Israeli liaison officer on the base, and in his complaint he leapt to the wild, unsubstantiated idea that they were somehow colluding against the United States.

The colleague embroidered his report with other inaccuracies; he accused Dr. Tenenbaum of saying disparaging things about the United States (David maintains he never did), and that David suggested that US government employees become overly close to Israel and Israelis. (Again, David denies that claim.) The official complaint went nowhere, but his colleagues continued a whisper campaign behind David’s back, accusing him of being more loyal to the Jewish state than to the US. The rumors went on for years.

In 1995 David became one of the key developers of a major new project, the “Light Armor Systems Survivability” project (LASS), a US Army program to make Humvees more “survivable” in the face of explosives. With US troops facing improvised explosive devices in the Middle East, the project was urgent. From the beginning, David and LASS partnered with engineers in Israel and Germany, two key US allies with extensive experience in making vehicles safer in the event of explosions.

Fluent in Hebrew and one of the founding engineers within LASS, Dr. Tenenbaum explains that one of the reasons he was hired was because he was able to liaise with Israeli engineers. In 1995 he traveled to Israel – on a trip that was approved by the US Government – to attend an international ballistics conference. It was the third trip to Israel that the US Army sent David on – it “enabled me to confer with world experts in the ballistics and survivability/armor field,” David explained in an exclusive interview with Aish.com.

The conference was uneventful, except in one respect: civilian employees of David’s level were meant to be debriefed after returning from international travel. Weeks, then months passed, but nobody contacted him to debrief him about the conference. In time, he forgot about it as LASS continued to grow; David found himself ever busier at work, and the details of his latest Israel trip faded from his memory.

Dr. David Tenenbaum outside the TACOM base
Eventually, more than nine months after the Israel conference, David received a phone call ordering him to report for a debriefing with Military Intelligence officials. The debriefing went horribly. After so many months, David couldn’t remember the name of the hotel he’d stayed at in Israel. He had the feeling that his interrogators mistrusted him and were trying to trip him up.

A few months later, in 1996, David’s boss asked him to submit paperwork for a higher level security clearance. He now feels that request was a ruse to allow him to be questioned again about his ties to Israel. “They were using the pretense of a security clearance upgrade as a ruse to interrogate me without having an attorney present as they suspected me of being an Israeli spy,” Dr. Tenenbaum recalled.

His interrogation was overseen by Lt. Col. John Simonini, a virulent anti-Semite who voiced lurid fantasies about Jews’ supposedly evil.
This interrogation was overseen by Lt. Col. John Simonini, the head of the Security and Counterintelligence Office at David’s base. Though David didn’t realize it at the time, Lt. Col. Simonini was a virulent anti-Semite who regularly voiced lurid fantasies about Jews’ supposedly evil and all-encompassing tendencies. He seemed to have David in his sights as an Israeli spy.

The meeting began with “good cop, bad cop,” and became combative after a lunch break. They accused David of being uncooperative and said he’d passed classified information to Israel. They told him he could either take a polygraph test or be fired, and implied that they would seek to prosecute him as a spy. In one afternoon, David’s career as a trusted civilian employee with the US Army seemed to be in danger of crashing down all around him.

David eventually went home, unaware of the shocking recommendations Lt. Col. Siminoni was making behind his back: Siminoni told the FBI that David had compromised himself in the debriefing interview, and asserted that the Army now had new information to add to the baseless and secret 1992 complaint against him. With no proof, Siminoni was accusing David of spying for a foreign country, a crime that can carry the death penalty in the United States.

A few weeks later, David agreed to undergo a polygraph exam. The exam took many hours and was harrowing. The examiner called David a liar and falsely claimed that “he had gotten other Jews to confess and he would get Tenenbaum to confess too”, David described. David kept saying that he had nothing to confess, as he had done nothing wrong. Shockingly, David later found out that far from recording David’s assertions of innocence, the polygrapher lied and falsely told the FBI that Tenenbaum had confessed to being a spy.

Far from recording David’s assertions of innocence, the polygrapher lied and falsely told the FBI that Tenenbaum had confessed to being a spy.
The questioning continued. The next day, February 14, 1997, FBI and other federal agencies came to David’s workplace and interrogated him again. What about the Hebrew phone calls his colleagues had overheard him making, they asked. Was he passing along official secrets during these Hebrew language conversations?

For David it was a terrible moment. Had his own colleagues turned on him, assuming that he was committing treason every time he spoke Hebrew? “I speak to my children in Hebrew,” he explained. “I want them to be bilingual.” Even though dozens of members on David’s international team of engineers regularly spoke foreign languages at home and even at the office – Dr. Tenenbaum jokes that his office used to be known as “the UN” because of its highly international diverse nature – his use of Hebrew had seemingly raised suspicions about his loyalty to America.

The next day on Shabbat, during lunch with their two children and guest, half a dozen FBI agents raided the Tannenbaum home in the heavily Jewish suburb of Southfield, Michigan. The details of that day remain vividly lodged in his memory.

David had just come home from synagogue. His wife Madeline had just set cholent on the table. Their kids gathered round, and David was about to make Kiddush. Suddenly, three cars pulled up to the house. FBI agents knocked on the door, showed the family a search warrant, and proceeded to comb through every room of the family’s home with a fine-tooth comb. Though some of the agents seemed zealous in their search, the lead FBI agent, Special Agent James Gugino, kept muttering, “I don’t know what I’m doing here, I told them not to do the search.”

Madeline watched in horror as FBI agents looked through her personal belongings and the couple’s children cowered in fear. Their oldest child, Nechama, remained deeply fearful of strangers for years afterwards.

The FBI agents took David’s computer away – as well as some of their children’s coloring and musical books, saying that there could be some secret codes within these children’s items.

After the search, David hired a lawyer and began a years-long campaign to clear his name. Dismissing the allegations of spying that were leveled against him, David notes that “if I’d ever done what some of these newspapers said, you and I wouldn’t be talking right now – I’d be in jail.” David is clear: “I never did anything wrong, which by the way was substantiated by (Lt. Col.) Simonini’s right hand man, Paul Barnard, in a sworn deposition... I never ever gave any classified materials, deliberately or inadvertently, to Israel.”

The Army suspended David from February 1997 until May 1998. He eventually was ordered back to work, but endured years of suspicion and repeated questions about his loyalty. “You have no idea what it was like,” he said, likening his stressful situation to the sword of Damocles, as he waited for a resolution in his case.

FBI agents followed him “24/7 for months”, interviewed his neighbors, and leaked details about suspicions against him to the press. Dr. Tenenbaum believes that the case of Jonathan Pollard, a civilian Navy employee who, as part of a plea bargain, pleaded guilty in 1987 to passing classified information to Israel about Arab nations, might have helped create an atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion around him and other Jewish civilians working for the US military.

“Let me clarify that there were never any charges against me,” David stressed. “There were baseless anti-Semitic slanders.”

After he was completely cleared of the horrific crime of treason, he was forbidden from working with Israelis.
Nevertheless, once he returned to work after he was completely cleared of the horrific crime of treason, he was forbidden from working with Israelis, despite the fact that Israel is a leader in the field of armor and survivability and despite the fact that he had done nothing wrong.

After years of harassment, David was finally given back his security clearance in 1998. “They even upgraded my security clearance,” he noted, yet for years he never received a formal apology. Anyone looking him up on the internet would find a host of misleading news articles about him, detailing unproven allegations and smears that he was a spy.

Throughout, his Orthodox Jewish community and his Jewish faith helped sustain him. David’s father was a Holocaust survivor and his harrowing history also helped David keep his own travails in perspective. “My humor keeps me sane.”

David’s attorneys filed a lawsuit in federal court in Detroit to force the US Government to apologize for their treatment of him, but the case was dismissed after government lawyers argued that the case couldn’t be tried because it involved “state secrets”. In 2006, then US Senator Carl Levin of Michigan managed to get the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General (IG) to review David’s case.

In July 2008 the IG’s office released a report saying that David finally got vindication: the report admitted that he’d faced discrimination based on his religion and ethnicity. David used the report as evidence in a new lawsuit against the US Army in 2009, seeking damages. This case was dismissed, again on “state secrets” grounds.

David has become a government whistleblower. He wants the US public to know about his ordeal and learn two key things. One is the anti-Semitism he faced from within the US Army. He still hopes to receive an apology for the way he was treated.

His whistleblower status reflects his desire to alert the public that LASS, the Humvee program he helped direct, came to end when he was charged with espionage. Years later, he’s still upset about the effects of closing the program: “There were thousands of casualties because of IEDs (improvised explosive devices), which might have been fixed if the program hadn’t been shut down.” He wants the US public to know that the persecution he faced might have weakened programs that would have protected American troops.

For the past thirteen years, David has been teaching a class at his local synagogue and he tries to apply the lessons he’s learned. “We all face our own life trials and challenges, and it’s up to us how we react to those trials and challenges. We teach our children that there are consequences to their actions and we also need to be held accountable for our actions. The government has never been accountable for their horrific behavior.

“It’s not the tests you go through in life that define you,” Dr. Tenenbaum said, summing up his hard-learned wisdom after years of struggle to finally clear his name. “It’s our reaction to those tests that defines who we are.”

https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Jews-and-Pickles-7-Facts.html?s=mm
Pickles have long been a Jewish food. Here are some fascinating facts and recipes.
Pickling – the process of preserving food by preserving it in salt or brine – has a long history. For thousands of years, pickling fruits and vegetables – even meat, fish and eggs – has allowed people to store food long-term. In the years before refrigeration, this was a crucial way of making sure people had enough food to eat year-round.
There are two methods of pickling food. Marinating foods in vinegars or other acidic liquids kills most bacteria, ensuring that pickled foods can last for years even without refrigeration. Pickles can also be marinated in brine, a salty liquid. This causes fermentation and the growth of edible bacteria, and prevents the development of harmful bacteria that can cause spoilage.

Pickling also imparts a delicious flavor. Here are seven little known facts about the Jewish love of pickles, along with some recipes for quintessentially Jewish pickled dishes. Enjoy!

Ancient Pickles?
Cucumbers, one of the most popular pickled foods, are native to India. In ancient times they were sold and eaten throughout the Middle East, including ancient Egypt. The Torah even records that after the Jews left Egypt, they missed the cucumbers and other flavorful produce they’d eaten in Egypt: “We remember the fish which we were wont to eat in Egypt for nought; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic” (Numbers 11:5).

It’s likely that the cucumbers mentioned by our Jewish forebears were pickled in some way. Ancient cucumbers tasted extremely bitter and the ancient Egyptians “cooked” their cucumbers by lightly fermenting them. The resulting pickled vegetables were slightly alcoholic, and were seemingly eaten for their mind-altering properties.

Talmudic Pickle Description

The Talmud says, "Salting is like hearing and marinating is like cooking" (Chullin, 97b). This is one of the earliest descriptions of preserving food by pickling in ancient times. According to the Jewish law, pickling food is akin to cooking it: just as the laws of keeping kosher prohibit cooking meat and dairy items together, so too is it prohibited to pickle meat and dairy foods in the same jar.

Pickling foods by marinating in vinegar or salt seems to have been so common in Talmudic times that the Talmud even records a disagreement between two sages, Rabbah bar Rav Huna and Rava, over whether sprinkling salt on foods while sitting at the Shabbat table can be considered pickling.

The Talmud concludes that since it’s unlikely a diner would sprinkle sufficient quantities of salt on their foods that their meals could become pickled, salting foods poses no problem on Shabbat (Shabbat 75b). The discussion paints a fascinating portrait of a world in which so much food had to be salted and pickled to preserve it that the act of pickling was seemingly on everybody’s minds at meals and when preparing foods.

Preserving Food in the Shtetl
For generations, pickled foods made up a large portion of poor people’s diets. For the impoverished Jews of Eastern Europe, pickles were a crucial means of preserving food and ensuring that people had enough to eat during the long winter months. “Vegetable pickles, especially cabbage, beet, and cucumber, were staples in the diet of Jews in Poland, Lithuania, the Ukraine, and Russia,” notes Claudia Roden in her book The Book of Jewish Food (1996).

In addition to preserving vital foods and vitamins, pickles’ piquant taste provided a counterpoint to the often bland Eastern European diet. Jews became known for making tasty pickles. “Housewives would prepare stocks of winter provisions,” Roden records, “leaving them to ferment in cellars and outhouses. To the country markets, where peasants brought their farm produce, Jewish housewives brought their pickles in barrels for sale.”

Pickled Herring
One of the most iconic Jewish pickles is also one of the most unlikely sounding – pickled herring. For centuries herring has been a popular fish in the Baltic nations of northern Europe – locals preserved herrings by various means, including salting, smoking and pickling. In the Renaissance, Dutch fishing fleets trawled the Baltic Sea for herring, and cornered the market: the Netherlands had a substantial Jewish population, and Jews became key agents in the Netherlands’ herring trade.

Jewish traders pickled herring and exported it all over Europe without spoiling. A popular method was to pickle the fish in a marinade of vinegar, sugar and onions. Once herring was pickled, Jewish chefs sometimes packaged it in a wine sauce or a cream sauce. Jewish chefs became connoisseurs of various forms of pickled herring: “shmaltz” herrings are larger, fatty fish. Matjes herring are younger and smaller.

Pickled herring became a mainstay in Jewish homes throughout Europe, and was particularly popular as a Shabbat delicacy and a Hanukkah holiday meal. When Jews moved to the United States in the 1800s, they brought their love of pickled herrings with them, selling the delicacy from pushcarts. In 1925, a Jewish girl who immigrated to America and lived on the Lower East Side of New York, Anzia Yezierska, published a semi-autobiographical novel The Bread Givers about what life was like for those penniless, pious Jewish immigrants. Facing semi-starvation, the daughter of the family takes a job selling pickled herring on the streets: “I was burning up inside me with my herring to sell...like a houseful of hungry mouths my heart cried, ‘Herring – herring! Two cents apiece!’”

A Yiddish saying summed up the special place that the humble pickled herring had in the hearts of Ashkenazi Jews: B’makom she’eyn ish, iz hering oykh a fish – Where there is no worthy man, even a herring is a fish. Today, Jews continue to enjoy pickled herring. In fact, Israel, despite its small size, is one of the world’s top importers of herring, after the Netherlands, Germany, Ukraine and LIthuania.

“Depraved” Pickles
Jews living in the tenements in New York and other cities would place barrels containing cucumbers, cabbage, beets and other vegetables in brine each summer when produce was plentiful, then let them pickle in cool cellars and basements during the long cold winter. This way, poor families could have access to vegetables, albeit in pickle form. Even when Jews didn’t make their own pickles, they could easily be found in many Jewish neighborhoods. In the 1920s, the Lower East Side in New York had no fewer than 80 kosher pickle factories.

“Available year round, cheap, and ready to eat, pickles fed tenement dwellers and reminded many Eastern Europeans of the lands they had left behind,” the New York Tenement Museum notes.

For many non-Jewish Americans, the Jewish fondness for pickles was evidence of Jews’ supposed degeneracy. The famous American doctor and author Susanna Way Dodds, who published copiously about a healthy lifestyle at the turn of the 20th century, opined that pickled cucumbers could morally corrupt children: “The spices in (pickles) are bad, the vinegar is a seething mass of rottenness...and the poor little innocent cucumber...if it had very little ‘character’ in the beginning, must now fall into the ranks of the totally depraved.” The New York City Board of Education even launched their school lunch program as a way of weaning immigrant children off their habit of eating pickles.

Kosher Dills
In Europe, many non-Jewish cooks used vinegar to pickle their foods. Derived from wine, vinegar was just too expensive for many Jewish cooks to use. Instead, Jewish housewives turned to brine, with salt and water as the primary ingredients. It became popular to add garlic and dill to the brine, and in time “kosher dills” pickled cucumbers were a quintessentially Jewish delicacy.

Other “Jewish” pickles include “sours”, “half sours” and “sweets”. These names refer to the length of time they’re fermented. Sours are fully fermented in brine for weeks. Half sours are partially fermented in salt brine for two to four weeks. Sweet pickles are pickled in salt brine and also in sugar, which also acts as a fermenting agent.

Here’s a recipe for Kosher Dill Pickles to try at home:

⅓ cup kosher salt
2 lbs. Kirby cucumbers, washed and halved or quartered lengthwise
5 cloves garlic, crushed
1 large bunch of fresh dill, washed thoroughly
Combine the salt and 1 cup boiling water in a large bowl. Stir to dissolve the salt. Add a handful of ice cubes to cool the mixture, then all the remaining ingredients.

Add cold water to cover. Use a plate slightly smaller than the diameter of the bowl and a small weight to keep the cucumbers immersed. Set aside at room temperature.

Begin sampling the cucumbers after 4 hours if your quartered them. It will probably take 12-24 hours or even 48 hours for them to taste pickled enough to suit your taste.

When they are ready, refrigerate them, still in the brine. The pickles will continue to ferment as they sit, more quickly at room temperature and more slowly in the refrigerator. They will keep well for up to a week.
Sephardi Pickled Delicacies
Sephardi Jewish cuisines contain delicious pickled vegetable dishes. Pickled lemons, pink pickled turnips and pickled eggplants are all delectable Sephardi dishes that have become staples in many Israeli kitchens, no matter where their ancestors came from.

“Pickles and marinated vegetables had an important place in the old Sephardi world,” notes Claudia Roden, a Jewish cookbook writer who grew up in Egypt. “They were brought out as appetizers with drinks and again as side dishes during the meal. Originally a way of preserving seasonal vegetables, they became delicacies to be eaten as soon as they were ready.”

Here is a wonderful and easy recipe for Torshi Left, a turnip pickle that was brought to Israel by Egyptian, Syrian and Lebanese Jews and is a quintessentially Israeli condiment today.


2 lbs (1 kg) turnips
1 beet, raw or cooked, peeled and cut in slices
3 or 4 garlic cloves, cut into slices
3 ¾ cups (850 ml) water
3-4 T red or white wine vinegar
2 ½ T salt
Peel the turnips, cut in half or quarters, and put them in a jar interspersed with the slices of beet and garlic. In a pan bring the water, vinegar, and salt to the boil, stirring to dissolve the salt. Then pour over the turnips. Let cool before closing the jar.

(Variation: You may also add a chili pepper.)

Pickle in your refrigerator as long as possible; the longer the turnips stay in the marinade, the stronger your pickles will be. Claudia Roden notes that in her family the kids could never wait until the pickles were ready and would snack on them while they were still crisp. Taste every few days to get a sense of how strong you’d like this pickle to be.

(From The Book of Jewish Food by Claudia Roden. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.: 1996.)

https://www.aish.com/jw/s/An-Open-Letter-to-Seth-Rogen.html?s=mm
An Open Letter to Seth Rogen
Aug 1, 2020  |  by Rabbi Benjamin Blechprint article
An Open Letter to Seth Rogen
Seth, you spent an hour of prime time savaging your fellow Jews, misrepresenting Jewish history, defaming Israel and Israelis, and slandering Judaism. What gives?

Dear Seth,
I know that you’ve never claimed to be a historian, a theologian, a philosopher or a scholar. You’re a famous actor and comedian. Until last week, you pretty much stuck to the areas of your expertise.

I can’t blame you for going on Marc Maron’s podcast to plug your new movie – after all Maron has more downloads than any cable show has viewers. Your new film, An American Pickle, is a pretty far out fantasy with a Jewish “hook” that might even have an important message. It’s the story of a simple Jewish man named Herschel Greenbaum who works in a pickle factory in Brooklyn, falls into a vat of brine and stays there perfectly preserved for 100 years until he comes back to life to be with his great great grandson Ben in contemporary Brooklyn. I have no inkling how you developed the idea but to my mind it certainly would make for an interesting opportunity to focus on the link between generations as well as the mystical and miraculous reality of Jewish survival.

Seems that was wishful thinking on my part. Seth, you spent an hour of prime time with many millions of listeners savaging your fellow Jews, misrepresenting Jewish history, defaming Israel and Israelis, slandering Judaism and, in your own words, testifying that “religion is silly” and “for the preservation of the Jewish people it [Israel] makes no sense.”

I can’t help but wonder how your grandparents who taught you about the reality of anti-Semitism would feel about your performance if they could have been “pickled” and returned to life like the hero of your film. What I can tell you though is the absolute glee of Jew haters in the aftermath of your hour of shame. Mondoweiss, a left-leaning news website co-edited by journalists Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz - two Jewish founders who describe themselves as progressive and anti-Zionist - reacted to your statements with the bold headline “Israel Is Ridiculous, Antiquated and Based on Ethnic Cleansing, Seth Rogen Says, But He’s Afraid To Tell Other Jews.” But obviously not afraid enough to prevent him from sharing his views on the most listened-to podcast in the world.

You have an obligation to think before you speak and to have some familiarity with facts before you libel people.
Seth, I don’t mean to swell your ego but in a celebrity-driven culture such as ours, what you say matters, and what you claim as truth can unfortunately influence the thinking of countless people. You have an obligation to think before you speak and to have some familiarity with facts before you libel people. How terrible, you shared with millions, that you were “fed a huge amount of lies about Israel my entire life! They never tell you that – oh by the way, there were people there. They make it seem like it was just like sitting there, like the (obscenity) door’s open they forget to include the fact to every young Jewish person.”


 
I understand that you’re not a scholar, Seth. It seems that it comes as a shock to you that there were in fact people other than Jews living in Palestine. Let me explain that to you how that happened.

We just finished commemorating Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av. For thousands of years Jews around the world have fasted and observed a day of mourning. We weep for what we once had. Our ancestors settled in the land God promised to Abraham in biblical times. There twelve tribes became a nation. There we had prophets who taught us as well as the rest of the world how to live lives of holiness, of justice and righteousness. And there we built a temple to the Almighty in order to bring His presence down to earth and His values and wisdom to serve as beacon for all mankind.

It was on Tisha B’Av that the Babylonians destroyed that temple and sent us into our first exile. But we wept by the rivers of Babylon and we would not forget our homeland. We returned and rebuilt. We saw the glory of yet another temple. And once again we learned that those who serve as the conscience of the world will be hated. The second Temple was destroyed by the Romans and in a striking coincidence – or as we see it the serendipity of God’s management of the universe - the date of the tragedy was once more the ninth of Av. Again we were forced into exile.

History had a remarkable sense of irony. The first Crusade was declared by Pope Urban II on July 20, 1095, leading to the death of 1.2 million Jews. The Hebrew date? Tisha B’Av. In 1492, the Golden age of Spain came to a close when Queen Isabella and her husband King Ferdinand ordered that the Jews be banished from the land “for the greater glory of the church and the Christian religion.” The edict of expulsion gave the Jews exactly four months to the day to put their affairs in order and leave the country. The Hebrew date on which no Jews were allowed any longer to remain in the land where they had enjoyed welcome and prosperity for centuries? Of course, Tisha B’Av.

And yet Jews never despaired. We never gave up on our “silly religion” or our claim to our national homeland - a place, Seth, you seem to think we don’t need because we can rely on other safe havens in spite of our history of oppression, exile and Holocaust.

When Dr. Chaim Weizmann, later to become the first president of the state of Israel, met with Lord Balfour, former prime minister of UK, and explained to him the Zionist idea, Balfour asked him why the Jews were opposed to the Uganda Plan as a substitute for Palestine. Wiseman responded: “Lord Balfour, suppose that I would offer to you Paris instead of London, would you accept?” “But,” Balfour said, “Dr. Weitzman, London is ours.”

“That’s true,” Wiseman answered, “but Jerusalem was ours when London was still a swamp.”

Seth, maybe you really should study a little more about the history of your people. Yes, other people were in Palestine. But even a Jew-hating world somehow miraculously recognized, first by way of the Balfour declaration and then with United Nations recognition, that amidst a sea of newly created Arab countries Jews had a right to at least a tiny sliver of land they could call their own, harking back to thousands of years of linkage, physical, spiritual and emotional.

The following story is probably apocryphal but its message is a truth, Seth, that should speak directly to your heart. Napoleon was once walking through the streets of Paris on Tisha B’Av. As he passed the synagogue he heard the sounds of crying and mourning. “What’s this all about?” Napoleon asked. An aide explained that the Jews were mourning for the loss of their temple. “When did this happen?”, Napoleon asked. The agent replied, “About 1700 years ago.”

Napoleon was incredulous. “Certainly a people which has mourned the loss of their temple for so long,” he said, “will merit to see it rebuilt.”

This Tisha B’Av, I wept for the two temples destroyed and the many other tragedies that were the result of horrors inflicted on us by others. I cried for the insensitivity, the thoughtlessness and – I hate to say it – the stupidity of our own people. How painful that post-Holocaust Jewry fails to recognize that suicide may be just as destructive as murder.

Seth, would you allow me to guide you and to help you find out why you are so gravely mistaken about Israel, about Judaism and about the Herschel Greenbaum you really are in the depths of your soul?

I would welcome the opportunity to learn with you.

Respectfully yours,
Benjamin Blech

In the #NoDenyingIt campaign, Holocaust survivors ask Facebook to remove Holocaust denial.
Enough is enough. Tell Facebook to say no to Holocaust denial.
That’s the message of the new campaign launched last week #NoDenyingIt. Its message is clear: Facebook – like too many other social media platforms – has become a cesspool of Holocaust denial and it’s time we all demanded that stop. No more denying the Holocaust on Facebook, or anywhere else.
“As a result of Facebook’s refusal to categorize Holocaust denial as a form of antisemitic hate speech,” the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recently observed, “this (Holocaust-denying) rhetoric appears across the platform, including in both public and private groups specifically devoted to the topic… an ADL review clearly found explicit denial, as well as the hate-filled and conspiratorial antisemitism common to this philosophy.”
Facebook does maintain what it terms Community Standards, and provides a lengthy list on its website of posts that violate their standards and will be removed from the platform. This includes hate speech, which Facebook defines broadly as “direct attack(s) on people based on what we call protected characteristics - race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disease or disability.”
Under these very guidelines it seems that claims the Holocaust never occurred can be considered hate speech. After all, if the Holocaust didn’t happen, then the tens of thousands of Jewish witnesses who watched as their mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and other loved ones were murdered - and told the world what happened in the Jewish ghettos and Nazi death camps - somehow must all be lying. If the Holocaust is a hoax, then the millions of Jews around the world today who continue to remember and mourn its victims would all be liars, participants in one of the greatest lies the world has ever seen.
https://www.aish.com/ci/s/Take-Holocaust-Denial-Off-Facebook.html?s=mm



https://www.aish.com/ci/s/Fear-of-Speech-is-Replacing-Freedom-of-Speech.html?s=mm
Fear of Speech is Replacing Freedom of Speech
Aug 1, 2020  |  by Jeff Jacobyprint article
Fear of Speech is Replacing Freedom of Speech
Culturally, the freedom to express unpopular views has never been more endangered.
"Freedom of Speech," the famous Norman Rockwell painting that depicts a young man addressing a local gathering, was inspired by a real event. One evening in 1942, Rockwell attended the town meeting in Arlington, Vt., where he lived for many years. On the agenda was the construction of a new school. It was a popular proposal, supported by everyone in attendance — except for one resident, who got up to express his dissenting view. He was evidently a blue-collar worker, whose battered jacket and stained fingernails set him apart from the other men in the audience, all dressed in white shirts and ties. In Rockwell's scene, the man speaks his mind, unafraid to express a minority opinion and not intimidated by the status of those he's challenging. He has no reason not to speak plainly: His words are being attended to with respectful attention. His neighbors may disagree with him, but they're willing to hear what he has to say.

What brings Rockwell's painting to mind is a new national poll by the Cato Institute. The survey found that self-censorship has become extremely widespread in American society, with 62 percent of adults saying that, given the current political climate, they are afraid to honestly express their views.
"These fears cross partisan lines," writes Emily Ekins, Cato's director of polling. "Majorities of Democrats (52 percent), independents (59 percent), and Republicans (77 percent) all agree they have political opinions they are afraid to share." The survey's 2,000 respondents sorted themselves ideologically as "very liberal," "liberal," "moderate," "conservative," or "very conservative." In every category except "very liberal," a majority of respondents feel pressured to keep their views to themselves. Roughly one-third of American adults — 32 percent — fear they could be fired or otherwise penalized at work if their political beliefs became known.

Freedom of speech has often been threatened in America, but the suppression of "wrong" opinions in the past has tended to come from the top down. It was the government that arrested editors for criticizing Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy, made it a crime to burn the flag, turned the dogs on civil rights marchers, and jailed communists under the Smith Act. Today, by contrast, dissent is rarely prosecuted. Thanks to the Supreme Court's First Amendment jurisprudence, freedom of expression has never been more strongly protected — legally.

But culturally, the freedom to express unpopular views has never been more endangered.
On college campuses, in workplaces, in the media, there are ever-widening no-go zones of viewpoints and arguments that cannot be safely expressed. Voice an opinion that self-anointed social-justice warriors regard as heretical, and the consequences can be career-destroying. The dean of the nursing school at UMass-Lowell lost her job after writing in an email that "everyone's life matters." An art curator was accused of being a racist and forced to quit for saying that his museum would "continue to collect white artists." The director of communications for Boeing apologized and resigned after an employee complained that 33 years ago he was opposed to women serving in combat.

Virtually everyone would agree that some views are indisputably beyond the pale. If there are supporters of slavery or advocates of genocide who feel inhibited from sharing their beliefs, no one much cares. But the range of opinions deemed unsayable by today's progressive thought police extends well into the mainstream. And in many cases, the most enthusiastic suppressors of debate are students, journalists, artists, intellectuals — those who in former times were the greatest champions of uninhibited speech and the greatest foes of ideological conformity.

It isn't only on the left that this totalitarian impulse to silence dissent exists. President Trump, always infuriated by criticism, has called for columnists who disparage him to be fired, hecklers at his rallies to be beaten up, and TV stations to lose their licenses if they run ads vilifying his handling of the pandemic — calls routinely amplified on social media by tens of thousands of his followers. When a Babson College professor joked that Iran ought to bomb "sites of beloved American cultural heritage" like the Mall of America and the Kardashian residence, a right-wing website launched a campaign that got him fired.

The new Cato survey found that more than one in five Americans (22 percent) would support firing a business executive who donated money to Democrat Joe Biden's presidential campaign, while 31 percent would be OK with firing someone who gave money to Trump's re-election campaign. The urge to ostracize or penalize unwelcome views isn't restricted to just one end of the spectrum.

Americans' right to free speech is shielded by the Constitution to a degree unmatched anywhere else. But our First Amendment guarantees will prove impotent if the habit of free speech is lost. For generations, Americans were raised to see debate as legitimate, desirable, and essential to democratic health. They quoted Voltaire's (apocryphal) aphorism: "I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it." Editors, publishers, satirists, and civil libertarians took to heart the dictum of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who wrote that "the principle of free thought" is meant to enshrine "not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate."

But that principle has been turned on its head. The "thought that we hate" is not tolerated but stifled. It is reviled as taboo, forbidden to be uttered. Anyone expressing it may be accused not just of giving offense, but of literally endangering those who disagree. And even if only some people lose their careers or reputations for saying something "wrong," countless others get the chilling message.

"And so dread settles in," writes journalist Emily Yoffe. "Challenging books go untaught. Deep conversations are not had. Friendships are not formed. Classmates and colleagues eye each other with suspicion."

And 62 percent of Americans fear to express what they think.

The speaker in Norman Rockwell's painting may have had something unpopular to say, but neither he nor his neighbors had any doubt that it was appropriate for him to say it. Now, such doubt is everywhere, and freedom of speech has never been more threatened.

This article originally appeared in the Boston Globe.

https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Mourning-the-Old-Normal.html?s=mm
Mourning the Old Normal
Jul 25, 2020  |  by Sara Yoheved Rigler
Mourning the Old Normal
Take time to mourn the life we used to have.

I walk the narrow lanes of my neighborhood in the walled Old City of Jerusalem like I am moving through the Prophet Jeremiah’s lament: “How she sits in solitude, the city that was full of people” (Lamentations 1:1)! Just five months ago, the lanes of the Old City were so crowded with tour groups from Asia, Europe, and Africa that it was hard to maneuver my way through them. Now the streets are empty; even the residents have little cause to venture out.

The men who used to fill the yeshivahs now learn Torah by Zoom from their apartments. Mothers stay home with their children. The students from around the world who converged on Jerusalem are exiled to their native countries, the gates of Israel sealed to non-citizens. The souvenir shops and the restaurants are closed and dark. The popular humus restaurant, opened just a year ago, has a FOR SALE sign on the glass door. The owner of the boutique hotel around the corner from me is also trying to sell. I know these men – fathers of families now hundreds of thousands of shekels in debt.

“The byways of Zion are in mourning for lack of the festival pilgrims,” lamented Jeremiah. “All her gates are desolate.”

Once, God was revealed among us; now He is hidden, obscured, concealed.
This is the time of year for mourning. Known as the “Nine Days” between the first day of the Hebrew month of Av and the fast day of Tisha B’Av, we eat no meat, drink no wine, do not go swimming or buy new clothes. We are in mourning for the Holy Temple which was destroyed on the ninth of Av. We once had the tangible presence of God in our midst, attested to by miracles that everyone who entered the Temple could see. With the destruction of the Temple, we mourn the departure of the Divine Presence. Once, God was revealed among us; now He is hidden, obscured, concealed. We have much to mourn.

Judaism is fastidious about mourning. When a parent, sibling, spouse, or child dies, we sit shiva for seven days. During that time, we permit ourselves no distractions, refrain from all work, stay in the house, wear no shoes, do not change our clothes, sit on low stools, and give ourselves over to the arduous process of grieving for the loved one we have lost, in the presence of those who come to comfort us. My friend Beth told me how she sat shiva for her mother for seven days, but her father died two days before Passover, so the shiva was cut short by the holiday. She felt the difference. The lack of a full week to grieve – and to be comforted by visitors – left her feeling unresolved and incomplete.


Grief counsellors assert the importance of the mourning process. Unprocessed grief can lead to later physical and psychological problems. The sages knew what they were doing when they taught us how to mourn.

Mourning the Life We Knew
There is much talk about the “new normal” that the Covid-19 pandemic has thrust upon us. Whether still caught in the first wave or besieged anew by the second wave as we are in Israel, our lives have dramatically changed from just a few months ago. Many of us have suffered from the coronavirus itself; some have lost family members and friends; some have lost jobs or businesses; senior citizens and singles are isolated in their homes; young mothers are cooped up with their children; and all of us suffer from the chaos of conflicting medical opinions and expert recommendations. Society has become a rudderless boat in a storm. As Rabbi Aron Moss of Sydney wrote at the onset of the pandemic: “It is not that we have lost our sense of certainty. We have lost our illusion of certainty.”

In my weekly webinar for married Jewish women, I asked each member to name her greatest loss/hardship from Covid-19. The responses included:

Not being able to fly to my sister’s wedding
Losing my job
Not being able to visit my elderly parents in a different city
An irritable husband because his business has collapsed
My daughter not having a proper graduation from college
The stress of having husband and children home all the time
One webinar member said that she got married a couple of months ago, with few of her family and none of her friends at her wedding.

These are real losses. We must take time to mourn them. This requires allotting ourselves a block of time alone. We should write down all the things we have lost or miss due to the pandemic. (You can share some of your list in the comments section below.)

Here are some items from my list:

Not having my grandchildren come for the Pesach Seder
Not having Shabbos guests, including my married daughter and her family
The French bakery and all the other stores in my neighborhood that are out of business due to the lack of tourist traffic
No all-night learning with hundreds of women on Shavuot night
Miss hugging my children and grandchildren
Community functions and celebrations
Going out to dinner with my husband
Now, with your own list in hand, sit, close your eyes, and mourn for what you loved and have lost. Allow yourself time to feel the pain of the loss. Cry if you want to.

When you have fully acknowledged and experienced your losses, with your eyes still closed, move on to the next step: Be grateful for the life you do have. You can’t be with your loved ones, but you can see them on Zoom or FaceTime. You’re cooped up with your spouse; be grateful you have a spouse. You lost your job, but you still have the health and the mental capacity to seek a new job. Let gratitude color the new normal.

Then take a few deep breaths and open your eyes. Now you’re ready to emerge on the other side and move forward.

Avoid the 3 D’S
Judaism introduced into the world the concept of teleological time – that history moves forward toward a goal, specifically the Messianic Era. All other ancient cultures saw history as cyclical, an endless circle leading nowhere. Because Jews believe in a Divine Director, history has a direction, and a purpose: to teach us to transform ourselves and our societies into agents of justice, compassion, and holiness in order to bring the Final Redemption.

The Hebrew Prophets prophesized both catastrophes and redemption. They foresaw that the Holy Temple would be destroyed and the Jewish people exiled from their land. They also described the joyous return to the land of Israel when “old men and old women will once again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, … and the squares of the city will be filled with boys and girls playing” (Zecharia 8:4-5). In the Jewish worldview, all catastrophes lead ultimately to redemption.

The global catastrophe of the Covid-19 pandemic is also part of the redemption process. We are suffering, “the birth pangs of the Messiah.” As every woman who has given birth can attest, labor is painful, but purposeful pain is bearable. We must know that we are treading a rocky road leading to a worthwhile destination.

As we navigate this road, it is imperative to avoid the 3 D’s: denial, depression, and disconnection.

Denial: Many people are just waiting to return to life as it used to be. They believe that once a vaccine is found, presto! The world will be back to pre-March, 2020. This is unlikely. The profound losses in the global economy will take years to recoup. Many companies that have gone out of business, such as restaurants and summer sleep-away camps, will not be resuscitated. Whole industries, such as the airline industry and the tourist industry, will take years to recover. And the government debt accrued by disbursements to citizens will be an albatross around the global neck for the next generation.

Even in the medical field, experts are predicting that the novel coronavirus will mutate, necessitating multiple vaccines. Reports are surfacing of reinfections – people who tested positive, then negative, and who had antibodies, now vulnerable to the virus again.

Denial of the gravity of our situation makes us less able to cope with the challenge – and to learn its lessons. When God chooses to send a pandemic, it is to teach us and humble us. To deny the severity of the plague is to lose the opportunity for spiritual awareness and growth.

Depression: Depression is very different than mourning. Depression is a pit we fall into; mourning is a tunnel we pass through, emerging at the other end. The Torah specifically prohibits the extreme mourning rites of other ancient cultures, such as pulling out hair and cutting one’s skin. One must mourn one’s losses, but not too much and not too long.

Depression is a pit we fall into; mourning is a tunnel we pass through, emerging at the other end.
Depression paralyzes us and blinds us to the Divine, who is directing our world with love at every moment. Monotheism asserts that God is the only operative force in the universe. Although human beings have free will in the moral sphere, only God decides what will be the ultimate outcome. Emunah, or faith in a loving God, is the antidote to depression. Again, to quote Rabbi Aron Moss: “Panic and fear are also contagious. Take every precaution as advised by health authorities. Wash your hands well. And every time you do, remember whose hands you are in.”

Disconnection: Many people have commented how sheltering at home with spouse and children has been a positive experience of bonding. For others, the constant contact has been irritating and divisive. Domestic abuse is on the rise. The choice is ours whether to use periods of quarantine to connect or to disconnect, both with family members and with God.

One of the key choices in life is to choose connection, and Covid-19 has given us unique opportunities to do that. Zoom offers us a way to connect to relatives and friends we haven’t seen in ages. Community initiatives to deliver food to the elderly is one of the best fruits of the pandemic. In Israel, a volunteer organization has sprung up that will shop for food and medications, even take out the garbage, for families in quarantine. Don’t let the stress of Covid-19 drive you to disconnect.

Once we pass through the dark tunnel of mourning our losses, and we avoid the 3 D’s, we will emerge into the new reality of a world humbled and chastened, and we will be energized to take on the challenges leading to the coming of Moshiach.

https://www.aish.com/jw/s/The-Pope-who-Printed-the-Talmud.html?s=mm
The Pope who Printed the Talmud
Jul 18, 2020  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
The Pope who Printed the Talmud
Pope Leo X allowed a remarkable group of men to produce the first printed set of Talmud.

A volume of the Talmud – dedicated to the Pope? It seems unlikely but the very first printed edition of the Talmud was in fact dedicated to Pope Leo X, who reigned as pope from 1513 until his death in 1521.

For millennia, copies of the Talmud had been painstakingly written by hand. It could take many years to complete a set of all 63 masechtot, or tractates, of the Talmud.

In 1450, a German bookmaker named Johannes Gutenberg invented the very first printing press. He used it to print pamphlets and calendars, and several copies of the Bible. The “Gutenberg Bible” is considered the very first printed book ever produced in Europe. In the ensuing years, other printers copied Gutenberg’s invention and began printing books. Several Jewish books were printed using the new mechanical invention but nobody ever attempted to print an entire copy of the Talmud. For years, sets of the Talmud continued to be written laboriously by hand.

That changed in 1519, after years of bitter debates, when the very first complete edition of the Talmud was produced using the new invention the mechanical printing press.

Daniel Bomberg: Christian Printer of Hebrew Books
One of the very first printers to produce Hebrew books in Europe was Daniel Bomberg, a Christian printer who moved from his native Antwerp to Venice in 1515 and opened a printing press business there. Venice at the time was home to a vibrant Jewish community, and Bomberg realized that he could prosper by catering to this under-served market.

Printing Jewish books wasn’t so easy. His initial requests for a license were repeatedly turned down by Church and city officials. Bomberg started offering local officials ever larger bribes to allow him to print Jewish books. After paying 500 ducats – an enormous sum – he was granted a ten-year license to print Hebrew books.

Bomberg got to work immediately, hiring learned Jews to help him. He petitioned Venice’s officials for permission to hire “four well-instructed Jewish men”. Jews living in Venice at the time could only live in the Ghetto and were forced to wear distinctive yellow caps whenever they left the Ghetto’s gates. Bomberg’s assistants were granted permission to wear black caps like other non-Jewish workers.

Together, they started printing copies of the Chumash, the Five Books of Moses, and other Jewish books. Bomberg and his Jewish assistants decided to include the text of Targum Onkelos, the translation of the Hebrew text written by the celebrated First Century Jewish scholar Onkelos, a popular custom still in practice today.

Jacob Ben Jehiel: Jewish Nobleman Advising an Emperor
Bomberg’s pro-Jewish business activities were made somewhat easier by the climate in Europe overall, which was becoming more tolerant of Jews, thanks in part to an Austrian Jewish physician named Jacob Ben Jehiel (also known as Jacob Lender).

Very little is known about Jacob Ben Jehiel’s personal life. What’s clear is that he was a learned Jew, fluent in Hebrew, who worked as a doctor. He died in about 1505 in Linz, Austria. Unusual for a Jew, he rose to become one of the most influential men in the Holy Roman Empire, working as the personal assistant of Emperor Frederick III, who ruled from 1452-1493. It was noted that the two men were fast friends, and Jacob Ben Jehiel’s friendship influenced Frederick III to be sympathetic to his Jewish subjects. At the time the emperor’s enemies complained he was “more a Jew than a Holy Roman Emperor”. Jacob was so beloved by the Emperor that Frederick III knighted him, raising him from a lowly Jewish outcast to the ranks of the nobility.

One day, a young German nobleman named Johann von Reuchlin contacted Jacob, asking for his help in learning Hebrew. He’d studied with a Jew named Kalman in Paris, von Reuchln explained, and had learned the Hebrew alphabet. Now he wanted to learn more. Jacob Ben Jehiel agreed to tutor the Christian nobleman and taught him to read and write Hebrew. They struck up a friendship that would lead to von Reuchlin defending Jewish scholarship across Europe and to the first printing of the Talmud.

Johann von Reuchlin: Defending Jewish Books
Now fluent in Hebrew, Reuchlin championed Jewish books, defending Jewish scholarship from Catholic zealots who wanted to ban Jewish literature and burn Jewish books. He had many Jewish friends and was remarkably tolerant of Jewish viewpoints and scholarship. When Catholic officials demanded that he and other scholars condemn the Talmud, von Reuchlin replied contemptuously that one not condemn what one had not personally read and understood. “The Talmud was not composed for every blackguard to trample with unwashed feet and then to say that he knew all of it.”

Johann von Reuchlin
In the early 1500s, von Reuchlin engaged in what was known as the “Battle of the Books,” arguing that Jewish scholarship had merit and that Hebrew books ought not to be banned.

Johannes Pfefferkorn: Condemning his Fellow Jews
Reuchlin’s main adversary in the “Battle of the Books” was Johannes Pfefferkorn, a Jew who converted to Christianity. He turned on his fellow Jews and caused years of pain and misery for Jewish communities across Germany.

Pfefferkorn was a butcher by trade but he was also in trouble with the law. He was arrested for burglary in his 30s, spent time in prison, and subsequently found himself unemployable. In order to reverse his ill fortune, he volunteered to convert to Christianity and to have his wife and children convert as well. Pfefferkorn embraced Catholicism under the protection of the Dominicans, the strict Catholic order that administered the feared Inquisition. The Dominicans wasted no time in using Pfefferkorn to help bolster their attempts to persecute Jews and to ban Jewish books.

In the years between 1507 and 1509, Pfefferkorn wrote a series of booklets claiming to illuminate the secret world of Jewish thought. Although Pfefferkorn's writings show that he had a very poor grasp of Jewish scholarship, that didn’t deter him as he churned out booklet after booklet excoriating Jews and the Jewish faith. His pamphlets were written in Latin and aimed at Catholic scholars and priests. They had names such as Judenbeichte (“Jewish Confession”) and Judenfeind (“Enemy of the Jews”), and Pfefferkorn falsely claimed that Jews were devious and blasphemous and that their literature ought to be banned. Though he wasn’t educated enough to study it himself, Pfefferkorn demanded that the Talmud be banned in Europe.

Using Pfefferkorn’s booklets as “proof”, Dominical authorities demanded that Jews be expelled from towns which had large Jewish communities, including Regensburg, Worms and Frankfurt. Their campaign succeeded in Regensburg and the city’s Jews were expelled in 1519.

Pfefferkorn and his supporters managed to convince Emperor Maximilian I to briefly ban the Talmud and other Jewish books in cities across Germany and to destroy any and all Jewish books that could be found. This alarmed more liberal Catholics, including Johann Reuchlin, who’d spent so long learning Hebrew and studying Jewish holy books with Jacob Ben Jehiel. Reuchlin objected and wrote passionate defenses of the Talmud and other Jewish books. Eventually, Maximilian I reversed his decree.

Pope Leo X and the Battle of the Hebrew Books
The “Battle of the Books” raged across German cities and was debated among the educated class: should the Jewish Talmud and other holy books be banned, or were they worthy of preservation and study? Historian Solomon Grayzel notes that “There was not a liberal Christian in Europe, nor a single critic of the forces of bigotry within the Church, who failed to range himself on the side of Reuchlin in defense of the Jewish books… Everyone who was not a peasant in Europe was thus ranged on one or the other side in the controversy. The only people who were forced to stand aside and not participate were the ones most directly concerned – the Jews.” (From A History of the Jews by Solomon Grayzel. Plume: 1968)

Reuchlin eventually gained a powerful ally: Pope Leo X. A cultured, educated man, Leo X came from the fabulously wealthy Medici family. He was disposed to be tolerant towards Jews – so much so that at one point the Jews of Rome wondered if his benevolence towards them was a sign that the Messiah was on his way: community elders even wrote to Jewish leaders in the Land of Israel asking if they, too, had seen signs of the Messiah coming.

Pope Leo X
In 1518, Leo X took a public stand in the Battle of the Books: not only should the Talmud not be banned and burned, he stated, but he gave a Papal Decree allowing it to be printed using the new mechanical printing presses that were all the rage in Europe. Some individual volumes of the Talmud had already been printed; now, the Pope was allowing a complete set of all 63 volumes of the Talmud (called Shas in Hebrew) to be produced. Joannes Bomberg, who’d already built up a Jewish business at his printing press in Venice, was given the commission to print this first complete set of Shas on his printing presses. It was an unprecedented show of support for Jews in Europe.

Jacob ben Chaim ibn Adonijah
But Pope Leo X imposed one crucial condition: Daniel Bomberg could print the Talmud only if he included anti-Jewish polemics in the books. Realizing that this would alienate potential readers, Bomberg successfully lobbied against including anti-Jewish screeds in his Jewish books. He did, however, make one concession to the Pope’s generosity: the first four volumes of the set of Talmud he was printing were dedicated to Pope Leo X.

Bomberg Babylonian Talmud, Venice Pesachim
Local Jews were reluctant to buy expensive new volumes of the Talmud dedicated to a Catholic leader whose Church regularly persecuted Jews and Jewish communities across Europe, even if Pope Leo X himself was sympathetic towards Jews. Sales were sluggish and Bomberg realized he had to make some changes, including dropping the dedication to the Pope. He also turned to Jacob ben Chaim ibn Adonijah, a Jewish proofreader from Tunisia, for help. (There is some evidence that ibn Adonijah might have converted to Christianity, like some other printers who specialized in Hebrew books in Venice at the time.)

Bromberg and ibn Adonijah devised a layout of their printed editions of the Talmud that is still in use today. They placed the Talmud text in the middle of the page, and included key commentaries on the Talmud around the central text. The commentary by Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki (known as Rashi), a Medieval French scholar was printed on one side of the page. Commentaries by a group of other Medieval Jewish sages known as the Tosefotists are found on the opposite side of the page.

This layout made it easy to read and study, and proved an immediate hit with customers. Though their title pages no longer carried a printed dedication to Pope Leo X, these beautiful books continued to be printed with his permission, enabling even more Jewish communities to study and learn from complete sets of the printed Talmud.

For further reading, see these books:

History of the Jews by Heinrich Graetz (1894).
The Jewish Connection by Hirsh Goldberg (1976).
A History of the Jews by Solomon Grayzel (1968).

#JewishPrivilege
Jul 21, 2020  |  by Noah Goldman
Being Jewish shouldn't be defined through suffering and negativity. Let's flip #JewishPrivilege to a positive.
A strange discussion involving Jews has emerged on Twitter. The hashtag #JewishPrivilege has emerged and was gaining steam from different voices, some of whom have a large platform. The idea is likely the result of old antisemitic canards which claim that Jews are in control of everything from Hollywood to government. It’s the same antisemitism but with a different mask.
The goal is, as usual, dehumanization of the Jewish people.
Many Jews on twitter, including myself, raised their voices and shared their #JewishPrivilege in the antisemitism that they and their families have had to go through. This was such a powerful pushback that now if you go on Twitter and search the #JewishPrivilege hashtag, you will find many saddening stories of antisemitism. You will have to dig a bit to find the original antisemitic intentions of the hashtag.
But perhaps the most powerful way to push back the antisemitic #JewishPrivilege is to flip the script and turn it into a positive one. Because indeed it is a privilege to be Jewish!
#JewishPrivilege is being born with the opportunity to wrestle with and develop a relationship with the Divine Creator.
more https://www.aish.com/jw/s/JewishPrivilege.html?s=mm
#JewishPrivilege is having a community to rely on and receive support.
#JewishPrivilege is having the guidelines and tradition to constantly develop better character traits.
#JewishPrivilege is having Shabbat, a time to connect with God, yourself, your family, and your friends.
#JewishPrivilege is having a process to emotionally heal after the loss of a loved one.
#JewishPrivilege is returning to our homeland to defy history and rediscover who we are as a people with a homeland.
#JewishPrivilege is having the Torah to guide us through the ups and downs of life thrown our way.
#JewishPrivilege is striving to bring morality and wisdom into a broken world.
#JewishPrivilege is being part of a philanthropic nation that cares deeply about humanity.
#JewishPrivilege is appreciating the importance of education and learning for all.
#JewishPrivilege is being part of a nation that has miraculously survived thousands of yeas of exile, while being persecuted and dispersed, proudly identifying as Jews and keeping our traditions alive.

What's your #JewishPrivilege? Share in the comment section below.
About the Author

Noah GoldmanMore by this Author >
Noah Goldman graduated from Queens University of Charlotte with BA’s in Political Science and Religious Studies. He enjoys writing and discussing topics relating to Judaism, Politics, and Life and is currently learning at Aish HaTorah's Foundaishons program. He lives in Charlotte, NC with his family and two dogs.

https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Thank-You-Kareem-Abdul-Jabbar.html?s=mm
 Jul 19, 2020  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Thank You Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
An open letter to the NBA star who called on African Americans to condemn anti-Semitism.
Dear Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,
Thank you for speaking out. Thank you for breaking the silence. Thank you for using your column in The Hollywood Reporter and your celebrity status to condemn the recent torrent of virulently anti-Semitic tweets, Instagram posts, and other social media expressions targeting Jews in the vilest terms. Thank you for being a rare Black leader and role model who’s not afraid to stand up and condemn hatred when it’s directed against Jews.

“Recent incidents of anti-Semitic tweets and posts from sports and entertainment celebrities are a very troubling omen for the future of the Black Lives Matter movement,” you wrote, “but so too is the shocking lack of massive indignation. Given the New Woke-fulness in Hollywood and the sports world, we expected more passionate public outrage. What we got was a shrug of meh-rage.”

That “meh-rage” hurts.

For the past few weeks, we Jews have watched in horror as a string of high profile celebrities accused us of “world domination”, repeated old slanders that Jews control the world’s banks and are the “richest” people, and quoted vile anti-Semites such as Louis Farrakhan and Adolf Hitler. (In the case of Hitler, the social media posts purporting to quote him – posted last weekend by Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson – turned out to be misattributed.) In many cases, their extreme posts have been met with mild indignation at best. Contrast Jackson's slap on the wrist with the fate of Serbian soccer player Aleksandar Katai, who was fired by the LA Galaxy soccer club after his wife made racist social media posts mocking the Black Lives Matter movement.   


A lot of ink has been spilled recently lamenting “cancel culture” where one false move – one insensitive post or racist comment – can cause people to lose their credibility or even their livelihoods. It’s a horrible development but given cancel culture’s sad prevalence today it’s all the more shocking that anti-Semitic statements or posts stir such meager responses.

Celebrity rapper Ice Cube spent June 10 tweeting that Jews are responsible for oppressing African Americans. (Since your supportive column came out, Kareem, he’s attacked you for betraying Blacks and supposedly cozying up to Jews for “thirty pieces of silver”.) On June 30, television star Nick Cannon publicly agreed with the rapper Richard Griffin, who called Jews “wicked” and said Jews are responsible for most of the evil in the world on Cannon’s podcast; Cannon called these slurs “the truth”. (Cannon was recently fired from Viacom CBS for his words and finally apologized.)

Then last weekend, DeSean Jackson posted that Jews are trying to control the world and “extort America” and that “Hitler was right”. Jackson’s odious messages received only a tepid rebuttal from the NFL and many fans: the Eagles fined him but he’s still playing for the team. On July 8, former NBA player and Black Lives Matter activist Stephen Jackson came to his defense, posting that Jackson was “speaking the truth” and that the Jewish Rothschild family owns “all the banks”.

It’s not just athletes. “So many of the people I follow on Instagram have been quoting Louis Farrakhan,” my daughter recently lamented. She stopped following celebrities who support Farrakhan, the hateful leader of the Nation of Islam who has called Jews “Satanic,” “termites,” liars, the “master of the bankers,” slave-owners and liars. It’s hard to believe that anyone would publicly support or willingly quote Farrakhan, yet that’s what Philadelphia Eagles Lineman Malik Jackson did July 9, when he defended DeSean Jackson and called Farrakhan “honorable.” Comedian Chelsea Handler posted an old clip of Farrakhan claiming that Jews, Whites and Blacks can never “come together”; “I learned a lot from watching this powerful video” she commented in a June 21 post. (She has since deleted the video and apologized.)

Where’s the outrage? Where are the protests in the streets? After all, this time was supposed to be different.

For the past two months, so many of us have had the feeling that something was really shifting in America. I felt hopeful about race relations in the US, and energized that I could take part in this change. Was I wrong? Does the hatred that so many Americans harbor towards Jews mean that when it’s our turn for support – when we Jews are being attacked and it’s time to say no to hate on our behalf – our allies aren’t willing to stand up for us?

Jews have never faced so much hate in the US. 2019 saw the highest number of anti-Semitic incidents in the US since records began. The Anti-Defamation League reported a 12% jump in attacks on Jews from the already high level the year before. Within a year, over a dozen Jews were murdered in anti-Semitic attacks, including the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27, 2018; the attack on Chabad of Poway, California on April 27, 2019; the shootout at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City on December 10, 2019; and a frenzied knife attack at a Hanukkah party in New York on December 28, 2019.

The killers in these attacks came from radically different walks of life: hateful white supremacists, members of a Black Hebrew cult that taught African Americans are the “true” Jews, and a deranged African American man. They awoke us to the fact that extremist ideologies on both the right and the left demonize Jews and foment violence against us.

A recent poll finds that while about 14% of Americans in general harbor hate towards Jews, a much higher percentage of African Americans – about 23% – hold anti-Semitic views. The poll also found higher than average levels of anti-Semitism among Hispanic respondents: 19% of American-born Hispanic respondents and 31% of foreign-born Hispanic respondents revealed they harbor negative attitudes towards Jews. The flurry of offensive posts in recent weeks illustrates these dismal numbers: millions of our fellow Americans, from various walks of life, seem to hate us simply because we’re Jews.

No matter how many marches we go on, how many signs we put in our windows, how much we try to support our fellow Americans and proclaim loudly that we all stand together against hate – when that hate is directed against us, all those grand promises seem to ring hollow. Too often, we stand alone.

Kareem, that’s why your column is so important. You’re a role model – an athlete, author, and outspoken critic. We need more voices like yours calling out the double standard, reminding us that tackling racism and anti-Semitism together is still possible. We need more voices like yours calling out African American leaders – and white leaders too – who are quick to rightly condemn racism but remain quiet when it’s Jews who are under attack.

As you wrote, Kareem, “The lesson never changes, so why is it so hard for some people to learn: No one is free until everyone is free. As Martin Luther King Jr. explained: ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.’”

We need to have zero tolerance for anti-Semitism. As Americans condemn racism we must find the strength to stand up against Jew-hatred as well.

Yours Sincerely,
Yvette Miller
 

https://www.aish.com/ci/s/The-Jewish-Owner-of-The-New-York-Times.html?s=mm
The Jewish Owner of The New York Times
Jul 18, 2020  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
The Jewish Owner of The New York Times
A century ago Jewish newsman Adolph Ochs made the New York Times America’s premier newspaper.
Few publications elicit the same passions, loyalties and criticisms as the New York Times. To its dedicated readers, it’s the “Grey Lady”, a reliable source of high-quality news delivered each day along with a dollop of reasonable editorial comments. To its detractors, it’s a frustrating mouthpiece for progressive issues.

Some recent missteps have outraged Jews and Israel supporters, too. Last year, in April 2019, some of the paper’s international readers were outraged to see a highly offensive anti-Semitic political cartoon in the paper’s overseas edition, depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leading US President Trump around by a leash: a Jewish star was plastered on the leash in case anyone missed the age-old anti-Jewish stereotype of Jews controlling world leaders.

The paper apologized and changed its protocols, but according to New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, the newspaper’s problems went deeper than changing the way they approved cartoons. “The problem is that its publication was an astonishing act of ignorance of anti-Semitism – and that, at a publication that is otherwise hyper-alert to nearly every conceivable expression of prejudice…” He accused the paper of being blind to anti-Jewish bigotry, unable to recognize anti-Jewish hatred, even while it calls out other forms of prejudice.

It’s a criticism echoed by former New York Times Editorial Board member Bari Weiss, who quit last week, citing a culture where she was bullied for her conservative views and also for writing about Jewish issues.

It didn’t have to be this way. The New York Times was reimagined over a hundred years ago by Adolph Simon Ochs, a visionary Jew. He coined the term “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” a promise that still graces a small square at the top left corner of each day’s New York Times. Ochs purchased the venerable newspaper in 1896 and did all he could to turn what was then a failing newspaper into the nation’s paper of record.


Adolph Ochs
From an early age, Adolph learned that it was possible to disagree about politics and contemporary issues – even passionately – and still respect others who might hold different opinions. His parents, German Jewish immigrants, vividly illustrated the ability to disagree on major issues and still remain friends; they were on opposite sides of the slavery debate.

Adolph’s father Julius Ochs had moved to the US from Germany when he was 19; Adolph’s mother Bertha Levy immigrated when she was 16. Julius spoke six languages and led the small Jewish community of Nashville, where he originally settled. They moved to Cincinnati and started building their large family.

When the US Civil War broke out in 1861, Julius volunteered for the Union Army and fought against the Confederacy and slavery. Bertha considered herself a southerner, and she helped the Confederate cause, smuggling medicines to troops in Kentucky, just over the Ohio River from her home. Their vastly different political inclinations seemed not to strain their relationship and Adolph grew up in a loving Jewish home, where political differences were respected.

After the war times were hard and the Ochs’ once thriving dry goods store was forced to close. Julius worked as a justice of the peace but for a tiny salary. The family of seven were forced to move into a tiny, unpainted shack. Barely able to make ends meet, Adolph begged his parents to let him get a job. When he was 11 in 1869, they finally agreed and Adolph became a paper boy for the Knoxville Chronicle, folding 50 newspapers each morning and walking nearly five miles to deliver them. The $1.50 he earned each week helped the family survive.

Adolph continued in the newspaper business, quitting school at 15 to work full time. While working at the Louisville Courier-Journal, his parents wrote that they couldn’t afford to buy Adolph’s brothers and sisters clothes for school; he sent them his entire savings of $56.

His first foray into newspaper ownership came in 1877 when Adolph joined two colleagues in buying the Chattanooga Dispatch. Overjoyed, he wrote home to his parents, envisioning days of prosperity for his brothers and sisters ahead: “May God spare you to see Nannie married to a millionaire; George President of the United States; Milton a Senator; Ada a famous author; and Mattie a successful merchant or a large-salaried Rabbi’s wife. As to myself my prayer is that I may soon be able to make for you all a comfortable home where want is unknown and send my brothers and sisters on their different roads rejoicing,” he wrote to the family.

But the Chattanooga Dispatch failed and Adolph was left to settle its debts by using its printing presses to print pamphlets for local merchants. He told colleagues that he learned the importance of having a controlling stake in a newspaper, instead of relying on others.

Clean, dignified and trustworthy. It was a novel approach to journalism that Adolph would try to honor all his life.
Adolph soon bought another local paper, borrowing $250 to purchase a controlling stake in the ailing Chattanooga Times – “before he was old enough to vote,” his biographer Elmer Davis noted. At the time, “yellow journalism” was the norm; it was commonplace for newspapers to print lurid descriptions of murders and other sensationalist crimes. Truth wasn’t always a paper’s top priority. Adolph made a groundbreaking decision for a newspaper publisher: under his watch, the Chattanooga Times would be “clean, dignified and trustworthy.” It was a novel approach to journalism that Adolph would try to honor all his life.

His clean living extended to his personal life. In 1882, Adolph married Iphigene “Effie” Wise of Cincinnati; her father, Rabbi Isaac Wise, was a leader in the city’s Jewish community. Effie began writing book reviews for the newspaper. Adolph worked long hours but was careful to come home for dinner each evening. He gave Effie flowers or another small gift every day.

By 1896, when Adolph was 38, he decided to join the big leagues of publishing. The once venerable New York Times, founded in 1851, was failing. Lurid penny newspapers were much more popular and few people wanted to spend the three cents it cost to buy the New York Times and read its more serious news. While some sensationalist New York papers had circulations of up to 400,000, just 9,000 people regularly bought the New York Times.

Adolph purchased the paper and decided to take a risk. He’d keep the paper’s serious coverage, resisting the lure to print sensationalist stories, while he dropped the price to one penny. Under his ownership, Adolph announced he was keeping news and editorial departments strictly separate, a highly unusual arrangement at the time. In doing so, he was drawing on his own family’s unique history in which even strong political disagreements didn’t spill over into personal animosity. Under his leadership, the New York Times would publish a wide range of opinions, without stooping to ad hominem personal attacks.

The paper would run “all the news...in language that is parliamentary in good society,” he promised in a notice in the paper August 18, 1896. It was an electrifying announcement at the time, and his new mantra was discussed in newspapers across the country.

Adolph began printing “All the News That’s Fit to Print” on each issue, a dig at other salacious newspapers of the day.
The newspaper began to soon prosper. Teachers began using its articles in their lessons and religious leaders cited it in churches and synagogues. Adolph began printing “All the News That’s Fit to Print” on each issue, a dig at other newspapers of the day. By 1916, the paper had a circulation of 344,000 and had become the nation’s paper of record.

Adolph used to say that his success was due to his Jewish upbringing, but his family failed to keep Jewish traditions. As Jews around the world began settling in large numbers in the Land of Israel and building a Jewish state, Adolph was a self-described opponent of Zionism.

At his death in 1935, Adolph left a controlling interest in the paper to his son-in-law Arthur Hays Sulzberger. Sulzberger was very philanthropic and proud of his Jewish faith – but never wanted to be seen as “too” Jewish. He very publicly opposed Zionism and insisted that the New York Times not criticize Nazi atrocities against Jews too much in the 1930s and during the Holocaust.



In her book Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper,” Northeastern University Professor Laurel Leff notes that Sulzberger had experienced anti-Semitism and shied away from his newspaper being seen as “too Jewish.” “There would be no special attention, no special sensitivity, no special pleading,” for Jewish causes, even when the situation of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe was crying out for news coverage and editorials, Leff notes.

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger

Nazi crimes against Jews were “mostly buried inside (the paper’s) gray and stolid pages, never featured, analyzed or rendered truly comprehensible,” Max Frankel, the newspaper’s former Executive Editor, wrote in a scathing article in the New York Times in 2001. The paper only highlighted persecution of Jews six times on its front page; passionate exhortations to help Europe’s Jews were featured only twice in the paper’s weighty Sunday editions during the Holocaust.

Adolph’s grandson Arthur Ochs Sulzberger took over as publisher of the New York Times in 1963. Today, Adolph’s great grandson Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. serves as the paper’s publisher. Though Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. was raised in his mother’s Christian faith, several other members of the Ochs family continue to work at the newspaper, and in many quarters, the New York Times is seen as a “Jewish” newspaper. Perhaps because of its extensive Jewish history, and because of its prestige and the central role the New York Times plays in American life, its coverage of Jews and Israel is closely watched.

I subscribe to the New York Times and both appreciate its high level news coverage, as well as lament its inevitable flaws. The paper has printed some shocking editorial pieces, including a recent call by political agitator Peter Beinart on why he no longer believes in a state of Israel and wishes to see the Jewish state fade away. It also is one of the few daily newspapers to maintain a bureau in Israel, allowing for original reporting from the region. The paper can be maddening, frustrating, and on occasion inspiring.

“All the News That’s Fit to Print” remains stamped on each front page; it's a lofty standard to live up to, one that is Adolph Ochs’ legacy.

https://www.aish.com/ci/s/Bari-Weiss-and-the-New-York-Times.html?s=mm
Bari Weiss and the New York Times
Jul 15, 2020  |  by Rabbi Benjamin Blech
Bari Weiss and the New York Times
The paper has lost sight of its "deepest responsibility to make readers think".

Bari Weiss just learned her lesson.

A brilliant writer, winner last year of the National Jewish book award for How To Fight Anti-Semitism and staff editor for the op-ed section of the New York Times, she has this week regretfully sent in her letter of resignation in light of her recognition that the self-proclaimed “newspaper of record” no longer has room for journalists who refuse to fall in step with the far-left political narrative that has now become the New York Times Bible.

Weiss’s announcement follows shortly after the departure of editorial page editor James Bennett – another resignation that illustrates precisely the kind of new McCarthy-like policy that today governs a newspaper which once laid claim to our esteem for seeking truth and open inquiry.

Bennett permitted for publication an op-ed piece by Senator Tom Cotton that diverged from the Times’ approach to the post George Floyd riots that have so far been responsible for the deaths of at least 22 people. Senator Cotton expressed an opinion that reasonable people can debate; he agreed with the President that it was a good idea to send in the National Guard to maintain and restore order. He argued that the Insurrection Act could be invoked to deploy the military across the country to assist local law enforcement. And that was anathema to the current groupthink of the Times. As Bari Weiss notes, “It took the paper two days and two jobs to say that the Tom Cotton op-ed ‘fell short of our standards’” – and actually apologized for publishing it.

It was in 1896 that Adolph Ochs described the philosophy that would guide his newspaper and make it a paradigm for honest journalism: “To make of the columns of the New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”


Today’s readers need to know that that is no longer official or even permitted policy.

Opinions only have a right to be heard if they agree with the established orthodoxy of the publisher. The free exchange of ideas is not an ideal; it is a forbidden invitation to readers to come to their own erroneous conclusions.

As Weiss put it, “The Times has embraced the idea that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else… Intellectual curiosity – let alone risk-taking – is now a liability at the Times. If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital Thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets. Standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back.”

Bari Weiss had another reason for having a target placed on her back. She was the victim of “constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m ‘writing about the Jews again.’”

How utterly amazing to be accused as both a Nazi as well as a too ardent supporter of Israel.

Last week the Times offered us yet another op-ed that apparently “met their standards.” Peter Beinart's essay, “I No Longer Believe in a Jewish State”, beautifully echoed the paper’s intense antipathy to Israel as well as its ongoing prejudicial reporting.

The paper also had no problem a while back giving a half-page op-ed to arch terrorist Marwan Barghouti – a criminal serving five consecutive life terms after being convicted in an Israeli criminal court of premeditated murder for his role in terrorist attacks that killed five people – to author a diatribe against the Israeli system of justice. Just to make certain readers could identify the writer the article concluded with this note: ““Marwan Barghouti is a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian.”

It is well to remember that before the op-ed page debuted in the New York Times on September 21, 1970, John B. Oakes, the Times editor who willed the page into existence, remarked that, “A newspaper’s deepest responsibility is to make readers think. The minute we begin to insist that everyone think the same way we think, our democratic way of life is in danger.”

The page opposite the editorials, today home of the op-ed section, was originally occupied by obituaries, a fitting description of the demise of its dedication to truth which has now been replaced by a cancel culture that led to the resignation of a courageous editor. Hopefully Bari Weiss's final act at the Times will help reveal the truth of a newspaper which no longer deserves our respect and support.

https://www.aish.com/jw/s/An-Irreplaceable-Doctor-A-Tribute-to-Dr-Elliot-Samet.html?s=mm
An Irreplaceable Doctor: A Tribute to Dr. Elliot Samet
Jul 12, 2020  |  by Tzivia Reiter
An Irreplaceable Doctor: A Tribute to Dr. Elliot Samet
Our beloved community doctor died due to Covid-19.

I moved to Passaic, NJ nine years ago, right after my youngest daughter was born. It was a difficult time for me personally, as my father had just been diagnosed with cancer. When my father came to visit me, Dr. Samet frequently saw him at synagogue. Dr. Samet’s natural compassion was such that he noticed the new man in synagogue who appeared to be cold and shivering. No sweater could warm my father due to the sickness inside. Dr. Samet could not do enough for him. His humanity was such that he was extremely bothered by this and would tell me whenever he saw me, “What can we do for your father? I just wish we could do something for him.”

I felt the warmth of his kindness. Dr. Samet’s empathy for not only the suffering of my father but for the powerlessness of his loved ones to alleviate it, profoundly moved me. I felt an immediate bond with him that would only strengthen in the years to come.

My father’s condition worsened. I spent as much time as I could at the hospital. On the Friday before the last Shabbos of his life, I prepared to leave for the hospital. My friends came to my home to stay with my children. But when my daughter woke up from her nap, I saw that she had developed croup. As croup often does, she presented with symptoms that appeared perhaps more terrifying than they warranted. She gasped, wheezed and sounded like she could barely breathe. She cried, buried her head inside the crook of my neck and clung to me for dear life. It was the most agonizing moment of my life – to be torn between the love and duty of a mother toward her sick child, and the love and duty of a daughter toward her dying father.

I was distraught and completely immobilized. I did not know what to do. I called Dr. Samet. He said, “Go to your father. I’ll take care of your baby. She will be fine. I’ll come to the house over Shabbos. Don’t worry. Trust me and go to your father.”

And so I went. Dr. Samet made house calls to my daughter over Shabbos and personally checked to make sure that she was fine and that her croup was not dangerous. I had peace of mind knowing that she was safe and in good hands. I remained at my father’s bedside until the moment he took his last breath. I will always be grateful to Dr. Samet for gifting me that.
 
Dr. Samet dancing at a patient's bar mitzvah.

My father died in the morning and his funeral was held a few hours later in Brooklyn. There wasn’t much time to get the word out, as we needed to get him to the airport to reach his final resting place in Israel. While much of what took place in those ensuing hours remain a blur to me, one thing I do remember is seeing Dr. Samet’s face among the crowd. That he made the time, on such short notice, to travel to Brooklyn for my father’s funeral in the midst of his busy schedule astounded me. Perhaps I should not have been surprised. A person who felt so much, could do no less.

Dr. Samet was the old fashioned family doctor of yesteryear. The kind who makes house calls. The kind who calls after a visit to see how your child is feeling. Like the grandfather who manages to make every grandchild feel like he’s the favorite, my children each felt they shared a bond with him. Even my mother was connected to Dr. Samet. When she came to Passaic for the weekend and got sick or needed a doctor, he would always see her without fail.

There were so many things to admire about Dr. Samet, even beyond his medical skill and dedication. His connection to God – he said a prayer before giving each child a shot. His humility – he insisted my husband call him Elliot and not doctor. His commitment – his zeal for the safety of the community’s children was legendary, providing education on many issues including wearing sunblock, helmets when bicycling, and avoiding drinking on Purim.

There are so many stories told about Dr. Samet. These are but a small glimpse of my own. Perhaps the most descriptive story is this: upon hearing the news of his passing, three generations of my family cried.

Our relationship with Dr. Samet will not end. It will transform into a new kind of relationship. A relationship of memories. A relationship where we call upon his wisdom and remind ourselves of what Dr. Samet would say, and what Dr. Samet would do. A new pediatrician may preside over our children’s future well visits, but Dr. Samet will always be our family doctor.
https://israelunwired.com/university-student-rips-apart-the-marxist-ideology/
University student rips apart the Marxist ideology
It seems uncommon that university students are willing to go against the Liberal way of thinking. But this student tears apart the Marxist ideology.
University student rips apart the Marxist ideology
By Leah Rosenberg - July 14, 2020 593 0
It seems uncommon that university students are willing to go against the Liberal way of thinking. But this student tears apart the Marxist ideology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=29&v=3-VZUzLd7LU&feature=emb_logo
Dear Marxist Students, Be Careful What You Wish For
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The Marxist Ideology Kills People
Do you want to know something about Black Lives Matter? They openly support the Marxist ideology. They have made it clear. Are so many that ignorant that they believe it is just about non-existent systemic racism? These protestors are supporting Communism – the same communism that killed about 100 million people.

Do these BLM activists know that? They are either ignorant about history, or they know it and don’t care. Either way, it is bad. It means you either have fools running Black Lives Matter or tyrants. Or both.

Hear it from Someone Who Knows
This student knows almost firsthand the horrors of Communism. His family experienced it. Communism is not a game, although it seems like many Americans act like it is.

These ignorant BLM supporters must stop fighting against the freedom that America has to offer. They should think before they fly that red flag and raise up that symbol of Communism.

Can you listen to this student speak and want the life his family had under Communist rule? That is ridiculous, irrational, and destructive. It is truly mind-boggling that Americans are actually fighting FOR such a cruel ideology.

It’s not About Police or Racism
Is it not obvious that these radical rioters do not care to actually improve America and help bring about reform? That they do not care about helping better society?

America isn’t perfect. What country is? But it tries to be as close to it as possible. America offers endless opportunities for people of all race and color. What in the world is BLM fighting against? What do they really want?
To destroy America. If you haven’t realized it yet, open your eyes just a little wider…

https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Defying-20000-Nazis-in-New-York-City.html?s=mm
Defying 20,000 Nazis in New York City
Jul 4, 2020  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Defying 20,000 Nazis in New York City
In 1939 Isadore Greenbaum risked his life to disrupt a major Nazi rally at Madison Square Gardens.

Sitting among more than 20,000 of his cheering, smiling fellow Americans, Isadore Greenbaum felt profoundly alone. Inside Madison Square Garden, a huge 30-foot picture of George Washington adorned the stage, flanked by American flags and swastikas. Washington was America’s “first Fascist’ according to the Feb. 20, 1939 rally organizers, the German American Bund, a nationwide cultural organization that promoted German-American culture and fealty to Hitler’s regime.

Surrounded by cheering Nazi sympathizers, Isadore sat through three hours of speeches and rapturous applause, getting angrier and angrier as speakers described a frightening Nazi vision of America, espousing white Christian dominance.

A huge portrait of George Washington at the German American Bund's "Pro American Rally" at Madison Square Garden.
“American patriots,” intoned Bund leader Fritz Kuhn, a naturalized American citizen who’d previously worked for a Ford factory in Detroit, “you have all heard of me through the Jewish controlled press as a creature with horns, a cloven hoof, and a long tail.” The rally kicked off with the National Anthem, sung by Americans wearing swastikas and giving Nazi salutes.

Speakers denounced “job-taking Jewish refugees.” A Bund official explained that “(t)he Spirit which opened the West and built our country is the spirit of the militant white man,” and claimed Nazism was a quintessentially American outlook. Kuhn reassured the rally goers, “It has then always been very much American to protect the Aryan character of this nation” and urged Americans to reclaim America and “demand that our government be returned to the people who founded it!”


 Photo from Life Magazine, March 7, 1938
The rally-goers waved American flags and posters with slogans that included “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America”. Many wore Nazi armbands. Security guards wearing uniforms very similar to the Brownshirts in Germany patrolled the aisles.

Outside Madison Square Garden, thousands of protestors gathered, denouncing the Nazi sympathizers inside. The crowd at the "Pro American Rally" also included housewives and ordinary citizens who were disgusted by Nazi supporters in their midst. At one point a band playing in a nearby Broadway theater serenaded the protestors with a rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. One unnamed protestor set up a loudspeaker in a nearby building which broadcast anti-Nazi sentiments, as well as the advice to people attending the rally: “Be American, Stay Home.” Other protesters clashed with police; thirteen protestors were arrested during the evening.

New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia had been lobbied to prevent the rally from taking place, but he defended the Bund’s right to free speech. “If we are for free speech, we have to be for free speech for everybody, and that includes Nazis,” he explained. Seeking to avert violence, he instructed the New York City police to have a heavy presence in the area. 1,700 police officers were deployed around Madison Square Garden – “enough to stop a revolution” the police commissioner told reporters at the time.

New York's mounted police form a solid line outside Madison Square Garden on Feb. 20, 1939, to hold in a crowd where the fascist German American Bund was holding a rally.

It was virtually impossible to pass the police ranks and enter the rally without a ticket. Yet Isadore Greenbaum, a Jewish 26-year-old plumber's assistant who lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with his wife Gertrude and their young son, managed to do it. He sneaked inside the rally and sat in the back, listening with growing alarm at the hate-filled speakers. He was shocked at how eagerly the crowd received anti-Jewish messages and embraced a vision of America built on xenophobia and hatred.

As the rally wound down, Fritz Kuhn took the stage once again, and Isadore got out of his seat and slowly walked to the front of the stadium. He pushed through the Nazi-uniformed guards and jumped up on the stage. Quickly pulling out the cables from Kuhn’s microphone so the crowd could no longer hear the Bund leader, Isadore shouted the message he wanted to convey to over 20,000 of his fellow Americans instead: “Down with Hitler!”

Isadore Greenbaum being rushed off stage.
Bund guards immediately jumped on Isadore, punching and kicking him. He sustained a black eye and a broken nose. As the guards beat him, while the rally-goers screamed their approval, roaring with the delight at this public beating of a Jew. Eventually New York City police officers managed to intervene and pull Isadore to safety – once they were outside the police promptly arrested Isadore for disturbing the peace.


Isadore was brought before a judge and explained what happened: “I went down to the Garden without any intention of interrupting, but being that they talked so much against my religion and there was so much persecution I lost my head and I felt it was my duty to talk.”

The judge seemed to blame Isadore for the violence that had been directed against him. “Don’t you realize the innocent people might have been killed,” because of Isadore’s outburst he asked. “Do you realize that plenty of Jewish people might be killed with their persecution up there?” Isadore retorted.

Seemingly unmoved, the judge gave Isadore a choice: either spend ten days in jail or pay a $25 fine. Gertrude managed to scrape together the money for the fine, a large amount in 1939. None of the security guards or other people attending the rally faced any charges for beating Isadore or openly praising Nazi Germany or preaching hate.

Isadore Greenbaum and his family

A few months later, Fritz Kuhn was found guilty of embezzlement and tax evasion and was sent to Sing Sing Prison in New York. In 1941, when the United States entered World War II, Isadore Greenbaum enlisted in the US Navy, becoming a Chief Petty Officer. He was interviewed by the US Armed Forces’ newspaper Stars and Stripes about his experiences in Madison Square Garden. It was one of the very first instances of an American fighting uniformed Nazis, just months before war broke out. “Gee, what would you have done if you were in my place listening to that (expletive) hollering against the government and publicly kissing Hitler’s behind – while thousands cheered?” Isadore told the reporter before explaining, “Well, I did it.”

After his military service, Isadore and Gertrude moved to Los Angeles where Isadore became a colorful local figure, working as a fisherman and an artist on Newport Pier. He died in 1997, one of the first Americans to directly confront Nazi terror and to risk his life to oppose the dark vision that American Nazi sympathizers were promoting for his country.

Watch this 7-min documentary, A Night at the Gardens, by Marshall Curry, that captures the rally.


About the Author

Dr. Yvette Alt MillerMore by this Author >

Yvette Alt Miller earned her B.A. at Harvard University. She completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Jewish Studies at Oxford University, and has a Ph.D. In International Relations from the London School of Economics. She lives with her family in Chicago, and has lectured internationally on Jewish topics. Her book Angels at the table: a Practical Guide to Celebrating Shabbat takes readers through the rituals of Shabbat and more, explaining the full beautiful spectrum of Jewish traditions with warmth and humor. It has been praised as "life-changing", a modern classic, and used in classes and discussion groups around the world.

https://www.aish.com/sp/pr/So-You-Dont-Feel-God-in-Your-Life.html?s=mm
So You Don't Feel God in Your Life?
Jul 11, 2020  |  by Rachel Carmon
So You Don't Feel God in Your Life?
I was berating myself, feeling down and useless. Little did I know that God was listening to my pain.

All I could see was blackness.

Sure, I was alive in a beautiful world. I was healthy. I did not have COVID-19. My family was safe. Thank God, all was well.

But this awareness was all intellectual; it wasn't something I felt.

I was down, feeling flat, useless. In spite of my best efforts, I had lost my job due to company issues and financial market fluctuations. And now corona hit; I didn't see any way forward. No job, no money coming in.

All these years I had talked myself into accepting that I wasn't working at anything I was really passionate about or that made me spring up out of bed in the morning with purpose and a sense of mission, but I comforted myself by saying that at least I was making a decent living to support my family. Now that too was gone.


 
What did I have to show for my 50+ years? What purpose did I have?

All those Aish webinars and video clips with the snappy language, cool rabbis and pulsating upbeat music, pushing for a sense of mission were taking their toll. I couldn't even begin to answer the questions: What were my dreams? What were my goals? What did I want to accomplish on this earth?

I would berate myself. How dare you complain with all the abundance that you have? Are you in a hospital bed? Are you getting chemo treatments? Can you talk? Can you hear? Can you see? You godless ingrate. You don't deserve what you have. The beating up on myself was endless. The problem (no job) and the solution (try to see the good you have) just morphed into turning myself into one big punching bag. You are no good. You are ungrateful. You have so much to be thankful for. You do not appreciate. You are worthless. Don’t you think God will take the good away from you if you don’t value it enough? Over and over. It was a broken record in my head that gave me no respite.

I wasn't one of those workaholics who had to learn that my family was my priority. My family was my priority. I knew that. Sure I worked hard. I was not one to cut corners at work; I was meticulous and conscientious. But I always knew that my children were the most important thing to me.

When I realized years ago that I could not get both myself and my kids out the door in the morning without being stressed, I adjusted my schedule so that I could be fully (read, perky!) there for my kids in the morning. Unhurriedly, I sent them off with carefully packed lunches, completed homework assignments (carefully labeled; no dog-eaten, crumpled half-baked paperwork for these kids!) and caressing goodbyes, replete with little loving notes of positivity tucked into their backpacks, and private chauffeuring to school if a bus was missed. Only after sending them off in cheerful Donna Reed-like fashion did I wend my way to work, making up the lost work-time in the wee hours of the morning, after everyone was fed, bathed, story-timed and tucked into bed, giving up regularly on sleep or "me-time" for years.

When the guests we constantly had at our Shabbos table due to my husband's work in outreach and adult education (now there was the sense of purpose and mission that my family could tap into), started to infringe on my kids sense of self, we cut back, ensuring that at least one meal was exclusively family time. We understood that healthy boundaries were called for and that as parents, we had to respond to our children's need to be seen and heard, front and center.

So, part of me was surprised when not all of those children stayed religious. That some of them are struggling with their relationship with the Almighty. I was sure that we were handing down the Jewish tradition faithfully, with just the right amount of old-fashioned responsibility to the past, link in the chain message, and a healthy dose of inject your own strengths, inform your faith with your own personality, talk. We felt we were real parents, authentic about our vulnerabilities, open to questions, caring and giving. Where did we go wrong?

The other part is not surprised. We cannot micromanage our children's journey. They came up against challenges and demons we had never encountered, both close to home and in the greater world. Their 21st century realities are a far cry from the bubble of conservatism we Baby Boomers experienced. We didn't know what they faced until it hit us in the face. We were not prepared.

And so, here we are – a fragile nuclear family, hanging on to each other, trying to understand and be there for each other, with compassion and love. Encircling us, at a far distance, is a fractured, somewhat estranged larger family, with bad guys and broken dreams, trampled hopes, derailed lives, tarnished souls, and cowardice. I know clearly with whom my loyalties lie – my husband and children. That is absolute. And yet, I feel such pain at the betrayals and losses in my life.

It all comes out, unleashed in a torrent of tears and fury. My friend listens quietly, interjecting here and there in that sensitive, understanding way of hers.
I find myself in my friend's garden, sitting socially distant-appropriate meters away, pouring out my heart about the losses and pain, the estrangement from the larger family, the no job and no purpose, the senseless misery, the feeling of abandonment, of being an orphan with no parents, the sense of aloneness and failure. It all comes out, unleashed in a torrent of tears and fury. My friend listens quietly, interjecting here and there in that sensitive, understanding way of hers. I finally finish. I am spent.

"So you don't feel God in your life?" she asks. I nod miserably. "You feel your father died and left so much undone and is not here to help and hug?" I nod again. "Your pain at your larger family is justified, your estrangement from them is self-protecting; they hurt you and your family, but still there is a gaping hole, in the place where relationship once was. That is not phantom pain. That is real. But know that God is with you." I nod mutely. Sure.

I wasn't prepared for the email I received the very next day. It was from one of my estranged family members, someone I had not spoken with for years. I had not been ready for any kind of relationship with her. And the email went as follows: "I received the following note from someone I was corresponding with. Apparently that person knew your father. I found it meaningful. I hope you will also."

The story related in the email went as follows:

"I knew your relative quite well. I will take the liberty of writing a personal story that he shared with me about himself. [He had asked me what I was learning and I told him I was learning Tractate Yevamos which is quite complicated and difficult.] He said that after the war was over he was a skeleton of himself physically and emotionally and he was not sure he was sane. At the first opportunity that he had he got hold of a volume of the Talmud and it happened to be Yevamos. He opened it and began learning. When he saw that he could follow and, in his words in Yiddish, 'Ich hob zich gekent reorientirin [I was able to reorient myself]' he knew he was sane."

I held the iPhone in my shaking hands, tears rolling down my cheeks. Just yesterday in a quiet garden in the middle of nowhere, I had cried about my estranged family member, my need to get healing from a father who died too young and my sense of distance from God. These were the people/beings in my life I was missing.

And today, I received a message from each of them.

Is God in my life? You bet He is. And with all that is going on in this crazy world of ours, He takes the time to listen to our pain and send us sweet messages that He is there all along.

I was an Unhappy Atheist
Jul 4, 2020  |  by Kylie Ora Lobell
How believing in God made me a grateful person.
https://www.aish.com/sp/so/I-was-an-Unhappy-Atheist.html?s=mm
When I was 12, I decided I was an atheist.

After all, I had prayed to God multiple times that my parents wouldn’t get divorced, and they still did. When my Catholic grandmother would drag me to church, I’d be incredibly bored; if God was so magnificent, why was church awful?

I didn't have a strong religious background or education, so letting go of God was easy.

After I made my atheist declaration, I believed everything was in my control. If I was having a bad day, it wasn’t the universe was trying to tell me something; that was on me. And since I was the one who controlled my destiny, I got anxious whenever things didn’t work out. No greater power was watching over me, protecting me, so I felt all alone in the world. I didn’t think there was any sort of afterlife and got down thinking about the eternal nothingness that I was someday going to experience. Life became pretty meaningless.

I did what I had to do – go to school, get my homework done, and, as I got older, work part-time jobs to support myself – but I was rarely joyful about life. By the time I was a junior in college, I was going to weekly therapy sessions because I was having panic attacks. I was anxious about boys, about grades, and above all, about my future. I’d get sad on the weekends when there was nothing happening on campus, and I’d stay in my room, all alone, sulking and binging on pizza. Whenever I didn’t do well on a test, it felt like a huge setback. If it was rainy outside, which it often was, I got upset.
 
Upon graduation from college, I met Daniel, a Jewish comedian who was no longer observant but still enjoyed going to his local Chabad for Friday night dinner. The first time he took me along with him, I felt the palpable joy in the room as the Lubavitchers and their guests sang Shabbat tunes and excitedly talked to one another while eating delicious food. This was the kind of joy and community and warmth I needed in my life.

I kept going back to Shabbat dinners and discovering more about Judaism. The wisdom I learned resonated with me and I began to see how Judaism's framework for living could provide a structure and moral guide I needed. I was fascinated by the stories in the Torah, which played out in my head like a movie.

There was no definitive time when I knew, for sure, that I was no longer an atheist. I just felt God when I was at that Shabbat table or learning Torah. It felt like serenity sweeping over me. It made my days better and gave me hope. Instead of just relying on myself, I knew God was there, watching over me, and ensuring I would be okay. I became grateful for all the blessings in my life, of which there were plenty. They were no longer mere accidents. Focusing on the good things showed me just how great my life really was.

When I decided to pursue an Orthodox conversion to Judaism, Daniel decided to become more religious and return to his Orthodox roots.

Throughout my conversion process, I noticed that my mood was shifting. I was still in therapy and practicing self-care, but I saw how being a believer amplified my efforts. If I was having a bad day, I could talk about it in therapy to feel a little better, but ultimately, it was up to me to say, “God, I believe that everything that happens to me is for a good reason,” and try to improve my day as much as possible.

Now, 10 years after I started on my conversion process and five years after I formally became a Jew, I am happier than I’ve ever been. I wake up every day with a great attitude, and I’m ready to conquer what’s ahead. I don’t let the little things overwhelm me; I can control them as much as possible by staying calm and centered, but I can’t change everyone and everything around me. I treat myself right, and I have trust in God that everything will be fine. I pray for the big and small blessings because I know God has the power to transform my life.

I don’t know where I’d be without Judaism – probably still miserable, not enjoying life, and being bitter about what I didn’t have. Instead, I focus on what I do have, I live every day to the fullest, and I am excited about all the joys life has to offer.

Defying 20,000 Nazis in New York City
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Defying-20000-Nazis-in-New-York-City.html?s=mm
Jul 4, 2020  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Defying 20,000 Nazis in New York City
In 1939 Isadore Greenbaum risked his life to disrupt a major Nazi rally at Madison Square Gardens.

Sitting among more than 20,000 of his cheering, smiling fellow Americans, Isadore Greenbaum felt profoundly alone. Inside Madison Square Garden, a huge 30-foot picture of George Washington adorned the stage, flanked by American flags and swastikas. Washington was America’s “first Fascist’ according to the Feb. 20, 1939 rally organizers, the German American Bund, a nationwide cultural organization that promoted German-American culture and fealty to Hitler’s regime.

Surrounded by cheering Nazi sympathizers, Isadore sat through three hours of speeches and rapturous applause, getting angrier and angrier as speakers described a frightening Nazi vision of America, espousing white Christian dominance.

A huge portrait of George Washington at the German American Bund's "Pro American Rally" at Madison Square Garden.
“American patriots,” intoned Bund leader Fritz Kuhn, a naturalized American citizen who’d previously worked for a Ford factory in Detroit, “you have all heard of me through the Jewish controlled press as a creature with horns, a cloven hoof, and a long tail.” The rally kicked off with the National Anthem, sung by Americans wearing swastikas and giving Nazi salutes.

Speakers denounced “job-taking Jewish refugees.” A Bund official explained that “(t)he Spirit which opened the West and built our country is the spirit of the militant white man,” and claimed Nazism was a quintessentially American outlook. Kuhn reassured the rally goers, “It has then always been very much American to protect the Aryan character of this nation” and urged Americans to reclaim America and “demand that our government be returned to the people who founded it!”


 Photo from Life Magazine, March 7, 1938
The rally-goers waved American flags and posters with slogans that included “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America”. Many wore Nazi armbands. Security guards wearing uniforms very similar to the Brownshirts in Germany patrolled the aisles.

Outside Madison Square Garden, thousands of protestors gathered, denouncing the Nazi sympathizers inside. The crowd at the "Pro American Rally" also included housewives and ordinary citizens who were disgusted by Nazi supporters in their midst. At one point a band playing in a nearby Broadway theater serenaded the protestors with a rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. One unnamed protestor set up a loudspeaker in a nearby building which broadcast anti-Nazi sentiments, as well as the advice to people attending the rally: “Be American, Stay Home.” Other protesters clashed with police; thirteen protestors were arrested during the evening.

New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia had been lobbied to prevent the rally from taking place, but he defended the Bund’s right to free speech. “If we are for free speech, we have to be for free speech for everybody, and that includes Nazis,” he explained. Seeking to avert violence, he instructed the New York City police to have a heavy presence in the area. 1,700 police officers were deployed around Madison Square Garden – “enough to stop a revolution” the police commissioner told reporters at the time.

New York's mounted police form a solid line outside Madison Square Garden on Feb. 20, 1939, to hold in a crowd where the fascist German American Bund was holding a rally.

It was virtually impossible to pass the police ranks and enter the rally without a ticket. Yet Isadore Greenbaum, a Jewish 26-year-old plumber's assistant who lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with his wife Gertrude and their young son, managed to do it. He sneaked inside the rally and sat in the back, listening with growing alarm at the hate-filled speakers. He was shocked at how eagerly the crowd received anti-Jewish messages and embraced a vision of America built on xenophobia and hatred.

As the rally wound down, Fritz Kuhn took the stage once again, and Isadore got out of his seat and slowly walked to the front of the stadium. He pushed through the Nazi-uniformed guards and jumped up on the stage. Quickly pulling out the cables from Kuhn’s microphone so the crowd could no longer hear the Bund leader, Isadore shouted the message he wanted to convey to over 20,000 of his fellow Americans instead: “Down with Hitler!”

Isadore Greenbaum being rushed off stage.
Bund guards immediately jumped on Isadore, punching and kicking him. He sustained a black eye and a broken nose. As the guards beat him, while the rally-goers screamed their approval, roaring with the delight at this public beating of a Jew. Eventually New York City police officers managed to intervene and pull Isadore to safety – once they were outside the police promptly arrested Isadore for disturbing the peace.


Isadore was brought before a judge and explained what happened: “I went down to the Garden without any intention of interrupting, but being that they talked so much against my religion and there was so much persecution I lost my head and I felt it was my duty to talk.”

The judge seemed to blame Isadore for the violence that had been directed against him. “Don’t you realize the innocent people might have been killed,” because of Isadore’s outburst he asked. “Do you realize that plenty of Jewish people might be killed with their persecution up there?” Isadore retorted.

Seemingly unmoved, the judge gave Isadore a choice: either spend ten days in jail or pay a $25 fine. Gertrude managed to scrape together the money for the fine, a large amount in 1939. None of the security guards or other people attending the rally faced any charges for beating Isadore or openly praising Nazi Germany or preaching hate.

Isadore Greenbaum and his family

A few months later, Fritz Kuhn was found guilty of embezzlement and tax evasion and was sent to Sing Sing Prison in New York. In 1941, when the United States entered World War II, Isadore Greenbaum enlisted in the US Navy, becoming a Chief Petty Officer. He was interviewed by the US Armed Forces’ newspaper Stars and Stripes about his experiences in Madison Square Garden. It was one of the very first instances of an American fighting uniformed Nazis, just months before war broke out. “Gee, what would you have done if you were in my place listening to that (expletive) hollering against the government and publicly kissing Hitler’s behind – while thousands cheered?” Isadore told the reporter before explaining, “Well, I did it.”

After his military service, Isadore and Gertrude moved to Los Angeles where Isadore became a colorful local figure, working as a fisherman and an artist on Newport Pier. He died in 1997, one of the first Americans to directly confront Nazi terror and to risk his life to oppose the dark vision that American Nazi sympathizers were promoting for his country.

Watch this 7-min documentary, A Night at the Gardens, by Marshall Curry, that captures the rally.
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Defying-20000-Nazis-in-New-York-City.html?s=mm


https://israelunwired.com/when-reagan-gave-this-speech-he-didnt-realize-how-perfect-it-was/
When Reagan gave this speech, he didn’t realize how perfect it was
By Leah Rosenberg - July 1, 2020 5870 0
Ronald Reagan was a great speaker and a powerful leader. When he gave this speech decades ago, he had no idea how relevant it would still be today.

https://israelunwired.com/when-reagan-gave-this-speech-he-didnt-realize-how-perfect-it-was/
Reagan and Appeasement
What amazing speeches Ronald Reagan gave nearly half a century ago! Thank you to Mathew Worth from Canada for creating yet another inspiring video.

Have things even changed today? Reagan’s speech sounds like it could have been said right now. He declares in this speech that “…this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face—that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand—the ultimatum.”


How relevant this still is today! If only the people of Israel really understood this, there would be no question of what Israel needs to do in order to ensure its survival.

There was a time when people understood the clear and obvious, and common sense was still prevalent. We have lost it all in post-modernism, and people today can’t really understand. They don’t completely relate to these eternal words, and that is one of the biggest problems facing our world.

When King Louis IX Burned the Talmud
Jul 1, 2020  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
When King Louis IX Burned the Talmud
A thousand years ago, King Louis IX ordered the Talmud burned in Paris.
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/When-King-Louis-IX-Burned-the-Talmud.html?s=mm
“O (Talmud), that has been consumed by fire, seek the welfare of those who mourn for you…”
These searing words were written by Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg (1215-1293), a brilliant Jewish student who’d recently travelled from his home in northern Germany to Paris to study a renown yeshiva there, after he witnessed the mass burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1240 on the orders of King Louis IX. A peripatetic king, Louis IX was one of the few Medieval Christian thinkers to willingly engage in debate with Jews - but his legacy is one of pain and suffering for thousands of Jews in France.
“He was a splendid knight whose kindness and engaging manner made him popular,” the Encyclopedia Britannica describes King Louis IX. Crowned at the age of twelve in 1226, King Louis IX instituted legal reforms across France and often personally judged cases in his magnificent Great Hall in the Palais de la Cite in Paris, where he handed out judgments and punishments to his subjects. A staunchly religious Catholic, King Louis IX was seemingly preoccupied by Jews. He issued the Ordinance of Melun in 1230, forcing Jewish into “honest” jobs - in reality manual labor. (Forbidden from virtually all professions by the Lateran Council of 1215, life for France’s Jews became more difficult than ever.) He also had an appetite for debating Jews about religion and Judaism’s holiest texts.
In the 1230s, King Louis IX finally got his chance to show off his powers of argument and his piety and debate Jews about the very validity of the Jewish faith.
In 1236, Nicholas Donin, a Parisian Jew who had turned his back on the Jewish community and publicly embraced Catholicism, penned a damning letter to Pope Gregory IX. In it, Donin attacked the Talmud, the written discussions of the Oral Law that was given to Moses on Mount Sinai along with the Written Law that makes up the Five Books of Moses. He enumerated 35 complaints about the Talmud, including that it attacked the Catholic Church. If there were no more Talmud, Donin asserted, then Jews would be more likely to abandon their Jewish faith and convert to Christianity, as he himself had done.

Pope Gregory IX took Donin’s letter seriously, and he sent a letter to all Catholic institutions in France demanding that they seize copies of the Talmud from Jewish communities in their midst. Similar letters were sent to Catholic leaders in Italy, Spain and Portugal. The Talmud was going to be put on trial, the Pope announced, and all copies had to be confiscated before this began.
King Louis IX
The date for taking the precious Talmud volumes from synagogues, homes and Jewish schools was set for Shabbat, March 3, 1240. On that day, officials burst into synagogues across Europe where Jews were gathered for Shabbat services, loading volumes of the Talmud that had been painstakingly written by hand, as well as other Jewish books, away. Any Jew who tried to prevent his or her holy books could be killed with impunity.

Two months later, the Talmud was put on trial. King Louis IX oversaw the arrangements: the proceedings were to be public, and he personally promised to guarantee the personal safety of the Jews who were to be charged with defending the Talmud. However, there were strict ground rules that any Jew defending the Talmud had to adhere to: they could not criticize Christianity in any way. Nothing derogative about Christians or Christian belief could be uttered. Blasphemy, as defined by the Catholic Church, would not be tolerated. The conclusion of this infamous trial, or disputation, was a foregone conclusion.

King Louis IX ordered four prominent rabbis to defend the Talmud: Rabbi Yechiel of Paris, Rabbi Moses of Coucy, Rabbi Judah of Melum and Rabbi Samuel ben Solomon of Chateau-Thierry. They faced off against Nicholas Donin, the Christian convert who’d initiated the entire dispute.

The trial raged for days. Rabbi Yechiel led the Jewish team, and even his opponents agreed that he argued brilliantly, given the strict limitations on what he was allowed to say. When Donin accused the Talmud of treating Christian figures less than kindly, Rabbi Yechiel responded that it was possible that two people might have the same name, pointing out that “not every Louis born in France is king.” His flattery seemed designed to sooth the mercurial monarch, who watched every stage of the debate with great interest.

At one point King Louis IX’s temper got the better of him as he followed the intricate arguments. Rabbi Yechiel advanced a particularly effective argument and Louis IX became enraged, shouting that instead of discussing matters of faith with a Jew, a good Christian should plunge his sword into him instead. So much for assurances that the rabbis would be safe. Rabbi Yechiel fled for his life, and the three other rabbis continued the dispute without him. Despite the rabbis’ best efforts, the trial had been decided before it began. The Talmud was found “guilty” and condemned to be burned.

King Louis IX oversaw the “sentence” two years later, in 1242. Officials throughout France had scoured the countryside looking for copies of the Talmud and other Hebrew books, taking them by force from Jews across France. Not a single volume of the Talmud remained in Jewish hands. On the morning of June 17, 1242, 24 wagons piled to the top with thousands of volumes of the Talmud and other Jewish books made their way slowly through Paris to the Place de Greve, near Notre Dame Cathedral. The collection was enormous. At a time when every book was painstakingly written by hand, this represented generations of Jewish learning and work. It’s estimated that the wagons held about 10,000 books.

One by one, each of the two dozen wagons disgorged their books, dropping the precious texts onto the ground. By the end of the day, an enormous pile of Jewish writings covered the plaza. A crowd gathered to watch the conflagration as Louis IX’s officials set the books on fire.
“My tears formed a river that reached to the Sinai desert and to the graves of Moshe and Aharon,” Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, who was present at the scene, recalled later about that day. “Is there another Torah to replace the Torah which you have taken from us?” Sages designated a minor fast day in memory of this tragedy: the Friday before the Torah Portion Chukat is read in synagogue. This year’s fast day in memory of the Talmud’s burning is Friday, July 3, 2020.
The Apotheosis of St. Louis, which stands in front of the St. Louis Art Museum, memorializes the city's namesake.
The fast day this year comes amid renewed attention about King Louis IX. After his death, he became a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. The city of St. Louis is named after him and some people are protesting his statue in that city. In addition to putting the Talmud on trial, King Louis IX also signed legislation to expel Jews from France (this was carried out by his successor King Phillip IV) and led the Seventh and Eighth Crusades, which also targeted Jewish communities. His legacy is a complex one.

Yet, as many people around the world debate Louis IX’s legacy, some Jews will recall his reign in a much more personal way, fasting and praying and recalling the Trial of the Talmud that he oversaw, and the incalculable loss of Jewish scholarship that resulted.



The Year of the Vilna Gaon
Jun 27, 2020
by Ariel Bulshtein, Israel Hayom
Long after most of its once-vibrant Jewish community is gone, Lithuania is embracing the legacy of the Vilna Gaon.
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/The-Year-of-the-Vilna-Gaon.html?s=mm
Visitors to the only remaining Jewish cemetery in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius witnessed something unusual on April 23. Despite the coronavirus pandemic, the area filled with cars, and out of one spilled high-ranking Lithuanian officials, including Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius. Careful to observe social distancing, they all joined Israeli Ambassador to Lithuania Yossi Levy near one of the headstones to mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of the great Torah scholar Rabbi Eliyahu Ben Shlomo Zalman, better known as the Vilna Gaon.

The Vilna Gaon was born on April 23, 1720, in the village of Selz in modern-day Belarus. When he was living, Vilnius, known as the "Jerusalem of Lithuania" was anything but Lithuanian, and home mostly to Poles and Jews. The Holocaust changed that forever.

Although the now-independent Lithuania is home to only a tiny Jewish population, the locals try to remember the rabbi, who helped make their capital famous throughout the Jewish world. One of the streets in the old city of Vilnius has been renamed after the rabbi. In 1997, a statue of him was erected in what used to be the city's Jewish quarter.

The Vilna Gaon lived near the city's great synagogue, which was later badly damaged in World War II and completely destroyed by the Soviets. Still, much of the area remains as it was during his life. The nation's Jewish museum is named after the Vilna Gaon, and another site in Vilnius linked to the rabbi is the Widow and Brothers Romm print shop, which published the first version of the Talmud with the Gaon's commentary.

Ironically, the first version of the statue to commemorate the great scholar portrayed him without any head covering, an error that was later fixed. Although there are many images of the rabbi, no one knows what he really looked like, as all 11 "portraits" were painted long after his death.

The 300th anniversary of the Gaon's birth inspired decision-makers to step up their efforts to commemorate his life. The Lithuanian Parliament declared 2020 the Year of the Vilna Gaon and the Year of Jewish History. But even before 2020, Lithuanian authorities sought to have the Gaon's manuscripts included in UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme. The Lithuanian Central Bank issued a special commemorative coin to mark the celebrations of his birth and legacy.

The celebration scheduled originally included nearly 70 separate events, but coronavirus upended everything. An international conference on Jewish study and intellectualism in Lithuania from the 18th to 20th centuries has been postponed until October, and possibly to next year.

His sons said he never slept more than two hours a day, divided into four half-hour parts.
The Vilna Gaon himself would probably wonder, and maybe be dismayed, if he knew the honors being heaped upon him in his homeland, which since his lifetime has been nearly emptied of its Jewish population. He was noted for scholarship and modesty, so much so that he consistently refused an official position with the local rabbinate, as the job would have disrupted his studies.

His sons said he never slept more than two hours a day, divided into four half-hour parts. It's hard to imagine him making time for the "nonsense" of national honors.

The unusual interest in the great scholar's life seems quite appropriate to Lithuanian Ambassador to Israel Lina Antanavičienė. "The Jews were an inseparable part of society in Lithuania from the days of the great duchy in the 14th century," Antanavičienė said.

"The Jewish community made an important contribution to the rise of Lithuania, its history, culture, and science. We see the 300th anniversary of the Gaon's birth an opportunity to promote knowledge of the history of Jews in our country, and improve and preserve their legacy and invest more in keeping that legacy alive. In the broader sense, this is an opportunity for the Lithuanian people and for the entire world to learn more about the achievements of Jews who were born in our country and lived and created for our country, and to be proud of them," the ambassador said.

The Lithuanians' desire to show pride in a spiritual authority who was active in their capital city is worthy of praise, but it is a challenge. The Vilna Gaon's work, his thinking, rulings, and innovations to the Talmud and the Kabbala are not immediately comprehensible to anyone who is not familiar with Jewish texts, and virtually inaccessible to anyone who does not read Hebrew. And without the content, the Vilna Gaon could be reduced to a folkloric figure, as happened with Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague, whom residents and visitors associate with the famous legend of the Golom.

The organizers of the year of events honoring the Vilna Gaon will try to bridge knowledge gaps with an exhibition titled "The Years of Eliyahu," which is scheduled to open in October at the National Library of Lithuania and will focus on the rabbi's enormous influence on Judaism. State authorities plan to borrow the famous notebook from the Gaon's own synagogue, which is currently preserved at the Yiddish Scientific Institute in New York, for the exhibit.

The Lithuanian national broadcast company is making a special effort to bring the Vilna Gaon's work to the general public. A special radio program devoted to the Gaon shared some of his pearls of wisdom with listeners, and stressed his critical approach as well as his broad familiarity with general subjects like mathematics and astronomy. The Gaon wrote a book on the sciences, and was also knowledgeable about engineering, biology, geography, linguistics, and music.

The broadcast underscored the Gaon's importance as a spiritual authority not only to the Jewish people, and shared a piece of his practical advice: "Today, this teaching from the Vilna Gaon is important to us. If a person desires to understand something, he must follow three rules: to look at what he is shown, to hear what he is told, and to feel all this in his heart."

Ambassador Antanaviciene agreed that the legacy of the Vilna Gaon includes universal messages. "The Vilna Gaon's philosophy is as relevant in the changing world of today as it was in the 18th century. Living in a community, while developing independent thought and aspiring to make positive changes in society – that teaches us an important lesson about the development of modern democracy in Lithuania," she said.