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https://aish.com/the-best-response-to-antisemitism/?src=ac
The Best Response to Antisemitism
Brian Keating
by Rabbi Emanuel Feldman
January 7, 2024
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An open letter to an American Jewish college student.

You were very excited about being admitted to a famous Ivy League university, and you eagerly looked forward to the coming intellectual journey.

And then, almost overnight, there was an explosion of anti-Semitism on your campus and on many other prestigious campuses. Ostensibly, this was in connection with Israel’s strong response to the October 7 massacre in which Hamas terrorists murdered and mutilated 1200 innocent Israelis in cold blood. When you read about the slaughter, you were horrified, as were most civilized people. Although you do not have a strong Jewish background, you were nevertheless proud that Israel responded forcefully to the horror.

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But your pride turned into shock when, instead of condemning the October atrocities, many students demonstrated and chanted anti-Israel slogans. Your shock turned to fear as marauding gangs of students taunted you for being a Jew, drew swastikas on Jewish frat houses, called for an intifada against Jews, chanted the genocidal “from the river to the sea.” You actually were worried about your personal safety — especially when the university president refused to clearly condemn the racist behavior of the students.

What, you ask, should be your response?

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The awful truth is that there is no lasting response to prejudice and hatred, and especially not to that disease called antisemitism. Whether you cite Biblical proof of Jewish rights to Israel or you appeal to morality or logic, it will have no long-term effect. When we abandoned our Judaism and assimilated, we were still rejected. When we maintained our distinctiveness and remained separate from the outside world, we were called clannish and holier-than-thou. We have been derided as communists and as capitalists, ridiculed for our intellectual bent and condemned for our fighting abilities, accused of manipulating the world’s finances on Wall Street even while we were making the desert bloom in the Negev.

I fear that antisemitism is a part of the DNA of the world, a pestilence for which there is no cure.

I fear that antisemitism is a part of the DNA of the world, a pestilence for which there is no cure. Here and there we find some righteous Gentiles who come to our defense, but for the masses, the disease is inborn. The most we can hope for is that this endemic antisemitism is limited to hate speech and slogans, and does not go beyond that — though history shows that it rarely stops at the mouth but proceeds to the fist and physical violence and even to murder. We can hope for periods of quiet when the hatred stays subsurface, we can pray for extensions of the quiet and continue kicking the can down the road, but Jew-hatred seems to be a fact of Jewish life.


Even before the contributions of billions of Arab petrodollars prostituted our finest universities, the hatred was present; how much more so today. Only a naïf would deny that the Arab billions came with a price tag: Islamic Studies departments with anti-Israel agendas and kid-glove treatment of anti-Semitic pro-Hamas students.

Some Jewish thinkers suggest that, transcending all mundane theories about anti-Semitism, this is G-d’s mysterious way of reminding us who we really are. When we forget that we are the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the heirs of Moses and Rabbi Akiva and Rambam and the Gaon of Vilna (of whom some Jews have never even heard); when we dismiss the fact that we are Heaven’s deputies to remind mankind that there is a God Who demands morality and self-discipline and love for the neighbor — when we tend to abandon all this in order to assimilate into the outside world and become just like them, then perhaps God taps us on the shoulder and reminds us in His own hidden ways.

There is one truly powerful response that is often overlooked: to become more Jewish.

You ask what should be your response. My suggestion: Although campus counter-demonstrations are fine, and mass rallies in Washington are helpful, and contact with legislators is effective, there is one truly powerful response that is often overlooked: to become more Jewish. That does not mean to eat more gefilte fish or to tell Yiddish jokes. It does mean to defy the hatemongers by looking inward at oneself and to begin behaving more Jewishly. Which means, for example, to turn Friday night into Shabbat, with kiddush, special meals, informal discussions, group singing, and no distracting Smartphones. Or: To take five minutes every morning and don tefillin and read the first paragraph of the Shema in any language in the privacy of your own room. Or: Do some reading on your own of any classic Jewish text. Or — and this will take some courage — to wear a kippah/yarmulke on campus as a sign of your Jewish pride and your defiance of the haters. (Of the thousands of Jewish students, are there ten young men who have the guts to do this?)

I am not suggesting that you suddenly become an Orthodox Jew. I am suggesting that in addition to the obvious steps against antisemitism, you and your Jewish friends take a step out of the box, do something different and heroic: become a more Jewish Jew — even if this has not been your lifestyle. They wish to destroy all vestiges of Judaism; you don’t cringe, but stand tall as a member of our holy, eternal people.

A version of this article originally appeared in Mishpacha magazine.

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https://aish.com/the-awakening-of-liberal-jewish-americans/?src=ac
The Awakening of Liberal Jewish Americans
October 7 has spurred many disengaged Jews to revitalize their Jewish identity. We need to embrace them with support and openness, not condescension and political infighting.

If there is a silver lining to the events that have unfolded in Israel and around the world since October 7th, it is that American Jews are finally waking up. For some, it was the overt glorification of Hamas’ atrocities at protests around the world, and the genocidal calls of “from the river to the sea” by crowds holding posters of Nazi symbols. For others, it was the testimony of ivy league administrators who firmly and proudly affirmed their students’ right to call for genocide against Jews, under the guise of defending free speech.

A growing number of liberal American Jews have been forced to reckon with unprecedented levels of antisemitism emerging from political and intellectual institutions they have long supported, and many are drawing the conclusion that Jewish identity - and support for Israel – needs to play a larger role in their lives.

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The Awakening of Liberal Jewish Americans
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Based on my own observations, this group shares a few key characteristics in common: they are largely secular, but culturally Jewish, and do not currently engage with Jewish life in any major way. Privately they are pro-Israel, but have historically refrained from publicly supporting Israel due to fear of social repercussion. They have generously supported progressive causes such as LGBT rights and Black Lives Matter, but feel abandoned by progressive institutions on issues of rising antisemitism.

If the overflowing attendance at my local synagogue is to be taken as evidence, this group’s newly realized engagement with Jewish life represents a revitalization of Jewish identity at a spiritual, social, and cultural level - but only if these individuals are properly received and supported.

Instead of embracing these young Jews, some people are mocking, belittling, and castigating them, caving into the ancient human impulse to say, “I told you so.”

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Instead of embracing these young Jews, some people are mocking, belittling, and castigating them, caving into the ancient human impulse to say, “I told you so.” And a heated discourse surrounding the political future of American Jewry has added additional friction within the community.


Since October 7th, some of the most flagrant antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric has come from individuals affiliated with the progressive left, under leadership from the so-called “squad.” The political reaction from left-leaning Jews since October 7th has been split, with some claiming to have left the Democratic party, and others vowing to reform the antisemitic elements of the group. There is a vocal group of Jews promulgating views that conservative political allegiance - particularly to Donald Trump - is an obligation for all Jews who truly care about Israel, given the historical pro-Israel support from that side of the aisle. Efforts to mobilize Jewish voters, born out of a desire to protect and defend, have devolved into a sort of political litmus test which creates barriers to entry for left-leaning Jews. As some friends have confided to me, many Jews feel caught between a rock and a hard place - unaccepted by the radical anti-Israel elements of the left, but equally rejected by Jews on the right.

Such political infighting serves only to divide our community. A better course of action would be to extend a welcoming hand to all those with the courage to speak up for Israel, and to recognize that support for Israel on both sides of the aisle is politically advantageous.

A second, equally crucial priority should be for Jewish educational and cultural institutions to develop a long-term strategy focused on embracing a new cohort of non-religious Jews with no current foothold in Jewish life. This means increasing the availability and accessibility of Jewish day schools, religious programs, and camps. For the first time, secular parents alarmed by the growth of anti-Zionist narratives in American public education will consider placing their children in Jewish schools, but the current preponderance of orthodox institutions will not meet the unique needs of this community. Institutions will need to bridge the gap between secular “cultural” and orthodox expressions of Judaism if they are to properly integrate this new community. So too should synagogues extend new community groups and classes for newcomers joining the fold, who may be unsure of where to begin.

Now more than ever, there is also a need for fresh leadership within the Jewish community which can identify with this community. The time is ripe for emerging leadership from Jewish influencers, professionals, celebrities, and students - individuals both inside and outside the religious sphere who can provide guidance on how to get in touch with one’s Jewish identity, as well as how to meaningfully support Israel.

Fifteen years ago, my bat mitzvah speech focused on Pharaoh's fear of a strong Jewish nation, and how this concern has led to repeated persecution of the Jews throughout history. Looking at this same text again, one line from the Torah stands out to me in light of recent events. “The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.” That Jews are embracing their Jewish identity even under intense pressure is a testament to the resilience of our people and not something that should be taken for granted. Extending a welcoming hand to all those in our community is a small but crucial step towards the continued flourishing of our people.

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https://aish.com/underground-jews-during-the-dark-reign-of-communism/?src=ac
Underground Jews During the Dark Reign of Communism
by Kylie Ora Lobell
December 31, 2023
After fleeing the Nazis, many Hasidic Jews settled in Samarkand, alongside the centuries-old Bukharan Jewish community when the communists ruled the region.

In the 1940s, as World War II raged on in Europe and Hitler was sending Jews to the death camps, many members of the Hasidic Lubavitch community found a place of refuge: Samarkand, a city in Uzbekistan. They settled alongside Bukharan Jews, one of the oldest ethno-religious groups in Central Asia.

Though these Jews were safe during the war, when the Soviets took over afterwards, communism forbade people from practicing their religion. If they were caught, they could be sent to prison, a forced labor camp, or worse.

That didn’t stop the Hasidic Lubavitch community there, who continued to practice their Judaism under the ever-present eyes of the KGB at a time when a majority of Jews were forced to give it up.

In Rabbi Hillel Zaltzman’s new book, “The Jewish Underground of Samarkand: How Faith Defied Soviet Rule,” readers can learn about how the Jewish community continued to survive – and even thrive – in the face of possible persecution.

Being secretly Jewish in Samarkand
In 1943, Zaltzman, then only four years old, fled Ukraine with his family when the Germans were invading. Like many fellow Lubavitchers, they found safety in Samarkand, but it wouldn’t last long.
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Students of the underground yeshiva in Samarkand: From left to right: Avrohom Zerach Notik, Tanchum Boroshansky, Yosef Yitzchak Zaltzman, Benzion Goldschmidt, Shmuel Notik

When the communists took over, they infiltrated and controlled every aspect of life, from the synagogues to the schools, where Jewish boys and girls would typically learn about Jewish rituals.

In his book, Zaltzman writes, “The war for Jewish education was both offensive and defensive: Parents struggled to keep their children from attending the Soviet schools, or at the very least to keep them home on Shabbos and holidays, if they were forced to attend at all. At the same time, they tried to provide their children with an authentic Jewish education at home.”

The fathers would go to work and the children would stay home with their mothers and receive a Jewish education. But it wasn’t so simple.

“[Mothers] were the ones who were left alone with their children while their husbands went to work, and every knock on the door brought with it a rush of fear and anxiety,” Zaltzman writes. “Unfortunately, the tremendous stress had a detrimental effect on the health of many of these heroic women.”

Zaltzman’s family, as well as other Jews, had special codes for communicating, like how to knock on a door or ring a bell to signal that it wasn’t the KGB. The codes were used when Jews were learning or conducting any sort of religious activity.

Eventually, Zaltzman himself had to go to public school because of threats from a local principal. “If my father did not send me to school, warned the principal, his rights as a parent would be revoked,” he writes. “I would then be sent to a government orphanage.”

Jewish boys who studied Torah in the Underground classes

His father registered him in a school in a mostly Muslim district where he hoped nobody would notice when he wasn’t in school on Shabbat or the Jewish holidays. In school, the students had to sing songs praising Father Stalin, Lenin, Mother Russia, and the Communist Party, but he didn’t want to.

Once, his teacher noticed and asked him why he didn’t sing. Without thinking, he replied, “I don’t like your songs.”

He then realized that he had made a huge mistake. The teacher said, “What do you mean by ‘your songs’? Which songs are ‘ours’ and which songs are ‘yours’? Go over to the blackboard and sing one of ‘your’ songs!”

Zaltzman recalled some Azerbaijani music that a neighbor played in his housing district. He’d heard these songs so many times that he knew them by heart.

“As I began to sing, the teacher opened her mouth wide in surprise,” he writes. “She had not imagined that I was able to sing so nicely! She enjoyed it so much that she completely forgot my faux pas, or perhaps she thought that I had been referring to Azerbaijani music all along.”

Revisiting Samarkand: The author and his brother, Berel, in Registan Square, Samakand's main tourist attraction, in the heart of the Old City

“The Jewish Underground of Samarkand: How Faith Defied Soviet Rule” is full of stories about close calls and the obvious miracles the Jews of Samarkand experienced.

For instance, only a few elderly Jews would go to the official synagogues of Samarkand because there were always KGB spies there. Children weren’t allowed to go, and most adults were afraid of the government and wouldn’t attend, either. Secret services were held without Torah scrolls.

“Our greatest challenge was obtaining a Torah scroll,” Zaltzman writes. “We did not possess one of our own, and had no way to get hold of one. Asking the gabbai of the shul would no doubt be our undoing, as the authorities would thereby instantly discover our activities. Taking one without authorization was also risky; sooner or later the ‘burglary’ would be discovered and the ensuing commotion would quickly lead the government to our activities. Often enough, we had to suffice with reading the weekly Torah portion from a printed Bible, if only to preserve the structure of the service and not forego the Torah reading altogether. That was the best we could do.”
Finding refuge elsewhere
After World War II ended, some Jews in Samarkand snuck out of Uzbekistan and went back to where they came from, like Poland. But it was very risky to leave – if the KGB caught one of them trying to flee without the government’s permission, it could mean a harsh punishment like imprisonment (or worse). Zaltzman’s family didn’t want to take any chances. (The Soviets almost never granted permission for people to leave until 1990, after Gorbachev came to power and he instituted the policy of glasnost, which allowed for some Jews to finally get out.) After 15 years of waiting to obtain a visa, in 1971, his wish was finally granted, and Zaltzman went to Israel, where he had relatives.

The exit visa for which the author waited fifteen years
From Israel, he worked with the Jews in Samarkand from afar through his organization Chamah. He helped to provide services to the community there, such as a soup kitchen for the needy, meals-on-wheels for the elderly, and therapy for children with special needs. In 1973, he moved to the U.S. to start a branch of Chamah there, and today, he resides in Brooklyn, continuing his work.

Today, there are almost no Jews in Samarkand. Many of them made aliyah to Israel, while others immigrated to the U.S. and elsewhere when the Iron Curtain finally fell. Zaltzman has been back three times since he left because his mother is buried there.

Zaltzman hopes his book will inspire a generation of younger Jews. “It is crucial for the younger generation to understand that observing Judaism is not solely about freedom, but also about persevering through hardships,” said Zaltzman. “I hope this story encourages people to uphold their Jewish identity in all circumstances.”

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https://aish.com/science-religion-and-a-cosmologists-return-to-judaism-an-interview-with-dr-brian-keating/?src=ac
Science, Religion and a Cosmologist’s Return to Judaism: An Interview with Dr. Brian Keating
RABBI ADAM JACOBS
A leading cosmologist, Dr. Keating was a Catholic altar boy before he discovered his Judaism later in life.
Dr. Brian Keating is one of modern cosmology’s greatest luminaries. He has a gift for taking extremely complex ideas and articulating them in a way that we regular people can easily digest, and he does it with wit and humor. It’s no wonder his books have been so widely read and his social media following is so robust. Dr. Keating is also a proud Jew who discovered his Judaism later in life. I was fortunate to recently interview him for Aish.com.

Adam Jacobs: There's a famous statement by evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould that science and religion are, as he put it, “non-overlapping magisteria,” the idea that everyone should stay in their lane. Religion might have what to contribute to the world, but it's in its own arena, and science is in its own arena. Do you agree with that approach, or do you feel that there is room for either collaboration or exploration or is there any point of connection between those two areas for you?

Adam Jacobs: How did you discover your Jewish roots, and how did you come to embrace them? Was there some catalyzing event that took place?
Brian Keating: I had a fairly tortured path to Jewish observance. I always knew I was born Jewish, whatever that means. Biologically speaking, my mother is Jewish. My father is Jewish, but like many children of the seventies, I experienced divorce. I lived with my mother's second husband, my stepfather, and he and my mother adopted us legally, changing our names to match her new last name when she remarried. That was a significant moment in my life because, at that time, I became religious for the first time in my life (I mean practicing Catholicism, not necessarily believing), but certainly practicing religion for the first time. Before that, it had been occasional sets of matchbox cars on the first night of Hanukkah, maybe a Passover dinner here or there. And that was it for the first seven years of my life.

As a kid, my mother married an Irish Catholic and I took to the church's rituals and practice.

Then, immediately following my mother's marriage, I became immersed in Catholicism and converted and was confirmed baptized within the span of just a few years to the Catholic Church of Chappaqua, New York. Having always had a curious and probably spiritual side, even as a kid, I just took to the Catholic church's rituals and practice. And the warmth of not only my family, my adopted family, but my stepfather's family, which was a huge Irish Catholic family of 10 brothers and sisters and millions of cousins and grandparents and great-grandparents.

Contrasting that with my biologically Jewish relatives, more or less shunning us after the marriage, then adopting us into their family and really almost believing that we were genetically biologically their kids. And I loved Christmas and Easter, just a huge pageantry and the food and drinking and everything else. I decided I wanted to learn more and become more serious about it at age 12 and became an altar boy in the Catholic church. Not too many Orthodox members of boards or directors of orthodox synagogues have former altar boy on their CV.

After 9/11, I had a notion that I better learn at least something about why Israel is at the center of the world's hatred and ire and the Western kind of hegemony and schisms and so forth. I had always had a bias towards Judaism, and a lot of my friends were Jewish. I was dating someone who wasn't Jewish at the time, but I felt like this was the time for me to wake up and learn more about it. At the same time, my older brother moved out west and lived with me in California. Thankfully, he had moved from Manhattan a year before 9/11. Then, he encountered an Orthodox Jew at his law firm in LA.

And they had taken him in and been very warm and supportive of him. He got involved in the Jewish community of Los Angeles, which is very different from the Jewish community of New York City, where he had lived and gone to Cardozo Law School. He had friends who were rabbis who never once invited him for Shabbat dinners. By the time he moved to LA, the first day he was in his law firm he was getting invitations everywhere. It was a very warm and welcoming community there.

As he started to learn more, I began to learn more and meet with the same kind of rabbis and folks that he was involved with. And I slowly began to learn and decided to read the Torah. I've never read it before.

I got involved with the community there, attended Shabbat services, and taught myself to at least pronounce words in Hebrew. Even if I did not know the language, I just went to services, learned and participated in holidays, and so forth. That was about 20-plus years ago. I then really resolved to grow, get married, and have a family in a Jewish Orthodox setting. So that's where I'm now, always trying to learn more and not sit content with either my scientific expertise or my religious learnings, so-called expertise.

Adam Jacobs: Why do you regularly learn the Torah, and do you recommend it to others?

Brian Keating: You have to have a certain level of understanding; otherwise, you're just a klutz asking klutz questions. But there are just so many platitudes about religion that scientists like Steven Weinberg and Lawrence Krauss do, and what I think undergirds their reasoning and their statements and their confidence (or arrogance) is that they had a bar mitzvah. I mean, I think it really comes down to that.

They're left in a permanently stunted premature state by virtue of their arrogance that because they learned to chant some meaningless tunes as a 13-year-old, and had a bad experience, that somehow they’re done with Judaism.

And universally (and this was true of my biological father), and it's true of Lawrence Kraus, and it was probably true of Carl Sagan and Stephen J. Gould all the way up and down the ladder is that their bar mitzvahs marked the graduation from ever thinking about the Torah again. And this has left them and those like them in a permanently stunted state with respect to their understanding of Judaism. They may be very smart, and there may, in fact be logical fallacies and scientific untruths, although I've looked for them, but I can't really find them, and it's hard to find them, but they would never accept the refutation of a physical law of a mathematical theorem—they would never accept the falsification and undermining of that from a 12-year-old boy.

And yet that's what they're doing with their understanding. They're left in a permanently stunted premature state by virtue of their arrogance that because they learned to chant some meaningless tunes as a 13-year-old, and had a bad experience, that somehow they’re done with Judaism. It was challenging to do my bar mitzvah last month at age 52. So I can only imagine what it's like at age 13. But to see them basically present just completely trivial objections that really amount to excuses based on a malformed prematurely developed understanding of religion is almost laughable if it wasn't often used in a really derogatory hostile format.

Adam Jacobs: What are your thoughts on the rise of antisemitism in the wake of 10/7? How do you understand the support for Hamas?

Brian Keating: I think it’s linked to the conflation of Western leftist hatred of America, which always comes concomitant with hatred of Israel. Ironically, the most progressive countries in the world, the US and Israel, are hated by the folks who call themselves progressive. I think there’s an element of self-hatred combined with nihilism that I last witnessed before 9/11, but not as much as after 10/7.

Adam Jacobs: As an academic and a Jew, how do you feel about the Harvard/MIT brouhaha and Harvard's president?

Brian Keating: I wrote about it many times on Twitter and spoke about it on YouTube. I’ll say that academia has long been a form of idol worship for our secular society, which is especially prevalent among liberal/secular Jews. This mindset often found young Jews feeling like failures because their parents prize college—and especially prestigious colleges like the Ivies—as the stamp of approval indicating they did a fantastic job. Neglecting their character and focusing on the five non-professor members of an admissions committee is pathetic and worthy of concern.

It’s no surprise the ethically compromised presidents of these universities would also find themselves investigated for other ethical lapses, which, sadly, are more widely condemned than their inexcusable reaction to antisemitism rampant on their campuses long before 10/7 but amplified immensely since.

Visit Dr. Keating’s website at https://BrianKeating.com and his Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1.

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https://aish.com/from-superstar-actress-to-super-jew/?src=ac
FROM SUPERSTAR ACTRESS TO SUPER JEW
SARAH PACHTER
Sarah Mintz, a household name amongst Spanish-speakers in the US and Latin America, converted to Judaism and now lives in Israel.
Sarah Mintz, a household name amongst Spanish-speakers in the US and Latin America, converted to Judaism and now lives in Israel.

Sarah Mintz, aka Maritza Rodríguez Gómez, is a Colombian actress and household name amongst Spanish-speakers in the US and Latin America. The former Catholic converted to Judaism and today lives in Israel as an Orthodox Jew with her husband and twin boys.

For over two decades she led a successful career as a television host, actress, model, and a fixture on the red carpets and magazines. But while walking the red carpet and flashing a smile for the cameras, in her heart she was thinking, “Did I come into this world just to do soap operas and strike poses? There has to be more.”

Aish
Underground Jews During the Dark Reign of Communism
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Sarah was born in 1975 to a devout Catholic family. She attended church every Sunday with her family and was told to pray to the statues of Jesus placed throughout the sanctuary. Sarah often wondered: “Why do I have to pray to them? Why can’t I have a direct relationship to God?”

She also wondered why one can only connect with God while in church, once a week. Shouldn’t a relationship with God be constant?

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Sarah was never chastised for her curiosity. In fact, her mother urged Sarah to always be authentic and have the courage to be truthful. Her mother also taught her that transformation is always possible. She would say, “We are reborn every day and you can transform yourself to be the best you.” Her parents’ dedication to Catholicism set the stage for her eventual, greatest transformation—becoming a Jew.


As an aspiring actress, Sarah landed her first gig as an MC, which led to small television roles. Over time her repertoire grew and she eventually became a leading actress in Colombia. She worked for Telemundo (part of NBCUniversal), where she had an exclusive contract. Today, she is considered one of the most iconic villains in Spanish-language television.

By the time Sarah was 26, she had established an international career, which required intense travel. By 2001, she was feeling overworked and needed a vacation. One of her best friends, Marcela Pezet, a fellow actress, was acting in a soap opera in Los Angeles and invited Sarah to join her in LA while she filmed.

Once in LA Marcela urged her to go with her to the studio. She joked, “You want me to go to a studio? I’m on vacation!” She reluctantly complied, despite wanting to tour the city of LA instead. While Marcela prepped in her dressing room, Sarah explored the studio. “Suddenly, in front of my eyes I saw a marvelous guy.”

The star of a popular Spanish soap opera

He asked, “Oh, hey there. Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Smitten, she told him she was a friend of Marcela’s. He introduced himself as Joshua Mintz.

Sarah excitedly ran back to her friend’s dressing room and told her, “I know this sounds crazy, but I think I just met my future husband and father of my children.” That moment, they heard a knock on her dressing room door.

Joshua stood there stammering, “Oh… Hi! I…was checking to see if everything was okay.” He stayed briefly, and then left.

Joshua later confided that he had knocked on Marcela’s door to find out more about the beautiful blonde, Sarah.

It was love at first sight and divine intervention that began their relationship. Joshua was working as an Executive Producer in Mexico and was just in LA by chance. The TV show Marcela acted in had fired the original producer, and Joshua replaced him. It was his first time in LA, and he was only there for that specific project.

Sarah and Joshua were opposites. Sarah was loud, fiery, seductive, and was the life of the party. Joshua was reserved, serious, and professional. Sarah was Catholic and Joshua was Jewish, but that didn’t matter to them. Joshua was so far removed from Judaism, even though he always remained a Zionist, the fact that she wasn’t Jewish never interfered or came up as a topic of conversation in their relationship.

Until it was time to get married.

After Joshua proposed, Sarah said, “I envision getting married in a Catholic Church, wearing a beautiful white dress.”

He paused and said, “I’m sorry, I can’t do that because I’m Jewish.”


Stunned by his response, she said, “Okay, then why don’t we get married according to your religion in your synagogue?

“No, we can’t get married in a synagogue because you have to be Jewish.”

They decided to have a civil wedding because Sarah didn’t want to incorporate both Judaism and Catholicism under one roof. She wanted to be respectful and authentically follow one religion or another, not a convenient combination of both. “I didn’t want to make a mockery or have a circus at my wedding.”

They got married in 2005 and lived in Miami. Sarah began taking English courses at night with a professor. He noticed that she was very spiritual and suggested that she go to the Kabbalah Center in order to learn English and spirituality simultaneously. Even though she was interested, she felt her English wasn’t sufficient to understand the courses offered and didn’t go.

One day, Sarah and Joshua took a walk after a hurricane had passed through Florida. They saw a piece of paper lying on the sidewalk. It was a flier that offered Kabbalah classes in Spanish. Sarah thought it was a sign from God. She attended her first class and was thirsting for more. She felt restless and unsettled but wasn’t sure where the feeling was coming from. “Something was changing within me, but I didn’t know what.”

Sarah and Joshua Mintz

Sarah had a thriving and successful career at that point. She had an exclusive contract as one of the main actresses with Telemundo. Her face was all over billboards and advertisements. She attended award shows and walked all the red carpets. She loved her career, but still felt something was missing. Jewish mysticism fed her spiritual side. Without ever mentioning the word ‘Judaism,’ they introduced her to Torah, Shabbat, and the concept of family purity.

“When I found myself reading the Torah I thought, this is it. This is what I was looking for. I had such a wonderful life story, but I finally found what I was looking for. It’s not like I was looking for a big change. Judaism was simply the change my heart was looking for.”

Sarah started to keep Shabbat and all holidays, even though she was not yet Jewish. She stopped shooting on Friday evenings and Saturdays and would make excuses as to why she couldn’t be there. Before signing new contracts, she would explain that she was not available on Saturdays. She began to dress more modestly and started keeping portions of the laws of family purity. The Kabbalah Center had a class called “Sex and Kabbalah,” which was about family purity. Sarah said she started to live this way without even knowing it was Judaism.

She was making small changes and was enjoying the learning at the Kabbalah Center, but at a certain point, she felt she needed more. She began to take classes with an Orthodox Rabbi, but her husband felt this was too extreme and asked her to change course.

As a compromise, she started to learn with a Conservative Rabbi in 2014. At that time, she was expecting twins, and the Rabbi explained that if she wanted the children to be born Jewish, she needed to convert before giving birth. She undertook a quick conversion, and she and Joshua remarried in a Conservative ceremony before giving birth to twin boys, Akiva and Yehuda.

At that point, Joshua was offered a new position for a TV Network in Mexico called TV Azteca. This was the opportunity of a lifetime, and their family moved to Mexico. Sarah began looking into Jewish schools for the children and was again introduced to another Orthodox Rabbi. She was drawn to his classes and this time she shared what she was learning with Joshua. The more she learned, the more she shared with her husband, who found the concepts intriguing and meaningful. Sarah wanted to begin incorporating Jewish practices in her life and no longer wanted to be kissing other men as an actress.


Joshua realized how happy Judaism was making his wife, so he got onboard. With Sarah leading the way, together they decided that Sarah would convert as an Orthodox Jew. She traveled to Jerusalem in 2016 and completed her conversion that year. With a new religious identity, she decided to change her name from Maritza to Sarah.

“Since I was a young girl, I never liked the name Maritza that my mom gave me.” She prayed that God would help her find the right Jewish name for herself.

While visiting Jerusalem, she connected to the name Sarah when praying by the grave of Sarah the Matriarch at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, but didn’t want to have a difficult life like she did, with trouble bearing children, among her other challenges. So she pointedly ignored the fact that she was drawn towards the name.

When she went back to work at the Telemundo studio, she got several texts from someone asking to speak with Sarah. She called the guy to tell him he had the wrong number. “I think you are texting the wrong person,” she told him. “I’m Maritza.”

He responded, “Are you sure you are not Sarah?”

That moment gave her goose bumps and she knew her name had to be Sarah.

Remarried in Israel after Sarah’s Orthodox conversion

The first person who started using her new name was her mother, Eva, who accepted and supported her conversion wholeheartedly.

Even though Sarah now lives happily as a full-fledged Jew in Jerusalem, it is not always easy to balance her career, home life, and Jewish commitment. She said, “It is easier to make a decision than to maintain it.”

Today, Sarah still acts, but is selective in what she agrees to film. She is currently part of a successful reality show that portrays the six most iconic villains of Latin American television in a show called, Secrets of the Villains. The six “villains” spend a week together with no kids or family in various mansions around the globe. On the show they get to be their real selves and are no longer acting as villains. They share their secrets and reveal things that happen in their lives. It’s all authentic, and there are no scripts. Sarah was allowed to be herself and show the world who she is now and all of the beautiful aspects of Judaism.

Barbara Hidalgo, production manager shared, “Sarah inspired me, and inspires so many people. We are not even Jewish. She teaches me things about respect to others, to your husband, to God. So many things make a lot of sense that I never, never thought about before. We must respect her Shabbat. When Sarah goes anywhere, she’s like a light walking. She is always so wise and sweet and so able to connect with people. She really touches our hearts. Even people who don’t know her love and respect her a lot.”

Sarah is the only actress on the show who is still married today. Most of the actresses in the industry are divorced or single. It’s very hard to have a healthy family with such a career. Her priority has always been her family. She knew she wanted to have a successful career, but realized when she got married that her husband and kids were going to come first.

In addition to acting, Sarah is also a fashion and lifestyle influencer, boasting two million social media followers. She uses her platform to teach others about Judaism and is also a spiritual coach.
Sarah has been able to successfully integrate all parts of herself and is able to lead a full, inspirational life. “I’m working with a Chassidic channel. We are working on Chassidic stories, acting out a narrative that feeds the soul with Jewish stories. I’m also a teacher at a Jewish seminary in Spanish, where women study Torah and girls also study for conversion. I’m also a life coach, and I work a lot with the Minister of the Diaspora to connect Judaism with different communities. I love to study and learn, to inspire my family…including my husband, who has grown so much. I am very happy to have completed my dream, and to have an impact on society, not only for the Jews, but also to the non-Jewish public to inspire people to have a genuine connection with God. To be an influencer is to be a positive role model.”

When asked how she felt about living in Israel during the recent war between Israel and Hamas, she said, “I wasn’t scared. The first thing I said to myself was, ‘This is the best place to be. I’m in God’s hands.’ And that’s how I have felt from the moment I stepped foot in Israel.”

Sarah has some words of encouragement for people around the world who are currently fearing for safety, given their Jewish-born status. “We must recognize the jewels that we are. God loves us so much and has given us the task to do good in this world. We have to know that we are so small and yet we are protected by the Infinite God. With faith and trust, we can build a beautiful life with whatever God brings our way. Our greatest weapon is our connection to God.”
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF JEWISH CONSPIRACY THEORIES
ILENE S. COHEN, PH. D.
A deep dive into the intricate psychology behind mass antisemitism.
Throughout history, conspiracy theories have often been the spark that ignites fear, discrimination, and violence. Among these, Jewish conspiracy theories hold a unique place, often involving unfounded claims of global control, manipulation of economic systems, or secretive plots. These theories are rooted in antisemitism and have been used to propagate an "accepted" hate and conduct against Jewish people.

Conspiracy theories generally arise from a need to make sense of complex world events. They appeal to our cognitive biases, such as the tendency to see patterns where none exist or to attribute intent to random events. They offer a simple explanation for complex phenomena, bringing comfort to some.

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Jewish conspiracy have been used as a way to demonize the Jewish people so that any violence against them could be justified and dismissed.

But Jewish conspiracy theories differ from regular conspiracy theories. While most conspiracy theories are created to explain unexpected or shocking events, Jewish conspiracy theories are often designed to propagate hate speech and justify discriminatory actions. They have been used as a way to demonize the Jewish people so that any violence against them could be justified and dismissed. We have seen it throughout history, and this very same tactic to create global hate against the Jewish people is being used again today.

Historical Examples of Jewish Conspiracy Theories
The archives of history are filled with examples of Jewish conspiracy theories, each more damaging than the last.

International Jewish Conspiracy: This theory, suggesting a coordinated global effort by Jews to control the world, is perhaps the most widespread and pernicious. Despite having no basis in fact, it has been used to justify various forms of discrimination and persecution. For example, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1903 is a fabricated anti-Semitic text that was widely circulated during the early 20th century. It proposed a global conspiracy by Jews to control the world. Even though it has been widely debunked, it contributed significantly to the spread of the International Jewish Conspiracy theory.

The Dreyfus Affair (1894-1906): This was a prominent example in France where a Jewish military officer, Alfred Dreyfus, was falsely accused of treason. The event was fueled by antisemitic sentiments and conspiracy theories about Jews having dual loyalties.

In the Nazi era (1933-1945), Adolf Hitler and his party propagated the idea of an International Jewish Conspiracy as a part of their antisemitic propaganda. This theory played a crucial role in justifying the genocide of six million Jews during the Holocaust.

Hitler openly propagated the trope of an International Jewish Conspiracy in his book, Mein Kampf, where he blamed Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I and the subsequent economic hardships. This damning narrative was further exacerbated by Joseph Goebbels, the Reich's Minister of Propaganda, through his skillful use of media, including newspapers, radio broadcasts, and films. The Nazi's portrayal of Jews as the enemy behind Germany's troubles effectively dehumanized them, facilitating their systematic persecution.

The Rothschild Conspiracy: Originating in the 19th century, this conspiracy theory insinuated that the Rothschild family, a prominent banking dynasty of Jewish descent, possessed the power to manipulate global events for their monetary gain. This false narrative primarily stemmed from the family's substantial wealth and influence in finance during the 1800s. The antisemitic stereotype embedded in this conspiracy painted Jews universally as greedy, power-hungry, and corrupt, extending the harmful trope far beyond the individual family.

White Genocide Conspiracy Theory (Late 20th Century - Present): This theory, which emerged prominently in the late 20th century and continues to persist today, falsely suggests that Jews are orchestrating the replacement of white populations with non-white populations. The narrative is often associated with extreme right-wing ideologies and white supremacist movements, which view cultural diversity and immigration as threats to the white ethnic identity.

They propagate the baseless idea that a shadowy Jewish cabal is masterminding these demographic changes to undermine white societies. This theory is often tied to anti-Semitism, with Jews being accused of orchestrating these changes to undermine white power.

It is important to stress that all of these historical Jewish conspiracy theories lack any factual grounding. These theories have been widely dismissed by scholars and are recognized as a manifestation of hate speech.

Current Conspiracy Theories: Anti-Israel Narratives
In recent times, misinformation about the Israel-Hamas War has been rampant, further perpetuating Jew hatred. Jewish people are often categorized as the "white oppressor" and "occupier," an unfounded stereotype that breeds acceptable hate and violence towards them.

Post-October 7th, the anti-Israel narratives have been gaining increasing traction, leading to widespread repercussions amongst Israel supporters and global Jewish communities. The act of categorizing Jewish people as the "white oppressor" and "occupier" has fueled an environment conducive to hostility and aggression, often manifesting as hate crimes and antisemitic attacks. This has created a climate of fear and uncertainty among Jewish people and Israeli supporters worldwide.

In the United States, for instance, a marked increase in the number of antisemitic incidents has been reported. Jewish synagogues, schools, and community centers have been targeted, forcing institutions to heighten security measures and individuals to conceal their Jewish identity. Such a hostile environment has the potential to erode the sense of communal solidarity and individual self-assurance fundamental to the Jewish way of life.

This has also affected the worldwide support for Israel, a cornerstone of Jewish identity for many. Supporters of Israel, irrespective of their Jewish heritage, are finding themselves under scrutiny and, at times, direct threat. This atmosphere of intimidation can deter open support for Israel, undermining democratic values of free speech and association.

The Psychology Behind Jewish Conspiracy Theories
Fear, ignorance, and the human tendency to scapegoat others are critical factors behind the traction gained by these theories. Scapegoating provides an outlet for frustration and a target for displaced anger. The search for patterns or explanations, even where none exist, can lead to creating and propagating conspiracy theories.

We must be open to holding multiple perspectives and evaluating sources or methods to understand this phenomenon comprehensively. When understanding Jewish conspiracy theories, a complex interplay of societal, psychological, and individual factors contributes to their spread.

For instance, in modern times, a sociological perspective might highlight the role of social media in facilitating the rapid dissemination and normalization of these theories. A psychological lens might focus on cognitive biases predisposing individuals toward conspiracy thinking, such as a propensity for pattern recognition and a tendency toward scapegoating. Meanwhile, analyzing individual testimonies could reveal personal factors, such as feelings of disenfranchisement or fear, that make specific individuals more susceptible to conspiracy theories.

A systemic approach to viewing why conspiracy theories spread and happen emphasizes the importance of multifaceted responses addressing the societal, psychological, and personal factors propagating conspiracy theories. These theories have significant societal and individual impacts. They contribute to a climate of fear and suspicion, and they can incite violence and discrimination against Jewish communities.

Understanding the psychological mechanisms behind these conspiracy theories is crucial in combating their spread. By becoming more critical of the information we consume, people can become more aware of the harmful effects of such unfounded beliefs.

Education and awareness are crucial to counteracting these harmful narratives. Encouraging critical thinking, promoting media literacy, and fostering empathy and understanding can help reduce the influence of these damaging conspiracy theories. In the face of hate, we must stand together, challenge misinformation, and strive for a world where acceptance and understanding prevail over prejudice and discrimination.

References
Anti-Defamation League. (2020). Audit of Antisemitic Incidents. https://www.adl.org/audit2020
Bilewicz, M., Winiewski, M., Kofta, M., & Wójcik, A. (2013). Harmful ideas, the structure and consequences of anti-Semitic beliefs in Poland. Political Psychology, 34(6), 821-839.
Bruder, M., Haffke, P., Neave, N., Nouripanah, N., & Imhoff, R. (2013). Measuring individual differences in generic beliefs in conspiracy theories across cultures: Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire. Frontiers in psychology, 4, 225.
Van Prooijen, J. W., & Acker, M. (2015). The influence of control on belief in conspiracy theories: conceptual and applied extensions. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 29(5), 753-761.
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Four Women Who Are Changing the World
Mother Tells Israeli Soldiers: Don’t Blame Yourselves for Accidentally Killing My Son
by Sarah Pachter
December 24, 2023
These four incredible women — Sarah R’bibo, Dr. Deborah Axelrod, Miri Robin, and Galit Horowitz — are moving mountains.

Sarah R’bibo
Sarah R’bibo and her family

In 2017, Sarah R’bibo helped to create Maor, the only Jewish special needs school in Los Angeles. Sarah’s youngest daughter, Iva, was born in 2012. Early on, Sarah noticed developmental delays and began the search to access services for her daughter. When Sarah embarked on a journey to pave a path for her daughter she had no idea it would create one for hundreds to follow.

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As Iva grew, Sarah and her husband were shocked to learn that there were no Jewish schools in the city for their daughter. Sarah searched for a viable option and was told, “There must be a Jewish school here in LA, you just did not look hard enough.” “Those kids get what they need in public school.”

Students at Maor

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Seven years ago, Sarah met Chaya Chazanow, another mother who was dealing with similar issues. They started a Whatsapp group that still exists today, boasting over 100 participants. “The chat helped us find others. We were determined to build a community to help everyone navigate this challenge.” This was the beginning of the vision for Maor.


“We got the advice to get a couple kids, a teacher, and just go. I thought, Okay, that’s doable.”

Maor Academy opened in 2017 with just Sarah and Chaya’s children. Today, Maor is home to 36 students and 20 staff members. “Maor is a school that thinks differently by focusing on our students’ strengths, not deficits. We do not put limits on what they can accomplish,” Sarah says.

Maor believes in individualized education, creating personalized learning plans for each student, addressing the entire child, all in a warm and loving Jewish environment that helps our students succeed.

Sarah explains, “People have a narrow view of what they think special needs means. Many assume it is only children with severe disabilities. But there are many neuro-diverse children who think and learn differently, and who struggle in traditional school settings. We teach them that thinking differently can lead to greatness. At Maor, we are breaking down this limited belief system and giving our students a new story of what they can accomplish and achieve in life.”

Sarah receives many calls from parents whose children are only three years old and have already been labeled as the “difficult” or “problem” child because of learning differences and behaviors.

“We had one mother who said that her five-year-old was already saying things like, ‘I’m not smart’ and ‘I hate being Jewish.’ This child had an amazing year at Maor. She flourished, and now loves school and Judaism.”

Sarah and Chaya are now leading an entire community of parents who desperately need them. “What I am most proud of is that we created a community space where students and families feel welcome and supported. We had the opportunity to be trailblazers and to create something that has far surpassed our expectations.”

Dr. Debora Axelrod
Dr. Axelrod, who has studied under top surgeons and renowned doctors, has treated breast cancers in over 10,000 patients over 35 years.
“I was lucky because during the early days of general surgery there weren’t many students interested in breast cases so I got the surgeries and the office hour exposure. When I told the chief surgeon that I wanted to be a breast surgeon, he replied, ‘I didn't train you all these years just to be a breast surgeon.’”

Dr. Axelrod didn’t mind that it wasn't the popular choice. She was drawn to it and became the chief of surgery at Beth Israel Hospital, in 1988. But she didn’t always want to be an oncologist. She originally wanted to be a comedian. Although she felt she wasn’t funny enough to become one, she used her love of comedy to write a book with Rosie O'Donnell, who was a patient of hers.

Dr. Axelrod reached out to her about writing a book together. The result was Bosom Buddies: Lessons and Laughter on Breast Health and Cancer. All the proceeds from the book are donated to charity. Every last dollar has gone to deserving organizations and breast cancer research.

“The most rewarding aspect of my job is receiving feedback from my patients.

“When I turned 50 I decided to make a birthday book with entries from my patients. I asked them to send pictures and to share about their current life after cancer. I told them, ‘I’m not dying, but when I retire I want to look back at the book and show it to my grandkids. It was so astounding what people wrote, and so heartfelt to read their words. I have this book until today.”

Dr. Axelrod is confident that one day the medical community will win the war against breast cancer. “Make no mistake—it will go away. Finding the solution won’t be easy, but as physicians and researchers we must be persistent.”

Miri Robin
Miri Robin began an organization called Love N Groceries, which assists widows and widowers in the Los Angeles Jewish community. It officially began in March 2020, but the seeds were planted 15 years ago when Miri and her mother helped feed a local widow anonymously.

Miri Robin and her family

In 2020 a group of six women convened in Miri’s backyard. The husband of a friend of theirs had passed away, and they wanted to do something to help. “Instead of just nodding and saying, ‘We should do something,’ we took initiative and created the organization.”

Each family has an ambassador who is aware of that family's specific needs. “This is not a generic organization that just randomly donates things to people. It takes into account what each person in each family really needs at that moment.”

In addition to addressing immediate food needs, the organization pays for medical and dental bills, rent, and mortgage shortages when needed. They also make sure to help celebrate birthdays and milestones, and make each holiday special for their recipients.

The goal of Love N Groceries is long-term support. When someone’s spouse dies, in the beginning everyone is there for them. But over time, people tend to forget and life goes on. Years down the line, when these widows and their orphans really need help, they often don’t have anyone to turn to. Love N Groceries is here to fill that gap.

Members of Love N Groceries team

“This organization is crucial because of the much-needed support it provides. Our promise is that we will support each other in a time of need.”

Miri explains, “Not only do we provide these widows and their families with basic needs, we provide these women, men, and their children with comforts other families and children have so they don’t feel the shame of appearing deprived.”

Love N Groceries also serves as the liaison for individuals to give anonymously to specific families. One man bought his own wife a piece of jewelry before the holidays. He donated the same amount to Love N Groceries in order to gift a widow jewelry, as well. This was the first piece of jewelry this woman received in six years, since her husband's passing. Today, she wears the piece with pride, never knowing who the donor was.

Love N Groceries asks members to donate $25 a week to help the widows in the community. “The goal is that everyone gets involved to do something collectively, on a weekly basis. There is power in numbers and these small donations add up to make a huge difference.

“When a lonely widow receives a gift at her door, that gift reminds her, ‘We love you and we are here for you.’ Together, our community fills a deep void. The widows know that the community is there right by their side, holding them and carrying their burden alongside them. That makes all the difference in the world.”

Galit Horowitz
Galit Horowitz founded LevLA, an organization that provides a hospitality home for those undergoing medical treatment in Los Angeles. Galit and her husband, Shlomi Horowitz, have used their savings, and even taken out loans, in order to provide this space for those who cannot afford accommodations near the L.A.-area hospitals where they are receiving treatment.

What motivated them to do so?

The Horowitz Family
Galit’s personal story began ten years ago with her first husband, Noam Capri who, one month after Galit gave birth to twins, was diagnosed with heart failure and needed an immediate heart transplant. Galit lived in the Valley and she traveled back and forth from Cedars Sinai twice a day until his release. Afterwards, her husband was re-hospitalized after contracting West Nile Virus, and went into a coma.

Galit and her twins traveled back and forth, relying on the hospitality of her friends, and even sleeping at the hospital at times. She felt like a nomad, enduring this intense challenge for more than three years.

After Noam passed away, a vision was born. Galit and Shlomi are on a mission to host families of patients in surrounding hospitals, for free. They work tirelessly to give families, who fly in from around the world, a sense of comfort and home. They are provided with home-cooked meals, and their every need is anticipated and taken care of. Galit does not want anyone to go through what she went through. The Horowitz family doesn’t take any compensation for the incredible kindness they bestow, the epitome of true volunteering.

These four women took a moment of challenge and inspiration to transform the world around them. May their personal examples of everyday heroism inspire you to leave your mark on the world.

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Antisemitism Forced My Family to Flee Colombia
by Jessica Ghitis
December 25, 2023
For generations Cali, Colombia was my family’s home. Then the President of Colombia verbally attacked my father because he’s a Jew.

I grew up with my family's stories, like my great-grandfather Jaime who crossed the Atlantic, got off at the wrong port in Barranquilla, and made his way to the Valle del Cauca, Colombia in a small boat on the Magdalena River.

That's how my abuelito, Spanish for grandfather, Chicole Ghitis was born in Cali, along with my father, David, and finally me. I used to think about everything my ancestors had done to escape the pogroms in Russia and the Nazis in Romania so that I could sit and drink coffee on my abuelita’s balcony and feel the breeze that comes into Cali from the Pacific at five in the afternoon. I was sure that Cali was the promised land for me and my family, even though life and the pursuit of a career in screenwriting had taken me to Los Angeles, California. I would go back at least twice a year to be with my family and feel that breeze from the Pacific.

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Antisemitism Forced My Family to Flee Colombia
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My great-grandfather on a horse in Colombia

The president of Colombia called my father a Nazi and an Israeli criminal, putting a target on my father’s back and ultimately forcing him and my mother to flee from Colombia.

But there are moments that bind you to history. Your name gets tangled up with events and dates, and you become one more Jew in a long history of discrimination and displacement. In March 2022, the president of Colombia, President Gustavo Petro, called my father a Nazi and an Israeli criminal, and then published my father’s work history with Israel on Twitter. His comment put a target on my father’s back and ultimately forced him and my mother to flee from Colombia.

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My father is an activist who gained popularity on Twitter back in 2012 when Gustavo Petro was only the mayor of Bogotá. He fought to get the then mayor impeached, and this enraged him. Petro had previously belonged to a terrorist group called the M-19. Many didn’t believe someone who had taken up arms against Colombia should run the capital, especially someone who had been accused of killing those who disagreed with their views. My father also openly accused Petro of corruption because of the way he fast-tracked city contracts.


I was 19 at the time and felt horror rush through my veins as my last name, which had been foreign and difficult for non-Jews to pronounce, began to roll off people’s tongues with recognition. Most people believed that Petro’s disdain was personal, not antisemitic. At the time, even I didn’t view it as antisemitic.

In 2022, during a contentious presidential race, Gustavo Petro attacked and defamed my father because he published an opinion column criticizing Petro for wanting to use pension funds for government expenses. Petro had to say something big to turn attention away from him, and bringing attention to my father’s Jewishness was just the trick.

Since Petro’s remarks came just a year after President Vladimir Putin called Jewish president Volodymyr Zelensky a Nazi as his justification for invading Ukraine, the media paid attention and my family name was in the news again. Putin ignored thousands of years of history to attack Zelensky and justify his war, and Petro, who has repeatedly refused to condemn Russia’s war on Ukraine, followed in his footsteps to attack a person who belonged to an ethnic minority. (The population of Colombia is around 51 million inhabitants. Jews in Colombia number less than 14,700.)

The attack also touched old wounds for us as Colombians. The Colombian people have worked tirelessly to overcome their violent past, and this was a rude reminder that we hadn’t gotten far. Stories of kidnapped or murdered activists were swirling, and as a nation we feared that we were moving toward dark times once again.

Jessica Ghitis

My father began to receive kidnapping threats that reeked of antisemitism. They ranged from the unoriginal “Maldito Judio”, damned Jew, to “Israeli criminal”, feeding off Petro’s rhetoric and publication of my father’s work history where the world could see he had almost exclusively worked with Israeli companies, making him seem less Colombian and more “other”.

My father and mother, along with their four dogs, had to flee before threats became actions. Many other Jews have since followed, fearing the poisonous seeds planted by Petro are spreading.

It's not the first time that Colombia has witnessed a Jewish exodus. Back in the 90s, my family and many others decided to leave Colombia out of fear of the FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. This group was responsible for bombings, murders, drug trafficking, and kidnappings all in the name of gathering funds for their so-called “revolution”. When I was four years old, the FARC threatened our school. I remember seeing soldiers with guns escorting us onto buses to take us home. My parents told me that this was the last straw. I was five years old when we left Colombia for the first time and moved to Israel. Ten years and two presidents later, my parents finally felt it was safe enough to return.

We don’t talk about Colombian antisemitism, but the history buff in me rebels against this pajaso mental, a Colombian saying that refers to the strawman-like lies we tell ourselves. Unsurprisingly, many government officials were against “the Hebrew race” immigrating to Colombia during World War II and asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to prevent it. In the years that followed, anti-Jewish propaganda was posted on the streets and outside Jewish-owned shops as right-wing leaders supported Hitler’s fascism. They viewed it as a form of resistance. In 1944, after Alfonso Pardo Ruiz attacked Jacobo Fisboim, 44-year-old Jewish Colombian, businesses were vandalized, and Jews were beaten in the streets. These incidents were swept under the rug by my ancestors, perhaps so they could go on feeling that Colombia was welcoming to Jews.

When Gustavo Petro attacked my father, I thought about my ancestors. Those who brought the first Torah to Colombia, those who helped found my synagogue, proclaiming it should be made of iron so nothing could ever demolish it. The synagogue where my grandfather would be the rabbi for many years. I thought about my grandparents and great-aunts, who were mistreated by nuns in Catholic schools until the Jewish community built its own school.

My father was singled out for one simple reason: he is a Jew.

I also thought about my descendants, those who would never step inside my synagogue or school, those who would never feel the Cali breeze, and those who were going to be the first generation born in another country.

My father was not leading the charge against Petro. He’s not a politician. Many other people believe and say the same things my father said, and they have much more power and political standing than he ever had.

My father was singled out for one simple reason: he is a Jew.

Jews are the canary in a coal mine, warning the world of what’s to come. Since October 7th, the president of Colombia has spewed more antisemitic vile than just about any other world leader. He’s threatened to break political ties with Israel, stood silent as the Israeli Embassy is vandalized and threatened, and compared Jews to Nazis.

These signs cannot be ignored, and they are not only happening in Colombia.

I am a strong liberal feminist. I have marched in the United States for the rights of the Black community, LGBTQ+, reproductive rights, and for the rights of us immigrants. My friends share my ideals, but when it comes to my Jewish identity and what happened to my family due to antisemitism, they don’t take it seriously. Nobody is going to march for Jews except Jews.

Three generations of my family were born in Colombia. Three generations of my family have loved Colombia, but history obliges us to pay attention to the signs. The damage is irreparable. There is no Jewish future in Colombia, and Jews have been dehumanized to pave the way for hate and violence against them.

I refuse to sweep our pain under the rug. Violence begins with words, like the words of President Gustavo Petro. And when we needed support, none was found; we were abandoned.

Today, Jews around the world need support, and every citizen of the world needs to ask themselves: will I stand with the forces of darkness or with the forces of light?

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Stephen Fry Declares His Jewish Pride and Calls Out Antisemitism
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
December 26, 2023
The British actor’s alternative Christmas message broadcasted on BBC was a bold, courageous statement that is getting a lot of hate.
On December 25 he delivered Channel 4's Alternative Christmas Message to Britain. It’s a huge honor. Each year, King Charles (and before him, Queen Elizabeth) delivers a formal Royal Christmas Message, wishing all a happy holiday and highlighting important social issues and messages. For the past 30 years, a popular figure then delivers an alternative point of view.

Stephen Fry, a disengaged Jew, tackled antisemitism. “One truth about myself…that I never thought for one single second would ever be an issue about which I had any cause to worry in this country was that I’m a Jew,” he intoned. “Yes, you heard me correctly, I am a Jew.” Acknowledging that “that may surprise some people,” Fry described how his mother’s Jewish family fled Central Europe in the 1930s, finding refuge in England. Fry pointed out that something has profoundly shifted.
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“My Jewish grandparents loved Britain, believing that Jews were more welcome here than in most countries,” Fry told the nation. “I am glad they aren’t alive now to read newspaper stories that would have reminded them of the 1930s Europe that they left behind… Since October the 7th there have been 50 separate reported incidents of antisemitism every day in London alone, an increase of 1350%... Shop windows smashed, Stars of David and swastikas daubed on walls of Jewish properties, synagogues, and cemeteries. Jewish schools have been forced to close. There is real fear stalking the Jewish neighborhoods of Britain. Jewish people here are becoming fearful of showing themselves.”

Fry’s statistics are sobering. In London in December alone, a Jewish man wearing a kippah was punched in the head by someone who yelled “kill the Jews” at a London bus stop. An Orthodox woman was kicked and punched on a busy street in the middle of the afternoon until she lost consciousness in what London police are investigating as an anti-Jewish hate crime. Jewish schools in London have closed temporarily rather than have students and parents risk their lives by walking past angry mobs calling for the eradication of Israel which have sometimes demonstrated outside. And women putting up posters of Israeli hostages have been attacked, pushed to the ground, and kicked.

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The situation is similar in much of the world. In France, “the number of antisemitic acts has exploded,” announced Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin. In Germany, the Israeli embassy in Berlin recently said that the rise of antisemitic incidents in that city is “reminiscent of the Third Reich” era. In the United States, FBI director Christopher Wray described the current climate of antisemitism as “reaching…historic levels.”


Backlash

While some have welcomed Fry’s beautiful Christmas message, many have excoriated him for daring to defend Jews and criticizing antisemitism. Soon after Fry was announced as this year’s deliverer of the Alternative Christmas Message, Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of Britain’s Holocaust Education Trust, wrote that both she and Fry were being inundated with hateful anti-Israel messages on social media every time they were linked to any criticism of antisemitism, no matter what the context.

Pollack explained that when the Holocaust Education Trust posted about the 85th anniversary of a group of Jewish children being brought to safety in Britain, they had to turn off the comment button on their Twitter account. Messages included “Holocaust is fake zionism (sic),” “From the River to the Sea…Israehell will never be,” “and Keep the world clean” along with a picture of a Jewish star being dumped into a garbage can. This sort of discourse has become commonplace on social media since Hamas October 7 attacks, she notes, identifying Stephen Fry as a particular target of online hate.

As soon as Fry delivered his message, Twitter was rife with vile anti-Israel rants and comments excoriating him for daring to complain about anyone hating Jews. The Express - a sensationalist Britain newspaper - immediately posted the headline “Stephen Fry sparks angry backlash to pro-Israel alternative Christmas message on Channel 4” - even though Fry’s message had nothing whatsoever to do with Israel. The newspaper reported that Fry is being accused of “spreading propaganda” about Israel and linked to some of the many anti-Fry messages flooding social media.

Ignorance about Jews and Israel

Confusion and ignorance about Jews and Israel allow these sorts of antisemitic attitudes to take root and grow.

Ignorance about Jews and Israel is growing. In 2020, a major study found that fully 63% of Americans did not know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Another survey that year found that 11% of Millennial and Generation Z Americans (19% in New York state) thought that it was Jews themselves who caused the Holocaust.

Ron Hassner, a political science professor and Chair of the Israel Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley, recently surveyed protestors yelling the well-known slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” asking them which river and which sea the slogan referred to. (The slogan is a way of saying that the entire territory which currently makes up Israel, the lands governed by the Palestinian Authority, and Gaza - all of which lie between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea - should be one entity. This would mean the eradication of Israel and likely the deaths of millions of Israeli Jews should an extremist organization like Hamas come to power.) In Prof. Hassner’s survey, a majority of demonstrators - 53% - couldn’t name which river and which sea they were talking about. “There’s no shame in being ignorant unless one is screaming for the extermination of millions,” Prof. Hassner notes. Another recent poll found that 50% of Americans between 18 to 24 support Hamas in the current Israel-Hamas war.

Stephen Fry’s Answer to Antisemitism

Given the horrible smears against Stephen Fry since his Christmas Address, his message of hope is more important than ever. Fry noted the importance of being proud to be Jewish. “I’m frankly damned if I’ll let antisemites be the ones who define me, and take ownership of the word Jew, injecting it with their own spiteful venom. So I accept and claim the identity with pride, I am Stephen Fry, and I am a Jew… At this time in the face of the greatest rise in anti-Jewish racism since records began, Jews should stand upright and proud in who they are…Standing upright means speaking up and calling out venomous slurs and hateful abuse wherever you encounter them. Knowing and loving this country as I do, I don’t believe that most Britons are ok living in a society that judges hatred of Jews to be the one acceptable form of racism. So speak up, stand with us, be proud to be Jewish, or Jew-ish - or, if not Jewish at all, proud to have us as much a part of this great nation as any other minority, as any of you.”

It took courage for Stephen Fry, long considered a quintessentially English national treasure, to identify himself so publicly as a Jew, and to use his Christmas Message to deliver such an unpopular speech. May his message inspire all of us to stand tall, be proud, and refuse to ignore the antisemitism that’s all around us.

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Elaine, peace is powerful!

Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

During World War I, in the winter of 1914, on the battlefields of Flanders, one of the most unusual events in history took place. The Germans had been in a fierce battle with the British and French. Both sides were dug in, safe in muddy man-made trenches six to eight feet deep that seemed to stretch forever… but it was Christmas, and what happened next was astonishing, writes Stanley Weintraub, author of the book, Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce.

“The Germans set trees on trench parapets and lit the candles. Then, they began singing carols, and though their language was unfamiliar to their enemies, the tunes were not. After a few trees were shot at, the British became more curious than belligerent and crawled forward to watch and listen. And after a while, they began to sing.

By Christmas morning, the "no man's land" between the trenches was filled with fraternizing soldiers, sharing rations and gifts, singing and (more solemnly) burying their dead between the lines. Soon they were even playing soccer, mostly with improvised balls.”

Though the war had to continue, as commanders on both sides ordered their troops to restart hostilities, this interval of peace during war was extraordinary and unprecedented.

Elaine, this is the season of peace. And the Prince of Peace has commanded us to be peacemakers. May we become known for initiating peace -- in our homes, in our families, in our workplaces, in every which situation. And never forget to pray for the Peace of Jerusalem!

Your family in the Lord with much agape love,

George, Baht Rivka, Obadiah and Elianna (Dallas, TX)
(Baltimore, MD)

Editor's Note: During this war, we have been live blogging throughout the day -- sometimes minute by minute on our Telegram channel. Be sure to check it out!


Editor's Note: Would you prayerfully consider giving a year-end donation to Worthy Ministries? Your support will help us grow, allowing us to hire additional writers and staff for the coming year.

Editor's Note: We are planning our Winter Tour so if you would like us to minister at your congregation, home fellowship, or Israel focused event, be sure to let us know ASAP. You can send an email to george [ @ ] worthyministries.com for more information.

https://aish.com/why-are-so-many-christmas-songs-written-by-jews/?src=ac
Why Are So Many Christmas Songs Written by Jews?
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
December 24, 2023
From White Christmas to Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, Jews created much of the soundtrack of the holiday.

Many of the most beloved Christmas songs were written by Jewish composers who shaped Americans’ conception of the holiday. From White Christmas to Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer to Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Jews created much of the soundtrack of the holiday.
Why are so many of the most beloved Christmas songs Jewish creations?
Aish
A Generation of Antisemites
Dutch Jewish composer Stephen Emmer (who’s written his own Christmas song, Sleep for England) posits that: “It is in the DNA of Jews to write melancholy music, and also to ingratiate themselves in a world in which they are outsiders, at a time of the year when people are feeling especially patriotic and rooted in the idea of home.”

For many of the Jewish composers mentioned below, it seems that writing Christmas music was a way of fitting into a non-Jewish American idea. They didn’t write about Jesus or religious aspects of the holiday. Instead, their songs invoke an idealized American life that was denied to them and their families.
“The Christmas songs that are popular are not about Jesus, but they’re about sleigh bells and Santa and the trappings of Christmas,” explains Jewish American singer Michael Feinstein, who has recorded Christmas music himself. “They’re not religious songs.” Perhaps writing comforting, largely secular-sounding Christmas songs was a way for these composers to allow Jews to take part in the season.
Jewish American composer Rob Kapilow believes these composers reinvented Christmas as a largely secular holiday and a time to invoke an idealized America.
They created some beautiful music that brought joy to millions of people – but perhaps in doing so, they lost something precious of themselves, as well.
The story of the Jewish songwriters who shaped Christmas music “is…really a story about pogroms, prejudice, poverty, immigration, assimilation, and the powerful creative imaginations of an extraordinary group of songwriters who are trying to find their way into an American culture,” Kapilow notes, pointing out that older and European Christmas music used to be much more religious in nature. That changed in the 1940s, he believes, with the Jewish-written song White Christmas. “You know…lots of roads into American culture were blocked for these Jews, but they wanted to become part of that American world. And so what they did was they looked around, they listened around and they created the soundtrack of a secular Christmas.”

The composers listed below aren’t known for songs celebrating Hanukkah or other Jewish festivals. (Though Irving Berlin did write a song called Israel after the founding of the State of Israel.) They created some beautiful music that brought joy to millions of people – but perhaps in doing so, they lost something precious of themselves, as well.
Christmas Classics Written By Jews
Here are a few classic songs written or co-written by Jewish musicians.
Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, by Jewish duo Mel Torme and Bob Levinson
Mel Torme was born in Chicago in 1925 after his parents immigrated from Russia. Mel remembered that after Shabbat dinner each week, he and his parents and siblings would sit on the front step of their building and serenade the neighbors with beautiful renditions of traditional Shabbat songs. Mel eventually left Jewish practice behind, became a composer, moved to California, and married four times. He teamed up with fellow Jewish musician Bob Levinson, who adopted the non-Jewish sounding name Wells. Bob penned lyrics to songs and Mel composed the music.

One summer day Mel walked into their Los Angeles studio to find a piece of paper propped on his piano reading: “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire / Jack Frost nipping at your nose / Yuletide carols being sung by a choir / And folds dressed up like Eskimos.” Bob walked in and explained that he was so hot, he’d tried to cool himself down by writing a song about winter. For his lyrics he drew on his childhood memories of wintertime in Boston.

Mel quickly came up with the now-famous song’s signature tune. Excited by how it sounded, Bob wrote more verses. The song was finished within 45 minutes. Nat King Cole recorded it the following year and a hit was born.

Mel Torme also wrote the song The Christmas Feeling in 1992.

Winter Wonderland, by Jewish composer Felix Bernard, words by Richard B. Smith
Felix Bernard
Richard B. Smith, the lyricist who wrote the beautiful words to this song, wasn’t Jewish, and they were among the last lyrics ever penned. He was hospitalized for tuberculosis in Pennsylvania in 1934 when he was 33 years old. Watching the snow fall outside his window, he wrote the words to Winter Wonderland and gave them to his business partner, the Jewish composer Felix Bernard (born Felix Bernhardt).

Knowing that his colleague was dying, Felix quickly wrote a beautiful melody for the work and ensured that it was released that year. Winter Wonderland was the biggest hit of 1934; Richard B. Smith died the following year.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow, by Jewish child prodigies Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne
This song was written during a major heat wave in 1945 in Los Angeles, when its composers found themselves longing for colder weather. Both of its composers were Jewish child protegees whose parents were refugees from Eastern Europe. They both changed their names, moved far away from their childhood homes, and gave up much of the Jewish ritual that marked their early lives.

Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne

Sammy Cahn was born Samuel Cohen in New York in 1913. He learned the violin and played in bar mitzvah bands as a teen. Jule Styne (born Julius Stein) was born into London’s impoverished East End in 1905; his parents hailed from Ukraine and owned a small grocery store. He played the piano on stage in London as a young child. When he was eight years old, Jule’s family moved to Chicago when Jule was eight. There, Jule played the piano with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He later transitioned to songwriting and moved to Los Angeles.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town, by John Coots and Haven Gillespie
Haven Gillespie (who was not Jewish) wrote the words to this 1934 hit and Jewish composer Fred Coots created the music. It took him only ten minutes to invent the core tune to this catchy melody.



Coots was born in 1897 in Brooklyn to a musical Jewish family. His father sang at bar mitzvahs and his mother was a concert pianist. In his long career, Coots wrote songs for dozens of musicals, as well as scores of stand-alone songs.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, A Holly Jolly Christmas and more, by Johnny Marks and his brother in law, Robert May
Johnny Marks was born in 1909 in Mt. Vernon, New York, into a distinguished, secular Jewish family. Eschewing a synagogue membership, he joined the “Ethical Culture School” in Manhattan, a largely-Jewish center that aimed to provide a religious-like framework outside the bounds of Judaism or any other religion. Marks became a musician and songwriter and eventually specialized in creating Christmas songs. Among the scores of Christmas songs he penned, some of the most famous are Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, and A Holly Jolly Christmas.

Johnny Marks
His most famous song, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, had a little-known family connection: it was based on a character created by Robert Lewis May, Johnny’s brother-in-law. In 1939, Robert was working for Montgomery Ward, the pioneering mail-order businessman and department store developer. It was a terrible time. Robert’s wife was very ill and he knew she didn’t have much more time left. Even though Robert was Jewish, Ward asked him to create a “cheery Christmas story” the store could give away with purchases during the Christmas shopping season.

Robert obliged and drew on his own experiences growing up as a “shy” and “small” Jewish boy who “had known what it was like to be an underdog.” He created a rhyming story about a little reindeer with a shiny nose named Rudolph. He is too small to help Santa deliver presents, but when the weather is foggy one Christmas Eve, Rudolph is the only reindeer who can help, illuminating Santa’s way with his glowing nose.

Years later, Johnny employed his brother-in law’s lyrics - written during the worst year of his life - in what is now a classic Christmas song.

White Christmas, by Irving Berlin
White Christmas was written by Irving Berlin, a Jewish composer for whom Christmas was always associated with deep sadness.

Born Israel Beilin in Russia, Irving Berlin moved with his family to New York in 1902, when he was five years old. The family was utterly impoverished. Irving’s father worked as a chazzan, or cantor, as well as in a meat plant as a Hebrew teacher. He died when Irving was 13 years old, throwing the family into penury. Irving and his seven siblings went to work as children, leaving school to help support their family. Irving sold newspapers and the snatches of songs he heard from bars as he walked New York’s streets was his first introduction to American music.

Irving Berlin
Irving’s first wife, Dorothy Goetz, contracted typhoid fever on their honeymoon and died soon after. He remarried and his son, Irving Berlin Jr., died when he was just three weeks old on Christmas Day 1928. From then on December 25 was always a day of sadness.

Despite these terrible personal feelings about December 25, Berlin wrote the nostalgic, beautiful song White Christmas in 1941, describing an idealized, all-American holiday, and it became a hit when Bing Crosby recorded it. It was included in the 1942 movie Holiday Inn, cementing White Christmas as an American favorite.

Sleigh Ride, Lyrics by Jewish New Yorker Mitchell Parrish and Music by Leroy Anderson
Swedish-American composer Leroy Anderson began composing Sleigh Ride during a 1946 heatwave. The tune conveys the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves and was initially performed without words. In 1950, Jewish songwriter Mitchell Parrish wrote words for the piece. It was eventually recorded by the Ronettes in 1963 and became a hit.

Mitchell Parrish
Born Michael Hyman Pashelinsky in 1901 in Lithuania, Mitchell Parrish’s family settled in New York where he learned to play the piano and got a job as a “songplugger,” traveling around New York music stores playing the latest popular songs in order to sell sheet music. He eventually wrote dozens of songs and worked on many musicals, though Sleigh Ride remained his most popular work.

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, by Jewish duo George Wyle and Edward Pola
This 1963 hit describing a quintessentially American Christmas was written by two Jews: George Wyle (born Bernard Weissman in 1916 in New York) composed the music and Edward Pola (born Sidney Edward Pollacsek in 1907, also in New York) wrote the lyrics. The song isn’t the most popular hit that George Wyle composed; he also wrote the theme song to Gilligan’s Island.
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https://aish.com/why-are-so-many-christmas-songs-written-by-jews/?src=ac
Why Are So Many Christmas Songs Written by Jews?
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
December 24, 2023
From White Christmas to Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, Jews created much of the soundtrack of the holiday.

Many of the most beloved Christmas songs were written by Jewish composers who shaped Americans’ conception of the holiday. From White Christmas to Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer to Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Jews created much of the soundtrack of the holiday.
Why are so many of the most beloved Christmas songs Jewish creations?
Aish
A Generation of Antisemites
Dutch Jewish composer Stephen Emmer (who’s written his own Christmas song, Sleep for England) posits that: “It is in the DNA of Jews to write melancholy music, and also to ingratiate themselves in a world in which they are outsiders, at a time of the year when people are feeling especially patriotic and rooted in the idea of home.”

For many of the Jewish composers mentioned below, it seems that writing Christmas music was a way of fitting into a non-Jewish American idea. They didn’t write about Jesus or religious aspects of the holiday. Instead, their songs invoke an idealized American life that was denied to them and their families.
“The Christmas songs that are popular are not about Jesus, but they’re about sleigh bells and Santa and the trappings of Christmas,” explains Jewish American singer Michael Feinstein, who has recorded Christmas music himself. “They’re not religious songs.” Perhaps writing comforting, largely secular-sounding Christmas songs was a way for these composers to allow Jews to take part in the season.
Jewish American composer Rob Kapilow believes these composers reinvented Christmas as a largely secular holiday and a time to invoke an idealized America.
They created some beautiful music that brought joy to millions of people – but perhaps in doing so, they lost something precious of themselves, as well.
The story of the Jewish songwriters who shaped Christmas music “is…really a story about pogroms, prejudice, poverty, immigration, assimilation, and the powerful creative imaginations of an extraordinary group of songwriters who are trying to find their way into an American culture,” Kapilow notes, pointing out that older and European Christmas music used to be much more religious in nature. That changed in the 1940s, he believes, with the Jewish-written song White Christmas. “You know…lots of roads into American culture were blocked for these Jews, but they wanted to become part of that American world. And so what they did was they looked around, they listened around and they created the soundtrack of a secular Christmas.”

The composers listed below aren’t known for songs celebrating Hanukkah or other Jewish festivals. (Though Irving Berlin did write a song called Israel after the founding of the State of Israel.) They created some beautiful music that brought joy to millions of people – but perhaps in doing so, they lost something precious of themselves, as well.
Christmas Classics Written By Jews
Here are a few classic songs written or co-written by Jewish musicians.
Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, by Jewish duo Mel Torme and Bob Levinson
Mel Torme was born in Chicago in 1925 after his parents immigrated from Russia. Mel remembered that after Shabbat dinner each week, he and his parents and siblings would sit on the front step of their building and serenade the neighbors with beautiful renditions of traditional Shabbat songs. Mel eventually left Jewish practice behind, became a composer, moved to California, and married four times. He teamed up with fellow Jewish musician Bob Levinson, who adopted the non-Jewish sounding name Wells. Bob penned lyrics to songs and Mel composed the music.

One summer day Mel walked into their Los Angeles studio to find a piece of paper propped on his piano reading: “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire / Jack Frost nipping at your nose / Yuletide carols being sung by a choir / And folds dressed up like Eskimos.” Bob walked in and explained that he was so hot, he’d tried to cool himself down by writing a song about winter. For his lyrics he drew on his childhood memories of wintertime in Boston.

Mel quickly came up with the now-famous song’s signature tune. Excited by how it sounded, Bob wrote more verses. The song was finished within 45 minutes. Nat King Cole recorded it the following year and a hit was born.

Mel Torme also wrote the song The Christmas Feeling in 1992.

Winter Wonderland, by Jewish composer Felix Bernard, words by Richard B. Smith
Felix Bernard
Richard B. Smith, the lyricist who wrote the beautiful words to this song, wasn’t Jewish, and they were among the last lyrics ever penned. He was hospitalized for tuberculosis in Pennsylvania in 1934 when he was 33 years old. Watching the snow fall outside his window, he wrote the words to Winter Wonderland and gave them to his business partner, the Jewish composer Felix Bernard (born Felix Bernhardt).

Knowing that his colleague was dying, Felix quickly wrote a beautiful melody for the work and ensured that it was released that year. Winter Wonderland was the biggest hit of 1934; Richard B. Smith died the following year.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow, by Jewish child prodigies Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne
This song was written during a major heat wave in 1945 in Los Angeles, when its composers found themselves longing for colder weather. Both of its composers were Jewish child protegees whose parents were refugees from Eastern Europe. They both changed their names, moved far away from their childhood homes, and gave up much of the Jewish ritual that marked their early lives.

Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne

Sammy Cahn was born Samuel Cohen in New York in 1913. He learned the violin and played in bar mitzvah bands as a teen. Jule Styne (born Julius Stein) was born into London’s impoverished East End in 1905; his parents hailed from Ukraine and owned a small grocery store. He played the piano on stage in London as a young child. When he was eight years old, Jule’s family moved to Chicago when Jule was eight. There, Jule played the piano with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He later transitioned to songwriting and moved to Los Angeles.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town, by John Coots and Haven Gillespie
Haven Gillespie (who was not Jewish) wrote the words to this 1934 hit and Jewish composer Fred Coots created the music. It took him only ten minutes to invent the core tune to this catchy melody.



Coots was born in 1897 in Brooklyn to a musical Jewish family. His father sang at bar mitzvahs and his mother was a concert pianist. In his long career, Coots wrote songs for dozens of musicals, as well as scores of stand-alone songs.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, A Holly Jolly Christmas and more, by Johnny Marks and his brother in law, Robert May
Johnny Marks was born in 1909 in Mt. Vernon, New York, into a distinguished, secular Jewish family. Eschewing a synagogue membership, he joined the “Ethical Culture School” in Manhattan, a largely-Jewish center that aimed to provide a religious-like framework outside the bounds of Judaism or any other religion. Marks became a musician and songwriter and eventually specialized in creating Christmas songs. Among the scores of Christmas songs he penned, some of the most famous are Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, and A Holly Jolly Christmas.

Johnny Marks
His most famous song, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, had a little-known family connection: it was based on a character created by Robert Lewis May, Johnny’s brother-in-law. In 1939, Robert was working for Montgomery Ward, the pioneering mail-order businessman and department store developer. It was a terrible time. Robert’s wife was very ill and he knew she didn’t have much more time left. Even though Robert was Jewish, Ward asked him to create a “cheery Christmas story” the store could give away with purchases during the Christmas shopping season.

Robert obliged and drew on his own experiences growing up as a “shy” and “small” Jewish boy who “had known what it was like to be an underdog.” He created a rhyming story about a little reindeer with a shiny nose named Rudolph. He is too small to help Santa deliver presents, but when the weather is foggy one Christmas Eve, Rudolph is the only reindeer who can help, illuminating Santa’s way with his glowing nose.

Years later, Johnny employed his brother-in law’s lyrics - written during the worst year of his life - in what is now a classic Christmas song.

White Christmas, by Irving Berlin
White Christmas was written by Irving Berlin, a Jewish composer for whom Christmas was always associated with deep sadness.

Born Israel Beilin in Russia, Irving Berlin moved with his family to New York in 1902, when he was five years old. The family was utterly impoverished. Irving’s father worked as a chazzan, or cantor, as well as in a meat plant as a Hebrew teacher. He died when Irving was 13 years old, throwing the family into penury. Irving and his seven siblings went to work as children, leaving school to help support their family. Irving sold newspapers and the snatches of songs he heard from bars as he walked New York’s streets was his first introduction to American music.

Irving Berlin
Irving’s first wife, Dorothy Goetz, contracted typhoid fever on their honeymoon and died soon after. He remarried and his son, Irving Berlin Jr., died when he was just three weeks old on Christmas Day 1928. From then on December 25 was always a day of sadness.

Despite these terrible personal feelings about December 25, Berlin wrote the nostalgic, beautiful song White Christmas in 1941, describing an idealized, all-American holiday, and it became a hit when Bing Crosby recorded it. It was included in the 1942 movie Holiday Inn, cementing White Christmas as an American favorite.

Sleigh Ride, Lyrics by Jewish New Yorker Mitchell Parrish and Music by Leroy Anderson
Swedish-American composer Leroy Anderson began composing Sleigh Ride during a 1946 heatwave. The tune conveys the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves and was initially performed without words. In 1950, Jewish songwriter Mitchell Parrish wrote words for the piece. It was eventually recorded by the Ronettes in 1963 and became a hit.

Mitchell Parrish
Born Michael Hyman Pashelinsky in 1901 in Lithuania, Mitchell Parrish’s family settled in New York where he learned to play the piano and got a job as a “songplugger,” traveling around New York music stores playing the latest popular songs in order to sell sheet music. He eventually wrote dozens of songs and worked on many musicals, though Sleigh Ride remained his most popular work.

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, by Jewish duo George Wyle and Edward Pola
This 1963 hit describing a quintessentially American Christmas was written by two Jews: George Wyle (born Bernard Weissman in 1916 in New York) composed the music and Edward Pola (born Sidney Edward Pollacsek in 1907, also in New York) wrote the lyrics. The song isn’t the most popular hit that George Wyle composed; he also wrote the theme song to Gilligan’s Island.
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https://aish.com/understanding-the-israeli-palestinian-crisis-a-comprehensive-historical-primer/?src=ac
UNDERSTANDING THE ISRAELI / PALESTINIAN CRISIS: A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORICAL PRIMER
DW DUKE
A clear, brief history of the Mideast conflict that is required reading to better understand what is happening today and a path forward in seeking a resolution.
The Backdrop
October 7, 2023, was a normal day for twenty-two-year-old Shani Louk. Shani, a tattoo artist from Germany was visiting a peace rally in Israel called the Supernova Festival which is a celebration of the end of Sukkot. As Shani danced with her friends, she failed to notice the thousands of Hamas militants who arrived without warning and began killing as many people as they could find. Shani was one of the victims. After killing Shani the Hamas militants stripped off her clothes and paraded her naked body through the streets of Gaza in the back of a pickup truck while cheering and shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

Shani was one of the victims of the Hamas assault that resulted in the death of over 1,200 people in Israel with several thousand more injuries. The massacre brought immeasurable grief around the world. Many supporters of Palestinians were shocked and grieved that their champion, Hamas, would engage in such a brutal slaughter. Others doubled down and adopted the mantra “Free Palestine by any Means” and “From the River to the Sea.” On the Jewish side of the conflict were the questions why did this happen? Why do they hate us so much? What did we do to deserve this? Ironically, the Supernova Festival was intended to be a peace rally to support peaceful relations between Israel and Palestine, yet Hamas attacked the festival anyway killing hundreds of attendees. The question is why.

Aish
A Generation of Antisemites
Read More
Having closely observed the conflict between Israel and Palestine for decades it occurred to me that modern media provides very little information about the actual dispute between these people which results in widespread ignorance of the issues. For example, in listening to discussions about the conflict, it is apparent that few people are aware that the Palestinian Authority and its adversary Hamas, are branches of the militant groups of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Muhammed Amin al-Huseini, who was the co-author, with Adolph Hitler, of the Nazi plan to concentrate and exterminate all Jews in Europe then in Palestine.

Prior to the October 7, attack, I had been assisting families in Palestine obtain food and medical care. During the course of our conversations, I had occasions to discuss their situation in depth. I learned that in one family the father was disabled due to an injury sustained in a military conflict with Israel. One of their sons was also disabled and the mother was the sole source of income. She sells fruits and vegetables from a fruit stand at the side of the road. The young woman explained that medical care is unavailable except to the wealthiest families and wealth is determined according to one’s rank within Hamas or within the sphere of Hamas’s influence.

UNDERSTANDING THE ISRAELI / PALESTINIAN CRISIS: A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORICAL PRIMER
DW DUKE
A clear, brief history of the Mideast conflict that is required reading to better understand what is happening today and a path forward in seeking a resolution.
The Backdrop
October 7, 2023, was a normal day for twenty-two-year-old Shani Louk. Shani, a tattoo artist from Germany was visiting a peace rally in Israel called the Supernova Festival which is a celebration of the end of Sukkot. As Shani danced with her friends, she failed to notice the thousands of Hamas militants who arrived without warning and began killing as many people as they could find. Shani was one of the victims. After killing Shani the Hamas militants stripped off her clothes and paraded her naked body through the streets of Gaza in the back of a pickup truck while cheering and shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

Shani was one of the victims of the Hamas assault that resulted in the death of over 1,200 people in Israel with several thousand more injuries. The massacre brought immeasurable grief around the world. Many supporters of Palestinians were shocked and grieved that their champion, Hamas, would engage in such a brutal slaughter. Others doubled down and adopted the mantra “Free Palestine by any Means” and “From the River to the See.” On the Jewish side of the conflict were the questions why did this happen? Why do they hate us so much? What did we do to deserve this? Ironically, the Supernova Festival was intended to be a peace rally to support peaceful relations between Israel and Palestine, yet Hamas attacked the festival anyway killing hundreds of attendees. The question is why.
READ MORE https://aish.com/understanding-the-israeli-palestinian-crisis-a-comprehensive-historical-primer/?src=ac

https://aish.com/anchorless-young-jews-need-to-learn-about-the-story-of-the-jewish-people/
Anchorless: Young Jews Need to Learn about the Story of the Jewish People
December 19, 2023
6 min read
The next chapter of the story of the Jewish People is being written and you play a role in it.

I grew up hearing from my parents about the open antisemitism that unleashed fear and eventually the hell of the Holocaust. My grandparents told me about the indifference of neighbors they had thought were friends. The vicious slogans, the boycotts, the beatings, the book burnings, and the laws against the Jews that all thought were impossible to occur in a cultured society.

No one thought it could happen. After all, to be highly educated means that you live with higher morals and clarity, right?
Wrong.

In just a few weeks we have seen the eruption of hatred unlike anything we have ever personally witnessed. Today we see the indifference of those who are sitting in the seats of authority. Hiding behind legalese they speak about “context” and close their eyes as rants calling for genocide against the Jews, “global intifada,” “resistance by any means, in all forms” shake the grounds of their campuses.

After beheading, raping, burning and kidnapping, you would imagine there would be widespread revulsion for their beastly behavior. Instead they are celebrated by professors, students, and mobs in the streets.

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Hamas, an openly anti-Jewish terrorist organization, has become the new superhero of the younger generation. Their 1988 founding charter endorses the murder of every Jew on earth. Their leaders have called for “Jihad against every Jew.” After beheading, raping, burning and kidnapping, you would imagine there would be widespread revulsion for their beastly behavior. Instead they are celebrated by professors, students, and mobs in the streets. “We are all Hamas” they shout. A week after the terrorists' hands were stained with the blood of our people, they declared their intention to repeat the murderous acts of October 7th again and again until Israel is wiped off the planet.


Instead of crying out at the injustice of innocent babies, women and civilians being taken hostage, body parts cut off, women violently violated as they plead for a quick death, the world is back to blaming the Jews for the massacre they bring upon themselves.

As the world simmers, Israel and the Jewish people, are called “colonizers”, “occupiers”, “murderers”, and an “apartheid state.” Shockingly, a majority of 18-24 year olds think that Israel should be ended and given to Hamas. They were the largest proportion of respondents who disagreed with the statement that Israel has the right to exist. Young Americans hold more anti-Jewish sentiment than any other group and agreed with a slew of antisemitic statements including “Jews have too much power in America,” “Israel exploits Holocaust victimhood for its own purposes”, and “Israel has too much control over global affairs.” One in five young Americans believe the Holocaust is a myth.

How dare the world forget!

I grew up with half my family missing. I never got to hear my grandmother’s sweet lullaby, never got to be held by my grandfather, feel their love or hear their voice. Cousins, aunts and uncles were shadows above us, whose names we carried. We lived because they could not. They were shoved into cattle cars, murdered, burned in ovens, gasping their very last breaths as the world remained silent. To call the Holocaust a myth is to deny their final dignity, their story, their very soul. To disbelieve the atrocities of that dark time allows us to turn a blind eye to what is happening today. Deleting the memories permits the world to erase the magical moment that brought us the gift of our land, of Israel.

Too many of our young generation lack the knowledge of Jewish history that provides essential context to the present conflict.

There was no country in the world who would take my parents in. The orphans, the broken hearted, the dry bones, had no where on earth to go. My parents had to sit in displaced persons camps while begging country after country for permission to begin life anew. The Israel that was born and sheltered the shattered nation is the Israel of today that continues to shelter us, and nurture our faith in tomorrow.

Too many of our young generation lack the knowledge of Jewish history that provides essential context to the present conflict. They protest, they scream, they speak out against the one place on earth that the Jewish nation calls home. For thousands of years we have dreamed of Jerusalem, we have called out its name as we faced the destruction of our Temples, were sold as slaves in the markets of Rome, crucified in the crusades, tortured in the Inquisitions, endured blood libels, gas chambers, and concentration camps. We never lost our hope of returning to our land, and to Jerusalem.

As we sat by the rivers of Babylon, we wept as we remembered Zion. Today, we cry again as we mourn those beautiful souls who were cruelly massacred and taken. We grieve for the young soldiers who are giving their lives defending our land. But here’s the difference. Miraculously, after thousands of years, we have come home. We stand before the Western Wall of our ancient Temple, a fortress of faith, testimony to the Divine promise of the Jew. We walk the very earth that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob walked. We, the Jewish people, will never forfeit our eternal legacy.

The hatred we see on streets around the world and on college campuses across America is intertwined with the canceling of our long history. My parents’ story began with intimidation, harassment, and revulsion of the Jew. As I watch the same story repeat itself, I know that we must be committed to hold onto our faith, our love for one another, and for the truth of our destiny.

The Torah warns us, after being attacked by the nation of Amalek, “Zachor! Remember!” Never forget those who try to wipe you off the face of this earth. Knowledge is power. The Jewish People do not have “history”; we have a “story” – a personal story about the Jewish family that speaks to us from the beginning of time until today. On Passover night we retell our story for each new generation to hear, strengthening the current link in the chain, and we recall, “In every generation they try to obliterate us, but God saves us from their hands.”

When you lose your memory, you surrender your story and become anchorless. Learn about your spiritual inheritance. Embrace your family’s story and deepen your understanding of what it means to be a Jew.
The next chapter of the story of the Jewish People is being written and you play a role in it. Stand strong.

Click here to comment on this article
https://aish.com/anchorless-young-jews-need-to-learn-about-the-story-of-the-jewish-people/


https://aish.com/madison-grant-the-american-eugenicist-who-inspired-hitler-to-eradicate-the-jews/
Aish
Madison Grant: The American Eugenicist Who Inspired Hitler to Eradicate the Jews
Wrong.
In just a few weeks we have seen the eruption of hatred unlike anything we have ever personally witnessed. Today we see the indifference of those who are sitting in the seats of authority. Hiding behind legalese they speak about “context” and close their eyes as rants calling for genocide against the Jews, “global intifada,” “resistance by any means, in all forms” shake the grounds of their campuses.

After beheading, raping, burning and kidnapping, you would imagine there would be widespread revulsion for their beastly behavior. Instead they are celebrated by professors, students, and mobs in the streets.

Hamas, an openly anti-Jewish terrorist organization, has become the new superhero of the younger generation. Their 1988 founding charter endorses the murder of every Jew on earth. Their leaders have called for “Jihad against every Jew.” After beheading, raping, burning and kidnapping, you would imagine there would be widespread revulsion for their beastly behavior. Instead they are celebrated by professors, students, and mobs in the streets. “We are all Hamas” they shout. A week after the terrorists' hands were stained with the blood of our people, they declared their intention to repeat the murderous acts of October 7th again and again until Israel is wiped off the planet.


Instead of crying out at the injustice of innocent babies, women and civilians being taken hostage, body parts cut off, women violently violated as they plead for a quick death, the world is back to blaming the Jews for the massacre they bring upon themselves.

As the world simmers, Israel and the Jewish people, are called “colonizers”, “occupiers”, “murderers”, and an “apartheid state.” Shockingly, a majority of 18-24 year olds think that Israel should be ended and given to Hamas. They were the largest proportion of respondents who disagreed with the statement that Israel has the right to exist. Young Americans hold more anti-Jewish sentiment than any other group and agreed with a slew of antisemitic statements including “Jews have too much power in America,” “Israel exploits Holocaust victimhood for its own purposes”, and “Israel has too much control over global affairs.” One in five young Americans believe the Holocaust is a myth.

How dare the world forget!

I grew up with half my family missing. I never got to hear my grandmother’s sweet lullaby, never got to be held by my grandfather, feel their love or hear their voice. Cousins, aunts and uncles were shadows above us, whose names we carried. We lived because they could not. They were shoved into cattle cars, murdered, burned in ovens, gasping their very last breaths as the world remained silent. To call the Holocaust a myth is to deny their final dignity, their story, their very soul. To disbelieve the atrocities of that dark time allows us to turn a blind eye to what is happening today. Deleting the memories permits the world to erase the magical moment that brought us the gift of our land, of Israel.

Too many of our young generation lack the knowledge of Jewish history that provides essential context to the present conflict.

There was no country in the world who would take my parents in. The orphans, the broken hearted, the dry bones, had no where on earth to go. My parents had to sit in displaced persons camps while begging country after country for permission to begin life anew. The Israel that was born and sheltered the shattered nation is the Israel of today that continues to shelter us, and nurture our faith in tomorrow.

Too many of our young generation lack the knowledge of Jewish history that provides essential context to the present conflict. They protest, they scream, they speak out against the one place on earth that the Jewish nation calls home. For thousands of years we have dreamed of Jerusalem, we have called out its name as we faced the destruction of our Temples, were sold as slaves in the markets of Rome, crucified in the crusades, tortured in the Inquisitions, endured blood libels, gas chambers, and concentration camps. We never lost our hope of returning to our land, and to Jerusalem.

As we sat by the rivers of Babylon, we wept as we remembered Zion. Today, we cry again as we mourn those beautiful souls who were cruelly massacred and taken. We grieve for the young soldiers who are giving their lives defending our land. But here’s the difference. Miraculously, after thousands of years, we have come home. We stand before the Western Wall of our ancient Temple, a fortress of faith, testimony to the Divine promise of the Jew. We walk the very earth that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob walked. We, the Jewish people, will never forfeit our eternal legacy.

The hatred we see on streets around the world and on college campuses across America is intertwined with the canceling of our long history. My parents’ story began with intimidation, harassment, and revulsion of the Jew. As I watch the same story repeat itself, I know that we must be committed to hold onto our faith, our love for one another, and for the truth of our destiny.

The Torah warns us, after being attacked by the nation of Amalek, “Zachor! Remember!” Never forget those who try to wipe you off the face of this earth. Knowledge is power. The Jewish People do not have “history”; we have a “story” – a personal story about the Jewish family that speaks to us from the beginning of time until today. On Passover night we retell our story for each new generation to hear, strengthening the current link in the chain, and we recall, “In every generation they try to obliterate us, but God saves us from their hands.”

When you lose your memory, you surrender your story and become anchorless. Learn about your spiritual inheritance. Embrace your family’s story and deepen your understanding of what it means to be a Jew.
The next chapter of the story of the Jewish People is being written and you play a role in it. Stand strong.

Click here to comment on this article
https://aish.com/anchorless-young-jews-need-to-learn-about-the-story-of-the-jewish-people/?src=ac

https://aish.com/madison-grant-the-american-eugenicist-who-inspired-hitler-to-eradicate-the-jews/?src=ac
Madison Grant: The American Eugenicist Who Inspired Hitler to Eradicate the Jews
Jews in the Land of Israel #2: From Ottoman Conquest to the 18th
by Kylie Ora Lobell
December 19, 2023
7 min read
The prominent wildlife conservationist and friend of Theodore Roosevelt was a notorious racist who impacted Nazi ideology.

Madison Grant, a lawyer and wildlife conservationist, released his book “The Passing of the Great Race” in 1916. In it, he proposed the Nordic race from northwest Europe, who were white, were culturally and biologically superior to all other people.

He wrote, “Man has the choice of two methods of race improvement. He can breed from the best or he can eliminate the worst by segregation or sterilization.”

Aish
Dispel the Lies by Telling the Jewish Story to the World
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Grant was racist towards all non-whites including Italians, Syrians, Blacks, and Jews. He was anti-immigration, anti-desegregation, and advocated for white people to only marry other white people. He called white Americans with Nordic ancestry the “native Americans,” discrediting anyone else who emigrated to the U.S.

“The man of the old stock is being crowded out of many country districts by these foreigners just as he is to-day being literally driven off the streets of New York City by the swarms of Polish Jews,” he wrote. “These immigrants adopt the language of the native American, they wear his clothes, they steal his name and they are beginning to take his women, but they seldom adopt his religion or understand his ideals and while he is being elbowed out of his own home the American looks calmly abroad and urges on others the suicidal ethics which are exterminating his own race.”

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Grant not only wrote about sterilizing non-whites and breeding more white people – he also advocated for these eugenicist policies in the U.S. government. Decades later, his dangerous ideas would catch on and inspire Hitler to pursue the Final Solution to get rid of the Jews altogether.

Who Was Madison Grant?
Madison Grant was born into a wealthy family in New York in 1865. His ancestors were some of the first immigrants to settle in New England colonies. His father, Gabriel Grant, was a surgeon and health commission who received a Congressional Medal of Honor for his work at the Battle of Fair Oaks during the Civil War.

Grant and his family would spend summers at their country estate in Long Island, where he explored the surrounding wildlife. He fell in love with hunting and was an early member of the newly formed Boone and Crockett Club. After studying at Columbia College (now Columbia University), he became a lawyer and spent much of his time going on big game hunting expeditions.

Madison Grant, second from left, councilor for the Save the Redwoods League, presented the dedication of the Bolling Grove in August 6, 1921, in honor of Colonel Raynal C. Bolling, the first American officer of high rank to fall in the world war.

Alongside Theodore Roosevelt, his friend and a fellow hunter, as well as some other colleagues, Grant worked to conserve parks and wildlife across the nation. As a result of their efforts, they protected the endangered bison in Oklahoma’s Wichita Mountains, which was one of the first national wildlife refuges in the U.S. He also fought to protect Glacier National Park in Montana, Olympic National Parks, and the redwoods in California’s sequoia forests.

Grant rose to fame and prominence through his conservation work. When he published his book “The Passing of the Great Race,” he tried to pass off racism as science. He advocated for eugenics, a scientifically inaccurate theory that human beings can be improved by selective breeding, and that white people are superior. The eugenics movement started in the late 1800s when Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton released his book “Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development” and argued that disease and health as well as social and intellectual characteristics were based on the concept of race.

U.S. eugenics poster advocating for the removal of genetic "defectives" such as the insane, "feeble-minded" and criminals, and supporting the selective breeding of "high-grade" individuals, c. 1926
Grant’s influence grew amongst those who were racist and against immigration around the turn of the 20th century. He served as president of the Eugenics Research Association, and he was a member of American Defense Society and the Immigration Restriction League, two anti-immigrant lobbying organizations. He also co-founded the Eugenics Committee of the United States of America to promote eugenics policies in the U.S., and he organized the second and third International Eugenics Congresses, which took place at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in 1921 and 1932.


It was there that Ernst Rüdin, a eugenicist, became popular; he served as the chairman of the Society of German Neurologists and Psychiatrists in the Nazi party and helped write the 1933 German Sterilization law. This law led to tens of thousands of people being forcibly sterilized in the U.S. and hundreds of thousands undergoing the same torture in Nazi Germany.

By the time Grant passed away in 1937, his book had sold 16,000 copies in the U.S. alone, and it was on the fourth edition of printing. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge were said to have been influenced by the book, and it was often quoted by politicians on the floor of Congress.

During that same time, the theory of eugenics had become popular worldwide, with Hitler leading the eugenics movement in 1930s and 1940s Germany to destroy the Jewish people – along with any other minorities or disabled people that did not fit the “superior” mold.

How Grant’s Book Impacted Nazi Ideology
“The Passing of the Great Race” was the first non-German book that the Nazis reprinted when they took over Germany. Hitler referred to it as “my Bible,” and referenced it in his autobiographical, antisemitic manifesto, “Mein Kampf.”


Along with sterilizing hundreds of thousands of non-white Germans, Hitler euthanized at least 70,000 adults and over 5,000 children in Germany, Austria, and additional occupied territories. Hitler used Grant’s theories to justify his systematic killing of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust and a number of other people, including individuals with disabilities and the Sinti and Roma, who were not white and did not fit into his idea of perfection, the “Aryan” race.

When the Nuremberg Trials were held after the war, the German side used “The Passing of the Great Race” in their defense, saying that Nazi eugenicists were inspired by this book and other U.S. based policies to carry out their evil plans.

Grant’s Disdainful Legacy
While Grant may have been an important figure during his life, he left behind a disgraceful legacy. Even though he worked towards conserving parks, it is his eugenicist, racist teachings that will define him. In fact, in 2021, California State Parks removed a memorial to Madison Grant from Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, and ensured that he would be known for his racism and not for his environmental work.

“California State Parks and our partners recognize the dark truth behind some of the 20th century’s most prominent conservationists, including League founder Madison Grant,” said North Coast Redwoods District’s superintendent Victor Bjelajac. “Grant used his privilege to advocate for and influence the development of discriminatory laws impacting millions of people across the world.”

He continued, “While we value his contribution towards protecting ancient redwoods, we fully reject his racist ideology and are committed to creating a park system for all people, regardless of race, creed, or ethnicity. The Madison Grant Memorial has stood in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park for three quarters of a century. It is long overdue that we remove it.”

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https://aish.com/the-search-for-king-davids-tomb/?src=ac
THE SEARCH FOR KING DAVID’S TOMB
AVI ABRAMS
Is King David really buried on Mount Zion? The debate goes back as far as Talmudic times.
If you ask any tourist who has visited Jerusalem’s Old City, “Where is the Tomb of David located?” they’ll tell you, “On Mount Zion, on the ground floor underneath the Last Supper Room.” After all, it’s in all the guide books. The site is located just outside the boundaries of the Old City near Zion Gate, one of the seven entranceways into the ancient town.

But scholars and archaeologists throughout the ages have pondered if the current site of David’s Tomb is, in fact, the true location of where the Jewish king was buried some 3000 years ago.

Aish
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This is not just a question of modern archaeology but a debate that goes back as far as Talmudic times.

The entrance to the Tomb of David

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The Bible records the burial of King David as follows: “And David slept with his fathers and was buried in the City of David” (Kings I, 2:10). The implication is that David was buried in the City of David, not Mount Zion, and therefore the current location for David’s Tomb cannot possibly be where the Biblical king was actually buried.


Both sites, the City of David and the Tomb of David on Mount Zion, are located relatively close to each other, a distance of about 2500 feet. The City of David, however, is a ridge on a much lower elevation near the Kidron Valley, whereas Mount Zion is located on one of the higher points of the ancient town. They’re both technically outside the current walls of the Old City that were last rebuilt by the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century, but in earlier historical periods, both areas were included within the boundaries of Jerusalem.

However, during King David’s lifetime, Jerusalem exclusively consisted of the City of David. Mount Zion, where David’s tomb is currently located, would have been outside the walls of the city at this time.

Zion Gate

On the one hand, it does make sense that David’s tomb would have been immediately outside Jerusalem and not inside the city itself. During this time period (the Iron Age), cities were the sizes of small neighborhoods by our standards. Only royalty, noblemen, administrators, and tax collectors lived in the cities. Space would have been extremely limited. The land mass of the City of David for example is only about 12 acres. There wouldn’t be much room for tombs. Burial outside the city would have been much more logical.

If that’s the case, why does the Bible specifically write that he was buried inside the city?

Another problem with David being buried inside the city is regarding ritual impurity. In Judaism, dead bodies impart ritual impurity. In ancient Jewish towns, we typically find graves outside the confines of the city to avoid physical contact with the source of impurity.

The Tomb of David on Mount Zion

In Jerusalem for example, tombs of historical figures can be found in the hills surrounding the Old City. The Talmud therefore asks the question how could David have been buried inside the city under these circumstances?

Rabbi Akiva claims a tunnel was constructed from David’s tomb in Jerusalem to the Kidron Valley that extracted the impurity from the king’s tomb. This piece of information actually gives us a clue as to the tomb’s location.

Mount Zion is too far away from the Kidron valley. Such a tunnel would have to slope down the hill into the Tyropean Valley and cut through the width of the City of David and out into the Kidron Valley. But if the tomb was in fact located in the City of David, only a very short tunnel would be needed, as the City of David overlooks the Kidron Valley.

Antique photograph of the Tomb of David

Given the Biblical and Talmud data, a French archaeologist by the name of Raymond Weill led excavations in the City of David in search of David’s historical resting place in the years leading up to World War I. His research did unveil nine burial caves in the southern portion of the City of David, which he felt could be good candidates, but it turns out they date to the Second Temple period based on Greek inscriptions found there. No tomb or any material evidence from the period of King David was ever discovered at the site.

If the City of David did not yield the expected results, only one option remained and that was to excavate the Mount Zion site itself.

Inside the Tomb of David

One of the few Israeli archaeologists who excavated under the Tomb of David on Mount Zion was Dr. Gabi Barkai. Below the sarcophagus, which was built in the Crusader period for symbolic reasons, a staircase was discovered that leads to a secret passageway. Following the tunnel brings you into an ancient burial cave, which was excavated by Dr. Barkai. Based on pottery finds, he was able to date the cave to the First Temple period.

While Dr. Barkai accepts the Biblical narrative as the City of David being the true burial place of King David, he claims the Mount Zion tomb may be associated with Biblical Judean kings from Menashe onwards. Being a rebellious king who embraced idol worship and burned Torah scrolls, it’s possible that the Jewish religious leadership denied him burial near David’s tomb. It is interesting to note that by Menashe’s time, the boundaries of Jerusalem had expanded to the area of Mount Zion. From his generation onwards, the Bible records the Judean kings as being buried in a place called Gan Uzzah, not the City of David. It’s possible that the tomb we typically associate with King David may actually be that of the last Biblical kings of the Davidic dynasty, but not David himself.

Archeological site in the City of David

I’m no archaeologist, but if you ask my opinion as a tour guide, I would say something rather unconventional, but perhaps a resolution to this mystery. In the City of David, we can clearly see the ancient wall of Jerusalem from the Biblical period, but only on the eastern side facing the Kidron Valley. We have never found a wall dating to Biblical times on the western side of the City of David facing Mount Zion. Furthermore, we have never done extensive archaeological excavations on Mount Zion itself. For that reason, perhaps our assumption that the City of David was limited to the ridge was incorrect and perhaps it did in fact extend to Mount Zion even during the lifetime of King David.

If that’s the case, then what we call Mount Zion today may have been a part of what the Bible calls the City of David. This would mean the traditional site of David’s tomb could in fact be where he was buried after all.

Inside the Tomb of David

In any case, the Tomb of David is a great place to visit on your next tour of Jerusalem. More important than where exactly he died is how he lived. You can read the story of King David in the Book of Samuel and read his personal prayers in the Book of Psalms.

Click here to comment on this article
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https://aish.com/the-search-for-king-davids-tomb/?src=ac
THE SEARCH FOR KING DAVID’S TOMB
AVI ABRAMS
Is King David really buried on Mount Zion? The debate goes back as far as Talmudic times.
If you ask any tourist who has visited Jerusalem’s Old City, “Where is the Tomb of David located?” they’ll tell you, “On Mount Zion, on the ground floor underneath the Last Supper Room.” After all, it’s in all the guide books. The site is located just outside the boundaries of the Old City near Zion Gate, one of the seven entranceways into the ancient town.

But scholars and archaeologists throughout the ages have pondered if the current site of David’s Tomb is, in fact, the true location of where the Jewish king was buried some 3000 years ago.

Aish
Loukoumades, Greek Donuts
READ MORE
This is not just a question of modern archaeology but a debate that goes back as far as Talmudic times.

The entrance to the Tomb of David

SUBSCRIBE
Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history, food, philosophy, current events, holidays and more...

Enter your email address
GET OUR EMAILS
The Bible records the burial of King David as follows: “And David slept with his fathers and was buried in the City of David” (Kings I, 2:10). The implication is that David was buried in the City of David, not Mount Zion, and therefore the current location for David’s Tomb cannot possibly be where the Biblical king was actually buried.


Both sites, the City of David and the Tomb of David on Mount Zion, are located relatively close to each other, a distance of about 2500 feet. The City of David, however, is a ridge on a much lower elevation near the Kidron Valley, whereas Mount Zion is located on one of the higher points of the ancient town. They’re both technically outside the current walls of the Old City that were last rebuilt by the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century, but in earlier historical periods, both areas were included within the boundaries of Jerusalem.

However, during King David’s lifetime, Jerusalem exclusively consisted of the City of David. Mount Zion, where David’s tomb is currently located, would have been outside the walls of the city at this time.

Zion Gate

On the one hand, it does make sense that David’s tomb would have been immediately outside Jerusalem and not inside the city itself. During this time period (the Iron Age), cities were the sizes of small neighborhoods by our standards. Only royalty, noblemen, administrators, and tax collectors lived in the cities. Space would have been extremely limited. The land mass of the City of David for example is only about 12 acres. There wouldn’t be much room for tombs. Burial outside the city would have been much more logical.

If that’s the case, why does the Bible specifically write that he was buried inside the city?

Another problem with David being buried inside the city is regarding ritual impurity. In Judaism, dead bodies impart ritual impurity. In ancient Jewish towns, we typically find graves outside the confines of the city to avoid physical contact with the source of impurity.

The Tomb of David on Mount Zion

In Jerusalem for example, tombs of historical figures can be found in the hills surrounding the Old City. The Talmud therefore asks the question how could David have been buried inside the city under these circumstances?

Rabbi Akiva claims a tunnel was constructed from David’s tomb in Jerusalem to the Kidron Valley that extracted the impurity from the king’s tomb. This piece of information actually gives us a clue as to the tomb’s location.

Mount Zion is too far away from the Kidron valley. Such a tunnel would have to slope down the hill into the Tyropean Valley and cut through the width of the City of David and out into the Kidron Valley. But if the tomb was in fact located in the City of David, only a very short tunnel would be needed, as the City of David overlooks the Kidron Valley.

Antique photograph of the Tomb of David

Given the Biblical and Talmud data, a French archaeologist by the name of Raymond Weill led excavations in the City of David in search of David’s historical resting place in the years leading up to World War I. His research did unveil nine burial caves in the southern portion of the City of David, which he felt could be good candidates, but it turns out they date to the Second Temple period based on Greek inscriptions found there. No tomb or any material evidence from the period of King David was ever discovered at the site.

If the City of David did not yield the expected results, only one option remained and that was to excavate the Mount Zion site itself.

Inside the Tomb of David

One of the few Israeli archaeologists who excavated under the Tomb of David on Mount Zion was Dr. Gabi Barkai. Below the sarcophagus, which was built in the Crusader period for symbolic reasons, a staircase was discovered that leads to a secret passageway. Following the tunnel brings you into an ancient burial cave, which was excavated by Dr. Barkai. Based on pottery finds, he was able to date the cave to the First Temple period.

While Dr. Barkai accepts the Biblical narrative as the City of David being the true burial place of King David, he claims the Mount Zion tomb may be associated with Biblical Judean kings from Menashe onwards. Being a rebellious king who embraced idol worship and burned Torah scrolls, it’s possible that the Jewish religious leadership denied him burial near David’s tomb. It is interesting to note that by Menashe’s time, the boundaries of Jerusalem had expanded to the area of Mount Zion. From his generation onwards, the Bible records the Judean kings as being buried in a place called Gan Uzzah, not the City of David. It’s possible that the tomb we typically associate with King David may actually be that of the last Biblical kings of the Davidic dynasty, but not David himself.

Archeological site in the City of David

I’m no archaeologist, but if you ask my opinion as a tour guide, I would say something rather unconventional, but perhaps a resolution to this mystery. In the City of David, we can clearly see the ancient wall of Jerusalem from the Biblical period, but only on the eastern side facing the Kidron Valley. We have never found a wall dating to Biblical times on the western side of the City of David facing Mount Zion. Furthermore, we have never done extensive archaeological excavations on Mount Zion itself. For that reason, perhaps our assumption that the City of David was limited to the ridge was incorrect and perhaps it did in fact extend to Mount Zion even during the lifetime of King David.

If that’s the case, then what we call Mount Zion today may have been a part of what the Bible calls the City of David. This would mean the traditional site of David’s tomb could in fact be where he was buried after all.

Inside the Tomb of David

In any case, the Tomb of David is a great place to visit on your next tour of Jerusalem. More important than where exactly he died is how he lived. You can read the story of King David in the Book of Samuel and read his personal prayers in the Book of Psalms.

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DR. YVETTE ALT MILLER
One of the world’s most popular sources of entertainment is rife with Jew-hatred.
With antisemitism at sky-high levels around the world, many are overlooking one of the most fertile sites of growing Jew-hatred: online video games.

Ranging from the open display of antisemitic and Nazi imagery, to virtual anti-Israel rallies, to recruiting for extremist groups, some video games are full of shockingly antisemitic content.

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Many people dismiss video games as frivolous or unworthy of study, allowing much of the surging hatred in online games to continue unopposed and unnoticed by policy makers, parents, and authorities. This is a big mistake. About one out of every eight human beings on the planet are active video game players, a number that’s predicted to grow. Hatred directed against Jews and others in online games is a plague that is spewing forth largely unnoticed.

Online Harassment
Over a billion people regularly play video games worldwide. By some estimates over 90% of children play video games. The largest area of video game growth is online games, where players from all over the world mingle in virtual reality (vr) settings, competing against each other, sending messages, sometimes cooperating, and often harassing and threatening each other. The very qualities that make online games so much fun - the ability to invent new personas online and interact anonymously with people from all over the world - also allows players to introduce toxic content at times, with little to no repercussions.

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A recent report found that the vast majority of players - 86% of players in 2022 - experienced online harassment, a big spike over the last few years. One recent study found that 51% of players were exposed to hateful extremism last year. Despite Jews making up just 0.2% of the global community, much of the ire that’s filling online games is antisemitic, attacking Jews and recruiting players to anti-Jewish and other extremist ideologies or groups.

Attacking Jews in Games
A 2021 Anti-Defamation League (ADL) study found that over a third of all gamers - 34% - reported experiencing antisemitic hate speech in the course of playing games. “In addition to Jewish people being targeted for their identity, we’re also seeing people who are denying or saying the Holocaust didn’t happen or wasn’t as bad as people say,” noted Daniel Kelley, the Director of Strategy and Operations at the ADL’s Center for Technology and Society. Misinformation, anti-Jewish slurs, hate symbols such as swastikas, and even online solicitations for funds by terrorist organizations and hate groups populate spaces in some of the most popular global games.

Roblox: Young Children Encountering Jew-Hate
One of the biggest online games is Roblox, a fun, wildly popular game that has an antisemitism problem. Invented in 2006, Roblox has over 70 million active daily users. 214 million people play Roblox at least monthly; 4.6 billion accounts have been registered with the game. 45% of Roblox players are under the age of 13.



Video game journalist Cecilia D’Anastasio describes Roblox’s compelling appeal: “The game… is a hub of interconnected virtual worlds… Roblox gives players a simple set of tools to create any environment they want… They have also built spaces to hang out and role-play different characters and scenarios.” Players create any avatar they want and can strike up friendships and alliances with other anonymous players.

From the beginning, D’Anastasio notes, Roblox began to have a problem with Nazi-themed games and imagery. After going public in 2021 (with a valuation $55 billion), the game clamped down on fascist imagery. Swastikas and other Nazi memorabilia are officially banned in the game, though players still encounter these images. D’Anastasio describes a typical Nazi-themed game created by players that managed to dodge Roblox’s regulators for months, until she directed regulators’ attention to it. The game-within-a-game was called “Insbruch Border Simulator,” and allowed Roblox players to role play the part of Nazis. It received over a million visits from Roblox players before being shut down. (Nazi imagery and other hate speech is strictly prohibited on Roblox, but with tens of millions of games going on at once, some scenarios which violate Roblox’s standard inevitably escape notice.)

Soon after Hamas’ terror attacks on Israel killed 1,200, Roblox became host to pro-Palestinian marches, carried out online by hordes of martial-looking cartoon characters holding flags and filling virtual reality squares in the game. These sorts of online activities can have real effects in the real world, radicalizing kids, conditioning them to think that the behavior they see in online games is normal, and providing them with a community of like-minded peers who indulge and encourage their political extremism.

Recruiting for Hate Groups in Popular Games
Online games can also be a site for recruitment. In December 2023, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) took the unusual step of issuing a warning that “extremists continue their attempts to recruit young people through popular chat and online forums including gaming platforms.” AFP singled out Roblox in particular, for the often violent role-playing that takes place on the site.



Sweden’s Psychological Defense Agency identifies online video games as a major venue for terrorist recruitment. The first step, the Agency notes, is often “forming what appears to be innocent friendships based on shared interests and grievances.” Terrorist and extremist recruiters use in-game chat rooms and messaging systems to strike up friendships with vulnerable-seeming players. Recruiters often then shift their conversations to social media outlets or to smaller, modified video games (“mods”) where hatred and violence is normalized.

The BBC singled out Roblox, Call of Duty, and Minecraft as games where hate flourished in some corners.

In 2021, the BBC studied a number of popular video games and found that some of the most popular were flooded with “anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia,” particularly in private chats within the games. The BBC singled out Roblox, Call of Duty, and Minecraft as games where hate flourished in some corners. Joe Mulhall, with the British antifascist group Hope Not Hate, explained why encountering radicalism in games is so dangerous: “You sit at home after school and play games, so the gaming element can create a sense that it’s normal, not extremist, not dangerous.” Encountering antisemitism and other hatred in a beloved game instills a sense that hatred is normal and accepted.

Radicalizing in Online Games and Gaming Forums
The experience of real-world extremists bears this out. The white supremacist who shot and killed 10 Black people in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York on May 14, 2022, left a record of his online radicalization. “I’m just saying,” he wrote on social media, “I probably would be as nationalistic (sic) if it weren’t for Blood and Iron (a gaming room) on Roblox.” .

The European Union (EU) has documented cases of real-world radicalization on popular social media forums for discussing video games, such as Discord, Twitch, and DLive. These are spaces where players can connect to discuss video games and watch each other play. Though moderators work hard to clamp down on hate speech, extremism manages to flood these spaces. “Discord has been used for the planning of offline events, including the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017,” the EU notes of the mass rally that included chants of “Jews will not replace us!” and the death of one protestor. The EU also notes that ISIS has used in-game chats to spread their beliefs.

Israeli soldier pleading to Arab “freedom fighter”: “Please don’t kill me. I am begging you.”

In 2020, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) conducted a study of antisemitism on Steam, the popular mainstream gaming social media platform with institutional and financial links to some of the biggest video games. Even though Steam’s official position is not to tolerate hate speech, the ADL noted that “(i)t was disturbingly easy for ADL’s researchers to locate Steam users who espouse extremist beliefs, using language associated with white supremacist ideology and subcultures, including key terms, common numeric hate symbols and acronyms.” Among the comments they found were “Gas the Jew” and “Smash Jew scum.”

“Mods” and Extremist Video Games
Some players are attracted to “mods,” modified extremist forms of mainstream games, and fringe games where hatred of specific groups such as Jews is a primary feature of play. Take the game “Counter Strike: Source,” a game based on the older video game Counter Strike. “Counter Strike: Source” has a 10 out of 10 rating and well over 100,000 reviews on the video game social media platform Steam. It’s also closely linked to real-world violence; the game is “played by nearly every known rampage killer” in Germany, notes Robert Heimberger, a state crime officer in the German state of Bavaria.

The European Union has documented extremist games with real-world consequences. “Hezbollah, for example, produced its own video game in the early 2000s,” notes the EU’s Radicalization Awareness Network in 2023, “and more recently violent right-wing groups have produced games such as Ethnic Cleansing and Heimat Defender: Rebellion.” It also notes that popular games such as Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty have been “modded,” or modified, by extremists, notably by supporters of ISIS



One recent game explicitly encourages players to wreak violence on Israelis. Fursan al-Aqsa: The Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque asks players to adopt the role of an Arab “freedom fighter” and attack Israelis using methods similar to anti-Israel terrorist groups. The game has a 9 out of 10 rating on Steam and has already been spun off into mods of its own.

Fighting Back
In the face of so much online hatred, there are a few steps we can all take. One is educating people within video games. That was the tack that Luc Bernard, a video game designer, took when he created a virtual Holocaust museum inside the wildly popular game Fortnite in August 2023. Epic Games, Fortnite’s parent company, had recently been criticized by the ADL for allowing Holocaust denial to flourish within Fortnite. Now, Fortnite players can wander into the museum within the game, learning “about the heroes who saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust and also the Jewish members of the Resistance,” Bernard has explained: “Hate is rising worldwide and I think we need tools to make people more empathetic.”

For ordinary players, the task of countering the mountains of antisemitic content in video games and gaming chat sites can feel hopeless. Speaking up for the truth is important; so is countering misinformation when we hear it. The anonymity of online video games emboldens some players to say outrageous things. It’s our responsibility to call out hate speech wherever we encounter it, including within games.

Parents have an additional responsibility to monitor kids’ video game use. Adults don’t always realize the tsunami of abuse and hate their children might be encountering online. Talk to kids about what they’re seeing in video games. Ask specific questions including: have you seen swastikas or other hateful imagery; have you been called ethnic slurs; has anything you’ve encountered while gaming made you feel scared or upset?

Consider taking part in your kids’ games to get a sense of what they’re like. Consider setting limits to kids’ gaming, asking children to avoid games that make you uncomfortable, and setting limits to how long kids can spend gaming online.

We cannot ignore the antisemitism and hatred in online video games, one of the world’s most popular sources of entertainment. Hatred directed against gamers, ultimately, is hatred directed against us all.

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4 More Myths About Israel’s War with Hamas

While they don’t defect to another religion, Berest and her ancestors hide their Jewish identity.

Devastated by pain, Berest’s grandmother Myriam, a French partisan, loses her entire family in Auschwitz. She retreats to the French countryside. In the postwar years, she marries a non-Jewish man and raises her children without religion in what she hopes will be “a new world without links to the old one.” Her daughter Lelia, Berest’s mother, follows a similar path, as does Berest herself.

But as hard as they try to tamp it down, the family’s Judaism keeps rising to the surface.


Author Anne Berest

In one of the book’s most striking scenes, Berest recalls herself as a child asking her mother what being Jewish was all about. Her mother’s answer is to show her photographs of concentration camp inmates. Berest is traumatized.

“My eight years of life aren’t enough to have given me any kind of mental resistance. I feel physically attacked by them, wounded,” she writes.

Not surprisingly, Berest becomes an anxious adult. “To me, death always feels near. I have a sense of being hunted. I’m afraid of telling people I am Jewish,” she writes.

Many young Jews today who lack a positive connection to being Jewish are, like Berest and her foremothers, fearful of their Jewishness.

Keep Your Jewish Identity Under Wraps
In some ways Berest and her clan remind me of my Aunt Evelyn who, unlike the other adults in my family, grew up without Judaism and was deeply uncomfortable with her Jewishness.

She was raised in an assimilated home in Budapest by upwardly mobile Jews. Like Berest’s grandmother Myriam, she experienced the horrors of World War II, confined to the Budapest ghetto. She kept her war stories to herself and the trauma of those terrible years never left her.

Evelyn and her mother survived, and her father, a diabetic, died in a Hungarian labor camp after he was denied access to insulin.

In the postwar years Evelyn attempted to distance herself from her past, particularly her Jewish identity that proved so caustic. She reestablished herself in Manhattan in the shadow of Lincoln Center, believing that distinctions based on religion were no longer relevant.

Evelyn enjoyed people, especially children, but she had no intimate friends. Like Myriam, she “didn’t want anyone to get too close.” She was especially discomfited by people who seemed to her too Jewish.

When my sons visited she insisted that they tuck in their tzitzit strings and exchange their yarmulkes for baseball caps, primarily out of concern for their personal safety. For Evelyn, Jewish identity was best kept under wraps. “It’s no one’s business,” she’d say.

“You don’t have a Jewish nose,” she’d tell me when I was young. She was probably thinking that if and when the Nazis return, I’d be able to hide.

The Berest women all married non-Jews and took their names. Evelyn married a Jew but blurred her identity by changing the family surname from Schwartzman to Black. She was pleased when my parents continued the ruse by giving my brother and me ethnically cleansed first names. It also pleased her that neither of us was too “Jewish-looking.”

“You don’t have a Jewish nose,” she’d tell me when I was young. She was probably thinking that if and when the Nazis return, I’d be able to hide. She was ready. Evelyn kept wads of cash under the floorboards of her closet—to bribe her way to safety.

For years, I thought these were the bizarre quirks of an eccentric old woman. Now I realize that she had suffered terribly from Holocaust-related post-traumatic stress disorder.

Evelyn wanted the Holocaust to be remembered. It was she, not my parents, who told me about the camps and the Zyklon B showers, when I was far too young to hear such things.

Jew By Choice
With the current wave of virulent Jew-hatred making one’s Jewish identity a potentially dangerous liability, my understanding – and compassion – of Evelyn and Myriam has deepened. While the urge to run away and hide is powerful for some, a wide swath of Jews, particularly in Israel, are choosing the opposite course and drawing strength from our traditions, our faith, and from each other.

Many Jews are embracing their Jewish identity and deepening their appreciation of the meaning and beauty of their heritage.

Jews are showing up in shuls across the US and holding each other up in loving embrace. Look at the nearly 300,000 who traveled to Washington DC to stand against hate and stand together with the Jewish people.

Wearing a Star of David has become an emblem of Jewish pride. For IDF soldiers tzitzit have become part of the fighting uniform and they are praying. On army bases daily prayer services are packed with both religious and non-religious soldiers.

Jews are also leaning into kindness, donating to soldiers and evacuees. Some are even coming to Israel to pick crops in the Gaza envelope.

I do not judge Jews like Myriam Berest or my Aunt Evelyn, who viewed being Jewish as a dark weight to push away. But it is gratifying to see so many Jews choose a different path in response to their dormant Jewishness becoming potential liability – they are shaking off the dust, embracing their Jewish identity, and deepening their appreciation of the meaning and beauty of their heritage.

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In 1286, the German ruler Rudolf I designated the Jewish community as servi camerae regis, or "serfs of the treasury," which meant Rudolf could directly tax the Jewish community on top of the heavy taxes already imposed by local nobles. Together with his family and students, Rabbi Meir decided to leave Germany and move to the Land of Israel. Tragically, as the group traveled through the mountains of Lombardy, an apostate Jew accompanying the archbishop of Mainz recognized him.

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Rabbi Meir was arrested and brought back to Germany, where he was imprisoned and held for an exorbitant ransom in the fortress of Ensisheim in Alsace, by orders of King Rudolf.


Meïr of Rothenburg – Photo from the Museum of Rothenburg
The Jewish community immediately set about raising great sums to free Rabbi Meir from captivity. But as Rabbi Solomon Luria (1510-1573) later wrote, Rabbi Meir refused to be ransomed:

“I heard about our teacher and Rabbi, Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg… who was held captive in the fortress at Ensisheim for several years, and the king demanded from the communities a preposterous ransom. The communities wished to pay but Rabbi Meir would not allow it, saying that it is not permitted to ransom captives for more than their worth. I am flabbergasted, as he was an exceptionally great Torah scholar, and there was none like him in Torah and piety in his generation, and it is permissible to ransom him for all the money in the world…

“Clearly, his opinion was that if they ransomed him, the rulers would take the greatest Torah scholar of each generation into captivity for ransom so great that the Jewish communities of the diaspora would not be able to ransom them, and the Torah would be forgotten from Israel. I also heard that the same evil ruler wanted to seize his student, [Rabbenu Asher]. He heard about this and fled to Tulitila and was saved by God’s compassion and mercy. Because of this, the pious one [Rabbi Meir] said that it is better that a little wisdom be lost from Israel than the total loss of all Torah scholarship. And this is the sign [that he was correct], that at that time they ceased seizing the sages of the diaspora.” (Yam Shel Shlomo, Tractate Gittin).

For seven years, Rabbi Meir remained a prisoner, until his death in 1293. His body was only returned to the Jewish community 14 years later when a wealthy Jew, Alexander Suskind Wimpfen of Frankfort, paid a large ransom.

Redeeming Captives
If he were alive today, what would Rabbi Meir say about Israel’s hostage exchange with Hamas? Would he approve or disapprove?

Maimonides writes: “There is no greater mitzvah than redeeming captives. For a captive is among those who are hungry, thirsty, and unclothed and he is in mortal peril. And one who averts his eyes from redeeming them transgresses ‘Do not harden your heart or shut your hand,’ and ‘Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor,’... and nullifies the commandments of ‘You shall surely revive your brother’ and ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Maimonides, Laws of Gifts to the Poor 8:10).

Now that some of the hostages have been freed, we know that Hamas terrorists tortured and starved them while they were in captivity. Every moment the remaining hostages spend in captivity under the control of Hamas is a danger to their lives, and they are almost certainly suffering from trauma, hunger and medical problems. Redeeming captives as quickly as possible is a matter of life and death. Surely Rabbi Meir would agree!

Nevertheless, as Rabbi Meir’s own experience shows, there are complicating factors. The sages explain that we “must not ransom captives for more than their value, for the good order of the world” (Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 45A). If Jews are willing to pay any price, no matter how exorbitant, to free their loved ones whom have been taken hostage, the enemies of our people will only be encouraged to kidnap more Jews in the future.

Gilad Shalit
The people of Israel learned this truth the hard way on October 7. In 2011, Israel released 1,027 convicted terrorists in exchange for Corporal Gilad Shalit, a soldier who was kidnapped by Hamas six years earlier. Though the price was unquestionably exorbitant – 1,207 terrorists for one soldier – the deal was supported by a majority of Israelis, including 26 government ministers, who desperately wanted to bring Shalit home, at any price.

Gilad Shalit
As Rabbi Meir understood, a lopsided deal like the Gilad Shalit exchange only encourages antisemites to abduct more Jews. Among the terrorists released in 2011 was Yahya Sinwar, the now infamous leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the mastermind of the October 7 massacre and abduction.

Significant Differences
Though Rabbi Meir’s case is instructive, there are significant differences between his story and the current situation. During his seven-year ordeal, it does not appear that Rabbi Meir’s life was at any point in danger. The same, sadly, cannot be said of today’s hostages, several of whom have already been murdered by Hamas.

Some rabbis argue that when hostages’ lives are stake, the normal rules forbidding exorbitant ransom fees do not apply.

Some rabbis argue that when hostages’ lives are stake, the normal rules forbidding exorbitant ransom fees do not apply, for Jews are required to break almost of the rules of the Torah in order to save a life. Others, however, argue that we must not pay exorbitant fees even to save a life, for doing so will only endanger the lives of other Jews in the future.

When grappling with the demands of terrorists like Hamas, a critical distinction must be made. Whereas Rabbi Meir’s case was deeply traumatic and potentially dangerous to the Jewish community, the kidnappers were motivated by financial considerations. By contrast, Hamas is fighting a genocidal war against Israel in which the very survival of the Jewish nation is at stake. During wartime, the normal rules of redeeming captives are suspended, for any concession to the enemy is likely to be perceived as a dangerous sign of weakness.

Should Israel negotiate another ceasefire with Hamas to release more hostages? It’s hard to imagine a more painful dilemma.

When the Canaanite king of Arad attacked the Israelites as they wandered through the wilderness, his armies took captives from Israel. The rabbis explain that only one prisoner, a handmaid, was taken prisoner. Nevertheless, Moses did not enter into negotiations for her release. Instead, the people went to war and freed the hostage by destroying the enemy.

On September 6, 1970, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Palestinian terrorist organization, hijacked a TWA flight with 310 passengers. The non-Jewish passengers were freed, but the terrorists held 56 Jewish passengers in custody, including Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, one of the great rabbis of the generation. As the drama played out, some rabbis argued that due to Rabbi Hutner’s unique status, the hostages should be redeemed even at an exorbitant price.

Hijacking of TWA plane by Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

But Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky (1891-1986) disagreed, arguing that the standard rules of redeeming captives only apply during a time of peace. During a time of war, he asserted, it is forbidden to redeem hostages for financial payments, for doing so actively assists and strengthens the enemy that is trying to destroy the Jewish people.

In the deal with Hamas, Israel was required to allow large amounts of “humanitarian aid” to enter Gaza which was soon confiscated by Hamas terrorists. Will these supplies assist and strengthen Hamas in their genocidal war against Israel and endanger the lives of Israeli soldiers? Though we cannot answer with certainty, the answer is likely yes.

Should Israel negotiate another ceasefire with Hamas to release more hostages? It’s hard to imagine a more painful dilemma. May God give Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government the wisdom and strength to choose correctly, and may all of the hostages soon be freed and returned to their families, in good health.

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Norman Lear Made America Confront Antisemitism and Racism
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DR. YVETTE ALT MILLER
The prolific film and television producer changed television.
For much of the 1970s and 1980s, America was defined by Jewish-American director and producer Norman Lear and the groundbreaking television shows he created.

At Lear’s peak popularity, each week 120 million people would watch the TV sitcoms he created, a majority of all American adults. Hit shows such as All in the Family, Good Times, The Jeffersons, Mary Hartman, Maude, One Day at a Time, and Sanford and Son reflected a changing America, grappling with weighty issues that audiences weren’t used to seeing on TV.
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Before Lear started creating television programs, the “biggest problems on shows was the pot roast is ruined and the boss is coming for dinner” he told the Chicago magazine JUF News in 2015. “These shows sent the message that there are no race problems in America, there is no antisemitism, there is no bad economy, and there are no health problems.”
Norman Lear with the cast from All in the Family
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American viewers were used to watching a sanitized version of life in movies and television. In show after show, Lear changed that, pushing the limits of what was acceptable to show on television, and creating flawed characters whose problems and foibles transfixed a generation of viewers. His medium was comedy, and the laughs Lear elicited helped audiences process the often difficult themes he explored.
Lear’s show All in the Family, which debuted in 1971, featured a bigoted main character, Archie Bunker, who reacts to the rapid social changes that were then rocking the United States. “When I thought about what made Archie a bigot, it was that he was afraid of life, afraid of tomorrow, afraid of what’s new,” Lear explained in his 2021 book All in the Family: The Show That Changed Television. “He was comfortable with what existed. And Black people moving next door - that was too new for him. He couldn’t deal with progress and change.”
Lear was determined to probe this social moment, holding a mirror up for American viewers who were processing changing mores too.
Lear’s hit sitcom The Jeffersons started as a spin-off of All in the Family when the Bunkers’ Black neighbors, the Jeffersons, prosper financially and move away to a better neighborhood. It was a groundbreaking plot line at a time: Black characters were rarely depicted on television - and certainly not as wealthy, successful businesspeople.
Music executive Russell Simmons once told Norman Lear that the first time he ever saw a Black man writing a check was on The Jeffersons, when the character George Jefferson, played by Sherman Hemsley, engaged in this otherwise prosaic act and showed Simmons that it was possible for Black men to be successful and financially stable - and to be seen that way by others.
Lear’s Jewish Identity
Lear credited his Jewish identity with making him sensitive to the plight of outsiders, whether Jewish or Black.
He had a difficult childhood. Lear grew up in Chelsea, Massachusetts, in a poor Jewish immigrant family. His mother was from Ukraine and his father’s family had moved to the US from Russia. When Lear was nine years old, his father went to jail for three years for selling fake bonds to a Boston brokerage house. Lear’s mother and sister lived together, while Lear was sent to live with his bubbe and zayde (grandmother and grandfather) in New Haven. It was the only time in his life that Lear enjoyed the weekly holiday of Shabbat. “I sat on Friday evenings,” with his grandparents, he later recalled, playing card games and enjoying the peace and quiet and each other’s company.
Around the time his father went to prison, Lear realized that his presence as a Jew in America wasn’t always welcome. The nine year old Lear made a homemade radio for himself - and promptly heard Father Charles Coughlin, a wildly popular and extremely antisemitic radio personality in the 1920s and 1930s. “That kid poking around on his crystal set, spooked by a Jew hater, still lives in me,” Lear wrote in his 2014 memoir, Even This I Get to Experience.

Lear’s feelings of being a despised minority never entirely left him, no matter how successful he became. “I could be, and often was, at the center of things and still feel like an outsider.” It was this sensitivity to the constant slights that minorities felt in the United States that made him feel a kinship with Black Americans too. “I don’t know at what point it was,” Lear recalled, “that I realized what these Black kids - there weren’t that many in those schools I went to - had it far worse than I because I was Jewish. So I was empathetic at an early age.”

Married three times, he is survived by his six children. Lear worked tirelessly for progressive causes, and remained active and working in film and television until the very end of his life. In a CNN interview two years ago, at the age of 99, Lear shared his secret to feeling energetic and vital at that advanced age: lox and bagels, lots of laughter, and the love of his family.

Most of all, he felt a burning need to keep on creating and contributing to the world. “I like getting up in the morning with something on my mind, something I can work on…to some conclusion.”

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WHAT’S IT LIKE TO BE A JEW AT NYU?
BELLA INGBER
This college student powerfully describes to Congress what it’s like to be a Jew on campus today.
This college student powerfully describes to Congress what it’s like to be a Jew on campus today.
Thank you all for having me and for giving me the opportunity to share with you my story. My name is Bella Ingber. I am a junior at NYU and I'm going to try to answer the following question for you from my personal experiences: What is it like to be a Jew at NYU?

Being a Jew at NYU is walking to class and passing torn and defaced posters of innocent hostages with the words occupier and murderer written across their faces.
It is going to Booth's library to study and being interrupted by unauthorized protests, where students and faculty call for a globalized intifada revolution, an incitement to violence against Jews everywhere, and a call for the annihilation of the Jewish state and my friends and family who live there.
Being a Jew at NYU is being surrounded by students and faculty who support the murder and kidnapping of Jews because after all, as they say, resistance is justified when people are occupied.
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https://aish.com/my-meeting-with-young-progressive-jews/?src=ac
My Meeting with Young Progressive Jews
by Elliot Mathias
December 5, 2023
We have failed to properly educate the next generation about Jewish history, Jewish values, and the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel.

I recently spent an evening conversing a group of left-wing progressive Jews in Brooklyn who are deeply bothered by what is happening in Gaza. They blame the conflict squarely on Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. They were open to meeting a rabbi and having a heated exchange of ideas.

They all identify as politically progressive, and as one person told me, "Everyone I know is anti-Zionist." I gained a number of valuable insights from our encounter which I am still mulling over. Here are a few of the key takeaways.

They are open to a two-way dialogue
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Many progressive Jews are open to having a discussion and learning new things about the situation in Israel. But it is essential to listen to them as well and acknowledge that much of their concern comes from a genuine and understandable place. Anyone watching the images and footage coming from Gaza sees the humanitarian disaster that is happening there. To be bothered about it and want to do something about it is something to be admired, not condemned. By acknowledging their concern, I found they were very open to discussing the reasons for what is happening.

They know very little about Jewish history
This group of progressive Jews are disconnected from Jewish history. Their sense of Jewish history in Israel begins just before 1948 with the Jewish People's immigration to the area. They look at the situation as Jews fleeing antisemitism, coming to a land with Arabs living in it, making life difficult for them, and eventually creating their own Jewish state on this Arab land. The fact that Jews have had a continuous presence in the Land of Israel for thousands of years was not known. To their credit, I said "I don't want to bore you with a history lesson," but they responded, "No, we do want to know."

Their sense of Jewish history in Israel begins just before 1948.

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HENRY KISSINGER IN 10 QUOTES
DR. YVETTE ALT MILLER
A complex and controversial man, Kissinger was both marked by his Jewish identity and at times publicly rejected it.
Born in 1923 in the German town of Furth, Henry Kissinger, who has died aged 100, rose to become one of the most influential National Security Advisors and Secretaries of State ever to serve in the United States - and one of the most consequential and well-known Jews of modern times.

Kissinger advised 12 American presidents, wrote dozens of books on politics and foreign policy, and helped bring about some of the most consequential political breakthroughs of the 20th century. Kissinger helped open American diplomacy to China in 1972, orchestrated America’s controversial extrication from the Vietnam War, helped end the Yom Kippur War in 1973, pave the way for the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty in 1979, and helped rachet down tensions between the USA and USSR during the peak of the Cold War.
A complex and controversial man, Kissinger was both marked by his Jewish identity and at times publicly rejected it. Here are 10 quotes by and about Henry Kissinger that give a sense of the many contradictions of this brilliant, complicated statesman.

1. “I have reached a stage where I speak no language without an accent.” - Henry Kissinger https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-11-30/as-heinz-and-henry-kissinger-brought-germany-redemption
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