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Re: AISH
Empower Your Jewish Journey
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Five little-known facts about the January 1 “New Year” holiday, and its meaning for Jews.
Happy New Year! Or is it? For Jews, January 1 can pose a conundrum: most of us live by the modern secular calendar in which January 1 is New Year’s Day. But according to the Jewish calendar, Rosh Hashanah ushers in the New Year. Jewish tensions around celebrating January 1 go back for generations. Here are five little-known facts about the January 1 “New Year” holiday, and its meaning for Jews.
Recent Invention
While many of us think of January 1 as having been “New Year” forever, the holiday is relatively recent and has undergone many changes through the years. For much of European history, New Year occurred in March, when Spring began to make flowers and other fauna grow again.
According to the Roman historian Livy, it was the Roman King Numa Pompilius (715-673 BCE) who first introduced a twelve month calendar with January as its first month. (January was named after the Roman god Janus, which had two faces, making it appropriate for the start of the new year, when the month could symbolically look into the past and forwards into the future.)
Roman King Numa PompiliusRoman King Numa Pompilius
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Despite the fact that January was the first month, the Roman New Year was March 15 for hundreds of years. This changed in 153 BCE when it was switched to January 1. Years later, in 45 BCE, a more comprehensive calendar was adopted by the Roman priest-turned-ruler Julius Caesar. His “Julian” calendar kept January 1 as the New Year, but the holiday didn’t last in many of the Roman Empire’s territories. With the fall of the Roman Empire, European nations began to revert to their old New Year days. Some celebrated the New Year on March 25; other European groups celebrated December 25 as the New Year instead.
By the 1500s it became clear that the Julian calendar had serious shortcomings: leap years were miscalculated, and as a result the Christian festivals were changing days, migrating through the calendar. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced a new calendar: this Gregorian Calendar is still in use today. Among its many innovations, it restored January 1 as New Year’s Day in Christian lands.
Not all European countries made the switch. Protestant and Eastern Orthodox nations were slow to make the change. In Great Britain and the American Colonies, New Year’s Day continued to be March 25. It was only in 1752, when an Act of Parliament mandated January 1 as New Years, that English speaking lands adopted January 1 as their New Year’s Day.
Why January 1?
The Romans had a unique numbering system for the days of the month: the first day of each month was called a “Kalend” (we get our word calendar from this); the seventh day of each month was called “Nones” ;and the 15th day of each month was known as the “Ides”. Other days were counted only by how close they were to these three significant days.
The Talmud notes that Kalend days were celebrated as festivals of idolatry in ancient Rome and cautioned Jews not to do business with Romans on those days in order to avoid taking any part in activities that could be construed as idol worship (Mishnah Avodah Zarah 1:1-5).
In ancient times, the Kalends of January (January 1) in particular was a riotous affair, capping a two-week period that began with the Romans’ mid-December Saturnalia festival. This was a period when normal rules of behavior and mores were suspended: a slave was chosen to be elevated to a position of temporary king, and he ruled over a period of dissolution and wild parties. Homes were decorated with greenery and lights, and gifts were given to children. According to some accounts, at the end of this festive period, the slave who’d been named as master of ceremonies was then killed. This violence and period of moral lapses led Jews to avoid taking part in the mid-December and January 1 Roman holidays.
Celebrating a Bris?
As Christianity spread and developed, Christian celebrations incorporated earlier holiday customs. The Christian Bible doesn’t specify the date of Jesus’ birth, and it seems that in the early years of Christianity it was not celebrated in December, as it is today. The first record of December 25 being celebrated as a holiday commemorating Jesus’ birthday dates from a Roman calendar in the year 336 CE; some of the customs surrounding this holiday seem to have been borrowed from the ancient Roman festivals of Saturnalia and Kalends.
The day of January 1 - the old Roman Kalends holiday - became associated with a feast day called the Feast of the Circumcision in some denominations (including Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, and Anglican traditions). Count the days: January 1 is eight days after December 25, the day that a Jewish baby boy would have had his brit milah (circumcision) in the Jewish faith.
Dark Day in Jewish History
January 1 has seen harsh anti-Jewish decrees. On January 1, 1791, Russian ruler Catherine the Great established the Pale of Settlement, an area in the western part of her empire which became the only district in Russia’s vast empire where Jews were permitted to live. The terms of the Pale of Settlement varied over the years: its borders were adjusted and rules allowing Jews exemptions to live in other parts of Russia were introduced. Yet the Pale of Settlement affected a huge portion of the world’s Jews. At its peak, it’s estimated that fully 40% of the world’s Jews (about five million Jews) lived in the Pale of Settlement. This law lasted until the Russian Revolution of 1917, when Russian Jews were finally allowed to live outside the Pale.
Starting on January 1, 1798, all Hebrew language books began to be censored in Russia. A decade later, on January 1, 1807, Russia’s Czar Alexander I introduced wide-ranging new laws governing what Jews could do and how they could be educated and earn their livings. The draconian new law put restrictions on Jews’ ability to purchase property and restricted the trades to which Jews could belong. The law also forbade Jewish children from speaking Yiddish in schools. Jews were not allowed to hold office and even were banned from working as rabbis and other community officials if Yiddish was their sole language.
In Nazi Germany, January 1 saw more harsh measures. On January 1, 1939, all Jews had to add the names Sarah (for women) and Israel (for men) to their names. They also had to start carrying identity cards with them at all times. (I still possess my great grandmother’s passport to leave Nazi Germany later that year: even though her name was Kamilla, her name is listed as Sarah on her passport.) A decree also took effect on that day, closing all Jewish-owned businesses. The following year, on January 1, 1940, Jews were forbidden from gathering for prayer, either in synagogues or in private homes, in Nazi-controlled lands.
New Year’s Celebrations
Some New Year’s customs have surprising Jewish links. In the American south it’s customary to eat black eyed peas on New Year’s as a symbol of good luck. This echoes Sephardi Jewish traditions of eating beans on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, as a symbol of good fortune; some historians have speculated that the custom was brought to the United States by Sephardi Jews.
First ball dropped in Times SquareThe first ball dropped in Times Square in 1907 (Library of Congress)
Each year millions of people around the world watch the ball drop in Times Square in New York to mark the start of the New Year. Few realize that this annual stunt was the brainchild of a Jewish businessman in the 1800s. Adolph S. Ochs was the child of Jewish immigrants from Germany; he entered the newspaper business when he was eleven years old working as an office boy for the Knoxville Chronicle. In 1896 he bought the New York Times and announced an ambitious plan to make it a high-quality newspaper. To increase publicity for the paper, Ochs started holding a fireworks show in front of the offices on New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31.
In 1907 the city refused to grant him a permit for the fireworks show and Ochs instead commissioned an enormous ball covered with light bulbs to lower at midnight. (It was customary at the time for merchant seamen to mark the hour by lowering an enormous ball that could be seen far out at sea; Och’s ball was simply a larger and more festive twist on this maritime tradition.) Och’s tradition has continued; the ball used today is now nearly 12,000 pounds and twelve feet in diameter.
Like What You Read? Give Jews around the world the chance to experience engaging Jewish wisdom with more articles and videos on Aish. As a nonprofit organization it's your support that keeps us going. Thanks so much!
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Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Dr. Alt Miller lives with her family in Chicago, and has lectured internationally on Jewish topics. Her latest book Portraits of Valor: Heroic Jewish Women You Should Know describes the lives of 40 remarkable women who inhabited different eras and lands, giving a sense of the vast diversity of Jewish experience. It's been praised as inspirational, fascinating, fun and educational.
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Five little-known facts about the January 1 “New Year” holiday, and its meaning for Jews.
Happy New Year! Or is it? For Jews, January 1 can pose a conundrum: most of us live by the modern secular calendar in which January 1 is New Year’s Day. But according to the Jewish calendar, Rosh Hashanah ushers in the New Year. Jewish tensions around celebrating January 1 go back for generations. Here are five little-known facts about the January 1 “New Year” holiday, and its meaning for Jews.
Recent Invention
While many of us think of January 1 as having been “New Year” forever, the holiday is relatively recent and has undergone many changes through the years. For much of European history, New Year occurred in March, when Spring began to make flowers and other fauna grow again.
According to the Roman historian Livy, it was the Roman King Numa Pompilius (715-673 BCE) who first introduced a twelve month calendar with January as its first month. (January was named after the Roman god Janus, which had two faces, making it appropriate for the start of the new year, when the month could symbolically look into the past and forwards into the future.)
Roman King Numa PompiliusRoman King Numa Pompilius
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Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history, food, philosophy, current events, holidays and more...
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Despite the fact that January was the first month, the Roman New Year was March 15 for hundreds of years. This changed in 153 BCE when it was switched to January 1. Years later, in 45 BCE, a more comprehensive calendar was adopted by the Roman priest-turned-ruler Julius Caesar. His “Julian” calendar kept January 1 as the New Year, but the holiday didn’t last in many of the Roman Empire’s territories. With the fall of the Roman Empire, European nations began to revert to their old New Year days. Some celebrated the New Year on March 25; other European groups celebrated December 25 as the New Year instead.
By the 1500s it became clear that the Julian calendar had serious shortcomings: leap years were miscalculated, and as a result the Christian festivals were changing days, migrating through the calendar. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced a new calendar: this Gregorian Calendar is still in use today. Among its many innovations, it restored January 1 as New Year’s Day in Christian lands.
Not all European countries made the switch. Protestant and Eastern Orthodox nations were slow to make the change. In Great Britain and the American Colonies, New Year’s Day continued to be March 25. It was only in 1752, when an Act of Parliament mandated January 1 as New Years, that English speaking lands adopted January 1 as their New Year’s Day.
Why January 1?
The Romans had a unique numbering system for the days of the month: the first day of each month was called a “Kalend” (we get our word calendar from this); the seventh day of each month was called “Nones” ;and the 15th day of each month was known as the “Ides”. Other days were counted only by how close they were to these three significant days.
The Talmud notes that Kalend days were celebrated as festivals of idolatry in ancient Rome and cautioned Jews not to do business with Romans on those days in order to avoid taking any part in activities that could be construed as idol worship (Mishnah Avodah Zarah 1:1-5).
In ancient times, the Kalends of January (January 1) in particular was a riotous affair, capping a two-week period that began with the Romans’ mid-December Saturnalia festival. This was a period when normal rules of behavior and mores were suspended: a slave was chosen to be elevated to a position of temporary king, and he ruled over a period of dissolution and wild parties. Homes were decorated with greenery and lights, and gifts were given to children. According to some accounts, at the end of this festive period, the slave who’d been named as master of ceremonies was then killed. This violence and period of moral lapses led Jews to avoid taking part in the mid-December and January 1 Roman holidays.
Celebrating a Bris?
As Christianity spread and developed, Christian celebrations incorporated earlier holiday customs. The Christian Bible doesn’t specify the date of Jesus’ birth, and it seems that in the early years of Christianity it was not celebrated in December, as it is today. The first record of December 25 being celebrated as a holiday commemorating Jesus’ birthday dates from a Roman calendar in the year 336 CE; some of the customs surrounding this holiday seem to have been borrowed from the ancient Roman festivals of Saturnalia and Kalends.
The day of January 1 - the old Roman Kalends holiday - became associated with a feast day called the Feast of the Circumcision in some denominations (including Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, and Anglican traditions). Count the days: January 1 is eight days after December 25, the day that a Jewish baby boy would have had his brit milah (circumcision) in the Jewish faith.
Dark Day in Jewish History
January 1 has seen harsh anti-Jewish decrees. On January 1, 1791, Russian ruler Catherine the Great established the Pale of Settlement, an area in the western part of her empire which became the only district in Russia’s vast empire where Jews were permitted to live. The terms of the Pale of Settlement varied over the years: its borders were adjusted and rules allowing Jews exemptions to live in other parts of Russia were introduced. Yet the Pale of Settlement affected a huge portion of the world’s Jews. At its peak, it’s estimated that fully 40% of the world’s Jews (about five million Jews) lived in the Pale of Settlement. This law lasted until the Russian Revolution of 1917, when Russian Jews were finally allowed to live outside the Pale.
Starting on January 1, 1798, all Hebrew language books began to be censored in Russia. A decade later, on January 1, 1807, Russia’s Czar Alexander I introduced wide-ranging new laws governing what Jews could do and how they could be educated and earn their livings. The draconian new law put restrictions on Jews’ ability to purchase property and restricted the trades to which Jews could belong. The law also forbade Jewish children from speaking Yiddish in schools. Jews were not allowed to hold office and even were banned from working as rabbis and other community officials if Yiddish was their sole language.
In Nazi Germany, January 1 saw more harsh measures. On January 1, 1939, all Jews had to add the names Sarah (for women) and Israel (for men) to their names. They also had to start carrying identity cards with them at all times. (I still possess my great grandmother’s passport to leave Nazi Germany later that year: even though her name was Kamilla, her name is listed as Sarah on her passport.) A decree also took effect on that day, closing all Jewish-owned businesses. The following year, on January 1, 1940, Jews were forbidden from gathering for prayer, either in synagogues or in private homes, in Nazi-controlled lands.
New Year’s Celebrations
Some New Year’s customs have surprising Jewish links. In the American south it’s customary to eat black eyed peas on New Year’s as a symbol of good luck. This echoes Sephardi Jewish traditions of eating beans on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, as a symbol of good fortune; some historians have speculated that the custom was brought to the United States by Sephardi Jews.
First ball dropped in Times SquareThe first ball dropped in Times Square in 1907 (Library of Congress)
Each year millions of people around the world watch the ball drop in Times Square in New York to mark the start of the New Year. Few realize that this annual stunt was the brainchild of a Jewish businessman in the 1800s. Adolph S. Ochs was the child of Jewish immigrants from Germany; he entered the newspaper business when he was eleven years old working as an office boy for the Knoxville Chronicle. In 1896 he bought the New York Times and announced an ambitious plan to make it a high-quality newspaper. To increase publicity for the paper, Ochs started holding a fireworks show in front of the offices on New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31.
In 1907 the city refused to grant him a permit for the fireworks show and Ochs instead commissioned an enormous ball covered with light bulbs to lower at midnight. (It was customary at the time for merchant seamen to mark the hour by lowering an enormous ball that could be seen far out at sea; Och’s ball was simply a larger and more festive twist on this maritime tradition.) Och’s tradition has continued; the ball used today is now nearly 12,000 pounds and twelve feet in diameter.
Like What You Read? Give Jews around the world the chance to experience engaging Jewish wisdom with more articles and videos on Aish. As a nonprofit organization it's your support that keeps us going. Thanks so much!
ONE TIME $54 $108 $1000 OTHERMONTHLY $10 $18 $100 OTHER
Submit
Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Dr. Alt Miller lives with her family in Chicago, and has lectured internationally on Jewish topics. Her latest book Portraits of Valor: Heroic Jewish Women You Should Know describes the lives of 40 remarkable women who inhabited different eras and lands, giving a sense of the vast diversity of Jewish experience. It's been praised as inspirational, fascinating, fun and educational.
Re: AISH
https://aish.com/two-war-heroes-who-faced-discrimination/?
Two War Heroes Who Faced Discrimination
And the woman who fought the US government to right this wrong.
On a hot August day in 1918, Sergeant William Shemin was in the trenches in Bazoches, France. He was part of the U.S. 47th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division that was fighting with the Allies during World War I. The ground smelled sour and terrible, and in his trench he saw gigantic rats, outbreaks of lice, and many dead bodies. Some of the soldiers developed a painful condition that damages the feet called “trench foot” which can happen from standing in cold water or mud for an extended period of time.
Stepping out of the trench into no-man’s land was even worse. Troops had to survive a hail of bullets flying everywhere, the barbs of twisted wire on the ground, and the poison of deadly mustard gas.
The American soldiers in the trenches needed to locate a German machine gun nest. Two soldiers volunteered, but they were killed. Other soldiers went out under fire and were wounded on the battlefield. William (Bill) Shemin had to make an impossible choice. Was he brave enough to risk near-certain death if he tried to rescue a fellow soldier?
Without wasting a moment, Bill jumped from the safety of the trench and dashed towards the injured soldier. When he got close, he realized this was his best friend from Newark, NJ, Jim Pritchard, who was 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds. On this sunny day in the open field with no cover, Bill was able to dodge the bullets and barbed wire. An athlete all his young life, Bill was able to hoist his friend over his shoulder and carry him back to safety, running across the football field and half-length of no-man’s land, dodging German enemy fire the entire way.
After this rescue, Bill did something even more incredible. He went back into no-man’s land again, braving machine gun, small arms fire, and aerial bombardment. Bill Shemin rescued not one, not two, but three soldiers that day. Then when all of Bill’s senior officers were killed or suffered casualties, Bill reorganized and, although only a Sergeant, took command of the whole platoon, leading the survivors to safety.
During this same time period, there was another American hero on a battlefield in France, not far from Bill Shemin. He was a soldier named Henry Johnson. He was part of the all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment, the Harlem Hellfighters. Henry’s battalion was also tucked in a trench, facing a German raiding party of at least 12 soldiers. Henry and another soldier named Needham Roberts, stood sentry along no-man’s land.
Sgt. William Shemen
The German raiding party started to fire bullets. Henry fired back and then both men threw grenades and both of them were hit. Needham lost consciousness and two German soldiers captured him and were carrying him away. Henry refused to let this happen. When his rifle got jammed trying to put in a magazine, Henry swung the rifle at one enemy attacker, knocking him down. Then he grabbed the only weapon he had left - his Bolo knife - and took down the other German soldier. In just a few minutes of fighting, these two Americans had defeated the entire raiding party, and Henry had saved a fellow solider.
What do William Shemin and Henry Johnson have in common? How are they linked together by history?
Yes, they were both heroes of the American efforts to help the Allies dislodge the German occupiers of France in World War I during 1918. They both fought bravely against extreme odds, saved their fellow soldiers’ lives, and survived themselves under horrific conditions of a terrible war.
Sgt. Henry Johnson of the 369th Infantry Regiment
And both of these soldiers went unrecognized with a Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award, in their lifetimes, even though their heroic acts during WW I certainly deserved one. Why? Both men were discriminated against – William Shemin, because he was a Jewish American, and Henry Johnson, because he was African American.
Can a wrong be made right?
Meet the third hero of this story – Elsie Shemin-Roth, William’s daughter. The battlefield isn’t the only way to demonstrate tremendous acts of courage and determination. Elsie waged her own battle to have the U.S. government review the records of WWI soldiers who had been overlooked for the MOH due to discrimination. After 15 years of so much effort and hearing “Sorry, no” to many requests, Elsie was finally triumphant. President Obama approved the Medal of Honor to both William Shemin and Henry Johnson in 2015.
A White House ceremony was convened on June 2, 2015, to present the MOH posthumously to both William Shemin and Henry Johnson. On that occasion, President Barack Obama said:
It has taken a long time for Henry Johnson and William Shemin to receive the recognition they deserve. And there are surely others whose heroism is still unacknowledged and uncelebrated. We have work to do, as a nation, to make sure that all of our heroes’ stories are told. And we’ll keep at it, no matter how long it takes. America is the country we are today because of people like Henry and William -- Americans who signed up to serve, and rose to meet their responsibilities -- and then went beyond. The least we can do is to say: We know who you are. We know what you did for us. We are forever grateful.
Sgt. Shemin's Distinguished Service Cross and Purple Heart
Since that bright day in 2015, we have seen both progress and setbacks in America. There is a rising wave of hate crimes and attacks against Jews, African Americans, Asians, Latinos, Native Americans and other minority groups. We hope this story inspires people to continue to fight for justice and equality for all people.
The article is based on the book The Ivy Hero, which can be purchased on Amazon.
To find out more about the book or contact the authors, visit The Ivy Hero website.
Like What You Read? Give Jews around the world the chance to experience engaging Jewish wisdom with more articles and videos on Aish.
JEWISH HISTORY
Two War Heroes Who Faced Discrimination
And the woman who fought the US government to right this wrong.
On a hot August day in 1918, Sergeant William Shemin was in the trenches in Bazoches, France. He was part of the U.S. 47th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division that was fighting with the Allies during World War I. The ground smelled sour and terrible, and in his trench he saw gigantic rats, outbreaks of lice, and many dead bodies. Some of the soldiers developed a painful condition that damages the feet called “trench foot” which can happen from standing in cold water or mud for an extended period of time.
Stepping out of the trench into no-man’s land was even worse. Troops had to survive a hail of bullets flying everywhere, the barbs of twisted wire on the ground, and the poison of deadly mustard gas.
The American soldiers in the trenches needed to locate a German machine gun nest. Two soldiers volunteered, but they were killed. Other soldiers went out under fire and were wounded on the battlefield. William (Bill) Shemin had to make an impossible choice. Was he brave enough to risk near-certain death if he tried to rescue a fellow soldier?
Without wasting a moment, Bill jumped from the safety of the trench and dashed towards the injured soldier. When he got close, he realized this was his best friend from Newark, NJ, Jim Pritchard, who was 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds. On this sunny day in the open field with no cover, Bill was able to dodge the bullets and barbed wire. An athlete all his young life, Bill was able to hoist his friend over his shoulder and carry him back to safety, running across the football field and half-length of no-man’s land, dodging German enemy fire the entire way.
After this rescue, Bill did something even more incredible. He went back into no-man’s land again, braving machine gun, small arms fire, and aerial bombardment. Bill Shemin rescued not one, not two, but three soldiers that day. Then when all of Bill’s senior officers were killed or suffered casualties, Bill reorganized and, although only a Sergeant, took command of the whole platoon, leading the survivors to safety.
During this same time period, there was another American hero on a battlefield in France, not far from Bill Shemin. He was a soldier named Henry Johnson. He was part of the all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment, the Harlem Hellfighters. Henry’s battalion was also tucked in a trench, facing a German raiding party of at least 12 soldiers. Henry and another soldier named Needham Roberts, stood sentry along no-man’s land.
Sgt. William Shemen
The German raiding party started to fire bullets. Henry fired back and then both men threw grenades and both of them were hit. Needham lost consciousness and two German soldiers captured him and were carrying him away. Henry refused to let this happen. When his rifle got jammed trying to put in a magazine, Henry swung the rifle at one enemy attacker, knocking him down. Then he grabbed the only weapon he had left - his Bolo knife - and took down the other German soldier. In just a few minutes of fighting, these two Americans had defeated the entire raiding party, and Henry had saved a fellow solider.
What do William Shemin and Henry Johnson have in common? How are they linked together by history?
Yes, they were both heroes of the American efforts to help the Allies dislodge the German occupiers of France in World War I during 1918. They both fought bravely against extreme odds, saved their fellow soldiers’ lives, and survived themselves under horrific conditions of a terrible war.
Sgt. Henry Johnson of the 369th Infantry Regiment
And both of these soldiers went unrecognized with a Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award, in their lifetimes, even though their heroic acts during WW I certainly deserved one. Why? Both men were discriminated against – William Shemin, because he was a Jewish American, and Henry Johnson, because he was African American.
Can a wrong be made right?
Meet the third hero of this story – Elsie Shemin-Roth, William’s daughter. The battlefield isn’t the only way to demonstrate tremendous acts of courage and determination. Elsie waged her own battle to have the U.S. government review the records of WWI soldiers who had been overlooked for the MOH due to discrimination. After 15 years of so much effort and hearing “Sorry, no” to many requests, Elsie was finally triumphant. President Obama approved the Medal of Honor to both William Shemin and Henry Johnson in 2015.
A White House ceremony was convened on June 2, 2015, to present the MOH posthumously to both William Shemin and Henry Johnson. On that occasion, President Barack Obama said:
It has taken a long time for Henry Johnson and William Shemin to receive the recognition they deserve. And there are surely others whose heroism is still unacknowledged and uncelebrated. We have work to do, as a nation, to make sure that all of our heroes’ stories are told. And we’ll keep at it, no matter how long it takes. America is the country we are today because of people like Henry and William -- Americans who signed up to serve, and rose to meet their responsibilities -- and then went beyond. The least we can do is to say: We know who you are. We know what you did for us. We are forever grateful.
Sgt. Shemin's Distinguished Service Cross and Purple Heart
Since that bright day in 2015, we have seen both progress and setbacks in America. There is a rising wave of hate crimes and attacks against Jews, African Americans, Asians, Latinos, Native Americans and other minority groups. We hope this story inspires people to continue to fight for justice and equality for all people.
The article is based on the book The Ivy Hero, which can be purchased on Amazon.
To find out more about the book or contact the authors, visit The Ivy Hero website.
Like What You Read? Give Jews around the world the chance to experience engaging Jewish wisdom with more articles and videos on Aish.
JEWISH HISTORY
Re: AISH
https://aish.com/googles-offensive-definition-of-jew/
Google’s Offensive Definition of Jew
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
December 29, 2022
In its first spot the search engine gave an insulting definition of the term “Jew.”
Google has retracted a highly offensive definition that its search engine supplied to those looking up the word “Jew.” “Our apologies,” Tweeted Danny Sullivan, a Google employee. “Google licenses definitions from third-party dictionary experts. We only display offensive definitions by default if they are the main meaning of a term….” Google has now blocked it.
For a short period of time this week, the top result for “Jew” was: “to bargain with someone in a miserly or petty way”. The definition belonged to a Google partner named Oxford Languages, which calls itself “the world’s leading dictionary publisher” with over 150 years of experience. “Oxford’s English dictionaries are widely regarded as the world’s most authoritative sources on current English,” its website declares. Oxford Languages did label its definition as “offensive,” yet provided it as the most common use of the word Jew. It even included different tenses, including the words “jewed” and “jewing” as further “examples” of unethical financial behavior.
Modern Ethnic Slur
During the Middle Ages, many European communities radically restricted Jews’ professional opportunities, allowing them to serve as traders and money lenders, an activity that the Catholic Church banned for Christians starting in 1179. Catholic councils and theologians wrote extensively about the supposed evils of extending credit, creating a sense that the Jews who engaged in loaning money for profit were somehow uniquely terrible, even though they served a vital purpose of providing liquidity in European communities.
In England during the Middle Ages, Jews were formally considered “property of the Crown” and expected to lend money to the monarch and nobles. In Poland in the 13th century, King Boleslaw the Pious described his land’s Jews as “slaves of the Treasury” and expected them to serve a similar role. In the 1700s, the historian Howard M. Sachar estimates that “perhaps as many as three-fourths of the Jews in Central and Western Europe were limited to the precarious occupation of retail peddling, hawking, and ‘street-banking,’ that is, moneylending.”
Google’s Offensive Definition of Jew
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
December 29, 2022
In its first spot the search engine gave an insulting definition of the term “Jew.”
Google has retracted a highly offensive definition that its search engine supplied to those looking up the word “Jew.” “Our apologies,” Tweeted Danny Sullivan, a Google employee. “Google licenses definitions from third-party dictionary experts. We only display offensive definitions by default if they are the main meaning of a term….” Google has now blocked it.
For a short period of time this week, the top result for “Jew” was: “to bargain with someone in a miserly or petty way”. The definition belonged to a Google partner named Oxford Languages, which calls itself “the world’s leading dictionary publisher” with over 150 years of experience. “Oxford’s English dictionaries are widely regarded as the world’s most authoritative sources on current English,” its website declares. Oxford Languages did label its definition as “offensive,” yet provided it as the most common use of the word Jew. It even included different tenses, including the words “jewed” and “jewing” as further “examples” of unethical financial behavior.
Modern Ethnic Slur
During the Middle Ages, many European communities radically restricted Jews’ professional opportunities, allowing them to serve as traders and money lenders, an activity that the Catholic Church banned for Christians starting in 1179. Catholic councils and theologians wrote extensively about the supposed evils of extending credit, creating a sense that the Jews who engaged in loaning money for profit were somehow uniquely terrible, even though they served a vital purpose of providing liquidity in European communities.
In England during the Middle Ages, Jews were formally considered “property of the Crown” and expected to lend money to the monarch and nobles. In Poland in the 13th century, King Boleslaw the Pious described his land’s Jews as “slaves of the Treasury” and expected them to serve a similar role. In the 1700s, the historian Howard M. Sachar estimates that “perhaps as many as three-fourths of the Jews in Central and Western Europe were limited to the precarious occupation of retail peddling, hawking, and ‘street-banking,’ that is, moneylending.”
Re: AISH
Shalom Elaine,
Here’s your Aish.com Round Up for December 28th.
Whoopi Goldberg Can’t Take Her Foot Out of Her Mouth
Oops. Whoopi once again mentioned that the Holocaust wasn’t about race – it was white on white violence. The usual suspects had a fit, and thankfully this time she wasn’t forced to sit in the corner, banished from The View for a couple of weeks (as Jews, we should know that banning speakers and limiting free speech is not the way to deal with objectionable viewpoints). Naturally, Whoopie apologized – apparently, she didn’t mean what she said.
But her comments do raise some thorny questions about Jews being a race or a religion. The truth is we’re neither. It’s complicated. Read Sara Yoheved Rigler’s take on this.
https://aish.com/are-jews-a-race-its-complicated/?
Here’s your Aish.com Round Up for December 28th.
Whoopi Goldberg Can’t Take Her Foot Out of Her Mouth
Oops. Whoopi once again mentioned that the Holocaust wasn’t about race – it was white on white violence. The usual suspects had a fit, and thankfully this time she wasn’t forced to sit in the corner, banished from The View for a couple of weeks (as Jews, we should know that banning speakers and limiting free speech is not the way to deal with objectionable viewpoints). Naturally, Whoopie apologized – apparently, she didn’t mean what she said.
But her comments do raise some thorny questions about Jews being a race or a religion. The truth is we’re neither. It’s complicated. Read Sara Yoheved Rigler’s take on this.
https://aish.com/are-jews-a-race-its-complicated/?
Re: AISH
https://aish.com/i-went-back-to-spain-to-learn-about-my-sephardic-roots/
I Went Back to Spain to Learn about My Sephardic Roots
by Daniel Lobell
December 18, 2022
Here’s what I discovered.
Right after we got married, my wife Kylie Ora Lobell and I set off on our honeymoon tour of the world. One of our stops was Spain, where I was going to record my new comedy special, “Reconquistador!” I was tracing my Sephardic roots and learning about the Jewish community that was still there.
My family had lived in Spain before the Spanish Inquisition in 1492. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella forcibly converted, tortured, or expelled around 300,000 Jews from the country. I enjoyed my previous visits to Spain even though I knew its dark history of the Jewish people.
Our first stop was Girona, the Jewish quarter that dates back to the 12th century. It was beautiful, which made me even more upset that we were expelled from the city.
SUBSCRIBE
Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history, food, philosophy, current events, holidays and more...
I visited the Jewish museum in Girona and saw the name “Lobell” everywhere. It was interesting because I’m Sephardic on my mom’s side and went to a Sephardic synagogue growing up; now, I discovered that my dad’s side could have had Sephardic roots as well.
The museum is well done; there were antique menorahs in there, old tallit, and a mohel’s tools for circumcision. I learned that the Jews had been in Spain for at least 2,000 years following the destruction of the Second Temple. There was a golden age of the Jews in Spain during Muslim rule, but when Catholic monarchs King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella took over, they issued the Alhambra Decree and expelled the Jews from their kingdoms. We talk about the Holocaust a lot because it was so recent, but the Inquisition was just as bad. Jews were burned at the stake, tortured, and forcibly converted or thrown out of their country.
At the Girona museum, I felt the same way I did when I went to other Jewish museums around the world. Usually, the country is saying, “Jews, we kicked you out, we tortured you, and we murdered you, but hey! At least we now have this nice museum and gift shop! Please buy a keychain.”
As a comedian, I turned to humor while exploring the museum, cracking jokes with the staff. But it was overwhelming. I couldn’t process my mixed emotions.
The remnants of the Inquisition deeply ingrained in Spanish culture. For instance, while touring around Barcelona and Madrid, I noticed there were pig legs and signs for jamón, a dry-cured ham, everywhere. I joked that there must have been lots of pigs in wheelchairs all over the country.
I found out that the pig legs weren’t just there because the Spanish people found them delicious. During the Inquisition, people would put pig into everything to find out who was Jewish or Muslim. If you didn’t eat it, you could be killed.
There are still statues of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in Spain. And in 2015, the year I went on my honeymoon, Spain said it would be giving citizenship to the descendants of the Jews who were expelled during the Inquisition. Since then, they have rejected thousands of applications, and thousands of other people never got a response.
When Kylie and I went to Chabad for Shabbat services, heavily armed Israeli guards questioned us before allowing us into the synagogue. And when we went to the rabbi’s house for Friday night dinner, they accompanied us there for protection. In modern-day Spain, Europe, and the world in general, Jews are still being attacked simply for being Jewish. Not much seems to have changed.
As hard as it was for me to learn about the history of the Jews in Spain, I still love the country. It’s gorgeous and, like other European towns, full of so much history.
Most of the people you meet in Spain are lovely, too. The audiences at my standup shows were ready to laugh and have a good time. Plus, I enjoyed going to the kosher restaurants and delis in Madrid and Barcelona – even though the one in Madrid was hidden in an unmarked building in an alley. Touring the world as a comedian, I found that was often the case.
I hope that the Spanish government will make good on its promise to give people with Sephardic roots citizenship. My cousins recently moved from Turkey to Spain; I’d love to go and visit them and get citizenship myself.
And I hope that people will learn about the history of Spanish Jewry while watching my film, and laugh along the way.
Watch the “Reconquistador!” trailer
To bring “Reconquistador!” to your synagogue or city, please email Kylie@Koldigitalmarketing.com to set up a screening. Learn more at ReconquistadorMovie.com.
I Went Back to Spain to Learn about My Sephardic Roots
by Daniel Lobell
December 18, 2022
Here’s what I discovered.
Right after we got married, my wife Kylie Ora Lobell and I set off on our honeymoon tour of the world. One of our stops was Spain, where I was going to record my new comedy special, “Reconquistador!” I was tracing my Sephardic roots and learning about the Jewish community that was still there.
My family had lived in Spain before the Spanish Inquisition in 1492. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella forcibly converted, tortured, or expelled around 300,000 Jews from the country. I enjoyed my previous visits to Spain even though I knew its dark history of the Jewish people.
Our first stop was Girona, the Jewish quarter that dates back to the 12th century. It was beautiful, which made me even more upset that we were expelled from the city.
SUBSCRIBE
Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history, food, philosophy, current events, holidays and more...
I visited the Jewish museum in Girona and saw the name “Lobell” everywhere. It was interesting because I’m Sephardic on my mom’s side and went to a Sephardic synagogue growing up; now, I discovered that my dad’s side could have had Sephardic roots as well.
The museum is well done; there were antique menorahs in there, old tallit, and a mohel’s tools for circumcision. I learned that the Jews had been in Spain for at least 2,000 years following the destruction of the Second Temple. There was a golden age of the Jews in Spain during Muslim rule, but when Catholic monarchs King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella took over, they issued the Alhambra Decree and expelled the Jews from their kingdoms. We talk about the Holocaust a lot because it was so recent, but the Inquisition was just as bad. Jews were burned at the stake, tortured, and forcibly converted or thrown out of their country.
At the Girona museum, I felt the same way I did when I went to other Jewish museums around the world. Usually, the country is saying, “Jews, we kicked you out, we tortured you, and we murdered you, but hey! At least we now have this nice museum and gift shop! Please buy a keychain.”
As a comedian, I turned to humor while exploring the museum, cracking jokes with the staff. But it was overwhelming. I couldn’t process my mixed emotions.
The remnants of the Inquisition deeply ingrained in Spanish culture. For instance, while touring around Barcelona and Madrid, I noticed there were pig legs and signs for jamón, a dry-cured ham, everywhere. I joked that there must have been lots of pigs in wheelchairs all over the country.
I found out that the pig legs weren’t just there because the Spanish people found them delicious. During the Inquisition, people would put pig into everything to find out who was Jewish or Muslim. If you didn’t eat it, you could be killed.
There are still statues of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in Spain. And in 2015, the year I went on my honeymoon, Spain said it would be giving citizenship to the descendants of the Jews who were expelled during the Inquisition. Since then, they have rejected thousands of applications, and thousands of other people never got a response.
When Kylie and I went to Chabad for Shabbat services, heavily armed Israeli guards questioned us before allowing us into the synagogue. And when we went to the rabbi’s house for Friday night dinner, they accompanied us there for protection. In modern-day Spain, Europe, and the world in general, Jews are still being attacked simply for being Jewish. Not much seems to have changed.
As hard as it was for me to learn about the history of the Jews in Spain, I still love the country. It’s gorgeous and, like other European towns, full of so much history.
Most of the people you meet in Spain are lovely, too. The audiences at my standup shows were ready to laugh and have a good time. Plus, I enjoyed going to the kosher restaurants and delis in Madrid and Barcelona – even though the one in Madrid was hidden in an unmarked building in an alley. Touring the world as a comedian, I found that was often the case.
I hope that the Spanish government will make good on its promise to give people with Sephardic roots citizenship. My cousins recently moved from Turkey to Spain; I’d love to go and visit them and get citizenship myself.
And I hope that people will learn about the history of Spanish Jewry while watching my film, and laugh along the way.
Watch the “Reconquistador!” trailer
To bring “Reconquistador!” to your synagogue or city, please email Kylie@Koldigitalmarketing.com to set up a screening. Learn more at ReconquistadorMovie.com.
Re: AISH
https://aish.com/i-went-back-to-spain-to-learn-about-my-sephardic-roots/
I Went Back to Spain to Learn about My Sephardic Roots
by Daniel Lobell
December 18, 2022
Here’s what I discovered.
Right after we got married, my wife Kylie Ora Lobell and I set off on our honeymoon tour of the world. One of our stops was Spain, where I was going to record my new comedy special, “Reconquistador!” I was tracing my Sephardic roots and learning about the Jewish community that was still there.
My family had lived in Spain before the Spanish Inquisition in 1492. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella forcibly converted, tortured, or expelled around 300,000 Jews from the country. I enjoyed my previous visits to Spain even though I knew its dark history of the Jewish people.
Our first stop was Girona, the Jewish quarter that dates back to the 12th century. It was beautiful, which made me even more upset that we were expelled from the city.
SUBSCRIBE
Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history, food, philosophy, current events, holidays and more...
I visited the Jewish museum in Girona and saw the name “Lobell” everywhere. It was interesting because I’m Sephardic on my mom’s side and went to a Sephardic synagogue growing up; now, I discovered that my dad’s side could have had Sephardic roots as well.
The museum is well done; there were antique menorahs in there, old tallit, and a mohel’s tools for circumcision. I learned that the Jews had been in Spain for at least 2,000 years following the destruction of the Second Temple. There was a golden age of the Jews in Spain during Muslim rule, but when Catholic monarchs King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella took over, they issued the Alhambra Decree and expelled the Jews from their kingdoms. We talk about the Holocaust a lot because it was so recent, but the Inquisition was just as bad. Jews were burned at the stake, tortured, and forcibly converted or thrown out of their country.
At the Girona museum, I felt the same way I did when I went to other Jewish museums around the world. Usually, the country is saying, “Jews, we kicked you out, we tortured you, and we murdered you, but hey! At least we now have this nice museum and gift shop! Please buy a keychain.”
As a comedian, I turned to humor while exploring the museum, cracking jokes with the staff. But it was overwhelming. I couldn’t process my mixed emotions.
The remnants of the Inquisition deeply ingrained in Spanish culture. For instance, while touring around Barcelona and Madrid, I noticed there were pig legs and signs for jamón, a dry-cured ham, everywhere. I joked that there must have been lots of pigs in wheelchairs all over the country.
I found out that the pig legs weren’t just there because the Spanish people found them delicious. During the Inquisition, people would put pig into everything to find out who was Jewish or Muslim. If you didn’t eat it, you could be killed.
There are still statues of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in Spain. And in 2015, the year I went on my honeymoon, Spain said it would be giving citizenship to the descendants of the Jews who were expelled during the Inquisition. Since then, they have rejected thousands of applications, and thousands of other people never got a response.
When Kylie and I went to Chabad for Shabbat services, heavily armed Israeli guards questioned us before allowing us into the synagogue. And when we went to the rabbi’s house for Friday night dinner, they accompanied us there for protection. In modern-day Spain, Europe, and the world in general, Jews are still being attacked simply for being Jewish. Not much seems to have changed.
As hard as it was for me to learn about the history of the Jews in Spain, I still love the country. It’s gorgeous and, like other European towns, full of so much history.
Most of the people you meet in Spain are lovely, too. The audiences at my standup shows were ready to laugh and have a good time. Plus, I enjoyed going to the kosher restaurants and delis in Madrid and Barcelona – even though the one in Madrid was hidden in an unmarked building in an alley. Touring the world as a comedian, I found that was often the case.
I hope that the Spanish government will make good on its promise to give people with Sephardic roots citizenship. My cousins recently moved from Turkey to Spain; I’d love to go and visit them and get citizenship myself.
And I hope that people will learn about the history of Spanish Jewry while watching my film, and laugh along the way.
Watch the “Reconquistador!” trailer
To bring “Reconquistador!” to your synagogue or city, please email Kylie@Koldigitalmarketing.com to set up a screening. Learn more at ReconquistadorMovie.com.
I Went Back to Spain to Learn about My Sephardic Roots
by Daniel Lobell
December 18, 2022
Here’s what I discovered.
Right after we got married, my wife Kylie Ora Lobell and I set off on our honeymoon tour of the world. One of our stops was Spain, where I was going to record my new comedy special, “Reconquistador!” I was tracing my Sephardic roots and learning about the Jewish community that was still there.
My family had lived in Spain before the Spanish Inquisition in 1492. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella forcibly converted, tortured, or expelled around 300,000 Jews from the country. I enjoyed my previous visits to Spain even though I knew its dark history of the Jewish people.
Our first stop was Girona, the Jewish quarter that dates back to the 12th century. It was beautiful, which made me even more upset that we were expelled from the city.
SUBSCRIBE
Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history, food, philosophy, current events, holidays and more...
I visited the Jewish museum in Girona and saw the name “Lobell” everywhere. It was interesting because I’m Sephardic on my mom’s side and went to a Sephardic synagogue growing up; now, I discovered that my dad’s side could have had Sephardic roots as well.
The museum is well done; there were antique menorahs in there, old tallit, and a mohel’s tools for circumcision. I learned that the Jews had been in Spain for at least 2,000 years following the destruction of the Second Temple. There was a golden age of the Jews in Spain during Muslim rule, but when Catholic monarchs King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella took over, they issued the Alhambra Decree and expelled the Jews from their kingdoms. We talk about the Holocaust a lot because it was so recent, but the Inquisition was just as bad. Jews were burned at the stake, tortured, and forcibly converted or thrown out of their country.
At the Girona museum, I felt the same way I did when I went to other Jewish museums around the world. Usually, the country is saying, “Jews, we kicked you out, we tortured you, and we murdered you, but hey! At least we now have this nice museum and gift shop! Please buy a keychain.”
As a comedian, I turned to humor while exploring the museum, cracking jokes with the staff. But it was overwhelming. I couldn’t process my mixed emotions.
The remnants of the Inquisition deeply ingrained in Spanish culture. For instance, while touring around Barcelona and Madrid, I noticed there were pig legs and signs for jamón, a dry-cured ham, everywhere. I joked that there must have been lots of pigs in wheelchairs all over the country.
I found out that the pig legs weren’t just there because the Spanish people found them delicious. During the Inquisition, people would put pig into everything to find out who was Jewish or Muslim. If you didn’t eat it, you could be killed.
There are still statues of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in Spain. And in 2015, the year I went on my honeymoon, Spain said it would be giving citizenship to the descendants of the Jews who were expelled during the Inquisition. Since then, they have rejected thousands of applications, and thousands of other people never got a response.
When Kylie and I went to Chabad for Shabbat services, heavily armed Israeli guards questioned us before allowing us into the synagogue. And when we went to the rabbi’s house for Friday night dinner, they accompanied us there for protection. In modern-day Spain, Europe, and the world in general, Jews are still being attacked simply for being Jewish. Not much seems to have changed.
As hard as it was for me to learn about the history of the Jews in Spain, I still love the country. It’s gorgeous and, like other European towns, full of so much history.
Most of the people you meet in Spain are lovely, too. The audiences at my standup shows were ready to laugh and have a good time. Plus, I enjoyed going to the kosher restaurants and delis in Madrid and Barcelona – even though the one in Madrid was hidden in an unmarked building in an alley. Touring the world as a comedian, I found that was often the case.
I hope that the Spanish government will make good on its promise to give people with Sephardic roots citizenship. My cousins recently moved from Turkey to Spain; I’d love to go and visit them and get citizenship myself.
And I hope that people will learn about the history of Spanish Jewry while watching my film, and laugh along the way.
Watch the “Reconquistador!” trailer
To bring “Reconquistador!” to your synagogue or city, please email Kylie@Koldigitalmarketing.com to set up a screening. Learn more at ReconquistadorMovie.com.
Re: AISH
https://aish.com/what-fiddler-on-the-roof-gets-right-and-wrong/
What Fiddler on the Roof Gets Right – and Wrong
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
December 18, 2022
The musical captures much of the joy of Jewish life and traditions, and gets some key points wrong as well.
Growing up, a surprisingly large amount of what I knew about Judaism came from my favorite movie, Fiddler on the Roof. The musical captures much of the joy of Jewish life and traditions, and gets some key points wrong as well.
Here are a few things Fiddler gets right, and two things it gets wrong.
Based on Yiddish Stories
The 1964 Broadway musical was based on stories written by the famous Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem. His series of short stories about “Tevye the Dairyman” introduced readers to Tevye, a father living in a shtetl named Anatevka in an obscure corner of the Russian empire who’s “blessed with five daughters” as his character says with heavy emphasis in the movie, which came out in 1971. (In the stories, he has seven.)
When it comes time to marry, Tevye’s daughters rebel, each pushing the envelope a little farther. Tzeitel, the oldest, refuses to consent to marry the old widower Anatevka’s matchmaker picks out for her, insisting that she marry a young penniless tailor named Motel for love. Tevye relents, concocting a crazy excuse for countenancing the marriage.
Next, his daughter Hodel refuses to marry a religious Jew, choosing instead to follow a young secular Jewish Communist named Perchik to Siberia.
Finally, at the end of the film, the next youngest daughter, Chava, breaks with Jewish tradition completely: she announces she’s marrying Fyedka, a non-Jewish local man. In the Broadway musical and subsequent movie, Tevye agonizes, then ultimately gives his blessing to the match, telling the couple “God be with you.” In the original stories, Tevye remains steadfast, refusing to countenance the match. (The original stories are also darker in tone, with his other daughters suffering difficult trials and sad fates.)
Sholem Aleichem was the pen name of Sholem Rabinivitz. Born in 1859 into a middle-class family in the prosperous town of Pereyaslav in the Ukraine, he grew up speaking Hebrew and Russian as well as Yiddish. He always said he based his Tevye stories on a real-life milkman named Tevye he once met in a tiny Jewish shtetl who had a wry way of looking at the world and was committed to his Jewish religion. Sholem Aleichem wrote him as a comic character and envisioned him being portrayed on stage; a 1919 Yiddish play did capture Tevye’s stories to an appreciative Yiddish-speaking audience, followed by a Yiddish movie produced in 1939
Depicting Shabbat and Community
By the time the Broadway musical and Hollywood film came along, the shtetls that Sholem Aleichem had describe were long gone: over 6 million Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust just a generation before. Sholem Aleichem, like so many other European Jews, had moved to the United States. In the 1960s and 1970s, many American Jews were abandoning the tight-knit bonds that had held them together in immigrant neighborhoods and were moving to more affluent, spacious suburbs. Fiddler on the Roof came along at a time when nostalgia for the old ways of life was bumping up against the new, secular reality of American Jewish communities.
The musical conveys some of the joy of a traditional Jewish lifestyle. One of my favorite scenes takes place late on Friday afternoon. Tevye’s rounds have taken longer than usual because his horse is lame and he’s had to pull his heavy milk wagon himself. As he approaches his ramshackle home, his wife Golde tells him, “Hurry up, it’s nearly the Sabbath!” She’s already dressed in her fine Shabbat dress. Golde looks regal, her dress adorned with a strand of pearls. It’s a realistic scene in Jewish homes across the world each week: as sunset on Friday approaches, Jews don their finest clothes to prepare for a regal meal, as the lady of the home lights Shabbat candles.
Tevye feeds his animals (singing If I Were a Rich Man as he works), then washes up and changes into his Shabbat suit and kippah. He begins reciting prayers under his breath as he enters his home. Usually shabby, tonight it looks beautiful. Typically hard-working and harried, tonight Tevye and his family have time to relax and focus on one another. Tevye and Golde bless their children and Golde makes a blessing over her Shabbat candles. The musical gets the grandeur and holiness of Shabbat right.
Fiddler on the Roof also gets right the tightly-knit Jewish communities. A traditional Jewish community fosters a lot of togetherness: men typically pray together three times a day with a minyan; children attend Jewish schools or classes; women get together to study and recite Psalms. That community is evident in the world of Fiddler where the bonds that unite the dwellers of Anatevka are palpable. Norman Jewison, the non-Jewish director of the film, described sitting next to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (who grew up in a Yiddish speaking home in Ukraine) at the film’s premier screening in Israel, and watching her wipe away a tear.
Do You Love Me?”
One of my favorite songs in the musical is Do You Love Me?, sung by Tevye and his wife Golde after their daughter Hodel announces she is marrying a penniless young Jewish Communist named Perchik “for love,” without any involvement from a matchmaker or her family. When Golde objects, Tevye tells her Perchik “is a good man… I like him… And what’s more important, Hodel likes him. Hodel loves him. So what can we do? It’s a new world. Love.” Tevye starts to get up then suddenly asks Golde if she loves him.
Do You Love Me?
Singing, they describe their own arranged marriage 25 years ago, when their parents told them that eventually, love would grow. “And now I’m asking, Golde, do you love me?” Tevye sings. In response, Golde describes all the ways they’ve worked together through the decades: she’s milked the family cow, raised their children, cooked and cleaned, and so much more.” “If that’s not love, what is?” she finally concludes.
Tevye - who’s slaved away through the years as well, building their family - gazes at her fondly as they finally realize they’re in love: “It doesn’t change a thing, But even so, After 25 years, it’s nice to know.”
This touching song conveys a deep Jewish truth: love grows through giving. The Hebrew word for love, ahavah, has as its root the word hav, “give.” Giving to another person helps us keep their needs and perspective in mind, and fosters closeness. When we give to another person, and particularly when we make the series of commitments to our spouses that marriage demands, we begin to foster the deep, abiding love that comes from being true life partners.
Getting Torah Right - and Wrong
A lot of Fiddler on the Roof’s comedy comes from Tevye’s bumbling through quotes about Jewish topics. “As Abraham said, ‘I am a stranger in a strange land…’” Tevye confidently intones in one scene, only to be told that it was Moses who said that. “Ah. Well, as King David said, ‘I am slow of speech, and slow of tongue,’” Tevye replies - only to be told that this too was said by Moses. “For a man who was slow of tongue,” Tevye replies testily, “he talked a lot.”
The denizens of Anatevka are steeped in religious discourse, but in the Broadway and movie version there’s never any indication that they take it too seriously. The town’s rabbi is elderly and out of touch, and religious comments are confined to Tevye’s garbled pronouncements. That is a far cry from the way life was in actual shtetls and even different from the Tevye in Sholem Aleichem’s writings. “On the Shabbat, I tell you, I’m a king,” Tevye proclaims in the short story Tevye Strikes it Rich, before describing the Jewish books he studies on Shabbat: “The Bible, Psalms, Rashi, Targum, Perek, you-name-it….” It’s a far cry from the more ignorant Tevye of modern depictions.
The writer Pauline Wengeroff (1833-1916) wrote about her life in the type of close-knit Yiddish speaking Jewish communities that Fiddler on the Roof refers to. She and her husband were highly educated, fluent in German and Russian as well as Hebrew and Yiddish. Yet her husband, like most of the Jews they knew, spent long hours prioritizing Jewish study. “My parents were God-fearing, deeply pious, and respectable people,” she wrote in her masterful two-volume work Memoirs of a Grandmother. “This was the prevalent type among the Jews then, whose aim in life was above all the love of God and of family. Most of the day was spent in the study of Talmud, and only appointed hours were set aside for business….”
In a real-life shtetl like Anatevka, there would have been much more Jewish learning, and a greater familiarity with Jewish books and wisdom.
More Than “Tradition”
If there’s any song in Fiddler on the Roof that grates on my nerves, it’s the opening song Tradition! “Because of our traditions, we’ve kept our balance for many, many years,” Tevye sings. “Here in Anatevka we have traditions for everything - how to eat, how to sleep, how to wear clothes. For instance, we always keep our heads covered and always wear a little prayer shawl. This shows our constant devotion to God. You may ask, how did this tradition start? I’ll tell you - I don’t know! But it’s a tradition….”
Nonsense. A committed Jew like Tevye, who made the time to study Jewish texts, would be familiar with the sources for the Jewish practices he describes: he’d likely spend time studying about them each week. Jews don’t live Jewish lives merely because of “tradition”. On the contrary: they grappled with Jewish texts and eternal questions for most of their lives.
In Sholem Aleichem’s final Tevye story, after the residents of Anatevka have learned they must leave their town, Tevye is philosophical, relying on his deep faith to sustain him. As he packs up to leave, he quotes the Torah and Jewish prayers. He remembers how our ancestor Abraham was commanded by God to leave his family and his land too. Tevya hopes for the coming of the Messiah. And he takes our leave, saying he’s done talking, because now he has to go and be with his children and his grandchildren, who need him.
Like him, they were living a rich Jewish life, not out of tradition, but based in a deeply-held commitment to Jewish ideals.
What Fiddler on the Roof Gets Right – and Wrong
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
December 18, 2022
The musical captures much of the joy of Jewish life and traditions, and gets some key points wrong as well.
Growing up, a surprisingly large amount of what I knew about Judaism came from my favorite movie, Fiddler on the Roof. The musical captures much of the joy of Jewish life and traditions, and gets some key points wrong as well.
Here are a few things Fiddler gets right, and two things it gets wrong.
Based on Yiddish Stories
The 1964 Broadway musical was based on stories written by the famous Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem. His series of short stories about “Tevye the Dairyman” introduced readers to Tevye, a father living in a shtetl named Anatevka in an obscure corner of the Russian empire who’s “blessed with five daughters” as his character says with heavy emphasis in the movie, which came out in 1971. (In the stories, he has seven.)
When it comes time to marry, Tevye’s daughters rebel, each pushing the envelope a little farther. Tzeitel, the oldest, refuses to consent to marry the old widower Anatevka’s matchmaker picks out for her, insisting that she marry a young penniless tailor named Motel for love. Tevye relents, concocting a crazy excuse for countenancing the marriage.
Next, his daughter Hodel refuses to marry a religious Jew, choosing instead to follow a young secular Jewish Communist named Perchik to Siberia.
Finally, at the end of the film, the next youngest daughter, Chava, breaks with Jewish tradition completely: she announces she’s marrying Fyedka, a non-Jewish local man. In the Broadway musical and subsequent movie, Tevye agonizes, then ultimately gives his blessing to the match, telling the couple “God be with you.” In the original stories, Tevye remains steadfast, refusing to countenance the match. (The original stories are also darker in tone, with his other daughters suffering difficult trials and sad fates.)
Sholem Aleichem was the pen name of Sholem Rabinivitz. Born in 1859 into a middle-class family in the prosperous town of Pereyaslav in the Ukraine, he grew up speaking Hebrew and Russian as well as Yiddish. He always said he based his Tevye stories on a real-life milkman named Tevye he once met in a tiny Jewish shtetl who had a wry way of looking at the world and was committed to his Jewish religion. Sholem Aleichem wrote him as a comic character and envisioned him being portrayed on stage; a 1919 Yiddish play did capture Tevye’s stories to an appreciative Yiddish-speaking audience, followed by a Yiddish movie produced in 1939
Depicting Shabbat and Community
By the time the Broadway musical and Hollywood film came along, the shtetls that Sholem Aleichem had describe were long gone: over 6 million Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust just a generation before. Sholem Aleichem, like so many other European Jews, had moved to the United States. In the 1960s and 1970s, many American Jews were abandoning the tight-knit bonds that had held them together in immigrant neighborhoods and were moving to more affluent, spacious suburbs. Fiddler on the Roof came along at a time when nostalgia for the old ways of life was bumping up against the new, secular reality of American Jewish communities.
The musical conveys some of the joy of a traditional Jewish lifestyle. One of my favorite scenes takes place late on Friday afternoon. Tevye’s rounds have taken longer than usual because his horse is lame and he’s had to pull his heavy milk wagon himself. As he approaches his ramshackle home, his wife Golde tells him, “Hurry up, it’s nearly the Sabbath!” She’s already dressed in her fine Shabbat dress. Golde looks regal, her dress adorned with a strand of pearls. It’s a realistic scene in Jewish homes across the world each week: as sunset on Friday approaches, Jews don their finest clothes to prepare for a regal meal, as the lady of the home lights Shabbat candles.
Tevye feeds his animals (singing If I Were a Rich Man as he works), then washes up and changes into his Shabbat suit and kippah. He begins reciting prayers under his breath as he enters his home. Usually shabby, tonight it looks beautiful. Typically hard-working and harried, tonight Tevye and his family have time to relax and focus on one another. Tevye and Golde bless their children and Golde makes a blessing over her Shabbat candles. The musical gets the grandeur and holiness of Shabbat right.
Fiddler on the Roof also gets right the tightly-knit Jewish communities. A traditional Jewish community fosters a lot of togetherness: men typically pray together three times a day with a minyan; children attend Jewish schools or classes; women get together to study and recite Psalms. That community is evident in the world of Fiddler where the bonds that unite the dwellers of Anatevka are palpable. Norman Jewison, the non-Jewish director of the film, described sitting next to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (who grew up in a Yiddish speaking home in Ukraine) at the film’s premier screening in Israel, and watching her wipe away a tear.
Do You Love Me?”
One of my favorite songs in the musical is Do You Love Me?, sung by Tevye and his wife Golde after their daughter Hodel announces she is marrying a penniless young Jewish Communist named Perchik “for love,” without any involvement from a matchmaker or her family. When Golde objects, Tevye tells her Perchik “is a good man… I like him… And what’s more important, Hodel likes him. Hodel loves him. So what can we do? It’s a new world. Love.” Tevye starts to get up then suddenly asks Golde if she loves him.
Do You Love Me?
Singing, they describe their own arranged marriage 25 years ago, when their parents told them that eventually, love would grow. “And now I’m asking, Golde, do you love me?” Tevye sings. In response, Golde describes all the ways they’ve worked together through the decades: she’s milked the family cow, raised their children, cooked and cleaned, and so much more.” “If that’s not love, what is?” she finally concludes.
Tevye - who’s slaved away through the years as well, building their family - gazes at her fondly as they finally realize they’re in love: “It doesn’t change a thing, But even so, After 25 years, it’s nice to know.”
This touching song conveys a deep Jewish truth: love grows through giving. The Hebrew word for love, ahavah, has as its root the word hav, “give.” Giving to another person helps us keep their needs and perspective in mind, and fosters closeness. When we give to another person, and particularly when we make the series of commitments to our spouses that marriage demands, we begin to foster the deep, abiding love that comes from being true life partners.
Getting Torah Right - and Wrong
A lot of Fiddler on the Roof’s comedy comes from Tevye’s bumbling through quotes about Jewish topics. “As Abraham said, ‘I am a stranger in a strange land…’” Tevye confidently intones in one scene, only to be told that it was Moses who said that. “Ah. Well, as King David said, ‘I am slow of speech, and slow of tongue,’” Tevye replies - only to be told that this too was said by Moses. “For a man who was slow of tongue,” Tevye replies testily, “he talked a lot.”
The denizens of Anatevka are steeped in religious discourse, but in the Broadway and movie version there’s never any indication that they take it too seriously. The town’s rabbi is elderly and out of touch, and religious comments are confined to Tevye’s garbled pronouncements. That is a far cry from the way life was in actual shtetls and even different from the Tevye in Sholem Aleichem’s writings. “On the Shabbat, I tell you, I’m a king,” Tevye proclaims in the short story Tevye Strikes it Rich, before describing the Jewish books he studies on Shabbat: “The Bible, Psalms, Rashi, Targum, Perek, you-name-it….” It’s a far cry from the more ignorant Tevye of modern depictions.
The writer Pauline Wengeroff (1833-1916) wrote about her life in the type of close-knit Yiddish speaking Jewish communities that Fiddler on the Roof refers to. She and her husband were highly educated, fluent in German and Russian as well as Hebrew and Yiddish. Yet her husband, like most of the Jews they knew, spent long hours prioritizing Jewish study. “My parents were God-fearing, deeply pious, and respectable people,” she wrote in her masterful two-volume work Memoirs of a Grandmother. “This was the prevalent type among the Jews then, whose aim in life was above all the love of God and of family. Most of the day was spent in the study of Talmud, and only appointed hours were set aside for business….”
In a real-life shtetl like Anatevka, there would have been much more Jewish learning, and a greater familiarity with Jewish books and wisdom.
More Than “Tradition”
If there’s any song in Fiddler on the Roof that grates on my nerves, it’s the opening song Tradition! “Because of our traditions, we’ve kept our balance for many, many years,” Tevye sings. “Here in Anatevka we have traditions for everything - how to eat, how to sleep, how to wear clothes. For instance, we always keep our heads covered and always wear a little prayer shawl. This shows our constant devotion to God. You may ask, how did this tradition start? I’ll tell you - I don’t know! But it’s a tradition….”
Nonsense. A committed Jew like Tevye, who made the time to study Jewish texts, would be familiar with the sources for the Jewish practices he describes: he’d likely spend time studying about them each week. Jews don’t live Jewish lives merely because of “tradition”. On the contrary: they grappled with Jewish texts and eternal questions for most of their lives.
In Sholem Aleichem’s final Tevye story, after the residents of Anatevka have learned they must leave their town, Tevye is philosophical, relying on his deep faith to sustain him. As he packs up to leave, he quotes the Torah and Jewish prayers. He remembers how our ancestor Abraham was commanded by God to leave his family and his land too. Tevya hopes for the coming of the Messiah. And he takes our leave, saying he’s done talking, because now he has to go and be with his children and his grandchildren, who need him.
Like him, they were living a rich Jewish life, not out of tradition, but based in a deeply-held commitment to Jewish ideals.
Re: AISH
The Deeper Meaning of Hanukkah
Rabbi Coopersmith
Shalom Elaine,
‘Tis the season, and I am saturated with donuts, potato latkes, chocolate gelt and reams of thought-provoking Hanukkah content. It’s a really busy time of year, but be sure to take a few moments to check out these features. I guarantee they’ll add some light to your holiday.
1. The Deeper Meaning of Hanukkah
It’s easy to reduce Hanukkah to loads of eating oily foods and gift-giving, and lose sight of the deeper meaning of the holiday. Hanukkah isn’t just the Jewish Christmas; in fact, it’s the opposite. Here are three very different explorations of the ideological battle between ancient Greece and the Jewish people.
Hanukkah: It’s Greek to Me: Rabbi Tzvi Nightingale explores the Jewish and Greek views of competition, and will change how you view the Olympics.
The Spiritual Battle between Light and Darkness: The Greeks enlightened the world with art, philosophy and science. So why does Torah associate them with forces of darkness? The brilliant Dina Coopersmith – yes, my erudite wife! – discusses the fundamental flaw in Greek philosophy.
Messi, the World Cup, and a Hanukkah Message: It’s no accident that the World Cup final was on the first night of Hanukkah. Read this article to discover why.
2. Fighting for the Jewish People Today
With the darkness of antisemitism clouding the atmosphere, it’s refreshing to meet a young, courageous Jew who is standing up for being Jewish. Emily Austin is sports broadcaster, media consultant for the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations, and an ambassador for Puma – and she has almost one million followers on social media. Some of them wish she’d die. She’s not backing down. Read about Emily here.
3. The Holocaust Menorah – Jewish History Encapsulated
A big Jewish story this week was about the famous menorah from this picture taken in Kiel across from Nazi headquarters. The family took the menorah back to Germany to light it there.
The inspiring photo encapsulates the amazing story of the Jewish people who have somehow beaten the odds, vanquished their enemies and continue to thrive today. This short video features a handful of powerful contrasts, depicting the Jewish people’s odyssey from oppression to freedom.
Shabbat Shalom & Hanukkah Sameach!
Rabbi Nechemia Coopersmith
Rabbi Coopersmith
Shalom Elaine,
‘Tis the season, and I am saturated with donuts, potato latkes, chocolate gelt and reams of thought-provoking Hanukkah content. It’s a really busy time of year, but be sure to take a few moments to check out these features. I guarantee they’ll add some light to your holiday.
1. The Deeper Meaning of Hanukkah
It’s easy to reduce Hanukkah to loads of eating oily foods and gift-giving, and lose sight of the deeper meaning of the holiday. Hanukkah isn’t just the Jewish Christmas; in fact, it’s the opposite. Here are three very different explorations of the ideological battle between ancient Greece and the Jewish people.
Hanukkah: It’s Greek to Me: Rabbi Tzvi Nightingale explores the Jewish and Greek views of competition, and will change how you view the Olympics.
The Spiritual Battle between Light and Darkness: The Greeks enlightened the world with art, philosophy and science. So why does Torah associate them with forces of darkness? The brilliant Dina Coopersmith – yes, my erudite wife! – discusses the fundamental flaw in Greek philosophy.
Messi, the World Cup, and a Hanukkah Message: It’s no accident that the World Cup final was on the first night of Hanukkah. Read this article to discover why.
2. Fighting for the Jewish People Today
With the darkness of antisemitism clouding the atmosphere, it’s refreshing to meet a young, courageous Jew who is standing up for being Jewish. Emily Austin is sports broadcaster, media consultant for the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations, and an ambassador for Puma – and she has almost one million followers on social media. Some of them wish she’d die. She’s not backing down. Read about Emily here.
3. The Holocaust Menorah – Jewish History Encapsulated
A big Jewish story this week was about the famous menorah from this picture taken in Kiel across from Nazi headquarters. The family took the menorah back to Germany to light it there.
The inspiring photo encapsulates the amazing story of the Jewish people who have somehow beaten the odds, vanquished their enemies and continue to thrive today. This short video features a handful of powerful contrasts, depicting the Jewish people’s odyssey from oppression to freedom.
Shabbat Shalom & Hanukkah Sameach!
Rabbi Nechemia Coopersmith
Re: AISH
Harvard, Stanford and NASA Are Still Glorifying Nazis
by Slovie Jungreis-Wolff December 20, 2022
How can great American institutions today honor Nazis and whitewash their brutal history?
In a shocking opinion piece in the New York Times, Lev Golinkin writes of the celebration of high-profile Nazis whose names still grace Harvard and Stanford programs, a part of NASA’s Kennedy Space center, and a U.S army post. As Harvard contemplates the university’s history of profiting from slavery, Golinkin urges these institutions to reckon the fellowships and scholarships still called by the names of men who committed mass genocide and aided Hitler with their scientific research to exterminate the Jewish nation.
How did this happen to begin with?
The former Nazis were needed by the U.S. after the war for their expertise and technology. Germany was divided between east and west. The Soviet Union became America’s largest adversary. Washington had to compete with the Kremlin and stop the spread of Communism in Europe. Many Nazis became cohorts with the U.S. in their fight of the Cold War. Suddenly, their past was sanitized, blood stains laundered. Washington even recruited former Nazi scientists through their infamous Operation Paperclip program.
Meet the Nazis whose names are still being honored:
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Alfred Krupp was an industrial baron who was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials. Krupp had a company that put approximately 100,000 people to work in Auschwitz, in a slaved-built factory. Forced laborers included children and concentration camp inmates.
Alfred Krupp
In 1974, millions of dollars from Krupp were used to create the Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies as well as the Krupp Foundation Dissertation Research Fellowship at Harvard. There is no mention of Krupp’s crimes against mankind. Those who carry on his name as they study, unknowingly carry the shadows of his atrocities as well.
Then there are von Braun and Kurt Debus, two scientists who handed Hitler the V-2 ballistic missile. This missile was built by concentration camp prisoners in an underground complex that shouted death. At least 10,000 enslaved captives were killed while making these rockets. The earth was filled with emaciated corpses, discovered by American troops upon liberation. Who cannot be shaken and stunned by such a sight?
Yet, these two scientists were offered jobs in Washington.
Wernher von Braun (center) in 1961 with fellow Operation Paperclip scientists working on a Saturn rocket.
Golinkin quotes the ‘About Us” section of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center (a Smithsonian affiliated museum and host of a Space Camp program lauding von Braun): “Dr. Werner von Braun and his team of rocket scientists transformed Huntsville, Alabama…into a technology center that today is home to the second-largest research park in the United States.” Von Braun is honored on the website, his name is affixed to a research hall at the University of Alabama, a performing arts center, and a planetarium.
How astonishing to celebrate art, music and space with the name of one who snuffed the life out of the most innocent of souls on this planet. Indeed, this was the cruel paradox of Hitler and his killing machines. They were the great lovers of art, music and culture, while murdering millions to the sounds of their favorite concertos.
READ more ᐅ https://aish.com/harvard-stanford-and-nasa-are-still-glorifying-nazis/
by Slovie Jungreis-Wolff December 20, 2022
How can great American institutions today honor Nazis and whitewash their brutal history?
In a shocking opinion piece in the New York Times, Lev Golinkin writes of the celebration of high-profile Nazis whose names still grace Harvard and Stanford programs, a part of NASA’s Kennedy Space center, and a U.S army post. As Harvard contemplates the university’s history of profiting from slavery, Golinkin urges these institutions to reckon the fellowships and scholarships still called by the names of men who committed mass genocide and aided Hitler with their scientific research to exterminate the Jewish nation.
How did this happen to begin with?
The former Nazis were needed by the U.S. after the war for their expertise and technology. Germany was divided between east and west. The Soviet Union became America’s largest adversary. Washington had to compete with the Kremlin and stop the spread of Communism in Europe. Many Nazis became cohorts with the U.S. in their fight of the Cold War. Suddenly, their past was sanitized, blood stains laundered. Washington even recruited former Nazi scientists through their infamous Operation Paperclip program.
Meet the Nazis whose names are still being honored:
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
Alfred Krupp was an industrial baron who was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials. Krupp had a company that put approximately 100,000 people to work in Auschwitz, in a slaved-built factory. Forced laborers included children and concentration camp inmates.
Alfred Krupp
In 1974, millions of dollars from Krupp were used to create the Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies as well as the Krupp Foundation Dissertation Research Fellowship at Harvard. There is no mention of Krupp’s crimes against mankind. Those who carry on his name as they study, unknowingly carry the shadows of his atrocities as well.
Then there are von Braun and Kurt Debus, two scientists who handed Hitler the V-2 ballistic missile. This missile was built by concentration camp prisoners in an underground complex that shouted death. At least 10,000 enslaved captives were killed while making these rockets. The earth was filled with emaciated corpses, discovered by American troops upon liberation. Who cannot be shaken and stunned by such a sight?
Yet, these two scientists were offered jobs in Washington.
Wernher von Braun (center) in 1961 with fellow Operation Paperclip scientists working on a Saturn rocket.
Golinkin quotes the ‘About Us” section of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center (a Smithsonian affiliated museum and host of a Space Camp program lauding von Braun): “Dr. Werner von Braun and his team of rocket scientists transformed Huntsville, Alabama…into a technology center that today is home to the second-largest research park in the United States.” Von Braun is honored on the website, his name is affixed to a research hall at the University of Alabama, a performing arts center, and a planetarium.
How astonishing to celebrate art, music and space with the name of one who snuffed the life out of the most innocent of souls on this planet. Indeed, this was the cruel paradox of Hitler and his killing machines. They were the great lovers of art, music and culture, while murdering millions to the sounds of their favorite concertos.
READ more ᐅ https://aish.com/harvard-stanford-and-nasa-are-still-glorifying-nazis/
Re: AISH
https://aish.com/emily-austin-sports-broadcaster-influencer-and-proud-jew/
Emily Austin: Sports Broadcaster, Influencer and Proud Jew
TRENDING
PERSONAL GROWTH
Messi, The World Cup, and a Hanukkah Message
Why are so many people wishing this woman would drop dead?
Emily Austin receives countless direct messages on Instagram wishing her death. People call her corrupt and tell her the world would be better off if Hitler had succeeded.
Her crime?
She’s proudly Jewish online.
The college senior has a whopping 991,000 followers on Instagram and 4.7 million likes on TikTok. She’s a media consultant for the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations, an ambassador for Puma and a college sports reporter who wears a prominent Star of David necklace during interviews.
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Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history, food, philosophy, current events, holidays and more...
This past summer, Austin visited the White House and posted a picture of herself in the Oval Office titled, “Your first Woman, Jewish, President.”
After Kanye West’s antisemitic tirade on Alex Jones’ show, she posted, “These last few months have been a crazy time for the world in general, but more personally as a Jew. Free speech is a beautiful thing -- it’s our right. Just because you CAN say something, doesn’t mean you SHOULD. I will always use my voice to speak for what’s right.”
Austin wasn’t always so vocal about her Jewish background online. But once she saw the rise of antisemitism, she realized she could use her voice to make a difference.
“I noticed so many people online and even around me just had this misconception of what a Jew is,” she said. “People would know and love me, and be so taken aback that I was Jewish. They would say remarks like ‘Oh, that’s why you’re so smart,’ which I guess is a compliment. But I was really bothered by the ‘the Jews’ narrative going around. I really try to break the ‘us vs. them’ narrative and find common denominators amongst everyone despite religious observance and beliefs.”
People brush off antisemitism as “free speech,” even though hate towards other minorities is never tolerated.
The 21-year-old influencer believes that not enough people are speaking up online about antisemitism. She also thinks that people brush off antisemitism as “free speech,” even though hate towards other minorities is never tolerated.
“They think Jews are an exception to the rule because despite the Holocaust being less than 100 years ago, we don’t have that victim label,” she said. “They think it’s okay to slander us.”
What Austin has learned is that if the Jewish people don’t speak up, we won’t have any allies speaking up, either.
“What people say online reflects what they think,” she said. “If people are slandering the Jewish people and we aren’t standing up for ourselves, no one else will do it for us.”
Austin, who hails from Long Island, grew up in a Modern Orthodox home and kept kosher.
“I remember once in Pre-K, I ate non-kosher chicken nuggets one day because a lunch aid told me they were kosher, but they weren’t,” she said. “[When I found out], I cried so hard they sent me to the school psychologist.”
Austin’s family was also stringent about Shabbat.
“I was never allowed to go out Friday nights because of Shabbat, and I never understood why until I got a little older,” she said. “Now, I value it and embrace it as opposed to hating it growing up because I felt like I missed out.”
Austin doesn’t only embrace Shabbat – she also turns to God to keep her grounded, no matter what she’s going through.
“It brings me the comfort daily that there’s a higher power,” she said. “When things are both good and bad I know I have someone to turn to. It motivates me and gives me a strong backbone.”
During Covid, Austin’s school, Hofstra, closed for two months, and suddenly she didn’t have much to do. Instead of binging on TV, she decided to use her connections to some Knicks players and start interviewing them on Instagram Live. From there, her social media blew up and she got professional broadcasting gigs at MTV and Sports Illustrated. She either does one-on-one interviews or broadcasts from the sidelines at sports games.
Austin currently spends her time shuffling between New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, and she posts about going to the United Nations. “Women’s rights are human rights,” she recently wrote from UN headquarters.
Along with continuing to speak up about her Jewish identity, Austin, who is set to graduate next year, wants to have a successful sports show of her own one day. And, since she has such a huge following, she wants to make an impact and do her part to bring about peace.
“I hope to keep using my platform to educate my audience and beyond on how important it is to build more bridges and to engage in dialogue with people who are different than you,” she said. “It’s the only way to win.”
Emily Austin: Sports Broadcaster, Influencer and Proud Jew
TRENDING
PERSONAL GROWTH
Messi, The World Cup, and a Hanukkah Message
Why are so many people wishing this woman would drop dead?
Emily Austin receives countless direct messages on Instagram wishing her death. People call her corrupt and tell her the world would be better off if Hitler had succeeded.
Her crime?
She’s proudly Jewish online.
The college senior has a whopping 991,000 followers on Instagram and 4.7 million likes on TikTok. She’s a media consultant for the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations, an ambassador for Puma and a college sports reporter who wears a prominent Star of David necklace during interviews.
SUBSCRIBE
Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history, food, philosophy, current events, holidays and more...
This past summer, Austin visited the White House and posted a picture of herself in the Oval Office titled, “Your first Woman, Jewish, President.”
After Kanye West’s antisemitic tirade on Alex Jones’ show, she posted, “These last few months have been a crazy time for the world in general, but more personally as a Jew. Free speech is a beautiful thing -- it’s our right. Just because you CAN say something, doesn’t mean you SHOULD. I will always use my voice to speak for what’s right.”
Austin wasn’t always so vocal about her Jewish background online. But once she saw the rise of antisemitism, she realized she could use her voice to make a difference.
“I noticed so many people online and even around me just had this misconception of what a Jew is,” she said. “People would know and love me, and be so taken aback that I was Jewish. They would say remarks like ‘Oh, that’s why you’re so smart,’ which I guess is a compliment. But I was really bothered by the ‘the Jews’ narrative going around. I really try to break the ‘us vs. them’ narrative and find common denominators amongst everyone despite religious observance and beliefs.”
People brush off antisemitism as “free speech,” even though hate towards other minorities is never tolerated.
The 21-year-old influencer believes that not enough people are speaking up online about antisemitism. She also thinks that people brush off antisemitism as “free speech,” even though hate towards other minorities is never tolerated.
“They think Jews are an exception to the rule because despite the Holocaust being less than 100 years ago, we don’t have that victim label,” she said. “They think it’s okay to slander us.”
What Austin has learned is that if the Jewish people don’t speak up, we won’t have any allies speaking up, either.
“What people say online reflects what they think,” she said. “If people are slandering the Jewish people and we aren’t standing up for ourselves, no one else will do it for us.”
Austin, who hails from Long Island, grew up in a Modern Orthodox home and kept kosher.
“I remember once in Pre-K, I ate non-kosher chicken nuggets one day because a lunch aid told me they were kosher, but they weren’t,” she said. “[When I found out], I cried so hard they sent me to the school psychologist.”
Austin’s family was also stringent about Shabbat.
“I was never allowed to go out Friday nights because of Shabbat, and I never understood why until I got a little older,” she said. “Now, I value it and embrace it as opposed to hating it growing up because I felt like I missed out.”
Austin doesn’t only embrace Shabbat – she also turns to God to keep her grounded, no matter what she’s going through.
“It brings me the comfort daily that there’s a higher power,” she said. “When things are both good and bad I know I have someone to turn to. It motivates me and gives me a strong backbone.”
During Covid, Austin’s school, Hofstra, closed for two months, and suddenly she didn’t have much to do. Instead of binging on TV, she decided to use her connections to some Knicks players and start interviewing them on Instagram Live. From there, her social media blew up and she got professional broadcasting gigs at MTV and Sports Illustrated. She either does one-on-one interviews or broadcasts from the sidelines at sports games.
Austin currently spends her time shuffling between New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, and she posts about going to the United Nations. “Women’s rights are human rights,” she recently wrote from UN headquarters.
Along with continuing to speak up about her Jewish identity, Austin, who is set to graduate next year, wants to have a successful sports show of her own one day. And, since she has such a huge following, she wants to make an impact and do her part to bring about peace.
“I hope to keep using my platform to educate my audience and beyond on how important it is to build more bridges and to engage in dialogue with people who are different than you,” she said. “It’s the only way to win.”
Re: AISH
https://aish.com/ss-guard-who-fell-in-love-with-a-jew-in-auschwitz/?
SS Guard who Fell in Love with a Jew in Auschwitz
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
November 21, 2021
A new documentary tells the story of a grotesque romance that saved lives.
The new documentary Love it Was Not seems like an unrealistic, perverse romance: in Auschwitz, a Jewish prisoner and the SS guard charged with murdering her family and friends fall in love. Or – as the title makes clear – not a normal love, but something resembling romance and affection.
This is no fiction. In the hellhole of Auschwitz, where 1,100,000 million people were murdered – 960,000 of them Jews – a Jewish prisoner named Helena Citronova and a Nazi SS Lance Corporal named Franz Wunsch developed feelings for one another. Their relationship saved the life of Helena’s sister Rozinka.
Sing For Me
In 1942, Helena was one of 997 Jewish teens and young women sent to Auschwitz during the first official transport of Jewish prisoners to the death camp. They’d been told by Slovak authorities that they were going to do national work service for a few months. In reality each of the prisoners was sold by the Slovak government to the Nazi authorities for 200 Reichsmarks (about $500) per prisoner.
When the girls arrived at Auschwitz they immediately realized they’d been tricked. “We were teenagers,” recalled one survivor, Edith Grosman, who was amongst that first transport. “We were still young enough to want to throw temper tantrums, to be lazy, to shirk a duty or to sleep late. Only a month ago we were giggling and gossiping about the latest bit of news in our community, and now we were seeing girls dying...already dead before their time. And then there is the question, will that be me too? Will I be dead soon, too?” (Quoted in The Nine Hundred: The Extraordinary Young Woman of the First Official Transport to Auschwitz by heather Dune Macadam. Hodder & Stoughton: 2020.)
SS Guard who Fell in Love with a Jew in Auschwitz
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
November 21, 2021
A new documentary tells the story of a grotesque romance that saved lives.
The new documentary Love it Was Not seems like an unrealistic, perverse romance: in Auschwitz, a Jewish prisoner and the SS guard charged with murdering her family and friends fall in love. Or – as the title makes clear – not a normal love, but something resembling romance and affection.
This is no fiction. In the hellhole of Auschwitz, where 1,100,000 million people were murdered – 960,000 of them Jews – a Jewish prisoner named Helena Citronova and a Nazi SS Lance Corporal named Franz Wunsch developed feelings for one another. Their relationship saved the life of Helena’s sister Rozinka.
Sing For Me
In 1942, Helena was one of 997 Jewish teens and young women sent to Auschwitz during the first official transport of Jewish prisoners to the death camp. They’d been told by Slovak authorities that they were going to do national work service for a few months. In reality each of the prisoners was sold by the Slovak government to the Nazi authorities for 200 Reichsmarks (about $500) per prisoner.
When the girls arrived at Auschwitz they immediately realized they’d been tricked. “We were teenagers,” recalled one survivor, Edith Grosman, who was amongst that first transport. “We were still young enough to want to throw temper tantrums, to be lazy, to shirk a duty or to sleep late. Only a month ago we were giggling and gossiping about the latest bit of news in our community, and now we were seeing girls dying...already dead before their time. And then there is the question, will that be me too? Will I be dead soon, too?” (Quoted in The Nine Hundred: The Extraordinary Young Woman of the First Official Transport to Auschwitz by heather Dune Macadam. Hodder & Stoughton: 2020.)
Re: AISH
Word of the Year: Goblin Mode
https://aish.com/word-of-the-year-goblin-mode/?
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
December 7, 2022
And why I propose an alternative.
Given all the stress and hardships of 2022, “Goblin Mode” was recently chosen by Oxford University Press as their new word (or in this case, expression) of the year.
Goblin Mode isn’t so much a phrase as a zeitgeist, as in “I stayed in bed all weekend, in full Goblin Mode” or using #GoblinMode as a retort to social media posts that seem too perfect to be believed. The Oxford University Dictionary describes Goblin Mode as “a type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.”
”A type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.”
Dave McNamee’s tweet about the phrase went viral early in 2022. “Goblin mode is like when you wake up at 2am and shuffle into the kitchen wearing nothing but a long T-shirt to make a weird snack, like melted cheese on saltines…It’s about a complete lack of aesthetic. Because why would a goblin care what they look like? Why would a goblin care about presentation?”
We’ve all been there. Stressed or overwhelmed, sometimes we all need a little Goblin Mode in our lives. (I’m writing this while ignoring my kids, wearing an ancient cardigan, a scented candle burning on the table next to me and an alcoholic drink at my side.) The phrase gained a lot of traction as users posted it as a response to too-perfect social media posts that portrayed an unattainable ideal. Faced with pressure to look and act overly polished, it’s tempting to retreat to Goblin Mode as an antidote.
https://aish.com/word-of-the-year-goblin-mode/?
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
December 7, 2022
And why I propose an alternative.
Given all the stress and hardships of 2022, “Goblin Mode” was recently chosen by Oxford University Press as their new word (or in this case, expression) of the year.
Goblin Mode isn’t so much a phrase as a zeitgeist, as in “I stayed in bed all weekend, in full Goblin Mode” or using #GoblinMode as a retort to social media posts that seem too perfect to be believed. The Oxford University Dictionary describes Goblin Mode as “a type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.”
”A type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.”
Dave McNamee’s tweet about the phrase went viral early in 2022. “Goblin mode is like when you wake up at 2am and shuffle into the kitchen wearing nothing but a long T-shirt to make a weird snack, like melted cheese on saltines…It’s about a complete lack of aesthetic. Because why would a goblin care what they look like? Why would a goblin care about presentation?”
We’ve all been there. Stressed or overwhelmed, sometimes we all need a little Goblin Mode in our lives. (I’m writing this while ignoring my kids, wearing an ancient cardigan, a scented candle burning on the table next to me and an alcoholic drink at my side.) The phrase gained a lot of traction as users posted it as a response to too-perfect social media posts that portrayed an unattainable ideal. Faced with pressure to look and act overly polished, it’s tempting to retreat to Goblin Mode as an antidote.
Re: AISH
https://aish.com/jewish-valor-at-pearl-harbor/?
Jewish Valor at Pearl Harbor
by Rivka Ronda Robinson
December 5, 2022
Many Jews were among the heroes of that day that will live in infamy.
This week marks the 81st anniversary of the “date that will live in infamy,” the surprise Japanese bombing of the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, that killed more than 2,400 Americans and wounded another 1,000. Many Jews were among the heroes that day, including Solomon Silas Isquith, who saved hundreds from the torpedo ship he commanded in the waters of Hawaii Territory.
Solomon Isquith
Just before 8 a.m. that Sunday, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes swooped down from the sky and destroyed or damaged 20 American naval vessels, including eight battleships, and hundreds of airplanes. In its bid to overtake the South Pacific, Japan aimed to crush the U.S. fleet.
Lt. Cmdr. Isquith, the second of seven children born to a New York family, became the senior-ranking officer aboard the USS Utah in Pearl Harbor. After two torpedoes slammed his vessel, Isquith directed more than 500 crew members to abandon ship. He stayed aboard to oversee the evacuation until the ship capsized, then escaped through a porthole in the captain’s cabin
Jewish Valor at Pearl Harbor
by Rivka Ronda Robinson
December 5, 2022
Many Jews were among the heroes of that day that will live in infamy.
This week marks the 81st anniversary of the “date that will live in infamy,” the surprise Japanese bombing of the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, that killed more than 2,400 Americans and wounded another 1,000. Many Jews were among the heroes that day, including Solomon Silas Isquith, who saved hundreds from the torpedo ship he commanded in the waters of Hawaii Territory.
Solomon Isquith
Just before 8 a.m. that Sunday, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes swooped down from the sky and destroyed or damaged 20 American naval vessels, including eight battleships, and hundreds of airplanes. In its bid to overtake the South Pacific, Japan aimed to crush the U.S. fleet.
Lt. Cmdr. Isquith, the second of seven children born to a New York family, became the senior-ranking officer aboard the USS Utah in Pearl Harbor. After two torpedoes slammed his vessel, Isquith directed more than 500 crew members to abandon ship. He stayed aboard to oversee the evacuation until the ship capsized, then escaped through a porthole in the captain’s cabin
Re: AISH
https://aish.com/the-history-of-the-jews-of-turkey/?
The History of the Jews of Turkey
by Rabbi Menachem Levine
December 4, 2022
Who Are the Karaites?
The Hanukkah Queen Who Saved the Jews
SS Guard who Fell in Love with a Jew in Auschwitz
A comprehensive overview covering 2000 years of history.
Jews escaping Spain due to the Expulsion had few doors open to them. Although legends discuss Jews escaping to the Americas, the fact is that the vast majority chose to go to a country that opened its doors and whose government mandate was to receive the Jews cordially. There, the Spanish Jews joined the other communities and built arguably the most prosperous Jewish community of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Which country was this? The surprising answer is: Turkey.
In the beautiful synagogue of Ahrida, one of the oldest in Istanbul, the bima is shaped like a galleon, a Spanish ship, reminiscent of Noah’s Ark
Ancient Anatolia
Turkey is one of the world's earliest continuously settled regions and was originally known as Anatolia or Asia Minor. The capital of Turkey was known by different names at different points in history: Byzantium, Constantinople, and then Istanbul. The capital was a thriving port city due to its prime geographic location between Europe and Asia and its natural harbor on the shores of the Black Sea in the North and the Aegean Sea to the West, and the Mediterranean Sea in the South.
Early Jewish settlements are mentioned by the renowned historian Josephus Flavius (37-100) when he relates that Aristotle“met Jewish people with whom he had an exchange of views during his trip across Asia Minor.”
Ancient synagogue ruins have been found in Sardis, near Izmir, dating from 220 B.C.E., and traces of other Jewish settlements have been discovered in other areas of Turkey.
Ancient synagogue of Sardis
A bronze column found in Ankara has a fascinating inscription that confirms the rights Emperor Augustus (63 BCE-14 CE) accorded the Jews of Asia Minor, including the right to send donations to Jerusalem and not be called to the palace on the Sabbath.
Byzantine Empire
Ironically, one of the earliest pieces of information we know about the Jewish community in Turkey is regarding expulsion. In the year 422, the Jews were expelled from Byzantium by Theodosius II. It was not until nearly 400 years later that they were permitted to return. These newly settled Byzantine Greek-speaking Jewish communities, called Romaniotes, chose to reside in the large coastal cities of the Aegean Sea.
Despite numerous persecutions, the Jewish communities continued to reside in Turkey during the Byzantine period. Byzantine emperors wielded both political and religious power, and thus the discrimination against the Jews was particularly severe under their rule. Jews were restricted to specific economic activities, confined to specially designated neighborhoods, and persecuted because of their religion. Under Justinian rule, persecution against Judaism was unbearable, to the extent that it was forbidden to recite the Shema since the phrase “our G-d is the only G-d” was considered an insult to the Christian concept of the Trinity.
It is, therefore, not surprising that when the Muslims began to conquer Turkey, they were welcomed by the Jewish community.
The Turks and the Muslim Conquest
The Islamic presence in Turkey began in the 8th century when Turkish tribes fought alongside Arab Muslims against Chinese forces at the Battle of Talas. By 751, Arab Muslims controlled the Anatolian Peninsula and Central Asia. Influenced by their beliefs, many people converted to Islam over the next few centuries.
The Battle of Talas
The Turkish people became servants to the Muslim rulers, then they were their soldiers, and eventually, they rose to be the Caliph's favored troops. By the end of the ninth century, the Muslim Turkish leaders gained significant military and political power and started forming their own empires. The Seljuk Turks were the most powerful and established an empire by 1037. They captured Bagdhad in 1055 and in 1071 gained control of the Anatolian Peninsula.
When the Seljuk Turks increased, they brought the Islamic religion and Persian culture to what had previously been a Christian Byzantine Empire. Thus began the bumpy transition of Turkey from European to Persian in terms of culture, religion, politics, and identity.
The Seljuk Empire covered over a million square miles across parts of the Middle East and Central Asia, although it did not rule in the southern part of Turkey, which remained Byzantine. The Seljuk Empire lasted until 1194.
Ottoman Turks
The 14th century saw the emergence of a new power in the Middle East. The Ottoman Turks under Sultan Osman (1288-1326) advanced across Anatolia and became the new rulers of the Romaniote Jewish communities still under the oppressive Byzantine rule. Just as their brethren had done to the Seljuk’s, they welcomed the Ottomans as their liberators and even helped the Ottomans capture the city. Their hopes for positive change were realized, and Sultan Osman’s son Sultan Ohran (1323-62), permitted them to build theEtz ha-Hachayim(Tree of Life) synagogue, which operated for over 600 years.
From the beginning, however, the tolerance of the Ottomans toward the Jews was dictated by reasons of a vested interest. The Ottomans were primarily a society of warriors and peasants, whereas the Jews were involved in commerce, and their efforts created a robust economy.
As in other Islamic lands, the Ottomans followed the rule of dhimmi regarding their Jewish citizens. This meant that the Jews were guaranteed security but were required to pay additional taxes and were treated as second-class citizens. In general, the Ottoman sultans were pragmatic regarding the Jews and enabled them to live peacefully.
Sultan Mehmed II became Mehmed the Conqueror after taking the 1,000-year-old fortress capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, in May 1453.
Sultan Mehmet II, also known as “the Conqueror,” expanded the Ottoman Turkish Empire and shocked the world when he conquered the proud capital of Byzantium, Constantinople, in 1453. There he encountered an oppressed Romaniote Jewish community, which enthusiastically welcomed him. Sultan Mehmet II proclaimed to all Jews“... to ascend the site of the Imperial Throne, to dwell in the best of the land, each beneath his Dine and his fig tree, with silver and with gold, with wealth and with cattle...” The Sultan renamed Constantinople Istanbul, which it is called to our very day.
A Haven for Sephardic Jews
Rabbi Yitzchok Zarfati wrote a famous letter to his fellow Jews, saying, “I assure you, Turkey is a country of abundance where, if you wish, you will find rest.”
Thus, from the 14th century onward, many European Jews that were expelled from their homelands migrated to Turkey. Expelled Jews from Hungary came in 1360 and from France in 1394, as well as Jews from Sicily and Salonika. In 1470, Jews expelled from Bavaria by Ludwig X found refuge in the Ottoman Empire. Tens of thousands of Sephardim would soon follow them after they were expelled from Spain.
In 1492, Sultan Bayezid II ordered the governors of the provinces of the Ottoman Empire “not to refuse the Jews entry or cause them difficulties, but to receive them cordially. Roughly 100,000 Jews fled Spain under the Alhambra Decree, and most chose to go to the Ottoman Empire, with 60,000 Jews arriving in 1492 alone. The Sultan said that “the Catholic monarch Ferdinand was wrongly considered wise since he impoverished Spain by expelling the Jews and enriched Turkey.”
Between the late 15th and 16th centuries, additional Jews arrived in Turkey from Italy and Portugal and established or joined thriving communities, especially in Istanbul and Salonika.
The steady stream of Jews arriving from Spain lasted for several decades. Some came directly, while others only after long journeys, notably by way of Italy. Due to the large influx, the original group of Greek-speaking Romaniote Jews was eventually absorbed by the Sefardic community.
The increase in Jewish population was apparent in the censuses taken at that time. In 1477, Jewish households in Istanbul numbered 1,647, or 11% of the total. Half a century later, that number had quadrupled. In another telling census, taken in 1520-1530, there were 2645 Jewish households in Thessaloniki, more than half of the city’s population. This is incredible because 30 years earlier, there were no Jews in this large Balkan port city. From the 16th century onward, Thessaloniki became the capital of the Judeo-Spanish world and remained so until the end of the Ottoman Empire.
For 200 years following the expulsion from Spain, the prosperity and creativity of the Ottoman Jews rivaled that of the Golden Age of Spain.
For 200 years following the expulsion from Spain, the prosperity and creativity of the Ottoman Jews rivaled that of the Golden Age of Spain. Jews played vital roles in medicine, innovation, government, and finance.
Most of the Sultan’s court physicians were Jews, including Hakim Yakoub, Joseph and Moshe Hamon, Daniel Fonseca, and Gabriel Buenauentura.
Immigrating Jews brought with them new techniques of navigation and weapons production. The printing press was one of the most significant innovations Jews brought to the Ottoman Empire. In 1493, only one year after their expulsion from Spain, David, and Samuel ibn Nahmias established the first Hebrew printing press in Istanbul. However, Turkish authorities forbade them to use the Arabic alphabet so that Turkish scribes and calligraphers would not be deprived of work.
In the economic sphere, Jewish contributions were most significant. Jews also had vital roles in tax administration, the Empire’s finances, the textile industries, and banking.
Torah Scholarship
In Torah scholarship, Turkey had scholars of note, some of whom arrived there due to the expulsions.
The famous Rabbi Yosef Caro (1488-1575), considered the most significant Sefardic halachic authority in the past 600 years, fled Spain during the expulsion and moved to Constantinople. He compiled most of his monumental Beis Yosef in Adrianople, before moving to Safed.
Rabbi Yosef Caro
Rabbi Shlomo HaLevi Alkabetz (1500-1576) lived in Turkey and later moved to the Safed and composed the L’chah Dodi, the song sung by Jewish communities worldwide when Shabbat begins.
Rabbi Eliyahu Mizrachi (1450-1525) served as Chief Rabbi of Turkey for 30 years and is famous for his work, the Ra’am, which elucidates Rashi’s explanations on the Torah.
Rabbi Yehudah Rosnes (1657-1727) was the Chief Rabbi of Istanbul and the author of a commentary on the Rambam known as the Mishnah L’Melach. His student was Rabbi Yaakov Culi, who began to write the widely studied Ladino commentary Me’Am Loez on the Torah. (He died two years after initiating the work and it was finished by others).
Turkey captures the Holy Land
In 1516-7, Selim I conquered Syria and Israel. With that began a special relationship between the Turkish communities and the communities of Israel. Turkish Jews often emigrated to Israel, and rabbis from Israel relocated and served as rabbis for the communities of Turkey.
Suleiman the Magnificent
With the conquering of Israel, Turkish interest in Israel increased. Suleiman the Magnificent, one of the greatest sultans, made a lasting mark in history when he rebuilt the walls around the Old City of Jerusalem that stand to our very day.
In 1558, Sultan Suleiman granted a Jewish woman, Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi, a long-term lease on the Tiberias region in Israel. This area was largely desolate, and Dona Gracia committed to giving a large amount of yearly tax revenues from this area to the Sultan.
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/ancient-citadel-inside-old-city-at-night-jerusalem-royalty-free-image/643978056?phrase=Jerusalem david citadel&adppopup=true
Walls of Jerusalem’s Old City built by Suleiman the Magnificent
Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi was one of the wealthiest and most influential Jewish women of Renaissance Europe. She married into the eminent international banking family known as the House of Mendes. She was the aunt, mother-in-law, and business partner of Don Yosef Nasi, who became a prominent figure in the Ottoman Empire as the Duke of Naxos. Don Yosef was responsible for much of the delicate maneuvering of Turkey’s declaration of war against Venice in 1571 and the resultant conquest of Cyprus (which still plays a role in current-day international politics). Dona Gracia was renowned for her concern for Jews worldwide and for her wisdom and courage in helping them. She even developed an escape network that saved hundreds of Conversos - forcibly converted Jews - from the terrors of the Inquisition.
Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi
Dona Gracia intended to make Tiberias a major new center of Jewish settlement, trade, and learning. She also aided Jews in settling nearby Safed, and in less than 100 years, the population of Safed grew from 300 families to 10,000 people, making it the most Jewishly populated city in Israel at that time.
After the passing of Dona Gracia and Don Yosef Nasi, other Jewish leaders were influential in the Turkish court. A Portuguese Marrano, Aluaro Mandes, was named Duke of Mytilene in return for his diplomatic services to the Sultan. Salomon ben Nathan Ashkenazi arranged the first diplomatic ties with the British Empire.
Turkish Jews of the 16th and 17th centuries were the most prosperous Jewish group in the world, and the Jewish community thrived in this tranquil and relatively free atmosphere.
Shabtai Zvi (1626-78) decimates Turkish Jewry
In the 17th century, a person rose to influence who would forever change the Jewish communities of Turkey and the world in a most damaging way. Shabtai Tzvi was born in 1626 in Smyrna, Turkey, on the Ninth of Av, a day on which, according to Jewish lore, the Messiah was to be born. Tzvi’s family wereRomaniotes.
Brilliant and charismatic, Shabtai was already given the title of chacham, “wise man,” by the age of twenty. Nevertheless, more pronounced than his scholarship were his strange behavior and extreme emotions between deep depression and overflowing ecstasies.
Shabtai Tzvi
Some Smyrna Jews were strongly drawn to him and inspired by his religious utterances. However, his repeated claims to be the Messiah, and his utterances of the ineffable name of God, led the rabbis of Smyrna to expel him from Smyrna in the early 1650s.
He eventually traveled to the Holy Land, where he consulted with Nathan Benjamin Levi, known from that time as Nathan of Gaza. Nathan claimed to be a soul healer, and in a fateful meeting, Shabtai Tzvi met with him to “find a tikkun (rectification) and peace for his soul,” as one report put it. Nathan was convinced that Shabtai Tzvi was the Messiah, and at Nathan’s urging, Shabtai revealed himself as such. Nathan professed to be Elijah the Prophet and became a leading figure in this Messianic movement. Although the rabbis of Jerusalem denounced him and declared both to be frauds, the movement continued to gain momentum.
Shabtai Tzvi returned to Smyrna in 1665 with a large entourage, and great homage was paid to him there. Along with Nathan of Gaza, he made announcements declaring himself the Messiah and making wild predictions and claims as to the imminent miracles and redemption that were to take place. Despite his detractors, he became the leader of the community in Smyrna. He removed the former rabbi, Rabbi Aaron Lapapa, from his position and appointed Rabbi Chaim Benveniste as rabbi instead. His popularity grew, and he used his power to crush the opposition.
His fame spread as people of all faiths repeated stories about various miracles and sightings. It was said: “in the north of Scotland, a ship had appeared with silken sails and ropes, manned by sailors who spoke Hebrew. The flag bore the inscription ‘The Twelve Tribes of Israel.’” Letters regarding Shabtai Tzvi reached Europe and North Africa with embellished reports about the movement, and enthusiasm throughout the Jewish world grew.
Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Hamburg, and Amsterdam all heard about the events in Smyrna. The Jewish community of Avignon, France, even prepared to emigrate to the new kingdom in the spring of 1666.
Even though Shabtai Tzvi had a considerable following in the Jewish world (much more than Jesus ever had), most of the European rabbis who saw how Shabtai Tzvi and his followers violated Jewish law were not fooled and warned against him. Foremost among his opponents was Rabbi Yaakov Sasportas of Amsterdam.
Eventually, Shabtai Tzvi was arrested by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and imprisoned in Gallipoli. Even this did not deter his followers, and many of them flocked to visit him in prison,
The debacle came to its devastating end on September 15, 1666. Shabtai Zvi was brought before the Sultan and given the choice of death or conversion to Islam, and he chose to convert. Shaken to the core at his decision, the vast majority of the Jewish world realized he was an imposter.
Yet, believers in his Messianic claims tragically remained. Approximately 300 families converted to Islam along with him and became known as Dönmeh (converts). Nathan of Gaza continued to support Shabtai Tzvi, explaining that his conversion was a deep mystery and part of a Kabbalistic process toward the final redemption. He and other followers of Shabtai Tzvi continued to adhere to a paradoxical theology that combined aspects of Judaism with a continued belief in Shabtai Tzvi.
In the aftermath of the Shabtai Tzvi saga, the Ottoman authorities began to regard the Jewish minority, which until then had attracted no particular concern, with growing suspicion. Western travelers who passed through the Jewish areas of Istanbul described a new reality in sharp contrast to what was described two centuries before. These Turkish Jews kept to themselves in their communities, mostly earning their living as shop owners, artisans, or low-level employees.
The Dönmeh followers of Shabtai Tzvi
The Dönmeh continued to exist as a minority, set apart from the Jewish community by their conversion to Islam and belief in Shabtai Tzvi. By the 1680s, much of the Dönmeh resided in Salonika and continued to practice certain Jewish rituals.
The exact amount of the Dönmeh is unclear. According to Danish traveler Karsten Niebuhr, around 600 Dönmeh families lived in Salonika in 1774 and married only among themselves. Before World War I, their population was estimated to be between 10,000 and 15,000.
In an unexpected turn of events, the Dönmeh played a crucial role in the Young Turk movement, the group of modernist revolutionaries who brought down the Ottoman Empire. After the founding of the Turkish Republic, the dönmeh strongly supported the Republican, pro-Western reforms of Atatürk, which wanted to restrict the religious establishment's power and modernize Turkey.
Etz ha-Hayim Synagogue before it burnt in 1941. Visit of late Chief Rabbi Haim Bedjerano.
The first administration that came to power after the Young Turk revolution in 1909 included several ministers of Dönmeh origin, including the minister of finance, Javid Bey. One assertion that many Jews made (although this was denied by the Turkish government) was that Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938), the founder of the Modern Turkish State, was of Dönmeh origin. This view was eagerly embraced by many of Atatürk’s religious opponents in Anatolia as a means of discrediting him.
However, as a society, the Dönmeh could only retain their integrity and institutional framework when they were concentrated in Salonika. When they were compelled to leave Salonika in 1924 due to the Greco-Turkish War, many settled in Istanbul or in Turkish cities such as Izmir and Ankara. Within a short time, assimilation became widespread. By the end of the 20th century, the Dönmeh were fully assimilated into Muslim Turkish society.
More Equality & A New Republic
The status of Jews in Turkey began to improve under the Tanzimat reforms in the late 18th century. These reforms were part of a process to transform the Empire based on European models and were intended to signify that the Ottoman Empire belonged among the European nations. As part of the reforms, there was now official recognition of Jews as separate communities and a state-appointed chief rabbi.
The proclamation of the Hatti Humayun in 1856 made all Ottoman citizens, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, equal under the law and granted that all subjects be allowed to worship their religion freely. Each religion was also assigned its own government-appointed leader. Although Greek and Armenian were amenable to this, the diverse Jewish population resented this state intrusion into their internal communal affairs. With the reorganization of the state came new professional opportunities, and Jews flourished in banking, trade, and manufacturing and began to enter government service.
As part of the impact of reforms throughout Turkey, the leadership shifted from religious leaders to secular ones, which also affected the Jewish community.
Secular Turkey
World War I ended the glory of the Ottoman Empire, and in its place rose the Young Turkish Republic. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was elected president, the Caliphate was abolished, and a secular constitution was adopted. However, in reality, Islam remained inextricably intertwined with Turkish culture.
According to a census taken in 1927, 81,872 Jews lived within the boundaries of the Turkish Republic under Mustapha Kemal, and most were concentrated in the cities of Istanbul and Izmir.
Devastated by the crumbling of the Empire, the Turkish Republic attempted to forge a new national identity that regarded minorities with suspicion. This significantly affected the Jewish community's living conditions as the government insisted that all republic residents identify as Turkish. The widespread Universal Israelite Alliance schools that served the Jewish community were forced to break their ties with their French sponsors, and Turkish was made the language of instruction in all schools. Although the demands were made of the Jews to integrate, they were simultaneously identified as foreigners, and a double standard was applied to their community.
This was most apparent with the “exceptional tax” instituted in 1942. On average, this tax demanded 5% from Muslims and 150-200% from Greeks, Armenians, and Jews. Most had no way to pay such exorbitant taxes and were forced to sell their belongings or be sent to work camps. Although the tax was abolished in March 1944, its effect on Turkish Jews was traumatic and began to pave the way for the massive emigration of Turkish Jews to Israel that would begin in 1948.
Istanbul Ashkenazi Synagogue
Yet, during World War II, Turkey was a safe passage for many Jews fleeing the Nazis. Seizing an opportunity in 1933, Ataturk invited prominent German Jewish professors to flee Nazi Germany and settle in Turkey. Before and during the war, these academics contributed a great deal to the development of the Turkish university system.
During the Holocaust, the Turkish Jews remained secure, although Greece's nearby Jewish communities were almost wiped out. Several Turkish diplomats persevered in their efforts to save the Turkish Jews from the Holocaust and succeeded. Mr. Salahattin Ulkumen, Consul General at Rhodes from 1943-1944, was recognized by the Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile in June 1990.
The Vanishing Turkish Jew
The present size of the Jewish community is estimated at 14,500 out of the total population of 85 million. Most Jews live in Istanbul, and Sephardim account for 96% of the population.
Turkish Jews are led by and legally represented by the Chacham Bashi, the Chief Rabbi. There remains a small group of one hundred Karaites who are not part of the normative Jewish community and do not accept the authority of the Chief Rabbi.
Jews in Turkey have been the victims of violent antisemitism on multiple occasions. On September 6, 1986, a member of the Palestinian terror group Abu Nidal opened fire on the Neve Shalom synagogue in Istanbul, killing 22 Jewish individuals. Neve Shalom synagogue was also the target of a terror attack in November 2003 when multiple truck bombs went off all around Istanbul. One exploded in front of Neve Shalom, and another exploded in front of the Bet Israel congregation, killing and injuring many people.
Turkey has experienced underlying antisemitism for much of its history, but the antisemitism has been especially apparent since Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rose to power. Turkey under Erdogan is frightening for Turkish Jews. The Turkish leader and his top aides make anti-Semitic remarks and under his rule, antisemitism is on the rise. For example, in 2014, in response to Operation Protective Edge, over 30,000 Turkish-language tweets were published, including comments that stated positive things about Hitler and the Holocaust. Among other discomfiting signs of antisemitism, Hitler’s Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were best-sellers in Turkey in recent years. According to the ADL’s surveys, 69% of Turks hold some anti-Semitic beliefs. This figure is higher than other European countries and slightly lower than the Middle East average.
Against this backdrop, Turkey’s centuries-old Jewish community small community has had a considerable jump in emigration, especially to Israel. Turkey, a country that once welcomed Jews worldwide, is losing its Jews to emigration and assimilation. In an ironic twist, there are even Turkish Jews that emigrate to the relative safety of Spain and Portugal, reversing the historical path taken centuries earlier.
The History of the Jews of Turkey
by Rabbi Menachem Levine
December 4, 2022
Who Are the Karaites?
The Hanukkah Queen Who Saved the Jews
SS Guard who Fell in Love with a Jew in Auschwitz
A comprehensive overview covering 2000 years of history.
Jews escaping Spain due to the Expulsion had few doors open to them. Although legends discuss Jews escaping to the Americas, the fact is that the vast majority chose to go to a country that opened its doors and whose government mandate was to receive the Jews cordially. There, the Spanish Jews joined the other communities and built arguably the most prosperous Jewish community of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Which country was this? The surprising answer is: Turkey.
In the beautiful synagogue of Ahrida, one of the oldest in Istanbul, the bima is shaped like a galleon, a Spanish ship, reminiscent of Noah’s Ark
Ancient Anatolia
Turkey is one of the world's earliest continuously settled regions and was originally known as Anatolia or Asia Minor. The capital of Turkey was known by different names at different points in history: Byzantium, Constantinople, and then Istanbul. The capital was a thriving port city due to its prime geographic location between Europe and Asia and its natural harbor on the shores of the Black Sea in the North and the Aegean Sea to the West, and the Mediterranean Sea in the South.
Early Jewish settlements are mentioned by the renowned historian Josephus Flavius (37-100) when he relates that Aristotle“met Jewish people with whom he had an exchange of views during his trip across Asia Minor.”
Ancient synagogue ruins have been found in Sardis, near Izmir, dating from 220 B.C.E., and traces of other Jewish settlements have been discovered in other areas of Turkey.
Ancient synagogue of Sardis
A bronze column found in Ankara has a fascinating inscription that confirms the rights Emperor Augustus (63 BCE-14 CE) accorded the Jews of Asia Minor, including the right to send donations to Jerusalem and not be called to the palace on the Sabbath.
Byzantine Empire
Ironically, one of the earliest pieces of information we know about the Jewish community in Turkey is regarding expulsion. In the year 422, the Jews were expelled from Byzantium by Theodosius II. It was not until nearly 400 years later that they were permitted to return. These newly settled Byzantine Greek-speaking Jewish communities, called Romaniotes, chose to reside in the large coastal cities of the Aegean Sea.
Despite numerous persecutions, the Jewish communities continued to reside in Turkey during the Byzantine period. Byzantine emperors wielded both political and religious power, and thus the discrimination against the Jews was particularly severe under their rule. Jews were restricted to specific economic activities, confined to specially designated neighborhoods, and persecuted because of their religion. Under Justinian rule, persecution against Judaism was unbearable, to the extent that it was forbidden to recite the Shema since the phrase “our G-d is the only G-d” was considered an insult to the Christian concept of the Trinity.
It is, therefore, not surprising that when the Muslims began to conquer Turkey, they were welcomed by the Jewish community.
The Turks and the Muslim Conquest
The Islamic presence in Turkey began in the 8th century when Turkish tribes fought alongside Arab Muslims against Chinese forces at the Battle of Talas. By 751, Arab Muslims controlled the Anatolian Peninsula and Central Asia. Influenced by their beliefs, many people converted to Islam over the next few centuries.
The Battle of Talas
The Turkish people became servants to the Muslim rulers, then they were their soldiers, and eventually, they rose to be the Caliph's favored troops. By the end of the ninth century, the Muslim Turkish leaders gained significant military and political power and started forming their own empires. The Seljuk Turks were the most powerful and established an empire by 1037. They captured Bagdhad in 1055 and in 1071 gained control of the Anatolian Peninsula.
When the Seljuk Turks increased, they brought the Islamic religion and Persian culture to what had previously been a Christian Byzantine Empire. Thus began the bumpy transition of Turkey from European to Persian in terms of culture, religion, politics, and identity.
The Seljuk Empire covered over a million square miles across parts of the Middle East and Central Asia, although it did not rule in the southern part of Turkey, which remained Byzantine. The Seljuk Empire lasted until 1194.
Ottoman Turks
The 14th century saw the emergence of a new power in the Middle East. The Ottoman Turks under Sultan Osman (1288-1326) advanced across Anatolia and became the new rulers of the Romaniote Jewish communities still under the oppressive Byzantine rule. Just as their brethren had done to the Seljuk’s, they welcomed the Ottomans as their liberators and even helped the Ottomans capture the city. Their hopes for positive change were realized, and Sultan Osman’s son Sultan Ohran (1323-62), permitted them to build theEtz ha-Hachayim(Tree of Life) synagogue, which operated for over 600 years.
From the beginning, however, the tolerance of the Ottomans toward the Jews was dictated by reasons of a vested interest. The Ottomans were primarily a society of warriors and peasants, whereas the Jews were involved in commerce, and their efforts created a robust economy.
As in other Islamic lands, the Ottomans followed the rule of dhimmi regarding their Jewish citizens. This meant that the Jews were guaranteed security but were required to pay additional taxes and were treated as second-class citizens. In general, the Ottoman sultans were pragmatic regarding the Jews and enabled them to live peacefully.
Sultan Mehmed II became Mehmed the Conqueror after taking the 1,000-year-old fortress capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, in May 1453.
Sultan Mehmet II, also known as “the Conqueror,” expanded the Ottoman Turkish Empire and shocked the world when he conquered the proud capital of Byzantium, Constantinople, in 1453. There he encountered an oppressed Romaniote Jewish community, which enthusiastically welcomed him. Sultan Mehmet II proclaimed to all Jews“... to ascend the site of the Imperial Throne, to dwell in the best of the land, each beneath his Dine and his fig tree, with silver and with gold, with wealth and with cattle...” The Sultan renamed Constantinople Istanbul, which it is called to our very day.
A Haven for Sephardic Jews
Rabbi Yitzchok Zarfati wrote a famous letter to his fellow Jews, saying, “I assure you, Turkey is a country of abundance where, if you wish, you will find rest.”
Thus, from the 14th century onward, many European Jews that were expelled from their homelands migrated to Turkey. Expelled Jews from Hungary came in 1360 and from France in 1394, as well as Jews from Sicily and Salonika. In 1470, Jews expelled from Bavaria by Ludwig X found refuge in the Ottoman Empire. Tens of thousands of Sephardim would soon follow them after they were expelled from Spain.
In 1492, Sultan Bayezid II ordered the governors of the provinces of the Ottoman Empire “not to refuse the Jews entry or cause them difficulties, but to receive them cordially. Roughly 100,000 Jews fled Spain under the Alhambra Decree, and most chose to go to the Ottoman Empire, with 60,000 Jews arriving in 1492 alone. The Sultan said that “the Catholic monarch Ferdinand was wrongly considered wise since he impoverished Spain by expelling the Jews and enriched Turkey.”
Between the late 15th and 16th centuries, additional Jews arrived in Turkey from Italy and Portugal and established or joined thriving communities, especially in Istanbul and Salonika.
The steady stream of Jews arriving from Spain lasted for several decades. Some came directly, while others only after long journeys, notably by way of Italy. Due to the large influx, the original group of Greek-speaking Romaniote Jews was eventually absorbed by the Sefardic community.
The increase in Jewish population was apparent in the censuses taken at that time. In 1477, Jewish households in Istanbul numbered 1,647, or 11% of the total. Half a century later, that number had quadrupled. In another telling census, taken in 1520-1530, there were 2645 Jewish households in Thessaloniki, more than half of the city’s population. This is incredible because 30 years earlier, there were no Jews in this large Balkan port city. From the 16th century onward, Thessaloniki became the capital of the Judeo-Spanish world and remained so until the end of the Ottoman Empire.
For 200 years following the expulsion from Spain, the prosperity and creativity of the Ottoman Jews rivaled that of the Golden Age of Spain.
For 200 years following the expulsion from Spain, the prosperity and creativity of the Ottoman Jews rivaled that of the Golden Age of Spain. Jews played vital roles in medicine, innovation, government, and finance.
Most of the Sultan’s court physicians were Jews, including Hakim Yakoub, Joseph and Moshe Hamon, Daniel Fonseca, and Gabriel Buenauentura.
Immigrating Jews brought with them new techniques of navigation and weapons production. The printing press was one of the most significant innovations Jews brought to the Ottoman Empire. In 1493, only one year after their expulsion from Spain, David, and Samuel ibn Nahmias established the first Hebrew printing press in Istanbul. However, Turkish authorities forbade them to use the Arabic alphabet so that Turkish scribes and calligraphers would not be deprived of work.
In the economic sphere, Jewish contributions were most significant. Jews also had vital roles in tax administration, the Empire’s finances, the textile industries, and banking.
Torah Scholarship
In Torah scholarship, Turkey had scholars of note, some of whom arrived there due to the expulsions.
The famous Rabbi Yosef Caro (1488-1575), considered the most significant Sefardic halachic authority in the past 600 years, fled Spain during the expulsion and moved to Constantinople. He compiled most of his monumental Beis Yosef in Adrianople, before moving to Safed.
Rabbi Yosef Caro
Rabbi Shlomo HaLevi Alkabetz (1500-1576) lived in Turkey and later moved to the Safed and composed the L’chah Dodi, the song sung by Jewish communities worldwide when Shabbat begins.
Rabbi Eliyahu Mizrachi (1450-1525) served as Chief Rabbi of Turkey for 30 years and is famous for his work, the Ra’am, which elucidates Rashi’s explanations on the Torah.
Rabbi Yehudah Rosnes (1657-1727) was the Chief Rabbi of Istanbul and the author of a commentary on the Rambam known as the Mishnah L’Melach. His student was Rabbi Yaakov Culi, who began to write the widely studied Ladino commentary Me’Am Loez on the Torah. (He died two years after initiating the work and it was finished by others).
Turkey captures the Holy Land
In 1516-7, Selim I conquered Syria and Israel. With that began a special relationship between the Turkish communities and the communities of Israel. Turkish Jews often emigrated to Israel, and rabbis from Israel relocated and served as rabbis for the communities of Turkey.
Suleiman the Magnificent
With the conquering of Israel, Turkish interest in Israel increased. Suleiman the Magnificent, one of the greatest sultans, made a lasting mark in history when he rebuilt the walls around the Old City of Jerusalem that stand to our very day.
In 1558, Sultan Suleiman granted a Jewish woman, Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi, a long-term lease on the Tiberias region in Israel. This area was largely desolate, and Dona Gracia committed to giving a large amount of yearly tax revenues from this area to the Sultan.
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/ancient-citadel-inside-old-city-at-night-jerusalem-royalty-free-image/643978056?phrase=Jerusalem david citadel&adppopup=true
Walls of Jerusalem’s Old City built by Suleiman the Magnificent
Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi was one of the wealthiest and most influential Jewish women of Renaissance Europe. She married into the eminent international banking family known as the House of Mendes. She was the aunt, mother-in-law, and business partner of Don Yosef Nasi, who became a prominent figure in the Ottoman Empire as the Duke of Naxos. Don Yosef was responsible for much of the delicate maneuvering of Turkey’s declaration of war against Venice in 1571 and the resultant conquest of Cyprus (which still plays a role in current-day international politics). Dona Gracia was renowned for her concern for Jews worldwide and for her wisdom and courage in helping them. She even developed an escape network that saved hundreds of Conversos - forcibly converted Jews - from the terrors of the Inquisition.
Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi
Dona Gracia intended to make Tiberias a major new center of Jewish settlement, trade, and learning. She also aided Jews in settling nearby Safed, and in less than 100 years, the population of Safed grew from 300 families to 10,000 people, making it the most Jewishly populated city in Israel at that time.
After the passing of Dona Gracia and Don Yosef Nasi, other Jewish leaders were influential in the Turkish court. A Portuguese Marrano, Aluaro Mandes, was named Duke of Mytilene in return for his diplomatic services to the Sultan. Salomon ben Nathan Ashkenazi arranged the first diplomatic ties with the British Empire.
Turkish Jews of the 16th and 17th centuries were the most prosperous Jewish group in the world, and the Jewish community thrived in this tranquil and relatively free atmosphere.
Shabtai Zvi (1626-78) decimates Turkish Jewry
In the 17th century, a person rose to influence who would forever change the Jewish communities of Turkey and the world in a most damaging way. Shabtai Tzvi was born in 1626 in Smyrna, Turkey, on the Ninth of Av, a day on which, according to Jewish lore, the Messiah was to be born. Tzvi’s family wereRomaniotes.
Brilliant and charismatic, Shabtai was already given the title of chacham, “wise man,” by the age of twenty. Nevertheless, more pronounced than his scholarship were his strange behavior and extreme emotions between deep depression and overflowing ecstasies.
Shabtai Tzvi
Some Smyrna Jews were strongly drawn to him and inspired by his religious utterances. However, his repeated claims to be the Messiah, and his utterances of the ineffable name of God, led the rabbis of Smyrna to expel him from Smyrna in the early 1650s.
He eventually traveled to the Holy Land, where he consulted with Nathan Benjamin Levi, known from that time as Nathan of Gaza. Nathan claimed to be a soul healer, and in a fateful meeting, Shabtai Tzvi met with him to “find a tikkun (rectification) and peace for his soul,” as one report put it. Nathan was convinced that Shabtai Tzvi was the Messiah, and at Nathan’s urging, Shabtai revealed himself as such. Nathan professed to be Elijah the Prophet and became a leading figure in this Messianic movement. Although the rabbis of Jerusalem denounced him and declared both to be frauds, the movement continued to gain momentum.
Shabtai Tzvi returned to Smyrna in 1665 with a large entourage, and great homage was paid to him there. Along with Nathan of Gaza, he made announcements declaring himself the Messiah and making wild predictions and claims as to the imminent miracles and redemption that were to take place. Despite his detractors, he became the leader of the community in Smyrna. He removed the former rabbi, Rabbi Aaron Lapapa, from his position and appointed Rabbi Chaim Benveniste as rabbi instead. His popularity grew, and he used his power to crush the opposition.
His fame spread as people of all faiths repeated stories about various miracles and sightings. It was said: “in the north of Scotland, a ship had appeared with silken sails and ropes, manned by sailors who spoke Hebrew. The flag bore the inscription ‘The Twelve Tribes of Israel.’” Letters regarding Shabtai Tzvi reached Europe and North Africa with embellished reports about the movement, and enthusiasm throughout the Jewish world grew.
Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Hamburg, and Amsterdam all heard about the events in Smyrna. The Jewish community of Avignon, France, even prepared to emigrate to the new kingdom in the spring of 1666.
Even though Shabtai Tzvi had a considerable following in the Jewish world (much more than Jesus ever had), most of the European rabbis who saw how Shabtai Tzvi and his followers violated Jewish law were not fooled and warned against him. Foremost among his opponents was Rabbi Yaakov Sasportas of Amsterdam.
Eventually, Shabtai Tzvi was arrested by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and imprisoned in Gallipoli. Even this did not deter his followers, and many of them flocked to visit him in prison,
The debacle came to its devastating end on September 15, 1666. Shabtai Zvi was brought before the Sultan and given the choice of death or conversion to Islam, and he chose to convert. Shaken to the core at his decision, the vast majority of the Jewish world realized he was an imposter.
Yet, believers in his Messianic claims tragically remained. Approximately 300 families converted to Islam along with him and became known as Dönmeh (converts). Nathan of Gaza continued to support Shabtai Tzvi, explaining that his conversion was a deep mystery and part of a Kabbalistic process toward the final redemption. He and other followers of Shabtai Tzvi continued to adhere to a paradoxical theology that combined aspects of Judaism with a continued belief in Shabtai Tzvi.
In the aftermath of the Shabtai Tzvi saga, the Ottoman authorities began to regard the Jewish minority, which until then had attracted no particular concern, with growing suspicion. Western travelers who passed through the Jewish areas of Istanbul described a new reality in sharp contrast to what was described two centuries before. These Turkish Jews kept to themselves in their communities, mostly earning their living as shop owners, artisans, or low-level employees.
The Dönmeh followers of Shabtai Tzvi
The Dönmeh continued to exist as a minority, set apart from the Jewish community by their conversion to Islam and belief in Shabtai Tzvi. By the 1680s, much of the Dönmeh resided in Salonika and continued to practice certain Jewish rituals.
The exact amount of the Dönmeh is unclear. According to Danish traveler Karsten Niebuhr, around 600 Dönmeh families lived in Salonika in 1774 and married only among themselves. Before World War I, their population was estimated to be between 10,000 and 15,000.
In an unexpected turn of events, the Dönmeh played a crucial role in the Young Turk movement, the group of modernist revolutionaries who brought down the Ottoman Empire. After the founding of the Turkish Republic, the dönmeh strongly supported the Republican, pro-Western reforms of Atatürk, which wanted to restrict the religious establishment's power and modernize Turkey.
Etz ha-Hayim Synagogue before it burnt in 1941. Visit of late Chief Rabbi Haim Bedjerano.
The first administration that came to power after the Young Turk revolution in 1909 included several ministers of Dönmeh origin, including the minister of finance, Javid Bey. One assertion that many Jews made (although this was denied by the Turkish government) was that Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938), the founder of the Modern Turkish State, was of Dönmeh origin. This view was eagerly embraced by many of Atatürk’s religious opponents in Anatolia as a means of discrediting him.
However, as a society, the Dönmeh could only retain their integrity and institutional framework when they were concentrated in Salonika. When they were compelled to leave Salonika in 1924 due to the Greco-Turkish War, many settled in Istanbul or in Turkish cities such as Izmir and Ankara. Within a short time, assimilation became widespread. By the end of the 20th century, the Dönmeh were fully assimilated into Muslim Turkish society.
More Equality & A New Republic
The status of Jews in Turkey began to improve under the Tanzimat reforms in the late 18th century. These reforms were part of a process to transform the Empire based on European models and were intended to signify that the Ottoman Empire belonged among the European nations. As part of the reforms, there was now official recognition of Jews as separate communities and a state-appointed chief rabbi.
The proclamation of the Hatti Humayun in 1856 made all Ottoman citizens, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, equal under the law and granted that all subjects be allowed to worship their religion freely. Each religion was also assigned its own government-appointed leader. Although Greek and Armenian were amenable to this, the diverse Jewish population resented this state intrusion into their internal communal affairs. With the reorganization of the state came new professional opportunities, and Jews flourished in banking, trade, and manufacturing and began to enter government service.
As part of the impact of reforms throughout Turkey, the leadership shifted from religious leaders to secular ones, which also affected the Jewish community.
Secular Turkey
World War I ended the glory of the Ottoman Empire, and in its place rose the Young Turkish Republic. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was elected president, the Caliphate was abolished, and a secular constitution was adopted. However, in reality, Islam remained inextricably intertwined with Turkish culture.
According to a census taken in 1927, 81,872 Jews lived within the boundaries of the Turkish Republic under Mustapha Kemal, and most were concentrated in the cities of Istanbul and Izmir.
Devastated by the crumbling of the Empire, the Turkish Republic attempted to forge a new national identity that regarded minorities with suspicion. This significantly affected the Jewish community's living conditions as the government insisted that all republic residents identify as Turkish. The widespread Universal Israelite Alliance schools that served the Jewish community were forced to break their ties with their French sponsors, and Turkish was made the language of instruction in all schools. Although the demands were made of the Jews to integrate, they were simultaneously identified as foreigners, and a double standard was applied to their community.
This was most apparent with the “exceptional tax” instituted in 1942. On average, this tax demanded 5% from Muslims and 150-200% from Greeks, Armenians, and Jews. Most had no way to pay such exorbitant taxes and were forced to sell their belongings or be sent to work camps. Although the tax was abolished in March 1944, its effect on Turkish Jews was traumatic and began to pave the way for the massive emigration of Turkish Jews to Israel that would begin in 1948.
Istanbul Ashkenazi Synagogue
Yet, during World War II, Turkey was a safe passage for many Jews fleeing the Nazis. Seizing an opportunity in 1933, Ataturk invited prominent German Jewish professors to flee Nazi Germany and settle in Turkey. Before and during the war, these academics contributed a great deal to the development of the Turkish university system.
During the Holocaust, the Turkish Jews remained secure, although Greece's nearby Jewish communities were almost wiped out. Several Turkish diplomats persevered in their efforts to save the Turkish Jews from the Holocaust and succeeded. Mr. Salahattin Ulkumen, Consul General at Rhodes from 1943-1944, was recognized by the Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile in June 1990.
The Vanishing Turkish Jew
The present size of the Jewish community is estimated at 14,500 out of the total population of 85 million. Most Jews live in Istanbul, and Sephardim account for 96% of the population.
Turkish Jews are led by and legally represented by the Chacham Bashi, the Chief Rabbi. There remains a small group of one hundred Karaites who are not part of the normative Jewish community and do not accept the authority of the Chief Rabbi.
Jews in Turkey have been the victims of violent antisemitism on multiple occasions. On September 6, 1986, a member of the Palestinian terror group Abu Nidal opened fire on the Neve Shalom synagogue in Istanbul, killing 22 Jewish individuals. Neve Shalom synagogue was also the target of a terror attack in November 2003 when multiple truck bombs went off all around Istanbul. One exploded in front of Neve Shalom, and another exploded in front of the Bet Israel congregation, killing and injuring many people.
Turkey has experienced underlying antisemitism for much of its history, but the antisemitism has been especially apparent since Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rose to power. Turkey under Erdogan is frightening for Turkish Jews. The Turkish leader and his top aides make anti-Semitic remarks and under his rule, antisemitism is on the rise. For example, in 2014, in response to Operation Protective Edge, over 30,000 Turkish-language tweets were published, including comments that stated positive things about Hitler and the Holocaust. Among other discomfiting signs of antisemitism, Hitler’s Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were best-sellers in Turkey in recent years. According to the ADL’s surveys, 69% of Turks hold some anti-Semitic beliefs. This figure is higher than other European countries and slightly lower than the Middle East average.
Against this backdrop, Turkey’s centuries-old Jewish community small community has had a considerable jump in emigration, especially to Israel. Turkey, a country that once welcomed Jews worldwide, is losing its Jews to emigration and assimilation. In an ironic twist, there are even Turkish Jews that emigrate to the relative safety of Spain and Portugal, reversing the historical path taken centuries earlier.
Re: AISH
https://aish.com/who-are-the-karaites/?
Who Are the Karaites?
The inside story of a rebellious Jewish sect that begun in the Middle Ages.
A popular legend from the medieval period depicts the founding of Karaism to a bitter dispute over the office of the exilarch, the political leader of the Jewish community in Babylonia. Anan Ben David was supposedly qualified for the office but was passed over due to his independence and untrustworthiness. Out of jealousy, Anan gathered together what were left of the sectarians from the Second Temple period, such as the Sadducees, and established a new Jewish sect: the Karaites. Charged with treason and placed in jail, Anan met a prominent Muslim scholar who greatly influenced the development of his new religious sect.
While little of this account is viewed as reliable by historians, and the influence of Islam on Karaism is a controversial academic question, it is generally accepted that in the 8th century a Jewish scholar named Anan abandoned the Babylonian rabbinic academies and composed a Talmud of his own. Like the Babylonian Talmud, Anan’s Talmud is written in Aramaic, and small fragments exist to this day. The students of Anan did not call themselves “Karaites,” but were rather known as “Ananites” or “followers of Anan” and it was not until the 9th century that evidence of communities calling themselves “Karaites” is found.
The Karaites rejected the Oral Torah, a central pillar of Judaism.
The major distinction between Ananites and Karaites, versus the Rabbinic Jewish community, is that Anan and his followers rejected the belief that two Torahs were given by God to Moses at Mount Sinai and taught to the entire Jewish people: a Written Torah, containing the five books of Moses; and an “Oral Torah” in which the details of the written Torah were explained in detail. Faith in the Oral Law whose details were transmitted orally from Moses to Joshua to the present generation of Torah scholars is a central pillar of Judaism. Thus, Anan struck at the core of Jewish faith and survival.
By rejecting the authority of the Oral Torah and the rabbinic leaders who transmitted its teachings, Anan created a new sect based in his view that religious truth emerges from independent study of the Written Torah alone. In other words, in cases where details of Jewish practice are transmitted exclusively via the Oral Torah, Anan insisted that such traditions are mistaken. Instead, he propounded the belief that all of the Torah’s commandments must be derived from a careful examination of its verses alone.
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A Karaite kenesa [synagogue], Vilnius, built in 1921.
A famous slogan epitomizing Anan’s revolution is “search scripture well and do not rely on my opinion.” Later Karaite groups in the medieval period, following in Anan’s footsteps, turned this motto into a principle of faith that each individual Jew in every generation is obligated to interpret the Torah’s commandments on their own.
Chaotic Splintering
If such a philosophy sounds like it would lead to chaos, or “two Jews three opinions,” you would be correct. The 10th century Iraqi Karaite Jacob al-Qirqisānī records a lengthy list of disputes within the Karaite community, and complains that the amount of disagreement amongst Karaites is constantly growing and is driven by jealousy and ego amongst Karaite leaders. Even for matters as basic to Jewish life as the calendar, it would not be unusual for two Karaites in the same community to calculate different days and even months for the Jewish holidays because each one observed the new moon on a different day, or observed the ripening of barley (used by Karaites to determine the spring or month of Nisan for celebrating Passover) in a different period.
It would not be unusual for two Karaites in the same community to calculate different days and even months for the Jewish holidays.
By contrast, the leaders of the Rabbinic community – the Geonim – established a fixed calendar in the medieval period so that all Jews around the world would celebrate the holidays on the same day. al-Qirqisānī describes the Ananites as so bitterly divided over the issue of the calendar, that members of their sect refused to eat meals with each other if they disagreed over the calculation of the calendar or any other detail of Anan’s law.
Distorting Basic Commandments
A group of Karaites, from Description ethnographique des Peuples de la Russie (Theodore de Pauly, 1862).
Many of the interpretations that Anan and subsequent generations of Karaites found in the Torah were similarly disruptive for the continuity of Jewish practice since antiquity. For example, Anan interpreted the story of Israel’s circumcision at Gilboa to conclude that “knives of flint” (Joshua 5:2) implies that circumcision must be performed with scissors rather than a knife. He justified this view on the basis that “knives” is in the plural, and thus understood that the circumcision tool must have multiple parts i.e., a scissor with two blades and not a knife with a single blade.
Even the later Karaites were very critical of this interpretation, because it was obvious that in the thousands of years of Jewish history, nobody had heard of circumcision scissors. Indeed, one Karaite points out that “knives” is in the plural in the story of Joshua because thousands of Jews were being circumcised at the same time and thus many knives were needed.
The ancient details regarding tzitzit and what to write inside the boxes of tefillin were rejected by Karaites, as were the identity of the plants used for the four species on Sukkot.
In addition to new interpretations of biblical verses, Anan and the Karaites also rejected many details of Judaism that have no explicit biblical description but are included in the Oral Torah. For example, the ancient details regarding how to tie tzitzit and what to write inside the boxes of tefillin were rejected by Karaites, as were the identity of the plants used for the four species on Sukkot and the guidelines for building a legal Sukkah and many more details of the commandments. Some aspects of post-biblical Judaism, such as the holiday of Hanukkah are not observed by Karaites for the same reason.
Moreover, some aspects of Torah law that are understood in the Oral Torah as non-literal, such as the understanding that the punishment of an “eye for an eye” means monetary compensation, were re-interpreted as literal punishments by some Karaites.
Emphasis on Hebrew Grammar
Karaite men in traditional garb, Crimea, 19th century.
As a result of the Karaite commitment towards utilizing the Written Torah as the sole basis of their legal traditions, Karaites in the Middle Ages produced many biblical commentaries and treatises on Hebrew grammar designed to understand the Torah’s language as precisely as possible. For example, a Karaite from Jerusalem, Japheth Ben Eli, is credited by historians as the first author to complete a commentary on all 24 books of the Hebrew Bible in the second half of the 10th century. Japhet’s commentary and other Karaite works on Hebrew grammar were studied by some of the most influential Rabbinic commentators on the Torah such as Ibn Ezra, who occasionally cites Japhet’s views anonymously in his biblical commentary.
The chief opponent of Anan and the Karaites in the medieval period was Saadia Gaon, who wrote several books challenging Karaism from the beginning to the end of his long scholarly career. Most of these books, written in Arabic, have unfortunately been lost. From the fragments that have survived, it is clear that Saadia was diametrically opposed to the heart of Karaite ideology – that each Jew is obligated to interpret the Torah on their own.
Those who were physically and proximally closer to God’s revelation to the entire Jewish people at Sinai – the sages of the Mishna and Talmud - necessarily earn a higher degree of authority in Judaism than later generations.
Rather, Saadia pointed out that Judaism, like any other mature legal system, builds upon the efforts of earlier generations and does not start from scratch in each generation. Those who were physically and proximally closer to God’s revelation to the entire Jewish people at Sinai – the sages of the Mishna and Talmud - necessarily earn a higher degree of authority in Judaism than later generations.
At the outset of Anan’s activity until the 10th century, Saadia and other Babylonian Jewish leaders fiercely opposed Anan and his followers and banned marriages and other communal intermingling between Rabbinic Jews and Karaites. In subsequent centuries, however, attitudes towards Karaites relaxed as the “threat” of Karaism dwindled and it became clear that the Karaites were destined to become a small minority splinter group. Evidence unearthed in the 20th century from the Cairo Geniza, such as marriage documents, letters, and donation slips, indicate that Rabbinic Jews and Karaites in medieval Egypt of the 11th-12th centuries had a higher degree of social cohesion than previously understood -- and the various legal questions concerning the status of Karaites in Judaism remain complex and debated amongst rabbinic scholars to this day.
Karaites Today
Nowadays, the Karaites survive as a small minority group of approximately 40,000 individuals in Israel, with smaller communities in the United States and Europe. Most of today’s Karaites are descendants of the Egyptian Karaite community, with smaller communities from Eastern Europe, Turkey and Iraq.
Karaite Congregation B’nai Israel in Daly City, California
The face of Karaism has changed dramatically since the medieval period. Karaism developed its own set of customs and beliefs over the generations and is significantly less “revolutionary” in encouraging each individual in each generation to discover the truth on his own. Like other minority groups in Israel, such as the Samaritans, many Karaites have assimilated into the fabric of Israeli society and the future of Karaism is uncertain at best.
The medieval Karaites left an indelible mark on medieval Judaism and its intellectual culture. Rather than defeating the Oral Torah, they only strengthened the faith in its necessity for Judaism, as Proverbs says, “It’s a tree of life to those who hold fast to it, and those who uphold it are happy. Its ways are pleasant and all of its paths are peaceful” (3:18).
Who Are the Karaites?
The inside story of a rebellious Jewish sect that begun in the Middle Ages.
A popular legend from the medieval period depicts the founding of Karaism to a bitter dispute over the office of the exilarch, the political leader of the Jewish community in Babylonia. Anan Ben David was supposedly qualified for the office but was passed over due to his independence and untrustworthiness. Out of jealousy, Anan gathered together what were left of the sectarians from the Second Temple period, such as the Sadducees, and established a new Jewish sect: the Karaites. Charged with treason and placed in jail, Anan met a prominent Muslim scholar who greatly influenced the development of his new religious sect.
While little of this account is viewed as reliable by historians, and the influence of Islam on Karaism is a controversial academic question, it is generally accepted that in the 8th century a Jewish scholar named Anan abandoned the Babylonian rabbinic academies and composed a Talmud of his own. Like the Babylonian Talmud, Anan’s Talmud is written in Aramaic, and small fragments exist to this day. The students of Anan did not call themselves “Karaites,” but were rather known as “Ananites” or “followers of Anan” and it was not until the 9th century that evidence of communities calling themselves “Karaites” is found.
The Karaites rejected the Oral Torah, a central pillar of Judaism.
The major distinction between Ananites and Karaites, versus the Rabbinic Jewish community, is that Anan and his followers rejected the belief that two Torahs were given by God to Moses at Mount Sinai and taught to the entire Jewish people: a Written Torah, containing the five books of Moses; and an “Oral Torah” in which the details of the written Torah were explained in detail. Faith in the Oral Law whose details were transmitted orally from Moses to Joshua to the present generation of Torah scholars is a central pillar of Judaism. Thus, Anan struck at the core of Jewish faith and survival.
By rejecting the authority of the Oral Torah and the rabbinic leaders who transmitted its teachings, Anan created a new sect based in his view that religious truth emerges from independent study of the Written Torah alone. In other words, in cases where details of Jewish practice are transmitted exclusively via the Oral Torah, Anan insisted that such traditions are mistaken. Instead, he propounded the belief that all of the Torah’s commandments must be derived from a careful examination of its verses alone.
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A Karaite kenesa [synagogue], Vilnius, built in 1921.
A famous slogan epitomizing Anan’s revolution is “search scripture well and do not rely on my opinion.” Later Karaite groups in the medieval period, following in Anan’s footsteps, turned this motto into a principle of faith that each individual Jew in every generation is obligated to interpret the Torah’s commandments on their own.
Chaotic Splintering
If such a philosophy sounds like it would lead to chaos, or “two Jews three opinions,” you would be correct. The 10th century Iraqi Karaite Jacob al-Qirqisānī records a lengthy list of disputes within the Karaite community, and complains that the amount of disagreement amongst Karaites is constantly growing and is driven by jealousy and ego amongst Karaite leaders. Even for matters as basic to Jewish life as the calendar, it would not be unusual for two Karaites in the same community to calculate different days and even months for the Jewish holidays because each one observed the new moon on a different day, or observed the ripening of barley (used by Karaites to determine the spring or month of Nisan for celebrating Passover) in a different period.
It would not be unusual for two Karaites in the same community to calculate different days and even months for the Jewish holidays.
By contrast, the leaders of the Rabbinic community – the Geonim – established a fixed calendar in the medieval period so that all Jews around the world would celebrate the holidays on the same day. al-Qirqisānī describes the Ananites as so bitterly divided over the issue of the calendar, that members of their sect refused to eat meals with each other if they disagreed over the calculation of the calendar or any other detail of Anan’s law.
Distorting Basic Commandments
A group of Karaites, from Description ethnographique des Peuples de la Russie (Theodore de Pauly, 1862).
Many of the interpretations that Anan and subsequent generations of Karaites found in the Torah were similarly disruptive for the continuity of Jewish practice since antiquity. For example, Anan interpreted the story of Israel’s circumcision at Gilboa to conclude that “knives of flint” (Joshua 5:2) implies that circumcision must be performed with scissors rather than a knife. He justified this view on the basis that “knives” is in the plural, and thus understood that the circumcision tool must have multiple parts i.e., a scissor with two blades and not a knife with a single blade.
Even the later Karaites were very critical of this interpretation, because it was obvious that in the thousands of years of Jewish history, nobody had heard of circumcision scissors. Indeed, one Karaite points out that “knives” is in the plural in the story of Joshua because thousands of Jews were being circumcised at the same time and thus many knives were needed.
The ancient details regarding tzitzit and what to write inside the boxes of tefillin were rejected by Karaites, as were the identity of the plants used for the four species on Sukkot.
In addition to new interpretations of biblical verses, Anan and the Karaites also rejected many details of Judaism that have no explicit biblical description but are included in the Oral Torah. For example, the ancient details regarding how to tie tzitzit and what to write inside the boxes of tefillin were rejected by Karaites, as were the identity of the plants used for the four species on Sukkot and the guidelines for building a legal Sukkah and many more details of the commandments. Some aspects of post-biblical Judaism, such as the holiday of Hanukkah are not observed by Karaites for the same reason.
Moreover, some aspects of Torah law that are understood in the Oral Torah as non-literal, such as the understanding that the punishment of an “eye for an eye” means monetary compensation, were re-interpreted as literal punishments by some Karaites.
Emphasis on Hebrew Grammar
Karaite men in traditional garb, Crimea, 19th century.
As a result of the Karaite commitment towards utilizing the Written Torah as the sole basis of their legal traditions, Karaites in the Middle Ages produced many biblical commentaries and treatises on Hebrew grammar designed to understand the Torah’s language as precisely as possible. For example, a Karaite from Jerusalem, Japheth Ben Eli, is credited by historians as the first author to complete a commentary on all 24 books of the Hebrew Bible in the second half of the 10th century. Japhet’s commentary and other Karaite works on Hebrew grammar were studied by some of the most influential Rabbinic commentators on the Torah such as Ibn Ezra, who occasionally cites Japhet’s views anonymously in his biblical commentary.
The chief opponent of Anan and the Karaites in the medieval period was Saadia Gaon, who wrote several books challenging Karaism from the beginning to the end of his long scholarly career. Most of these books, written in Arabic, have unfortunately been lost. From the fragments that have survived, it is clear that Saadia was diametrically opposed to the heart of Karaite ideology – that each Jew is obligated to interpret the Torah on their own.
Those who were physically and proximally closer to God’s revelation to the entire Jewish people at Sinai – the sages of the Mishna and Talmud - necessarily earn a higher degree of authority in Judaism than later generations.
Rather, Saadia pointed out that Judaism, like any other mature legal system, builds upon the efforts of earlier generations and does not start from scratch in each generation. Those who were physically and proximally closer to God’s revelation to the entire Jewish people at Sinai – the sages of the Mishna and Talmud - necessarily earn a higher degree of authority in Judaism than later generations.
At the outset of Anan’s activity until the 10th century, Saadia and other Babylonian Jewish leaders fiercely opposed Anan and his followers and banned marriages and other communal intermingling between Rabbinic Jews and Karaites. In subsequent centuries, however, attitudes towards Karaites relaxed as the “threat” of Karaism dwindled and it became clear that the Karaites were destined to become a small minority splinter group. Evidence unearthed in the 20th century from the Cairo Geniza, such as marriage documents, letters, and donation slips, indicate that Rabbinic Jews and Karaites in medieval Egypt of the 11th-12th centuries had a higher degree of social cohesion than previously understood -- and the various legal questions concerning the status of Karaites in Judaism remain complex and debated amongst rabbinic scholars to this day.
Karaites Today
Nowadays, the Karaites survive as a small minority group of approximately 40,000 individuals in Israel, with smaller communities in the United States and Europe. Most of today’s Karaites are descendants of the Egyptian Karaite community, with smaller communities from Eastern Europe, Turkey and Iraq.
Karaite Congregation B’nai Israel in Daly City, California
The face of Karaism has changed dramatically since the medieval period. Karaism developed its own set of customs and beliefs over the generations and is significantly less “revolutionary” in encouraging each individual in each generation to discover the truth on his own. Like other minority groups in Israel, such as the Samaritans, many Karaites have assimilated into the fabric of Israeli society and the future of Karaism is uncertain at best.
The medieval Karaites left an indelible mark on medieval Judaism and its intellectual culture. Rather than defeating the Oral Torah, they only strengthened the faith in its necessity for Judaism, as Proverbs says, “It’s a tree of life to those who hold fast to it, and those who uphold it are happy. Its ways are pleasant and all of its paths are peaceful” (3:18).
Re: AISH
My Encounter with James Brown, the Godfather of Soul
by Rabbi Pinchas Landis
November 26, 2022
4 min read
The music legend was actually excited to shmooze with a group of Jewish teenagers and show off his Jewish connections.
When I was in high school, I was active in the B’nai Brith Youth Organization. One year, the annual convention was in Augusta, Georgia. There are two things that make Augusta famous. It’s home to The Masters golf tournament, and to the Godfather of Soul, James Brown.
Our convention coincided with James Brown’s annual holiday party which was held at the same hotel. A group of us Jewish teens bumped into Brown while he was doing some pre-party prep.
Top Ten Israeli Snacks
“How y’all doin’, how y’all doin?” Mr. Brown asked us in his famous raspy voice. “What brings y’all to Augusta?”
“We’re here for our annual Jewish Youth Group Convention,” I replied.
Really! I was an honorary member of ZBT down in Tampa!” ZBT is the world’s first and largest Jewish fraternity.
“Wow, that’s awesome!” we all said.
I mustered up my courage and asked Mr. Brown, “Maybe you can drop by and do a little number for us later?”
“Aw, I don’t know about that.”
“I’ve got my harmonica,” my friend chimed in, “and I can play backup.”
James Brown pointing his finger at my friend and said, “Ooo, do Hava Nagilah!”
We all laughed and bid the Godfather of Soul farewell.
“Alright, shalom y’all,” he said. “I feel good!”
I’ve often thought about this serendipitous encounter. Here was James Brown, the Godfather of Soul himself, so excited to meet a group of Jewish teenagers, boasting about being an honorary member of a Jewish fraternity and flexing what little knowledge he had of the Jewish people. I’ll never forget his genuine warmth for Jews and how friendly he was to a group of nerdy Jewish teens. There wasn’t an ounce of animosity.
Somewhere along the way, I assume, James Brown had positive encounters with Jews that impacted his views of Jews. Maybe the Jews of ZBT down in Tampa treated James Brown with honor and respect, realizing they were representing the Jewish people.
Michael Jordan’s Philosophy on Life
It reminds of an incredible lesson I learned from my teacher, Rabbi Binyomin Friedman.
I was helping him put up his sukkah and we needed to run to Home Depot to get some more supplies. Before getting into the car, Rabbi Friedman rolled down his shirt sleeves and put on his tie and suit jacket. I was mystified.
“Rabbi Friedman, we’re just going to Home Depot.”
READ MORE https://aish.com/my-encounter-with-james-brown-the-godfather-of-soul/?acid=1b81364b7cf9d6c258b67cddaa94e16b&src=ac-txt
by Rabbi Pinchas Landis
November 26, 2022
4 min read
The music legend was actually excited to shmooze with a group of Jewish teenagers and show off his Jewish connections.
When I was in high school, I was active in the B’nai Brith Youth Organization. One year, the annual convention was in Augusta, Georgia. There are two things that make Augusta famous. It’s home to The Masters golf tournament, and to the Godfather of Soul, James Brown.
Our convention coincided with James Brown’s annual holiday party which was held at the same hotel. A group of us Jewish teens bumped into Brown while he was doing some pre-party prep.
Top Ten Israeli Snacks
“How y’all doin’, how y’all doin?” Mr. Brown asked us in his famous raspy voice. “What brings y’all to Augusta?”
“We’re here for our annual Jewish Youth Group Convention,” I replied.
Really! I was an honorary member of ZBT down in Tampa!” ZBT is the world’s first and largest Jewish fraternity.
“Wow, that’s awesome!” we all said.
I mustered up my courage and asked Mr. Brown, “Maybe you can drop by and do a little number for us later?”
“Aw, I don’t know about that.”
“I’ve got my harmonica,” my friend chimed in, “and I can play backup.”
James Brown pointing his finger at my friend and said, “Ooo, do Hava Nagilah!”
We all laughed and bid the Godfather of Soul farewell.
“Alright, shalom y’all,” he said. “I feel good!”
I’ve often thought about this serendipitous encounter. Here was James Brown, the Godfather of Soul himself, so excited to meet a group of Jewish teenagers, boasting about being an honorary member of a Jewish fraternity and flexing what little knowledge he had of the Jewish people. I’ll never forget his genuine warmth for Jews and how friendly he was to a group of nerdy Jewish teens. There wasn’t an ounce of animosity.
Somewhere along the way, I assume, James Brown had positive encounters with Jews that impacted his views of Jews. Maybe the Jews of ZBT down in Tampa treated James Brown with honor and respect, realizing they were representing the Jewish people.
Michael Jordan’s Philosophy on Life
It reminds of an incredible lesson I learned from my teacher, Rabbi Binyomin Friedman.
I was helping him put up his sukkah and we needed to run to Home Depot to get some more supplies. Before getting into the car, Rabbi Friedman rolled down his shirt sleeves and put on his tie and suit jacket. I was mystified.
“Rabbi Friedman, we’re just going to Home Depot.”
READ MORE https://aish.com/my-encounter-with-james-brown-the-godfather-of-soul/?acid=1b81364b7cf9d6c258b67cddaa94e16b&src=ac-txt
Re: AISH
https://aish.com/dear-persian-jews-tradition-is-not-enough/?
Dear Persian Jews: Tradition Is Not Enough
Many Iranian American Jews likely will not have Jewish descendants in the coming decades. It’s our fault. We’re applying an old formula to a new country.
Like many children in the U.S., I once begged my mother to let me attend a Friday night sleepover.
“It’s Shabbat night,” she declared in Persian. “You don’t go out on Shabbat night.”
“Why?” I prodded. “I want to go to this sleepover and eat something called ‘Chinese food.’”
“But we’ve always ‘done’ Shabbat.” she cried. “It’s a time for family and Full House.”
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Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history, food, philosophy, current events, holidays and more...
I grew up in the 1990s when ABC aired TGIF television programs like, yes, Full House.
I didn’t accept my mother’s response because there was no soul in it.
There’s something about this story that’s uniquely Persian, and at the risk of excommunication, I’ve been waiting 20 years to declare the following:
With our misguided belief that tradition alone is enough to ensure Jewish continuity, many Iranian American Jews will likely not have Jewish descendants in the coming decades.
With our misguided belief that tradition alone is enough to ensure Jewish continuity, many Iranian American Jews will likely not have Jewish descendants in the coming decades.
It’s our fault. We applied an old formula to a new country.
In Iran, we didn’t worry much about assimilation. First, social antisemitism made marriage between Jews and non-Jews very difficult. In the U.S., antisemitism doesn’t break up relationships. For Persian Jews, the job of promoting Jewish marriage often belongs to parents, and if those parents die without having imprinted the need and beauty of Jewish continuity, intermarriage will be the result.
Second, we felt less need in Iran to go beyond tradition (toward more learning and Jewish practice), particularly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, because we were merely trying to survive. No one worries about whether their children will retain their Jewish identity in a country that constantly keeps them in their place as Jews. That’s not an issue in the U.S.
Third, there was an unspoken distance between Muslim and Jewish children in Iran. Often, they learned and played together (at non-Jewish schools), but the level of interaction that Jewish children who attend public schools in the U.S. today have with non-Jewish friends is much greater.
In Tehran, I didn’t partake in non-Jewish traditions with non-Jewish children; in the U.S., I couldn’t wait to help my Christian friends hang ornaments on their Christmas trees, and I viewed them — with their “free” Friday nights — as truly liberated.
There are many Persian Jews who actively are staying connected to Judaism but they now seem a minority.
Hanukkah is a good time to observe my assumption in practice. If you’re a parent, ask yourself if your children — whether 12 or 25 — are exhibiting true understanding that Hanukkah, at its core, is a celebration of non-assimilation, or are they simply excited to unwrap chocolate gelt? Are you basically exposing them to an equally commercialized Jewish version of Christmas?
There aren't enough latkes in the world to instill Jewish pride if the only associations your children have with Hanukkah are the various foods or eight nights of small gifts.
Hanukkah celebrates the courage to not assimilate and the miracle of Jewish continuity. There aren't enough latkes in the world to teach that lesson if the only associations your children have with Hanukkah are the various foods or eight nights of small gifts.
Can you encourage your children to actually look deeply into the small flames of each Hanukkah candle and contemplate a world in which all Jews had succumbed to Hellenism? Or do they mindlessly scroll their beloved phones as you light the candles on the Hanukkiah?
Are you using this extraordinary time of year to guide your children and make connections between the worldly obsessions of Hellenism then and today's incessant messages that promise happiness through material objects and the external validation of friends and social media followers?
I’m Persian, and I don’t get Persians.
Beautifully but maddeningly traditional, we actually throw ourselves at Torah scrolls when they’re brought down to the pews, but in our homes, we outsource our children’s hearts and souls to their friends and phones.
My mother used to practically shove other women out of the way to steal a kiss on the Torah, but she never managed to invade my heart with an intoxicating love of being Jewish, because her mother had raised her only with tradition, too.
But my mother grew up in Iran. In the U.S., my Judaism was competing with public school and Friday night sleepovers.
If your kids find little meaning in synagogue services, find another synagogue. If they associate Shabbat only with food (however comforting) and idle chatter, start telling stories. Above all, if they don’t exhibit passion about being Jewish, you must start modeling this for them by practicing Jewish customs with joy — right before their eyes.
Soulful joy makes for a full house.
A version of this article originally appeared in The Jewish Journal
Dear Persian Jews: Tradition Is Not Enough
Many Iranian American Jews likely will not have Jewish descendants in the coming decades. It’s our fault. We’re applying an old formula to a new country.
Like many children in the U.S., I once begged my mother to let me attend a Friday night sleepover.
“It’s Shabbat night,” she declared in Persian. “You don’t go out on Shabbat night.”
“Why?” I prodded. “I want to go to this sleepover and eat something called ‘Chinese food.’”
“But we’ve always ‘done’ Shabbat.” she cried. “It’s a time for family and Full House.”
SUBSCRIBE
Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history, food, philosophy, current events, holidays and more...
I grew up in the 1990s when ABC aired TGIF television programs like, yes, Full House.
I didn’t accept my mother’s response because there was no soul in it.
There’s something about this story that’s uniquely Persian, and at the risk of excommunication, I’ve been waiting 20 years to declare the following:
With our misguided belief that tradition alone is enough to ensure Jewish continuity, many Iranian American Jews will likely not have Jewish descendants in the coming decades.
With our misguided belief that tradition alone is enough to ensure Jewish continuity, many Iranian American Jews will likely not have Jewish descendants in the coming decades.
It’s our fault. We applied an old formula to a new country.
In Iran, we didn’t worry much about assimilation. First, social antisemitism made marriage between Jews and non-Jews very difficult. In the U.S., antisemitism doesn’t break up relationships. For Persian Jews, the job of promoting Jewish marriage often belongs to parents, and if those parents die without having imprinted the need and beauty of Jewish continuity, intermarriage will be the result.
Second, we felt less need in Iran to go beyond tradition (toward more learning and Jewish practice), particularly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, because we were merely trying to survive. No one worries about whether their children will retain their Jewish identity in a country that constantly keeps them in their place as Jews. That’s not an issue in the U.S.
Third, there was an unspoken distance between Muslim and Jewish children in Iran. Often, they learned and played together (at non-Jewish schools), but the level of interaction that Jewish children who attend public schools in the U.S. today have with non-Jewish friends is much greater.
In Tehran, I didn’t partake in non-Jewish traditions with non-Jewish children; in the U.S., I couldn’t wait to help my Christian friends hang ornaments on their Christmas trees, and I viewed them — with their “free” Friday nights — as truly liberated.
There are many Persian Jews who actively are staying connected to Judaism but they now seem a minority.
Hanukkah is a good time to observe my assumption in practice. If you’re a parent, ask yourself if your children — whether 12 or 25 — are exhibiting true understanding that Hanukkah, at its core, is a celebration of non-assimilation, or are they simply excited to unwrap chocolate gelt? Are you basically exposing them to an equally commercialized Jewish version of Christmas?
There aren't enough latkes in the world to instill Jewish pride if the only associations your children have with Hanukkah are the various foods or eight nights of small gifts.
Hanukkah celebrates the courage to not assimilate and the miracle of Jewish continuity. There aren't enough latkes in the world to teach that lesson if the only associations your children have with Hanukkah are the various foods or eight nights of small gifts.
Can you encourage your children to actually look deeply into the small flames of each Hanukkah candle and contemplate a world in which all Jews had succumbed to Hellenism? Or do they mindlessly scroll their beloved phones as you light the candles on the Hanukkiah?
Are you using this extraordinary time of year to guide your children and make connections between the worldly obsessions of Hellenism then and today's incessant messages that promise happiness through material objects and the external validation of friends and social media followers?
I’m Persian, and I don’t get Persians.
Beautifully but maddeningly traditional, we actually throw ourselves at Torah scrolls when they’re brought down to the pews, but in our homes, we outsource our children’s hearts and souls to their friends and phones.
My mother used to practically shove other women out of the way to steal a kiss on the Torah, but she never managed to invade my heart with an intoxicating love of being Jewish, because her mother had raised her only with tradition, too.
But my mother grew up in Iran. In the U.S., my Judaism was competing with public school and Friday night sleepovers.
If your kids find little meaning in synagogue services, find another synagogue. If they associate Shabbat only with food (however comforting) and idle chatter, start telling stories. Above all, if they don’t exhibit passion about being Jewish, you must start modeling this for them by practicing Jewish customs with joy — right before their eyes.
Soulful joy makes for a full house.
A version of this article originally appeared in The Jewish Journal
Re: AISH
https://aish.com/the-jews-of-oz-a-history-of-the-australian-jewish-community/?
How did Jews get to Australia?
I was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia and have an affinity for all things Australian, including Vegemite. I cannot help feeling that when the prophet Ezekiel said that Jews were dispersed and scattered among the nations, that he had Australia in mind. Isaiah predicted that the Jewish people would be exiled “to far off islands, which have not heard my fame, nor have they seen my glory…”1 and are there very many farther islands from Israel than Australia?
How did Jews get to Australia?
Basically, there have been five “waves” of immigration that have planted the seeds of the Australian Jewish community. Originally, England began to send convicts to Australia in the 18th century. Some of these convicts were violent criminals, many however were convicted of petty theft and minor crimes, which, in the British justice system were liable to a death sentence. Britain wanted to settle and colonize Australia and hence often commuted the death sentence and replaced it with transportation to Australia.
It is believed that on the First Fleet of convicts sent to Australia in 1788 there were possibly seven Jews. There are records of some of the Jewish convicts. In Hodgson’s Old Bailey Shorthand Reports there is a record of a certain Ikey Bull, or Isaac Simmonds, a Jew accused of violent assault and robbery. He was sentenced to death at age 32, but the hanging was unsuccessful, and he survived only to be sentenced to transportation to Australia.
How did Jews get to Australia?
I was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia and have an affinity for all things Australian, including Vegemite. I cannot help feeling that when the prophet Ezekiel said that Jews were dispersed and scattered among the nations, that he had Australia in mind. Isaiah predicted that the Jewish people would be exiled “to far off islands, which have not heard my fame, nor have they seen my glory…”1 and are there very many farther islands from Israel than Australia?
How did Jews get to Australia?
Basically, there have been five “waves” of immigration that have planted the seeds of the Australian Jewish community. Originally, England began to send convicts to Australia in the 18th century. Some of these convicts were violent criminals, many however were convicted of petty theft and minor crimes, which, in the British justice system were liable to a death sentence. Britain wanted to settle and colonize Australia and hence often commuted the death sentence and replaced it with transportation to Australia.
It is believed that on the First Fleet of convicts sent to Australia in 1788 there were possibly seven Jews. There are records of some of the Jewish convicts. In Hodgson’s Old Bailey Shorthand Reports there is a record of a certain Ikey Bull, or Isaac Simmonds, a Jew accused of violent assault and robbery. He was sentenced to death at age 32, but the hanging was unsuccessful, and he survived only to be sentenced to transportation to Australia.
Re: AISH
Blacks vs Jews, left vs right, religious vs secular – how do we tear down barriers that drive us apart?
I learned a valuable lesson from a 76-year-old Black woman who vehemently disagreed with my take on Dave Chappelle. Instead of shooting me down, she subscribed to Aish.com – because she recognized that only through openness and genuine understanding can we overcome our ingrained prejudices and learn to see each other as fellow human beings.
Read what happened next.
https://aish.com/when-a-black-woman-visited-a-jewish-website/?
I learned a valuable lesson from a 76-year-old Black woman who vehemently disagreed with my take on Dave Chappelle. Instead of shooting me down, she subscribed to Aish.com – because she recognized that only through openness and genuine understanding can we overcome our ingrained prejudices and learn to see each other as fellow human beings.
Read what happened next.
https://aish.com/when-a-black-woman-visited-a-jewish-website/?
Re: AISH
https://aish.com/the-jews-of-iraq/
The Jews of Iraq
Jewish Geography
Expand Your Knowledge
Get fascinating takes on Jewish history
by Eliyahu Freedman
November 7, 2022
Explore one of the oldest and most significant diaspora Jewish communities of all time.
While some identify the city of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, in modern-day Iraq or Babylonia, the history of the ancient Jewish community "By the rivers of Babylon” (Ps. 137:1) is generally considered to begin in the sixth century BCE. In that early period, from 587-538 BCE the Jews were held captive as slaves in Babylonia upon the conquest of Jerusalem and destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.
Even while the subsequent Persian ruler of Babylonia, King Cyrus, permitted the Jewish captives to return to Jerusalem and re-build the Second Temple in 538 BCE, many chose to stay in the fertile land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. One of the oldest and most influential diaspora Jewish communities of all time was established on these lands.
Jewish scribes at Ezekiel's Tomb, 1914
From approximately the year 225 CE until 1000 CE, the Jewish community of Babylonia is recognized as the capital of worldwide Torah study and is credited with preserving and transmitting rabbinic traditions from the ancient to medieval periods. There, around the year 225 CE, Rav or Abba Arikha established the Sura Academy in southern Iraq, which continued to operate until the conclusion of the Geonic period in the eleventh century.
Rav, a student of Rabbi Judah the Prince in the land of Israel, traveled to Iraq with the Mishna, beginning the period of intensive study and debate of Jewish law that culminated in the compilation of the Babylonian Talmud by Rav Ashi in the fifth century. Upon the completion of the Talmud, leaders of the Rabbinic seminaries in Sura and Pumbedita or “Geonim” continued to serve the Jewish people’s religious and philosophical needs by answering questions that were sent from around the world. These “questions and answers” were collected and published, and remain an important basis of contemporary Jewish law, in addition to precious historical sources for this early period of Jewish history.
Jews praying at Ezekiel's tomb in al-Kifl, Iraq
With the flourishing of Jewish communities in Ashkenaz, France, North Africa and Egypt in the Medieval period, in addition to the brutal invasion of Iraq by Genghis Khan in 1238 CE, the Jewish community of Iraq’s status and significance as a center of Jewish life declined rapidly. It was not until many years later in the nineteenth century, under the leadership of Rabbi Abdallah Somekh (1813-1899) and his student Rabbi Yosef Hayyim, the “Ben Ish Hai” (1834-1909), that Iraq re-emerged as an important center of Jewish culture and religious education. In this period, Iraqi Rabbis guided the growing Jewish communities of the East – particularly India and China – as Jews played a central role in the globalization of trade and finance in these emerging markets.
Flora Sassoon, Jewish-Indian businesswoman, philanthropist and scholar
One interesting example, capturing the fidelity of Babylonian Jewry to their ancient traditions in addition to a general open mindedness to progress and innovation, is the story of the Sassoon family and Flora Sassoon. The Sassoon family, nicknamed the “Rothschilds of the East” for their immense wealth, are best known for advancing global trade to India by building the ports of Bombay (Mumbai) used until this day. Flora Sassoon (1859-1936), the spouse of Solomon David Sassoon, is well known for running the Sassoon family empire upon her husband’s passing, in addition to her philanthropic and scholarly endeavors. A devout observant Jew, she maintained personal correspondence with leading Rabbis of her day, and even managed to publish scholarly articles on various Torah subjects in her spare time.
The fate of the Jewish community in Iraq suffered a sudden decline in 1941, when antisemitic violence broke out in the streets of Baghdad, killing hundreds of Jews. After thousands of years of relative tranquility and peace as a religious minority, the Jewish community of Iraq could no longer trust the newly-founded Iraqi government after their inflammation of ethnic tensions and deprivation of the Jews’ full political rights. Upon the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, over 90 percent of the Jews of Iraq chose to relinquish their Iraqi citizenship at the first opportunity and make Aliyah to Israel in 1951 in “Operation Ezra and Nehemia.”
The Great Synagogue of Baghdad circa early 20th century
To this day, Iraqi Jews maintain a distinct identity and are prideful of their ancient heritage, with communities around the world and Iraqi synagogues located in London, Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto. In Israel, the early arrival of Iraqi Jews in 1951 has profoundly shaped Israeli culture. For example, many of the leading Sephardic Rabbis in Israel are of Iraqi descent, including the famous Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Ovadia Yoseph (1920-2013).
Iraqi foods, such as the sabich sandwich, kubbeh soup, and amba are staples of Israeli cuisine and are found in restaurants across the country. Even classical Iraqi music, pioneered by the Jewish Al-Kuwaity brothers, Daoud and Saleh, has achieved international popularity thanks to the Israeli group Dudu Tassa & The Kuwaitis (Dudu Tassa being the grandson of Daoud Al-Kuwaity).
First brought to Babylon as slaves, the Jews of Iraq persevered, survived and flourished in their new home “between the two rivers.” Their mark on Jewish history is lasting and enduring, and uniquely impacted the development of Judaism in an early, formative period. Even while Iraq largely remains unsafe for tourism, a small community of Jews continues to live in northern Iraq/ Kurdistan and many more Iraqi Jews safeguard their relationship to Iraq and the Iraqi people communicating in Arabic in popular social media groups such as “Iraqi Jews.”
The Jews of Iraq
Jewish Geography
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by Eliyahu Freedman
November 7, 2022
Explore one of the oldest and most significant diaspora Jewish communities of all time.
While some identify the city of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, in modern-day Iraq or Babylonia, the history of the ancient Jewish community "By the rivers of Babylon” (Ps. 137:1) is generally considered to begin in the sixth century BCE. In that early period, from 587-538 BCE the Jews were held captive as slaves in Babylonia upon the conquest of Jerusalem and destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.
Even while the subsequent Persian ruler of Babylonia, King Cyrus, permitted the Jewish captives to return to Jerusalem and re-build the Second Temple in 538 BCE, many chose to stay in the fertile land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. One of the oldest and most influential diaspora Jewish communities of all time was established on these lands.
Jewish scribes at Ezekiel's Tomb, 1914
From approximately the year 225 CE until 1000 CE, the Jewish community of Babylonia is recognized as the capital of worldwide Torah study and is credited with preserving and transmitting rabbinic traditions from the ancient to medieval periods. There, around the year 225 CE, Rav or Abba Arikha established the Sura Academy in southern Iraq, which continued to operate until the conclusion of the Geonic period in the eleventh century.
Rav, a student of Rabbi Judah the Prince in the land of Israel, traveled to Iraq with the Mishna, beginning the period of intensive study and debate of Jewish law that culminated in the compilation of the Babylonian Talmud by Rav Ashi in the fifth century. Upon the completion of the Talmud, leaders of the Rabbinic seminaries in Sura and Pumbedita or “Geonim” continued to serve the Jewish people’s religious and philosophical needs by answering questions that were sent from around the world. These “questions and answers” were collected and published, and remain an important basis of contemporary Jewish law, in addition to precious historical sources for this early period of Jewish history.
Jews praying at Ezekiel's tomb in al-Kifl, Iraq
With the flourishing of Jewish communities in Ashkenaz, France, North Africa and Egypt in the Medieval period, in addition to the brutal invasion of Iraq by Genghis Khan in 1238 CE, the Jewish community of Iraq’s status and significance as a center of Jewish life declined rapidly. It was not until many years later in the nineteenth century, under the leadership of Rabbi Abdallah Somekh (1813-1899) and his student Rabbi Yosef Hayyim, the “Ben Ish Hai” (1834-1909), that Iraq re-emerged as an important center of Jewish culture and religious education. In this period, Iraqi Rabbis guided the growing Jewish communities of the East – particularly India and China – as Jews played a central role in the globalization of trade and finance in these emerging markets.
Flora Sassoon, Jewish-Indian businesswoman, philanthropist and scholar
One interesting example, capturing the fidelity of Babylonian Jewry to their ancient traditions in addition to a general open mindedness to progress and innovation, is the story of the Sassoon family and Flora Sassoon. The Sassoon family, nicknamed the “Rothschilds of the East” for their immense wealth, are best known for advancing global trade to India by building the ports of Bombay (Mumbai) used until this day. Flora Sassoon (1859-1936), the spouse of Solomon David Sassoon, is well known for running the Sassoon family empire upon her husband’s passing, in addition to her philanthropic and scholarly endeavors. A devout observant Jew, she maintained personal correspondence with leading Rabbis of her day, and even managed to publish scholarly articles on various Torah subjects in her spare time.
The fate of the Jewish community in Iraq suffered a sudden decline in 1941, when antisemitic violence broke out in the streets of Baghdad, killing hundreds of Jews. After thousands of years of relative tranquility and peace as a religious minority, the Jewish community of Iraq could no longer trust the newly-founded Iraqi government after their inflammation of ethnic tensions and deprivation of the Jews’ full political rights. Upon the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, over 90 percent of the Jews of Iraq chose to relinquish their Iraqi citizenship at the first opportunity and make Aliyah to Israel in 1951 in “Operation Ezra and Nehemia.”
The Great Synagogue of Baghdad circa early 20th century
To this day, Iraqi Jews maintain a distinct identity and are prideful of their ancient heritage, with communities around the world and Iraqi synagogues located in London, Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto. In Israel, the early arrival of Iraqi Jews in 1951 has profoundly shaped Israeli culture. For example, many of the leading Sephardic Rabbis in Israel are of Iraqi descent, including the famous Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Ovadia Yoseph (1920-2013).
Iraqi foods, such as the sabich sandwich, kubbeh soup, and amba are staples of Israeli cuisine and are found in restaurants across the country. Even classical Iraqi music, pioneered by the Jewish Al-Kuwaity brothers, Daoud and Saleh, has achieved international popularity thanks to the Israeli group Dudu Tassa & The Kuwaitis (Dudu Tassa being the grandson of Daoud Al-Kuwaity).
First brought to Babylon as slaves, the Jews of Iraq persevered, survived and flourished in their new home “between the two rivers.” Their mark on Jewish history is lasting and enduring, and uniquely impacted the development of Judaism in an early, formative period. Even while Iraq largely remains unsafe for tourism, a small community of Jews continues to live in northern Iraq/ Kurdistan and many more Iraqi Jews safeguard their relationship to Iraq and the Iraqi people communicating in Arabic in popular social media groups such as “Iraqi Jews.”
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People Love Dead Jews: Exclusive Interview with Award-Winning Author Dara Horn
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by Saj Freiberg
November 20, 2022
The provocative scholar’s views on Kanye, effective responses to antisemitism, and being Jewish in a non-Jewish world.
Dara Horn is the author of New York Times Notable Book, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present. She is a critically acclaimed novelist and scholar of Yiddish literature. She is the recipient of numerous prizes for her writing, including two National Jewish Book Awards and most recently a Kirkus Prize for People Love Dead Jews. Her provocative book could not be more timely. I recently had a wide-ranging, thought-provoking discussion with Dara. Here is an edited version of our interview.
Saj Freiberg: What are your thoughts on Kanye West and the response to the companies that dumped him?
Dara Horn: Oh, man. I hate that I have to have an opinion about Kanye West. This is unfortunately not an uncommon sentiment along a lot of people. And I'm not the first person to notice that he has twice as many followers online as there are Jews in the world. This is unfortunately a hugely influential set of beliefs, which is not so surprising. And it does have a real world impact. I live in New Jersey and it was a couple days after that that somebody was making credible threats against synagogues in New Jersey, which it sounds like was encouraged by this. There's been vandalism on Jewish cemeteries that says, "Kanye was right." And this is disturbing. Credit to these companies that dumped him, although they may have been looking for other reasons to dump him.
Saj: Do you feel the response was appropriate?..
Dara: Actually, I know people are complaining that it came a week late or something like that. I was pretty impressed that anybody would respond in that way because I think we usually don't see that kind of response to antisemitism. So, I found that kind of encouraging.
I think the guardrails have come off on what's considered acceptable. And there's this level of outrage that's sort of very common now. This stuff used to be more filtered. I'm 45 and I'm old enough to remember before the internet, there were celebrities who would say crazy things, but there was a gatekeeper who was keeping these people in check and you wouldn't necessarily hear all of the things that they were thinking when they were on the toilet at 2:00 in the morning. You didn't really need to hear that.
There's are a lot of outrageous opinions that are now considered acceptable.
There's this rising level of antisemitism, which is not deniable, but I sort of wonder if it's rising levels of acceptable antisemitism. When I was in college, I spent summers working at magazines. I would read the letters to the editor and decide the 12 out of hundred that they should consider printing. And then the editor would pick the four that they would print. We got the crazy letters. We got the antisemitic rant, conspiracy theory. We got the whole racist garbage. Those people were always around. They were always were writing to magazines but we didn’t print them.
In the past a celebrity had a platform but you're not hearing their unfiltered musings. They'd have an interview and then it would be edited. Like Tucker Carlson edited his interview with Kanye to make him a little less crazy that he apparently is. So, some of the crazy was less visible. What the problem is though is that this is sort of creating a standard for what's normal in public discourse. And the standard is going so far down the tube and that's disturbing. And that's a larger problem that goes beyond antisemitism. There's just a lot of outrageous opinions that are now considered acceptable.
Saj: Did you watch Dave Chappelle’s monologue?
Dara: No, I was overseas this past weekend and didn't see it. But I guess I should go watch it. I think the whole discourse around racism in this country makes it harder to respond to antisemitism when it's coming from people in the Black community, because there's so much tangled up.
I think that what's interesting about that is that it does illustrate how antisemitism really differs from a lot of other forms of racism because, I wouldn't just say, "Racism." Most forms of bigotry are, you say like, "Oh, there's this group of people over here that I feel are inferior to me." And that's the way we're taught to think about the way racism and prejudice in general work. And antisemitism does have an element of that. But antisemitism is less a social prejudice and more like a conspiracy theory. And the thing about a conspiracy theory is that instead of saying, "I'm punching down at, oh, there's this group of people who I believe are inferior to me," not being logical because it's a prejudice and prejudices aren't logical, it also includes this idea of there's this group of people who are superior to me, that these people are evil supervillains who are manipulating things behind the scenes.
Antisemitism is less a social prejudice and more like a conspiracy theory.
And that belief makes it so universally appealing for people from many different backgrounds to get behind this because it gives you this feeling of, "Oh, I'm not being a bigot. I'm speaking truth to power." I'm dismantling this power hierarchy. And unfortunately there is a power hierarchy in our society. It is real and it is tied up with the history of racism in this country. All those things are true.
The problem is if you're looking at the world just through that lens, you're very susceptible to falling face first into antisemitism because if your belief is that there's this group of shadowy elites behind the scenes who are running things and maintaining this unequal power structure, and that's a core belief of the conspiracy theory of antisemitism -- Jews have too much power, Jews have too much privilege, Jews are overrepresented. Jews need to be taken down a notch from this power that they have.
That's the Book of Exodus. That's why the Egyptian Pharaoh enslaves the Jews. It's like, "Oh, they have too much power, they have too much privilege, they're overrepresented."
I'm not claiming that Kanye West, who's a bajillionaire is in the lower strata of society. He is not. But there is this idea that the purpose of antisemitism is to deflect the anger of people on the bottom of the power structure towards someone who isn't them.
Saj: Your book, People Love Dead Jews – that’s a shocking title. It seems aimed at getting people to understand something new about antisemitism. What is it that you feel often gets overlooked?
Dara: I didn't feel I was writing this book saying something new. I just felt I was saying something kind of obvious. When you say this title is shocking. I mean, yes, it’s provocative. The reason for this is because I feel there are Jews in non-Jewish societies who are accustomed to erasing themselves in order to make other people feel comfortable.
Saj: What do you mean by that?
Dara: One of the things that I've learned in my 20 years as a published writer is that when you approach a topic and you start feeling like, "Oh, I really don't want to go there," that's when you're about to learn something that you didn't know before.
Saj: And you feel that Jews themselves are avoiding those uncomfortable moments?
Dara: Yes. And there are certain emotions that you're not allowed to feel as a Jew in a non-Jewish society. And I'm raising those emotions as well. For example, I have a piece in the book that's about what the tourist industry calls Jewish heritage sites. These are places in countries that used to have vibrant Jewish communities and don't anymore for reasons we may or may not choose to explain. And you go to these places and they have lovingly restored this synagogue and turned it into a museum where there's nobody using this synagogue at the museum. This term “Jewish heritage sites” sounds so benign. It sounds much better than property seized from dead or expelled Jews. Who wants to go to that? Jewish heritage sites, it sounds so nice.
This term “Jewish heritage sites” sounds so benign. It sounds much better than property seized from dead or expelled Jews. Who wants to go to that?
I've been to places like this around the world, from Spain to China, and I always felt extremely uncomfortable in these places. And I had so buried the reason for my discomfort. I would think that it was because I was sad. Like, "Oh, I feel uncomfortable because it's so sad that this community that lived here for hundreds of years is now gone."
That's not why I was feeling uncomfortable. It wasn't sadness. It was rage because when you're in these places and whether it is somewhere where all the people were murdered, or whether it's a place where they merely were expelled and had all their assets seized, that's the nice version. In any of those situations what you're looking at is the triumph of evil because these are societies who had decided that it was unacceptable to have Jews living there. This is the triumph of evil. This is a society that decided it is unacceptable to have someone who's slightly different from me.
And so, the appropriate response to that is not sorrow, it is rage. But as Jews in a non-Jewish society, we're not allowed to feel rage. And that's how deeply we bury it. I remember my kids would sometimes come home from school and say, "You're not supposed to be angry. It's really bad to be angry." You know what I would say to my children at that point. I would say, "You know who was really angry? Moses."
He sees the Egyptian taskmaster beating the Hebrew slave. He doesn't write a letter to the editor about it. He kills the guy and then he hits the rock, he sees them worshiping an idol. He smashes the tablets. He's yelling at Pharaoh for half the Book of Exodus. All of Deuteronomy, he's yelling at the Israelites. But the thing is that anger is an emotion that is tied to your perception of injustice. Now, that doesn't mean that your perception of injustice is accurate. I mean, you could be someone like Ye, or you could be a four year old who wants another cookie. But the thing is that if you don't allow people to feel anger, what you're saying is you're not allowing people to correct injustices in a society.
If you don't allow people to feel anger, what you're saying is you're not allowing people to correct injustices in a society.
So, the title is very much about, it is about allowing people to notice this problem. I didn't even think of it as a book really about antisemitism. I see it as a book about the role that dead Jews play in the wider world's imagination. And there's sort of two elements to that. And it does become sinister very quickly because there are basically two themes that run through the whole book. One is that people tell stories about dead Jews that make them feel better about themselves. And then the other half of that is that living Jews have to erase themselves in order to gain public respect.
Saj: You take issue in your book in various ways about how there's a tendency to focus on positive elements in the history of antisemitism, even in the Holocaust. For instance, focus on the acts of righteous gentiles. You express frustration that the most famous Jewish director in the world, Steven Spielberg, when he finally makes a film about the Holocaust, makes it about a non-Jew's story about the Holocaust. Can you speak a little bit about that frustration?
Dara: Yes. And actually it's funny, I have an episode of my podcast about it where I talk about how he made that movie while simultaneously making Jurassic Park and how they're actually the same movie. There's this eccentric businessman who's trying to save those who are utterly different from himself, imprisoned in this artificial environment with barbed wire. And there's so many scenes in that movie where they're hiding from the predator. It's like exactly the same scene.
But anyway, yes, this is what I say, people tell stories about dead Jews that make them feel better about themselves. I've now sort of actually been doing a project about American Holocaust education and I've been researching this and traveling around the country and looking at museums and speaking with educators. And there's this whole story about upstanders, which is the opposite of a bystander, this is this lingo they've come up with. And it's like you said, righteous gentiles. And the purpose of these museums is training people to be upstanders. And the problem is like, yeah, it’s important to honor what righteous gentiles did. Unfortunately, they're statistically insignificant, as are stories of Holocaust survival.
Saj: I don't know what Spielberg would say, but what if he were to retort, "I know how to get millions of people in a theater. That’s why I focused on a non-Jew. A film like Schindler's List brought some of the horrors of the Holocaust to the masses. And if you didn't select a positive story about a non-Jew, maybe they never would've really seen the whole story. So, why knock it?
Dara: Because this is a movie with no Jewish characters. And if you look it up online, Jewish movies about Jews, this is the number one film and there are no Jewish characters in that movie.
Saj: What do you mean? There are a lot of Jewish characters.
People Love Dead Jews is basically the implication is that non-Jewish societies are only comfortable with Jews if Jews have no agency. In Schindler’s List, there are no Jewish characters who have agency.
Dara: Even Ben Kingsley. Ben Kingsley has five lines in that movie. This movie is an arena for the rivalry between these two non-Jewish characters, this Nazi henchman and Schindler and everyone else is a prop. There are no Jewish characters who have agency in this film at all. That is the way that non-Jews are comfortable seeing Jews. My title of my book, People Love Dead Jews is basically the implication is that non-Jewish societies are only comfortable with Jews if Jews have no agency. Whether that means they're politically impotent or dead. It is okay for Jews to not have agency. And that's why that movie was successful.
There's this sort of notorious screenwriting book called Save the Cat. There's this screenwriting trick where 15 minutes into the movie, you show the protagonist saving a cat, being kind to an animal, helping a little kid, doing something nice for an old lady. And that's supposed to make you, as the audience, get on the side of the protagonist where he's one of the good guys saving the cat.
The problem with Schindler’s List is that the Jews are not the heroes of that movie. The Jews are the cat who get saved by someone else. And that is the only way it's acceptable to be Jewish in a non-Jewish society.
Saj: You once posed the question of whether antisemitism is really a problem that Jews are responsible to solve.
Dara: We can't fix this. I don't think this should be our job.
Saj: Why not?
Dara: I'm not saying Holocaust education isn't important, but this should not be our job. We can't fix this problem. Non-Jews have to fix this problem. We cannot do it. The only way we can fix this problem is basically protect ourselves. I mean, this is a mental virus that we need to protect ourselves from non-Jewish societies that unfortunately get infected with this virus. So, yes, self-defense, okay. But short of that, that's isn't a problem we can fix. This has to be a change in a non-Jewish society.
We can't fix antisemitism. Non-Jews have to fix it. All we can do is basically protect ourselves.
What's implied in your question is that Holocaust education prevents antisemitism. That is also implied in the vast enterprise of American Holocaust education for the past 50 years. It was sort of like, if you look at the roots of American Holocaust education in the 1970s, beginning, it comes from survivor communities. If you look at the example of the attempted Nazi march on Skokie in 1977 where it was this American Nazi party applied to march in their uniforms through this Jewish community that had a huge number of Holocaust survivors. And basically it became this law court case and basically the law sided with the Nazis because of the First Amendment.
They ended up not marching in Skokie for other reasons, because of the political backlash. But what eventually happened was the survivors in that community were sort of like, "Well, what can the law do to protect people from antisemitism?" The answer actually turns out to be not much. But so then that's when you have the community pivoting to education as a way of changing society.
The problem is, if you look at when all these museums are built in the 1990s and you start having state mandates for Holocaust education, that's 30 years ago. Rates of antisemitism in the United States are, no matter how you measure it, no matter whose statistics you use, it's much higher now than it was when these museums were built 30 years ago.
So, it's a legitimate question to ask. Is this working? I've spent the past about five or six months researching this. Where are the data? I can tell you there are no data and the data that do exist are not encouraging in terms of Holocaust education preventing antisemitism.
Saj: If somebody were to give you $10 million to help the Jewish people, how might you spend it?
Dara: On Jewish education for Jews and non-Jews. I'm going to give an example. Think about what it says in a high school history textbook about Jews, world history textbook. If the book has ancient history in it, there might be a page near the beginning about the Israelites. It doesn't mention that those people are Jews, they're people who died a long time ago. Who cares? There might as well be Phoenicians. And also there's a much bigger chapter about the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. By the way, all the people who persecuted the Jews, but let's put that over here. Yeah. There's a paragraph about the Israelites. They're dead a long time ago. Who cares?
If it's a book that has modern history in it, there's probably a chapter toward the end about the Holocaust. So, from this, we learn that Jews are people who got murdered. Their murders are there to teach us some lesson about humanity. There's nothing in between and there's nothing after. And this is an erasure of Jewish civilization.
And you could say, "Oh, well. Jews are such a tiny population. We don't have a lot of information in there about the Yazidis either." I'm like, "Okay, except that the Yazidis are not foundational to the history of the West." Judaism is foundational to the history of the West. You cannot understand Christianity, Islam, the whole history of the West. None of it makes sense without the foundation of Jewish culture.
Why are we not teaching that? Why are we allowing ourselves to be erased from this world history textbook?
Saj: Do you have an answer as to why antisemitism is so prevalent?
Dara: Why do people think this is so complicated? This isn't a big mystery. People want to blame their problems on somebody else. People will do absolutely anything to blame their problems on others. That's all. It's not hard.
Saj Freiberg: Why us in particular?
Dara Horn: Why were you waiting for this meeting? "Oh, I was caught in traffic." I'm like, "Well, I mean, it's not a big secret that there's traffic at this time of day. You actually could have left your house 10 minutes earlier, but you're going to blame someone else." Everybody else can lay their problems on somebody else. This isn't hard.
Saj: But I think you would agree that something about the intensity and the quality of Jew hatred stands out. I mean, it is a unique hatred in some ways.
Dara: I used to think that, but actually what's interesting to me is since I published this book, I've found that there's actually many people from other minority groups have reached out to me and have said to me things like, "You're speaking my language." And I've done these kinds of interviews with media outlets, with other minority community. I've also done these interviews with Christian TV and stuff like that, which is a different conversation. I've done general interest media stuff.
But I no longer think that this is so unique because my readers have told me that it's not. Readers from other minority communities are like, "This is the same dynamic." I even remember a woman who contacted me who's a principal of a high school in Western Canada that's mostly indigenous students. And she wanted to bulk order this book for her school. I'm like, "I could think of better ways for you to spend your money." But she was like, "This is what my students are dealing with. And they don't have the language for it."
The piece of it that's unique is the longevity. And that's because this is one of the only surviving groups from the ancient world of all those people.
And that also confuses people because it's hard to compare it with other groups because it doesn't resemble other groups. I'll do these college events and people will ask me these tedious questions like, "Oh, are Jews white or Jews a religion, or Jews a race, or Jews of nationality?" And I'm like, "Here's the problem with those questions. Jews predate all of those categories. Jews predate the modern concept of race. Jews predate the modern concept of nationality."
For more information about Aish New York's Jewish Wisdom Society’s talk with Dara Horn in Manhattan on December 6th, please email us at jws@aish.com.
People Love Dead Jews: Exclusive Interview with Award-Winning Author Dara Horn
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by Saj Freiberg
November 20, 2022
The provocative scholar’s views on Kanye, effective responses to antisemitism, and being Jewish in a non-Jewish world.
Dara Horn is the author of New York Times Notable Book, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present. She is a critically acclaimed novelist and scholar of Yiddish literature. She is the recipient of numerous prizes for her writing, including two National Jewish Book Awards and most recently a Kirkus Prize for People Love Dead Jews. Her provocative book could not be more timely. I recently had a wide-ranging, thought-provoking discussion with Dara. Here is an edited version of our interview.
Saj Freiberg: What are your thoughts on Kanye West and the response to the companies that dumped him?
Dara Horn: Oh, man. I hate that I have to have an opinion about Kanye West. This is unfortunately not an uncommon sentiment along a lot of people. And I'm not the first person to notice that he has twice as many followers online as there are Jews in the world. This is unfortunately a hugely influential set of beliefs, which is not so surprising. And it does have a real world impact. I live in New Jersey and it was a couple days after that that somebody was making credible threats against synagogues in New Jersey, which it sounds like was encouraged by this. There's been vandalism on Jewish cemeteries that says, "Kanye was right." And this is disturbing. Credit to these companies that dumped him, although they may have been looking for other reasons to dump him.
Saj: Do you feel the response was appropriate?..
Dara: Actually, I know people are complaining that it came a week late or something like that. I was pretty impressed that anybody would respond in that way because I think we usually don't see that kind of response to antisemitism. So, I found that kind of encouraging.
I think the guardrails have come off on what's considered acceptable. And there's this level of outrage that's sort of very common now. This stuff used to be more filtered. I'm 45 and I'm old enough to remember before the internet, there were celebrities who would say crazy things, but there was a gatekeeper who was keeping these people in check and you wouldn't necessarily hear all of the things that they were thinking when they were on the toilet at 2:00 in the morning. You didn't really need to hear that.
There's are a lot of outrageous opinions that are now considered acceptable.
There's this rising level of antisemitism, which is not deniable, but I sort of wonder if it's rising levels of acceptable antisemitism. When I was in college, I spent summers working at magazines. I would read the letters to the editor and decide the 12 out of hundred that they should consider printing. And then the editor would pick the four that they would print. We got the crazy letters. We got the antisemitic rant, conspiracy theory. We got the whole racist garbage. Those people were always around. They were always were writing to magazines but we didn’t print them.
In the past a celebrity had a platform but you're not hearing their unfiltered musings. They'd have an interview and then it would be edited. Like Tucker Carlson edited his interview with Kanye to make him a little less crazy that he apparently is. So, some of the crazy was less visible. What the problem is though is that this is sort of creating a standard for what's normal in public discourse. And the standard is going so far down the tube and that's disturbing. And that's a larger problem that goes beyond antisemitism. There's just a lot of outrageous opinions that are now considered acceptable.
Saj: Did you watch Dave Chappelle’s monologue?
Dara: No, I was overseas this past weekend and didn't see it. But I guess I should go watch it. I think the whole discourse around racism in this country makes it harder to respond to antisemitism when it's coming from people in the Black community, because there's so much tangled up.
I think that what's interesting about that is that it does illustrate how antisemitism really differs from a lot of other forms of racism because, I wouldn't just say, "Racism." Most forms of bigotry are, you say like, "Oh, there's this group of people over here that I feel are inferior to me." And that's the way we're taught to think about the way racism and prejudice in general work. And antisemitism does have an element of that. But antisemitism is less a social prejudice and more like a conspiracy theory. And the thing about a conspiracy theory is that instead of saying, "I'm punching down at, oh, there's this group of people who I believe are inferior to me," not being logical because it's a prejudice and prejudices aren't logical, it also includes this idea of there's this group of people who are superior to me, that these people are evil supervillains who are manipulating things behind the scenes.
Antisemitism is less a social prejudice and more like a conspiracy theory.
And that belief makes it so universally appealing for people from many different backgrounds to get behind this because it gives you this feeling of, "Oh, I'm not being a bigot. I'm speaking truth to power." I'm dismantling this power hierarchy. And unfortunately there is a power hierarchy in our society. It is real and it is tied up with the history of racism in this country. All those things are true.
The problem is if you're looking at the world just through that lens, you're very susceptible to falling face first into antisemitism because if your belief is that there's this group of shadowy elites behind the scenes who are running things and maintaining this unequal power structure, and that's a core belief of the conspiracy theory of antisemitism -- Jews have too much power, Jews have too much privilege, Jews are overrepresented. Jews need to be taken down a notch from this power that they have.
That's the Book of Exodus. That's why the Egyptian Pharaoh enslaves the Jews. It's like, "Oh, they have too much power, they have too much privilege, they're overrepresented."
I'm not claiming that Kanye West, who's a bajillionaire is in the lower strata of society. He is not. But there is this idea that the purpose of antisemitism is to deflect the anger of people on the bottom of the power structure towards someone who isn't them.
Saj: Your book, People Love Dead Jews – that’s a shocking title. It seems aimed at getting people to understand something new about antisemitism. What is it that you feel often gets overlooked?
Dara: I didn't feel I was writing this book saying something new. I just felt I was saying something kind of obvious. When you say this title is shocking. I mean, yes, it’s provocative. The reason for this is because I feel there are Jews in non-Jewish societies who are accustomed to erasing themselves in order to make other people feel comfortable.
Saj: What do you mean by that?
Dara: One of the things that I've learned in my 20 years as a published writer is that when you approach a topic and you start feeling like, "Oh, I really don't want to go there," that's when you're about to learn something that you didn't know before.
Saj: And you feel that Jews themselves are avoiding those uncomfortable moments?
Dara: Yes. And there are certain emotions that you're not allowed to feel as a Jew in a non-Jewish society. And I'm raising those emotions as well. For example, I have a piece in the book that's about what the tourist industry calls Jewish heritage sites. These are places in countries that used to have vibrant Jewish communities and don't anymore for reasons we may or may not choose to explain. And you go to these places and they have lovingly restored this synagogue and turned it into a museum where there's nobody using this synagogue at the museum. This term “Jewish heritage sites” sounds so benign. It sounds much better than property seized from dead or expelled Jews. Who wants to go to that? Jewish heritage sites, it sounds so nice.
This term “Jewish heritage sites” sounds so benign. It sounds much better than property seized from dead or expelled Jews. Who wants to go to that?
I've been to places like this around the world, from Spain to China, and I always felt extremely uncomfortable in these places. And I had so buried the reason for my discomfort. I would think that it was because I was sad. Like, "Oh, I feel uncomfortable because it's so sad that this community that lived here for hundreds of years is now gone."
That's not why I was feeling uncomfortable. It wasn't sadness. It was rage because when you're in these places and whether it is somewhere where all the people were murdered, or whether it's a place where they merely were expelled and had all their assets seized, that's the nice version. In any of those situations what you're looking at is the triumph of evil because these are societies who had decided that it was unacceptable to have Jews living there. This is the triumph of evil. This is a society that decided it is unacceptable to have someone who's slightly different from me.
And so, the appropriate response to that is not sorrow, it is rage. But as Jews in a non-Jewish society, we're not allowed to feel rage. And that's how deeply we bury it. I remember my kids would sometimes come home from school and say, "You're not supposed to be angry. It's really bad to be angry." You know what I would say to my children at that point. I would say, "You know who was really angry? Moses."
He sees the Egyptian taskmaster beating the Hebrew slave. He doesn't write a letter to the editor about it. He kills the guy and then he hits the rock, he sees them worshiping an idol. He smashes the tablets. He's yelling at Pharaoh for half the Book of Exodus. All of Deuteronomy, he's yelling at the Israelites. But the thing is that anger is an emotion that is tied to your perception of injustice. Now, that doesn't mean that your perception of injustice is accurate. I mean, you could be someone like Ye, or you could be a four year old who wants another cookie. But the thing is that if you don't allow people to feel anger, what you're saying is you're not allowing people to correct injustices in a society.
If you don't allow people to feel anger, what you're saying is you're not allowing people to correct injustices in a society.
So, the title is very much about, it is about allowing people to notice this problem. I didn't even think of it as a book really about antisemitism. I see it as a book about the role that dead Jews play in the wider world's imagination. And there's sort of two elements to that. And it does become sinister very quickly because there are basically two themes that run through the whole book. One is that people tell stories about dead Jews that make them feel better about themselves. And then the other half of that is that living Jews have to erase themselves in order to gain public respect.
Saj: You take issue in your book in various ways about how there's a tendency to focus on positive elements in the history of antisemitism, even in the Holocaust. For instance, focus on the acts of righteous gentiles. You express frustration that the most famous Jewish director in the world, Steven Spielberg, when he finally makes a film about the Holocaust, makes it about a non-Jew's story about the Holocaust. Can you speak a little bit about that frustration?
Dara: Yes. And actually it's funny, I have an episode of my podcast about it where I talk about how he made that movie while simultaneously making Jurassic Park and how they're actually the same movie. There's this eccentric businessman who's trying to save those who are utterly different from himself, imprisoned in this artificial environment with barbed wire. And there's so many scenes in that movie where they're hiding from the predator. It's like exactly the same scene.
But anyway, yes, this is what I say, people tell stories about dead Jews that make them feel better about themselves. I've now sort of actually been doing a project about American Holocaust education and I've been researching this and traveling around the country and looking at museums and speaking with educators. And there's this whole story about upstanders, which is the opposite of a bystander, this is this lingo they've come up with. And it's like you said, righteous gentiles. And the purpose of these museums is training people to be upstanders. And the problem is like, yeah, it’s important to honor what righteous gentiles did. Unfortunately, they're statistically insignificant, as are stories of Holocaust survival.
Saj: I don't know what Spielberg would say, but what if he were to retort, "I know how to get millions of people in a theater. That’s why I focused on a non-Jew. A film like Schindler's List brought some of the horrors of the Holocaust to the masses. And if you didn't select a positive story about a non-Jew, maybe they never would've really seen the whole story. So, why knock it?
Dara: Because this is a movie with no Jewish characters. And if you look it up online, Jewish movies about Jews, this is the number one film and there are no Jewish characters in that movie.
Saj: What do you mean? There are a lot of Jewish characters.
People Love Dead Jews is basically the implication is that non-Jewish societies are only comfortable with Jews if Jews have no agency. In Schindler’s List, there are no Jewish characters who have agency.
Dara: Even Ben Kingsley. Ben Kingsley has five lines in that movie. This movie is an arena for the rivalry between these two non-Jewish characters, this Nazi henchman and Schindler and everyone else is a prop. There are no Jewish characters who have agency in this film at all. That is the way that non-Jews are comfortable seeing Jews. My title of my book, People Love Dead Jews is basically the implication is that non-Jewish societies are only comfortable with Jews if Jews have no agency. Whether that means they're politically impotent or dead. It is okay for Jews to not have agency. And that's why that movie was successful.
There's this sort of notorious screenwriting book called Save the Cat. There's this screenwriting trick where 15 minutes into the movie, you show the protagonist saving a cat, being kind to an animal, helping a little kid, doing something nice for an old lady. And that's supposed to make you, as the audience, get on the side of the protagonist where he's one of the good guys saving the cat.
The problem with Schindler’s List is that the Jews are not the heroes of that movie. The Jews are the cat who get saved by someone else. And that is the only way it's acceptable to be Jewish in a non-Jewish society.
Saj: You once posed the question of whether antisemitism is really a problem that Jews are responsible to solve.
Dara: We can't fix this. I don't think this should be our job.
Saj: Why not?
Dara: I'm not saying Holocaust education isn't important, but this should not be our job. We can't fix this problem. Non-Jews have to fix this problem. We cannot do it. The only way we can fix this problem is basically protect ourselves. I mean, this is a mental virus that we need to protect ourselves from non-Jewish societies that unfortunately get infected with this virus. So, yes, self-defense, okay. But short of that, that's isn't a problem we can fix. This has to be a change in a non-Jewish society.
We can't fix antisemitism. Non-Jews have to fix it. All we can do is basically protect ourselves.
What's implied in your question is that Holocaust education prevents antisemitism. That is also implied in the vast enterprise of American Holocaust education for the past 50 years. It was sort of like, if you look at the roots of American Holocaust education in the 1970s, beginning, it comes from survivor communities. If you look at the example of the attempted Nazi march on Skokie in 1977 where it was this American Nazi party applied to march in their uniforms through this Jewish community that had a huge number of Holocaust survivors. And basically it became this law court case and basically the law sided with the Nazis because of the First Amendment.
They ended up not marching in Skokie for other reasons, because of the political backlash. But what eventually happened was the survivors in that community were sort of like, "Well, what can the law do to protect people from antisemitism?" The answer actually turns out to be not much. But so then that's when you have the community pivoting to education as a way of changing society.
The problem is, if you look at when all these museums are built in the 1990s and you start having state mandates for Holocaust education, that's 30 years ago. Rates of antisemitism in the United States are, no matter how you measure it, no matter whose statistics you use, it's much higher now than it was when these museums were built 30 years ago.
So, it's a legitimate question to ask. Is this working? I've spent the past about five or six months researching this. Where are the data? I can tell you there are no data and the data that do exist are not encouraging in terms of Holocaust education preventing antisemitism.
Saj: If somebody were to give you $10 million to help the Jewish people, how might you spend it?
Dara: On Jewish education for Jews and non-Jews. I'm going to give an example. Think about what it says in a high school history textbook about Jews, world history textbook. If the book has ancient history in it, there might be a page near the beginning about the Israelites. It doesn't mention that those people are Jews, they're people who died a long time ago. Who cares? There might as well be Phoenicians. And also there's a much bigger chapter about the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. By the way, all the people who persecuted the Jews, but let's put that over here. Yeah. There's a paragraph about the Israelites. They're dead a long time ago. Who cares?
If it's a book that has modern history in it, there's probably a chapter toward the end about the Holocaust. So, from this, we learn that Jews are people who got murdered. Their murders are there to teach us some lesson about humanity. There's nothing in between and there's nothing after. And this is an erasure of Jewish civilization.
And you could say, "Oh, well. Jews are such a tiny population. We don't have a lot of information in there about the Yazidis either." I'm like, "Okay, except that the Yazidis are not foundational to the history of the West." Judaism is foundational to the history of the West. You cannot understand Christianity, Islam, the whole history of the West. None of it makes sense without the foundation of Jewish culture.
Why are we not teaching that? Why are we allowing ourselves to be erased from this world history textbook?
Saj: Do you have an answer as to why antisemitism is so prevalent?
Dara: Why do people think this is so complicated? This isn't a big mystery. People want to blame their problems on somebody else. People will do absolutely anything to blame their problems on others. That's all. It's not hard.
Saj Freiberg: Why us in particular?
Dara Horn: Why were you waiting for this meeting? "Oh, I was caught in traffic." I'm like, "Well, I mean, it's not a big secret that there's traffic at this time of day. You actually could have left your house 10 minutes earlier, but you're going to blame someone else." Everybody else can lay their problems on somebody else. This isn't hard.
Saj: But I think you would agree that something about the intensity and the quality of Jew hatred stands out. I mean, it is a unique hatred in some ways.
Dara: I used to think that, but actually what's interesting to me is since I published this book, I've found that there's actually many people from other minority groups have reached out to me and have said to me things like, "You're speaking my language." And I've done these kinds of interviews with media outlets, with other minority community. I've also done these interviews with Christian TV and stuff like that, which is a different conversation. I've done general interest media stuff.
But I no longer think that this is so unique because my readers have told me that it's not. Readers from other minority communities are like, "This is the same dynamic." I even remember a woman who contacted me who's a principal of a high school in Western Canada that's mostly indigenous students. And she wanted to bulk order this book for her school. I'm like, "I could think of better ways for you to spend your money." But she was like, "This is what my students are dealing with. And they don't have the language for it."
The piece of it that's unique is the longevity. And that's because this is one of the only surviving groups from the ancient world of all those people.
And that also confuses people because it's hard to compare it with other groups because it doesn't resemble other groups. I'll do these college events and people will ask me these tedious questions like, "Oh, are Jews white or Jews a religion, or Jews a race, or Jews of nationality?" And I'm like, "Here's the problem with those questions. Jews predate all of those categories. Jews predate the modern concept of race. Jews predate the modern concept of nationality."
For more information about Aish New York's Jewish Wisdom Society’s talk with Dara Horn in Manhattan on December 6th, please email us at jws@aish.com.
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People Love Dead Jews: Exclusive Interview with Award-Winning Author Dara Horn
Empower Your Jewish Journey
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by Saj Freiberg
November 20, 2022
The provocative scholar’s views on Kanye, effective responses to antisemitism, and being Jewish in a non-Jewish world.
Dara Horn is the author of New York Times Notable Book, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present. She is a critically acclaimed novelist and scholar of Yiddish literature. She is the recipient of numerous prizes for her writing, including two National Jewish Book Awards and most recently a Kirkus Prize for People Love Dead Jews. Her provocative book could not be more timely. I recently had a wide-ranging, thought-provoking discussion with Dara. Here is an edited version of our interview.
Saj Freiberg: What are your thoughts on Kanye West and the response to the companies that dumped him?
Dara Horn: Oh, man. I hate that I have to have an opinion about Kanye West. This is unfortunately not an uncommon sentiment along a lot of people. And I'm not the first person to notice that he has twice as many followers online as there are Jews in the world. This is unfortunately a hugely influential set of beliefs, which is not so surprising. And it does have a real world impact. I live in New Jersey and it was a couple days after that that somebody was making credible threats against synagogues in New Jersey, which it sounds like was encouraged by this. There's been vandalism on Jewish cemeteries that says, "Kanye was right." And this is disturbing. Credit to these companies that dumped him, although they may have been looking for other reasons to dump him.
Saj: Do you feel the response was appropriate?..
Dara: Actually, I know people are complaining that it came a week late or something like that. I was pretty impressed that anybody would respond in that way because I think we usually don't see that kind of response to antisemitism. So, I found that kind of encouraging.
I think the guardrails have come off on what's considered acceptable. And there's this level of outrage that's sort of very common now. This stuff used to be more filtered. I'm 45 and I'm old enough to remember before the internet, there were celebrities who would say crazy things, but there was a gatekeeper who was keeping these people in check and you wouldn't necessarily hear all of the things that they were thinking when they were on the toilet at 2:00 in the morning. You didn't really need to hear that.
There's are a lot of outrageous opinions that are now considered acceptable.
There's this rising level of antisemitism, which is not deniable, but I sort of wonder if it's rising levels of acceptable antisemitism. When I was in college, I spent summers working at magazines. I would read the letters to the editor and decide the 12 out of hundred that they should consider printing. And then the editor would pick the four that they would print. We got the crazy letters. We got the antisemitic rant, conspiracy theory. We got the whole racist garbage. Those people were always around. They were always were writing to magazines but we didn’t print them.
In the past a celebrity had a platform but you're not hearing their unfiltered musings. They'd have an interview and then it would be edited. Like Tucker Carlson edited his interview with Kanye to make him a little less crazy that he apparently is. So, some of the crazy was less visible. What the problem is though is that this is sort of creating a standard for what's normal in public discourse. And the standard is going so far down the tube and that's disturbing. And that's a larger problem that goes beyond antisemitism. There's just a lot of outrageous opinions that are now considered acceptable.
Saj: Did you watch Dave Chappelle’s monologue?
Dara: No, I was overseas this past weekend and didn't see it. But I guess I should go watch it. I think the whole discourse around racism in this country makes it harder to respond to antisemitism when it's coming from people in the Black community, because there's so much tangled up.
I think that what's interesting about that is that it does illustrate how antisemitism really differs from a lot of other forms of racism because, I wouldn't just say, "Racism." Most forms of bigotry are, you say like, "Oh, there's this group of people over here that I feel are inferior to me." And that's the way we're taught to think about the way racism and prejudice in general work. And antisemitism does have an element of that. But antisemitism is less a social prejudice and more like a conspiracy theory. And the thing about a conspiracy theory is that instead of saying, "I'm punching down at, oh, there's this group of people who I believe are inferior to me," not being logical because it's a prejudice and prejudices aren't logical, it also includes this idea of there's this group of people who are superior to me, that these people are evil supervillains who are manipulating things behind the scenes.
Antisemitism is less a social prejudice and more like a conspiracy theory.
And that belief makes it so universally appealing for people from many different backgrounds to get behind this because it gives you this feeling of, "Oh, I'm not being a bigot. I'm speaking truth to power." I'm dismantling this power hierarchy. And unfortunately there is a power hierarchy in our society. It is real and it is tied up with the history of racism in this country. All those things are true.
The problem is if you're looking at the world just through that lens, you're very susceptible to falling face first into antisemitism because if your belief is that there's this group of shadowy elites behind the scenes who are running things and maintaining this unequal power structure, and that's a core belief of the conspiracy theory of antisemitism -- Jews have too much power, Jews have too much privilege, Jews are overrepresented. Jews need to be taken down a notch from this power that they have.
That's the Book of Exodus. That's why the Egyptian Pharaoh enslaves the Jews. It's like, "Oh, they have too much power, they have too much privilege, they're overrepresented."
I'm not claiming that Kanye West, who's a bajillionaire is in the lower strata of society. He is not. But there is this idea that the purpose of antisemitism is to deflect the anger of people on the bottom of the power structure towards someone who isn't them.
Saj: Your book, People Love Dead Jews – that’s a shocking title. It seems aimed at getting people to understand something new about antisemitism. What is it that you feel often gets overlooked?
Dara: I didn't feel I was writing this book saying something new. I just felt I was saying something kind of obvious. When you say this title is shocking. I mean, yes, it’s provocative. The reason for this is because I feel there are Jews in non-Jewish societies who are accustomed to erasing themselves in order to make other people feel comfortable.
Saj: What do you mean by that?
Dara: One of the things that I've learned in my 20 years as a published writer is that when you approach a topic and you start feeling like, "Oh, I really don't want to go there," that's when you're about to learn something that you didn't know before.
Saj: And you feel that Jews themselves are avoiding those uncomfortable moments?
Dara: Yes. And there are certain emotions that you're not allowed to feel as a Jew in a non-Jewish society. And I'm raising those emotions as well. For example, I have a piece in the book that's about what the tourist industry calls Jewish heritage sites. These are places in countries that used to have vibrant Jewish communities and don't anymore for reasons we may or may not choose to explain. And you go to these places and they have lovingly restored this synagogue and turned it into a museum where there's nobody using this synagogue at the museum. This term “Jewish heritage sites” sounds so benign. It sounds much better than property seized from dead or expelled Jews. Who wants to go to that? Jewish heritage sites, it sounds so nice.
This term “Jewish heritage sites” sounds so benign. It sounds much better than property seized from dead or expelled Jews. Who wants to go to that?
I've been to places like this around the world, from Spain to China, and I always felt extremely uncomfortable in these places. And I had so buried the reason for my discomfort. I would think that it was because I was sad. Like, "Oh, I feel uncomfortable because it's so sad that this community that lived here for hundreds of years is now gone."
That's not why I was feeling uncomfortable. It wasn't sadness. It was rage because when you're in these places and whether it is somewhere where all the people were murdered, or whether it's a place where they merely were expelled and had all their assets seized, that's the nice version. In any of those situations what you're looking at is the triumph of evil because these are societies who had decided that it was unacceptable to have Jews living there. This is the triumph of evil. This is a society that decided it is unacceptable to have someone who's slightly different from me.
And so, the appropriate response to that is not sorrow, it is rage. But as Jews in a non-Jewish society, we're not allowed to feel rage. And that's how deeply we bury it. I remember my kids would sometimes come home from school and say, "You're not supposed to be angry. It's really bad to be angry." You know what I would say to my children at that point. I would say, "You know who was really angry? Moses."
He sees the Egyptian taskmaster beating the Hebrew slave. He doesn't write a letter to the editor about it. He kills the guy and then he hits the rock, he sees them worshiping an idol. He smashes the tablets. He's yelling at Pharaoh for half the Book of Exodus. All of Deuteronomy, he's yelling at the Israelites. But the thing is that anger is an emotion that is tied to your perception of injustice. Now, that doesn't mean that your perception of injustice is accurate. I mean, you could be someone like Ye, or you could be a four year old who wants another cookie. But the thing is that if you don't allow people to feel anger, what you're saying is you're not allowing people to correct injustices in a society.
If you don't allow people to feel anger, what you're saying is you're not allowing people to correct injustices in a society.
So, the title is very much about, it is about allowing people to notice this problem. I didn't even think of it as a book really about antisemitism. I see it as a book about the role that dead Jews play in the wider world's imagination. And there's sort of two elements to that. And it does become sinister very quickly because there are basically two themes that run through the whole book. One is that people tell stories about dead Jews that make them feel better about themselves. And then the other half of that is that living Jews have to erase themselves in order to gain public respect.
Saj: You take issue in your book in various ways about how there's a tendency to focus on positive elements in the history of antisemitism, even in the Holocaust. For instance, focus on the acts of righteous gentiles. You express frustration that the most famous Jewish director in the world, Steven Spielberg, when he finally makes a film about the Holocaust, makes it about a non-Jew's story about the Holocaust. Can you speak a little bit about that frustration?
Dara: Yes. And actually it's funny, I have an episode of my podcast about it where I talk about how he made that movie while simultaneously making Jurassic Park and how they're actually the same movie. There's this eccentric businessman who's trying to save those who are utterly different from himself, imprisoned in this artificial environment with barbed wire. And there's so many scenes in that movie where they're hiding from the predator. It's like exactly the same scene.
But anyway, yes, this is what I say, people tell stories about dead Jews that make them feel better about themselves. I've now sort of actually been doing a project about American Holocaust education and I've been researching this and traveling around the country and looking at museums and speaking with educators. And there's this whole story about upstanders, which is the opposite of a bystander, this is this lingo they've come up with. And it's like you said, righteous gentiles. And the purpose of these museums is training people to be upstanders. And the problem is like, yeah, it’s important to honor what righteous gentiles did. Unfortunately, they're statistically insignificant, as are stories of Holocaust survival.
Saj: I don't know what Spielberg would say, but what if he were to retort, "I know how to get millions of people in a theater. That’s why I focused on a non-Jew. A film like Schindler's List brought some of the horrors of the Holocaust to the masses. And if you didn't select a positive story about a non-Jew, maybe they never would've really seen the whole story. So, why knock it?
Dara: Because this is a movie with no Jewish characters. And if you look it up online, Jewish movies about Jews, this is the number one film and there are no Jewish characters in that movie.
Saj: What do you mean? There are a lot of Jewish characters.
People Love Dead Jews is basically the implication is that non-Jewish societies are only comfortable with Jews if Jews have no agency. In Schindler’s List, there are no Jewish characters who have agency.
Dara: Even Ben Kingsley. Ben Kingsley has five lines in that movie. This movie is an arena for the rivalry between these two non-Jewish characters, this Nazi henchman and Schindler and everyone else is a prop. There are no Jewish characters who have agency in this film at all. That is the way that non-Jews are comfortable seeing Jews. My title of my book, People Love Dead Jews is basically the implication is that non-Jewish societies are only comfortable with Jews if Jews have no agency. Whether that means they're politically impotent or dead. It is okay for Jews to not have agency. And that's why that movie was successful.
There's this sort of notorious screenwriting book called Save the Cat. There's this screenwriting trick where 15 minutes into the movie, you show the protagonist saving a cat, being kind to an animal, helping a little kid, doing something nice for an old lady. And that's supposed to make you, as the audience, get on the side of the protagonist where he's one of the good guys saving the cat.
The problem with Schindler’s List is that the Jews are not the heroes of that movie. The Jews are the cat who get saved by someone else. And that is the only way it's acceptable to be Jewish in a non-Jewish society.
Saj: You once posed the question of whether antisemitism is really a problem that Jews are responsible to solve.
Dara: We can't fix this. I don't think this should be our job.
Saj: Why not?
Dara: I'm not saying Holocaust education isn't important, but this should not be our job. We can't fix this problem. Non-Jews have to fix this problem. We cannot do it. The only way we can fix this problem is basically protect ourselves. I mean, this is a mental virus that we need to protect ourselves from non-Jewish societies that unfortunately get infected with this virus. So, yes, self-defense, okay. But short of that, that's isn't a problem we can fix. This has to be a change in a non-Jewish society.
We can't fix antisemitism. Non-Jews have to fix it. All we can do is basically protect ourselves.
What's implied in your question is that Holocaust education prevents antisemitism. That is also implied in the vast enterprise of American Holocaust education for the past 50 years. It was sort of like, if you look at the roots of American Holocaust education in the 1970s, beginning, it comes from survivor communities. If you look at the example of the attempted Nazi march on Skokie in 1977 where it was this American Nazi party applied to march in their uniforms through this Jewish community that had a huge number of Holocaust survivors. And basically it became this law court case and basically the law sided with the Nazis because of the First Amendment.
They ended up not marching in Skokie for other reasons, because of the political backlash. But what eventually happened was the survivors in that community were sort of like, "Well, what can the law do to protect people from antisemitism?" The answer actually turns out to be not much. But so then that's when you have the community pivoting to education as a way of changing society.
The problem is, if you look at when all these museums are built in the 1990s and you start having state mandates for Holocaust education, that's 30 years ago. Rates of antisemitism in the United States are, no matter how you measure it, no matter whose statistics you use, it's much higher now than it was when these museums were built 30 years ago.
So, it's a legitimate question to ask. Is this working? I've spent the past about five or six months researching this. Where are the data? I can tell you there are no data and the data that do exist are not encouraging in terms of Holocaust education preventing antisemitism.
Saj: If somebody were to give you $10 million to help the Jewish people, how might you spend it?
Dara: On Jewish education for Jews and non-Jews. I'm going to give an example. Think about what it says in a high school history textbook about Jews, world history textbook. If the book has ancient history in it, there might be a page near the beginning about the Israelites. It doesn't mention that those people are Jews, they're people who died a long time ago. Who cares? There might as well be Phoenicians. And also there's a much bigger chapter about the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. By the way, all the people who persecuted the Jews, but let's put that over here. Yeah. There's a paragraph about the Israelites. They're dead a long time ago. Who cares?
If it's a book that has modern history in it, there's probably a chapter toward the end about the Holocaust. So, from this, we learn that Jews are people who got murdered. Their murders are there to teach us some lesson about humanity. There's nothing in between and there's nothing after. And this is an erasure of Jewish civilization.
And you could say, "Oh, well. Jews are such a tiny population. We don't have a lot of information in there about the Yazidis either." I'm like, "Okay, except that the Yazidis are not foundational to the history of the West." Judaism is foundational to the history of the West. You cannot understand Christianity, Islam, the whole history of the West. None of it makes sense without the foundation of Jewish culture.
Why are we not teaching that? Why are we allowing ourselves to be erased from this world history textbook?
Saj: Do you have an answer as to why antisemitism is so prevalent?
Dara: Why do people think this is so complicated? This isn't a big mystery. People want to blame their problems on somebody else. People will do absolutely anything to blame their problems on others. That's all. It's not hard.
Saj Freiberg: Why us in particular?
Dara Horn: Why were you waiting for this meeting? "Oh, I was caught in traffic." I'm like, "Well, I mean, it's not a big secret that there's traffic at this time of day. You actually could have left your house 10 minutes earlier, but you're going to blame someone else." Everybody else can lay their problems on somebody else. This isn't hard.
Saj: But I think you would agree that something about the intensity and the quality of Jew hatred stands out. I mean, it is a unique hatred in some ways.
Dara: I used to think that, but actually what's interesting to me is since I published this book, I've found that there's actually many people from other minority groups have reached out to me and have said to me things like, "You're speaking my language." And I've done these kinds of interviews with media outlets, with other minority community. I've also done these interviews with Christian TV and stuff like that, which is a different conversation. I've done general interest media stuff.
But I no longer think that this is so unique because my readers have told me that it's not. Readers from other minority communities are like, "This is the same dynamic." I even remember a woman who contacted me who's a principal of a high school in Western Canada that's mostly indigenous students. And she wanted to bulk order this book for her school. I'm like, "I could think of better ways for you to spend your money." But she was like, "This is what my students are dealing with. And they don't have the language for it."
The piece of it that's unique is the longevity. And that's because this is one of the only surviving groups from the ancient world of all those people.
And that also confuses people because it's hard to compare it with other groups because it doesn't resemble other groups. I'll do these college events and people will ask me these tedious questions like, "Oh, are Jews white or Jews a religion, or Jews a race, or Jews of nationality?" And I'm like, "Here's the problem with those questions. Jews predate all of those categories. Jews predate the modern concept of race. Jews predate the modern concept of nationality."
For more information about Aish New York's Jewish Wisdom Society’s talk with Dara Horn in Manhattan on December 6th, please email us at jws@aish.com.
People Love Dead Jews: Exclusive Interview with Award-Winning Author Dara Horn
Empower Your Jewish Journey
Sign up for Aish.com’s Weekly Email
by Saj Freiberg
November 20, 2022
The provocative scholar’s views on Kanye, effective responses to antisemitism, and being Jewish in a non-Jewish world.
Dara Horn is the author of New York Times Notable Book, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present. She is a critically acclaimed novelist and scholar of Yiddish literature. She is the recipient of numerous prizes for her writing, including two National Jewish Book Awards and most recently a Kirkus Prize for People Love Dead Jews. Her provocative book could not be more timely. I recently had a wide-ranging, thought-provoking discussion with Dara. Here is an edited version of our interview.
Saj Freiberg: What are your thoughts on Kanye West and the response to the companies that dumped him?
Dara Horn: Oh, man. I hate that I have to have an opinion about Kanye West. This is unfortunately not an uncommon sentiment along a lot of people. And I'm not the first person to notice that he has twice as many followers online as there are Jews in the world. This is unfortunately a hugely influential set of beliefs, which is not so surprising. And it does have a real world impact. I live in New Jersey and it was a couple days after that that somebody was making credible threats against synagogues in New Jersey, which it sounds like was encouraged by this. There's been vandalism on Jewish cemeteries that says, "Kanye was right." And this is disturbing. Credit to these companies that dumped him, although they may have been looking for other reasons to dump him.
Saj: Do you feel the response was appropriate?..
Dara: Actually, I know people are complaining that it came a week late or something like that. I was pretty impressed that anybody would respond in that way because I think we usually don't see that kind of response to antisemitism. So, I found that kind of encouraging.
I think the guardrails have come off on what's considered acceptable. And there's this level of outrage that's sort of very common now. This stuff used to be more filtered. I'm 45 and I'm old enough to remember before the internet, there were celebrities who would say crazy things, but there was a gatekeeper who was keeping these people in check and you wouldn't necessarily hear all of the things that they were thinking when they were on the toilet at 2:00 in the morning. You didn't really need to hear that.
There's are a lot of outrageous opinions that are now considered acceptable.
There's this rising level of antisemitism, which is not deniable, but I sort of wonder if it's rising levels of acceptable antisemitism. When I was in college, I spent summers working at magazines. I would read the letters to the editor and decide the 12 out of hundred that they should consider printing. And then the editor would pick the four that they would print. We got the crazy letters. We got the antisemitic rant, conspiracy theory. We got the whole racist garbage. Those people were always around. They were always were writing to magazines but we didn’t print them.
In the past a celebrity had a platform but you're not hearing their unfiltered musings. They'd have an interview and then it would be edited. Like Tucker Carlson edited his interview with Kanye to make him a little less crazy that he apparently is. So, some of the crazy was less visible. What the problem is though is that this is sort of creating a standard for what's normal in public discourse. And the standard is going so far down the tube and that's disturbing. And that's a larger problem that goes beyond antisemitism. There's just a lot of outrageous opinions that are now considered acceptable.
Saj: Did you watch Dave Chappelle’s monologue?
Dara: No, I was overseas this past weekend and didn't see it. But I guess I should go watch it. I think the whole discourse around racism in this country makes it harder to respond to antisemitism when it's coming from people in the Black community, because there's so much tangled up.
I think that what's interesting about that is that it does illustrate how antisemitism really differs from a lot of other forms of racism because, I wouldn't just say, "Racism." Most forms of bigotry are, you say like, "Oh, there's this group of people over here that I feel are inferior to me." And that's the way we're taught to think about the way racism and prejudice in general work. And antisemitism does have an element of that. But antisemitism is less a social prejudice and more like a conspiracy theory. And the thing about a conspiracy theory is that instead of saying, "I'm punching down at, oh, there's this group of people who I believe are inferior to me," not being logical because it's a prejudice and prejudices aren't logical, it also includes this idea of there's this group of people who are superior to me, that these people are evil supervillains who are manipulating things behind the scenes.
Antisemitism is less a social prejudice and more like a conspiracy theory.
And that belief makes it so universally appealing for people from many different backgrounds to get behind this because it gives you this feeling of, "Oh, I'm not being a bigot. I'm speaking truth to power." I'm dismantling this power hierarchy. And unfortunately there is a power hierarchy in our society. It is real and it is tied up with the history of racism in this country. All those things are true.
The problem is if you're looking at the world just through that lens, you're very susceptible to falling face first into antisemitism because if your belief is that there's this group of shadowy elites behind the scenes who are running things and maintaining this unequal power structure, and that's a core belief of the conspiracy theory of antisemitism -- Jews have too much power, Jews have too much privilege, Jews are overrepresented. Jews need to be taken down a notch from this power that they have.
That's the Book of Exodus. That's why the Egyptian Pharaoh enslaves the Jews. It's like, "Oh, they have too much power, they have too much privilege, they're overrepresented."
I'm not claiming that Kanye West, who's a bajillionaire is in the lower strata of society. He is not. But there is this idea that the purpose of antisemitism is to deflect the anger of people on the bottom of the power structure towards someone who isn't them.
Saj: Your book, People Love Dead Jews – that’s a shocking title. It seems aimed at getting people to understand something new about antisemitism. What is it that you feel often gets overlooked?
Dara: I didn't feel I was writing this book saying something new. I just felt I was saying something kind of obvious. When you say this title is shocking. I mean, yes, it’s provocative. The reason for this is because I feel there are Jews in non-Jewish societies who are accustomed to erasing themselves in order to make other people feel comfortable.
Saj: What do you mean by that?
Dara: One of the things that I've learned in my 20 years as a published writer is that when you approach a topic and you start feeling like, "Oh, I really don't want to go there," that's when you're about to learn something that you didn't know before.
Saj: And you feel that Jews themselves are avoiding those uncomfortable moments?
Dara: Yes. And there are certain emotions that you're not allowed to feel as a Jew in a non-Jewish society. And I'm raising those emotions as well. For example, I have a piece in the book that's about what the tourist industry calls Jewish heritage sites. These are places in countries that used to have vibrant Jewish communities and don't anymore for reasons we may or may not choose to explain. And you go to these places and they have lovingly restored this synagogue and turned it into a museum where there's nobody using this synagogue at the museum. This term “Jewish heritage sites” sounds so benign. It sounds much better than property seized from dead or expelled Jews. Who wants to go to that? Jewish heritage sites, it sounds so nice.
This term “Jewish heritage sites” sounds so benign. It sounds much better than property seized from dead or expelled Jews. Who wants to go to that?
I've been to places like this around the world, from Spain to China, and I always felt extremely uncomfortable in these places. And I had so buried the reason for my discomfort. I would think that it was because I was sad. Like, "Oh, I feel uncomfortable because it's so sad that this community that lived here for hundreds of years is now gone."
That's not why I was feeling uncomfortable. It wasn't sadness. It was rage because when you're in these places and whether it is somewhere where all the people were murdered, or whether it's a place where they merely were expelled and had all their assets seized, that's the nice version. In any of those situations what you're looking at is the triumph of evil because these are societies who had decided that it was unacceptable to have Jews living there. This is the triumph of evil. This is a society that decided it is unacceptable to have someone who's slightly different from me.
And so, the appropriate response to that is not sorrow, it is rage. But as Jews in a non-Jewish society, we're not allowed to feel rage. And that's how deeply we bury it. I remember my kids would sometimes come home from school and say, "You're not supposed to be angry. It's really bad to be angry." You know what I would say to my children at that point. I would say, "You know who was really angry? Moses."
He sees the Egyptian taskmaster beating the Hebrew slave. He doesn't write a letter to the editor about it. He kills the guy and then he hits the rock, he sees them worshiping an idol. He smashes the tablets. He's yelling at Pharaoh for half the Book of Exodus. All of Deuteronomy, he's yelling at the Israelites. But the thing is that anger is an emotion that is tied to your perception of injustice. Now, that doesn't mean that your perception of injustice is accurate. I mean, you could be someone like Ye, or you could be a four year old who wants another cookie. But the thing is that if you don't allow people to feel anger, what you're saying is you're not allowing people to correct injustices in a society.
If you don't allow people to feel anger, what you're saying is you're not allowing people to correct injustices in a society.
So, the title is very much about, it is about allowing people to notice this problem. I didn't even think of it as a book really about antisemitism. I see it as a book about the role that dead Jews play in the wider world's imagination. And there's sort of two elements to that. And it does become sinister very quickly because there are basically two themes that run through the whole book. One is that people tell stories about dead Jews that make them feel better about themselves. And then the other half of that is that living Jews have to erase themselves in order to gain public respect.
Saj: You take issue in your book in various ways about how there's a tendency to focus on positive elements in the history of antisemitism, even in the Holocaust. For instance, focus on the acts of righteous gentiles. You express frustration that the most famous Jewish director in the world, Steven Spielberg, when he finally makes a film about the Holocaust, makes it about a non-Jew's story about the Holocaust. Can you speak a little bit about that frustration?
Dara: Yes. And actually it's funny, I have an episode of my podcast about it where I talk about how he made that movie while simultaneously making Jurassic Park and how they're actually the same movie. There's this eccentric businessman who's trying to save those who are utterly different from himself, imprisoned in this artificial environment with barbed wire. And there's so many scenes in that movie where they're hiding from the predator. It's like exactly the same scene.
But anyway, yes, this is what I say, people tell stories about dead Jews that make them feel better about themselves. I've now sort of actually been doing a project about American Holocaust education and I've been researching this and traveling around the country and looking at museums and speaking with educators. And there's this whole story about upstanders, which is the opposite of a bystander, this is this lingo they've come up with. And it's like you said, righteous gentiles. And the purpose of these museums is training people to be upstanders. And the problem is like, yeah, it’s important to honor what righteous gentiles did. Unfortunately, they're statistically insignificant, as are stories of Holocaust survival.
Saj: I don't know what Spielberg would say, but what if he were to retort, "I know how to get millions of people in a theater. That’s why I focused on a non-Jew. A film like Schindler's List brought some of the horrors of the Holocaust to the masses. And if you didn't select a positive story about a non-Jew, maybe they never would've really seen the whole story. So, why knock it?
Dara: Because this is a movie with no Jewish characters. And if you look it up online, Jewish movies about Jews, this is the number one film and there are no Jewish characters in that movie.
Saj: What do you mean? There are a lot of Jewish characters.
People Love Dead Jews is basically the implication is that non-Jewish societies are only comfortable with Jews if Jews have no agency. In Schindler’s List, there are no Jewish characters who have agency.
Dara: Even Ben Kingsley. Ben Kingsley has five lines in that movie. This movie is an arena for the rivalry between these two non-Jewish characters, this Nazi henchman and Schindler and everyone else is a prop. There are no Jewish characters who have agency in this film at all. That is the way that non-Jews are comfortable seeing Jews. My title of my book, People Love Dead Jews is basically the implication is that non-Jewish societies are only comfortable with Jews if Jews have no agency. Whether that means they're politically impotent or dead. It is okay for Jews to not have agency. And that's why that movie was successful.
There's this sort of notorious screenwriting book called Save the Cat. There's this screenwriting trick where 15 minutes into the movie, you show the protagonist saving a cat, being kind to an animal, helping a little kid, doing something nice for an old lady. And that's supposed to make you, as the audience, get on the side of the protagonist where he's one of the good guys saving the cat.
The problem with Schindler’s List is that the Jews are not the heroes of that movie. The Jews are the cat who get saved by someone else. And that is the only way it's acceptable to be Jewish in a non-Jewish society.
Saj: You once posed the question of whether antisemitism is really a problem that Jews are responsible to solve.
Dara: We can't fix this. I don't think this should be our job.
Saj: Why not?
Dara: I'm not saying Holocaust education isn't important, but this should not be our job. We can't fix this problem. Non-Jews have to fix this problem. We cannot do it. The only way we can fix this problem is basically protect ourselves. I mean, this is a mental virus that we need to protect ourselves from non-Jewish societies that unfortunately get infected with this virus. So, yes, self-defense, okay. But short of that, that's isn't a problem we can fix. This has to be a change in a non-Jewish society.
We can't fix antisemitism. Non-Jews have to fix it. All we can do is basically protect ourselves.
What's implied in your question is that Holocaust education prevents antisemitism. That is also implied in the vast enterprise of American Holocaust education for the past 50 years. It was sort of like, if you look at the roots of American Holocaust education in the 1970s, beginning, it comes from survivor communities. If you look at the example of the attempted Nazi march on Skokie in 1977 where it was this American Nazi party applied to march in their uniforms through this Jewish community that had a huge number of Holocaust survivors. And basically it became this law court case and basically the law sided with the Nazis because of the First Amendment.
They ended up not marching in Skokie for other reasons, because of the political backlash. But what eventually happened was the survivors in that community were sort of like, "Well, what can the law do to protect people from antisemitism?" The answer actually turns out to be not much. But so then that's when you have the community pivoting to education as a way of changing society.
The problem is, if you look at when all these museums are built in the 1990s and you start having state mandates for Holocaust education, that's 30 years ago. Rates of antisemitism in the United States are, no matter how you measure it, no matter whose statistics you use, it's much higher now than it was when these museums were built 30 years ago.
So, it's a legitimate question to ask. Is this working? I've spent the past about five or six months researching this. Where are the data? I can tell you there are no data and the data that do exist are not encouraging in terms of Holocaust education preventing antisemitism.
Saj: If somebody were to give you $10 million to help the Jewish people, how might you spend it?
Dara: On Jewish education for Jews and non-Jews. I'm going to give an example. Think about what it says in a high school history textbook about Jews, world history textbook. If the book has ancient history in it, there might be a page near the beginning about the Israelites. It doesn't mention that those people are Jews, they're people who died a long time ago. Who cares? There might as well be Phoenicians. And also there's a much bigger chapter about the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. By the way, all the people who persecuted the Jews, but let's put that over here. Yeah. There's a paragraph about the Israelites. They're dead a long time ago. Who cares?
If it's a book that has modern history in it, there's probably a chapter toward the end about the Holocaust. So, from this, we learn that Jews are people who got murdered. Their murders are there to teach us some lesson about humanity. There's nothing in between and there's nothing after. And this is an erasure of Jewish civilization.
And you could say, "Oh, well. Jews are such a tiny population. We don't have a lot of information in there about the Yazidis either." I'm like, "Okay, except that the Yazidis are not foundational to the history of the West." Judaism is foundational to the history of the West. You cannot understand Christianity, Islam, the whole history of the West. None of it makes sense without the foundation of Jewish culture.
Why are we not teaching that? Why are we allowing ourselves to be erased from this world history textbook?
Saj: Do you have an answer as to why antisemitism is so prevalent?
Dara: Why do people think this is so complicated? This isn't a big mystery. People want to blame their problems on somebody else. People will do absolutely anything to blame their problems on others. That's all. It's not hard.
Saj Freiberg: Why us in particular?
Dara Horn: Why were you waiting for this meeting? "Oh, I was caught in traffic." I'm like, "Well, I mean, it's not a big secret that there's traffic at this time of day. You actually could have left your house 10 minutes earlier, but you're going to blame someone else." Everybody else can lay their problems on somebody else. This isn't hard.
Saj: But I think you would agree that something about the intensity and the quality of Jew hatred stands out. I mean, it is a unique hatred in some ways.
Dara: I used to think that, but actually what's interesting to me is since I published this book, I've found that there's actually many people from other minority groups have reached out to me and have said to me things like, "You're speaking my language." And I've done these kinds of interviews with media outlets, with other minority community. I've also done these interviews with Christian TV and stuff like that, which is a different conversation. I've done general interest media stuff.
But I no longer think that this is so unique because my readers have told me that it's not. Readers from other minority communities are like, "This is the same dynamic." I even remember a woman who contacted me who's a principal of a high school in Western Canada that's mostly indigenous students. And she wanted to bulk order this book for her school. I'm like, "I could think of better ways for you to spend your money." But she was like, "This is what my students are dealing with. And they don't have the language for it."
The piece of it that's unique is the longevity. And that's because this is one of the only surviving groups from the ancient world of all those people.
And that also confuses people because it's hard to compare it with other groups because it doesn't resemble other groups. I'll do these college events and people will ask me these tedious questions like, "Oh, are Jews white or Jews a religion, or Jews a race, or Jews of nationality?" And I'm like, "Here's the problem with those questions. Jews predate all of those categories. Jews predate the modern concept of race. Jews predate the modern concept of nationality."
For more information about Aish New York's Jewish Wisdom Society’s talk with Dara Horn in Manhattan on December 6th, please email us at jws@aish.com.
Re: AISH
Mayim Bialik: Six Questions
by Sarah Pachter
November 13, 2022
3 min read
Six incredible things you never knew about her.
After iconic roles in television shows like Blossom and The Big Bang Theory, actress Mayim Bialik is now the host of Jeopardy. Here are six incredible things you never knew about her.
What do you think has been your greatest kiddush Hashem – a moment you really excelled in representing the Jewish people?
That’s a funny question. I don’t usually identify them myself. I think that typically it should be something other people say or see. I think it’s hard to answer for myself without sounding like I’m placing importance on myself or what I do. I do consider it a big source of pride that I wear a Jewish star when I make personal appearances or when I walk a red carpet. I also find ways to incorporate Jewish elements into what I wear.
What has been one of your greatest challenges in being an observant Jew in show business?
I think the most obvious is the calendar. Being a Jewish person of any level of observance means we have a separate calendar. However, for those of us who do live according to a halachic notion of the calendar, it can be really difficult, especially throughout the Jewish holidays. It can be really challenging to have people understand what it’s like to live with two calendars in your head. Also, the fall is really complicated because we essentially have a holiday every week for what feels like 86 weeks. That’s really, really hard.
On a positive note, I’m very grateful we tape on Tuesday nights and not Friday nights. But, there are many parties and events and things that do fall on Shabbos. And again, having off for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Shemini Atzeret is a big challenge. I am grateful to my lawyer, Shep Rosenman, who is also a mentor of mine, who has helped me navigate all of this.
What have you learned by being the host of Jeopardy?
I have learned that there is a lot I don’t know! I realize there are many categories in the world and universe that I know very little about. Additionally, there are some incredible minds that I get to watch and be entertained by. I’ve also learned a lot about the writers and the writing staff and behind the scenes of what goes into creating the clues behind the game. It’s been wonderful.
How do you deal with the intense pressure of such a spotlight?
THE NUGGET
"So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith." (Galations 6:10 NKJ)
"Be sober minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour." (1 Peter 5:8 NKJ)
As the saying goes, "Another day, another dollar." Or in todays economy another fifty cents. I look at it this way, another day, another opportunity. Another opportunity to get it right. Another chance to better serve God.
God is into do overs. So don't worry or stress if you mess up. We all do. Just repent and start again. If you woke up this morning, then God isn't done with you. If you are breathing, you still have work to do. You still have an opportunity to get it right, you can still get others saved. You can still lend a helping hand to someone.
There is still time to put the devil in his place. Still time to take a stand against his evil in the world. There is still time. But don't wait too long, time is running out. But as long as you are here you can make a difference in someones life.
The holidays are coming up. Send an elderly neighbor a plate of food for Thanksgiving. They may not have close family to celebrate the day with. Adopt a resident at a nursing home. As a former nursing home employee, there is always a few residents who doesn't have family so they don't get a card, much less a gift at Christmas.
As for me, I have started sending cards to two different nursing homes for the residents. I hope I might have brightened someone's day a little. I plan on it again this year. By the way, I sign them from the youth group at my church. I figured it might mean a little more from the church kids. Those are ways to make a difference. There are others.
Don't let an opportunity pass by. Make a difference in someone's life.
Have a great day!
Kathy Keller
Writer and Prayer warrior with Answers2Prayer Ministries
If you would like to receive daily inspirational messages from Kathy Keller, click here and put “devotional” in the subject bar.
Announcements
Does anyone out there find the Bible dull? Lacking in excitement and action? Check out: Lights, Camera, Action! -- A mini-series in the books of Joshua and Acts by Suresh Manoharan.
by Sarah Pachter
November 13, 2022
3 min read
Six incredible things you never knew about her.
After iconic roles in television shows like Blossom and The Big Bang Theory, actress Mayim Bialik is now the host of Jeopardy. Here are six incredible things you never knew about her.
What do you think has been your greatest kiddush Hashem – a moment you really excelled in representing the Jewish people?
That’s a funny question. I don’t usually identify them myself. I think that typically it should be something other people say or see. I think it’s hard to answer for myself without sounding like I’m placing importance on myself or what I do. I do consider it a big source of pride that I wear a Jewish star when I make personal appearances or when I walk a red carpet. I also find ways to incorporate Jewish elements into what I wear.
What has been one of your greatest challenges in being an observant Jew in show business?
I think the most obvious is the calendar. Being a Jewish person of any level of observance means we have a separate calendar. However, for those of us who do live according to a halachic notion of the calendar, it can be really difficult, especially throughout the Jewish holidays. It can be really challenging to have people understand what it’s like to live with two calendars in your head. Also, the fall is really complicated because we essentially have a holiday every week for what feels like 86 weeks. That’s really, really hard.
On a positive note, I’m very grateful we tape on Tuesday nights and not Friday nights. But, there are many parties and events and things that do fall on Shabbos. And again, having off for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Shemini Atzeret is a big challenge. I am grateful to my lawyer, Shep Rosenman, who is also a mentor of mine, who has helped me navigate all of this.
What have you learned by being the host of Jeopardy?
I have learned that there is a lot I don’t know! I realize there are many categories in the world and universe that I know very little about. Additionally, there are some incredible minds that I get to watch and be entertained by. I’ve also learned a lot about the writers and the writing staff and behind the scenes of what goes into creating the clues behind the game. It’s been wonderful.
How do you deal with the intense pressure of such a spotlight?
THE NUGGET
"So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith." (Galations 6:10 NKJ)
"Be sober minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour." (1 Peter 5:8 NKJ)
As the saying goes, "Another day, another dollar." Or in todays economy another fifty cents. I look at it this way, another day, another opportunity. Another opportunity to get it right. Another chance to better serve God.
God is into do overs. So don't worry or stress if you mess up. We all do. Just repent and start again. If you woke up this morning, then God isn't done with you. If you are breathing, you still have work to do. You still have an opportunity to get it right, you can still get others saved. You can still lend a helping hand to someone.
There is still time to put the devil in his place. Still time to take a stand against his evil in the world. There is still time. But don't wait too long, time is running out. But as long as you are here you can make a difference in someones life.
The holidays are coming up. Send an elderly neighbor a plate of food for Thanksgiving. They may not have close family to celebrate the day with. Adopt a resident at a nursing home. As a former nursing home employee, there is always a few residents who doesn't have family so they don't get a card, much less a gift at Christmas.
As for me, I have started sending cards to two different nursing homes for the residents. I hope I might have brightened someone's day a little. I plan on it again this year. By the way, I sign them from the youth group at my church. I figured it might mean a little more from the church kids. Those are ways to make a difference. There are others.
Don't let an opportunity pass by. Make a difference in someone's life.
Have a great day!
Kathy Keller
Writer and Prayer warrior with Answers2Prayer Ministries
If you would like to receive daily inspirational messages from Kathy Keller, click here and put “devotional” in the subject bar.
Announcements
Does anyone out there find the Bible dull? Lacking in excitement and action? Check out: Lights, Camera, Action! -- A mini-series in the books of Joshua and Acts by Suresh Manoharan.
Re: AISH
Mayim Bialik: Six Questions
by Sarah Pachter
November 13, 2022
3 min read
Six incredible things you never knew about her.
After iconic roles in television shows like Blossom and The Big Bang Theory, actress Mayim Bialik is now the host of Jeopardy. Here are six incredible things you never knew about her.
What do you think has been your greatest kiddush Hashem – a moment you really excelled in representing the Jewish people?
That’s a funny question. I don’t usually identify them myself. I think that typically it should be something other people say or see. I think it’s hard to answer for myself without sounding like I’m placing importance on myself or what I do. I do consider it a big source of pride that I wear a Jewish star when I make personal appearances or when I walk a red carpet. I also find ways to incorporate Jewish elements into what I wear.
What has been one of your greatest challenges in being an observant Jew in show business?
I think the most obvious is the calendar. Being a Jewish person of any level of observance means we have a separate calendar. However, for those of us who do live according to a halachic notion of the calendar, it can be really difficult, especially throughout the Jewish holidays. It can be really challenging to have people understand what it’s like to live with two calendars in your head. Also, the fall is really complicated because we essentially have a holiday every week for what feels like 86 weeks. That’s really, really hard.
On a positive note, I’m very grateful we tape on Tuesday nights and not Friday nights. But, there are many parties and events and things that do fall on Shabbos. And again, having off for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Shemini Atzeret is a big challenge. I am grateful to my lawyer, Shep Rosenman, who is also a mentor of mine, who has helped me navigate all of this.
What have you learned by being the host of Jeopardy?
I have learned that there is a lot I don’t know! I realize there are many categories in the world and universe that I know very little about. Additionally, there are some incredible minds that I get to watch and be entertained by. I’ve also learned a lot about the writers and the writing staff and behind the scenes of what goes into creating the clues behind the game. It’s been wonderful.
How do you deal with the intense pressure of such a spotlight?
by Sarah Pachter
November 13, 2022
3 min read
Six incredible things you never knew about her.
After iconic roles in television shows like Blossom and The Big Bang Theory, actress Mayim Bialik is now the host of Jeopardy. Here are six incredible things you never knew about her.
What do you think has been your greatest kiddush Hashem – a moment you really excelled in representing the Jewish people?
That’s a funny question. I don’t usually identify them myself. I think that typically it should be something other people say or see. I think it’s hard to answer for myself without sounding like I’m placing importance on myself or what I do. I do consider it a big source of pride that I wear a Jewish star when I make personal appearances or when I walk a red carpet. I also find ways to incorporate Jewish elements into what I wear.
What has been one of your greatest challenges in being an observant Jew in show business?
I think the most obvious is the calendar. Being a Jewish person of any level of observance means we have a separate calendar. However, for those of us who do live according to a halachic notion of the calendar, it can be really difficult, especially throughout the Jewish holidays. It can be really challenging to have people understand what it’s like to live with two calendars in your head. Also, the fall is really complicated because we essentially have a holiday every week for what feels like 86 weeks. That’s really, really hard.
On a positive note, I’m very grateful we tape on Tuesday nights and not Friday nights. But, there are many parties and events and things that do fall on Shabbos. And again, having off for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Shemini Atzeret is a big challenge. I am grateful to my lawyer, Shep Rosenman, who is also a mentor of mine, who has helped me navigate all of this.
What have you learned by being the host of Jeopardy?
I have learned that there is a lot I don’t know! I realize there are many categories in the world and universe that I know very little about. Additionally, there are some incredible minds that I get to watch and be entertained by. I’ve also learned a lot about the writers and the writing staff and behind the scenes of what goes into creating the clues behind the game. It’s been wonderful.
How do you deal with the intense pressure of such a spotlight?
Re: AISH
https://aish.com/crawling-towards-god/
An encounter with the Unknowables: faith, prayer, and a Force beyond the self.
After a concert my band and I had performed in Chicago, in the winter of 2015, I spent the night at my friend Lou’s house so that I could be close to O’Hare airport. My intention was to leave at the crack of dawn and catch the first flight back home to Los Angeles.
At the time, I’d been coping with a rare ear disorder called idiopathic intratympanic sudden hearing loss (try saying that three times fast!). Just past midnight I experienced a terrible bout of vertigo. The room was spinning so severely that I felt as though I were strapped to a jet-powered merry-go-round. I was feverish and “desperate to use the bathroom,” but the vertigo was so bad that I couldn’t take a single step.
There was no choice left for me except to literally crawl like an infant down the hallway in my sweat-drenched T-shirt. Normally reluctant to ask for help, I was now pleading for it just outside Lou’s bedroom door.
“Lou, help me, please. I need you!”
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Before long, Lou stumbled out the door in his pajamas, walked me down the hallway, and sat me down on the toilet. When I felt I was able to stand, Lou guided me back through the hallway to his eleven-year-old son’s room, where I proceeded to convalesce for more than 24 hours under the Thomas the Train comforter that adorned his son’s bed. The poor kid, half asleep, had been exiled to his sister’s room while the world turned in frenzied circles around me.
At 4:30 in the morning, in the darkness and steadily chilling air of a burgeoning midwestern snowstorm, Lou’s wife, Amy, still in her pajamas, got on her hat, her parka, and her snow boots and headed out to the street. As Lou watched over me, Amy shoveled out the family minivan and headed off to CVS for some mint tea, a box of crackers, and a family-size bottle of Antivert. As I languished in Lou’s son’s room, Lou held a straw to my lips so I could take a swallow of water. Later he called my wife to let her know I was too vertiginous to make my 6:00 a.m. flight.
When Amy returned, she held a wet compress to my forehead and asked if I’d like her to pray for me. “Please do,” I said. “Say anything.”
She intoned what I took to be an improvised prayer. And because Amy cared—truly cared—her beautiful invocation helped me more than I could have possibly imagined it would.
One of the issues many of us have with prayer is its formality. We often think, mistakenly, that there is a time for everyday activities and a time for prayerful activities, and that the two should never intertwine. Worse yet, many of us have been conditioned to think that there always needs to be a special place for prayer—a mosque, for example, or a church, synagogue, or temple. The problem with this is that it compartmentalizes our conception of prayer.
We think: “Prayer is good here, but not there; it’s good in special circumstances, but not in mundane ones.” That’s how prayer ceases to feel meaningful. And for a thing to be truly meaningful it needs to be truthful in every circumstance.
It’s one thing to be open to asking for and receiving help from a fellow human being. It’s another thing to be open to asking for help from God. And fundamental to this latter kind of openness is prayer. You hear the word “prayer” in song lyrics, on television shows, and in hushed waiting rooms. We hear it so often that it’s sometimes hard to recall exactly what prayer is.
There are many motivations for prayer, but for now, let’s focus on just one of them: The longing of a human being to connect with a Force beyond oneself. It’s in seeking a connection with that higher Force that we fulfill, what scholars of mysticism call the primary will of God, which is to relate to us and to give to us. (And of course, if you don’t “believe” in God, you may have a difficult time with where I’m headed… but please give it a try.)
It’s in seeking a connection with that higher Force that we fulfill, what scholars of mysticism call the primary will of God, which is to relate to us and to give to us.
In the Kabbalistic tradition we learn that it was from an infinite and unknowable desire to bestow goodness that God created the world from utter nothingness. Aside from the inability of any human being to conceive of “nothingness;” the idea of God desiring to bestow good, is itself, a very challenging notion. What kind of “desire” could God have? And how do we process the idea that God has any characteristics that we could possibly relate to? One, admittedly, strange way of looking at this, is to think of humans as having a semblance of Godly characteristics instead of trying to imagine that God has human characteristics.
It’s crucial to point out that I’m speaking about metaphors here. There is no physical property to God, nor is there any property or characteristics that can be rightfully ascribed to God. As a means of understanding what little we possibly can about God, it may be helpful to see things from a sort of inverse position, as I began to explain above.
For example, many of us would find it ridiculous to suggest that when we read about the “hand of God” in the Bible, the phrase is referring to an actual hand. But what if we inverted things and considered the possibility that our hands, our physical hands, aren’t in essence, “real”—that they are only metaphors for the limitless, fundamentally true hands that only God possesses? What if, for just a moment, we were to think of our physical hands as somehow metaphorical and God’s hands as “real?” To understand this, we need to open our thinking to a fundamental idea —if not a fundamental truth: “real” and “physical” are not synonymous.
Yes, our hands can touch and build and make music, but for the sake of this mental exercise, could you suppose for a moment that those things are themselves only metaphors for Real (capital R) touching, real building, and the real creation of music? To put it another way, try to think of God as the Original and Continual Source of Everything, and that anything you can possibly comprehend —or not comprehend, such as seraphs, eyesight, laughter, quarks, galaxies, grains of wheat, or strands of pearls—are as nothing compared to the unique, all-encompassing Oneness of God.
Now, for just a moment, dwell on the notion that our ability to think, see, touch, hear, create, reproduce, etc. is in a sense, not real. And that although our hands and the things our hands do, are decidedly tangible, they are a mere facsimile when compared to God’s non-temporal “hands.” (And just to reiterate: a thing need not be physical to be real.)
We all experience many nonphysical things that are in fact very real. How about love? Aside from the act of intimacy, is there a physical dimension to love itself? Does love take up space? Does it exist in time? Does it have any of the properties shared by other physical things? Clearly not, but anyone who has ever loved and been loved in return knows how utterly real love is.
For many of us, opening our minds to the existence of things and ideas that are not empirically provable, things and ideas that have no temporal qualities, can feel strange and even frightening. Imagine, though, that gaining a greater openness to things of a spiritual nature is like finally putting on a pair of glasses that allows you to see a whole new aspect of the world that you’ve been missing.
The list of what lies beyond our ken is endless — and still, we as human beings, have become inured to the sheer normalcy of things that are beyond our comprehension.
One last thought. If you’re someone who has trouble staying open to “irrational’ subjects like prayer or a connection to an indefinable Force beyond the self, and beyond the world you can sense; you might want to consider how many things and experiences you encounter daily that you will never comprehend. The power of music for example, the vastness of space, the absurdity of dreams, the intensity of envy, of joy, of grief. Not to mention wind, water, or fire.
Sure, we know the scientific names for some of their components, but that doesn’t scratch the surface of what we would call: real knowing. The list of what lies beyond our ken is endless — and still, we as human beings, have become inured to the sheer normalcy of things that are beyond our comprehension. This is to say that it’s probable that there’s nothing in the world that we do comprehend, at least not fully. In this sense, the abstractions, the “unknowables” are around us, always —and strangely, they are not so foreign to us. We are accustomed to them, even comfortable with them. Of course, we are. We exist alongside only what is unknowable and utterly inscrutable
Just a note: The Antivert worked, the room stopped spinning. I drank some mint tea, ate a half box of crackers, and caught the same flight back to LA the following morning. You can bet I prayed with a new intention after that trying day.
Like What You Read? Give Jews around the world the chance to experience engaging Jewish wisdom with more articles and videos on Aish. It would make your mother so proud and as a nonprofit organization it's your support that keeps us going. Thanks a ton!
ONE TIME $54 $108 $1000 OTHERMONTHLY $10 $18 $100 OTHER
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More About The Author
Peter Himmelman
Peter Himmelman isn’t your run of the mill Grammy and Emmy nominated singer-songwriter. He’s also an erudite and entertaining communicator whose unique skill-sets have placed him squarely in the zeitgeist where creativity, spirituality, and a fearless sense of wonder have become essential for understanding our rapidly changing cultural landscape. Most recently Himmelman began, Big Muse, a highly regarded methodology for developing creative thinking and deeper levels of communication.
More from this Author >
An encounter with the Unknowables: faith, prayer, and a Force beyond the self.
After a concert my band and I had performed in Chicago, in the winter of 2015, I spent the night at my friend Lou’s house so that I could be close to O’Hare airport. My intention was to leave at the crack of dawn and catch the first flight back home to Los Angeles.
At the time, I’d been coping with a rare ear disorder called idiopathic intratympanic sudden hearing loss (try saying that three times fast!). Just past midnight I experienced a terrible bout of vertigo. The room was spinning so severely that I felt as though I were strapped to a jet-powered merry-go-round. I was feverish and “desperate to use the bathroom,” but the vertigo was so bad that I couldn’t take a single step.
There was no choice left for me except to literally crawl like an infant down the hallway in my sweat-drenched T-shirt. Normally reluctant to ask for help, I was now pleading for it just outside Lou’s bedroom door.
“Lou, help me, please. I need you!”
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
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Before long, Lou stumbled out the door in his pajamas, walked me down the hallway, and sat me down on the toilet. When I felt I was able to stand, Lou guided me back through the hallway to his eleven-year-old son’s room, where I proceeded to convalesce for more than 24 hours under the Thomas the Train comforter that adorned his son’s bed. The poor kid, half asleep, had been exiled to his sister’s room while the world turned in frenzied circles around me.
At 4:30 in the morning, in the darkness and steadily chilling air of a burgeoning midwestern snowstorm, Lou’s wife, Amy, still in her pajamas, got on her hat, her parka, and her snow boots and headed out to the street. As Lou watched over me, Amy shoveled out the family minivan and headed off to CVS for some mint tea, a box of crackers, and a family-size bottle of Antivert. As I languished in Lou’s son’s room, Lou held a straw to my lips so I could take a swallow of water. Later he called my wife to let her know I was too vertiginous to make my 6:00 a.m. flight.
When Amy returned, she held a wet compress to my forehead and asked if I’d like her to pray for me. “Please do,” I said. “Say anything.”
She intoned what I took to be an improvised prayer. And because Amy cared—truly cared—her beautiful invocation helped me more than I could have possibly imagined it would.
One of the issues many of us have with prayer is its formality. We often think, mistakenly, that there is a time for everyday activities and a time for prayerful activities, and that the two should never intertwine. Worse yet, many of us have been conditioned to think that there always needs to be a special place for prayer—a mosque, for example, or a church, synagogue, or temple. The problem with this is that it compartmentalizes our conception of prayer.
We think: “Prayer is good here, but not there; it’s good in special circumstances, but not in mundane ones.” That’s how prayer ceases to feel meaningful. And for a thing to be truly meaningful it needs to be truthful in every circumstance.
It’s one thing to be open to asking for and receiving help from a fellow human being. It’s another thing to be open to asking for help from God. And fundamental to this latter kind of openness is prayer. You hear the word “prayer” in song lyrics, on television shows, and in hushed waiting rooms. We hear it so often that it’s sometimes hard to recall exactly what prayer is.
There are many motivations for prayer, but for now, let’s focus on just one of them: The longing of a human being to connect with a Force beyond oneself. It’s in seeking a connection with that higher Force that we fulfill, what scholars of mysticism call the primary will of God, which is to relate to us and to give to us. (And of course, if you don’t “believe” in God, you may have a difficult time with where I’m headed… but please give it a try.)
It’s in seeking a connection with that higher Force that we fulfill, what scholars of mysticism call the primary will of God, which is to relate to us and to give to us.
In the Kabbalistic tradition we learn that it was from an infinite and unknowable desire to bestow goodness that God created the world from utter nothingness. Aside from the inability of any human being to conceive of “nothingness;” the idea of God desiring to bestow good, is itself, a very challenging notion. What kind of “desire” could God have? And how do we process the idea that God has any characteristics that we could possibly relate to? One, admittedly, strange way of looking at this, is to think of humans as having a semblance of Godly characteristics instead of trying to imagine that God has human characteristics.
It’s crucial to point out that I’m speaking about metaphors here. There is no physical property to God, nor is there any property or characteristics that can be rightfully ascribed to God. As a means of understanding what little we possibly can about God, it may be helpful to see things from a sort of inverse position, as I began to explain above.
For example, many of us would find it ridiculous to suggest that when we read about the “hand of God” in the Bible, the phrase is referring to an actual hand. But what if we inverted things and considered the possibility that our hands, our physical hands, aren’t in essence, “real”—that they are only metaphors for the limitless, fundamentally true hands that only God possesses? What if, for just a moment, we were to think of our physical hands as somehow metaphorical and God’s hands as “real?” To understand this, we need to open our thinking to a fundamental idea —if not a fundamental truth: “real” and “physical” are not synonymous.
Yes, our hands can touch and build and make music, but for the sake of this mental exercise, could you suppose for a moment that those things are themselves only metaphors for Real (capital R) touching, real building, and the real creation of music? To put it another way, try to think of God as the Original and Continual Source of Everything, and that anything you can possibly comprehend —or not comprehend, such as seraphs, eyesight, laughter, quarks, galaxies, grains of wheat, or strands of pearls—are as nothing compared to the unique, all-encompassing Oneness of God.
Now, for just a moment, dwell on the notion that our ability to think, see, touch, hear, create, reproduce, etc. is in a sense, not real. And that although our hands and the things our hands do, are decidedly tangible, they are a mere facsimile when compared to God’s non-temporal “hands.” (And just to reiterate: a thing need not be physical to be real.)
We all experience many nonphysical things that are in fact very real. How about love? Aside from the act of intimacy, is there a physical dimension to love itself? Does love take up space? Does it exist in time? Does it have any of the properties shared by other physical things? Clearly not, but anyone who has ever loved and been loved in return knows how utterly real love is.
For many of us, opening our minds to the existence of things and ideas that are not empirically provable, things and ideas that have no temporal qualities, can feel strange and even frightening. Imagine, though, that gaining a greater openness to things of a spiritual nature is like finally putting on a pair of glasses that allows you to see a whole new aspect of the world that you’ve been missing.
The list of what lies beyond our ken is endless — and still, we as human beings, have become inured to the sheer normalcy of things that are beyond our comprehension.
One last thought. If you’re someone who has trouble staying open to “irrational’ subjects like prayer or a connection to an indefinable Force beyond the self, and beyond the world you can sense; you might want to consider how many things and experiences you encounter daily that you will never comprehend. The power of music for example, the vastness of space, the absurdity of dreams, the intensity of envy, of joy, of grief. Not to mention wind, water, or fire.
Sure, we know the scientific names for some of their components, but that doesn’t scratch the surface of what we would call: real knowing. The list of what lies beyond our ken is endless — and still, we as human beings, have become inured to the sheer normalcy of things that are beyond our comprehension. This is to say that it’s probable that there’s nothing in the world that we do comprehend, at least not fully. In this sense, the abstractions, the “unknowables” are around us, always —and strangely, they are not so foreign to us. We are accustomed to them, even comfortable with them. Of course, we are. We exist alongside only what is unknowable and utterly inscrutable
Just a note: The Antivert worked, the room stopped spinning. I drank some mint tea, ate a half box of crackers, and caught the same flight back to LA the following morning. You can bet I prayed with a new intention after that trying day.
Like What You Read? Give Jews around the world the chance to experience engaging Jewish wisdom with more articles and videos on Aish. It would make your mother so proud and as a nonprofit organization it's your support that keeps us going. Thanks a ton!
ONE TIME $54 $108 $1000 OTHERMONTHLY $10 $18 $100 OTHER
Submit
Share this article
FacebookTwitterLinkedInPrintFriendlyShare
More About The Author
Peter Himmelman
Peter Himmelman isn’t your run of the mill Grammy and Emmy nominated singer-songwriter. He’s also an erudite and entertaining communicator whose unique skill-sets have placed him squarely in the zeitgeist where creativity, spirituality, and a fearless sense of wonder have become essential for understanding our rapidly changing cultural landscape. Most recently Himmelman began, Big Muse, a highly regarded methodology for developing creative thinking and deeper levels of communication.
More from this Author >
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