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Re: AISH
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Antisemitism-Isnt-Only-a-Jewish-Problem.html?
Antisemitism Isn’t Only a Jewish Problem
Jul 4, 2021 | by Adam Milsteinprint articleAntisemitism Isn’t Only a Jewish Problem
Instead of playing the role of the canary in the coal mine, we need to actively work to detect threats far before they harm us and our country.
Throughout Jewish history in the diaspora, Jews lived at the mercy of local rulers and largely lacked the ability to defend themselves. Today, however, American Jews have established themselves as one of the most successful immigrant communities in the United States and they also have the State of Israel to rely upon. Yet, in the face of intensifying antisemitism too much focus has been placed on documenting, educating about, and objecting to antisemitic acts after they occur instead of going on the offense. Not enough resources are and were invested in holding antisemites directly accountable and creating consequences for their bigotry.
Jew-hatred has become excusable and almost mainstream in America. During the latest Israel–Hamas conflict, we witnessed Jews in New York, Los Angeles, and other cities were violently attacked by mobs of anti-Israel demonstrators. In a shocking development many would never have thought possible within living memory of the Holocaust, many Jews in America now fear walking on the streets wearing articles or items that readily identify them as Jewish.
There has been outrage against the recent acts of violence against American Jews, but BDS movement and other antisemitic groups are only gaining strength. There has been outrage against growing antisemitism on mainstream media and social media, but the bias against Jews and the State of Israel is just exploding. There has outrage against legislators Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib for promoting antisemitic tropes, but they’ve been let off with only a light slap on the wrist.
Some of this inaction can be explained by the false sense of security many American Jews cling to despite the alarming rise in hatred and violence toward Jews in America. However, most Jews and other Americans fail to appreciate that antisemitism is not just a problem for Jews; antisemitism is an issue for all Americans and threatens to destroy the American way of life.
The goal of the radical groups who espouse antisemitism – the radical left, the radical right, radical Muslims, and radical African Americans of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam or the Black Hebrew Israelites – is not just to eradicate all Jews but mainly to destroy America as we know it. But, since Jews are the direct target of antisemitism, other Americans perceive Jew-hatred as a uniquely Jewish problem and fail to realize that defining antisemitism as a Jewish problem has long been a lose-lose proposition.
These radical groups are spearheading efforts to erode the core principles that make our country exceptional. Collectively, these extremist groups reject the Judeo-Christian values that have supported the foundation of our country and have protected all minority communities in America, including Jews.
If we don’t take new, pro-active approaches, rising antisemitic attacks and public displays of hate will continue to come from these radical movements. If we, as American Jews, are truly ready to subdue this hate, we must start fighting Jew-hatred head-on together with our fellow Americans.
We will lose as Jews and as Americans if we continue accepting our prescribed role as the sacrificial canary in the coal mine, hoping that others may recognize the danger after it has already consumed us whole.
Instead, we need to actively work to detect threats far before they harm us and our country. There are practical actions we must take to go on the offensive against antisemitism. They include:
1. investigating and exposing the radical movements that fuel the spread of this hatred by identifying their networks, financing and agendas;
2. increasing knowledge-sharing capabilities that inform the American people about the threats and empower them to take action;
3. holding the media accountable to the standards of a fair and free press;
4. supporting legislation that curbs the influence of the radical movements in our institutions
Rather than bemoaning the problem, it is time for all Americans to fight against this hatred and racism and for Jews to stand at the forefront of this fight.
Our history and the increasingly precarious reality demonstrate that the inalienable rights afforded by the Constitution cannot be taken for granted. We must uncompromisingly, bravely, and adamantly defend America from the dangers of antisemitism and the extremism it represents.
Photo credit: Angelica Ribeiro, Unsplash
Antisemitism Isn’t Only a Jewish Problem
Jul 4, 2021 | by Adam Milsteinprint articleAntisemitism Isn’t Only a Jewish Problem
Instead of playing the role of the canary in the coal mine, we need to actively work to detect threats far before they harm us and our country.
Throughout Jewish history in the diaspora, Jews lived at the mercy of local rulers and largely lacked the ability to defend themselves. Today, however, American Jews have established themselves as one of the most successful immigrant communities in the United States and they also have the State of Israel to rely upon. Yet, in the face of intensifying antisemitism too much focus has been placed on documenting, educating about, and objecting to antisemitic acts after they occur instead of going on the offense. Not enough resources are and were invested in holding antisemites directly accountable and creating consequences for their bigotry.
Jew-hatred has become excusable and almost mainstream in America. During the latest Israel–Hamas conflict, we witnessed Jews in New York, Los Angeles, and other cities were violently attacked by mobs of anti-Israel demonstrators. In a shocking development many would never have thought possible within living memory of the Holocaust, many Jews in America now fear walking on the streets wearing articles or items that readily identify them as Jewish.
There has been outrage against the recent acts of violence against American Jews, but BDS movement and other antisemitic groups are only gaining strength. There has been outrage against growing antisemitism on mainstream media and social media, but the bias against Jews and the State of Israel is just exploding. There has outrage against legislators Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib for promoting antisemitic tropes, but they’ve been let off with only a light slap on the wrist.
Some of this inaction can be explained by the false sense of security many American Jews cling to despite the alarming rise in hatred and violence toward Jews in America. However, most Jews and other Americans fail to appreciate that antisemitism is not just a problem for Jews; antisemitism is an issue for all Americans and threatens to destroy the American way of life.
The goal of the radical groups who espouse antisemitism – the radical left, the radical right, radical Muslims, and radical African Americans of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam or the Black Hebrew Israelites – is not just to eradicate all Jews but mainly to destroy America as we know it. But, since Jews are the direct target of antisemitism, other Americans perceive Jew-hatred as a uniquely Jewish problem and fail to realize that defining antisemitism as a Jewish problem has long been a lose-lose proposition.
These radical groups are spearheading efforts to erode the core principles that make our country exceptional. Collectively, these extremist groups reject the Judeo-Christian values that have supported the foundation of our country and have protected all minority communities in America, including Jews.
If we don’t take new, pro-active approaches, rising antisemitic attacks and public displays of hate will continue to come from these radical movements. If we, as American Jews, are truly ready to subdue this hate, we must start fighting Jew-hatred head-on together with our fellow Americans.
We will lose as Jews and as Americans if we continue accepting our prescribed role as the sacrificial canary in the coal mine, hoping that others may recognize the danger after it has already consumed us whole.
Instead, we need to actively work to detect threats far before they harm us and our country. There are practical actions we must take to go on the offensive against antisemitism. They include:
1. investigating and exposing the radical movements that fuel the spread of this hatred by identifying their networks, financing and agendas;
2. increasing knowledge-sharing capabilities that inform the American people about the threats and empower them to take action;
3. holding the media accountable to the standards of a fair and free press;
4. supporting legislation that curbs the influence of the radical movements in our institutions
Rather than bemoaning the problem, it is time for all Americans to fight against this hatred and racism and for Jews to stand at the forefront of this fight.
Our history and the increasingly precarious reality demonstrate that the inalienable rights afforded by the Constitution cannot be taken for granted. We must uncompromisingly, bravely, and adamantly defend America from the dangers of antisemitism and the extremism it represents.
Photo credit: Angelica Ribeiro, Unsplash
Re: AISH
https://www.aish.com/ci/s/Will-Joe-Biden-Grant-My-Daughter-Justice.html?
Will Joe Biden Grant My Daughter Justice?
Jul 4, 2021 | by Arnold Rothprint article
Will Joe Biden Grant My Daughter Justice?
America still has the power to extradite the terrorist who murdered her.
This essay was originally published on journalist Bari Weiss’ Substack. Please subscribe and support her important work.
A deafening explosion on a blazing summer afternoon 20 years ago ripped apart a Jerusalem pizzeria filled with families. Among the 15 killed in the Sbarro massacre on August 9, 2001, were my daughter Malki, 15, and her closest friend Michal, 16. Half the dead and most of the 130 wounded were children.
The terrorist sought a child-rich target and found it.
Ahlam Tamimi, a young Jordanian woman and an aspiring journalist, delivered the human bomb: a Palestinian man with a Hamas-made explosives-and-shrapnel-filled guitar case slung over his shoulder.
Tamimi made her get-away before the bomb detonated. She had no intention of dying that day and was well on her way out of the center of Jerusalem as it filled with dazed and hysterical survivors, first responders, security forces and Haredi volunteers engaged in gathering up body parts, some of them peeled off walls or pavement, for later burial. Their gruesome presence became a familiar sight in the following years as crowded Israeli buses and cafés became the targets of choice for Hamas, Fatah and similar agents of unfathomable darkness.
Tamimi was a 21-year-old journalism student freshly arrived from Jordan who worked evenings as a news reader for an Arab station located in Ramallah, only an hour’s drive from the site of the carnage. A video clip of her presenting that night’s news bulletin on Al-Istiqlal TV may be the only instance in the annals of television where an atrocity was reported by the perpetrator. Later, Tamimi spoke of how hard it was to suppress the jubilation that the deaths and injuries of Jews – especially Jewish children – aroused within her.
Tamimi reads the news of the bombing she had orchestrated. August 9, 2001 (Screenshot)
Israeli authorities arrested Tamimi a few weeks later. But this account is not one of those conventional narratives of justice triumphing over evil. I wish it were.
Ours is a story of parents whose shiva for a much-loved child has gone on for two decades. Abandoned by the government of Israel, our chosen home, we are now pleading with the one power in a position to see justice done: the United States.
In 2003, an Israeli court sentenced Tamimi to 16 consecutive terms of life imprisonment. She confessed to all charges, smiling throughout the proceedings. Horrified by the brazenness of a defendant manifesting “the very lowest level of humankind,” as the court put it, the judges recommended she never be eligible for early parole or a pardon.
Knowing she would spend the rest of her life in prison left the pain of our loss undiminished, but it brought a certain degree of closure. What followed after felt like being in a slow-motion car crash.
In October 2011, under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu – a prime minister who made his international reputation by authoring a bestseller arguing that deals must never be done with terrorists – Tamimi was one of 1,027 convicted terrorists, released by Israel in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who had been held hostage by Hamas for five years.
It was an extortionate deal, rammed through by senior politicians with only some lip-service paid to the anguish it would inflict upon the victims and their families. While it was happening, my wife and I quietly delivered several letters to the office of Prime Minister Netanyahu – handed personally to him, we were told – explaining why Tamimi should not be part of the transaction. All went unacknowledged.
The captured Israeli soldier, Shalit, returned to the embrace of his family. In the meantime, our daughter’s murderer embarked on years of victory laps and stardom across the Middle East. Public appearances, speeches and raucous celebrations elevated her to pan-Arab celebrity. She even got her own TV show.
Tamimi waves as she arrives at Queen Alia international airport in Amman on October 18, 2011. (Louai Beshara/AFP)
We had an initial taste of the nightmare ahead in one of her first interviews following her return to Amman: “I do not regret what happened” she said on camera. “Absolutely not. This is the path. I dedicated myself to Jihad for the sake of Allah, and Allah granted me success. You know how many casualties there were. This was made possible by Allah. Do you want me to denounce what I did? That's out of the question. I would do it again today and in the same manner.” It felt as if Malki was being buried again.
Then, in the midst of our despair, we found hope. It came via two pieces of information.
First, we learned that because Americans had been murdered at Sbarro, a rarely-invoked federal law, Section 2332a of Title 18 of the United States code, might apply to get Tamimi back behind bars in the U.S.
Second, we learned that Jordan and the United States have had an extradition treaty since 1995.
The lives of three U.S. nationals and one unborn American child ended in the Sbarro conflagration. One was a newly married young woman, herself an only child, visiting from New Jersey. She was pregnant with her first baby. Next, a young mother was catastrophically brain-damaged, alive but in a vegetative coma to this day. (The toddler daughter she was eating pizza with survived unharmed and grew up motherless.) And finally, our Malki, an American citizen because her mother is a native New Yorker.
So we took our case to Washington.
We imagined an open-and-shut case. It hasn’t worked out that way.
What followed were five aching years of Sisyphean frustration, campaigning for justice under Section 2332a, creating jurisdiction in U.S. federal court for criminal offenses causing the death of American nationals outside the country by means of a weapon of mass destruction.
In 2013, the DOJ filed charges against Tamimi in federal court. But then it promptly sealed them, revealing their existence only four years later. In March 2017, apparently after behind-the-scenes diplomacy with Jordan failed, senior Justice Department officials unsealed the charges, branding Tamimi “an unrepentant terrorist” and adding her to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list. A $5 million bounty was announced in early 2018.
Malki embracing Michal. The girls are buried beside each other.
The other fugitives on this list are, not surprisingly, all in hiding. But the investigators and prosecutors at the DOJ and the FBI know exactly where Tamimi lives. Since 2011, she has lived spectacularly free in Jordan’s capital, Amman, where she is a folk hero. In a recent tribute to her on “Caravan,” one of Jordan’s most watched TV shows, the excited presenter blurted out to Tamimi and her convicted-terrorist husband, Nazir Tamimi: “You, the people of the struggle, elevate the name of Jordan!”
Why has my daughter’s murderer been allowed to thrive?
Cynics point to the realpolitik of our situation. Jordan is a key U.S. ally; justice for a murdered American girl is simply not worth disrupting such an important alliance. This theory is bolstered by the U.S.’s near-apathetic response to the grisly murder of Washington Post columnist and Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.
But Jordan offered another explanation. In March 2017, six days after the criminal charges against Tamimi were unsealed and more than two decades after the extradition treaty with the U.S. went into effect, Jordan’s highest court declared the 1995 treaty to be invalid. Jordan’s most senior judges said it had never been ratified by the Jordanian legislature.
That isn’t true. Jordan had indeed ratified the treaty. I know because my wife and I used our right under the Freedom of Information Act to request the 1995 treaty documents from the State Department. When they failed to hand them over, we sued. In April, the State Department released the key documents.
They contained a bombshell.
Writing in regal style and invoking the “guidance of God,” the late King Hussein declared in a July 13, 1995, document addressed to the U.S. government his personal agreement as Jordan’s sovereign “to and ratification of that treaty in whole and in part. We further pledge to carry out its provisions and abide by its Articles, and we, God willing, shall not allow its violation.”
Jordan betrayed the treaty, plain as day. But no U.S. government official has publicly addressed Jordan’s failure to comply with its treaty obligation, let alone protest the moral offense or the insult to American interests and decades of mutually beneficial relations.
Tamimi’s name is vastly better known than that of my child and the other victims. In large part this is because there has not been a single investigative report in any part of the mainstream U.S. media into how the world’s most wanted female fugitive remains free. All of this means you likely know nothing about my daughter Malki and the luminous goodness of her tragically short life. That has been the most humiliating dimension of our battle.
As a parent seeking justice, I know I need to stay calm and restrained. But I have been suppressing an internal volcano for many years now. Together with my wife, I have implored officials at every level in Jerusalem, Washington and Amman to honor justice, the law, and bilateral treaty relationships by allowing a prosecution of obvious justice to proceed.
We have blogged and written Op-Eds. We have spoken by video conference and addressed live audiences. We have asked for support – and we have been stunned by how almost none of the details were known by our audiences until we conveyed them.
President Joe Biden, who knows well the inexpressible pain of losing a child, has a unique opportunity to deliver us justice. Later this month, Jordan’s King Abdullah II will be paying an official visit to Washington, the first Arab leader to meet personally with the 46th president.
President Biden, we beg you: press him to live up to Jordan’s promise by extraditing Ahlam Tamimi. Let her stand trial for murdering innocent Americans – one of them, my child.
Will Joe Biden Grant My Daughter Justice?
Jul 4, 2021 | by Arnold Rothprint article
Will Joe Biden Grant My Daughter Justice?
America still has the power to extradite the terrorist who murdered her.
This essay was originally published on journalist Bari Weiss’ Substack. Please subscribe and support her important work.
A deafening explosion on a blazing summer afternoon 20 years ago ripped apart a Jerusalem pizzeria filled with families. Among the 15 killed in the Sbarro massacre on August 9, 2001, were my daughter Malki, 15, and her closest friend Michal, 16. Half the dead and most of the 130 wounded were children.
The terrorist sought a child-rich target and found it.
Ahlam Tamimi, a young Jordanian woman and an aspiring journalist, delivered the human bomb: a Palestinian man with a Hamas-made explosives-and-shrapnel-filled guitar case slung over his shoulder.
Tamimi made her get-away before the bomb detonated. She had no intention of dying that day and was well on her way out of the center of Jerusalem as it filled with dazed and hysterical survivors, first responders, security forces and Haredi volunteers engaged in gathering up body parts, some of them peeled off walls or pavement, for later burial. Their gruesome presence became a familiar sight in the following years as crowded Israeli buses and cafés became the targets of choice for Hamas, Fatah and similar agents of unfathomable darkness.
Tamimi was a 21-year-old journalism student freshly arrived from Jordan who worked evenings as a news reader for an Arab station located in Ramallah, only an hour’s drive from the site of the carnage. A video clip of her presenting that night’s news bulletin on Al-Istiqlal TV may be the only instance in the annals of television where an atrocity was reported by the perpetrator. Later, Tamimi spoke of how hard it was to suppress the jubilation that the deaths and injuries of Jews – especially Jewish children – aroused within her.
Tamimi reads the news of the bombing she had orchestrated. August 9, 2001 (Screenshot)
Israeli authorities arrested Tamimi a few weeks later. But this account is not one of those conventional narratives of justice triumphing over evil. I wish it were.
Ours is a story of parents whose shiva for a much-loved child has gone on for two decades. Abandoned by the government of Israel, our chosen home, we are now pleading with the one power in a position to see justice done: the United States.
In 2003, an Israeli court sentenced Tamimi to 16 consecutive terms of life imprisonment. She confessed to all charges, smiling throughout the proceedings. Horrified by the brazenness of a defendant manifesting “the very lowest level of humankind,” as the court put it, the judges recommended she never be eligible for early parole or a pardon.
Knowing she would spend the rest of her life in prison left the pain of our loss undiminished, but it brought a certain degree of closure. What followed after felt like being in a slow-motion car crash.
In October 2011, under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu – a prime minister who made his international reputation by authoring a bestseller arguing that deals must never be done with terrorists – Tamimi was one of 1,027 convicted terrorists, released by Israel in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who had been held hostage by Hamas for five years.
It was an extortionate deal, rammed through by senior politicians with only some lip-service paid to the anguish it would inflict upon the victims and their families. While it was happening, my wife and I quietly delivered several letters to the office of Prime Minister Netanyahu – handed personally to him, we were told – explaining why Tamimi should not be part of the transaction. All went unacknowledged.
The captured Israeli soldier, Shalit, returned to the embrace of his family. In the meantime, our daughter’s murderer embarked on years of victory laps and stardom across the Middle East. Public appearances, speeches and raucous celebrations elevated her to pan-Arab celebrity. She even got her own TV show.
Tamimi waves as she arrives at Queen Alia international airport in Amman on October 18, 2011. (Louai Beshara/AFP)
We had an initial taste of the nightmare ahead in one of her first interviews following her return to Amman: “I do not regret what happened” she said on camera. “Absolutely not. This is the path. I dedicated myself to Jihad for the sake of Allah, and Allah granted me success. You know how many casualties there were. This was made possible by Allah. Do you want me to denounce what I did? That's out of the question. I would do it again today and in the same manner.” It felt as if Malki was being buried again.
Then, in the midst of our despair, we found hope. It came via two pieces of information.
First, we learned that because Americans had been murdered at Sbarro, a rarely-invoked federal law, Section 2332a of Title 18 of the United States code, might apply to get Tamimi back behind bars in the U.S.
Second, we learned that Jordan and the United States have had an extradition treaty since 1995.
The lives of three U.S. nationals and one unborn American child ended in the Sbarro conflagration. One was a newly married young woman, herself an only child, visiting from New Jersey. She was pregnant with her first baby. Next, a young mother was catastrophically brain-damaged, alive but in a vegetative coma to this day. (The toddler daughter she was eating pizza with survived unharmed and grew up motherless.) And finally, our Malki, an American citizen because her mother is a native New Yorker.
So we took our case to Washington.
We imagined an open-and-shut case. It hasn’t worked out that way.
What followed were five aching years of Sisyphean frustration, campaigning for justice under Section 2332a, creating jurisdiction in U.S. federal court for criminal offenses causing the death of American nationals outside the country by means of a weapon of mass destruction.
In 2013, the DOJ filed charges against Tamimi in federal court. But then it promptly sealed them, revealing their existence only four years later. In March 2017, apparently after behind-the-scenes diplomacy with Jordan failed, senior Justice Department officials unsealed the charges, branding Tamimi “an unrepentant terrorist” and adding her to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list. A $5 million bounty was announced in early 2018.
Malki embracing Michal. The girls are buried beside each other.
The other fugitives on this list are, not surprisingly, all in hiding. But the investigators and prosecutors at the DOJ and the FBI know exactly where Tamimi lives. Since 2011, she has lived spectacularly free in Jordan’s capital, Amman, where she is a folk hero. In a recent tribute to her on “Caravan,” one of Jordan’s most watched TV shows, the excited presenter blurted out to Tamimi and her convicted-terrorist husband, Nazir Tamimi: “You, the people of the struggle, elevate the name of Jordan!”
Why has my daughter’s murderer been allowed to thrive?
Cynics point to the realpolitik of our situation. Jordan is a key U.S. ally; justice for a murdered American girl is simply not worth disrupting such an important alliance. This theory is bolstered by the U.S.’s near-apathetic response to the grisly murder of Washington Post columnist and Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.
But Jordan offered another explanation. In March 2017, six days after the criminal charges against Tamimi were unsealed and more than two decades after the extradition treaty with the U.S. went into effect, Jordan’s highest court declared the 1995 treaty to be invalid. Jordan’s most senior judges said it had never been ratified by the Jordanian legislature.
That isn’t true. Jordan had indeed ratified the treaty. I know because my wife and I used our right under the Freedom of Information Act to request the 1995 treaty documents from the State Department. When they failed to hand them over, we sued. In April, the State Department released the key documents.
They contained a bombshell.
Writing in regal style and invoking the “guidance of God,” the late King Hussein declared in a July 13, 1995, document addressed to the U.S. government his personal agreement as Jordan’s sovereign “to and ratification of that treaty in whole and in part. We further pledge to carry out its provisions and abide by its Articles, and we, God willing, shall not allow its violation.”
Jordan betrayed the treaty, plain as day. But no U.S. government official has publicly addressed Jordan’s failure to comply with its treaty obligation, let alone protest the moral offense or the insult to American interests and decades of mutually beneficial relations.
Tamimi’s name is vastly better known than that of my child and the other victims. In large part this is because there has not been a single investigative report in any part of the mainstream U.S. media into how the world’s most wanted female fugitive remains free. All of this means you likely know nothing about my daughter Malki and the luminous goodness of her tragically short life. That has been the most humiliating dimension of our battle.
As a parent seeking justice, I know I need to stay calm and restrained. But I have been suppressing an internal volcano for many years now. Together with my wife, I have implored officials at every level in Jerusalem, Washington and Amman to honor justice, the law, and bilateral treaty relationships by allowing a prosecution of obvious justice to proceed.
We have blogged and written Op-Eds. We have spoken by video conference and addressed live audiences. We have asked for support – and we have been stunned by how almost none of the details were known by our audiences until we conveyed them.
President Joe Biden, who knows well the inexpressible pain of losing a child, has a unique opportunity to deliver us justice. Later this month, Jordan’s King Abdullah II will be paying an official visit to Washington, the first Arab leader to meet personally with the 46th president.
President Biden, we beg you: press him to live up to Jordan’s promise by extraditing Ahlam Tamimi. Let her stand trial for murdering innocent Americans – one of them, my child.
Re: AISH
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/At-the-Frontlines-in-Surfside.html?s=ac&
At the Frontlines in Surfside
Jun 28, 2021 | by Dr. Yvette Alt Millerprint article
At the Frontlines in Surfside
Interviews with volunteers from the Jewish community who are helping victims of the disaster in Florida.
On Thursday, June 24, 2021, tragedy struck Champlain Towers, a 12-story residential building in the Miami suburb of Surfside. Half of the complex suddenly collapsed in the early hours of the morning, burying entire families in the rubble. Days after the disaster, the remains of several people killed in the crush have been recovered and 150 people remain unaccounted for.
Champlain Towers is home to a diverse community that includes many Jews. In the days that followed this catastrophe, Jews and others around the world have come together to help search for victims and to comfort the families desperately waiting for word of their loved ones.
Searching Through the Rubble
Leon Roy Hausmann, a volunteer with the Mexican Jewish rescue organization Cadena, is on the scene in Surfside and spoke with Aish.com about the sense of solidarity he feels with the community and the many victims of the calamity.
Cadena volunteers help people “regardless of nationality, regardless of religion; we don’t discriminate,” he explains. After working around the world to help search for and rescue victims of over 1,000 natural disasters, helping search for residents of Champlain Towers feels close to home. “It just feels more immediate when it’s our people who are victimized by this event.”
When Cadena volunteers heard about the Chaplain Towers collapse, they sprang into action, dispatching seven Jewish search and rescue experts to Miami, and mobilizing local Cadena volunteers in the Miami area. “This is the highest technology in the market,” Hausmann notes of his team’s equipment, which includes sonar devices that can detect sounds underneath dozens of feet of rubble, search dogs trained to detect human scent, and x-ray machinery.
“We’re working with the Fire Department of Miami-Dade County," Hausmann notes, describing their work as round the clock and nonstop. Cadena volunteers have also dispatched psychologists and therapists who are working with family members who are still awaiting news.
Thousands of local residents have been volunteering to bring food and clothes and other items to the family members who are waiting and also to those families who made it out of Chaplain Towers alive and are currently homeless. “Thousands of volunteers have been bringing food and clothes and anything the families need. It has been very touching to see.”
One of Hausmann’s most moving moments during the past few days came on Shabbat, the day after the collapse. About 17 Cadena volunteers were at the site late on Friday night, providing support to the local fire department rescuers. “We made Kiddush for the whole team,” Hausmann recalls, “and also for all the Jewish people who are still trapped underneath the rubble.”
Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai at the site of a building collapse in Surfside, Florida, just outside Miami, on June 27, 2021
On Sunday, June 27, a group of ten Israeli Home Front Command soldiers arrived in Surfside. They went straight to the site of the building collapse and got to work alongside Cadena volunteers and local Miami-area first responders, searching in the rubble for survivors and also for the remains of victims of the collapse, bringing their unique search and rescue experience and expertise.
Rabbi Counselling the Bereaved and the Waiting
“The need right now is endless. You think of all these different families that have been erased in the blink of an eye,” explained Rabbi Dr. Fred Klein, one of the key responders in the area.
Rabbi Klein is the Executive Vice President of the Rabbinical Association of Greater Miami, Director of Mishkan Miami, and is board certified in clinical pastoral care. When Champlain Towers collapsed, the Jewish Federation of Greater Miami sent Rabbi Klein to help. He spoke with Aish.com during a busy day, filled with meetings and work coordinating the many elements of response to the disaster.
Right now, there are two main areas where Rabbi Klein and other volunteers are focusing their efforts. “One is actually the area where they’re doing search and rescue,” he explains. Throughout Sunday, June 27 – the Jewish fast day of the 17th of Tammuz, when Jews were fasting despite the extreme heat in Surfside – Rabbi Klein worked to take groups of family members to visit the site. “It’s extremely traumatic for them.”
A second area where Rabbi Klein is working is a local hotel where hundreds of family members of people who are still missing are gathered. “They came from around the country. They’re waiting for news and I think it’s a very difficult place to be psychologically.” He notes that many family members are praying “for a miracle” that their loved ones are found alive. “It’s hard to know what to do, or how to feel, or how to plan,” without knowing whether their loved ones are still alive. The hotel is offering kosher meals, all prepared by local volunteers. “So much good will has been flowing in from the Jewish community since the tragedy," Rabbi Klein explains, helping both Jewish and non-Jewish victims alike.
He notes that donations have poured in from throughout the area and that some local synagogues have transformed themselves into distribution centers for donated goods. “It’s not just the families who are waiting for news of a loved one,” he notes: “There are also families who lived in Champlain Towers who escaped. They are in need too. They’re homeless right now and are going to have to rebuild their lives.”
“I’m an Orthodox rabbi,” he notes, “but you see rabbis from all different walks of life – men and women – they’re on the ground right now. They’re trying to help diverse groups of Jews.”
Vital Medical Support
Many of the volunteers supporting the first responders in Surfside and aiding families of missing people are members of Hatzalah of South Florida, a Jewish group that improves health and medical outcomes by “augmenting existing emergency medical services in South Florida with community-based state-certified EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) volunteer responders.”
Joseph Dahan is one of the Hatzalah volunteers working in Surfside. “We’re broken down into several different teams,” he explained to Aish.com – with each team focusing on a different area of need.
At the site of the building collapse itself, “we’re providing the triage and medical support for the search and rescue teams,” he notes. When rescuers become injured or dehydrated on the job, Hatzalah volunteers help tend to the first responders.
Hatzalah also operates units of volunteers at the hotel where hundreds of family members are waiting for news. They employ psychotherapists and also work with other organizations to help counsel people. Hatzalah provides support medically and emotionally during these trying times.
Running a Storehouse of Donated Goods
Rabbi Gidon Moskovitz currently lives in Houston, but he and his family are soon planning to move to Bal Harbor – a neighboring suburb near Surfside – when he becomes the rabbi of Young Israel of Bal Harbor later this summer. As soon as Rabbi Moskovitz heard about Champlain Towers disaster, he knew he had to be with his Florida congregants, and flew to the area to help.
What he found was a huge outpouring of chesed (acts of kindness and help). Local Jews were collecting food, toiletries and other items to donate to families who lost their homes and possessions in the collapse. Soon, the garage of Young Israel of Bal Harbor was filled with donated items to distribute. Many of his congregants have friends and relatives who are still missing, and they are doing all they can to help.
“We knew they had nothing.”
“As soon as we heard about things Thursday morning at the crack of dawn, we checked on our (congregational) families,” recalls Mike Baranek, the Director of Congregational Engagement of Temple Beth Shalom in Miami Beach, in an Aish.com interview. He soon found that two of his synagogue’s members lived in Champlain Towers. “Thank God, both families were alive,” he notes. “One family walked out (of the building) in their pajamas” – unable to return to the destroyed building, they cannot access any of their family possessions.
Baranek notes that local Jewish families immediately opened their homes, giving displaced residents places to stay. “It’s been an amazing response from the city and from the Jewish community.” His congregants have been working to gather donations and to help in any way they can. “We got to the point where announcements were made that no more physical supplies are needed.”
The day after the collapse, Temple Beth Shalom delivered Shabbat dinner to their congregants who’d lost their homes. In addition to food, the synagogue also delivered kippahs, tallitot (Jewish prayer shawls), siddurs (Jewish prayer books), wine and candles for Shabbat. “We knew they had nothing,” Baranek explains.
What we can do
With the search and rescue operation still underway, there are many ways that we around the world can also step up to help. “At this moment the most important thing is to pray for the lives of the people who perished and who may still be alive,” notes Cadena volunteer Leon Roy Hausmann. Rabbi Moskovitz has been emphasizing the “power of what prayer can do.” He wants people to understand that prayer is just as important as other types of actions.
During times of tragedy, it’s a Jewish custom to recite Psalms. Consider spending some time reciting one or more Psalms each day. Here is a link to English translations of these powerful, timeless Jewish prayers. https://tehillim-online.com/tehillim-translated-into-english
We can also donate funds to help sustain the volunteers working in Surfside and the families who are in dire need.
The Greater Miami Jewish Federation has set up a fund to help victims of the Champlain Towers collapse. https://jewishmiami.org/gift/surfsidebuildingcollapse/?fbclid=IwAR318kF3kFQzOJaVXD3mVG0Zedgd0-f1SGr-wWGCZGi5B0zUhMOKafbr4Rk
The Shul of Bal Harbour, which is near to Champlain Towers and has served as a center for receiving and sorting donations, has set up the 8777 Collins Avenue Relief Fund. This fund will “be dispersed as needed directly to the victims and families.” https://www.theshul.org/8777
Donations to Hatzalah of South Florida can be made at this site: https://www.hatzalahsouthflorida.org/donate
At the Frontlines in Surfside
Jun 28, 2021 | by Dr. Yvette Alt Millerprint article
At the Frontlines in Surfside
Interviews with volunteers from the Jewish community who are helping victims of the disaster in Florida.
On Thursday, June 24, 2021, tragedy struck Champlain Towers, a 12-story residential building in the Miami suburb of Surfside. Half of the complex suddenly collapsed in the early hours of the morning, burying entire families in the rubble. Days after the disaster, the remains of several people killed in the crush have been recovered and 150 people remain unaccounted for.
Champlain Towers is home to a diverse community that includes many Jews. In the days that followed this catastrophe, Jews and others around the world have come together to help search for victims and to comfort the families desperately waiting for word of their loved ones.
Searching Through the Rubble
Leon Roy Hausmann, a volunteer with the Mexican Jewish rescue organization Cadena, is on the scene in Surfside and spoke with Aish.com about the sense of solidarity he feels with the community and the many victims of the calamity.
Cadena volunteers help people “regardless of nationality, regardless of religion; we don’t discriminate,” he explains. After working around the world to help search for and rescue victims of over 1,000 natural disasters, helping search for residents of Champlain Towers feels close to home. “It just feels more immediate when it’s our people who are victimized by this event.”
When Cadena volunteers heard about the Chaplain Towers collapse, they sprang into action, dispatching seven Jewish search and rescue experts to Miami, and mobilizing local Cadena volunteers in the Miami area. “This is the highest technology in the market,” Hausmann notes of his team’s equipment, which includes sonar devices that can detect sounds underneath dozens of feet of rubble, search dogs trained to detect human scent, and x-ray machinery.
“We’re working with the Fire Department of Miami-Dade County," Hausmann notes, describing their work as round the clock and nonstop. Cadena volunteers have also dispatched psychologists and therapists who are working with family members who are still awaiting news.
Thousands of local residents have been volunteering to bring food and clothes and other items to the family members who are waiting and also to those families who made it out of Chaplain Towers alive and are currently homeless. “Thousands of volunteers have been bringing food and clothes and anything the families need. It has been very touching to see.”
One of Hausmann’s most moving moments during the past few days came on Shabbat, the day after the collapse. About 17 Cadena volunteers were at the site late on Friday night, providing support to the local fire department rescuers. “We made Kiddush for the whole team,” Hausmann recalls, “and also for all the Jewish people who are still trapped underneath the rubble.”
Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai at the site of a building collapse in Surfside, Florida, just outside Miami, on June 27, 2021
On Sunday, June 27, a group of ten Israeli Home Front Command soldiers arrived in Surfside. They went straight to the site of the building collapse and got to work alongside Cadena volunteers and local Miami-area first responders, searching in the rubble for survivors and also for the remains of victims of the collapse, bringing their unique search and rescue experience and expertise.
Rabbi Counselling the Bereaved and the Waiting
“The need right now is endless. You think of all these different families that have been erased in the blink of an eye,” explained Rabbi Dr. Fred Klein, one of the key responders in the area.
Rabbi Klein is the Executive Vice President of the Rabbinical Association of Greater Miami, Director of Mishkan Miami, and is board certified in clinical pastoral care. When Champlain Towers collapsed, the Jewish Federation of Greater Miami sent Rabbi Klein to help. He spoke with Aish.com during a busy day, filled with meetings and work coordinating the many elements of response to the disaster.
Right now, there are two main areas where Rabbi Klein and other volunteers are focusing their efforts. “One is actually the area where they’re doing search and rescue,” he explains. Throughout Sunday, June 27 – the Jewish fast day of the 17th of Tammuz, when Jews were fasting despite the extreme heat in Surfside – Rabbi Klein worked to take groups of family members to visit the site. “It’s extremely traumatic for them.”
A second area where Rabbi Klein is working is a local hotel where hundreds of family members of people who are still missing are gathered. “They came from around the country. They’re waiting for news and I think it’s a very difficult place to be psychologically.” He notes that many family members are praying “for a miracle” that their loved ones are found alive. “It’s hard to know what to do, or how to feel, or how to plan,” without knowing whether their loved ones are still alive. The hotel is offering kosher meals, all prepared by local volunteers. “So much good will has been flowing in from the Jewish community since the tragedy," Rabbi Klein explains, helping both Jewish and non-Jewish victims alike.
He notes that donations have poured in from throughout the area and that some local synagogues have transformed themselves into distribution centers for donated goods. “It’s not just the families who are waiting for news of a loved one,” he notes: “There are also families who lived in Champlain Towers who escaped. They are in need too. They’re homeless right now and are going to have to rebuild their lives.”
“I’m an Orthodox rabbi,” he notes, “but you see rabbis from all different walks of life – men and women – they’re on the ground right now. They’re trying to help diverse groups of Jews.”
Vital Medical Support
Many of the volunteers supporting the first responders in Surfside and aiding families of missing people are members of Hatzalah of South Florida, a Jewish group that improves health and medical outcomes by “augmenting existing emergency medical services in South Florida with community-based state-certified EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) volunteer responders.”
Joseph Dahan is one of the Hatzalah volunteers working in Surfside. “We’re broken down into several different teams,” he explained to Aish.com – with each team focusing on a different area of need.
At the site of the building collapse itself, “we’re providing the triage and medical support for the search and rescue teams,” he notes. When rescuers become injured or dehydrated on the job, Hatzalah volunteers help tend to the first responders.
Hatzalah also operates units of volunteers at the hotel where hundreds of family members are waiting for news. They employ psychotherapists and also work with other organizations to help counsel people. Hatzalah provides support medically and emotionally during these trying times.
Running a Storehouse of Donated Goods
Rabbi Gidon Moskovitz currently lives in Houston, but he and his family are soon planning to move to Bal Harbor – a neighboring suburb near Surfside – when he becomes the rabbi of Young Israel of Bal Harbor later this summer. As soon as Rabbi Moskovitz heard about Champlain Towers disaster, he knew he had to be with his Florida congregants, and flew to the area to help.
What he found was a huge outpouring of chesed (acts of kindness and help). Local Jews were collecting food, toiletries and other items to donate to families who lost their homes and possessions in the collapse. Soon, the garage of Young Israel of Bal Harbor was filled with donated items to distribute. Many of his congregants have friends and relatives who are still missing, and they are doing all they can to help.
“We knew they had nothing.”
“As soon as we heard about things Thursday morning at the crack of dawn, we checked on our (congregational) families,” recalls Mike Baranek, the Director of Congregational Engagement of Temple Beth Shalom in Miami Beach, in an Aish.com interview. He soon found that two of his synagogue’s members lived in Champlain Towers. “Thank God, both families were alive,” he notes. “One family walked out (of the building) in their pajamas” – unable to return to the destroyed building, they cannot access any of their family possessions.
Baranek notes that local Jewish families immediately opened their homes, giving displaced residents places to stay. “It’s been an amazing response from the city and from the Jewish community.” His congregants have been working to gather donations and to help in any way they can. “We got to the point where announcements were made that no more physical supplies are needed.”
The day after the collapse, Temple Beth Shalom delivered Shabbat dinner to their congregants who’d lost their homes. In addition to food, the synagogue also delivered kippahs, tallitot (Jewish prayer shawls), siddurs (Jewish prayer books), wine and candles for Shabbat. “We knew they had nothing,” Baranek explains.
What we can do
With the search and rescue operation still underway, there are many ways that we around the world can also step up to help. “At this moment the most important thing is to pray for the lives of the people who perished and who may still be alive,” notes Cadena volunteer Leon Roy Hausmann. Rabbi Moskovitz has been emphasizing the “power of what prayer can do.” He wants people to understand that prayer is just as important as other types of actions.
During times of tragedy, it’s a Jewish custom to recite Psalms. Consider spending some time reciting one or more Psalms each day. Here is a link to English translations of these powerful, timeless Jewish prayers. https://tehillim-online.com/tehillim-translated-into-english
We can also donate funds to help sustain the volunteers working in Surfside and the families who are in dire need.
The Greater Miami Jewish Federation has set up a fund to help victims of the Champlain Towers collapse. https://jewishmiami.org/gift/surfsidebuildingcollapse/?fbclid=IwAR318kF3kFQzOJaVXD3mVG0Zedgd0-f1SGr-wWGCZGi5B0zUhMOKafbr4Rk
The Shul of Bal Harbour, which is near to Champlain Towers and has served as a center for receiving and sorting donations, has set up the 8777 Collins Avenue Relief Fund. This fund will “be dispersed as needed directly to the victims and families.” https://www.theshul.org/8777
Donations to Hatzalah of South Florida can be made at this site: https://www.hatzalahsouthflorida.org/donate
Re: AISH
Shalom Elaine!
"I have seen the return of Broadway, and its name is Bruce Springsteen."
So begins Nick Corasaniti's rapturous review of the return of Springsteen on Broadway, the first show to a paying audience in 471 days, ending its longest closure in history. (The line is a clever riff on Jon Landau's famous declaration in May, 1974, "I have seen the future of rock and roll and its name is Bruce Springsteen.")
I still have a soft spot for Springsteen. When I was a teenager I was a huge fan and saw him and the E Street Band perform their unparalleled 4-hour concert four times. Truth is, all my close friends were fans, as well as my older brother who played drums in Springsteen-esque high school rock band.
It wasn't just good ole rock n roll. Springsteen captured in words, images and music the deep angst that was roiling inside me, a confused 15-year-old trying to make sense of the world. From his stories about people yearning for freedom, independence and redemption, to his primal guttural screams at the end of Jungleland, Springsteen spoke to me like no one else did.
Feeling like Holden Caulfield surrounded by a sea of phoniness, I was yearning for meaning and purpose but had no idea where to find it. Bruce Springsteen eloquently captured my pain and it was like this super cool dude was reaching out to tell me, "I get you kid, and it's gonna be alright."
Take his song, Thunder Road, about a lonely guy who comes to save a girl stuck in a town of broken dreams with his guitar and car that will take her to the promised land.
…the night's busting open
These two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back, heaven's waiting down on the tracks…
Hey, I know it's late, we can make it if we run…
From your front porch to my front seat
The door's open but the ride it ain't free
And the song's triumphant ending: It's a town full of losers and I'm pulling out of here to win.
In 11th grade I decided it was absolutely essential for my classmates to discover the incredible meaning and insight of this song. So earnest and woefully naïve, I wanted to wake them up to the reality that there is so much more to life than the conveyor belt society has placed them on, and who better than The Boss to give them this insight.
I asked my English teacher if I could take over a class to delve into the lyrics; it's poetry after all. I guess my earnestness won him over (and he was too kind to point out my naiveté) and he agreed. Looking back this was the beginning of my career as a rabbi. I didn't yet believe in God and Judaism meant nothing to me at the time, but I was clued in to Judaism's primary goals – a lifelong quest for truth and a responsibility to help mankind in the deepest way you can.
It would take me a couple more years to "ride out and case the promised land", and discover the power of ancient Jewish wisdom to tackle my angst. But before during that perplexing time that happened, I am grateful to Bruce Springsteen for taking my hand during that time and showing me a little faith and magic in the night.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Nechemia Coopersmith
Editor in Chief, Aish.com
PS: I discuss angst and the search for meaning in greater detail on my Jewish philosophy course on Aish Academy. It's a nine-part series that explores the Jewish perspective on free will, purpose, why suffering exists, and how to live life with meaning. If you've always wanted to learn more about Judaism but never had the opportunity, or if you run a hectic schedule and need a program that you can learn at your own pace, then try out my course. The first class is free, click here to sign up. https://academy.aish.com/course/adventures-jewish-philosophy/?s=rnc&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Bruce+Springsteen+and+I
"I have seen the return of Broadway, and its name is Bruce Springsteen."
So begins Nick Corasaniti's rapturous review of the return of Springsteen on Broadway, the first show to a paying audience in 471 days, ending its longest closure in history. (The line is a clever riff on Jon Landau's famous declaration in May, 1974, "I have seen the future of rock and roll and its name is Bruce Springsteen.")
I still have a soft spot for Springsteen. When I was a teenager I was a huge fan and saw him and the E Street Band perform their unparalleled 4-hour concert four times. Truth is, all my close friends were fans, as well as my older brother who played drums in Springsteen-esque high school rock band.
It wasn't just good ole rock n roll. Springsteen captured in words, images and music the deep angst that was roiling inside me, a confused 15-year-old trying to make sense of the world. From his stories about people yearning for freedom, independence and redemption, to his primal guttural screams at the end of Jungleland, Springsteen spoke to me like no one else did.
Feeling like Holden Caulfield surrounded by a sea of phoniness, I was yearning for meaning and purpose but had no idea where to find it. Bruce Springsteen eloquently captured my pain and it was like this super cool dude was reaching out to tell me, "I get you kid, and it's gonna be alright."
Take his song, Thunder Road, about a lonely guy who comes to save a girl stuck in a town of broken dreams with his guitar and car that will take her to the promised land.
…the night's busting open
These two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back, heaven's waiting down on the tracks…
Hey, I know it's late, we can make it if we run…
From your front porch to my front seat
The door's open but the ride it ain't free
And the song's triumphant ending: It's a town full of losers and I'm pulling out of here to win.
In 11th grade I decided it was absolutely essential for my classmates to discover the incredible meaning and insight of this song. So earnest and woefully naïve, I wanted to wake them up to the reality that there is so much more to life than the conveyor belt society has placed them on, and who better than The Boss to give them this insight.
I asked my English teacher if I could take over a class to delve into the lyrics; it's poetry after all. I guess my earnestness won him over (and he was too kind to point out my naiveté) and he agreed. Looking back this was the beginning of my career as a rabbi. I didn't yet believe in God and Judaism meant nothing to me at the time, but I was clued in to Judaism's primary goals – a lifelong quest for truth and a responsibility to help mankind in the deepest way you can.
It would take me a couple more years to "ride out and case the promised land", and discover the power of ancient Jewish wisdom to tackle my angst. But before during that perplexing time that happened, I am grateful to Bruce Springsteen for taking my hand during that time and showing me a little faith and magic in the night.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Nechemia Coopersmith
Editor in Chief, Aish.com
PS: I discuss angst and the search for meaning in greater detail on my Jewish philosophy course on Aish Academy. It's a nine-part series that explores the Jewish perspective on free will, purpose, why suffering exists, and how to live life with meaning. If you've always wanted to learn more about Judaism but never had the opportunity, or if you run a hectic schedule and need a program that you can learn at your own pace, then try out my course. The first class is free, click here to sign up. https://academy.aish.com/course/adventures-jewish-philosophy/?s=rnc&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Bruce+Springsteen+and+I
Re: AISH
https://www.aish.com/sp/so/My-Choice.html?s=ac&
Why one Orthodox woman chose to have an abortion—and how she felt about her decision.
The second pink line was so pale, it was barely there at all, but when I saw it on the pregnancy test, I felt my whole soul light up. Already a mother of two, I would love this third baby so much.
Seven weeks later, I went for the nuchal translucency test. I lay back in the chair, and smiled at my husband as I pulled up my shirt from where a slight bulge was beginning to appear. We were looking forward to seeing our baby on the screen. The doctor smeared warm gel on my stomach, placed the smooth round disc against me, and adjusted it until the heartbeat showed up in the corner of the screen.
“There’s his hand,” the doctor said.
“Look, he’s waving at us,” said my husband, and he smiled at me.
“It’s too thick,” the doctor stated.
I didn’t understand what he was saying. I thought he meant the baby was in a position that made it difficult to measure, that following would come prods at my stomach or adjustments to the equipment.
“We expect to see a nuchal fluid value of under two, this is over four.” He spoke calmly.
“You mean you need to measure it again?”
“No, I did measure again. Look, here, at this number that shows on the screen, at this thick buildup of fluid behind the neck. “
I started to understand that something was wrong.
“What does this mean?”
My only conscious thought was thank God my husband was here, holding my hand, I couldn’t survive this alone.
The doctor played around with numbers on the computer. “There is a 1 in 2 likelihood of a chromosomal abnormality. I recommend further testing.”
We opted for the fetal DNA testing, despite it not being covered by our insurance, because it was noninvasive and there was no risk of it causing harm to the baby. The receptionist swiped my credit card and passed over forms for me to sign, waivers and explanations of the test’s precision. What followed was a simple blood test. It was hard to understand that one ultrasound measurement and one blood test had the power to turn our lives upside down.
“An abortion?” my husband replied. “How can you say that? We saw him. He waved at us.”
Downstairs in the parking lot after that horrible appointment, I told my husband: “If he’s right, and it’s allowed, I want an abortion.”
“An abortion?” my husband replied. “How can you say that? We saw him. He waved at us.”
“I’m not saying I would terminate, but we do have to ask a rabbi, see what he says. We speak to a rabbi when we want to know if a pot became treyf,” I said. “This is the biggest decision in our lives, shouldn’t we find out the Torah’s opinion and not assume that we know?”
“You’re right,” he said, “but let’s daven that it doesn’t come to that.”
I never thought I would have an abortion. It wasn’t that I was against abortion per se; it just wasn’t something that I personally would ever do. Living in an ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem, I compartmentalized abortions as belonging to a different world; I bunched them together with the other things irrelevant to my life, like partying in a nightclub or experimenting with weed. But now, suddenly, it was immediately relevant, part of my world.
The doctor said the fetal DNA test results would take one to two weeks to arrive; meanwhile, there was nothing we could do but wait. At home, I chose hairbands, found matching socks, and picked up Duplo and crayons from the living room floor. At night, I waited, prayed, and cried. I Googled words and terms and statistics that before I never gave much thought to, because they were part of other people’s lives, not mine.
That Friday night I lit the Shabbat candles, and prayed for the well-being of my husband and children. I also prayed for the baby I carried inside me – for ubari – inserting the Hebrew word for “my fetus” into the prayer, my own private modification, something I did every week since finding out I was pregnant.
When the doctor finally called, I was alone in my office. I closed the door, and listened to his words: “I’m very sorry,” he said.
The tree-lined street was empty, the Israeli sun bright, as my husband and I again held hands, and walked down the street paved with Jerusalem stone, toward the rabbi’s office. We had gone back to the specialist for a full, second-trimester, ultrasound screening, and now knew that the child I carried had a chromosomal abnormality, and would be born with some level of both mental and physical disability, together with health issues that would require surgery. Talk abounds on the internet about doctors “not knowing what they are talking about,” and “after everything the tests showed, the baby was born fine,” however in most case that applies to the stage where the diagnosis is a “statistical likeliness” of a problem. Here, unfortunately, the repeated testing showed that the diagnosis was certain. I could no longer pray for a miracle.
There are 70 faces to the Torah, because it is a living Torah, created for living, breathing, souls; each person unique. There are many different opinions in Judaism on abortion. The same rabbi could say different things to different couples facing the same medical diagnoses, based on their unique situation. In our case, he listened, he counseled, and he finished off by saying it was our choice, it was our decision to make.
This wasn’t a situation where we could compromise and find a middle ground.
My husband told me that I needed to be the one to decide. He said that once he knew that the Torah was supportive of either decision, he felt he could live with whichever path we went down, and his primary concern was for me. Part of me wanted to beg him to tell me what to do, but the other part knew that if he did, and I went along, I ran the risk of blaming him forever. This wasn’t a situation where we could compromise and find a middle ground. Despite him being the father, and us both standing at a crossroads that would forever impact both our lives and our family’s; on a deep primal level, I felt that this was my body, carrying the life growing inside me, and this had to be my choice.
Choice, I thought. It makes it sound like a good thing. But what about when both options are bad?
I wanted to choose to keep the baby, no matter what. I wanted to put my hand on my stomach and tell my baby, “Don’t worry; you will be safe inside me. I will carry you, nourish you, and let you grow inside me. I will become fat and heavy, and waddle, my pregnant belly on display for the entire world to see. I will take prenatal vitamins, and not eat sushi or drink alcohol, and not go into Jacuzzis or saunas, everything to keep you safe, I will labor, breathing through the agony, and give birth to you, I will hold you and nurse you.”
I wanted to promise my baby that I would look after him forever, be his mother forever.
I wanted to be a strong and brave tiger mom who fights for her child; fights for his life and health in hospital wards, fights for his development in clinics and therapy offices, and fights for his pride and dignity in schools and in playgrounds.
I wanted to carry on lighting the Shabbat candles, week after week, and praying for my baby.
I wanted to bring him home from the hospital, wrapped in a blanket with a cute matching hat, and tell my children that here was our little baby. He was a little bit sick, so we would need to take good care of him, and he was special, and different from other babies, and we loved him so much because he was our special precious baby.
I wanted my children to grow up as caring, giving, accepting people, because they learned that at home, learned that it’s OK to be different, and that giving to others makes us better and stronger and happier.
But I was scared.
I was scared of failing him. Of one day, looking at him – as a baby, or a child, or a grown adult – and thinking: “I can’t do this, I can’t take it any longer, I can’t look after him any longer.” By then it would be too late; I wouldn’t be able to turn back the clock.
I was scared of failing my family. I was scared of a home descending into dysfunction and neglect. I didn’t know how I would be able look my other children in the eye, when their parents were caught up in hospital stays and surgeries and therapies, knowing that I chose to do this to them.
I was scared of failing my marriage. Of fights, with both of us stretched past breaking point. Of us turning into people we didn’t want to be. Of there not being a light at the end of the tunnel to look forward to together, there not being any hope.
I was scared for myself. For selfish reasons, not stuff I can idealize, not stuff I can blame on anyone else. I was scared of feeling trapped, of wanting to escape, and run away, and there not being any way of running away, of leaving, because how could I ever leave my own child? I was scared of a lifetime of being a caretaker, a nurse, never being free.
I stopped putting my hand on my stomach and whispering to my baby. I stopped taking prenatal vitamins. I ate sushi and hoped to get sick, to end it the easy way. I didn’t pray for my unborn baby, that last Shabbat when I lit the candles. How could I pray for his health when I knew what was planned?
I scheduled the appointments, for the specialist, and for the social worker who would submit my request to the “committee for the approval of pregnancy termination” located at the hospital, in order to approve the procedure, the surgery. It looked like I was sure, but how could I be sure, with my child inside me, telling me something different? How could I do something that went against my very being?
It was the hardest thing I ever did.
The day before the scheduled D&E, I made the rounds at the hospital, from receptionist to nurse to doctor to social worker. I had to go over the details of why I wanted to do what I wanted to do, again with each of them. The words hurt every time. I was given a form, which I filled out on the back of a blue metal chair, and when I came to the question of “why I became pregnant,” I ran down a list including of “opposed to birth control,” “failure of birth control,” “rape and sexual violence,” until I reached the last option: “wanted pregnancy.” I think that is the moment when my heart broke, when I marked an X on that form, in the empty box next to “wanted pregnancy.”
The year that followed was a year of “should haves.” I should have been announcing my pregnancy, my family sharing in my joy. I should have been wearing maternity clothes. I should have been holding a baby. I should have been on maternity leave.
Together with the pain of pregnancy loss comes the guilt and self-doubt of pregnancy termination. Do I belong in the hospital support group, when the surgery I underwent was elective? Am I allowed to mourn my baby, after what I did to it?
I will feel guilty for the rest of my life. When I said vidui, the Jewish confession, on Yom Kippur, I didn’t feel any guilt, because I don’t feel guilty toward God. I know the Jewish way is a way of life, and I chose life – my life, my family’s life. The guilt that encompasses me is a different guilt, a Jewish mother’s guilt, toward my unborn baby, whom I gave up.
I look at our picture-perfect family portraits and see a shadow child there, hovering beside us.
I carry the memories of a pregnancy that existed only to my husband and myself, look at our picture-perfect family portraits and see a shadow child there, hovering beside us. I feel very alone. In the world I live in, a world of annual pregnancies and large families, pregnancy loss is barely spoken of, aside for abstract mentions in magazine articles, posts in anonymous forums, and hushed whispers between friends in an empty room.
Abortion is even more taboo. Jewish law allows terminating a pregnancy, of course, when the life of the mother is in danger, everybody knows that. But when the life of the mother is not in danger? When the child may have lived? I am scared to tell the truth, even within my family and close friends. The official term is “Termination for Medical Reasons” – there are forums and poems and books, a sisterhood of women who went through “TFMR.” We write of loss, and love, and trying for our rainbow babies. But “in real life,” among the people I know, I remain silent. I don’t want to be judged, not by people who talk in broad strokes of “I would never.” I read the anti-abortion articles they link to on Facebook. I am so jealous of them for never having had to make that choice.
I see them everywhere, those who made the other choice. I want to tell them how much I admire them, and respect them, while not regretting my choice, only mourning it.
This article originally appeared in Tablet Magazine.
Why one Orthodox woman chose to have an abortion—and how she felt about her decision.
The second pink line was so pale, it was barely there at all, but when I saw it on the pregnancy test, I felt my whole soul light up. Already a mother of two, I would love this third baby so much.
Seven weeks later, I went for the nuchal translucency test. I lay back in the chair, and smiled at my husband as I pulled up my shirt from where a slight bulge was beginning to appear. We were looking forward to seeing our baby on the screen. The doctor smeared warm gel on my stomach, placed the smooth round disc against me, and adjusted it until the heartbeat showed up in the corner of the screen.
“There’s his hand,” the doctor said.
“Look, he’s waving at us,” said my husband, and he smiled at me.
“It’s too thick,” the doctor stated.
I didn’t understand what he was saying. I thought he meant the baby was in a position that made it difficult to measure, that following would come prods at my stomach or adjustments to the equipment.
“We expect to see a nuchal fluid value of under two, this is over four.” He spoke calmly.
“You mean you need to measure it again?”
“No, I did measure again. Look, here, at this number that shows on the screen, at this thick buildup of fluid behind the neck. “
I started to understand that something was wrong.
“What does this mean?”
My only conscious thought was thank God my husband was here, holding my hand, I couldn’t survive this alone.
The doctor played around with numbers on the computer. “There is a 1 in 2 likelihood of a chromosomal abnormality. I recommend further testing.”
We opted for the fetal DNA testing, despite it not being covered by our insurance, because it was noninvasive and there was no risk of it causing harm to the baby. The receptionist swiped my credit card and passed over forms for me to sign, waivers and explanations of the test’s precision. What followed was a simple blood test. It was hard to understand that one ultrasound measurement and one blood test had the power to turn our lives upside down.
“An abortion?” my husband replied. “How can you say that? We saw him. He waved at us.”
Downstairs in the parking lot after that horrible appointment, I told my husband: “If he’s right, and it’s allowed, I want an abortion.”
“An abortion?” my husband replied. “How can you say that? We saw him. He waved at us.”
“I’m not saying I would terminate, but we do have to ask a rabbi, see what he says. We speak to a rabbi when we want to know if a pot became treyf,” I said. “This is the biggest decision in our lives, shouldn’t we find out the Torah’s opinion and not assume that we know?”
“You’re right,” he said, “but let’s daven that it doesn’t come to that.”
I never thought I would have an abortion. It wasn’t that I was against abortion per se; it just wasn’t something that I personally would ever do. Living in an ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem, I compartmentalized abortions as belonging to a different world; I bunched them together with the other things irrelevant to my life, like partying in a nightclub or experimenting with weed. But now, suddenly, it was immediately relevant, part of my world.
The doctor said the fetal DNA test results would take one to two weeks to arrive; meanwhile, there was nothing we could do but wait. At home, I chose hairbands, found matching socks, and picked up Duplo and crayons from the living room floor. At night, I waited, prayed, and cried. I Googled words and terms and statistics that before I never gave much thought to, because they were part of other people’s lives, not mine.
That Friday night I lit the Shabbat candles, and prayed for the well-being of my husband and children. I also prayed for the baby I carried inside me – for ubari – inserting the Hebrew word for “my fetus” into the prayer, my own private modification, something I did every week since finding out I was pregnant.
When the doctor finally called, I was alone in my office. I closed the door, and listened to his words: “I’m very sorry,” he said.
The tree-lined street was empty, the Israeli sun bright, as my husband and I again held hands, and walked down the street paved with Jerusalem stone, toward the rabbi’s office. We had gone back to the specialist for a full, second-trimester, ultrasound screening, and now knew that the child I carried had a chromosomal abnormality, and would be born with some level of both mental and physical disability, together with health issues that would require surgery. Talk abounds on the internet about doctors “not knowing what they are talking about,” and “after everything the tests showed, the baby was born fine,” however in most case that applies to the stage where the diagnosis is a “statistical likeliness” of a problem. Here, unfortunately, the repeated testing showed that the diagnosis was certain. I could no longer pray for a miracle.
There are 70 faces to the Torah, because it is a living Torah, created for living, breathing, souls; each person unique. There are many different opinions in Judaism on abortion. The same rabbi could say different things to different couples facing the same medical diagnoses, based on their unique situation. In our case, he listened, he counseled, and he finished off by saying it was our choice, it was our decision to make.
This wasn’t a situation where we could compromise and find a middle ground.
My husband told me that I needed to be the one to decide. He said that once he knew that the Torah was supportive of either decision, he felt he could live with whichever path we went down, and his primary concern was for me. Part of me wanted to beg him to tell me what to do, but the other part knew that if he did, and I went along, I ran the risk of blaming him forever. This wasn’t a situation where we could compromise and find a middle ground. Despite him being the father, and us both standing at a crossroads that would forever impact both our lives and our family’s; on a deep primal level, I felt that this was my body, carrying the life growing inside me, and this had to be my choice.
Choice, I thought. It makes it sound like a good thing. But what about when both options are bad?
I wanted to choose to keep the baby, no matter what. I wanted to put my hand on my stomach and tell my baby, “Don’t worry; you will be safe inside me. I will carry you, nourish you, and let you grow inside me. I will become fat and heavy, and waddle, my pregnant belly on display for the entire world to see. I will take prenatal vitamins, and not eat sushi or drink alcohol, and not go into Jacuzzis or saunas, everything to keep you safe, I will labor, breathing through the agony, and give birth to you, I will hold you and nurse you.”
I wanted to promise my baby that I would look after him forever, be his mother forever.
I wanted to be a strong and brave tiger mom who fights for her child; fights for his life and health in hospital wards, fights for his development in clinics and therapy offices, and fights for his pride and dignity in schools and in playgrounds.
I wanted to carry on lighting the Shabbat candles, week after week, and praying for my baby.
I wanted to bring him home from the hospital, wrapped in a blanket with a cute matching hat, and tell my children that here was our little baby. He was a little bit sick, so we would need to take good care of him, and he was special, and different from other babies, and we loved him so much because he was our special precious baby.
I wanted my children to grow up as caring, giving, accepting people, because they learned that at home, learned that it’s OK to be different, and that giving to others makes us better and stronger and happier.
But I was scared.
I was scared of failing him. Of one day, looking at him – as a baby, or a child, or a grown adult – and thinking: “I can’t do this, I can’t take it any longer, I can’t look after him any longer.” By then it would be too late; I wouldn’t be able to turn back the clock.
I was scared of failing my family. I was scared of a home descending into dysfunction and neglect. I didn’t know how I would be able look my other children in the eye, when their parents were caught up in hospital stays and surgeries and therapies, knowing that I chose to do this to them.
I was scared of failing my marriage. Of fights, with both of us stretched past breaking point. Of us turning into people we didn’t want to be. Of there not being a light at the end of the tunnel to look forward to together, there not being any hope.
I was scared for myself. For selfish reasons, not stuff I can idealize, not stuff I can blame on anyone else. I was scared of feeling trapped, of wanting to escape, and run away, and there not being any way of running away, of leaving, because how could I ever leave my own child? I was scared of a lifetime of being a caretaker, a nurse, never being free.
I stopped putting my hand on my stomach and whispering to my baby. I stopped taking prenatal vitamins. I ate sushi and hoped to get sick, to end it the easy way. I didn’t pray for my unborn baby, that last Shabbat when I lit the candles. How could I pray for his health when I knew what was planned?
I scheduled the appointments, for the specialist, and for the social worker who would submit my request to the “committee for the approval of pregnancy termination” located at the hospital, in order to approve the procedure, the surgery. It looked like I was sure, but how could I be sure, with my child inside me, telling me something different? How could I do something that went against my very being?
It was the hardest thing I ever did.
The day before the scheduled D&E, I made the rounds at the hospital, from receptionist to nurse to doctor to social worker. I had to go over the details of why I wanted to do what I wanted to do, again with each of them. The words hurt every time. I was given a form, which I filled out on the back of a blue metal chair, and when I came to the question of “why I became pregnant,” I ran down a list including of “opposed to birth control,” “failure of birth control,” “rape and sexual violence,” until I reached the last option: “wanted pregnancy.” I think that is the moment when my heart broke, when I marked an X on that form, in the empty box next to “wanted pregnancy.”
The year that followed was a year of “should haves.” I should have been announcing my pregnancy, my family sharing in my joy. I should have been wearing maternity clothes. I should have been holding a baby. I should have been on maternity leave.
Together with the pain of pregnancy loss comes the guilt and self-doubt of pregnancy termination. Do I belong in the hospital support group, when the surgery I underwent was elective? Am I allowed to mourn my baby, after what I did to it?
I will feel guilty for the rest of my life. When I said vidui, the Jewish confession, on Yom Kippur, I didn’t feel any guilt, because I don’t feel guilty toward God. I know the Jewish way is a way of life, and I chose life – my life, my family’s life. The guilt that encompasses me is a different guilt, a Jewish mother’s guilt, toward my unborn baby, whom I gave up.
I look at our picture-perfect family portraits and see a shadow child there, hovering beside us.
I carry the memories of a pregnancy that existed only to my husband and myself, look at our picture-perfect family portraits and see a shadow child there, hovering beside us. I feel very alone. In the world I live in, a world of annual pregnancies and large families, pregnancy loss is barely spoken of, aside for abstract mentions in magazine articles, posts in anonymous forums, and hushed whispers between friends in an empty room.
Abortion is even more taboo. Jewish law allows terminating a pregnancy, of course, when the life of the mother is in danger, everybody knows that. But when the life of the mother is not in danger? When the child may have lived? I am scared to tell the truth, even within my family and close friends. The official term is “Termination for Medical Reasons” – there are forums and poems and books, a sisterhood of women who went through “TFMR.” We write of loss, and love, and trying for our rainbow babies. But “in real life,” among the people I know, I remain silent. I don’t want to be judged, not by people who talk in broad strokes of “I would never.” I read the anti-abortion articles they link to on Facebook. I am so jealous of them for never having had to make that choice.
I see them everywhere, those who made the other choice. I want to tell them how much I admire them, and respect them, while not regretting my choice, only mourning it.
This article originally appeared in Tablet Magazine.
Re: AISH
https://www.aish.com/ci/s/Germanys-Other-Genocide-Dress-Rehearsal-for-the-Holocaust.html?s=ac&
Germany’s Other Genocide: Dress Rehearsal for the Holocaust
Jun 19, 2021 | by Dr. Yvette Alt Millerprint article
Germany’s Other Genocide: Dress Rehearsal for the Holocaust
Germany recently acknowledged it committed genocide in present-day Namibia.
Germany has recently publicly acknowledged that it committed genocide a generation before the Holocaust, when German troops murdered 80,000 people in present-day Namibia in Southern Africa.
It has been called the “forgotten genocide” and the first genocide of the 20th century. German soldiers targeted members of the Nama and Herero ethnic groups for extermination between 1904 and 1908 in what was then called South-West Africa, and was brutally colonized by Germany.
Dr. Elizabeth Baer, a research professor at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota and a researcher with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, has researched Germany’s genocide of Jews and Gypsies as well as the Nama and Herero. In her 2017 book The Genocidal Gaze: From German Southwest Africa to the Third Reich, she documents how these genocides are linked. Dr. Baer recently spoke with Aish.com about her work and what we can learn from Germany’s belated acknowledgement that it committed genocide in modern day Namibia.
“I didn’t learn much about the Holocaust growing up,” Dr. Baer notes. Raised as a Catholic, Dr. Baer traces her drive to research the Holocaust to a trip for historians that she took to Poland and Israel with a Jewish organization in the early 1990s. The group was led by survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto who showed Dr. Baer the sites of several Nazi killing centers in Europe. Then she and her fellow historians visited Israel where they toured a kibbutz and visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial. “It was a life changing moment for me,” Dr. Baer recalls. She began focusing her research on the Nazi genocide of Jews, publishing several books on the subject.
A chance conversation at a history seminar a decade ago set Dr. Baer on a new path, when she learned about the German genocide of the Nama and Herero peoples in the early 1900s. “So much less was known and published about it then,” she observes. With very little research documenting these horrific genocides, Dr. Baer knew she had to work to uncover their details. She took several trips to Africa to do research. “I thought I was going to write an article, but it turned into a book,” she recalls. The more Dr. Baer researched, the more she was struck by the many parallels between the German genocides in Namibia and those in Continental Europe a generation later.
As German colonizers settled the lands of present-day Namibia in the late 1800s, two ethnic groups resisted the encroachment on their traditional herding lands with particular fury: the Herero and the Nama. After a series of bloody uprisings by Herero warriors, Germany dispatched the fearsome military commander Lothar von Trotha to the region. In South-West Africa, von Trotha issued a dire warning: every member of the Herero people – and later, every member of the Nama, as well – would be imprisoned, made to perform forced labor, or shot.
Dr. Elizabeth Baer
Herero and Nama people were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. The most notorious of these was located on Shark Island and was the scene of horrific brutality. Prisoners were forced to perform backbreaking labor, were starved and tortured. Disease ran rampant. Thousands of men, women and children perished in Shark Island and other German-run concentration camps. Prisoners who died were decapitated and their heads sent to Germany so that scientists could “study” their skulls and supposedly prove that African people were inferior to Germans. For years, thousands of Herero and Nama were subject to the most gruesome atrocities and hatred by the hands of their German tormentors.
So venomous was the way Germans looked down upon Herero and Nama people, Dr. Baer invented a new term for it, and made it the title of her book on the subject: the Genocidal Gaze. “What I really mean by it is thinking about human beings in the framework of a racial hierarchy,” she explains. “At the top was Aryans. People at the bottom were perceived as sub-humans or less than human.”
In the case of the Herero and Nama people, Dr. Baer notes that their cattle-herding way of life was used to categorize them as a people “who didn’t have a history, didn’t have a religion, didn’t have a civilization.” By looking at the Nama and Herero as somehow less than human, German colonizers enabled their extermination. A generation later, Germans did the same thing to Jews, dehumanizing them and convincing people that they were less than fully human. In the runup to the Holocaust, Dr. Baer notes, “Jews were viewed as vermin; they were called lice, and unworthy of life.”
Seven Herero men in chains in what was then German South West Africa but is now Namibia. Germany has agreed to pay for atrocities committed between 1904 and 1908.
The first time that Germans used the notorious term Lebensraum – meaning that they deserved to seize new lands for Germans to live in – was in Namibia, Dr. Baer discovered. A generation later, Lebensraum was used to justify seizing European territories and deporting their inhabitants. “Lebensraum goes back to the 1890s to the era of Germany’s colonization of Namibia. The idea arose that they could exterminate the uncivilized sub-humans so they could have space for a colony.”
Dr. Baer has documented ways in which this odious ideology travelled from German colonizers back home. “People involved in the genocide and lengthy war with the Herero and Nama wrote memoirs in Germany,” she explains. The 1908 novel Peter Moore’s Journey to Southwest Africa – written by a man who never actually visited Africa – embodied what Dr. Baer calls the Genocidal Gaze and popularized it in Germany.
“The main character says to Peter Moore: these people deserve death under God and man because they’ve built no houses and built no wells,” Dr. Baer cites. The novel was a great favorite of Hitler. During World War II, Hitler had this odious book published in a small pocket-sized edition so that German soldiers could keep it in their pockets as they went to battle. “It established the attitude among the German people that genocide is acceptable in certain circumstances when the subject of the genocide is ‘sub-human’.”
The genocide of the Nama and Herero people helped German authorities perfect killing on an industrial scale.
“What I am arguing is that the genocide in Africa was sort of like a dress rehearsal for the Holocaust,” she explains. In addition to establishing the idea that some groups could be killed with impunity, the genocide of the Nama and Herero people helped German authorities perfect killing on an industrial scale.
Photos of the German concentration camps in Namibia survive, and there are unsettling similarities with the concentration camps in which Jews and others were imprisoned during the Holocaust. In Namibia, German troops forced some imprisoned women to work in brothels – the sadistic way they did this was copied a generation later during the Holocaust.
In addition to concentration camps, in Namibia Germans experimented with setting up a death camp, with the express aim of killing people there. “Shark Island was a prototype for the death camp,” Dr. Baer explains. Some prisoners were kept in metal cages on the beach there. “There was no food, no houses,” she notes. Using starvation as a method of killing people was pioneered at Shark Island, and later copied during the Holocaust. 80% of the Herero people and about half of all Nama people were killed during the German genocides of 1904-8: about 80,000 people.
80% of the Herero people and about half of all Nama people were killed during the German genocides of 1904-8: about 80,000 people.
These days, Dr. Baer has retired from full time teaching and is spending much of her time on research. What keeps her motivated is the fear that the hatred and dehumanization she’s written so much about might return. “Look at the world right now,” she warns, noting that hatred and demonization of others seems to be growing. “We have to take these types of attitudes very seriously,” Dr. Baer warns.
With Germany’s belated acknowledgement that it committed genocide in Namibia, there is some room for learning the lessons of the past and possibly making amends. In Germany, the term Vergangenheitsbewältigung means coming to terms with the past. When it comes to the Holocaust and the genocide of Jews, Gypsies and others, Dr. Baer notes “they built monuments and made reparations.” Now that Germany has acknowledged the horrors it perpetuated in Namibia, perhaps some measure of regret and self-examination might be possible. “Germany’s acknowledgment might have an impact on current affairs,” Dr. Baer hopes, enabling more people to learn about genocides in the past and perhaps help guard against any in the future.
General Lieutenant Lothar von Trotha, the chief military commander in German South-West Africa, with his staff during the Herero uprising, 1904.
Dr. Baer believes that we all learn from Germany’s acknowledgement just how dangerous it can be to accept racial or ethnic hierarchies as a framework for thinking about other people. “We are all human beings with the same needs and desires and fears – it’s critical that we begin to treat other human beings with kindness and empathy” instead of fear and hatred and demonization.
Germany’s Other Genocide: Dress Rehearsal for the Holocaust
Jun 19, 2021 | by Dr. Yvette Alt Millerprint article
Germany’s Other Genocide: Dress Rehearsal for the Holocaust
Germany recently acknowledged it committed genocide in present-day Namibia.
Germany has recently publicly acknowledged that it committed genocide a generation before the Holocaust, when German troops murdered 80,000 people in present-day Namibia in Southern Africa.
It has been called the “forgotten genocide” and the first genocide of the 20th century. German soldiers targeted members of the Nama and Herero ethnic groups for extermination between 1904 and 1908 in what was then called South-West Africa, and was brutally colonized by Germany.
Dr. Elizabeth Baer, a research professor at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota and a researcher with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, has researched Germany’s genocide of Jews and Gypsies as well as the Nama and Herero. In her 2017 book The Genocidal Gaze: From German Southwest Africa to the Third Reich, she documents how these genocides are linked. Dr. Baer recently spoke with Aish.com about her work and what we can learn from Germany’s belated acknowledgement that it committed genocide in modern day Namibia.
“I didn’t learn much about the Holocaust growing up,” Dr. Baer notes. Raised as a Catholic, Dr. Baer traces her drive to research the Holocaust to a trip for historians that she took to Poland and Israel with a Jewish organization in the early 1990s. The group was led by survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto who showed Dr. Baer the sites of several Nazi killing centers in Europe. Then she and her fellow historians visited Israel where they toured a kibbutz and visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial. “It was a life changing moment for me,” Dr. Baer recalls. She began focusing her research on the Nazi genocide of Jews, publishing several books on the subject.
A chance conversation at a history seminar a decade ago set Dr. Baer on a new path, when she learned about the German genocide of the Nama and Herero peoples in the early 1900s. “So much less was known and published about it then,” she observes. With very little research documenting these horrific genocides, Dr. Baer knew she had to work to uncover their details. She took several trips to Africa to do research. “I thought I was going to write an article, but it turned into a book,” she recalls. The more Dr. Baer researched, the more she was struck by the many parallels between the German genocides in Namibia and those in Continental Europe a generation later.
As German colonizers settled the lands of present-day Namibia in the late 1800s, two ethnic groups resisted the encroachment on their traditional herding lands with particular fury: the Herero and the Nama. After a series of bloody uprisings by Herero warriors, Germany dispatched the fearsome military commander Lothar von Trotha to the region. In South-West Africa, von Trotha issued a dire warning: every member of the Herero people – and later, every member of the Nama, as well – would be imprisoned, made to perform forced labor, or shot.
Dr. Elizabeth Baer
Herero and Nama people were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. The most notorious of these was located on Shark Island and was the scene of horrific brutality. Prisoners were forced to perform backbreaking labor, were starved and tortured. Disease ran rampant. Thousands of men, women and children perished in Shark Island and other German-run concentration camps. Prisoners who died were decapitated and their heads sent to Germany so that scientists could “study” their skulls and supposedly prove that African people were inferior to Germans. For years, thousands of Herero and Nama were subject to the most gruesome atrocities and hatred by the hands of their German tormentors.
So venomous was the way Germans looked down upon Herero and Nama people, Dr. Baer invented a new term for it, and made it the title of her book on the subject: the Genocidal Gaze. “What I really mean by it is thinking about human beings in the framework of a racial hierarchy,” she explains. “At the top was Aryans. People at the bottom were perceived as sub-humans or less than human.”
In the case of the Herero and Nama people, Dr. Baer notes that their cattle-herding way of life was used to categorize them as a people “who didn’t have a history, didn’t have a religion, didn’t have a civilization.” By looking at the Nama and Herero as somehow less than human, German colonizers enabled their extermination. A generation later, Germans did the same thing to Jews, dehumanizing them and convincing people that they were less than fully human. In the runup to the Holocaust, Dr. Baer notes, “Jews were viewed as vermin; they were called lice, and unworthy of life.”
Seven Herero men in chains in what was then German South West Africa but is now Namibia. Germany has agreed to pay for atrocities committed between 1904 and 1908.
The first time that Germans used the notorious term Lebensraum – meaning that they deserved to seize new lands for Germans to live in – was in Namibia, Dr. Baer discovered. A generation later, Lebensraum was used to justify seizing European territories and deporting their inhabitants. “Lebensraum goes back to the 1890s to the era of Germany’s colonization of Namibia. The idea arose that they could exterminate the uncivilized sub-humans so they could have space for a colony.”
Dr. Baer has documented ways in which this odious ideology travelled from German colonizers back home. “People involved in the genocide and lengthy war with the Herero and Nama wrote memoirs in Germany,” she explains. The 1908 novel Peter Moore’s Journey to Southwest Africa – written by a man who never actually visited Africa – embodied what Dr. Baer calls the Genocidal Gaze and popularized it in Germany.
“The main character says to Peter Moore: these people deserve death under God and man because they’ve built no houses and built no wells,” Dr. Baer cites. The novel was a great favorite of Hitler. During World War II, Hitler had this odious book published in a small pocket-sized edition so that German soldiers could keep it in their pockets as they went to battle. “It established the attitude among the German people that genocide is acceptable in certain circumstances when the subject of the genocide is ‘sub-human’.”
The genocide of the Nama and Herero people helped German authorities perfect killing on an industrial scale.
“What I am arguing is that the genocide in Africa was sort of like a dress rehearsal for the Holocaust,” she explains. In addition to establishing the idea that some groups could be killed with impunity, the genocide of the Nama and Herero people helped German authorities perfect killing on an industrial scale.
Photos of the German concentration camps in Namibia survive, and there are unsettling similarities with the concentration camps in which Jews and others were imprisoned during the Holocaust. In Namibia, German troops forced some imprisoned women to work in brothels – the sadistic way they did this was copied a generation later during the Holocaust.
In addition to concentration camps, in Namibia Germans experimented with setting up a death camp, with the express aim of killing people there. “Shark Island was a prototype for the death camp,” Dr. Baer explains. Some prisoners were kept in metal cages on the beach there. “There was no food, no houses,” she notes. Using starvation as a method of killing people was pioneered at Shark Island, and later copied during the Holocaust. 80% of the Herero people and about half of all Nama people were killed during the German genocides of 1904-8: about 80,000 people.
80% of the Herero people and about half of all Nama people were killed during the German genocides of 1904-8: about 80,000 people.
These days, Dr. Baer has retired from full time teaching and is spending much of her time on research. What keeps her motivated is the fear that the hatred and dehumanization she’s written so much about might return. “Look at the world right now,” she warns, noting that hatred and demonization of others seems to be growing. “We have to take these types of attitudes very seriously,” Dr. Baer warns.
With Germany’s belated acknowledgement that it committed genocide in Namibia, there is some room for learning the lessons of the past and possibly making amends. In Germany, the term Vergangenheitsbewältigung means coming to terms with the past. When it comes to the Holocaust and the genocide of Jews, Gypsies and others, Dr. Baer notes “they built monuments and made reparations.” Now that Germany has acknowledged the horrors it perpetuated in Namibia, perhaps some measure of regret and self-examination might be possible. “Germany’s acknowledgment might have an impact on current affairs,” Dr. Baer hopes, enabling more people to learn about genocides in the past and perhaps help guard against any in the future.
General Lieutenant Lothar von Trotha, the chief military commander in German South-West Africa, with his staff during the Herero uprising, 1904.
Dr. Baer believes that we all learn from Germany’s acknowledgement just how dangerous it can be to accept racial or ethnic hierarchies as a framework for thinking about other people. “We are all human beings with the same needs and desires and fears – it’s critical that we begin to treat other human beings with kindness and empathy” instead of fear and hatred and demonization.
Re: AISH
A 75-Year Wait for Kaddish
Jun 6, 2021
by Denise Heimowitz, as told to Rivka Ronda Robinsonprint article
https://www.aish.com/sp/so/A-75-Year-Wait-for-Kaddish.html?
A 75-Year Wait for Kaddish
Repaying a debt to the man who saved my father’s life.
“Are you Jewish?” the German officer asked Private Simon Langer. They were in Estonia, during World War I.
“Yes,” the young soldier admitted in German.
“Me too,” came the unexpected reply. Then, another surprise: “I am Officer Lipkovitz, and from now on you’ll no longer be in the trenches with the other soldiers. You’ll be my orderly, and you’ll help me fulfill my duties as an officer. You’ll follow my orders and live in the officers’ bunk with me, and do what I tell you needs to be done.”
I can only imagine how happy my father must have been when he heard this pronouncement. He no longer had to endure the cold in the trenches; he would live comfortably in the heated officers’ barrack.
Hans Lipkovitz probably saved my father’s life. And by a remarkable coincidence, my family was able to help elevate Officer Lipkovitz’s soul 75 years later.
Rabbi Shimon Langer
It all began when my father, Private Langer, was born in 1897 in Alsace Lorraine, France. Because of politics the official language was at times French, at times German. But the inhabitants had their own dialect, a mixture of both languages. Alsace was part of France until the end of the Franco-German War in 1871, when it was annexed to the German Empire. Still, the population retained its allegiance and loyalty primarily to France.
When World War I broke out between France and Germany in 1914, Germany drafted Private Langer and other young Alsacian young men into its army. The Germans realized these soldiers would not fight their countrymen in France, so sent them east to battle the Russians.
From One Jew to Another
Private Langer and his fellow soldiers were stationed in Tallinn, Estonia. They never saw battle but died by the thousands because of the extreme cold. As a religious Jew, my father would rise early in the morning and wrap himself in tallis and tefillin to pray. That’s how Officer Lipkovitz picked him out as a Jew among the French soldiers.
Not long after, Officer Lipkovitz asked him, “Would you like to visit your mother? Go to Alsace and buy me a box of cigars.” He gave Private Langer money for cigars and train fare to Alsace.
Did he expect my father to return to Estonia? We don’t know. But Private Langer, an honest and reliable young man, did go back after visiting his mother in Alsace and gave Officer Lipkovitz the cigars he had purchased for him.
When World War I ended in 1918, soldiers who were fortunate enough to have survived went home to put their lives back together. My father decided to become a rabbi and enrolled in the Hildesheimer Seminary in Berlin. After his ordination, he married my mother, Caroline Schweizer, in Strasbourg in 1925. They had met during the war when my mother’s family provided kosher food to my father and other soldiers stationed in Germany.
Rabbi Shimon Langer
By the 1930s my father had become a prominent rabbi in Paris. Before the outbreak of World War II, he parlayed his fluency in French and German language and culture into important rabbinic missions to benefit the Jews of Western Europe.
An Officer and a Gentleman
That’s how he happened to find Officer Lipkovitz again. Upon arriving in Brussels in 1938, my father walked outside the train station looking for a taxi. Whom did he see but Officer Lipkovitz, playing violin in the square nearby. The former Private Langer ran with outstretched arms and shouted, “Lipkovitz, Lipkovitz!” The former German officer responded, “Langer, Langer!”
They hugged and began to catch up on the many years since their last encounter. My father asked, “How did you get to Brussels, and how do you earn a living?” Lipkovitz responded, “Even though I was a German officer during the war, the Germans expelled me and many other Jewish officers. Since I had an elderly aunt here, I decided to come to Brussels. Here I stand and play the violin to earn a few francs.”
Recalling how the shabbily dressed person before him had saved his life, my father implored, “Officer, what can I do for you? How can I repay you?” Lipkovitz had a simple answer: “My violin is old and doesn’t sound the way it should. I wish I had a new violin so that I could play beautiful music to earn a few francs from passers-by.”
Rabbi Shimon Langer and his wife Caroline
My father quickly reached into his pocket and gave Lipkovitz the money for a new violin. Then the former officer and soldier parted company. But their story didn’t end there.
Fleeing to Safety in an Army Convoy
In 1939 France and Britain declared war on Germany, which had invaded Poland. My father served as a chaplain in the French army. That turned out to be a blessing when France surrendered and was divided into two zones. My family was able to flee in an army convoy from Nazi-occupied Paris to Marseille in the south.
Denise Heimowitz (right) with her twin sister Alice Weiss
As chief of the Jewish community in Marseille, my father visited a large internment camp west of the city that accommodated Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. One day as he was distributing food in the barracks he saw Lipkovitz in one of the beds, suffering from gangrene.
He ensured that his former officer received the medicine and food needed to manage deteriorating health. On one of his last visits, my father looked for his friend in the barracks, but Lipkovitz was nowhere to be found.
My father never learned of his officer’s fate.
In the Nick of Time
In 1941, due to my mother’s urgent insistence, my father packed up our family to escape by boat from Marseille to America. Within a week after our departure, the Germans came for my father because he was head of the Marseille Jewish community—but they were too late.
A father of four, he became a beloved rabbi in New York, with dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren across America and Israel. Years after my father died in 1987 at age 90, my niece discovered information about Lipkovitz’s fate. According to her research at Yad Vashem, Lipkovitz died in 1941 near the city of Gurs by the internment camp where my father had last seen him.
Exactly 75 years after the Hebrew date of Lipkovitz’s death, my brother took on the merit of going to synagogue to say kaddish (the mourner’s prayer) for the officer. He asked me to light a yahrzeit memorial candle for someone very special whom we had never met. Thus, we were able to pay tribute to the man who saved my father’s life and ensured the continuity of future generations.
Jun 6, 2021
by Denise Heimowitz, as told to Rivka Ronda Robinsonprint article
https://www.aish.com/sp/so/A-75-Year-Wait-for-Kaddish.html?
A 75-Year Wait for Kaddish
Repaying a debt to the man who saved my father’s life.
“Are you Jewish?” the German officer asked Private Simon Langer. They were in Estonia, during World War I.
“Yes,” the young soldier admitted in German.
“Me too,” came the unexpected reply. Then, another surprise: “I am Officer Lipkovitz, and from now on you’ll no longer be in the trenches with the other soldiers. You’ll be my orderly, and you’ll help me fulfill my duties as an officer. You’ll follow my orders and live in the officers’ bunk with me, and do what I tell you needs to be done.”
I can only imagine how happy my father must have been when he heard this pronouncement. He no longer had to endure the cold in the trenches; he would live comfortably in the heated officers’ barrack.
Hans Lipkovitz probably saved my father’s life. And by a remarkable coincidence, my family was able to help elevate Officer Lipkovitz’s soul 75 years later.
Rabbi Shimon Langer
It all began when my father, Private Langer, was born in 1897 in Alsace Lorraine, France. Because of politics the official language was at times French, at times German. But the inhabitants had their own dialect, a mixture of both languages. Alsace was part of France until the end of the Franco-German War in 1871, when it was annexed to the German Empire. Still, the population retained its allegiance and loyalty primarily to France.
When World War I broke out between France and Germany in 1914, Germany drafted Private Langer and other young Alsacian young men into its army. The Germans realized these soldiers would not fight their countrymen in France, so sent them east to battle the Russians.
From One Jew to Another
Private Langer and his fellow soldiers were stationed in Tallinn, Estonia. They never saw battle but died by the thousands because of the extreme cold. As a religious Jew, my father would rise early in the morning and wrap himself in tallis and tefillin to pray. That’s how Officer Lipkovitz picked him out as a Jew among the French soldiers.
Not long after, Officer Lipkovitz asked him, “Would you like to visit your mother? Go to Alsace and buy me a box of cigars.” He gave Private Langer money for cigars and train fare to Alsace.
Did he expect my father to return to Estonia? We don’t know. But Private Langer, an honest and reliable young man, did go back after visiting his mother in Alsace and gave Officer Lipkovitz the cigars he had purchased for him.
When World War I ended in 1918, soldiers who were fortunate enough to have survived went home to put their lives back together. My father decided to become a rabbi and enrolled in the Hildesheimer Seminary in Berlin. After his ordination, he married my mother, Caroline Schweizer, in Strasbourg in 1925. They had met during the war when my mother’s family provided kosher food to my father and other soldiers stationed in Germany.
Rabbi Shimon Langer
By the 1930s my father had become a prominent rabbi in Paris. Before the outbreak of World War II, he parlayed his fluency in French and German language and culture into important rabbinic missions to benefit the Jews of Western Europe.
An Officer and a Gentleman
That’s how he happened to find Officer Lipkovitz again. Upon arriving in Brussels in 1938, my father walked outside the train station looking for a taxi. Whom did he see but Officer Lipkovitz, playing violin in the square nearby. The former Private Langer ran with outstretched arms and shouted, “Lipkovitz, Lipkovitz!” The former German officer responded, “Langer, Langer!”
They hugged and began to catch up on the many years since their last encounter. My father asked, “How did you get to Brussels, and how do you earn a living?” Lipkovitz responded, “Even though I was a German officer during the war, the Germans expelled me and many other Jewish officers. Since I had an elderly aunt here, I decided to come to Brussels. Here I stand and play the violin to earn a few francs.”
Recalling how the shabbily dressed person before him had saved his life, my father implored, “Officer, what can I do for you? How can I repay you?” Lipkovitz had a simple answer: “My violin is old and doesn’t sound the way it should. I wish I had a new violin so that I could play beautiful music to earn a few francs from passers-by.”
Rabbi Shimon Langer and his wife Caroline
My father quickly reached into his pocket and gave Lipkovitz the money for a new violin. Then the former officer and soldier parted company. But their story didn’t end there.
Fleeing to Safety in an Army Convoy
In 1939 France and Britain declared war on Germany, which had invaded Poland. My father served as a chaplain in the French army. That turned out to be a blessing when France surrendered and was divided into two zones. My family was able to flee in an army convoy from Nazi-occupied Paris to Marseille in the south.
Denise Heimowitz (right) with her twin sister Alice Weiss
As chief of the Jewish community in Marseille, my father visited a large internment camp west of the city that accommodated Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. One day as he was distributing food in the barracks he saw Lipkovitz in one of the beds, suffering from gangrene.
He ensured that his former officer received the medicine and food needed to manage deteriorating health. On one of his last visits, my father looked for his friend in the barracks, but Lipkovitz was nowhere to be found.
My father never learned of his officer’s fate.
In the Nick of Time
In 1941, due to my mother’s urgent insistence, my father packed up our family to escape by boat from Marseille to America. Within a week after our departure, the Germans came for my father because he was head of the Marseille Jewish community—but they were too late.
A father of four, he became a beloved rabbi in New York, with dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren across America and Israel. Years after my father died in 1987 at age 90, my niece discovered information about Lipkovitz’s fate. According to her research at Yad Vashem, Lipkovitz died in 1941 near the city of Gurs by the internment camp where my father had last seen him.
Exactly 75 years after the Hebrew date of Lipkovitz’s death, my brother took on the merit of going to synagogue to say kaddish (the mourner’s prayer) for the officer. He asked me to light a yahrzeit memorial candle for someone very special whom we had never met. Thus, we were able to pay tribute to the man who saved my father’s life and ensured the continuity of future generations.
Re: AISH
My Masseuse Thinks Jews Don’t Pay Taxes
Jun 19, 2021 | by Rachel Kadoshprint article
She says it’s because of the Holocaust.
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/My-Masseuse-Thinks-Jews-Dont-Pay-Taxes.html?
Ashley greets me at the salon desk in her soft, understated way, dressed in her usual black T-shirt and leggings, her dark hair piled into a tight pincushion on her head. The phrase ‘pleasingly plump’ was coined with her in mind. She looks 18, but I know she’s 24.
Due to complicated Covid reasons, I accidentally paid ahead for 9 treatments at this salon, and now must use them within a span of three months. I decide to forego the facials and binge instead on massages. And Ashley is a master of massage.
This will be my fourth time. Ashley and I, we have a nice rapport, or at least I think so.
“You look so nice,” she exclaims. “Your hair” she makes an hour glass gesture “… everything.”
I’m startled. Then I realize – the last three times I came in wearing a chenille snood on my head.
It’s a wig, I blurt, not wanting to get credit for locks that aren’t my own. It’s a Jewish Orthodox thing, I explain, a little self-consciously.
She makes no remark, just gestures kindly toward the massage room, and I go.
There, I discard my clothing in less than a minute, not wanting to lose a precious second of Ashley’s massage. I slip off my wig in one swoop and toss it onto the rest of my clothing. It looks like a sleeping cat nestled there. Then I jump under the blanket and call out, "I’m ready!"
Ashley enters and asks me what part of the body I want to work on this time.
This question always stymies me. Where to begin? My bum knee? My scoliotic spine? My two frozen shoulders not yet totally healed though years and years have past? I’m past 50. There’s history here. I say, “Just go wherever your fingers think best,” and she smiles, and says, “I like the way you said that.”
Unable to contain myself, I throw in, “Maybe a little extra attention to the back and the neck.” I pause. “And the skull.”
Non-irritating New Age music plays in the background. Then I shut my mouth and eyes and enter the zone of touch, of sensation. Ashley massages silently, meditatively, almost prayerfully, except when she digs her knuckle in hard at what I call the poison spots ridging my spine. She comes at me from surprising angles, using all her limbs. Elbows, forearms, chin, who knows maybe even her knee – it’s hard to tell with me facing down on the massage block. She moves intuitively as if guided not only her training but a body-wisdom. All of her is into this work, no part is elsewhere, wondering who just texted her. I wish I could be as whole-hearted, whole-bodied, in whatever I’m doing – while listening to my teen or chopping a carrot or writing a story or emptying the dishwasher.
The only part that stops me from full enjoyment is that I know at some not far off point, it will end.
Halfway into the massage, Ashley tends to go chatty, which I don’t love – it breaks the dream – but I‘ve grown to like, because I like her. There’s something pure-hearted and rare about her.
I’m mildly curious about her origins – is that the word? – but I’ve learned to ask that could be a micro-aggression.
She asks me what movies I like, and I try to drum up a few. (Haven’t seen a movie in years.)
“You’re Jewish, right?” she says, after a few minutes of quiet.
I nod, to the degree that I can with my cheeks pressed into the headrest.
“Could I ask you something?” Her voice is hesitant.
“Go ahead.” I add jokingly, “As long as I can ask you something back.”
“Sure.” She says, “Is it true that Jews don’t pay taxes because they consider their homes to be a temple?”
“What?” I twist and look over at her. I burst out laughing. It’s so preposterous, I don’t even register the hidden canard – the Jews and money jab, you know, sharp-eyed Jews fleecing the government.
“Do you really think that’s true?” I ask her, incredulous.
She says, “I’ve heard it lots of times, from a few different people. It’s like, a known thing.”
Could she be referring to “shteibels” or the shteibel phenomenon in very Orthodox areas where small prayer groups occasionally form in private homes? There must be four or five in my own community. Yes, I suppose they would be entitled to a tax break on property taxes, but that is a lot different than tax evasion. That’s a lot different than all Jews don’t pay taxes. I try to explain this.
She’s concentrating on my arms right now, maybe that’s why she doesn’t answer.
I feel sucker punched. Because if sweet Ashley thinks this, what do the others think, the less fair-minded ones, who aren’t ever going to ask if it’s true?
I plunge on, determined to clarify, “It’s true in general that rabbis, imams, priests, etc. they don’t pay the same exact taxes as the rest of us. They get breaks. It’s called parsonage.” I know about this because my father-in-law was a chaplain in the air force and rabbi, and qualified for parsonage. “But that tax break applies equally to all clergy,” I end.
She’s nodding, I can feel it in her palms. I breathe more deeply into the massage, wishing for quiet so I can re-enter the zone where all that matters is fingers against skin. But my perverse curiosity can’t let go.
“How do you suppose some people got to believing this about Jews?” I ask.
She’s pressing the heel of her wrist into the area I call my chicken wing. “Well,” she says softly, “maybe it got mixed up. Cos’ everybody knows Jews don’t pay taxes because they suffered, you know, in the Holocaust.
Photo by Ilse Orsel on Unsplash
Again I start laughing, but it comes out as a choked bark. What in the world? She doesn’t say this with even a smidgen of hint of malice, but placidly, as if stating obvious things like peaches have pits and bees sting. I feel sucker punched. Because if sweet Ashley thinks this, what do the others think, the less fair-minded ones, who aren’t ever going to ask if it’s true? The ones who already harbor hatred toward Jews, and will pounce on this canard to hate them even more.
She doesn’t know what she’s saying, I tell myself. I like Ashley too much to indict her even in my mind.
Still, there’s a slight intensity in my voice as I say, “No, the Jews don’t get extra exemptions. They have to pay taxes, same as any other group. Jews who went through the Holocaust, though, many did get money from the German government, reparations. That’s the only monetary compensation I know of.”
“Mm,” she says, now pressing into my other chicken wing.
I feel a prickliness in my throat. The New Age music is finally getting on my nerves. I don’t have the heart to be angry at Ashley. She’s just passing on what she heard. At least she wanted to know if it was true. Someone once asked a close friend of mine if she had a tail. The person who asked came from a small town and had never met a Jew before. My friend was her first Jew.
Who knows, maybe I’m Ashley’s first Jew.
Normally I shrug off these comments. I can’t go around cancelling everybody who ever said something crazy about Jews. But something feels different these days. I’m hyper alert, edgy.
I’ve started telling my son to wear a baseball cap over his kippah. Don’t be a target, I say.
In the last month, I’ve read articles about Jews getting pepper-sprayed, beaten to the point of hospitalization especially if they’re easily identifiable as Jews in their kippahs, terrorized as cars drive through Orthodox neighborhoods, with people shouting out the window, “Free Palestine! Kill the Jews! We’re gonna rape your daughters!” Youtube clips of Jews getting punched and hit with bottles while harmlessly noshing at an outdoor sushi bar, a Hassid running for his life as two cars hoisting Palestinian flags try to flatten him, the drivers screaming, Allahu Akbar!
I feel an odd shame as I watch the panicked Hassid swerve here and there to avoid the cars. To be chased and hunted down like a dog, just like in Europe, 1943. It can’t be. Not in my America that welcomed my mother and grandparents from Tunisia in the 1950s with open arms.
Actually, why do I think it’s weird? Isn’t it an old standby, this collective blaming of Jews? Old as Jesus.
It’s shudderingly weird, this blaming of all kinds of Jews everywhere, for the so-called crime of Israel defending itself against terrorist attack.
Actually, why do I think it’s weird? Isn’t it an old standby, this collective blaming of Jews? Old as Jesus.
Remember that song in Cinderella, when the prince sings, “Do I love you because you’re beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?”
And I wonder if they hate Jewish people because of Israel, or in their heart of hearts, do they hate Israel because it’s Jewish?
Oh please. I shake myself. Please shut up. My stomach is roiling. And here I am, getting a massage. I’m lucky. Yes, privileged. Stop the screed. Enjoy this blessing. What a waste of a massage if I let my mind go to these tortuous self-righteous places. No one is going to pepper spray me while I’m lying here.
Certainly not Ashley. Under her good hands, my body breathes and sighs, utterly relaxes. It’s not that hard to blank out the world.
And I am soothed. Ashley would never do me any harm. She is a masseuse angel. I feel goodness pouring out of her finger tips. I wish she’d never stop, but she does.
I dress, slowly this time, pensively, put on my wig, and gather my things. She gives me a bottle of water. She thanks me for the tip.
“I appreciate you,” she says in her soft-spoken real way.
Oddly, we shake hands. “I feel it,” I say back. “I know you do.”
Sadly, I also know she may be a conduit, unwittingly transmitting hatred.
Then I book another appointment and go out the door, full of dread and determination, to track down all the other people who have ideas about us.
A version of this article was originally published in P.S. I Love You
Jun 19, 2021 | by Rachel Kadoshprint article
She says it’s because of the Holocaust.
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/My-Masseuse-Thinks-Jews-Dont-Pay-Taxes.html?
Ashley greets me at the salon desk in her soft, understated way, dressed in her usual black T-shirt and leggings, her dark hair piled into a tight pincushion on her head. The phrase ‘pleasingly plump’ was coined with her in mind. She looks 18, but I know she’s 24.
Due to complicated Covid reasons, I accidentally paid ahead for 9 treatments at this salon, and now must use them within a span of three months. I decide to forego the facials and binge instead on massages. And Ashley is a master of massage.
This will be my fourth time. Ashley and I, we have a nice rapport, or at least I think so.
“You look so nice,” she exclaims. “Your hair” she makes an hour glass gesture “… everything.”
I’m startled. Then I realize – the last three times I came in wearing a chenille snood on my head.
It’s a wig, I blurt, not wanting to get credit for locks that aren’t my own. It’s a Jewish Orthodox thing, I explain, a little self-consciously.
She makes no remark, just gestures kindly toward the massage room, and I go.
There, I discard my clothing in less than a minute, not wanting to lose a precious second of Ashley’s massage. I slip off my wig in one swoop and toss it onto the rest of my clothing. It looks like a sleeping cat nestled there. Then I jump under the blanket and call out, "I’m ready!"
Ashley enters and asks me what part of the body I want to work on this time.
This question always stymies me. Where to begin? My bum knee? My scoliotic spine? My two frozen shoulders not yet totally healed though years and years have past? I’m past 50. There’s history here. I say, “Just go wherever your fingers think best,” and she smiles, and says, “I like the way you said that.”
Unable to contain myself, I throw in, “Maybe a little extra attention to the back and the neck.” I pause. “And the skull.”
Non-irritating New Age music plays in the background. Then I shut my mouth and eyes and enter the zone of touch, of sensation. Ashley massages silently, meditatively, almost prayerfully, except when she digs her knuckle in hard at what I call the poison spots ridging my spine. She comes at me from surprising angles, using all her limbs. Elbows, forearms, chin, who knows maybe even her knee – it’s hard to tell with me facing down on the massage block. She moves intuitively as if guided not only her training but a body-wisdom. All of her is into this work, no part is elsewhere, wondering who just texted her. I wish I could be as whole-hearted, whole-bodied, in whatever I’m doing – while listening to my teen or chopping a carrot or writing a story or emptying the dishwasher.
The only part that stops me from full enjoyment is that I know at some not far off point, it will end.
Halfway into the massage, Ashley tends to go chatty, which I don’t love – it breaks the dream – but I‘ve grown to like, because I like her. There’s something pure-hearted and rare about her.
I’m mildly curious about her origins – is that the word? – but I’ve learned to ask that could be a micro-aggression.
She asks me what movies I like, and I try to drum up a few. (Haven’t seen a movie in years.)
“You’re Jewish, right?” she says, after a few minutes of quiet.
I nod, to the degree that I can with my cheeks pressed into the headrest.
“Could I ask you something?” Her voice is hesitant.
“Go ahead.” I add jokingly, “As long as I can ask you something back.”
“Sure.” She says, “Is it true that Jews don’t pay taxes because they consider their homes to be a temple?”
“What?” I twist and look over at her. I burst out laughing. It’s so preposterous, I don’t even register the hidden canard – the Jews and money jab, you know, sharp-eyed Jews fleecing the government.
“Do you really think that’s true?” I ask her, incredulous.
She says, “I’ve heard it lots of times, from a few different people. It’s like, a known thing.”
Could she be referring to “shteibels” or the shteibel phenomenon in very Orthodox areas where small prayer groups occasionally form in private homes? There must be four or five in my own community. Yes, I suppose they would be entitled to a tax break on property taxes, but that is a lot different than tax evasion. That’s a lot different than all Jews don’t pay taxes. I try to explain this.
She’s concentrating on my arms right now, maybe that’s why she doesn’t answer.
I feel sucker punched. Because if sweet Ashley thinks this, what do the others think, the less fair-minded ones, who aren’t ever going to ask if it’s true?
I plunge on, determined to clarify, “It’s true in general that rabbis, imams, priests, etc. they don’t pay the same exact taxes as the rest of us. They get breaks. It’s called parsonage.” I know about this because my father-in-law was a chaplain in the air force and rabbi, and qualified for parsonage. “But that tax break applies equally to all clergy,” I end.
She’s nodding, I can feel it in her palms. I breathe more deeply into the massage, wishing for quiet so I can re-enter the zone where all that matters is fingers against skin. But my perverse curiosity can’t let go.
“How do you suppose some people got to believing this about Jews?” I ask.
She’s pressing the heel of her wrist into the area I call my chicken wing. “Well,” she says softly, “maybe it got mixed up. Cos’ everybody knows Jews don’t pay taxes because they suffered, you know, in the Holocaust.
Photo by Ilse Orsel on Unsplash
Again I start laughing, but it comes out as a choked bark. What in the world? She doesn’t say this with even a smidgen of hint of malice, but placidly, as if stating obvious things like peaches have pits and bees sting. I feel sucker punched. Because if sweet Ashley thinks this, what do the others think, the less fair-minded ones, who aren’t ever going to ask if it’s true? The ones who already harbor hatred toward Jews, and will pounce on this canard to hate them even more.
She doesn’t know what she’s saying, I tell myself. I like Ashley too much to indict her even in my mind.
Still, there’s a slight intensity in my voice as I say, “No, the Jews don’t get extra exemptions. They have to pay taxes, same as any other group. Jews who went through the Holocaust, though, many did get money from the German government, reparations. That’s the only monetary compensation I know of.”
“Mm,” she says, now pressing into my other chicken wing.
I feel a prickliness in my throat. The New Age music is finally getting on my nerves. I don’t have the heart to be angry at Ashley. She’s just passing on what she heard. At least she wanted to know if it was true. Someone once asked a close friend of mine if she had a tail. The person who asked came from a small town and had never met a Jew before. My friend was her first Jew.
Who knows, maybe I’m Ashley’s first Jew.
Normally I shrug off these comments. I can’t go around cancelling everybody who ever said something crazy about Jews. But something feels different these days. I’m hyper alert, edgy.
I’ve started telling my son to wear a baseball cap over his kippah. Don’t be a target, I say.
In the last month, I’ve read articles about Jews getting pepper-sprayed, beaten to the point of hospitalization especially if they’re easily identifiable as Jews in their kippahs, terrorized as cars drive through Orthodox neighborhoods, with people shouting out the window, “Free Palestine! Kill the Jews! We’re gonna rape your daughters!” Youtube clips of Jews getting punched and hit with bottles while harmlessly noshing at an outdoor sushi bar, a Hassid running for his life as two cars hoisting Palestinian flags try to flatten him, the drivers screaming, Allahu Akbar!
I feel an odd shame as I watch the panicked Hassid swerve here and there to avoid the cars. To be chased and hunted down like a dog, just like in Europe, 1943. It can’t be. Not in my America that welcomed my mother and grandparents from Tunisia in the 1950s with open arms.
Actually, why do I think it’s weird? Isn’t it an old standby, this collective blaming of Jews? Old as Jesus.
It’s shudderingly weird, this blaming of all kinds of Jews everywhere, for the so-called crime of Israel defending itself against terrorist attack.
Actually, why do I think it’s weird? Isn’t it an old standby, this collective blaming of Jews? Old as Jesus.
Remember that song in Cinderella, when the prince sings, “Do I love you because you’re beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?”
And I wonder if they hate Jewish people because of Israel, or in their heart of hearts, do they hate Israel because it’s Jewish?
Oh please. I shake myself. Please shut up. My stomach is roiling. And here I am, getting a massage. I’m lucky. Yes, privileged. Stop the screed. Enjoy this blessing. What a waste of a massage if I let my mind go to these tortuous self-righteous places. No one is going to pepper spray me while I’m lying here.
Certainly not Ashley. Under her good hands, my body breathes and sighs, utterly relaxes. It’s not that hard to blank out the world.
And I am soothed. Ashley would never do me any harm. She is a masseuse angel. I feel goodness pouring out of her finger tips. I wish she’d never stop, but she does.
I dress, slowly this time, pensively, put on my wig, and gather my things. She gives me a bottle of water. She thanks me for the tip.
“I appreciate you,” she says in her soft-spoken real way.
Oddly, we shake hands. “I feel it,” I say back. “I know you do.”
Sadly, I also know she may be a conduit, unwittingly transmitting hatred.
Then I book another appointment and go out the door, full of dread and determination, to track down all the other people who have ideas about us.
A version of this article was originally published in P.S. I Love You
Re: AISH
https://www.aish.com/ci/s/Richard-Dawkins-and-Eugenics.html?
Richard Dawkins and Eugenics
Jun 12, 2021 | by Jeff Jacobyprint article
Richard Dawkins and Eugenics
Dawkins advocates for reducing “undesirable” populations by preventing them from being born in the first place.
“As a scientist, I tend to respond to anything by saying: Is it true? What are the facts?”
Those words were spoken by Richard Dawkins, the renowned evolutionary biologist and even more renowned – some might say notorious – atheist, during a conversation recently on Ireland’s RTE Radio 1. Dawkins has published a new book, a collection of writings on science as literature titled Books Do Furnish A Life, and he was appearing on Brendan O’Connor’s radio program to publicize it.
The two men talked about the role of science in the pandemic, about the beauty and inspiration that Dawkins finds in his scientific work, about scientists who are (unlike Dawkins) religious, and about Charles Darwin’s views on race and his passionate opposition to slavery.
Then O’Connor switched gears. He brought up an online exchange from 2014 in which Dawkins had responded to a woman who said she would be faced with a “real ethical dilemma” if she became pregnant with a baby who had Down syndrome. Dawkins’s advice: “Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.”
O’Connor, whose daughter Mary was born with Down syndrome in 2010, wanted to ask his distinguished guest about that.
“How do you think it is immoral to bring someone with Down syndrome into the world?”
Dawkins first responded by acknowledging that parents of Down syndrome children undoubtedly love their kids – “I wouldn’t deny that for one single moment.” But it is almost universally the case, he said, for a pregnancy to be aborted if there is a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome.
O’Connor didn’t let him evade the question. No one was challenging a woman’s legal right to abort a pregnancy if the baby would be born with Down syndrome, he said. “But why is it immoral not to abort it?”
Well, conceded Dawkins, “that was probably putting it a bit too strongly.” But he still insisted that it was wrong to give birth to such a child, “given that the amount of suffering in the world probably does not go down – probably does go up – compared to having another child who doesn’t have Down’s syndrome.”
Even taking Dawkins’s assumption at face value, his argument is grotesque. The way to minimize suffering in the world is to destroy in advance anyone who might suffer? By that logic, anyone who is apt to be raised in poverty ought to be aborted. Anyone who might be born into a persecuted or disfavored demographic – a baby of the “wrong” sex, race, religion, or ethnicity – ought to be aborted. An unborn child facing any physical, mental, or circumstantial difficulty ought to be destroyed in the womb, lest more “suffering” be added to the world.
When Dawkins confidently asserted that an unborn child with Down syndrome ought to be aborted, he was speaking out of sheer, arrogant ignorance.
But leave aside Dawkins’s bizarre moral calculus. O’Connor asked him for his empirical evidence that when a couple has a baby with Down syndrome, it increases global suffering. Dawkins had avowed earlier that his default approach to everything is to ask “Is it true? What are the facts?” Well, O’Connor wondered, what facts had he gathered about Down syndrome? How does he know that aborting a baby with Down syndrome makes the world less painful?
“I don’t know for certain,” the famous scientist admitted. “It seems to me to be plausible that if a child has any kind of disability, then you probably would increase the amount of happiness in the world more by having another child instead.”
O’Connor: But you have no reason for knowing that.
Dawkins: I have no direct evidence.
O’Connor: OK. You know you’re such a scientific, logical person I thought you could possibly have some logical backup to it. So, do you know anyone with Down syndrome?
Dawkins: Not – not intimately, no.
In other words, when Dawkins confidently asserted that an unborn child with Down syndrome ought to be aborted, he was speaking out of sheer, arrogant ignorance. He was relying not on research and data, but on crude superstition. He was doing, in short, what he so frequently and contemptuously accuses religious believers of doing.
As it happens, science has plenty to say about Down syndrome and the overall impact it has on human life.
Researchers at Children’s Hospital in Boston reported in 2011 that “the experience of Down syndrome is a positive one for most parents, siblings, and people with Down syndrome.” In three linked national surveys, the research team found that 79 percent of parents of a child with Down syndrome reported that their outlook on life was enhanced because of their child, while 94 percent of brothers and sisters of someone with Down syndrome expressed pride in their sibling. As for the people with Down syndrome themselves, an astonishing 99 percent said they were happy with their lives, 97 percent liked who they are, and 96 percent liked how they look. Only 4 percent expressed sadness about their life.
This is the “increased suffering” that Dawkins insists it would be immoral not to prevent through abortion.
What the hospital researchers documented statistically, many people who have relatives with Down syndrome have documented in personal narratives. One such account was published last week at the website Tortoise by Simon Barnes, an admirer of Dawkins’s scientific work who is also the father of Eddie Barnes, a 20-year-old man with Down syndrome. “We weren’t forced to have Eddie because of tyrannical religious prejudices,” Barnes writes.
It was a decision based on the subject Dawkins has written about with such certainty: life. My wife had a child inside her and we chose not to kill it. Such was our right. Other people make other decisions; that is their right and I don’t go about calling them immoral.
But I would like to explain to such people – before they make the decision to abort – that Eddie was born and lives and thrives. When he was at his mainstream primary school, the head teacher said that he made the school a better place: more caring, more considerate. The pupils voted to give him their annual Peace Prize.
These days, he works two days a week at the excellent Clinks Care Farm down the road from us in Norfolk. He recently completed an Open University Course in photography, for which he was given a mark of 89 per cent. He has a passion for music. He is a valued member of his community. He has good friends of all ages, including his own, and I think they would all say that knowing Eddie has enriched their lives. He and I chase wildlife together. He asks questions like, “How does a buzzard come to fly like that?” I can answer that because I’ve read Darwin and Dawkins. I am wiser for reading them. I am also wiser in many ways for living with Eddie for the past 20 years.
Sometimes Eddie will tell us, “I love my life.” In my view, that’s a good reason for letting him have it. Eddie loves and is loved: is that not a sufficient qualification for life.
In his interview on RTE Radio, Dawkins was asked what other imperfections he would “screen out” through abortion. His reply: “Deafness, blindness . . . [any] easily diagnosable disability.”
O’Connor wanted to make sure he was hearing Dawkins correctly: “You believe that if we can check for deafness or blindness or any other disability, that we should abort those children – those fetuses?”
Dawkins: Well, it’s a choice that the parents have.
O’Connor: Do you think it would be immoral not to do it?
Dawkins: Let’s leave out the immoral.
O’Connor: You brought immoral into it.
Dawkins: Okay, well, I take that back. But it would be wise – I think it would be wise and sensible to abort a child that had a serious disability that was diagnosed early in pregnancy.
There is a name for Dawkins’s attitude, though he never uses it. He is an advocate of eugenics, which held that “undesirable” populations should be reduced or eliminated by preventing them from being born in the first place. In many states in the early 20th century, the eugenics movement succeeded in passing laws to mandate the sterilization of people deemed unfit for reproduction. In the notorious 1927 case of Buck v. Bell , the Supreme Court upheld the right of state governments to forcibly sterilize “feebleminded” citizens. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing for the majority, proclaimed it “better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.”
Similarly fixated on perfecting the human race through eugenics was Margaret Sanger, the founder of the American Birth Control League, which was later renamed Planned Parenthood. In her influential 1922 book, The Pivot Of Civilization , Sanger called for “immediate, stern, and definite” action to solve the “problem of the feeble-minded and the menace of the moron” – those she regarded as the “dead weight of human waste.” She denounced the provision of free medical care to “slum mothers,” since that “would facilitate . . . maternity among the very classes in which the absolute necessity is to discourage it.”
Eugenics fell into disfavor only after it was enthusiastically embraced by Nazi Germany, which murdered more than 300,000 German citizens with cognitive and physical disabilities.
Eugenics fell into disfavor only after it was enthusiastically embraced by Nazi Germany, which not only sterilized an estimated 400,000 people against their will, but also murdered more than 300,000 German citizens with cognitive and physical disabilities. Needless to say, no one today advocates that babies born with Down syndrome be euthanized. But Dawkins is far from alone in advocating that those who would be born with the disorder be killed before they can take their first breath.
In much of Europe, the abortion rate after a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis is above 90 percent. In Iceland, where prenatal screening is widespread, “we have basically eradicated, almost, Down syndrome from our society,” geneticist Kari Stefansson told CBS a few years ago . Stefansson made clear that he disapproved of the “heavy-handed genetic counseling” that led to those results, but CBS promoted its story with an unmistakably upbeat tagline: “Iceland is on pace to virtually eliminate Down syndrome through abortion.”
Except that Iceland and other European nations aren’t eliminating Down syndrome at all. They are eliminating people. They are deliberately targeting a certain category of “unfit” persons for elimination. And so is the United States, where about 75 percent of women who learn that they are carrying a baby with Down syndrome abort the pregnancy, according to a meta-study published in 2012.
In a 2018 Washington Post column, George Will remarked bluntly that this sustained and largely successful campaign to abort anyone with Down syndrome deserved to be labeled genocide. That is the proper term, he wrote, for any “deliberate, systematic attempt to erase a category of people.” When prenatal specialists strongly encourage such abortions, when prominent scientists like Dawkins declare that the world would be happier without Down syndrome babies, what they are really promoting is a “Final Solution to the Down syndrome problem.”
Baseball fan Jon Will, standing with his father George F. Will, gives the Washington Nationals lineup card to the umpire on Opening Day in 2010.
As it happens, Will has good reason to shun euphemisms in discussing the subject: His oldest child, Jonathan, has Down syndrome. So he knows only too well how much joy and goodness the world would have missed out on if his son’s life had been destroyed in utero. “Judging by Jon,” Will wrote when his son turned 40 in 2013, “the world would be improved by more people with Down syndrome, who are quite nice, as humans go.”
In 2021, any civilized person regards with horror the compulsory sterilization of disabled people that was once championed by medical and political elites. The day is coming when those who urge the destruction of unborn human beings with Down syndrome will evoke the same repugnance. In the meantime, Richard Dawkins has been revealed as a smug and uninformed bigot. It’s not much, but it’s a step in the right direction.
This article originally appeared in Jeff Jacoby's weekly newsletter, Arguable, which is sponsored by the Boston Globe.
Richard Dawkins and Eugenics
Jun 12, 2021 | by Jeff Jacobyprint article
Richard Dawkins and Eugenics
Dawkins advocates for reducing “undesirable” populations by preventing them from being born in the first place.
“As a scientist, I tend to respond to anything by saying: Is it true? What are the facts?”
Those words were spoken by Richard Dawkins, the renowned evolutionary biologist and even more renowned – some might say notorious – atheist, during a conversation recently on Ireland’s RTE Radio 1. Dawkins has published a new book, a collection of writings on science as literature titled Books Do Furnish A Life, and he was appearing on Brendan O’Connor’s radio program to publicize it.
The two men talked about the role of science in the pandemic, about the beauty and inspiration that Dawkins finds in his scientific work, about scientists who are (unlike Dawkins) religious, and about Charles Darwin’s views on race and his passionate opposition to slavery.
Then O’Connor switched gears. He brought up an online exchange from 2014 in which Dawkins had responded to a woman who said she would be faced with a “real ethical dilemma” if she became pregnant with a baby who had Down syndrome. Dawkins’s advice: “Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.”
O’Connor, whose daughter Mary was born with Down syndrome in 2010, wanted to ask his distinguished guest about that.
“How do you think it is immoral to bring someone with Down syndrome into the world?”
Dawkins first responded by acknowledging that parents of Down syndrome children undoubtedly love their kids – “I wouldn’t deny that for one single moment.” But it is almost universally the case, he said, for a pregnancy to be aborted if there is a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome.
O’Connor didn’t let him evade the question. No one was challenging a woman’s legal right to abort a pregnancy if the baby would be born with Down syndrome, he said. “But why is it immoral not to abort it?”
Well, conceded Dawkins, “that was probably putting it a bit too strongly.” But he still insisted that it was wrong to give birth to such a child, “given that the amount of suffering in the world probably does not go down – probably does go up – compared to having another child who doesn’t have Down’s syndrome.”
Even taking Dawkins’s assumption at face value, his argument is grotesque. The way to minimize suffering in the world is to destroy in advance anyone who might suffer? By that logic, anyone who is apt to be raised in poverty ought to be aborted. Anyone who might be born into a persecuted or disfavored demographic – a baby of the “wrong” sex, race, religion, or ethnicity – ought to be aborted. An unborn child facing any physical, mental, or circumstantial difficulty ought to be destroyed in the womb, lest more “suffering” be added to the world.
When Dawkins confidently asserted that an unborn child with Down syndrome ought to be aborted, he was speaking out of sheer, arrogant ignorance.
But leave aside Dawkins’s bizarre moral calculus. O’Connor asked him for his empirical evidence that when a couple has a baby with Down syndrome, it increases global suffering. Dawkins had avowed earlier that his default approach to everything is to ask “Is it true? What are the facts?” Well, O’Connor wondered, what facts had he gathered about Down syndrome? How does he know that aborting a baby with Down syndrome makes the world less painful?
“I don’t know for certain,” the famous scientist admitted. “It seems to me to be plausible that if a child has any kind of disability, then you probably would increase the amount of happiness in the world more by having another child instead.”
O’Connor: But you have no reason for knowing that.
Dawkins: I have no direct evidence.
O’Connor: OK. You know you’re such a scientific, logical person I thought you could possibly have some logical backup to it. So, do you know anyone with Down syndrome?
Dawkins: Not – not intimately, no.
In other words, when Dawkins confidently asserted that an unborn child with Down syndrome ought to be aborted, he was speaking out of sheer, arrogant ignorance. He was relying not on research and data, but on crude superstition. He was doing, in short, what he so frequently and contemptuously accuses religious believers of doing.
As it happens, science has plenty to say about Down syndrome and the overall impact it has on human life.
Researchers at Children’s Hospital in Boston reported in 2011 that “the experience of Down syndrome is a positive one for most parents, siblings, and people with Down syndrome.” In three linked national surveys, the research team found that 79 percent of parents of a child with Down syndrome reported that their outlook on life was enhanced because of their child, while 94 percent of brothers and sisters of someone with Down syndrome expressed pride in their sibling. As for the people with Down syndrome themselves, an astonishing 99 percent said they were happy with their lives, 97 percent liked who they are, and 96 percent liked how they look. Only 4 percent expressed sadness about their life.
This is the “increased suffering” that Dawkins insists it would be immoral not to prevent through abortion.
What the hospital researchers documented statistically, many people who have relatives with Down syndrome have documented in personal narratives. One such account was published last week at the website Tortoise by Simon Barnes, an admirer of Dawkins’s scientific work who is also the father of Eddie Barnes, a 20-year-old man with Down syndrome. “We weren’t forced to have Eddie because of tyrannical religious prejudices,” Barnes writes.
It was a decision based on the subject Dawkins has written about with such certainty: life. My wife had a child inside her and we chose not to kill it. Such was our right. Other people make other decisions; that is their right and I don’t go about calling them immoral.
But I would like to explain to such people – before they make the decision to abort – that Eddie was born and lives and thrives. When he was at his mainstream primary school, the head teacher said that he made the school a better place: more caring, more considerate. The pupils voted to give him their annual Peace Prize.
These days, he works two days a week at the excellent Clinks Care Farm down the road from us in Norfolk. He recently completed an Open University Course in photography, for which he was given a mark of 89 per cent. He has a passion for music. He is a valued member of his community. He has good friends of all ages, including his own, and I think they would all say that knowing Eddie has enriched their lives. He and I chase wildlife together. He asks questions like, “How does a buzzard come to fly like that?” I can answer that because I’ve read Darwin and Dawkins. I am wiser for reading them. I am also wiser in many ways for living with Eddie for the past 20 years.
Sometimes Eddie will tell us, “I love my life.” In my view, that’s a good reason for letting him have it. Eddie loves and is loved: is that not a sufficient qualification for life.
In his interview on RTE Radio, Dawkins was asked what other imperfections he would “screen out” through abortion. His reply: “Deafness, blindness . . . [any] easily diagnosable disability.”
O’Connor wanted to make sure he was hearing Dawkins correctly: “You believe that if we can check for deafness or blindness or any other disability, that we should abort those children – those fetuses?”
Dawkins: Well, it’s a choice that the parents have.
O’Connor: Do you think it would be immoral not to do it?
Dawkins: Let’s leave out the immoral.
O’Connor: You brought immoral into it.
Dawkins: Okay, well, I take that back. But it would be wise – I think it would be wise and sensible to abort a child that had a serious disability that was diagnosed early in pregnancy.
There is a name for Dawkins’s attitude, though he never uses it. He is an advocate of eugenics, which held that “undesirable” populations should be reduced or eliminated by preventing them from being born in the first place. In many states in the early 20th century, the eugenics movement succeeded in passing laws to mandate the sterilization of people deemed unfit for reproduction. In the notorious 1927 case of Buck v. Bell , the Supreme Court upheld the right of state governments to forcibly sterilize “feebleminded” citizens. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing for the majority, proclaimed it “better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.”
Similarly fixated on perfecting the human race through eugenics was Margaret Sanger, the founder of the American Birth Control League, which was later renamed Planned Parenthood. In her influential 1922 book, The Pivot Of Civilization , Sanger called for “immediate, stern, and definite” action to solve the “problem of the feeble-minded and the menace of the moron” – those she regarded as the “dead weight of human waste.” She denounced the provision of free medical care to “slum mothers,” since that “would facilitate . . . maternity among the very classes in which the absolute necessity is to discourage it.”
Eugenics fell into disfavor only after it was enthusiastically embraced by Nazi Germany, which murdered more than 300,000 German citizens with cognitive and physical disabilities.
Eugenics fell into disfavor only after it was enthusiastically embraced by Nazi Germany, which not only sterilized an estimated 400,000 people against their will, but also murdered more than 300,000 German citizens with cognitive and physical disabilities. Needless to say, no one today advocates that babies born with Down syndrome be euthanized. But Dawkins is far from alone in advocating that those who would be born with the disorder be killed before they can take their first breath.
In much of Europe, the abortion rate after a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis is above 90 percent. In Iceland, where prenatal screening is widespread, “we have basically eradicated, almost, Down syndrome from our society,” geneticist Kari Stefansson told CBS a few years ago . Stefansson made clear that he disapproved of the “heavy-handed genetic counseling” that led to those results, but CBS promoted its story with an unmistakably upbeat tagline: “Iceland is on pace to virtually eliminate Down syndrome through abortion.”
Except that Iceland and other European nations aren’t eliminating Down syndrome at all. They are eliminating people. They are deliberately targeting a certain category of “unfit” persons for elimination. And so is the United States, where about 75 percent of women who learn that they are carrying a baby with Down syndrome abort the pregnancy, according to a meta-study published in 2012.
In a 2018 Washington Post column, George Will remarked bluntly that this sustained and largely successful campaign to abort anyone with Down syndrome deserved to be labeled genocide. That is the proper term, he wrote, for any “deliberate, systematic attempt to erase a category of people.” When prenatal specialists strongly encourage such abortions, when prominent scientists like Dawkins declare that the world would be happier without Down syndrome babies, what they are really promoting is a “Final Solution to the Down syndrome problem.”
Baseball fan Jon Will, standing with his father George F. Will, gives the Washington Nationals lineup card to the umpire on Opening Day in 2010.
As it happens, Will has good reason to shun euphemisms in discussing the subject: His oldest child, Jonathan, has Down syndrome. So he knows only too well how much joy and goodness the world would have missed out on if his son’s life had been destroyed in utero. “Judging by Jon,” Will wrote when his son turned 40 in 2013, “the world would be improved by more people with Down syndrome, who are quite nice, as humans go.”
In 2021, any civilized person regards with horror the compulsory sterilization of disabled people that was once championed by medical and political elites. The day is coming when those who urge the destruction of unborn human beings with Down syndrome will evoke the same repugnance. In the meantime, Richard Dawkins has been revealed as a smug and uninformed bigot. It’s not much, but it’s a step in the right direction.
This article originally appeared in Jeff Jacoby's weekly newsletter, Arguable, which is sponsored by the Boston Globe.
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https://www.aish.com/ci/s/The-Tulsa-Race-Massacre-and-Oklahomas-Jews.html?
The Tulsa Race Massacre and Oklahoma’s Jews
Jun 14, 2021 | by Phil Goldfarbprint article
The Tulsa Race Massacre and Oklahoma’s Jews
How local Jews – some with fresh memories of European pogroms – did their small part to help victims of one of the worst acts of racial violence in US history.
The Tulsa Race Massacre – also known as the Black Wall Street Massacre and the Tulsa Race Riot – was one of the most horrendous incidents of racial violence in United States history. On May 31 – June 1, 1921, hundreds of people were injured and killed, and thirty-five blocks of the city were destroyed, along with over 1,200 homes.
"Ruins of the Tulsa Race Riot, 6-1-21” (Public Domain via DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University)
While relatively few whites exhibited empathy and compassion to the persecuted African American community of Tulsa – largely due to the influence of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and others – many Jewish families made efforts to help African American families by taking them into their homes or businesses, feeding and clothing them, as well as hiding them during and after the atrocity.
During the time of the Race Massacre, a number of the Jewish families went into North Tulsa to secure their black employees, friends, and their families, in order to protect them at least until Martial Law was over on June 3rd… some even longer.
Many of the Jews in the city were recent immigrants from Eastern Europe who remembered firsthand suffering through violent pogroms and anti-Semitic policies in the Russian Empire and elsewhere.
Scenes like this undoubtedly brought back memories for many Tulsa Jews who had survived pogroms in Europe (Public Domain via DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University)
Here are a few family stories from that terrible time that have been passed down within the Oklahoma Jewish community.
Pickle vats and underskirts
Jewish Latvian immigrant Sam Zarrow (1894-1975) and his wife Rose (1893-1982) owned a grocery store and hid some black friends in their large pickle vats at the store, while Rose concealed some of the little kids under her skirt! In addition, they hid others in the basement of their home. Sam and Rose’s sons, Henry (1916-2014) and Jack Zarrow (1925-2012) became two of the most well-known and philanthropic men in Tulsa’s history, supporting a range of causes across the city.
Waiting with a shotgun
Tulsan Abraham (Abe) Solomon Viner (1885-1959) and his wife Anna (1887-1976) owned the Peoples Building and Loan Association. On the day of the Massacre, Abe went to all of the homes on his block, collected all of the maids from their quarters and assembled them in his living room. He then sat by the front door with a shotgun in case anyone broke into the house.
Smoke billowing over Tulsa during the Race Massacre (Photo: Alvin C. Krupnick Co. / Public Domain via Library of Congress)
Threatening the Klan
The Race Massacre had a far-reaching effect even outside of Tulsa. At the time, Mike Froug (1889-1959), his wife Esther (1889-1967) and daughter Rosetta Froug Mulmed (1914-2003) were living in Ponca City, Oklahoma running a clothing store called the Pickens Department Store. Immediately after the Massacre, several Ku Klux Klan members came to his house at night and set a cross on fire on his front lawn.
Knowing who the perpetrators were (frequent shoppers in his store), Froug went to the head of the Klan with his gun and told him that if they ever did that again, he would shoot them. This act had such a profound effect on Froug that when he and his cousin Ohren Smulian (1903-1984) opened the first Froug’s Department Store in Tulsa in 1929, they became the first store in the city after the Massacre to allow whites and blacks to not only shop together but to try on clothes at the same time. In fact, Frougs was also the first white-owned store in Tulsa to have black salespeople.
“Get your Jew crew out of Tulsa”
Successful oilman N.C. Livingston was an active leader in the Tulsa Jewish community, heading the establishment of the burial society and Orthodox synagogue, where he also served as president and taught a Talmud class. From B’nai Emunah, 1916-1966, part of the National Library of Israel collections
Jewish Lithuanian immigrant and oilman Nathan C. Livingston (1861-1944) and his wife Anna Livingston (1871-1934) had a newly married black couple named Gene and Willie Byrd working for them in 1921. Gene was the family driver while Willie was their housekeeper. During the Race Massacre, the couple and eight others of their family stayed in the Livingston’s basement and in their garage apartment for several days until they felt safe to go home. The following year, N.C. Livingston’s son Julius received a letter from the KKK telling him and his brothers Jay K. and Herman to “get your Jew crew out of Tulsa.”
1922 Letter to Julius Livingston telling him to get his “Jew Crew out of Tulsa” (SMMJA Livingston Archives)
Staying home
During the Massacre, Jewish Lithuanian immigrant and oil producer Jacob Hyman Bloch (1888-1955) and his wife Esther Goodman Bloch (1895-1927) told their two young daughters, Jean and Sura, to stay away from the windows and no to go to school or outside to play, while hiding their housekeeper in their home.
Jacob Hyman Bloch was also an active member in the local community, succeeding N.C. Livingstone as synagogue president in 1924. From B’nai Emunah, 1916-1966, part of the National Library of Israel collections
Driving to safety
Jewish Latvian immigrant Jacob Fell (1885-1959) and his wife Esther Fell (1886-1980) owned The Mis-Fit Clothing Store in Tulsa. During the race riots, Jacob gathered up several black friends, hid them in his large storage car trunk, and drove them to a safe area.
The Mis-Fit Clothing Store in Tulsa
“But not you Mr. Katz”
In Stillwater, Oklahoma the Ku Klux Klan also had a robust chapter. German immigrant Jacob Katz (1873-1968) started his department store in Stillwater in 1894, becoming the first Jew in the town. Katz was a highly respected merchant and town promoter and was on the Stillwater Board of Commissioners. During the heyday of the KKK, right after the Tulsa Massacre, members marched through Stillwater with anti-Jewish signs (there were only 12 Jews in Stillwater at the time!), along with one that read at the end of the line: “But not you Mr. Katz.”
This article previously appeared on “The Librarians,” the National Library of Israel’s official online publication dedicated to Jewish, Israeli and Middle Eastern history, heritage and culture. A version of the article was originally published in the May 2021 edition of theTulsa Jewish Review.
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Bestselling-Author-Brad-Meltzer-Teaches-New-Generation-about-Anne-Frank.html?
Bestselling Author Brad Meltzer Teaches New Generation about Anne Frank
Jun 12, 2021 | by Dr. Yvette Alt Millerprint article
Bestselling Author Brad Meltzer Teaches New Generation about Anne Frank
His most personal book, Meltzer wrote I am Anne Frank as a way to combat global Jew-hatred.
“I’ve never seen a reaction like I’ve seen for I am Anne Frank,” explained bestselling author Brad Meltzer in a recent Aish.com exclusive interview.
Brad Meltzer is a familiar name to millions of readers around the world. The #1 New York Times bestselling author of numerous books for adults and kids, Brad has hosted television programs and is also the creator of the 27 books in the Ordinary People Change the World series of biographies of notable people written for young children. These books, written in the first person, bring famous figures such as Amelia Earhart and Abraham Lincoln to life, describing what their life was like from the time they were children to the fame they earned as adults.
One of his most successful books in the series is I am Anne Frank. “I started this book series to give my own kids heroes to look up to,” Brad explains. He tries to write about historical figures who modeled “kindness, compassion and perseverance,” and with I am Anne Frank he also tried to convey hope. “Who better to teach hope than Anne Frank?” Brad asks. “This is the girl who hid from Nazis in an attic and still felt that people were good at heart.”
Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt on June 12, 1929. Her parents Otto and Edith Frank were cultured and middle class; Anne also had an older sister named Margo. In 1934, after Hitler came to power in Germany, the Franks fled Germany, finding relative safety in nearby Amsterdam. But when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1942, life changed drastically or Jews there. Unable to work or go to school, Dutch Jews were forced to wear a yellow star whenever they went out in public.
After local Nazi officials notified the Frank family that Margo was to be deported to a labor camp, the family had no choice but to hide.
After local Nazi officials notified the Frank family that Margo was to be deported to a labor camp, the family had no choice but to hide. Along with another family of three, then another man as well, the Franks spent over two years living in a secret set of rooms behind her father’s business office. Aided by some non-Jewish Dutch neighbors, the Franks and other Jews in the secret annex had to live in near silence most of the time. Even a footstep or an overheard whisper would have alerted the workers toiling in the building and would have led to the Jews’ discovery and arrest.
Anne spent much of her time writing in her diary. Her words have been inspirational to generations of readers.
In August 1944, the Franks and other Jews were discovered, probably because a local worker or neighbor heard or observed their presence. Arrested and sent to concentration camps, almost all of the Jews in the secret annex perished at the hands of the Nazis. Edith Frank died in Auschwitz. Both Margo and Anne Frank suffered from overwork, malnutrition and disease; they died of typhus in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. Of the eight Jews in the annex, only Otto Frank survived. He oversaw the publication of his Anne diary after the Holocaust.
With the current alarming rise in antisemitism around the world, Brad Meltzer wrote I am Anne Frank as a way of combatting global Jew-hatred. “The real truth is that antisemitism is at this brand new high,” he explains. “There are millennials who don’t know basic facts about the Holocaust, let alone that six million Jews died.”
A recent poll found that 63% of young adult millennials and Generation-Z didn’t know that six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. Shockingly, 11% believed that Jews had caused the Holocaust. More information about the Holocaust and the horrors of Nazi persecution of Jews and other groups is more crucial now than ever.
“When I read that statistic about millennials who don’t know about the Holocaust, I knew I had to write for non-Jewish readers too,” Brad notes. He points out that he has no memory of hearing Anne Frank’s story for the first time; her story has always been a part of his life. "Knowing about the Holocaust was part of growing up.” Today, the majority of youth do not have this same understanding and base of knowledge.
Brad Meltzer grew up in Brooklyn. A trip to Israel at the age of 19 changed his life. Visiting the Jewish state made him feel like he was “part of something – I started going to synagogue and saying Shabbat prayers.” As he’s grown older, Jewish practice has become a more central part of his life.
“As a father I realize that our kids need hope again.” Telling Anne Frank’s story to a new generation of children is a way to give readers hope.
Anne Frank’s diary contains some moving passages, a few of which Brad quotes in his book. In one inspiring section, he shows four passages from Anne’s real-life diary:
Who knows, maybe our religion will teach the world and all the people in it about goodness.
As long as this exists, this sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it, how sad can I be?
As long as you can look fearlessly at the sky, you’ll know that you’re pure within and will find happiness once more.
I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.
Readers have told him it’s the most important book they’ve ever read with their children.
Brad observes that Anne was “born with this light in her,” an ability to be optimistic and inspiring despite the traumas that he endured in her short life. “Great horrors in our lives don’t just take us apart,” Brad notes, “they also reveal us. Anne’s situation revealed her unique ability to look at life with positivity."
After I am Anne Frank came out, Brad recalls that his sister phoned him up to say she’d just read the book to Brad’s seven-year-old niece. He asked how it went and his sister replied, “I don’t believe it – I just had an hour-long conversation with her about the Holocaust.” At the end of this long emotional talk, Brad’s niece confided, “I’m proud to be Jewish.”
"Your book worked,” his sister told him.
Readers have told him it’s the most important book they’ve ever read with their children. “I’ve never seen a reaction like I’ve seen for Anne Frank. I think there’s something about this book that’s necessary – we get the heroes we need.”
The book tries to give parents the tools they need to teach children about the Holocaust in age-appropriate ways. Notice of Anne’s tragic death at the age of just 16 is placed at the end of the book in a section that can be skipped over when reading the book to younger children. Aimed at elementary school readers, Brad has found the book has wide appeal.
At the end of his book, Brad notes, “In the Jewish faith there’s a saying: If a person saves one life, it’s as if they’ve saved an entire world.” This beautiful concept, found in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 37a), is a lasting message that Brad wants readers to understand.
As soon as he began working on the book, he knew he was going to use that quote. I am Anne Frank is the first book in Brad’s Ordinary People Change the World series in which the hero doesn’t grow old. She lives on in her writing. And thanks to Brad Meltzer, Anne’s life and words continue to be read by young readers around the world today.
The Tulsa Race Massacre and Oklahoma’s Jews
Jun 14, 2021 | by Phil Goldfarbprint article
The Tulsa Race Massacre and Oklahoma’s Jews
How local Jews – some with fresh memories of European pogroms – did their small part to help victims of one of the worst acts of racial violence in US history.
The Tulsa Race Massacre – also known as the Black Wall Street Massacre and the Tulsa Race Riot – was one of the most horrendous incidents of racial violence in United States history. On May 31 – June 1, 1921, hundreds of people were injured and killed, and thirty-five blocks of the city were destroyed, along with over 1,200 homes.
"Ruins of the Tulsa Race Riot, 6-1-21” (Public Domain via DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University)
While relatively few whites exhibited empathy and compassion to the persecuted African American community of Tulsa – largely due to the influence of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and others – many Jewish families made efforts to help African American families by taking them into their homes or businesses, feeding and clothing them, as well as hiding them during and after the atrocity.
During the time of the Race Massacre, a number of the Jewish families went into North Tulsa to secure their black employees, friends, and their families, in order to protect them at least until Martial Law was over on June 3rd… some even longer.
Many of the Jews in the city were recent immigrants from Eastern Europe who remembered firsthand suffering through violent pogroms and anti-Semitic policies in the Russian Empire and elsewhere.
Scenes like this undoubtedly brought back memories for many Tulsa Jews who had survived pogroms in Europe (Public Domain via DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University)
Here are a few family stories from that terrible time that have been passed down within the Oklahoma Jewish community.
Pickle vats and underskirts
Jewish Latvian immigrant Sam Zarrow (1894-1975) and his wife Rose (1893-1982) owned a grocery store and hid some black friends in their large pickle vats at the store, while Rose concealed some of the little kids under her skirt! In addition, they hid others in the basement of their home. Sam and Rose’s sons, Henry (1916-2014) and Jack Zarrow (1925-2012) became two of the most well-known and philanthropic men in Tulsa’s history, supporting a range of causes across the city.
Waiting with a shotgun
Tulsan Abraham (Abe) Solomon Viner (1885-1959) and his wife Anna (1887-1976) owned the Peoples Building and Loan Association. On the day of the Massacre, Abe went to all of the homes on his block, collected all of the maids from their quarters and assembled them in his living room. He then sat by the front door with a shotgun in case anyone broke into the house.
Smoke billowing over Tulsa during the Race Massacre (Photo: Alvin C. Krupnick Co. / Public Domain via Library of Congress)
Threatening the Klan
The Race Massacre had a far-reaching effect even outside of Tulsa. At the time, Mike Froug (1889-1959), his wife Esther (1889-1967) and daughter Rosetta Froug Mulmed (1914-2003) were living in Ponca City, Oklahoma running a clothing store called the Pickens Department Store. Immediately after the Massacre, several Ku Klux Klan members came to his house at night and set a cross on fire on his front lawn.
Knowing who the perpetrators were (frequent shoppers in his store), Froug went to the head of the Klan with his gun and told him that if they ever did that again, he would shoot them. This act had such a profound effect on Froug that when he and his cousin Ohren Smulian (1903-1984) opened the first Froug’s Department Store in Tulsa in 1929, they became the first store in the city after the Massacre to allow whites and blacks to not only shop together but to try on clothes at the same time. In fact, Frougs was also the first white-owned store in Tulsa to have black salespeople.
“Get your Jew crew out of Tulsa”
Successful oilman N.C. Livingston was an active leader in the Tulsa Jewish community, heading the establishment of the burial society and Orthodox synagogue, where he also served as president and taught a Talmud class. From B’nai Emunah, 1916-1966, part of the National Library of Israel collections
Jewish Lithuanian immigrant and oilman Nathan C. Livingston (1861-1944) and his wife Anna Livingston (1871-1934) had a newly married black couple named Gene and Willie Byrd working for them in 1921. Gene was the family driver while Willie was their housekeeper. During the Race Massacre, the couple and eight others of their family stayed in the Livingston’s basement and in their garage apartment for several days until they felt safe to go home. The following year, N.C. Livingston’s son Julius received a letter from the KKK telling him and his brothers Jay K. and Herman to “get your Jew crew out of Tulsa.”
1922 Letter to Julius Livingston telling him to get his “Jew Crew out of Tulsa” (SMMJA Livingston Archives)
Staying home
During the Massacre, Jewish Lithuanian immigrant and oil producer Jacob Hyman Bloch (1888-1955) and his wife Esther Goodman Bloch (1895-1927) told their two young daughters, Jean and Sura, to stay away from the windows and no to go to school or outside to play, while hiding their housekeeper in their home.
Jacob Hyman Bloch was also an active member in the local community, succeeding N.C. Livingstone as synagogue president in 1924. From B’nai Emunah, 1916-1966, part of the National Library of Israel collections
Driving to safety
Jewish Latvian immigrant Jacob Fell (1885-1959) and his wife Esther Fell (1886-1980) owned The Mis-Fit Clothing Store in Tulsa. During the race riots, Jacob gathered up several black friends, hid them in his large storage car trunk, and drove them to a safe area.
The Mis-Fit Clothing Store in Tulsa
“But not you Mr. Katz”
In Stillwater, Oklahoma the Ku Klux Klan also had a robust chapter. German immigrant Jacob Katz (1873-1968) started his department store in Stillwater in 1894, becoming the first Jew in the town. Katz was a highly respected merchant and town promoter and was on the Stillwater Board of Commissioners. During the heyday of the KKK, right after the Tulsa Massacre, members marched through Stillwater with anti-Jewish signs (there were only 12 Jews in Stillwater at the time!), along with one that read at the end of the line: “But not you Mr. Katz.”
This article previously appeared on “The Librarians,” the National Library of Israel’s official online publication dedicated to Jewish, Israeli and Middle Eastern history, heritage and culture. A version of the article was originally published in the May 2021 edition of theTulsa Jewish Review.
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Bestselling-Author-Brad-Meltzer-Teaches-New-Generation-about-Anne-Frank.html?
Bestselling Author Brad Meltzer Teaches New Generation about Anne Frank
Jun 12, 2021 | by Dr. Yvette Alt Millerprint article
Bestselling Author Brad Meltzer Teaches New Generation about Anne Frank
His most personal book, Meltzer wrote I am Anne Frank as a way to combat global Jew-hatred.
“I’ve never seen a reaction like I’ve seen for I am Anne Frank,” explained bestselling author Brad Meltzer in a recent Aish.com exclusive interview.
Brad Meltzer is a familiar name to millions of readers around the world. The #1 New York Times bestselling author of numerous books for adults and kids, Brad has hosted television programs and is also the creator of the 27 books in the Ordinary People Change the World series of biographies of notable people written for young children. These books, written in the first person, bring famous figures such as Amelia Earhart and Abraham Lincoln to life, describing what their life was like from the time they were children to the fame they earned as adults.
One of his most successful books in the series is I am Anne Frank. “I started this book series to give my own kids heroes to look up to,” Brad explains. He tries to write about historical figures who modeled “kindness, compassion and perseverance,” and with I am Anne Frank he also tried to convey hope. “Who better to teach hope than Anne Frank?” Brad asks. “This is the girl who hid from Nazis in an attic and still felt that people were good at heart.”
Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt on June 12, 1929. Her parents Otto and Edith Frank were cultured and middle class; Anne also had an older sister named Margo. In 1934, after Hitler came to power in Germany, the Franks fled Germany, finding relative safety in nearby Amsterdam. But when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1942, life changed drastically or Jews there. Unable to work or go to school, Dutch Jews were forced to wear a yellow star whenever they went out in public.
After local Nazi officials notified the Frank family that Margo was to be deported to a labor camp, the family had no choice but to hide.
After local Nazi officials notified the Frank family that Margo was to be deported to a labor camp, the family had no choice but to hide. Along with another family of three, then another man as well, the Franks spent over two years living in a secret set of rooms behind her father’s business office. Aided by some non-Jewish Dutch neighbors, the Franks and other Jews in the secret annex had to live in near silence most of the time. Even a footstep or an overheard whisper would have alerted the workers toiling in the building and would have led to the Jews’ discovery and arrest.
Anne spent much of her time writing in her diary. Her words have been inspirational to generations of readers.
In August 1944, the Franks and other Jews were discovered, probably because a local worker or neighbor heard or observed their presence. Arrested and sent to concentration camps, almost all of the Jews in the secret annex perished at the hands of the Nazis. Edith Frank died in Auschwitz. Both Margo and Anne Frank suffered from overwork, malnutrition and disease; they died of typhus in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. Of the eight Jews in the annex, only Otto Frank survived. He oversaw the publication of his Anne diary after the Holocaust.
With the current alarming rise in antisemitism around the world, Brad Meltzer wrote I am Anne Frank as a way of combatting global Jew-hatred. “The real truth is that antisemitism is at this brand new high,” he explains. “There are millennials who don’t know basic facts about the Holocaust, let alone that six million Jews died.”
A recent poll found that 63% of young adult millennials and Generation-Z didn’t know that six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. Shockingly, 11% believed that Jews had caused the Holocaust. More information about the Holocaust and the horrors of Nazi persecution of Jews and other groups is more crucial now than ever.
“When I read that statistic about millennials who don’t know about the Holocaust, I knew I had to write for non-Jewish readers too,” Brad notes. He points out that he has no memory of hearing Anne Frank’s story for the first time; her story has always been a part of his life. "Knowing about the Holocaust was part of growing up.” Today, the majority of youth do not have this same understanding and base of knowledge.
Brad Meltzer grew up in Brooklyn. A trip to Israel at the age of 19 changed his life. Visiting the Jewish state made him feel like he was “part of something – I started going to synagogue and saying Shabbat prayers.” As he’s grown older, Jewish practice has become a more central part of his life.
“As a father I realize that our kids need hope again.” Telling Anne Frank’s story to a new generation of children is a way to give readers hope.
Anne Frank’s diary contains some moving passages, a few of which Brad quotes in his book. In one inspiring section, he shows four passages from Anne’s real-life diary:
Who knows, maybe our religion will teach the world and all the people in it about goodness.
As long as this exists, this sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it, how sad can I be?
As long as you can look fearlessly at the sky, you’ll know that you’re pure within and will find happiness once more.
I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.
Readers have told him it’s the most important book they’ve ever read with their children.
Brad observes that Anne was “born with this light in her,” an ability to be optimistic and inspiring despite the traumas that he endured in her short life. “Great horrors in our lives don’t just take us apart,” Brad notes, “they also reveal us. Anne’s situation revealed her unique ability to look at life with positivity."
After I am Anne Frank came out, Brad recalls that his sister phoned him up to say she’d just read the book to Brad’s seven-year-old niece. He asked how it went and his sister replied, “I don’t believe it – I just had an hour-long conversation with her about the Holocaust.” At the end of this long emotional talk, Brad’s niece confided, “I’m proud to be Jewish.”
"Your book worked,” his sister told him.
Readers have told him it’s the most important book they’ve ever read with their children. “I’ve never seen a reaction like I’ve seen for Anne Frank. I think there’s something about this book that’s necessary – we get the heroes we need.”
The book tries to give parents the tools they need to teach children about the Holocaust in age-appropriate ways. Notice of Anne’s tragic death at the age of just 16 is placed at the end of the book in a section that can be skipped over when reading the book to younger children. Aimed at elementary school readers, Brad has found the book has wide appeal.
At the end of his book, Brad notes, “In the Jewish faith there’s a saying: If a person saves one life, it’s as if they’ve saved an entire world.” This beautiful concept, found in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 37a), is a lasting message that Brad wants readers to understand.
As soon as he began working on the book, he knew he was going to use that quote. I am Anne Frank is the first book in Brad’s Ordinary People Change the World series in which the hero doesn’t grow old. She lives on in her writing. And thanks to Brad Meltzer, Anne’s life and words continue to be read by young readers around the world today.
Re: AISH
Shalom from Jerusalem!
Here's what I'm grateful for today:
1. Israel has a new government. Whether or not it will last (how could it?) or whether or not it reflects my political views, I'm taking a moment to be grateful that I live in Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, where we are free to cobble together such a disparate coalition and where the reins of power were peacefully handed over. Let's not take any of this for granted.
2. I'm grateful for not having subscribed to Richard Dawkins' odious view that it would be best to reduce "undesirable" populations, like people with Downs Syndrome, by preventing them from being born in the first place (read Jeff Jacoby's incisive article Richard Dawkins and Eugenics). I cannot imagine life without the infectious love, joy, and nachas my son Yehuda, who has Downs, gives my wife and me every day.
3. I am grateful that young passionate Jews like Chaya Arbiv have the kind of commitment, passion and willingness to move beyond their comfort zone in order to fulfill their vision of what it means to be a Jew. Chaya left the comfort and security of Chicago to move to Israel, alone, when she was only 15 years old! (Read about her experience here.) What a powerful response to antisemitism.
4. I am grateful that there are people like Michael Neumann in the world. After winning on Million Dollar Mile and competing in spartan races, Michael started his own non-profit to give teens who are struggling with massive physical challenges the life-changing opportunity to run their own spartan race. He's giving these teens the ability to unleash their inner fierceness and overcome their challenges. Click here to watch this amazing video about it.
5. And as chief editor of aish.com, it's always a thrill to discover a new writing talent who can inspire and provoke our readers. This week I'm excited to showcase Elias Neibart, a recent college grad who will be attending Harvard Law School. Elias eloquently describes his complicated relationship with tefillin, triggered by his encounter with two Chabad emissaries. Click here to read Strapped In.
Enjoy the content and let me know what you think.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Nechemia Coopersmith
Editor in Chief, Aish.com
Here's what I'm grateful for today:
1. Israel has a new government. Whether or not it will last (how could it?) or whether or not it reflects my political views, I'm taking a moment to be grateful that I live in Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, where we are free to cobble together such a disparate coalition and where the reins of power were peacefully handed over. Let's not take any of this for granted.
2. I'm grateful for not having subscribed to Richard Dawkins' odious view that it would be best to reduce "undesirable" populations, like people with Downs Syndrome, by preventing them from being born in the first place (read Jeff Jacoby's incisive article Richard Dawkins and Eugenics). I cannot imagine life without the infectious love, joy, and nachas my son Yehuda, who has Downs, gives my wife and me every day.
3. I am grateful that young passionate Jews like Chaya Arbiv have the kind of commitment, passion and willingness to move beyond their comfort zone in order to fulfill their vision of what it means to be a Jew. Chaya left the comfort and security of Chicago to move to Israel, alone, when she was only 15 years old! (Read about her experience here.) What a powerful response to antisemitism.
4. I am grateful that there are people like Michael Neumann in the world. After winning on Million Dollar Mile and competing in spartan races, Michael started his own non-profit to give teens who are struggling with massive physical challenges the life-changing opportunity to run their own spartan race. He's giving these teens the ability to unleash their inner fierceness and overcome their challenges. Click here to watch this amazing video about it.
5. And as chief editor of aish.com, it's always a thrill to discover a new writing talent who can inspire and provoke our readers. This week I'm excited to showcase Elias Neibart, a recent college grad who will be attending Harvard Law School. Elias eloquently describes his complicated relationship with tefillin, triggered by his encounter with two Chabad emissaries. Click here to read Strapped In.
Enjoy the content and let me know what you think.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Nechemia Coopersmith
Editor in Chief, Aish.com
Re: AISH
Earth, Wind, Fire & Water: The Four Elements of our Inner World
Jun 12, 2021 | by Rabbi Shlomo Buxbaumprint article
Earth, Wind, Fire & Water: The Four Elements of our Inner World
Jewish tradition compares the building blocks of our inner world to the four fundamental elements of creation.
Judaism compares a human being to a ladder with its feet on the ground and its top reaching up to the heavens.1 Each rung of the ladder represents a different realm that exists inside of us, each one loftier and more hidden than the one beneath it. This inner world is called in Hebrew our nefesh, which is commonly referred to as our “life force.”
Because each one of these inner realms possesses its own character, needs, and drives, it is not uncommon to feel turmoil inside of us, as if there are different personalities living inside of us. Within the same day, we can feel both completely content as well as dissatisfied with our life; we feel like we can conquer the world as well as completely helpless; we feel inspired and completely burned out, etc.
Our mission is to become a master over each realm, using it as a stepping-stone to reach even higher. Through this process, we will achieve a much more perfected and elevated version of ourselves. And if we are to really become masters of ourselves, we must understand how all these different faculties inside us operate and how we are supposed to bring inner harmony to all the parts of the machine.
Jewish tradition compares the building blocks of our nefesh to the four fundamental elements of creation: earth, wind, fire and water. These four elements reflect the four states that all matter exist in: Solid, Plasma, Gas, and Liquid.
This series will explore how these four states of matter reflect our inner world. We will give an overview of what each level is, and four additional articles will go into greater detail about the various struggles that happen in each of these domains.
Earth: The Element of the Physical Body
The element of earth is the element that is connected to our physical bodies. At this level, our consciousness is most connected to our bodily needs, and our main drive is for survival and the basic needs that keep our body working and properly maintained, such as the need for food, shelter, safety, and reproduction. When we are tuned in to this plane of consciousness, the only active parts of our brain are those necessary to sustain our body and keep us alive. We focus on the world and its resources, and even other people, in terms of what they can provide for us.
This level corresponds to earth because just as earth has the most form and the least movement, this part of our consciousness craves security, stability and consistency, and it takes care of our physical body, which is the most dense part of the human being.
Water: The Element of Emotions and Pleasure
Water is the element that corresponds to emotions and desires. At this level, we begin to see beyond just survival but look for ways to gain pleasure from this journey that we are on. It is here that we begin to experience sophisticated emotions such as love, fear, and hope, as well as lusts and cravings. Human interactions become less transactional, less self-centered, and more about companionship for emotional reasons.
The movement and life-giving power of water is symbolic of the pleasure and emotion that is found at this level. Just as water can be wild and rushing, our emotions can sometimes overwhelm us. However, when we are experiencing healthy emotions, they are like calm waters. The same is true with our desire for pleasure. Sometimes our cravings are raging and intense like the crashing waves, and sometimes that are very subtle like a lake at low tide.
Wind: The Element of the Intellect and Communication
Wind is the element connected to our intellect and our ability to communicate. It is here that we seek wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and information to develop the perspectives and direction for our lives. It is driven not by pleasure and emotion but by logic and sensibility. Feelings are replaced with ideas, intuition, and creativity. At this level, human relationships center around shared visions and common beliefs, and it is here that our feelings and thoughts are concretized to the point that we can process, articulate, and communicate.
Just like there can be a rapid wind or a calm wind, here too there are sublevels where thoughts can be scattered, wild, and, distracting, or they can be calm and blissful. When the winds are rapid, we tend to talk a lot, but when the winds are calm, we experience less need to talk, or feel the need to say only what is necessary.
Fire: The Element of Willpower and Self-Awareness
Fire is the spiritual element connected to willpower, self-esteem, and motivation. It is here that our yearning for self-actualization and even greatness is rooted. At this level, we want to feel like we really matter. Feelings and thoughts are replaced with an inner yearning and drive. In our relationships, we feel a responsibility for others as if they are an extension of ourselves.
This level corresponds to fire. The element of fire is the most formless, just as the will is detected least from all the other levels. Just like fire rises up, this level is about that inner yearning to go higher and higher. And just as fire destroys, this is the part of ourselves that we are tapping into when we are trying to overcome obstacles or remove anything blocking us from our path forward.
In the upcoming articles, we will delve into each one of the inner elements and explore the struggles that happen within each realm and the tools to achieve self-mastery in each of these areas.
Click here to read the next article in the series on the element of Earth.
Based on the new book Four Elements of an Empowered Life A Guidebook to Discovering Your Inner World And Unique Purpose. Click here to order.
Jun 12, 2021 | by Rabbi Shlomo Buxbaumprint article
Earth, Wind, Fire & Water: The Four Elements of our Inner World
Jewish tradition compares the building blocks of our inner world to the four fundamental elements of creation.
Judaism compares a human being to a ladder with its feet on the ground and its top reaching up to the heavens.1 Each rung of the ladder represents a different realm that exists inside of us, each one loftier and more hidden than the one beneath it. This inner world is called in Hebrew our nefesh, which is commonly referred to as our “life force.”
Because each one of these inner realms possesses its own character, needs, and drives, it is not uncommon to feel turmoil inside of us, as if there are different personalities living inside of us. Within the same day, we can feel both completely content as well as dissatisfied with our life; we feel like we can conquer the world as well as completely helpless; we feel inspired and completely burned out, etc.
Our mission is to become a master over each realm, using it as a stepping-stone to reach even higher. Through this process, we will achieve a much more perfected and elevated version of ourselves. And if we are to really become masters of ourselves, we must understand how all these different faculties inside us operate and how we are supposed to bring inner harmony to all the parts of the machine.
Jewish tradition compares the building blocks of our nefesh to the four fundamental elements of creation: earth, wind, fire and water. These four elements reflect the four states that all matter exist in: Solid, Plasma, Gas, and Liquid.
This series will explore how these four states of matter reflect our inner world. We will give an overview of what each level is, and four additional articles will go into greater detail about the various struggles that happen in each of these domains.
Earth: The Element of the Physical Body
The element of earth is the element that is connected to our physical bodies. At this level, our consciousness is most connected to our bodily needs, and our main drive is for survival and the basic needs that keep our body working and properly maintained, such as the need for food, shelter, safety, and reproduction. When we are tuned in to this plane of consciousness, the only active parts of our brain are those necessary to sustain our body and keep us alive. We focus on the world and its resources, and even other people, in terms of what they can provide for us.
This level corresponds to earth because just as earth has the most form and the least movement, this part of our consciousness craves security, stability and consistency, and it takes care of our physical body, which is the most dense part of the human being.
Water: The Element of Emotions and Pleasure
Water is the element that corresponds to emotions and desires. At this level, we begin to see beyond just survival but look for ways to gain pleasure from this journey that we are on. It is here that we begin to experience sophisticated emotions such as love, fear, and hope, as well as lusts and cravings. Human interactions become less transactional, less self-centered, and more about companionship for emotional reasons.
The movement and life-giving power of water is symbolic of the pleasure and emotion that is found at this level. Just as water can be wild and rushing, our emotions can sometimes overwhelm us. However, when we are experiencing healthy emotions, they are like calm waters. The same is true with our desire for pleasure. Sometimes our cravings are raging and intense like the crashing waves, and sometimes that are very subtle like a lake at low tide.
Wind: The Element of the Intellect and Communication
Wind is the element connected to our intellect and our ability to communicate. It is here that we seek wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and information to develop the perspectives and direction for our lives. It is driven not by pleasure and emotion but by logic and sensibility. Feelings are replaced with ideas, intuition, and creativity. At this level, human relationships center around shared visions and common beliefs, and it is here that our feelings and thoughts are concretized to the point that we can process, articulate, and communicate.
Just like there can be a rapid wind or a calm wind, here too there are sublevels where thoughts can be scattered, wild, and, distracting, or they can be calm and blissful. When the winds are rapid, we tend to talk a lot, but when the winds are calm, we experience less need to talk, or feel the need to say only what is necessary.
Fire: The Element of Willpower and Self-Awareness
Fire is the spiritual element connected to willpower, self-esteem, and motivation. It is here that our yearning for self-actualization and even greatness is rooted. At this level, we want to feel like we really matter. Feelings and thoughts are replaced with an inner yearning and drive. In our relationships, we feel a responsibility for others as if they are an extension of ourselves.
This level corresponds to fire. The element of fire is the most formless, just as the will is detected least from all the other levels. Just like fire rises up, this level is about that inner yearning to go higher and higher. And just as fire destroys, this is the part of ourselves that we are tapping into when we are trying to overcome obstacles or remove anything blocking us from our path forward.
In the upcoming articles, we will delve into each one of the inner elements and explore the struggles that happen within each realm and the tools to achieve self-mastery in each of these areas.
Click here to read the next article in the series on the element of Earth.
Based on the new book Four Elements of an Empowered Life A Guidebook to Discovering Your Inner World And Unique Purpose. Click here to order.
Re: AISH
https://www.aish.com/sp/so/What-Im-Learning-about-Almost-Dying.html?
What I’m Learning about Almost Dying
Jun 8, 2021 | by Avi Libermanprint article
What I’m Learning about Almost Dying
Some facial paralysis, 32 staples in my skull, and overwhelming concern from loved ones have given all kinds of new meaning to 'the show must go on.'
I was in a very serious car accident less than two weeks ago that required emergency brain surgery, and, as I am writing this, I have 32 staples in my skull and have partial paralysis on the left side of my face. I was 25 minutes away from dying, but let’s start off with the good news!
As a standup comic, that’s what I’m supposed to do anyway. Some people thought this is way too early to reflect on what I’m going through, as I was asked to write about it, but it’s such a unique time, why not seize it? I can also finally stare at a screen without getting a big headache, so I might as well take advantage. I got a lot of “whenever you are ready” comments, as far as writing about this, all meant with the utmost kindness, but I’m not sure if anyone is ever ready, so no time like the present.
As far as the positives: I can walk. I can see. And my recovery was described as, shall we say, “rare,” when it came to the speed of it, in terms of being able to balance, dizziness, and numerous other things they test. I try to exercise regularly and took some small pride when they started taking my vitals (when I was conscious enough to answer) and they kept asking, “Do you run or something? Do you exercise?” Once I was standing, I was doing regular walking laps around the hallways of the hospital and I’d get some looks from the nurses, all positive, and they could not have been nicer in helping me. Emotionally, there were also positives that I would have never imagined.
As I woke up from the surgery (I have no memory of getting hit by the truck), I remember seeing my parents walking in and my friend Rachel on the phone, and her telling a nurse: “Yes, I’m his sister,” which she’s not, but Rachel is tough as nails, and clearly wasn’t going to put up with whatever technical rules they had as far as visitors. While I was in agony, since I had a tube down my throat and was now throwing up from it, the ICU nurse Kate, kept cleaning it up and fought to get it taken out. She called in a doctor and said my oxygen levels were fine and the doctor agreed, and cleared her removing it. She told me she would still have to insert a tube down my nose and into my stomach and it was going to hurt so I should grab the hand of Rachel and squeeze. I did just that and made it through, and Rachel told me she felt better that I had good pressure on her hand so there was some strength there.
My sister (my actual sister, who is a nurse) showed up after flying in from Massachusetts, and my brother was right behind her coming in from LA. They both told me, “You’re aware there are a ton of people worried about you and inquiring?’ I honestly wasn’t, but after realizing, it obviously gave me hope and I was beyond touched. It mattered to me more than anything that people reached out and their phone calls meant the world. They were worried about “bothering” me as far as calls, etc. but my head hurt, so reading messages on a screen online was harder. My siblings were champs in helping me with that, and I felt determined to try to answer everyone and thank them for reaching out. My sister’s strength is her calm demeanor and level head (no pun intended with the head reference), and I distinctly remember grabbing her hand when she came in and thinking, “Thank God.” My brother’s strength is his intensity, and, when it came to gathering records, making sure the necessary medication was being prescribed, and connecting with doctors I would need when I was released, he was all over it and I didn’t need to worry about it. My parents of course were a whole other level of caring, which I can’t even really describe so I won’t.
Avi Liberman performs at Comedy for Koby. (Yissachar Ruas)
The friends, and some strangers, they allowed in (the friends would sometimes pose as clergy which I thought was hilarious) were also beyond helpful. My friend Max, who is my neighbor back in LA, showed up out of nowhere, and I still have no idea how he got in, but I felt immediate relief upon seeing him, and he went above and beyond and arranged a Hatzolah Air flight back to Houston for me and my family, on a donated jet, which checked vitals while I was on the flight. They even said they could lower altitude if the pressure on my ear and head was too much. It was amazing how much they cared.
Days before any of that even happened, as a practicing Jew when it came to various religious ceremonies, they all of a sudden took on a special importance to me. As Friday night approached, I got worried. Visitors were not allowed after 8 p.m. and the Sabbath was rolling in right about that time. How was I going to recite or listen to the Kiddush, the blessing over the grape juice? Before I knew it, out of nowhere, two young Chabad Hasidic Jews come walking into my room and took over. “How did you guys even get in here?” “We’re officially clergy! We’re on the list and Rabbi Klein at the synagogue in Aventura arranged it!” When they started reciting various blessings, I tried to join in, but absolutely broke down. I could barely get through it.
A Chabad Hasid named Mendy Goren passed away a couple years ago, and I wrote an article about him and, and how much he and his family in Miami meant to me. No surprise that they were instrumental in connecting my family to the hospital and letting others know where I was. His image popped right into my head when they started the service as if he was telling me, “Did you really think I’d let you go without this? I have you taken care of, even from this world!” I even successfully took a small sip of the grape juice and felt like the Sabbath mattered more than ever.
I had some other emotional moments where I broke down, where another friend also named Avi came and did the Havdalah closing service of the Sabbath, and he had no call to do so. I also had a great visit where my friend Achicam, who was also hurt in the accident with me (though he had some broken ribs, thank God, he did not require hospitalization, and is on the full mend) came to visit, and we basically collapsed into each other’s arms, happy that we were both alive. His choice of a Volvo basically saved my life and I’ll forever be grateful.
While this all may sound inspirational and giant pile of good feelings, what I learned is that every sob, ever interaction is not going to be that, and the image I may have of myself of “being able to beat it” could have been just a mirage to help me cope. Was I even being honest?
When I got back to Houston with my parents and brother, I broke down again, but this time it wasn’t a giant pile of hugs and good feelings. I was angry and depressed. Did I even have call to feel that way? After all, I had already bucked some pretty good odds right? Numerous people said I was lucky to be alive, walking, etc. Was I being rational?
This isn’t me!! I’m supposed to make people smile and now I can’t even do it myself!! I’m not some kind of pity case!
I don’t remember exactly what triggered my losing it, but it was a general discussion of treatments, expected time of recovery with my face paralysis, and all my parents and brother were tying to do was help. I began walking around the house screaming, “This isn’t me!! I’m supposed to make people smile and now I can’t even do it myself!! This isn’t me!! I’m not some kind of pity case! I don’t want to be a professional victim!! I’m the guy who bucks the odds not the other way around!!” I got so angry when they wouldn’t agree that maybe I could beat this at some absurd fast rate I picked up a bottle of water (half full at least so it didn’t break open) and threw it on the ground, and actually hurt my arm, I slammed it down so hard. I know they were just trying to avoid disappointed expectations, but I was furious and couldn’t calm down.
When I finally did relax, my dad was also crying, but not because he was sad. He simply said he was grateful I was still alive. He viewed it as such a gift that his son was still here and he was actually relieved I had finally broken down in flat out depression. It showed I was human, and of course, he was right.
After calming down even more the next day, two close friends who are comics, Dan and Ray, group-called me and said they had seen other comics who have had strokes, go on stage, address it briefly and then move on. You only become a victim on stage if you present yourself that way, so… don’t.
I was also fortunate enough years ago to do some shows in Iraq and Afghanistan, where I met some elite soldiers, who I’ve kept in touch with. My buddy Chris called me and he has been through not one, not two, but three traumatic head injuries and he really helped me. He told me to take it easy and that whatever type-A attitude I wanted to display was not the route to take. I was worried I was acting like a big baby, but Chris assured me. “Oh believe me, if you are, we’ll let you know!”
I know it’s only been a short time, but I’ll do the best I can as far as taking stock.
What have I learned so far in going through this and in being right in the middle of it? The obvious answer is of course that I still have a lot to learn. While I’m now embarrassed that I have some shame, in that I can’t even post a picture without the obvious facial struggles, maybe that’s okay. Crying and getting depressed and constantly questioning scenarios in my life are also okay. Let’s be brutally honest. I have a job to do, and aside from spreading joy, love, positivity, whatever you want to call it, part of that job is being a human being, with all the faults that accompany it.
In the end, what has jumped out to me the most is just how much family, friends, and, oddly enough, even total strangers can get you through the hardest times. We have our bad days, no question, but in the end, we can do more than just survive. We can live. Let’s start there, and hopefully we can all learn as we go, and live better, struggles and all.
This article originally appeared in the Times of Israel Blog.
What I’m Learning about Almost Dying
Jun 8, 2021 | by Avi Libermanprint article
What I’m Learning about Almost Dying
Some facial paralysis, 32 staples in my skull, and overwhelming concern from loved ones have given all kinds of new meaning to 'the show must go on.'
I was in a very serious car accident less than two weeks ago that required emergency brain surgery, and, as I am writing this, I have 32 staples in my skull and have partial paralysis on the left side of my face. I was 25 minutes away from dying, but let’s start off with the good news!
As a standup comic, that’s what I’m supposed to do anyway. Some people thought this is way too early to reflect on what I’m going through, as I was asked to write about it, but it’s such a unique time, why not seize it? I can also finally stare at a screen without getting a big headache, so I might as well take advantage. I got a lot of “whenever you are ready” comments, as far as writing about this, all meant with the utmost kindness, but I’m not sure if anyone is ever ready, so no time like the present.
As far as the positives: I can walk. I can see. And my recovery was described as, shall we say, “rare,” when it came to the speed of it, in terms of being able to balance, dizziness, and numerous other things they test. I try to exercise regularly and took some small pride when they started taking my vitals (when I was conscious enough to answer) and they kept asking, “Do you run or something? Do you exercise?” Once I was standing, I was doing regular walking laps around the hallways of the hospital and I’d get some looks from the nurses, all positive, and they could not have been nicer in helping me. Emotionally, there were also positives that I would have never imagined.
As I woke up from the surgery (I have no memory of getting hit by the truck), I remember seeing my parents walking in and my friend Rachel on the phone, and her telling a nurse: “Yes, I’m his sister,” which she’s not, but Rachel is tough as nails, and clearly wasn’t going to put up with whatever technical rules they had as far as visitors. While I was in agony, since I had a tube down my throat and was now throwing up from it, the ICU nurse Kate, kept cleaning it up and fought to get it taken out. She called in a doctor and said my oxygen levels were fine and the doctor agreed, and cleared her removing it. She told me she would still have to insert a tube down my nose and into my stomach and it was going to hurt so I should grab the hand of Rachel and squeeze. I did just that and made it through, and Rachel told me she felt better that I had good pressure on her hand so there was some strength there.
My sister (my actual sister, who is a nurse) showed up after flying in from Massachusetts, and my brother was right behind her coming in from LA. They both told me, “You’re aware there are a ton of people worried about you and inquiring?’ I honestly wasn’t, but after realizing, it obviously gave me hope and I was beyond touched. It mattered to me more than anything that people reached out and their phone calls meant the world. They were worried about “bothering” me as far as calls, etc. but my head hurt, so reading messages on a screen online was harder. My siblings were champs in helping me with that, and I felt determined to try to answer everyone and thank them for reaching out. My sister’s strength is her calm demeanor and level head (no pun intended with the head reference), and I distinctly remember grabbing her hand when she came in and thinking, “Thank God.” My brother’s strength is his intensity, and, when it came to gathering records, making sure the necessary medication was being prescribed, and connecting with doctors I would need when I was released, he was all over it and I didn’t need to worry about it. My parents of course were a whole other level of caring, which I can’t even really describe so I won’t.
Avi Liberman performs at Comedy for Koby. (Yissachar Ruas)
The friends, and some strangers, they allowed in (the friends would sometimes pose as clergy which I thought was hilarious) were also beyond helpful. My friend Max, who is my neighbor back in LA, showed up out of nowhere, and I still have no idea how he got in, but I felt immediate relief upon seeing him, and he went above and beyond and arranged a Hatzolah Air flight back to Houston for me and my family, on a donated jet, which checked vitals while I was on the flight. They even said they could lower altitude if the pressure on my ear and head was too much. It was amazing how much they cared.
Days before any of that even happened, as a practicing Jew when it came to various religious ceremonies, they all of a sudden took on a special importance to me. As Friday night approached, I got worried. Visitors were not allowed after 8 p.m. and the Sabbath was rolling in right about that time. How was I going to recite or listen to the Kiddush, the blessing over the grape juice? Before I knew it, out of nowhere, two young Chabad Hasidic Jews come walking into my room and took over. “How did you guys even get in here?” “We’re officially clergy! We’re on the list and Rabbi Klein at the synagogue in Aventura arranged it!” When they started reciting various blessings, I tried to join in, but absolutely broke down. I could barely get through it.
A Chabad Hasid named Mendy Goren passed away a couple years ago, and I wrote an article about him and, and how much he and his family in Miami meant to me. No surprise that they were instrumental in connecting my family to the hospital and letting others know where I was. His image popped right into my head when they started the service as if he was telling me, “Did you really think I’d let you go without this? I have you taken care of, even from this world!” I even successfully took a small sip of the grape juice and felt like the Sabbath mattered more than ever.
I had some other emotional moments where I broke down, where another friend also named Avi came and did the Havdalah closing service of the Sabbath, and he had no call to do so. I also had a great visit where my friend Achicam, who was also hurt in the accident with me (though he had some broken ribs, thank God, he did not require hospitalization, and is on the full mend) came to visit, and we basically collapsed into each other’s arms, happy that we were both alive. His choice of a Volvo basically saved my life and I’ll forever be grateful.
While this all may sound inspirational and giant pile of good feelings, what I learned is that every sob, ever interaction is not going to be that, and the image I may have of myself of “being able to beat it” could have been just a mirage to help me cope. Was I even being honest?
When I got back to Houston with my parents and brother, I broke down again, but this time it wasn’t a giant pile of hugs and good feelings. I was angry and depressed. Did I even have call to feel that way? After all, I had already bucked some pretty good odds right? Numerous people said I was lucky to be alive, walking, etc. Was I being rational?
This isn’t me!! I’m supposed to make people smile and now I can’t even do it myself!! I’m not some kind of pity case!
I don’t remember exactly what triggered my losing it, but it was a general discussion of treatments, expected time of recovery with my face paralysis, and all my parents and brother were tying to do was help. I began walking around the house screaming, “This isn’t me!! I’m supposed to make people smile and now I can’t even do it myself!! This isn’t me!! I’m not some kind of pity case! I don’t want to be a professional victim!! I’m the guy who bucks the odds not the other way around!!” I got so angry when they wouldn’t agree that maybe I could beat this at some absurd fast rate I picked up a bottle of water (half full at least so it didn’t break open) and threw it on the ground, and actually hurt my arm, I slammed it down so hard. I know they were just trying to avoid disappointed expectations, but I was furious and couldn’t calm down.
When I finally did relax, my dad was also crying, but not because he was sad. He simply said he was grateful I was still alive. He viewed it as such a gift that his son was still here and he was actually relieved I had finally broken down in flat out depression. It showed I was human, and of course, he was right.
After calming down even more the next day, two close friends who are comics, Dan and Ray, group-called me and said they had seen other comics who have had strokes, go on stage, address it briefly and then move on. You only become a victim on stage if you present yourself that way, so… don’t.
I was also fortunate enough years ago to do some shows in Iraq and Afghanistan, where I met some elite soldiers, who I’ve kept in touch with. My buddy Chris called me and he has been through not one, not two, but three traumatic head injuries and he really helped me. He told me to take it easy and that whatever type-A attitude I wanted to display was not the route to take. I was worried I was acting like a big baby, but Chris assured me. “Oh believe me, if you are, we’ll let you know!”
I know it’s only been a short time, but I’ll do the best I can as far as taking stock.
What have I learned so far in going through this and in being right in the middle of it? The obvious answer is of course that I still have a lot to learn. While I’m now embarrassed that I have some shame, in that I can’t even post a picture without the obvious facial struggles, maybe that’s okay. Crying and getting depressed and constantly questioning scenarios in my life are also okay. Let’s be brutally honest. I have a job to do, and aside from spreading joy, love, positivity, whatever you want to call it, part of that job is being a human being, with all the faults that accompany it.
In the end, what has jumped out to me the most is just how much family, friends, and, oddly enough, even total strangers can get you through the hardest times. We have our bad days, no question, but in the end, we can do more than just survive. We can live. Let’s start there, and hopefully we can all learn as we go, and live better, struggles and all.
This article originally appeared in the Times of Israel Blog.
Re: AISH
https://www.aish.com/ci/s/The-Last-Liberator-of-Auschwitz.html?
Jun 8, 2021 | by Rivka Ronda Robinsonprint article
The Last Liberator of Auschwitz
David Dushman, a Jewish soldier for the Red Army who drove his tank through the electric fence at Auschwitz, has died.
The man believed to be the last surviving liberator of Auschwitz died June 5 in Munich at age 98. The Jewish community of Munich and Upper Bavaria hailed David Dushman as an eyewitness and “Hero of Auschwitz” who saved countless lives.
As a 21-year-old soldier for the Soviet Union, Dushman drove his tank through the electric barbed-wire fence surrounding the Nazi death camp on Jan. 27, 1945, to make a pathway for ground troops in the 322nd Rifle Division. What he saw would haunt him for 77 years. The sight of skeletal survivors pierced his heart. “They staggered out of the barracks, sat and lay among the dead.
“When we arrived we saw the fence and these unfortunate people, we broke through the fence with our tanks. We gave food to the prisoners and continued,” he told Reuters. They were standing there, all of them in (prisoner) uniforms, only eyes, only eyes, very narrow – that was very terrible, very terrible.”
“We had not known that Auschwitz existed,” he added.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest of Hitler’s death camps, where more than 1.1 million Jews were murdered during World War II, according to Yad Vashem-The World Holocaust Remembrance Center.
World Loses a Last Holocaust Eyewitness
“Every contemporary witness who passes away is a loss, but the farewell of David Dushman is particularly painful,” said Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Jewish community of Munich. “He was one of the last who could tell about this event from his own experience.
“With him we lose a brave, honest and sincere man and an honorary member of our religious community.”
After the war Dushman, a Russian Jew, studied medicine in Moscow. His mother was a pediatrician who wanted her son to follow in his family’s footsteps in medicine. His father served as a doctor in the Soviet military – and once was a hero of the Revolution who fell out of favor with dictator Joseph Stalin. Banished in 1938 to a labor camp in Siberia, his father died there in 1949.
An Athlete, He Witnessed Munich Olympics Tragedy
In the end, however, David Dushman followed his heart and his passion for sports, particularly fencing. Despite having part of one lung removed due to a war injury, he rose to fame as the Soviet Union’s best fencer and one of the world’s greatest fencing coaches. He coached the Soviet women’s team from 1952 to 1988, paving the way for numerous world championships and Olympic medals.
His mentees won two gold, two silver and three bronze medals at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.
Once again, Dushman was an eyewitness to violence against Jews – this time, the deadly attack by eight Palestinian terrorists on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.
“We heard the gunshots and the hum of the helicopters above us. We lived right across from the Israeli team. We and all the other athletes were horrified,” he told a German newspaper in 2018.
Fellow fencer Thomas Bach, the German president of the International Olympic Committee, said in a statement this week that he was deeply saddened by the news of Dushman’s death.
Celebrating an Active, Purposeful Life
“When we met in 1970, he immediately offered me friendship and counsel, despite Mr. Dushman’s personal experience with World War II and Auschwitz, and he being a man of Jewish origin. This was such a deep human gesture that I will never, ever forget it,” Bach recalled.
Until age 94, Dushman went almost daily to his fencing club in Munich to give lessons.
In 2015 and 2019, Bach invited Dushman to International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne. According to the committee website, Dushman proclaimed, “My biggest dream and hope for future generations is to live in a world where there is no war.”
He urged the committee to do everything possible to use sport as a way to spread peace and reconciliation around the world. “War is something that should never happen again.”
That message remained consistent throughout Dushman’s later years. He visited schools to tell students about the war and the horrors of the Holocaust, hoping his firsthand account would make a difference in their lives.
Dushman and his wife, Zoja, were married for 60 years; they emigrated to Munich in 1996 after a brief stay in Austria. She died in 2011, and their only son, Sergei, in 2017. Dushman also considered his young fencing mentees as family.
Jun 8, 2021 | by Rivka Ronda Robinsonprint article
The Last Liberator of Auschwitz
David Dushman, a Jewish soldier for the Red Army who drove his tank through the electric fence at Auschwitz, has died.
The man believed to be the last surviving liberator of Auschwitz died June 5 in Munich at age 98. The Jewish community of Munich and Upper Bavaria hailed David Dushman as an eyewitness and “Hero of Auschwitz” who saved countless lives.
As a 21-year-old soldier for the Soviet Union, Dushman drove his tank through the electric barbed-wire fence surrounding the Nazi death camp on Jan. 27, 1945, to make a pathway for ground troops in the 322nd Rifle Division. What he saw would haunt him for 77 years. The sight of skeletal survivors pierced his heart. “They staggered out of the barracks, sat and lay among the dead.
“When we arrived we saw the fence and these unfortunate people, we broke through the fence with our tanks. We gave food to the prisoners and continued,” he told Reuters. They were standing there, all of them in (prisoner) uniforms, only eyes, only eyes, very narrow – that was very terrible, very terrible.”
“We had not known that Auschwitz existed,” he added.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest of Hitler’s death camps, where more than 1.1 million Jews were murdered during World War II, according to Yad Vashem-The World Holocaust Remembrance Center.
World Loses a Last Holocaust Eyewitness
“Every contemporary witness who passes away is a loss, but the farewell of David Dushman is particularly painful,” said Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Jewish community of Munich. “He was one of the last who could tell about this event from his own experience.
“With him we lose a brave, honest and sincere man and an honorary member of our religious community.”
After the war Dushman, a Russian Jew, studied medicine in Moscow. His mother was a pediatrician who wanted her son to follow in his family’s footsteps in medicine. His father served as a doctor in the Soviet military – and once was a hero of the Revolution who fell out of favor with dictator Joseph Stalin. Banished in 1938 to a labor camp in Siberia, his father died there in 1949.
An Athlete, He Witnessed Munich Olympics Tragedy
In the end, however, David Dushman followed his heart and his passion for sports, particularly fencing. Despite having part of one lung removed due to a war injury, he rose to fame as the Soviet Union’s best fencer and one of the world’s greatest fencing coaches. He coached the Soviet women’s team from 1952 to 1988, paving the way for numerous world championships and Olympic medals.
His mentees won two gold, two silver and three bronze medals at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.
Once again, Dushman was an eyewitness to violence against Jews – this time, the deadly attack by eight Palestinian terrorists on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.
“We heard the gunshots and the hum of the helicopters above us. We lived right across from the Israeli team. We and all the other athletes were horrified,” he told a German newspaper in 2018.
Fellow fencer Thomas Bach, the German president of the International Olympic Committee, said in a statement this week that he was deeply saddened by the news of Dushman’s death.
Celebrating an Active, Purposeful Life
“When we met in 1970, he immediately offered me friendship and counsel, despite Mr. Dushman’s personal experience with World War II and Auschwitz, and he being a man of Jewish origin. This was such a deep human gesture that I will never, ever forget it,” Bach recalled.
Until age 94, Dushman went almost daily to his fencing club in Munich to give lessons.
In 2015 and 2019, Bach invited Dushman to International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne. According to the committee website, Dushman proclaimed, “My biggest dream and hope for future generations is to live in a world where there is no war.”
He urged the committee to do everything possible to use sport as a way to spread peace and reconciliation around the world. “War is something that should never happen again.”
That message remained consistent throughout Dushman’s later years. He visited schools to tell students about the war and the horrors of the Holocaust, hoping his firsthand account would make a difference in their lives.
Dushman and his wife, Zoja, were married for 60 years; they emigrated to Munich in 1996 after a brief stay in Austria. She died in 2011, and their only son, Sergei, in 2017. Dushman also considered his young fencing mentees as family.
Re: AISH
Shalom Elaine!
Antisemitism is forcing many young Jews to ask: Why is being Jewish worth it? And that's a good thing.
The recent surge in Jew-hatred across North America got me thinking of my high school chemistry class.
Growing up, I thought I wanted to be a doctor. It wasn't my overarching passion; more like a default position mainly to do with my father who was a prominent doctor. (And thank you for the overwhelming response to the tribute about my father; my family and I were moved beyond words.)
But there was one glaring problem: I hated all the science and math courses I was taking to cover my bases. Things came to a head with chemistry. Each class was torture; I dreaded the upcoming test. And no matter how hard I studied, I could not wrap my head around the material. The formulas were gibberish; they meant nothing to me. Finally, in the midst of an epic daydream that was distracting me from studying for the test, I had an epiphany: I could drop chemistry! I don't need to take this course; I have enough credits without it. I hate math and science, and I don't want to become a doctor!
And that's what I did. The next day I bid farewell to my scary chemistry teacher (he wasn't sad to see me go either) and experienced a sublime moment of freedom I have never forgotten. I'm sure this is how the Jews felt when they left Egypt.
What does any of this have to do with an increase in antisemitism?
Please click here to read my answer.
(When you click on the link, you'll find yourself right in the middle of my latest essay where I answer this question.)
READ NOW
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Being-Jewish-Why-Bother.html?
Sincerely,
Rabbi Nechemia Coopersmith
Editor in Chief, Aish.com
Antisemitism is forcing many young Jews to ask: Why is being Jewish worth it? And that's a good thing.
The recent surge in Jew-hatred across North America got me thinking of my high school chemistry class.
Growing up, I thought I wanted to be a doctor. It wasn't my overarching passion; more like a default position mainly to do with my father who was a prominent doctor. (And thank you for the overwhelming response to the tribute about my father; my family and I were moved beyond words.)
But there was one glaring problem: I hated all the science and math courses I was taking to cover my bases. Things came to a head with chemistry. Each class was torture; I dreaded the upcoming test. And no matter how hard I studied, I could not wrap my head around the material. The formulas were gibberish; they meant nothing to me. Finally, in the midst of an epic daydream that was distracting me from studying for the test, I had an epiphany: I could drop chemistry! I don't need to take this course; I have enough credits without it. I hate math and science, and I don't want to become a doctor!
And that's what I did. The next day I bid farewell to my scary chemistry teacher (he wasn't sad to see me go either) and experienced a sublime moment of freedom I have never forgotten. I'm sure this is how the Jews felt when they left Egypt.
What does any of this have to do with an increase in antisemitism?
Please click here to read my answer.
(When you click on the link, you'll find yourself right in the middle of my latest essay where I answer this question.)
READ NOW
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Being-Jewish-Why-Bother.html?
Sincerely,
Rabbi Nechemia Coopersmith
Editor in Chief, Aish.com
Re: AISH
https://www.aish.com/jw/me/Israel-and-Intersectionality.html?
May 31, 2021 | by Barrie Wilsonprint article
Israel and Intersectionality
Defending Israel on a playing field created by its enemies is a foolhardy game.
Would you consider playing soccer on a hockey rink? And would you consider doing so time and time again when results prove dismal?
Playing a land sport on an ice surface is a ludicrous proposition. It’s dangerous and not likely to yield good results. But this is exactly the situation that the pro-Israel narrative faces on the world stage. Today defenders of Israel are confronted by a powerful “intersectional” narrative. It’s a viewpoint, however, which not only condemns Israel’s actions but also attacks Jews everywhere. The intersectional view sets the playing field.
The field is rigged. According to the intersectionalists, the facts are clear. The Palestinians are victims. The Israelis are colonial invaders, having seized land from the rightful occupants and backed by imperialist powers such as the United States and the United Kingdom. The West Bank is said to be “the occupied West Bank” as if Israel had just taken over this territory in its quest for enlargement. Israel is condemned as an apartheid society that sets apart and oppresses a Palestinian minority. Moreover, intersectionalists say, Israel has no right to exist. As the Palestinian slogan goes, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” These views are chanted on the streets of the world and the refrain is widespread, especially on social media.
But intersectionalism doesn’t just stop with criticism of Israel’s policies or its complete eradication. Anti-Israel and anti-Zionist views easily and angrily spill over into anti-Jew venom. This is evident in the many global protests by those touting an anti-Israel perspective. Jews should be killed; Hitler wasn’t sufficiently thorough; Jewish women should be raped. All these terrible sentiments are on hateful display. The anti-Israel crowd has bought into a huge package deal with a lot of baggage and ramifications.
As intersectional, the anti-Israel pro-Palestinian narrative garners supporters from other movements where people feel oppressed. Movements such as BLM and LGBTQ gravitate to a pro-Palestinian viewpoint, sharing in a sense of injustice. That’s the intersection: victimhood. These victim causes are linked as common causes, whereas in fact the movements are very different.
Tying all victim causes to an anti-Israel stance comes with strange comrades. It links pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiments with support for the terrorist organization Hamas which calls for the destruction of Israel, as well as creating an alignment with Iran and its quest for power in the Middle East.
In the case of LBGTQ, adopting an anti-Israel stance is curiously suicidal. Israel, unlike Gaza for instance, accepts LGBTQ persons and hosts Pride parades. In many Arab countries, being LGBTQ would result in a death sentence or prolonged imprisonment. In Israel, gays, lesbians, women and minority religious members are protected by law. Not so in almost all Muslim countries. Try being a Jew in Saudi Arabia…or Syria…or Gaza, for instance. How many synagogues are there in Gaza or the West Bank for that matter, whereas there are at least 20 mosques in Israel and dozens of churches of all denominations.
The problem is this: the pro-Israel narrative is playing on the wrong field. The anti-Israel narrative lays out the geography of colonization, occupation and suppression and it labels the players right from the outset.
A New Conceptual Landscape
Perhaps it is time to reverse the narrative and create a new conceptual arena. This involves changing terminology.
For one thing, the word “antisemitism” doesn’t punch out the full impact of the hateful attitude antisemites bring to the table. Many people simply do not know what the word means or they fail to recognize when they are being antisemitic. Jews must die; too bad Hitler didn’t succeed; Israel has no right to exist; Jews have all the money; Jews are all powerful; Jews control the media; etc. These antisemitic slogans are visceral charges. Their intent is to harm.
They hurt, wrong though they may be. As the only people who suffered one-third of its entire population killed in the 1940s, the idea that the Jews are all powerful and stand behind the forces of history is just ludicrous. The idea that Jews control everything is also ridiculous when virtually all Jews today do not live in the same area as their grandfathers, and all Jewish institutions (synagogues, Yeshivas, universities) had to relocate from Europe to North America and Israel. No other community has been faced these seismic shifts. No other community had to absorb 750,000 people expelled from Arab lands in the late 1940s, not to mention those taken in from the former Soviet Union and from Ethiopia.
The word “antisemitism” is far too academic and antiseptic to convey the forcefulness of the attack.
The correct phrase should be “Jew-hatred” and it should replace antisemitism in our vocabulary. That label places the focus as hatred of a people, either individually or collectively. It includes hatred of Jews for whatever reason — religion, ethnicity or national identity. It is the Jew who is targeted, not just Israel and not just Israelis.
Criticism of Israeli government policies is fair game – the Israeli media do it all the time as do opposition members of the Knesset. That is to be expected in a democratic society. Criticism becomes Jew-hatred, however, when the attitude shifts from policy discussions to a focus on Jewish people, associating Jews with some perceived negative trait. “They” become “the other.” And here there are familiar tropes: Jews as all-powerful, controlling the media as well as world events; Jews as wealthy, having all the money; Jews as sponsoring a secret society bent on world domination; and so on.
The pro-Israel narrative should also emphasize that the Jews are the indigenous people of the land and have been so for 3500 years at least. There have been times when attempts were made to dislodge Jews from Israel, as in Roman times after the Bar-Kochba revolt and again in the 7th century with the Arab invasion of the area. The crusades of the 11th – 13th centuries achieved minimal long-term results in trying to overthrow the Arab invaders and consequently the Arab population in the region grew. The Arabs, however, are the true colonial invaders of the land. They are the newcomers. The Jews constitute the Indigenous peoples.
The Muslim attempt to erase Jewish history, from First Temple through Second Temple times especially, is a total failure in light of Israeli archeology and biblical writings from both Jewish as well as Christian sources. Jews are the people of the land and have had a continuous presence in the area. The Balfour Declaration recognized this and the UN resolution creating a Jewish state and an Arab one in 1948 also affirmed this.
The pro-Israel narrative should build upon the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) of 2007 and form alliances with other Indigenous peoples throughout the world.
The word “Palestinian,” moreover, needs clarification. If we wish to help Palestinians succeed, we need first to segment the various groups known collectively as “Palestinian.” There are Gazan Palestinians, Israeli Palestinians, Palestinians in Judaea and Samaria (or West Bank if you prefer – more on that later), Palestinians in Jordan, Palestinians in Syria. So there are a variety of jurisdictions in which Palestinians live. Each Palestinian community poses its own set of unique problems.
It is important to recognize that Palestinians do need help. They have suffered and their leadership pursues self-defeating strategies. There are many joint Palestinian-Israeli ventures in Judaea and Samaria to help Palestinians form a self-sufficient state with a middle class entrepreneurial class. The Palestinians in Gaza are more difficult to assist, with Hamas diverting funds to build the infrastructure of war – rockets and tunnels — instead of responding to urgent humanitarian needs such as roads, hospitals, schools and community centers. Gaza under Hamas shows little evidence of being interested in co-existence with Israel, let alone peace. Palestinians in Syria and Jordan also require help, but, so far, the international community has paid scant attention to their plight.
May 31, 2021 | by Barrie Wilsonprint article
Israel and Intersectionality
Defending Israel on a playing field created by its enemies is a foolhardy game.
Would you consider playing soccer on a hockey rink? And would you consider doing so time and time again when results prove dismal?
Playing a land sport on an ice surface is a ludicrous proposition. It’s dangerous and not likely to yield good results. But this is exactly the situation that the pro-Israel narrative faces on the world stage. Today defenders of Israel are confronted by a powerful “intersectional” narrative. It’s a viewpoint, however, which not only condemns Israel’s actions but also attacks Jews everywhere. The intersectional view sets the playing field.
The field is rigged. According to the intersectionalists, the facts are clear. The Palestinians are victims. The Israelis are colonial invaders, having seized land from the rightful occupants and backed by imperialist powers such as the United States and the United Kingdom. The West Bank is said to be “the occupied West Bank” as if Israel had just taken over this territory in its quest for enlargement. Israel is condemned as an apartheid society that sets apart and oppresses a Palestinian minority. Moreover, intersectionalists say, Israel has no right to exist. As the Palestinian slogan goes, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” These views are chanted on the streets of the world and the refrain is widespread, especially on social media.
But intersectionalism doesn’t just stop with criticism of Israel’s policies or its complete eradication. Anti-Israel and anti-Zionist views easily and angrily spill over into anti-Jew venom. This is evident in the many global protests by those touting an anti-Israel perspective. Jews should be killed; Hitler wasn’t sufficiently thorough; Jewish women should be raped. All these terrible sentiments are on hateful display. The anti-Israel crowd has bought into a huge package deal with a lot of baggage and ramifications.
As intersectional, the anti-Israel pro-Palestinian narrative garners supporters from other movements where people feel oppressed. Movements such as BLM and LGBTQ gravitate to a pro-Palestinian viewpoint, sharing in a sense of injustice. That’s the intersection: victimhood. These victim causes are linked as common causes, whereas in fact the movements are very different.
Tying all victim causes to an anti-Israel stance comes with strange comrades. It links pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiments with support for the terrorist organization Hamas which calls for the destruction of Israel, as well as creating an alignment with Iran and its quest for power in the Middle East.
In the case of LBGTQ, adopting an anti-Israel stance is curiously suicidal. Israel, unlike Gaza for instance, accepts LGBTQ persons and hosts Pride parades. In many Arab countries, being LGBTQ would result in a death sentence or prolonged imprisonment. In Israel, gays, lesbians, women and minority religious members are protected by law. Not so in almost all Muslim countries. Try being a Jew in Saudi Arabia…or Syria…or Gaza, for instance. How many synagogues are there in Gaza or the West Bank for that matter, whereas there are at least 20 mosques in Israel and dozens of churches of all denominations.
The problem is this: the pro-Israel narrative is playing on the wrong field. The anti-Israel narrative lays out the geography of colonization, occupation and suppression and it labels the players right from the outset.
A New Conceptual Landscape
Perhaps it is time to reverse the narrative and create a new conceptual arena. This involves changing terminology.
For one thing, the word “antisemitism” doesn’t punch out the full impact of the hateful attitude antisemites bring to the table. Many people simply do not know what the word means or they fail to recognize when they are being antisemitic. Jews must die; too bad Hitler didn’t succeed; Israel has no right to exist; Jews have all the money; Jews are all powerful; Jews control the media; etc. These antisemitic slogans are visceral charges. Their intent is to harm.
They hurt, wrong though they may be. As the only people who suffered one-third of its entire population killed in the 1940s, the idea that the Jews are all powerful and stand behind the forces of history is just ludicrous. The idea that Jews control everything is also ridiculous when virtually all Jews today do not live in the same area as their grandfathers, and all Jewish institutions (synagogues, Yeshivas, universities) had to relocate from Europe to North America and Israel. No other community has been faced these seismic shifts. No other community had to absorb 750,000 people expelled from Arab lands in the late 1940s, not to mention those taken in from the former Soviet Union and from Ethiopia.
The word “antisemitism” is far too academic and antiseptic to convey the forcefulness of the attack.
The correct phrase should be “Jew-hatred” and it should replace antisemitism in our vocabulary. That label places the focus as hatred of a people, either individually or collectively. It includes hatred of Jews for whatever reason — religion, ethnicity or national identity. It is the Jew who is targeted, not just Israel and not just Israelis.
Criticism of Israeli government policies is fair game – the Israeli media do it all the time as do opposition members of the Knesset. That is to be expected in a democratic society. Criticism becomes Jew-hatred, however, when the attitude shifts from policy discussions to a focus on Jewish people, associating Jews with some perceived negative trait. “They” become “the other.” And here there are familiar tropes: Jews as all-powerful, controlling the media as well as world events; Jews as wealthy, having all the money; Jews as sponsoring a secret society bent on world domination; and so on.
The pro-Israel narrative should also emphasize that the Jews are the indigenous people of the land and have been so for 3500 years at least. There have been times when attempts were made to dislodge Jews from Israel, as in Roman times after the Bar-Kochba revolt and again in the 7th century with the Arab invasion of the area. The crusades of the 11th – 13th centuries achieved minimal long-term results in trying to overthrow the Arab invaders and consequently the Arab population in the region grew. The Arabs, however, are the true colonial invaders of the land. They are the newcomers. The Jews constitute the Indigenous peoples.
The Muslim attempt to erase Jewish history, from First Temple through Second Temple times especially, is a total failure in light of Israeli archeology and biblical writings from both Jewish as well as Christian sources. Jews are the people of the land and have had a continuous presence in the area. The Balfour Declaration recognized this and the UN resolution creating a Jewish state and an Arab one in 1948 also affirmed this.
The pro-Israel narrative should build upon the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) of 2007 and form alliances with other Indigenous peoples throughout the world.
The word “Palestinian,” moreover, needs clarification. If we wish to help Palestinians succeed, we need first to segment the various groups known collectively as “Palestinian.” There are Gazan Palestinians, Israeli Palestinians, Palestinians in Judaea and Samaria (or West Bank if you prefer – more on that later), Palestinians in Jordan, Palestinians in Syria. So there are a variety of jurisdictions in which Palestinians live. Each Palestinian community poses its own set of unique problems.
It is important to recognize that Palestinians do need help. They have suffered and their leadership pursues self-defeating strategies. There are many joint Palestinian-Israeli ventures in Judaea and Samaria to help Palestinians form a self-sufficient state with a middle class entrepreneurial class. The Palestinians in Gaza are more difficult to assist, with Hamas diverting funds to build the infrastructure of war – rockets and tunnels — instead of responding to urgent humanitarian needs such as roads, hospitals, schools and community centers. Gaza under Hamas shows little evidence of being interested in co-existence with Israel, let alone peace. Palestinians in Syria and Jordan also require help, but, so far, the international community has paid scant attention to their plight.
Re: AISH
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Tik-Tok-Executive-Discovers-Joy-and-Purpose-through-Jewish-Wisdom.html?
Tik Tok Executive Discovers Joy and Purpose through Jewish Wisdom
May 29, 2021 | by Judy Gruenprint article
Tik Tok Executive Discovers Joy and Purpose through Jewish Wisdom
Michal Oshman's new book asks, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”
Michal Oshman is a former commanding officer in the Israeli Defense Forces. She holds masters’ degrees in organizational sociology and psychodynamics. She has held leadership positions at major corporations including eBay, WPP, Facebook and currently, as the European culture lead at Tik Tok. Despite these achievements, for most of her life Oshman was consumed by anxiety, riddled with fears. For example, while signing a permission slip for a child’s field trip, she might envision a terrible bus accident.
Years of therapy made things worse. Every therapist insisted that she still had “unfinished business” with her parents and a painful past. “I knew that there was a spark of hidden joy inside me that I just couldn’t get to, but I believed it was there,” she writes in her new book, What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid? Discover a life filled with purpose and joy through the secrets of Jewish wisdom. The question in the title is taken from the book, Who Moved My Cheese? and became a standard challenge for Facebook employees.
Oshman came by her anxiety honestly. Her father was one of Israel’s leading pathologists, and even as a child, Oshman understood the nature of his work. At times, she came across gruesome photos. As a teenager she lived through Intifadas and terror attacks. Her grandparents on both sides were Holocaust survivors, and their obvious manifestations of trauma, including screams from her grandmother’s nightmares, affected her deeply.
Oshman’s gratitude for how Jewish wisdom helped transformed her life motivated her to write this book. In each chapter, she introduces a concept and shows how she integrated it into her personal and professional life. These include ideas such as replacing fear with purpose; finding one’s own “narrow bridge” and learning to cross it; recovering from a broken heart; making psychological space for others; creating a leadership culture at home and at work; raising children with a soul-awareness; learning to make volunteering and giving charity family habits, and learning about who you are deep inside. Each chapter also ends with practical exercises and the reminder, “If you change nothing, nothing will change.”
Having first discovered these ideas in her late thirties, it was a challenge to modify what had been a secular family life. “When we married, we were in a different place, and we have taken it one step at a time,” she said. “I was always clear that shalom bayit, maintaining a peaceful marriage and home life, was above everything else,” she said. Living in London with their four children, Oshman finds Jewish engagement even more important than when living in Israel. “In Israel, you don’t need to be told when it’s Yom Kippur,” she observed. “Here, it’s more important to offer our children a Jewish identity. We have a lot of dialogue with our older children, making every effort to still factor in activities that are important to them along with Jewish observance.”
She believes young adults today are hungry for spiritual messages: “They are value-driven, and I find that inspiring.”
While working at Facebook, Oshman gave a presentation to several hundred people about the Jewish concept of the Eishet Chayil, the “woman of valor” who is praised each Friday night. She explained that Jewish women have always played a pivotal role, not only in the home but often, in business. “She’s doing, creating, producing, selling,” Oshman said. “This song recognizes her contributions every week at a special time.”
Far from being dismissed as hopelessly old-fashioned, Oshman had many young women come over to her and say how much they enjoyed the message: “A few of them told me they hoped one day they’d have husbands who would sing their praises, too.” After the talk, her supervisor began sending her “Shabbat Shalom” messages each Friday afternoon. Based on her involvement with young adults at work and through social media, young adults today are hungry for spiritual messages. “They are value-driven, and I find that inspiring,” she said.
Oshman’s book was published during a moment of crisis for Israel and for Jews worldwide, given the recent battle between Israel and Hamas and the alarming spike in antisemitic violence. The author is both “shaken as well as more committed” to spreading Jewish wisdom as a response to the crisis.
She observed, “When I ask myself, what role can I play? I believe that my mission is to spread more light and build more bridges through Jewish wisdom. This includes the beauty of finding the positive in everything.”
Tik Tok Executive Discovers Joy and Purpose through Jewish Wisdom
May 29, 2021 | by Judy Gruenprint article
Tik Tok Executive Discovers Joy and Purpose through Jewish Wisdom
Michal Oshman's new book asks, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”
Michal Oshman is a former commanding officer in the Israeli Defense Forces. She holds masters’ degrees in organizational sociology and psychodynamics. She has held leadership positions at major corporations including eBay, WPP, Facebook and currently, as the European culture lead at Tik Tok. Despite these achievements, for most of her life Oshman was consumed by anxiety, riddled with fears. For example, while signing a permission slip for a child’s field trip, she might envision a terrible bus accident.
Years of therapy made things worse. Every therapist insisted that she still had “unfinished business” with her parents and a painful past. “I knew that there was a spark of hidden joy inside me that I just couldn’t get to, but I believed it was there,” she writes in her new book, What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid? Discover a life filled with purpose and joy through the secrets of Jewish wisdom. The question in the title is taken from the book, Who Moved My Cheese? and became a standard challenge for Facebook employees.
Oshman came by her anxiety honestly. Her father was one of Israel’s leading pathologists, and even as a child, Oshman understood the nature of his work. At times, she came across gruesome photos. As a teenager she lived through Intifadas and terror attacks. Her grandparents on both sides were Holocaust survivors, and their obvious manifestations of trauma, including screams from her grandmother’s nightmares, affected her deeply.
Oshman’s gratitude for how Jewish wisdom helped transformed her life motivated her to write this book. In each chapter, she introduces a concept and shows how she integrated it into her personal and professional life. These include ideas such as replacing fear with purpose; finding one’s own “narrow bridge” and learning to cross it; recovering from a broken heart; making psychological space for others; creating a leadership culture at home and at work; raising children with a soul-awareness; learning to make volunteering and giving charity family habits, and learning about who you are deep inside. Each chapter also ends with practical exercises and the reminder, “If you change nothing, nothing will change.”
Having first discovered these ideas in her late thirties, it was a challenge to modify what had been a secular family life. “When we married, we were in a different place, and we have taken it one step at a time,” she said. “I was always clear that shalom bayit, maintaining a peaceful marriage and home life, was above everything else,” she said. Living in London with their four children, Oshman finds Jewish engagement even more important than when living in Israel. “In Israel, you don’t need to be told when it’s Yom Kippur,” she observed. “Here, it’s more important to offer our children a Jewish identity. We have a lot of dialogue with our older children, making every effort to still factor in activities that are important to them along with Jewish observance.”
She believes young adults today are hungry for spiritual messages: “They are value-driven, and I find that inspiring.”
While working at Facebook, Oshman gave a presentation to several hundred people about the Jewish concept of the Eishet Chayil, the “woman of valor” who is praised each Friday night. She explained that Jewish women have always played a pivotal role, not only in the home but often, in business. “She’s doing, creating, producing, selling,” Oshman said. “This song recognizes her contributions every week at a special time.”
Far from being dismissed as hopelessly old-fashioned, Oshman had many young women come over to her and say how much they enjoyed the message: “A few of them told me they hoped one day they’d have husbands who would sing their praises, too.” After the talk, her supervisor began sending her “Shabbat Shalom” messages each Friday afternoon. Based on her involvement with young adults at work and through social media, young adults today are hungry for spiritual messages. “They are value-driven, and I find that inspiring,” she said.
Oshman’s book was published during a moment of crisis for Israel and for Jews worldwide, given the recent battle between Israel and Hamas and the alarming spike in antisemitic violence. The author is both “shaken as well as more committed” to spreading Jewish wisdom as a response to the crisis.
She observed, “When I ask myself, what role can I play? I believe that my mission is to spread more light and build more bridges through Jewish wisdom. This includes the beauty of finding the positive in everything.”
Re: AISH
Rabbi Coopersmith
Shalom Elaine!
With the alarming uptick in antisemitism in North America, Aish.com has made it a priority to create social media content to educate the world not only about Jew-hatred, but also what to do about it.
But Instagram didn't like what we're doing and censored us! They objected to the slide through below that highlight the current availability of Hitler's infamous Mein Kampf on Amazon and some of the history behind the book.
Here are some of the images Instagram felt was unfitting for public consumption:
Mein Kampf in 2021?!
Mein Kampf Politcal Manifesto by Adolf Hitler
Required Reading in Germany
Book excerpt
What do you think? Were they insidious, hateful or offensive? Instagram thinks so. Apparently it's ok to post vicious anti-Israel and anti-Jewish content, but not factual content that educates people about Hitler's antisemitic manifesto. It’s offensive to offer viewers the ability to learn about hate at Aish.com's Why the Jews seminar, a four-part series that explores the deeper meaning of antisemitism.
At a time Jews in Manhattan and LA are physically attacked, when shuls in Arizona, Illinois, New York, Nevada and Florida are being vandalized, we have a responsibility to stand up and fight back. We have a responsibility to educate the masses about the meaning of being Jewish. It's an outrage that Instagram is stymieing us, flagging our account and downgrading our status, torpedoing our critical organic growth.
Here's what we need to do and where YOU can help.
Aish.com needs increased manpower to battle against the overwhelming antisemitic bots that attack our pages, to block and delete their malicious comments. With your increased support, you’ll provide and maintain a safe space for respectful discourse and education.
With your help, Aish.com can create reams of compelling and effective content to engage young Jews and nurture Jewish pride.
Finally, with your gift, we will invest the necessary funds to boost and promote our content, thereby overcoming the barriers that Instagram has placed on us.
Yes, it's frustrating to give money to a company that is thwarting us. But we don't have the luxury to boycott them since we must reach the masses of disconnected Jews who live on social media and use that as the main source of news.
Fight against antisemitism, censorship and apathy by contributing to our expanded social media efforts. Give a gift today, and show the world that antisemitism will never win.
DONATE NOW
https://donorbox.org/aish-com-4?+com&utm_campaign=wbbrnc20210531mimgdact
Sincerely,
Rabbi Nechemia Coopersmith
Editor in Chief, Aish.com
Shalom Elaine!
With the alarming uptick in antisemitism in North America, Aish.com has made it a priority to create social media content to educate the world not only about Jew-hatred, but also what to do about it.
But Instagram didn't like what we're doing and censored us! They objected to the slide through below that highlight the current availability of Hitler's infamous Mein Kampf on Amazon and some of the history behind the book.
Here are some of the images Instagram felt was unfitting for public consumption:
Mein Kampf in 2021?!
Mein Kampf Politcal Manifesto by Adolf Hitler
Required Reading in Germany
Book excerpt
What do you think? Were they insidious, hateful or offensive? Instagram thinks so. Apparently it's ok to post vicious anti-Israel and anti-Jewish content, but not factual content that educates people about Hitler's antisemitic manifesto. It’s offensive to offer viewers the ability to learn about hate at Aish.com's Why the Jews seminar, a four-part series that explores the deeper meaning of antisemitism.
At a time Jews in Manhattan and LA are physically attacked, when shuls in Arizona, Illinois, New York, Nevada and Florida are being vandalized, we have a responsibility to stand up and fight back. We have a responsibility to educate the masses about the meaning of being Jewish. It's an outrage that Instagram is stymieing us, flagging our account and downgrading our status, torpedoing our critical organic growth.
Here's what we need to do and where YOU can help.
Aish.com needs increased manpower to battle against the overwhelming antisemitic bots that attack our pages, to block and delete their malicious comments. With your increased support, you’ll provide and maintain a safe space for respectful discourse and education.
With your help, Aish.com can create reams of compelling and effective content to engage young Jews and nurture Jewish pride.
Finally, with your gift, we will invest the necessary funds to boost and promote our content, thereby overcoming the barriers that Instagram has placed on us.
Yes, it's frustrating to give money to a company that is thwarting us. But we don't have the luxury to boycott them since we must reach the masses of disconnected Jews who live on social media and use that as the main source of news.
Fight against antisemitism, censorship and apathy by contributing to our expanded social media efforts. Give a gift today, and show the world that antisemitism will never win.
DONATE NOW
https://donorbox.org/aish-com-4?+com&utm_campaign=wbbrnc20210531mimgdact
Sincerely,
Rabbi Nechemia Coopersmith
Editor in Chief, Aish.com
Re: AISH
https://www.aish.com/ci/s/Identifying-As-A-Jew-in-an-Anti-Semitic-World.html?
Identifying As A Jew in an Anti-Semitic World
May 30, 2021 | by Rabbi Benjamin Blechprint article
Identifying As A Jew in an Anti-Semitic World
Leave the kippah on or take it off?
As a wave of anti-Semitic attacks, spurred by pro-Hamas propaganda, sweeps the world, America has suddenly become witness to a pandemic for which no vaccination has yet been discovered. Wear a yarmulke, a gold chain with a Star of David, speak Hebrew in public or respond affirmatively when directly asked if you’re a Jew, there's a real chance you'll be attacked, beaten up or perhaps even killed.
Exaggeration? You have but to read serious advice presently being offered by a number of “prominent leaders” that offer the “wisdom” that at a time such as this spiritual self-negation is a safer and better alternative than public admission of one’s Jewish identity. Aaron Keyak, whose Twitter and LinkedIn bio claims that he “led Jewish engagement for the Biden-Harris campaign and transition,” last week – as one of many examples – tweeted, “It pains me to say this, but if you fear for your physical safety take off your kippah and hide your Magen David. Obviously, if you can, ask your rabbi first.”
At least Mr.Keyak was kind enough not to claim his opinion as the last word on the matter. It’s probably not a bad idea to “ask your rabbi first” – not just for religious reasons but to add somewhat of a historic perspective.
Two years ago, in a European prelude to what is happening in the United States today, we learned that the “new Germany” encourages Jews in Germany not to wear their head coverings everywhere in public. It is now dangerous for Jews to be readily identifiable. Germany’s top official responsible for efforts against anti-Semitism, Felix Klein, decided that personal safety is more important than religious freedom. And so, in a remarkable historic irony, the country that gave us the Holocaust and the Star of David as a badge of shame, today in the guise of concern for its Jewish residents, gives us guidance about how to cope with the nascent rise of anti-Semitism by suggesting that this time we hide our identities and forsake our traditions!
Michel Friedman who previously served as president of the European Jewish Congress put it bluntly: “When a representative of the federal government officially tells the Jewish community that ‘you are not safe against anti-Jewish hate everywhere in Germany’, then that is a pathetic display for the rule of law and political reality.”
It is hard to believe that in the span of one generation we have gone from the defeat of Nazism and the realization of the ultimate unspeakable horrors of anti-Semitism to a repeat of Jew hatred considered so unstoppable and insoluble that the only viable response is for Jews to hide who they are and ignore their religious beliefs.
In a remarkable midrash the rabbis explain why the temple, the holiest symbol of God’s close relationship with the Jewish people, was built in the city of Jerusalem on a site apportioned to the tribe of Benjamin. Benjamin had one unique merit. When Jacob went to meet with his Esau, Jacob bowed before his brother and had his entire family follow. Some commentaries interpret this as a mistake. A Jew bows only to God, not to another human being. A Jew does not cower or tremble before a fellow human being; his faith makes him immune to fear.
Because Benjamin had not yet been born at the time of this encounter, he was the only one in the family who did not bow. It was only on Benjamin’s territory that the temple could be built. And it was only a descendent of Benjamin, Mordechai of the Purim story, who would defy the ruling of Haman that all Jews were to bow to him – the conviction of public pride in our identity as Jews that was responsible not only for the miracle of the Purim story but for our continued survival throughout all of history.
The “new Germany” and its Jewish leadership two years ago came up with what it believes is “for now, the best solution.” The head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, warned against wearing religious symbols on city streets for fear of attack, with a stark caution that Jews who wear a kippah or a Star of David could be courting danger on German streets.
The head of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, however criticized Schuster, saying he was “mistaken in the cure for the serious problem. Not wearing a skullcap due to fear of anti-Semitism is in fact the fulfillment of the vision of anti-Semites in Europe.”
In the famous scene in “Fiddler on The Roof”, when the Jews are being forced out of Anatevka, one of the townsmen says to Tevye, "Our forefathers have been forced out of many, many places at a moment’s notice."
Tevye responds: "Maybe that’s why we always wear our hats."
The response was typical Tevye. It was humor overlaid with irony. But Jews have always understood the far more profound meaning of the line. We wear our hats as a symbol of Jewish pride, a way of publicly declaring not only our religious affiliation and identity but also our firm conviction that there is always someone above us – above our minds and our understanding. That someone is the God of Abraham, the God of Sinai, the God of the Temple in Jerusalem in the territory of Benjamin – and the God whom we serve with pride, in the words of Isaiah, as “a light unto the nations.”
Identifying As A Jew in an Anti-Semitic World
May 30, 2021 | by Rabbi Benjamin Blechprint article
Identifying As A Jew in an Anti-Semitic World
Leave the kippah on or take it off?
As a wave of anti-Semitic attacks, spurred by pro-Hamas propaganda, sweeps the world, America has suddenly become witness to a pandemic for which no vaccination has yet been discovered. Wear a yarmulke, a gold chain with a Star of David, speak Hebrew in public or respond affirmatively when directly asked if you’re a Jew, there's a real chance you'll be attacked, beaten up or perhaps even killed.
Exaggeration? You have but to read serious advice presently being offered by a number of “prominent leaders” that offer the “wisdom” that at a time such as this spiritual self-negation is a safer and better alternative than public admission of one’s Jewish identity. Aaron Keyak, whose Twitter and LinkedIn bio claims that he “led Jewish engagement for the Biden-Harris campaign and transition,” last week – as one of many examples – tweeted, “It pains me to say this, but if you fear for your physical safety take off your kippah and hide your Magen David. Obviously, if you can, ask your rabbi first.”
At least Mr.Keyak was kind enough not to claim his opinion as the last word on the matter. It’s probably not a bad idea to “ask your rabbi first” – not just for religious reasons but to add somewhat of a historic perspective.
Two years ago, in a European prelude to what is happening in the United States today, we learned that the “new Germany” encourages Jews in Germany not to wear their head coverings everywhere in public. It is now dangerous for Jews to be readily identifiable. Germany’s top official responsible for efforts against anti-Semitism, Felix Klein, decided that personal safety is more important than religious freedom. And so, in a remarkable historic irony, the country that gave us the Holocaust and the Star of David as a badge of shame, today in the guise of concern for its Jewish residents, gives us guidance about how to cope with the nascent rise of anti-Semitism by suggesting that this time we hide our identities and forsake our traditions!
Michel Friedman who previously served as president of the European Jewish Congress put it bluntly: “When a representative of the federal government officially tells the Jewish community that ‘you are not safe against anti-Jewish hate everywhere in Germany’, then that is a pathetic display for the rule of law and political reality.”
It is hard to believe that in the span of one generation we have gone from the defeat of Nazism and the realization of the ultimate unspeakable horrors of anti-Semitism to a repeat of Jew hatred considered so unstoppable and insoluble that the only viable response is for Jews to hide who they are and ignore their religious beliefs.
In a remarkable midrash the rabbis explain why the temple, the holiest symbol of God’s close relationship with the Jewish people, was built in the city of Jerusalem on a site apportioned to the tribe of Benjamin. Benjamin had one unique merit. When Jacob went to meet with his Esau, Jacob bowed before his brother and had his entire family follow. Some commentaries interpret this as a mistake. A Jew bows only to God, not to another human being. A Jew does not cower or tremble before a fellow human being; his faith makes him immune to fear.
Because Benjamin had not yet been born at the time of this encounter, he was the only one in the family who did not bow. It was only on Benjamin’s territory that the temple could be built. And it was only a descendent of Benjamin, Mordechai of the Purim story, who would defy the ruling of Haman that all Jews were to bow to him – the conviction of public pride in our identity as Jews that was responsible not only for the miracle of the Purim story but for our continued survival throughout all of history.
The “new Germany” and its Jewish leadership two years ago came up with what it believes is “for now, the best solution.” The head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, warned against wearing religious symbols on city streets for fear of attack, with a stark caution that Jews who wear a kippah or a Star of David could be courting danger on German streets.
The head of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, however criticized Schuster, saying he was “mistaken in the cure for the serious problem. Not wearing a skullcap due to fear of anti-Semitism is in fact the fulfillment of the vision of anti-Semites in Europe.”
In the famous scene in “Fiddler on The Roof”, when the Jews are being forced out of Anatevka, one of the townsmen says to Tevye, "Our forefathers have been forced out of many, many places at a moment’s notice."
Tevye responds: "Maybe that’s why we always wear our hats."
The response was typical Tevye. It was humor overlaid with irony. But Jews have always understood the far more profound meaning of the line. We wear our hats as a symbol of Jewish pride, a way of publicly declaring not only our religious affiliation and identity but also our firm conviction that there is always someone above us – above our minds and our understanding. That someone is the God of Abraham, the God of Sinai, the God of the Temple in Jerusalem in the territory of Benjamin – and the God whom we serve with pride, in the words of Isaiah, as “a light unto the nations.”
Re: AISH
https://www.aish.com/ci/s/Jewish-Woman-Photographing-Resistance-Fighters.html?
Jewish Woman Photographing Resistance Fighters
May 23, 2021 | by Dr. Yvette Alt Millerprint article
Jewish Woman Photographing Resistance Fighters
Faye Schulman’s photographs are a rare glimpse into the life of Jewish partisan fighters during World War II.
As a young woman, Faye Schulman witnessed the murder of her family and friends at the hands of the Nazis – and resolved to fight back any way she could. A professional photographer, she documented Nazi massacres. When she joined the ranks of partisan fighters battling the Nazis, Faye continued to document her experiences in photos. Thanks to her incredible bravery and determination, Faye’s story – and the memory of the tragic fates of the Jews in her community – have never been forgotten.
Life in a Jewish Shtetel
In 1939, the small town of Lenin, in eastern Poland, was home to a vibrant Jewish community. Roughly half of the town’s 2,000 residents were Jews. Residents ran several Jewish institutions including a Jewish school, a Jewish library, and a Jewish dramatic society. There were also Zionist youth groups active in the area and several residents moved from Poland to the Land of Israel.
Lenin had one photography studio, run by a local young Jew named Moishe Lazebnik. The Lazebnik family was a large one with seven children, and Moishe’s teenaged sister, Faye, started helping him in his business too.
After Moishe moved away, Faye singlehandedly kept the business going, even after World War II broke out in 1939 and the Soviet Union took over Lenin. The Soviets mandated that Lenin’s Jewish school could no longer teach Jewish subjects; it was turned into a Yiddish-language school that taught Soviet propaganda. The Russians deported five Jewish families who were relatively wealthy and seized their property. Other than these terrible actions, the Jews of Lenin were left alone, relatively protected even as the Holocaust raged close to them in German-controlled lands.
On July 18, 1941, tragedy befell Lenin’s Jews. Nazi German troops conquered the area from the Soviet Union and started implementing their “Final Solution,” with the aim of murdering all of the region’s Jews. About a dozen Jews were murdered immediately by Nazi troops. Some others, including two of Faye’s brothers, were sent to Nazi slave labor camps.
The rest of Lenin’s Jews were imprisoned in a newly built Jewish ghetto and forced to do back-breaking labor. “It was overcrowded, with a lack of food to feed the hungry, and lots of ill people and disease,” Faye later described in a March of the Living commemoration in 2014.
Photographing Nazis
Faye was tasked with photographing local Nazi officials. One day she was ordered to make a portrait of the local Gebietskommissar, the local district commander. “He was like an animal,” Faye recalled. “I knew he’s a killer. I knew he killed already in the thousands.” Despite her revulsion, Faye had to ask the Nazi official to smile for his picture.
As the sweltering summer weeks went by in 1942, Lenin’s ghetto swelled. The Nazis transferred Jews from nearby villages into Lenin. By August, 1942, over 1,800 Jews were imprisoned in the ghetto, and the Nazis planned their complete annihilation of the Jews. The Nazis also planned to document this horrific act and chose Faye Lazebnik to photograph the day’s carnage, as well as other massacres of Jews in the area.
Faye Schulman (third from right, with her Red Cross box behind her head) sits with her partisan comrades in the fall of 1942.
Lenin’s Jewish ghetto was liquidated on August 14, 1942. Approximately 1,850 Jews were forced to walk outside of the town, where they were systematically shot. Their bodies were thrown into mass graves. Faye was spared – along with just 25 other Jews that day. As the Nazis looked on, she was forced on pain of death to take pictures of the mass graves that contained the bodies of her younger sisters, her younger brother, her parents, her friends and neighbors and relatives. Ordered to develop a set of photographs of the harrowing scenes, Faye secretly made a second copy for herself to prove what had taken place.
Joining the Partisans
In the weeks that followed, Faye was forced to photograph other atrocities. Even though Nazi troops controlled the area, local groups of partisan fighters were active. One local partisan brigade was known as Molotova and was made up of escaped Soviet soldiers who hid in the forest and battled Nazi troops, mostly in the heavily forested area of Belarus. During one raid, Faye escaped with them and joined the Molotova Brigade. “This was the only way I could fight back and (a)venge my family,” Faye later recalled.
Joining the Molotova fighters was no easy task. Many of these Soviet men were nearly as antisemitic as the Nazis. Some openly said they’d like to kill Jews. Faye didn’t speak often about her Jewish identity. When she celebrated Passover while she was with the partisans, Faye kept the holiday a secret. For a time, Faye looked after an eight-year-old Jewish orphan girl named Raika in the forest. She recalled having to throw away the little girl’s only memento from her parents – a watch – because she was worried that one of the Soviet fighters might decide to kill Raika in order to steal it.
The partisans desperately needed a doctor. Faye had no medical training but her brother-in-law had been a doctor and that was good enough for the Molotova Brigade. They appointed her nurse, aiding their camp “doctor” who was actually a veterinarian.
When the Molotova fighters ran low on supplies, they raided Lenin and other towns – at times with Faye making up one of their numbers. During one raid, Faye urged the partisans to burn down her family home. “I won’t be living here,” she told them. “The family’s killed. To leave it for the enemy? I said right away: ‘Burn it!’”
During one raid on Lenin, Faye recovered her camera and other photography equipment. She spent the next two years taking over one hundred photographs. Unable to access a darkroom or studio, Faye improvised, making negatives under blankets and printing “sun prints” from the negatives during the day.
Ms. Schulman stands with partisans from the Molotov Brigade in Polesye, Poland, circa 1943-1944. Yad Vashem
Her photos offer a rare glimpse into life among partisan fighters. Although scores of Jews fought with the partisan brigade, Faye is the only known Jewish partisan photographer. “We faced hunger and cold; we faced the constant threat of death and torture; added to this we faced antisemitism in our own ranks. Against all odds we struggled,” Faye wrote in her autobiography, A Partisan’s Memoir, published in 1995.
Faye’s photographs are haunting, capturing Jews fighting back in the midst of the Holocaust. In one photo she captured the joy of three young Jewish men who met in the forest: each believed the others had been killed. Another photo shows a funeral of two Jewish fighters alongside two Russian fighters. Far from being passive victims, Faye wanted us to know that Jews fought back, battling the Nazis in any way they could, whether it was fighting with partisans or through silent, little known acts of rebellion, such as Faye’s resistance act of secretly taking photos of atrocities to show future generations.
Bearing Witness to Jewish Resistance
Faye stayed with the Molotova Partisans until the Soviet Union conquered the area, defeating the Nazis, in July of 1944. After the war, Faye found out that her two older brothers Moishe and Kopel had managed to escape from Nazi slave labor camps and had also joined partisans. They introduced Faye to another Jewish partisan they’d fought with, Morris Schulman, and he and Faye married soon after.
In 1948, Faye and Morris moved to Canada. “We were poor, and it was hard to find work because we did not speak English,” she wrote in her autobiography. “But we were young and healthy and determined.” The couple worked in a factory until they were eventually able to start a hardware store.
“I am now an old woman,” Faye later described. "I love my two children and my six grandchildren dearly. But my past life as a partisan, the Holocaust, the torture of our people: These I will never forget.”
Faye passed away at the age of 101 in May 2021. Her photographs continue to provide a testimony to the Holocaust and to the way that Jews fought back against their Nazi oppressors.
Jewish Woman Photographing Resistance Fighters
May 23, 2021 | by Dr. Yvette Alt Millerprint article
Jewish Woman Photographing Resistance Fighters
Faye Schulman’s photographs are a rare glimpse into the life of Jewish partisan fighters during World War II.
As a young woman, Faye Schulman witnessed the murder of her family and friends at the hands of the Nazis – and resolved to fight back any way she could. A professional photographer, she documented Nazi massacres. When she joined the ranks of partisan fighters battling the Nazis, Faye continued to document her experiences in photos. Thanks to her incredible bravery and determination, Faye’s story – and the memory of the tragic fates of the Jews in her community – have never been forgotten.
Life in a Jewish Shtetel
In 1939, the small town of Lenin, in eastern Poland, was home to a vibrant Jewish community. Roughly half of the town’s 2,000 residents were Jews. Residents ran several Jewish institutions including a Jewish school, a Jewish library, and a Jewish dramatic society. There were also Zionist youth groups active in the area and several residents moved from Poland to the Land of Israel.
Lenin had one photography studio, run by a local young Jew named Moishe Lazebnik. The Lazebnik family was a large one with seven children, and Moishe’s teenaged sister, Faye, started helping him in his business too.
After Moishe moved away, Faye singlehandedly kept the business going, even after World War II broke out in 1939 and the Soviet Union took over Lenin. The Soviets mandated that Lenin’s Jewish school could no longer teach Jewish subjects; it was turned into a Yiddish-language school that taught Soviet propaganda. The Russians deported five Jewish families who were relatively wealthy and seized their property. Other than these terrible actions, the Jews of Lenin were left alone, relatively protected even as the Holocaust raged close to them in German-controlled lands.
On July 18, 1941, tragedy befell Lenin’s Jews. Nazi German troops conquered the area from the Soviet Union and started implementing their “Final Solution,” with the aim of murdering all of the region’s Jews. About a dozen Jews were murdered immediately by Nazi troops. Some others, including two of Faye’s brothers, were sent to Nazi slave labor camps.
The rest of Lenin’s Jews were imprisoned in a newly built Jewish ghetto and forced to do back-breaking labor. “It was overcrowded, with a lack of food to feed the hungry, and lots of ill people and disease,” Faye later described in a March of the Living commemoration in 2014.
Photographing Nazis
Faye was tasked with photographing local Nazi officials. One day she was ordered to make a portrait of the local Gebietskommissar, the local district commander. “He was like an animal,” Faye recalled. “I knew he’s a killer. I knew he killed already in the thousands.” Despite her revulsion, Faye had to ask the Nazi official to smile for his picture.
As the sweltering summer weeks went by in 1942, Lenin’s ghetto swelled. The Nazis transferred Jews from nearby villages into Lenin. By August, 1942, over 1,800 Jews were imprisoned in the ghetto, and the Nazis planned their complete annihilation of the Jews. The Nazis also planned to document this horrific act and chose Faye Lazebnik to photograph the day’s carnage, as well as other massacres of Jews in the area.
Faye Schulman (third from right, with her Red Cross box behind her head) sits with her partisan comrades in the fall of 1942.
Lenin’s Jewish ghetto was liquidated on August 14, 1942. Approximately 1,850 Jews were forced to walk outside of the town, where they were systematically shot. Their bodies were thrown into mass graves. Faye was spared – along with just 25 other Jews that day. As the Nazis looked on, she was forced on pain of death to take pictures of the mass graves that contained the bodies of her younger sisters, her younger brother, her parents, her friends and neighbors and relatives. Ordered to develop a set of photographs of the harrowing scenes, Faye secretly made a second copy for herself to prove what had taken place.
Joining the Partisans
In the weeks that followed, Faye was forced to photograph other atrocities. Even though Nazi troops controlled the area, local groups of partisan fighters were active. One local partisan brigade was known as Molotova and was made up of escaped Soviet soldiers who hid in the forest and battled Nazi troops, mostly in the heavily forested area of Belarus. During one raid, Faye escaped with them and joined the Molotova Brigade. “This was the only way I could fight back and (a)venge my family,” Faye later recalled.
Joining the Molotova fighters was no easy task. Many of these Soviet men were nearly as antisemitic as the Nazis. Some openly said they’d like to kill Jews. Faye didn’t speak often about her Jewish identity. When she celebrated Passover while she was with the partisans, Faye kept the holiday a secret. For a time, Faye looked after an eight-year-old Jewish orphan girl named Raika in the forest. She recalled having to throw away the little girl’s only memento from her parents – a watch – because she was worried that one of the Soviet fighters might decide to kill Raika in order to steal it.
The partisans desperately needed a doctor. Faye had no medical training but her brother-in-law had been a doctor and that was good enough for the Molotova Brigade. They appointed her nurse, aiding their camp “doctor” who was actually a veterinarian.
When the Molotova fighters ran low on supplies, they raided Lenin and other towns – at times with Faye making up one of their numbers. During one raid, Faye urged the partisans to burn down her family home. “I won’t be living here,” she told them. “The family’s killed. To leave it for the enemy? I said right away: ‘Burn it!’”
During one raid on Lenin, Faye recovered her camera and other photography equipment. She spent the next two years taking over one hundred photographs. Unable to access a darkroom or studio, Faye improvised, making negatives under blankets and printing “sun prints” from the negatives during the day.
Ms. Schulman stands with partisans from the Molotov Brigade in Polesye, Poland, circa 1943-1944. Yad Vashem
Her photos offer a rare glimpse into life among partisan fighters. Although scores of Jews fought with the partisan brigade, Faye is the only known Jewish partisan photographer. “We faced hunger and cold; we faced the constant threat of death and torture; added to this we faced antisemitism in our own ranks. Against all odds we struggled,” Faye wrote in her autobiography, A Partisan’s Memoir, published in 1995.
Faye’s photographs are haunting, capturing Jews fighting back in the midst of the Holocaust. In one photo she captured the joy of three young Jewish men who met in the forest: each believed the others had been killed. Another photo shows a funeral of two Jewish fighters alongside two Russian fighters. Far from being passive victims, Faye wanted us to know that Jews fought back, battling the Nazis in any way they could, whether it was fighting with partisans or through silent, little known acts of rebellion, such as Faye’s resistance act of secretly taking photos of atrocities to show future generations.
Bearing Witness to Jewish Resistance
Faye stayed with the Molotova Partisans until the Soviet Union conquered the area, defeating the Nazis, in July of 1944. After the war, Faye found out that her two older brothers Moishe and Kopel had managed to escape from Nazi slave labor camps and had also joined partisans. They introduced Faye to another Jewish partisan they’d fought with, Morris Schulman, and he and Faye married soon after.
In 1948, Faye and Morris moved to Canada. “We were poor, and it was hard to find work because we did not speak English,” she wrote in her autobiography. “But we were young and healthy and determined.” The couple worked in a factory until they were eventually able to start a hardware store.
“I am now an old woman,” Faye later described. "I love my two children and my six grandchildren dearly. But my past life as a partisan, the Holocaust, the torture of our people: These I will never forget.”
Faye passed away at the age of 101 in May 2021. Her photographs continue to provide a testimony to the Holocaust and to the way that Jews fought back against their Nazi oppressors.
Re: AISH
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Its-Not-about-Israel-Its-about-Being-a-Jew.html?
It’s Not about Israel; It’s about Being a Jew
May 24, 2021 | by Rabbi Benjamin Blechprint article
As attacks across the US show, the detested object of scorn remains the same as it has for thousands of years – the Jews.
I’ll never forget the lesson Elie Wiesel taught me.
It was more than a decade ago. I was involved in a project that could only succeed if I had the backing of someone with the international prestige of Elie Wiesel, the person who more than anyone else seared the memory of the Holocaust on the world’s conscience. Somehow – a tale all of its own – I was graciously able to meet the Auschwitz survivor and Nobel prize winner at his home.
By way of introducing myself I told him that although I wasn’t born in this country, I was not literally a survivor, thankfully never having endured the horrors of a concentration camp. Wiesel immediately corrected me. Sternly he asked me never again to repeat that error. “When Hitler, cursed be his name, set out to commit genocide on an entire people wherever they might be, men, women and children – then every Jew who is alive today is a survivor.”
It is a profound truth that most people to this day do not acknowledge. And it has profound implications with regard to the political reality of our day.
Those who want to slaughter Jews find ways to seemingly limit the object of their hatred, to focus their murderous intent on a specific and select portion of the survivors of anti-Semitism throughout the ages. Today the “camouflage cover” is “Israeli.” No, say the defenders of Hamas who send rockets of terror and destruction to indiscriminately kill civilians, it is not antisemitism. It’s only because they are Israelis. It is only those who dare to employ a “disproportionate response” to Hamas missiles by firing back at the attackers, sometimes even harming the children and the hospitals strategically placed in their firing positions. It is only “Israelis” that we are protesting against, proclaim the multitudes around the world.
A fundamental truth about the war against Israel can be summed up in one sentence: When approached by a student who attacked Zionism, Martin Luther King responded, “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews – and you’re talking antisemitism.”
And the most fundamental lie about the countless op-eds, vicious social media entries and critiques of Israeli policy is that its hatred is directed towards a tiny Jewish homeland situated in the midst of a huge area of Arab countries, when it has become ever more abundantly clear that the detested object of scorn remains the same as it has for thousands of years – the Jews.
Years in advance of the actual start of the Holocaust, Hitler recorded his plans for genocide in his book Mein Kampf. Scholars scoffed and said it was mere political exaggeration. Nobody could really have been serious about such a plan. But of course he was. Hamas also was not hesitant in openly outlining in their charter calls for “the murder of Jews wherever they are found.” Jews means Jews – and wherever they are found includes the United States as well as all the other continents.
Nobody could really be serious about that. Except of course for the more than 17,000 mentions of the words “Hitler was right” that the ADL recently found on Twitter. Or except for the Palestinian sympathizers viciously beating up Jews in Times Square. Or except for the diners in Los Angeles asked by a raging mob of Hamas flag bearers a question with ancient roots whose answer oft condemned people to horrific attacks or even death: “Are you a Jew?”
Stories just like this are reported from major cities around the world. None of the victims were asked if they were Israelis. All that mattered was that they were Jews.
Isn’t it strange that at a time when someone is accused of being racist can in an instant cause a person to lose his or her job and be banned from social media, but identification with Hamas which openly calls for a second Holocaust is viewed as a moral stance deserving of approval?
What really boggles my mind is that a sizable number of Jews still do not understand the intended victims of Hamas – just as all too many German Jews initially thought they were excluded from extermination because they had done so much for the country, because they were not practicing or believing Jews, because they proudly proclaimed they were more German than Jews. Yet to the outside world and to Germany, they were still Jews.
As Elie Wiesel told me, all of us who are by good fortune alive after the Holocaust should be considered survivors. And similarly, no matter where we live in the world or what connection we have with Israel today, all of us are Jews; all of us are targets. And for that reason, far too many people hate me – and they hate you.
When Jews are being attacked in New York, Chicago, LA, this isn’t about Israel; it’s about being a Jew.
It’s Not about Israel; It’s about Being a Jew
May 24, 2021 | by Rabbi Benjamin Blechprint article
As attacks across the US show, the detested object of scorn remains the same as it has for thousands of years – the Jews.
I’ll never forget the lesson Elie Wiesel taught me.
It was more than a decade ago. I was involved in a project that could only succeed if I had the backing of someone with the international prestige of Elie Wiesel, the person who more than anyone else seared the memory of the Holocaust on the world’s conscience. Somehow – a tale all of its own – I was graciously able to meet the Auschwitz survivor and Nobel prize winner at his home.
By way of introducing myself I told him that although I wasn’t born in this country, I was not literally a survivor, thankfully never having endured the horrors of a concentration camp. Wiesel immediately corrected me. Sternly he asked me never again to repeat that error. “When Hitler, cursed be his name, set out to commit genocide on an entire people wherever they might be, men, women and children – then every Jew who is alive today is a survivor.”
It is a profound truth that most people to this day do not acknowledge. And it has profound implications with regard to the political reality of our day.
Those who want to slaughter Jews find ways to seemingly limit the object of their hatred, to focus their murderous intent on a specific and select portion of the survivors of anti-Semitism throughout the ages. Today the “camouflage cover” is “Israeli.” No, say the defenders of Hamas who send rockets of terror and destruction to indiscriminately kill civilians, it is not antisemitism. It’s only because they are Israelis. It is only those who dare to employ a “disproportionate response” to Hamas missiles by firing back at the attackers, sometimes even harming the children and the hospitals strategically placed in their firing positions. It is only “Israelis” that we are protesting against, proclaim the multitudes around the world.
A fundamental truth about the war against Israel can be summed up in one sentence: When approached by a student who attacked Zionism, Martin Luther King responded, “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews – and you’re talking antisemitism.”
And the most fundamental lie about the countless op-eds, vicious social media entries and critiques of Israeli policy is that its hatred is directed towards a tiny Jewish homeland situated in the midst of a huge area of Arab countries, when it has become ever more abundantly clear that the detested object of scorn remains the same as it has for thousands of years – the Jews.
Years in advance of the actual start of the Holocaust, Hitler recorded his plans for genocide in his book Mein Kampf. Scholars scoffed and said it was mere political exaggeration. Nobody could really have been serious about such a plan. But of course he was. Hamas also was not hesitant in openly outlining in their charter calls for “the murder of Jews wherever they are found.” Jews means Jews – and wherever they are found includes the United States as well as all the other continents.
Nobody could really be serious about that. Except of course for the more than 17,000 mentions of the words “Hitler was right” that the ADL recently found on Twitter. Or except for the Palestinian sympathizers viciously beating up Jews in Times Square. Or except for the diners in Los Angeles asked by a raging mob of Hamas flag bearers a question with ancient roots whose answer oft condemned people to horrific attacks or even death: “Are you a Jew?”
Stories just like this are reported from major cities around the world. None of the victims were asked if they were Israelis. All that mattered was that they were Jews.
Isn’t it strange that at a time when someone is accused of being racist can in an instant cause a person to lose his or her job and be banned from social media, but identification with Hamas which openly calls for a second Holocaust is viewed as a moral stance deserving of approval?
What really boggles my mind is that a sizable number of Jews still do not understand the intended victims of Hamas – just as all too many German Jews initially thought they were excluded from extermination because they had done so much for the country, because they were not practicing or believing Jews, because they proudly proclaimed they were more German than Jews. Yet to the outside world and to Germany, they were still Jews.
As Elie Wiesel told me, all of us who are by good fortune alive after the Holocaust should be considered survivors. And similarly, no matter where we live in the world or what connection we have with Israel today, all of us are Jews; all of us are targets. And for that reason, far too many people hate me – and they hate you.
When Jews are being attacked in New York, Chicago, LA, this isn’t about Israel; it’s about being a Jew.
Re: AISH
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/How-My-Woke-Children-Woke-Up-to-Anti-Israel-Bias-and-Antisemitism.html?s
How My “Woke" Children Woke Up to Anti-Israel Bias and Antisemitism
May 23, 2021 | by Dr. Craig Schranzprint article
How My “Woke
My children discovered that what starts with anti-Zionist screeds against European imperialism morphs to implicit support of terrorism and ends in indiscriminate antisemitism.
I have three teenage children who are proud Americans and Jews. They are also a product of a mainstream youth culture where progressive political and cultural views are normative.
I’ve been chided for not going along with perspectives to include my lack of sensitivity to my own “privilege" as a white male or my misapplication of preferred gender pronouns. Terms such as canceling, deplatforming, microagressions and safe spaces were all unknown to my vocabulary. Now they are regularly discussed at the dinner table in favorable terms.
Terms such as canceling, deplatforming, microagressions and safe spaces were all unknown to my vocabulary. Now they are regularly discussed at the dinner table in favorable terms.
All my children have visited to Israel and take pride in its existence. But they also questioned why I had such an issue with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanction (BDS) movement that targets Israel’s economy due to perceived mistreatment of the Palestinian people. I shared videos that didn’t seem to resonate on the link between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Why couldn’t Israel loosen up and give what needed to be given for the sake of peace?
Dinner conversations over the sacrifices of Israel’s War of Independence, the miracle of the 1967 War and the near catastrophe of the Yom Kippur war were met with glazed eyes. My wife’s memories of spending a semester in Israel during her college years during a period of frequent suicide bus bombings were as relatable to them as me imagining trench warfare and mustard gas during WW1. Both remnants of past conflicts best left to history books.
My kids were too young to remember much about the last major blow-up in Gaza back in 2014. So the day the missiles started raining down on Israel was quite a shock. What happened to the peaceful Palestinians who just want their own land and are stuck in refugee camps? How could some of these same people be capable of launching thousands of rockets that could reach 70% of the country? The Free Palestine movement was about yard signs, marches and maybe the occasional thrown stone. But entire cities under siege and children being shipped off to safe locations far from the border rather than school seemed a bit much. Israelis fleeing to bomb shelters in the middle of the night praying that the most advanced weapons defense system on the planet would protect them from a peace-seeking people who only wanted coexistence didn’t seem to make sense.
As the conflict raged on the questions only grew. Why are they attacking Israel? How is that peaceful? I thought they already control the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock? I thought you said we conquered it back in 1967 and gave it right back for the Muslims to control? Why can’t Jews pray there too; I thought it was the site of our temple? You mean the rockets are just being shot from Gaza at random? A bunch of their own rockets are landing in Gaza but Israel is being blamed? If Israel intentionally kills women and children why would they tell everyone in a building to get out before they destroy it? Won’t that let a lot of terrorists get away?
The final stage was when it became less about Israel and more about Jews.
The final stage was when it became less about Israel and more about Jews. Tik Tok videos with Jewish content filled with reams of antisemitic comments, a video from London to ‘F--- the Jews and rape their daughters”. Footage in Los Angeles of thugs assaulting Jews at restaurants and clips of Jews being beaten up in Manhattan. Vandalism at a synagogue in Skokie 45 years after the infamous Nazi march in the streets.
And it became even more personal. All of my kids feel like they had to defend "Israeli aggression” in school because they were the only Jews in their class. Their friends' social media feeds pepper them with “Free Palestine” and accuse their coreligionists with war crimes. Their friends were parroting what they had heard from influencers like Trevor Noah and John Oliver without any insight or historical context of the conflict.
Last night I put my 13 year old to bed under a stream of tears after hearing she got into a back and forth with one of her friends on social media and refusing to apologize for supporting Israel’s right to defend itself. I woke up this morning to an email from the Hillel director of the college my eldest child plans to attend discussing recent antisemitic attacks on campus, including calls of “dirty Jew” and swastikas on campus.
My children have “woke” up to the fact that what starts with anti-Zionist screeds against European imperialism and subjugation morphs to implicit support of blatant terrorism and ends in indiscriminate antisemitism. Their presence as a Jew advocating for their ancestral land is a micro aggression to their classmates who don’t want the prevailing narrative of Palestinian oppression questioned. Their safe space that tolerates diversity and respects minority rights is now a bastion of name calling and playground taunts.
I am saddened by this round of fighting and relieved the ceasefire is holding. And I take solace that my children learned a valuable lesson. When push comes to shove, no matter what we wear, how we look, what we think or where we live, we will always be defined by others as being a Jew. That is how we must define ourselves. We will never apologize for that or for the right for us to exist and defend ourselves in our ancestral homeland.
May we all merit for lasting peace in the land of Israel and our communities across the globe.
How My “Woke" Children Woke Up to Anti-Israel Bias and Antisemitism
May 23, 2021 | by Dr. Craig Schranzprint article
How My “Woke
My children discovered that what starts with anti-Zionist screeds against European imperialism morphs to implicit support of terrorism and ends in indiscriminate antisemitism.
I have three teenage children who are proud Americans and Jews. They are also a product of a mainstream youth culture where progressive political and cultural views are normative.
I’ve been chided for not going along with perspectives to include my lack of sensitivity to my own “privilege" as a white male or my misapplication of preferred gender pronouns. Terms such as canceling, deplatforming, microagressions and safe spaces were all unknown to my vocabulary. Now they are regularly discussed at the dinner table in favorable terms.
Terms such as canceling, deplatforming, microagressions and safe spaces were all unknown to my vocabulary. Now they are regularly discussed at the dinner table in favorable terms.
All my children have visited to Israel and take pride in its existence. But they also questioned why I had such an issue with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanction (BDS) movement that targets Israel’s economy due to perceived mistreatment of the Palestinian people. I shared videos that didn’t seem to resonate on the link between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Why couldn’t Israel loosen up and give what needed to be given for the sake of peace?
Dinner conversations over the sacrifices of Israel’s War of Independence, the miracle of the 1967 War and the near catastrophe of the Yom Kippur war were met with glazed eyes. My wife’s memories of spending a semester in Israel during her college years during a period of frequent suicide bus bombings were as relatable to them as me imagining trench warfare and mustard gas during WW1. Both remnants of past conflicts best left to history books.
My kids were too young to remember much about the last major blow-up in Gaza back in 2014. So the day the missiles started raining down on Israel was quite a shock. What happened to the peaceful Palestinians who just want their own land and are stuck in refugee camps? How could some of these same people be capable of launching thousands of rockets that could reach 70% of the country? The Free Palestine movement was about yard signs, marches and maybe the occasional thrown stone. But entire cities under siege and children being shipped off to safe locations far from the border rather than school seemed a bit much. Israelis fleeing to bomb shelters in the middle of the night praying that the most advanced weapons defense system on the planet would protect them from a peace-seeking people who only wanted coexistence didn’t seem to make sense.
As the conflict raged on the questions only grew. Why are they attacking Israel? How is that peaceful? I thought they already control the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock? I thought you said we conquered it back in 1967 and gave it right back for the Muslims to control? Why can’t Jews pray there too; I thought it was the site of our temple? You mean the rockets are just being shot from Gaza at random? A bunch of their own rockets are landing in Gaza but Israel is being blamed? If Israel intentionally kills women and children why would they tell everyone in a building to get out before they destroy it? Won’t that let a lot of terrorists get away?
The final stage was when it became less about Israel and more about Jews.
The final stage was when it became less about Israel and more about Jews. Tik Tok videos with Jewish content filled with reams of antisemitic comments, a video from London to ‘F--- the Jews and rape their daughters”. Footage in Los Angeles of thugs assaulting Jews at restaurants and clips of Jews being beaten up in Manhattan. Vandalism at a synagogue in Skokie 45 years after the infamous Nazi march in the streets.
And it became even more personal. All of my kids feel like they had to defend "Israeli aggression” in school because they were the only Jews in their class. Their friends' social media feeds pepper them with “Free Palestine” and accuse their coreligionists with war crimes. Their friends were parroting what they had heard from influencers like Trevor Noah and John Oliver without any insight or historical context of the conflict.
Last night I put my 13 year old to bed under a stream of tears after hearing she got into a back and forth with one of her friends on social media and refusing to apologize for supporting Israel’s right to defend itself. I woke up this morning to an email from the Hillel director of the college my eldest child plans to attend discussing recent antisemitic attacks on campus, including calls of “dirty Jew” and swastikas on campus.
My children have “woke” up to the fact that what starts with anti-Zionist screeds against European imperialism and subjugation morphs to implicit support of blatant terrorism and ends in indiscriminate antisemitism. Their presence as a Jew advocating for their ancestral land is a micro aggression to their classmates who don’t want the prevailing narrative of Palestinian oppression questioned. Their safe space that tolerates diversity and respects minority rights is now a bastion of name calling and playground taunts.
I am saddened by this round of fighting and relieved the ceasefire is holding. And I take solace that my children learned a valuable lesson. When push comes to shove, no matter what we wear, how we look, what we think or where we live, we will always be defined by others as being a Jew. That is how we must define ourselves. We will never apologize for that or for the right for us to exist and defend ourselves in our ancestral homeland.
May we all merit for lasting peace in the land of Israel and our communities across the globe.
Re: AISH
https://www.aish.com/jw/me/Sheikh-Jarrah-The-Facts.html?s=ac&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Jew+s+Response+to+Difficult+Times%3B+Sheikh+Jarrah%3A+The+Facts%3B+The+Iranian+Zionist&utm_campaign=wbbwkl202105196sicact
A long-simmering controversy over the fate of Jewish-owned land and Palestinian tenants in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem has once again become front page news after yet another court decision reaffirming the pre-1948 Jewish ownership of the land and the obligation of the Palestinian tenants to pay their rent or be evicted. At the same time, false claims have been made that the Israeli laws are unfair because Jews can recover property in the West Bank, but Palestinians can’t recover property in pre-1967 Israel.
While Sheikh Jarrah is home to the American Colony Hotel and the former Orient House of the late Faisal Husseini, it is perhaps best known to Jews for two reasons:
First, in April 1948 Palestinian attackers carried out a horrific massacre in Sheikh Jarrah, killing 78 Jewish doctors, nurses, patients and others, who were in a convoy up to Mt. Scopus and Hadassah Hospital. The massacre was observed by British soldiers, who did nothing to stop it.
Second, the proximity of Sheikh Jarrah to the Tomb of Simon the Just, a prominent Second Temple High Priest. Simon’s Tomb has been a Jewish pilgrimage site for many hundreds of years, and religious Jews have therefore been eager to buy land and live in the area. In 1876 Jews bought Simon’s Tomb and an adjacent field of 18 dunams from Arab owners. The buyer, a committee of Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews, divided the property. While the Ashkenazi half remained vacant, the Sephardic Jews began building homes on their half, establishing a community that eventually numbered in the hundreds before diminishing in the face of Arab violence in the 1930’s.
Sheikh Jarrah After 1948
During the war invading Jordanian forces took Judea and Samaria, including Sheikh Jarrah and other parts of Jerusalem, and the Jews who survived the fighting had to flee. The Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property took control of all West Bank property owned by Jews including Jewish buildings and land in Sheikh Jarrah. Incidentally, the Jordanian Custodian also took property in the West Bank that belonged to Arabs who continued to live in what became Israel, since like Israeli Jews, these Israeli Arabs were now citizens of an enemy state.
(It should be mentioned that the laws underlying the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property, and the similar Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property that will be discussed below, were based on inherited British Mandate law, which is why the offices had similar names and responsibilities.)
Ownership of much of the Jewish land taken by the Jordanian Custodian was transferred to the Jordanian government, which used it, for example, to construct government buildings in East Jerusalem, and to create the Dheisheh Refugee Camp – which is built entirely on Jewish-owned land. In addition, Palestinian refugee camps at Qalandia and Anata were built in part on Jewish land that had been taken by the Custodian. (See Arab Building in Jerusalem: 1967—1997, Israel Kimhi, p48-49; for Dheisheh, see also, from the leaked Palestine papers, NSU Draft Memo Re: Rights of Jews Within the OPT Acquired pre-1967.)
In 1956 the Jordanian Government reached an agreement with UNRWA to use the vacant Ashkenazi land in Sheikh Jarrah to build houses for 28 Palestinian refugee families. Under the scheme the Custodian leased the land to the Jordanian Ministry of Development, and the United Nations (UNRWA) funded the construction:
The refugees would agree to give up their refugee assistance and ration cards and would pay nominal rent for a probationary period of three years and three months. Those tenants who lived up to the lease terms would be allowed to sign a long-term lease of 30 years, and after that a further 33 years.
The tenants claim that under a side agreement they received title to their homes after the initial three-year period, but there is no evidence of such an arrangement, which would obviously conflict with the fact that they had to sign a lease.
In any event, there is no evidence that any of the 28 families ever gained title to the homes from Jordan or UNRWA. They were tenants paying rent.
The Situation After 1967
Speaking generally, the Jordanian government purchased, or took by eminent domain, much of the Jewish property held by the Custodian, at which point the property being held in trust for the Jewish owner was replaced by the money gained in the transaction. The property in question was no longer Jewish-owned, and even after 1967 there is no way for the original Jewish owners to regain rights to such property, such as the previously mentioned Dheisheh Refugee Camp and Jordanian government buildings. The Jewish owners were only able to file for compensation from the Israeli Custodian who took over for the Jordanian Custodian.
In contrast to this, the land in Sheikh Jarrah was exceptional as it continued to be held in trust for the Jewish owners by the Jordanian Custodian, and then by the Israeli Custodian after 1967.
Is the Land Really Jewish Owned?
The Jordanian Custodian took the land in Sheikh Jarrah after 1948 because it was Jewish-owned, and in the next 19 years no one in the West Bank or Jordan disputed the fact that it was Jewish-owned land. While in recent years some Palestinians have come forward claiming to be the rightful owners of the land, their silence for so many years, especially when the land was first taken by the Jordanian Custodian, makes their claims extremely dubious, and Israeli courts have consistently found against them.
Israeli Government Not Expelling Anyone
It must be stressed also that this is a civil dispute over ownership rights and rent, and the Israeli government is not a party to the litigation. Over the years some of the Palestinian tenants have been evicted over non-payment of rent, but this is a private rather than a government matter. The Israeli government is not evicting anyone.
Once the Jewish claimants proved their ownership to the Sheikh Jarrah land in court, they also did not try to evict the Palestinian families – they merely informed them they would have to pay rent.
In 1982 the Jewish owners sued the Palestinian tenants for non-payment of rent and the lawyer representing the Palestinian families did not dispute the Jewish ownership of the land. Instead, he worked out a court-sanctioned agreement between the Jewish owners and the Palestinians, under which the families would agree to pay rent and would be considered “protected tenants.” As such, they could not be evicted if they lived up to the lease, including by paying rent, and under certain circumstances their families could inherit their rights to the apartment.
Perhaps under pressure from the PLO, along with monetary inducements, most but not all of the tenants soon renounced the agreement and once again claimed they owned the units and refused to pay rent.
Israel’s Handling of Palestinian Land
Property left behind by Arabs who fled during the fighting in 1948 (i.e., absentee property) was turned over Israel’s Custodian of Absentee Property, which sold most of the property to state or related bodies for public purposes, such as housing the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab countries who found refuge in Israel. The Custodian held the value of the property in trust for the registered Arab owner (with adjustments for inflation and interest).
Those registered owners are eligible to file for compensation from the Custodian, but Palestinians were pressured not to make claims, lest that legitimize Israel’s existence and sovereignty. Still, over the years at least 14,692 claims have been filed, claims have been settled with respect to more than 200,000 dunums of land, more than 10,000,000 NIS (New Israeli Shekels) has been paid in compensation, and more than 54,000 dunums of replacement land in Israel has been given in compensation. Israel has followed this generous policy despite the fact that not a single penny of compensation has ever been paid to any of the more than 500,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries, who were forced by the Arab governments to abandon their homes, businesses and savings.
Critics of Israel charging unfairness or “asymmetry” in application of absentee property laws might want to consider that asymmetry first.
A long-simmering controversy over the fate of Jewish-owned land and Palestinian tenants in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem has once again become front page news after yet another court decision reaffirming the pre-1948 Jewish ownership of the land and the obligation of the Palestinian tenants to pay their rent or be evicted. At the same time, false claims have been made that the Israeli laws are unfair because Jews can recover property in the West Bank, but Palestinians can’t recover property in pre-1967 Israel.
While Sheikh Jarrah is home to the American Colony Hotel and the former Orient House of the late Faisal Husseini, it is perhaps best known to Jews for two reasons:
First, in April 1948 Palestinian attackers carried out a horrific massacre in Sheikh Jarrah, killing 78 Jewish doctors, nurses, patients and others, who were in a convoy up to Mt. Scopus and Hadassah Hospital. The massacre was observed by British soldiers, who did nothing to stop it.
Second, the proximity of Sheikh Jarrah to the Tomb of Simon the Just, a prominent Second Temple High Priest. Simon’s Tomb has been a Jewish pilgrimage site for many hundreds of years, and religious Jews have therefore been eager to buy land and live in the area. In 1876 Jews bought Simon’s Tomb and an adjacent field of 18 dunams from Arab owners. The buyer, a committee of Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews, divided the property. While the Ashkenazi half remained vacant, the Sephardic Jews began building homes on their half, establishing a community that eventually numbered in the hundreds before diminishing in the face of Arab violence in the 1930’s.
Sheikh Jarrah After 1948
During the war invading Jordanian forces took Judea and Samaria, including Sheikh Jarrah and other parts of Jerusalem, and the Jews who survived the fighting had to flee. The Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property took control of all West Bank property owned by Jews including Jewish buildings and land in Sheikh Jarrah. Incidentally, the Jordanian Custodian also took property in the West Bank that belonged to Arabs who continued to live in what became Israel, since like Israeli Jews, these Israeli Arabs were now citizens of an enemy state.
(It should be mentioned that the laws underlying the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property, and the similar Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property that will be discussed below, were based on inherited British Mandate law, which is why the offices had similar names and responsibilities.)
Ownership of much of the Jewish land taken by the Jordanian Custodian was transferred to the Jordanian government, which used it, for example, to construct government buildings in East Jerusalem, and to create the Dheisheh Refugee Camp – which is built entirely on Jewish-owned land. In addition, Palestinian refugee camps at Qalandia and Anata were built in part on Jewish land that had been taken by the Custodian. (See Arab Building in Jerusalem: 1967—1997, Israel Kimhi, p48-49; for Dheisheh, see also, from the leaked Palestine papers, NSU Draft Memo Re: Rights of Jews Within the OPT Acquired pre-1967.)
In 1956 the Jordanian Government reached an agreement with UNRWA to use the vacant Ashkenazi land in Sheikh Jarrah to build houses for 28 Palestinian refugee families. Under the scheme the Custodian leased the land to the Jordanian Ministry of Development, and the United Nations (UNRWA) funded the construction:
The refugees would agree to give up their refugee assistance and ration cards and would pay nominal rent for a probationary period of three years and three months. Those tenants who lived up to the lease terms would be allowed to sign a long-term lease of 30 years, and after that a further 33 years.
The tenants claim that under a side agreement they received title to their homes after the initial three-year period, but there is no evidence of such an arrangement, which would obviously conflict with the fact that they had to sign a lease.
In any event, there is no evidence that any of the 28 families ever gained title to the homes from Jordan or UNRWA. They were tenants paying rent.
The Situation After 1967
Speaking generally, the Jordanian government purchased, or took by eminent domain, much of the Jewish property held by the Custodian, at which point the property being held in trust for the Jewish owner was replaced by the money gained in the transaction. The property in question was no longer Jewish-owned, and even after 1967 there is no way for the original Jewish owners to regain rights to such property, such as the previously mentioned Dheisheh Refugee Camp and Jordanian government buildings. The Jewish owners were only able to file for compensation from the Israeli Custodian who took over for the Jordanian Custodian.
In contrast to this, the land in Sheikh Jarrah was exceptional as it continued to be held in trust for the Jewish owners by the Jordanian Custodian, and then by the Israeli Custodian after 1967.
Is the Land Really Jewish Owned?
The Jordanian Custodian took the land in Sheikh Jarrah after 1948 because it was Jewish-owned, and in the next 19 years no one in the West Bank or Jordan disputed the fact that it was Jewish-owned land. While in recent years some Palestinians have come forward claiming to be the rightful owners of the land, their silence for so many years, especially when the land was first taken by the Jordanian Custodian, makes their claims extremely dubious, and Israeli courts have consistently found against them.
Israeli Government Not Expelling Anyone
It must be stressed also that this is a civil dispute over ownership rights and rent, and the Israeli government is not a party to the litigation. Over the years some of the Palestinian tenants have been evicted over non-payment of rent, but this is a private rather than a government matter. The Israeli government is not evicting anyone.
Once the Jewish claimants proved their ownership to the Sheikh Jarrah land in court, they also did not try to evict the Palestinian families – they merely informed them they would have to pay rent.
In 1982 the Jewish owners sued the Palestinian tenants for non-payment of rent and the lawyer representing the Palestinian families did not dispute the Jewish ownership of the land. Instead, he worked out a court-sanctioned agreement between the Jewish owners and the Palestinians, under which the families would agree to pay rent and would be considered “protected tenants.” As such, they could not be evicted if they lived up to the lease, including by paying rent, and under certain circumstances their families could inherit their rights to the apartment.
Perhaps under pressure from the PLO, along with monetary inducements, most but not all of the tenants soon renounced the agreement and once again claimed they owned the units and refused to pay rent.
Israel’s Handling of Palestinian Land
Property left behind by Arabs who fled during the fighting in 1948 (i.e., absentee property) was turned over Israel’s Custodian of Absentee Property, which sold most of the property to state or related bodies for public purposes, such as housing the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab countries who found refuge in Israel. The Custodian held the value of the property in trust for the registered Arab owner (with adjustments for inflation and interest).
Those registered owners are eligible to file for compensation from the Custodian, but Palestinians were pressured not to make claims, lest that legitimize Israel’s existence and sovereignty. Still, over the years at least 14,692 claims have been filed, claims have been settled with respect to more than 200,000 dunums of land, more than 10,000,000 NIS (New Israeli Shekels) has been paid in compensation, and more than 54,000 dunums of replacement land in Israel has been given in compensation. Israel has followed this generous policy despite the fact that not a single penny of compensation has ever been paid to any of the more than 500,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries, who were forced by the Arab governments to abandon their homes, businesses and savings.
Critics of Israel charging unfairness or “asymmetry” in application of absentee property laws might want to consider that asymmetry first.
Re: AISH
https://www.aish.com/h/sh/t/48965741.html?
What is the Purpose of the Torah?
May 13, 2006 | by Rabbi David Aaronprint article
What is the Purpose of the Torah?
God does not expect us to be perfect. In fact, that's why the Torah wasn't given to angels.
I will share with you a very strange story from the Talmud. The Sages encoded deep ideas into such stories. This story conveys a profound truth about who we are, what Torah is, and why we were given the Torah.
When Moses ascended to Heaven to get the Torah, the ministering angels said to the Holy One, praised be He, "Sovereign of the universe, what is one born of a woman doing among us?" In other words, what is this imperfect human being doing among perfect beings? How could mortal man ascend to the level of angels?
"He has come to receive the Torah," responded God. "He's not staying. He just came to pick something up -- the Torah."
The angels were even more upset. "What?! Are You about to bestow upon frail man such a cherished treasure? How can You give human beings your holy Torah? Keep it in heaven. Give it to us!"
Accepting the Torah means you are accepting a Divine mission.
People often say that the Torah is a manual for living from God. But it is really more than that. It is an assignment from God. The Torah is a mission from God to be performed on God's behalf. That's why the Torah was in the angelic realm. An angel is an agent for God appointed to perform a divine mission. Man also has the opportunity to perform a mission on behalf of God. Accepting the Torah means you are accepting a Divine mission. You become a Divine agent. According to Jewish law, if you appoint someone to be your agent, he is equipotent to yourself. You have given him your power of attorney, to act on your behalf. This is the amazing power, responsibility, and privilege entrusted to us through Torah.
The angels did not know what was in the Torah. All they knew was that God must really cherish this mission if He had been holding on to it for so long time and had not yet appointed anyone to perform it. When Moses showed up to receive the Torah, they were in absolute shock. All this time, they had heard about this incredible, lofty, exalted mission, and who does God finally chose to entrust it to? A human! This is absurd. Humans are such lowly creatures, filled with base inclinations and evil deeds. Humans are going to act on God's behalf?!
God says to Moses, "You have to respond to these angels' complaints." In other words, you have to understand why you deserve this mission. What are your qualifications?
Most people think that the theme of Torah is about believing in God. That's only half the story. Torah is also about believing in yourself. To accept Torah, you must have a tremendous amount of self-esteem. You must believe that you are worthy to be God's agent on Earth -- you were sent here to fulfill a sacred mission.
The message of Shavuot is: You are important and significant to God. You have been given the opportunity to represent the Almighty. You have been entrusted with His power of attorney to act on his behalf.
Arguing with the Angels
God says to Moses, "I cannot answer for you. Unless you realize for yourself what your qualifications are, you can't be entrusted with the mission."
Moses holds on to the Holy Throne, and is charged with amazing confidence to face the angels. In their presence, he asks God, "What's in Your Torah?"
"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt."
Moses then challenges the angels, "Did you go to Egypt and serve Pharaoh? What relevance is the Torah to you?" In other words, Moses argues, "Did you have to serve Pharaoh? Were you oppressed slaves for 210 years?"
The angels concede. They had lived only a perfect blissful life in heaven.
Moses continues to make his case, "God, what else is written in Your Torah?"
"Thou shalt not have other gods."
Moses confronts the angels, "Are you living among nations who worship idols?"
To really understand Moses' question you need to appreciate what idolatry was really all about. Idolatry was a lot of fun. Most idolatrous practices revolved around sexual promiscuity. The idolaters believed that orgies were a service to their gods. Therefore Moses' point to the angels was, "Do you live in a society which challenges you daily with constant allurements and seductions?"
The angels say, "Nahh, we're angels!"
Moses continues, "God, what else is in the Torah?"
"Keep the Shabbat. Honor your father and mother. Don't murder. Don't commit adultery. Don't steal."
"Angels," Moses challenges, "do you work hard? Do you need rest? Do you have fathers and mothers that you have to honor? Does jealousy exist among you? Do you have an evil inclination?"
These are the qualifications Moses presented to merit the mission of Torah for humankind: We live in a materialistic society filled with daily seductions. That's why we should get the Torah! We qualify for this mission because we make so many mistakes. We are inundated with problems and challenges from within and without. We are perfect for this job, because we are so imperfect! So the next time you call us "born of a woman," say it with respect.
The angels are indeed impressed. They even want to befriend humankind, and give Moses useful secrets to help humans in their difficult mission.
Human Goodness Inc
What is the mission of Torah? It is to overcome negative and destructive urges and choose goodness. Goodness that has been chosen is the highest form of goodness. We are highly qualified for this mission because we are inclined to the allurements and seductions. We are able to fail, but also to succeed. We are able to destroy, but also to build. We are able to choose to do great evil, but also to choose to do amazing good.
Angels are perfect; they have no negative inclination. They have no free choice. They can't struggle. They can't fail. They cannot choose goodness.
Our mission, if we're willing to accept it, is to choose goodness. This is how we serve God. Angels sing God's praises in a perfect heavenly world. However, human praises surpass those of the angels because we praise God from Earth, soiled with imperfections, problems, and challenges. This is our greatness.
A person can stand in Torah only after he has failed at it.
God does not expect us to be perfect. In fact, if we were perfect, we could not have qualified for the mission of Torah. The Talmud teaches that a person can stand in Torah only after he has failed at it. In other words, part of the mission of Torah is to fail, regret, resolve, change, choose goodness, and succeed. We humans are the perfect candidates for the job.
When the angels understood this, they gave Moses gifts -- useful secrets. They wanted to invest in the human enterprise. They wanted to be shareholders in Human Goodness Inc. If you can't work for the company, at least invest in it, and enjoy dividends as a shareholder.
God is the major investor in Human Goodness Inc. God invested a spark of the Divine Self in human beings in order to participate in this world. This is the meaning of the mystical tradition that teaches that God desires to be in this world. God lives and participates in this world through you and me -- if we accept the mission. This is the real meaning of God creating man in His image.
Every human being has the potential to be an agent and vehicle for God. Everything we do can be for God's sake. This is the greatest honor and pleasure a person could experience. To live for myself is no great honor, but to live for God, to choose goodness for God's sake -- this is Heaven on Earth.
Only Judaism can claim national revelation since the Jewish people is the only nation in the history of mankind who ever experienced it.
Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the other major religions of the world both accept the Jewish revelation at Sinai, including the Five Books of Moses in their Bible, and hold the Sinai revelation as a key component of their religion.
When starting their own religions, why did they build upon the Jewish claim? Why didn't they just deny the revelation ever happened?
The answer is that they knew that if national revelation can never be fabricated; so too, its validity can therefore never be denied.
Now it is understandable how the Author of the Torah can confidently predict that there will never be another claim of national revelation in history.
Because only God knew it would happen only once, as it did – at Sinai over 3,000 years ago.
Did God Speak at Sinai?
by Rabbi Nechemia Coopersmithprint article
Did God Speak at Sinai?
What supports the claim that God spoke to the entire Jewish people at the foot of Mount Sinai?
Who did God give the Torah to at Mount Sinai? Most people reply, "God gave the Torah to Moses."
And what were the Jewish people doing while Moses was receiving the Torah? "Worshipping the Golden Calf."
Correct answers – but NOT according to the Bible.
The above answers come from Cecil B. DeMille's classic film, "The Ten Commandments." Amazing the impact one movie can have on the Jewish education of generations of Jews. It's a great film, but DeMille should have read the original.
The version found in the Torah is quite different. The Torah's claim is that the entire people heard God speak at Mount Sinai, experiencing national revelation. God did not just appear to Moses in a private rendezvous; He appeared to everyone, some 3 million people. This claim is mentioned many times in the Torah.
[Moses told the Israelites]: 'Only beware for yourself and greatly beware for your soul, lest you forget the things that your eyes have beheld. Do not remove this memory from your heart all the days of your life. Teach your children and your children's children about the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horev [Mount Sinai]...
God spoke to you from the midst of the fire, you were hearing the sound of words, but you were not seeing a form, only a sound. He told you of His covenant, instructing you to keep the Ten Commandments, and He inscribed them on two stone tablets.' (Deut.4:9-13)
'You have been shown in order to know that God, He is the Supreme Being. There is none besides Him. From heaven he let you hear His voice in order to teach you, and on earth He showed you His great fire, and you heard His words amid the fire.' (Deut. 4:32-36)
Moses called all of Israel and said to them: 'Hear, O Israel, the decrees and the ordinances that I speak in your ears today – learn them, and be careful to perform them. The Lord your God sealed a covenant with us at Horev [Mount Sinai]. Not with our forefathers did God seal this covenant, but with us – we who are here, all of us alive today. Face to face did God speak with you on the mountain from amid the fire.' (Deut. 5:1-4)
The Torah claims that the entire Jewish nation heard God speak at Sinai, an assertion that has been accepted as part of their nation's history for over 3,000 years.
DeMille's mistake is such a big deal because the Jewish claim of national revelation, as opposed to individual revelation, is the central defining event that makes Judaism different than every other religion in the world.
How so?
History and Legends
Two types of stories are part of any national heritage.
The first kind is legends. Included in this category is George Washington's admission to chopping down the cherry tree, along with his statement, "I cannot tell a lie." Johnny Appleseed planting apple trees across America with his discarded apple cores is another legend.
Then there is history. For example, George Washington was the first president of the United States. William the Conqueror led the Battle of Hastings in 1066 in which Harold, King of England, was killed. The Jews of Spain were expelled from their country in 1492, the year Christopher Columbus set sail.
What is the difference between legend and history?
A legend is an unverified story. By their very nature legends are unverifiable because they have very few eyewitnesses. Perhaps little George did chop down the cherry tree. We can't know if it happened. This does not mean that the legend is necessarily false, only that it is unverifiable. No one thinks legends are facts, therefore they are not accepted as reliable history.
History, however, is comprised of events we know actually happened. It is reliable because we can determine if the claimed event is true or false through a number of ways. One key to verification is the assertion that large numbers of eyewitnesses observed the specific event.
Why is the number of claimed original witnesses a principal determining factor in making historical accounts reliable? This can be understood through looking at the nature of the following series of claims and weighing their levels of credibility. The nature of the claim itself can often determine its degree of believability.
The Believability Game
Gauge the level of credibility of the following scenarios.
Some claims are inherently unverifiable. For example, would you believe me if I told you the following:
Scenario #1:
"Last week after dinner, I went for a walk through the forest near my house. Suddenly everything was awash in a tremendous light and God appeared to me, designating me as His prophet. He told me to announce this revelation to you at this time."
Believable?
In theory this could have happened. It doesn't seem likely, but you don't know I'm lying. Would you choose to believe me?
Without any substantiating evidence, why choose to believe me? A foolish move, indeed.
Scenario #2:
Would you believe me if I told you the following:
"Last night while I was eating dinner with my family, the room started to suddenly shake and God's booming voice was heard by all of us. He designated me as His prophet and commanded me to announce this revelation."
Believable?
This could have happened too. If I were to bring in my family to confirm the story it would be more believable than the first story. You certainly don't know if I'm lying.
Would you believe me? Would you fork over $10,000 dollars if I told you God commanded you to do so?
No way. There is still not enough evidence to trust my claim – because it is very possible that my family is lying.
Scenario #3:
There is another type of claim that you can know is false. For example, would you believe me if I told you this:
"Do you remember what happened 10 minutes ago just as you began reading this article? Remember how the room started shaking, then the ceiling opened up to the skies, and you and I together heard God's booming voice come down and say 'Thou shalt hearken to the voice of Nechemia Coopersmith for he is my prophet!' And then the room went back to normal and you continued reading. You remember that, don't you?"
Is this believable?
This kind of claim is completely different. The two previous scenarios at least had the possibility of being true. You chose not to accept them because they were unverifiable. However this third scenario is impossible to believe. I'm claiming something happened to you that you know did not happen. Since you didn't experience it, you know I'm lying. I cannot convince you of something that you yourself know didn't happen.
I cannot convince you of something that you yourself know didn't happen.
This first type of claim – that something happened to someone else – is unverifiable, because you do not know for certain that the claim is a lie. Therefore it is possible for a person to decide to accept the claim as true if he really wanted to and take that leap of faith.
However, the other type of claim – that something happened to you – you know if it is inherently false. People do not accept patently false assertions, especially those that carry significant consequences.
Sinai: An Impossible Hoax
So far we have seen two types of claims – one is unverifiable and the other is inherently false.
Could the revelation at Sinai have been a brilliant hoax, duping millions of people into believing that God spoke to them?
Let's imagine the scene. Moses comes down the mountain and claims, "We all today heard God speak, all of you heard the God's voice from the fire..."
Assuming Moses is making it up, how would the people respond to his story?
"Moses! What are you talking about?! Boy, you sure had us going there for awhile. We may have even believed you if you came down and claimed that God appeared to you personally. But now you blew it! Now we know you're lying because you're claiming an event happened to us that we know didn't happen! We did not hear God speak to us from any fire!"
If the revelation at Sinai did not occur, then Moses is claiming an event everyone immediately knows is an outright lie, since they know that they never heard God speak. It is preposterous to think Moses can get away with a claim that everyone knows is lie.
Revelation Claimed Later in History?
Perhaps a hoax such as this could have been attempted at a later period in history. Perhaps the claim of national revelation did not originate at Sinai, but began, for example, 1,000 years after the event was said to have occurred. Perhaps the leader Ezra, for example, appears on the scene, introducing a book purported to be written by God and given to a people who stood at Sinai a long time ago.
Could someone get away with this kind of hoax? For example, would you believe the following:
"I want to let you in on a very little-known, but true fact. In 1794 over 200 years ago, from May until August, the entire continent of North America mysteriously sank under the sea. For those four months, the whole continent was submerged and somehow all animal, plant and human life managed to adapt to these bizarre conditions. Then, on August 31, the entire continent suddenly floated up to the surface and life resumed to normal."
Is there a possibility that I'm telling the truth? Do you know for a fact that it is a lie? After all, it happened so long ago, how do you know it didn't happen? Maybe you learned about in school and just forgot about it.
A significant event with many eyewitnesses cannot be perpetuated as a hoax.
You know that North America did not sink hundreds of years ago for one simple reason: If it did, you would have heard about it. An event so unique and amazing, witnessed by multitudes of people would have been known, discussed, and passed down, becoming a part of history. The fact that no one has heard of it up until now means you know the story is not true, making it impossible to accept.
An event of great significance with a large number of eyewitnesses cannot be perpetuated as a hoax. If it did not happen, everyone would realize it is false since no one ever heard about it before. Thus, if such an event was indeed accepted as part of history, the only way to understand its acceptance is that the event actually happened.
Introduced Later?
Let's assume for the moment that the revelation at Mount Sinai is really a hoax; God did not write the Torah. How did the revelation at Sinai become accepted for thousands of years as part of our nation's history?
Imagine someone trying to pull off such a hoax. An Ezra figure shows up one day holding a scroll.
"Hey Ezra – what are you holding there?"
"This is the Torah."
"The Torah? What's that?"
"It's an amazing book filled with laws, history and stories. Here, take a look at it."
Very nice, Ezra. Where did you get this?"
"Open up the book and see what it says. This book was given thousands of years ago to your ancestors. Three million of them stood at Mount Sinai and heard God speak! God appeared to everyone, giving His law and instruction."
How would you respond to such a claim?
The people give Ezra a quizzical look and say,
"Wait a second, Ezra. Something is a little fishy here. Why haven't we ever heard of this before? You're describing one of the most momentous events that could ever happen, claiming that it happened to our ancestors – and we never heard about it?"
"Sure. It was a long time ago. Of course you never heard about it."
"C'mon Ezra! It's impossible that our grandparents or great-grandparents would not have passed down the most significant event in our nation's history to some of the people! How could it be that no one has heard about this up until now?! You're claiming all my ancestors, the entire nation, 3 million people heard God speak and received a set of instructions called the Torah, and none of us have heard about it?! You must be lying."
If one cannot pull off a hoax with regard to a continent sinking, so too one cannot pull off a hoax to convince an entire people that their ancestors experienced the most unique event in all of human history.
Everyone would know it's a lie.
For thousands of years, Sinai was accepted as central to Jewish history. How else can this be explained?
Given that people will not fall for a hoax they know is a lie, how could national revelation have been not only accepted – but faithfully followed with great sacrifice by the vast majority of Jews?
The only way a people would accept such a claim is if it really happened. If Sinai did not happen, everyone would know it's a lie and it would never have been accepted. The only way one can ever claim a nation experienced revelation and have it accepted is if it is true.
Sinai: The Only Claim Of National Revelation
Throughout history, tens of thousands of religions have been started by individuals, attempting to convince people that God spoke to him or her. All religions that base themselves on some type of revelation share essentially the same beginning: a holy person goes into solitude, comes back to his people, and announces that he has experienced a personal revelation where God appointed him to be His prophet.
Would you believe someone who claims that God appointed him a new prophet?
Would you believe someone who claims to have received a personal communication from God appointing him or her as God's new prophet?
Maybe He did. Then again, maybe He didn't. One can never know. The claim is inherently unverifiable.
Personal revelation is an extremely weak basis for a religion since one can never know if it is indeed true. Even if the individual claiming personal revelation performs miracles, there is still no verification that he is a genuine prophet. Miracles do not prove anything. All they show – assuming they are genuine – is that he has certain powers. It has nothing to do with his claim of prophecy.
Maimonides writes:
Israel did not believe in Moses, our teacher, on account of the miracles he performed. For when one's faith is based on miracles, doubt remains in the mind that these miracles may have been done through the occult and witchcraft...
What then were the grounds of believing him? The revelation on Sinai which we saw with our own eyes, and heard with our own ears, not having to depend on the testimony of others... (Mishna Torah - Foundations of Torah 8:1)
A Bold Prediction
There are 15,000 known religions in all of recorded history. Given this inherent weakness, why do all of them base their claim on personal revelation? If someone wanted their religion to be accepted, why wouldn't they present the strongest, most believable claim possible – i.e. national revelation! It's far more credible. No one has to take a leap of faith and blindly trust just one person's word. It is qualitatively better to claim that God came to everyone, telling the entire group that so-and-so is His prophet.
Why would God establish His entire relationship with a nation through one man, without any possibility of verification, and still expect this nation to obediently follow an entire system of instructions, based only on blind faith?
Yet, Judaism is the only religion in the annals of history that makes the best of all claims – that everyone heard God speak. No other religion claims the experience of national revelation. Why?
Furthermore, the author of the Torah predicts that there will never be another claim of national revelation throughout history!
'You might inquire about times long past, from the day that God created man on earth, and from one end of heaven to the other: Has there ever been anything like this great thing or has anything like it been heard? Has a people ever heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fires as you have heard and survived?' (Deut. 4:32-33)
Let's consider the option that God did not write the Torah, and its author successfully convinced a group of people to accept a false claim of national revelation. In this book, the author writes a prediction that over the course of history no one will ever make a similar claim. That means if such a claim is ever made at some future time, the prediction will end up being false and his religion is finished.
How could the author include in the book he is passing off as a hoax the prediction that no other person will ever attempt to perpetuate the same hoax when he just made that exact claim? If he could do it, he can be certain that others will too, especially since it is the best possible claim to make. If you are making up a religion, you do not write something you know you cannot predict and whose outcome you would think is guaranteed to be exactly the opposite.
However, aside from the Jewish claim of Mount Sinai, it is a fact that no other nation has ever claimed such a similar national revelation.
Let's summarize two primary questions:
1. Out of 15,000 known religions in recorded history, why is Judaism the only one that claims national revelation, the best of all claims? Why do all other religions base themselves on the inherently weak assertion of personal revelation?
2. If Judaism's claim is indeed an example of a successful hoax that falsely asserts national revelation, the author just got away with passing off the best possible claim, and others will certainly follow suit. Why then would he predict that no one else will ever make a similar claim, a prediction he knows he cannot foresee, and whose outcome is likely to be the exact opposite?
There is one simple answer to both questions. A national revelation – as opposed to personal revelation – is the one lie you cannot get away with. It is one event you cannot fabricate. The only way to make this claim is if it actually happened.
If the claim is true, the people will believe it because they are agreeing to something they already know. Either they personally witnessed it, or their ancestors collectively passed down the account as part of their nation's accepted history.
If the claim is false, it's like trying to convince you that God spoke to you or your parents and somehow you never heard of it. No one would ever accept such a claim.
Therefore no other religion has ever made the best of all claims, because it is the one claim that can only be made if it is true. One cannot pass national revelation off as a hoax.
When inventing a religion, the originator must resort to personal revelation, despite its inherent weakness, since it is a claim that is unverifiable. The originator can hope to find adherents willing to take a leap of faith and accept his or her religion. After all, no one can ever know it is a lie. [Of course, no one can know if it's true either.] This simply cannot work with national revelation since it's the one claim that everyone will know is a lie.
It's no wonder that all other religions are based on 'personal' revelation.
What is the Purpose of the Torah?
May 13, 2006 | by Rabbi David Aaronprint article
What is the Purpose of the Torah?
God does not expect us to be perfect. In fact, that's why the Torah wasn't given to angels.
I will share with you a very strange story from the Talmud. The Sages encoded deep ideas into such stories. This story conveys a profound truth about who we are, what Torah is, and why we were given the Torah.
When Moses ascended to Heaven to get the Torah, the ministering angels said to the Holy One, praised be He, "Sovereign of the universe, what is one born of a woman doing among us?" In other words, what is this imperfect human being doing among perfect beings? How could mortal man ascend to the level of angels?
"He has come to receive the Torah," responded God. "He's not staying. He just came to pick something up -- the Torah."
The angels were even more upset. "What?! Are You about to bestow upon frail man such a cherished treasure? How can You give human beings your holy Torah? Keep it in heaven. Give it to us!"
Accepting the Torah means you are accepting a Divine mission.
People often say that the Torah is a manual for living from God. But it is really more than that. It is an assignment from God. The Torah is a mission from God to be performed on God's behalf. That's why the Torah was in the angelic realm. An angel is an agent for God appointed to perform a divine mission. Man also has the opportunity to perform a mission on behalf of God. Accepting the Torah means you are accepting a Divine mission. You become a Divine agent. According to Jewish law, if you appoint someone to be your agent, he is equipotent to yourself. You have given him your power of attorney, to act on your behalf. This is the amazing power, responsibility, and privilege entrusted to us through Torah.
The angels did not know what was in the Torah. All they knew was that God must really cherish this mission if He had been holding on to it for so long time and had not yet appointed anyone to perform it. When Moses showed up to receive the Torah, they were in absolute shock. All this time, they had heard about this incredible, lofty, exalted mission, and who does God finally chose to entrust it to? A human! This is absurd. Humans are such lowly creatures, filled with base inclinations and evil deeds. Humans are going to act on God's behalf?!
God says to Moses, "You have to respond to these angels' complaints." In other words, you have to understand why you deserve this mission. What are your qualifications?
Most people think that the theme of Torah is about believing in God. That's only half the story. Torah is also about believing in yourself. To accept Torah, you must have a tremendous amount of self-esteem. You must believe that you are worthy to be God's agent on Earth -- you were sent here to fulfill a sacred mission.
The message of Shavuot is: You are important and significant to God. You have been given the opportunity to represent the Almighty. You have been entrusted with His power of attorney to act on his behalf.
Arguing with the Angels
God says to Moses, "I cannot answer for you. Unless you realize for yourself what your qualifications are, you can't be entrusted with the mission."
Moses holds on to the Holy Throne, and is charged with amazing confidence to face the angels. In their presence, he asks God, "What's in Your Torah?"
"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt."
Moses then challenges the angels, "Did you go to Egypt and serve Pharaoh? What relevance is the Torah to you?" In other words, Moses argues, "Did you have to serve Pharaoh? Were you oppressed slaves for 210 years?"
The angels concede. They had lived only a perfect blissful life in heaven.
Moses continues to make his case, "God, what else is written in Your Torah?"
"Thou shalt not have other gods."
Moses confronts the angels, "Are you living among nations who worship idols?"
To really understand Moses' question you need to appreciate what idolatry was really all about. Idolatry was a lot of fun. Most idolatrous practices revolved around sexual promiscuity. The idolaters believed that orgies were a service to their gods. Therefore Moses' point to the angels was, "Do you live in a society which challenges you daily with constant allurements and seductions?"
The angels say, "Nahh, we're angels!"
Moses continues, "God, what else is in the Torah?"
"Keep the Shabbat. Honor your father and mother. Don't murder. Don't commit adultery. Don't steal."
"Angels," Moses challenges, "do you work hard? Do you need rest? Do you have fathers and mothers that you have to honor? Does jealousy exist among you? Do you have an evil inclination?"
These are the qualifications Moses presented to merit the mission of Torah for humankind: We live in a materialistic society filled with daily seductions. That's why we should get the Torah! We qualify for this mission because we make so many mistakes. We are inundated with problems and challenges from within and without. We are perfect for this job, because we are so imperfect! So the next time you call us "born of a woman," say it with respect.
The angels are indeed impressed. They even want to befriend humankind, and give Moses useful secrets to help humans in their difficult mission.
Human Goodness Inc
What is the mission of Torah? It is to overcome negative and destructive urges and choose goodness. Goodness that has been chosen is the highest form of goodness. We are highly qualified for this mission because we are inclined to the allurements and seductions. We are able to fail, but also to succeed. We are able to destroy, but also to build. We are able to choose to do great evil, but also to choose to do amazing good.
Angels are perfect; they have no negative inclination. They have no free choice. They can't struggle. They can't fail. They cannot choose goodness.
Our mission, if we're willing to accept it, is to choose goodness. This is how we serve God. Angels sing God's praises in a perfect heavenly world. However, human praises surpass those of the angels because we praise God from Earth, soiled with imperfections, problems, and challenges. This is our greatness.
A person can stand in Torah only after he has failed at it.
God does not expect us to be perfect. In fact, if we were perfect, we could not have qualified for the mission of Torah. The Talmud teaches that a person can stand in Torah only after he has failed at it. In other words, part of the mission of Torah is to fail, regret, resolve, change, choose goodness, and succeed. We humans are the perfect candidates for the job.
When the angels understood this, they gave Moses gifts -- useful secrets. They wanted to invest in the human enterprise. They wanted to be shareholders in Human Goodness Inc. If you can't work for the company, at least invest in it, and enjoy dividends as a shareholder.
God is the major investor in Human Goodness Inc. God invested a spark of the Divine Self in human beings in order to participate in this world. This is the meaning of the mystical tradition that teaches that God desires to be in this world. God lives and participates in this world through you and me -- if we accept the mission. This is the real meaning of God creating man in His image.
Every human being has the potential to be an agent and vehicle for God. Everything we do can be for God's sake. This is the greatest honor and pleasure a person could experience. To live for myself is no great honor, but to live for God, to choose goodness for God's sake -- this is Heaven on Earth.
Only Judaism can claim national revelation since the Jewish people is the only nation in the history of mankind who ever experienced it.
Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the other major religions of the world both accept the Jewish revelation at Sinai, including the Five Books of Moses in their Bible, and hold the Sinai revelation as a key component of their religion.
When starting their own religions, why did they build upon the Jewish claim? Why didn't they just deny the revelation ever happened?
The answer is that they knew that if national revelation can never be fabricated; so too, its validity can therefore never be denied.
Now it is understandable how the Author of the Torah can confidently predict that there will never be another claim of national revelation in history.
Because only God knew it would happen only once, as it did – at Sinai over 3,000 years ago.
Did God Speak at Sinai?
by Rabbi Nechemia Coopersmithprint article
Did God Speak at Sinai?
What supports the claim that God spoke to the entire Jewish people at the foot of Mount Sinai?
Who did God give the Torah to at Mount Sinai? Most people reply, "God gave the Torah to Moses."
And what were the Jewish people doing while Moses was receiving the Torah? "Worshipping the Golden Calf."
Correct answers – but NOT according to the Bible.
The above answers come from Cecil B. DeMille's classic film, "The Ten Commandments." Amazing the impact one movie can have on the Jewish education of generations of Jews. It's a great film, but DeMille should have read the original.
The version found in the Torah is quite different. The Torah's claim is that the entire people heard God speak at Mount Sinai, experiencing national revelation. God did not just appear to Moses in a private rendezvous; He appeared to everyone, some 3 million people. This claim is mentioned many times in the Torah.
[Moses told the Israelites]: 'Only beware for yourself and greatly beware for your soul, lest you forget the things that your eyes have beheld. Do not remove this memory from your heart all the days of your life. Teach your children and your children's children about the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horev [Mount Sinai]...
God spoke to you from the midst of the fire, you were hearing the sound of words, but you were not seeing a form, only a sound. He told you of His covenant, instructing you to keep the Ten Commandments, and He inscribed them on two stone tablets.' (Deut.4:9-13)
'You have been shown in order to know that God, He is the Supreme Being. There is none besides Him. From heaven he let you hear His voice in order to teach you, and on earth He showed you His great fire, and you heard His words amid the fire.' (Deut. 4:32-36)
Moses called all of Israel and said to them: 'Hear, O Israel, the decrees and the ordinances that I speak in your ears today – learn them, and be careful to perform them. The Lord your God sealed a covenant with us at Horev [Mount Sinai]. Not with our forefathers did God seal this covenant, but with us – we who are here, all of us alive today. Face to face did God speak with you on the mountain from amid the fire.' (Deut. 5:1-4)
The Torah claims that the entire Jewish nation heard God speak at Sinai, an assertion that has been accepted as part of their nation's history for over 3,000 years.
DeMille's mistake is such a big deal because the Jewish claim of national revelation, as opposed to individual revelation, is the central defining event that makes Judaism different than every other religion in the world.
How so?
History and Legends
Two types of stories are part of any national heritage.
The first kind is legends. Included in this category is George Washington's admission to chopping down the cherry tree, along with his statement, "I cannot tell a lie." Johnny Appleseed planting apple trees across America with his discarded apple cores is another legend.
Then there is history. For example, George Washington was the first president of the United States. William the Conqueror led the Battle of Hastings in 1066 in which Harold, King of England, was killed. The Jews of Spain were expelled from their country in 1492, the year Christopher Columbus set sail.
What is the difference between legend and history?
A legend is an unverified story. By their very nature legends are unverifiable because they have very few eyewitnesses. Perhaps little George did chop down the cherry tree. We can't know if it happened. This does not mean that the legend is necessarily false, only that it is unverifiable. No one thinks legends are facts, therefore they are not accepted as reliable history.
History, however, is comprised of events we know actually happened. It is reliable because we can determine if the claimed event is true or false through a number of ways. One key to verification is the assertion that large numbers of eyewitnesses observed the specific event.
Why is the number of claimed original witnesses a principal determining factor in making historical accounts reliable? This can be understood through looking at the nature of the following series of claims and weighing their levels of credibility. The nature of the claim itself can often determine its degree of believability.
The Believability Game
Gauge the level of credibility of the following scenarios.
Some claims are inherently unverifiable. For example, would you believe me if I told you the following:
Scenario #1:
"Last week after dinner, I went for a walk through the forest near my house. Suddenly everything was awash in a tremendous light and God appeared to me, designating me as His prophet. He told me to announce this revelation to you at this time."
Believable?
In theory this could have happened. It doesn't seem likely, but you don't know I'm lying. Would you choose to believe me?
Without any substantiating evidence, why choose to believe me? A foolish move, indeed.
Scenario #2:
Would you believe me if I told you the following:
"Last night while I was eating dinner with my family, the room started to suddenly shake and God's booming voice was heard by all of us. He designated me as His prophet and commanded me to announce this revelation."
Believable?
This could have happened too. If I were to bring in my family to confirm the story it would be more believable than the first story. You certainly don't know if I'm lying.
Would you believe me? Would you fork over $10,000 dollars if I told you God commanded you to do so?
No way. There is still not enough evidence to trust my claim – because it is very possible that my family is lying.
Scenario #3:
There is another type of claim that you can know is false. For example, would you believe me if I told you this:
"Do you remember what happened 10 minutes ago just as you began reading this article? Remember how the room started shaking, then the ceiling opened up to the skies, and you and I together heard God's booming voice come down and say 'Thou shalt hearken to the voice of Nechemia Coopersmith for he is my prophet!' And then the room went back to normal and you continued reading. You remember that, don't you?"
Is this believable?
This kind of claim is completely different. The two previous scenarios at least had the possibility of being true. You chose not to accept them because they were unverifiable. However this third scenario is impossible to believe. I'm claiming something happened to you that you know did not happen. Since you didn't experience it, you know I'm lying. I cannot convince you of something that you yourself know didn't happen.
I cannot convince you of something that you yourself know didn't happen.
This first type of claim – that something happened to someone else – is unverifiable, because you do not know for certain that the claim is a lie. Therefore it is possible for a person to decide to accept the claim as true if he really wanted to and take that leap of faith.
However, the other type of claim – that something happened to you – you know if it is inherently false. People do not accept patently false assertions, especially those that carry significant consequences.
Sinai: An Impossible Hoax
So far we have seen two types of claims – one is unverifiable and the other is inherently false.
Could the revelation at Sinai have been a brilliant hoax, duping millions of people into believing that God spoke to them?
Let's imagine the scene. Moses comes down the mountain and claims, "We all today heard God speak, all of you heard the God's voice from the fire..."
Assuming Moses is making it up, how would the people respond to his story?
"Moses! What are you talking about?! Boy, you sure had us going there for awhile. We may have even believed you if you came down and claimed that God appeared to you personally. But now you blew it! Now we know you're lying because you're claiming an event happened to us that we know didn't happen! We did not hear God speak to us from any fire!"
If the revelation at Sinai did not occur, then Moses is claiming an event everyone immediately knows is an outright lie, since they know that they never heard God speak. It is preposterous to think Moses can get away with a claim that everyone knows is lie.
Revelation Claimed Later in History?
Perhaps a hoax such as this could have been attempted at a later period in history. Perhaps the claim of national revelation did not originate at Sinai, but began, for example, 1,000 years after the event was said to have occurred. Perhaps the leader Ezra, for example, appears on the scene, introducing a book purported to be written by God and given to a people who stood at Sinai a long time ago.
Could someone get away with this kind of hoax? For example, would you believe the following:
"I want to let you in on a very little-known, but true fact. In 1794 over 200 years ago, from May until August, the entire continent of North America mysteriously sank under the sea. For those four months, the whole continent was submerged and somehow all animal, plant and human life managed to adapt to these bizarre conditions. Then, on August 31, the entire continent suddenly floated up to the surface and life resumed to normal."
Is there a possibility that I'm telling the truth? Do you know for a fact that it is a lie? After all, it happened so long ago, how do you know it didn't happen? Maybe you learned about in school and just forgot about it.
A significant event with many eyewitnesses cannot be perpetuated as a hoax.
You know that North America did not sink hundreds of years ago for one simple reason: If it did, you would have heard about it. An event so unique and amazing, witnessed by multitudes of people would have been known, discussed, and passed down, becoming a part of history. The fact that no one has heard of it up until now means you know the story is not true, making it impossible to accept.
An event of great significance with a large number of eyewitnesses cannot be perpetuated as a hoax. If it did not happen, everyone would realize it is false since no one ever heard about it before. Thus, if such an event was indeed accepted as part of history, the only way to understand its acceptance is that the event actually happened.
Introduced Later?
Let's assume for the moment that the revelation at Mount Sinai is really a hoax; God did not write the Torah. How did the revelation at Sinai become accepted for thousands of years as part of our nation's history?
Imagine someone trying to pull off such a hoax. An Ezra figure shows up one day holding a scroll.
"Hey Ezra – what are you holding there?"
"This is the Torah."
"The Torah? What's that?"
"It's an amazing book filled with laws, history and stories. Here, take a look at it."
Very nice, Ezra. Where did you get this?"
"Open up the book and see what it says. This book was given thousands of years ago to your ancestors. Three million of them stood at Mount Sinai and heard God speak! God appeared to everyone, giving His law and instruction."
How would you respond to such a claim?
The people give Ezra a quizzical look and say,
"Wait a second, Ezra. Something is a little fishy here. Why haven't we ever heard of this before? You're describing one of the most momentous events that could ever happen, claiming that it happened to our ancestors – and we never heard about it?"
"Sure. It was a long time ago. Of course you never heard about it."
"C'mon Ezra! It's impossible that our grandparents or great-grandparents would not have passed down the most significant event in our nation's history to some of the people! How could it be that no one has heard about this up until now?! You're claiming all my ancestors, the entire nation, 3 million people heard God speak and received a set of instructions called the Torah, and none of us have heard about it?! You must be lying."
If one cannot pull off a hoax with regard to a continent sinking, so too one cannot pull off a hoax to convince an entire people that their ancestors experienced the most unique event in all of human history.
Everyone would know it's a lie.
For thousands of years, Sinai was accepted as central to Jewish history. How else can this be explained?
Given that people will not fall for a hoax they know is a lie, how could national revelation have been not only accepted – but faithfully followed with great sacrifice by the vast majority of Jews?
The only way a people would accept such a claim is if it really happened. If Sinai did not happen, everyone would know it's a lie and it would never have been accepted. The only way one can ever claim a nation experienced revelation and have it accepted is if it is true.
Sinai: The Only Claim Of National Revelation
Throughout history, tens of thousands of religions have been started by individuals, attempting to convince people that God spoke to him or her. All religions that base themselves on some type of revelation share essentially the same beginning: a holy person goes into solitude, comes back to his people, and announces that he has experienced a personal revelation where God appointed him to be His prophet.
Would you believe someone who claims that God appointed him a new prophet?
Would you believe someone who claims to have received a personal communication from God appointing him or her as God's new prophet?
Maybe He did. Then again, maybe He didn't. One can never know. The claim is inherently unverifiable.
Personal revelation is an extremely weak basis for a religion since one can never know if it is indeed true. Even if the individual claiming personal revelation performs miracles, there is still no verification that he is a genuine prophet. Miracles do not prove anything. All they show – assuming they are genuine – is that he has certain powers. It has nothing to do with his claim of prophecy.
Maimonides writes:
Israel did not believe in Moses, our teacher, on account of the miracles he performed. For when one's faith is based on miracles, doubt remains in the mind that these miracles may have been done through the occult and witchcraft...
What then were the grounds of believing him? The revelation on Sinai which we saw with our own eyes, and heard with our own ears, not having to depend on the testimony of others... (Mishna Torah - Foundations of Torah 8:1)
A Bold Prediction
There are 15,000 known religions in all of recorded history. Given this inherent weakness, why do all of them base their claim on personal revelation? If someone wanted their religion to be accepted, why wouldn't they present the strongest, most believable claim possible – i.e. national revelation! It's far more credible. No one has to take a leap of faith and blindly trust just one person's word. It is qualitatively better to claim that God came to everyone, telling the entire group that so-and-so is His prophet.
Why would God establish His entire relationship with a nation through one man, without any possibility of verification, and still expect this nation to obediently follow an entire system of instructions, based only on blind faith?
Yet, Judaism is the only religion in the annals of history that makes the best of all claims – that everyone heard God speak. No other religion claims the experience of national revelation. Why?
Furthermore, the author of the Torah predicts that there will never be another claim of national revelation throughout history!
'You might inquire about times long past, from the day that God created man on earth, and from one end of heaven to the other: Has there ever been anything like this great thing or has anything like it been heard? Has a people ever heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fires as you have heard and survived?' (Deut. 4:32-33)
Let's consider the option that God did not write the Torah, and its author successfully convinced a group of people to accept a false claim of national revelation. In this book, the author writes a prediction that over the course of history no one will ever make a similar claim. That means if such a claim is ever made at some future time, the prediction will end up being false and his religion is finished.
How could the author include in the book he is passing off as a hoax the prediction that no other person will ever attempt to perpetuate the same hoax when he just made that exact claim? If he could do it, he can be certain that others will too, especially since it is the best possible claim to make. If you are making up a religion, you do not write something you know you cannot predict and whose outcome you would think is guaranteed to be exactly the opposite.
However, aside from the Jewish claim of Mount Sinai, it is a fact that no other nation has ever claimed such a similar national revelation.
Let's summarize two primary questions:
1. Out of 15,000 known religions in recorded history, why is Judaism the only one that claims national revelation, the best of all claims? Why do all other religions base themselves on the inherently weak assertion of personal revelation?
2. If Judaism's claim is indeed an example of a successful hoax that falsely asserts national revelation, the author just got away with passing off the best possible claim, and others will certainly follow suit. Why then would he predict that no one else will ever make a similar claim, a prediction he knows he cannot foresee, and whose outcome is likely to be the exact opposite?
There is one simple answer to both questions. A national revelation – as opposed to personal revelation – is the one lie you cannot get away with. It is one event you cannot fabricate. The only way to make this claim is if it actually happened.
If the claim is true, the people will believe it because they are agreeing to something they already know. Either they personally witnessed it, or their ancestors collectively passed down the account as part of their nation's accepted history.
If the claim is false, it's like trying to convince you that God spoke to you or your parents and somehow you never heard of it. No one would ever accept such a claim.
Therefore no other religion has ever made the best of all claims, because it is the one claim that can only be made if it is true. One cannot pass national revelation off as a hoax.
When inventing a religion, the originator must resort to personal revelation, despite its inherent weakness, since it is a claim that is unverifiable. The originator can hope to find adherents willing to take a leap of faith and accept his or her religion. After all, no one can ever know it is a lie. [Of course, no one can know if it's true either.] This simply cannot work with national revelation since it's the one claim that everyone will know is a lie.
It's no wonder that all other religions are based on 'personal' revelation.
Re: AISH
A Stranger Amongst You: My Life with Asperger's
May 9, 2021 | by Daniel Saundersprint article
A Stranger Amongst You: My Life with Asperger's
I look forward to a day when Asperger’s Syndrome is better understood within the Jewish community.
I was recently diagnosed, at the age of 37, with Asperger’s Syndrome, also known as high-functioning autism. It resolved years of questions I had about myself: why I struggled to make friends, build a career or get married, but raised many more questions about my future.
Asperger’s Syndrome manifests differently in different people, but is mainly characterised by difficulties in communication, empathy and sensory sensitivity. I could fill several pages with symptoms, but here are some of the more challenging ones for me.
I need a longer processing time for spoken communication than most people, sometimes leading to a noticeable delay in response in conversation and problems remembering long lists of spoken instructions. Implicit instructions can be hard to pick up too. I have great difficulty with non-verbal communication, including body language and eye contact. In spoken conversation I often come across as hesitant and uncertain.
Small talk in particular leaves me confused, as it is conversation with no obvious purpose or meaning, something that makes little sense to me. I am unable to pick up the non-verbal cues hidden within small talk, the hints of mutual interest and concern that express emotions more than words do. The more people in a conversation, the more confusing it gets to keep up with it, like juggling more and more balls.
People on the spectrum can share the pain of others. It's understanding how to help that we find so hard.
Autism and Asperger’s are often associated with a lack of empathy, but it is lack of a particular kind of empathy. People on the spectrum can share the pain of others, sometimes to a great extent, even being moved to tears by sad movies. It is the cognitive empathy of putting ourselves into someone else’s position to understand what they need to help ease their pain that we find so hard, rather than the emotional empathy of sharing their pain. This can lead to the uncomfortable situation of feeling the pain of others without knowing what to do to help. It is not just understanding the pain of others that is hard, but even understanding and expressing my own emotions can be a challenge.
Sensory sensitivity can be an issue for those of us on the spectrum too. We can be overwhelmed by bright lights or loud noises. I struggle to filter out background noise. It is impossible for me to hold a conversation in a room where the radio or some other source of noise is on in the background because I cannot filter it out. Touch can be a challenge too; sudden inadvertent or surprising touch is jarring. However, deep pressure, as when I wrap myself in my weighted blanket, can be soothing and reassuring.
Too much sensory or emotional stimulation can lead rapidly to burnout, with low mood and energy or, for some people, meltdowns, uncontrollable outbursts of emotion. Like many people on the spectrum, I’ve suffered for years with depression and social anxiety, and it is not hard to see why this is the case. If you were constantly subjected to bright lights and loud noises, and were surrounded by people who you just could not understand fully no matter how hard you tried, you would probably also develop a mental health disorder!
People on the spectrum often struggle with the world of work and careers. There are a few industries, such as IT and finance, that increasingly look for employees on the spectrum, deeming them to often have a good eye for detail and skill with numbers. The IDF even has a military intelligence unit composed entirely of autistic soldiers.
Nevertheless, autism manifests in many different ways, and for those of us not gifted with numbers, the workplace can be confusing and overwhelming. Over the last six years, I have moved from job to job, never working full-time and often feeling unhappy and overwhelmed in workplaces that were too noisy or required difficult levels of multitasking or interpersonal interaction.
Making friends without having much understanding of body language and small talk is difficult.
As you would expect with a disorder that makes communication difficult, socialising is a key problem area for many people on the spectrum. Making friends without having much understanding of body language and small talk is difficult. Like many people with Asperger’s, I have written “scripts” for myself to help me interact and converse for short periods, but I rapidly find myself running out of things to say, making me nervous with conversations that last more than a minute or two. It is hard to talk to acquaintances, harder still to have the skill to turn acquaintances into friends. I fear that many people interpret my social anxiety and autistic hesitations as aloofness or wrongly conclude that I do not want to talk to them.
Can the Jewish community be a source of support for those on the spectrum? It would be good if it could, but many of the difficulties people on the spectrum have are still present in the religious arena, for practical reasons rather than religious ones.
I find being given an aliyah in shul to be an overwhelming experience. With social anxiety, and difficulty rapidly changing between tasks, even simple ones, I find myself getting confused about what I am supposed to do and say and when to do it. I feel uncomfortable and exposed standing on the bimah in front of the whole community, which makes me more likely to make a mistake.
Daniel with his family at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Noisy communal events, whether Kiddush in shul or celebrations can also be difficult. Crowded rooms can combine noise, inadvertent touch and lots of people, becoming very draining very quickly. It is hard for me to focus on individual talking to me. I become over-stimulated and withdraw to a quiet corner by myself or simply leave early.
Fortunately, for my sister's wedding, we were prepared, and my family made sure there was a “quiet” room for me where I could read when the noise and people became too much for me.
Dating is a problem on its own. As well as all the usual problems with social interactions (slow processing speed, long pauses, difficulty making eye contact, difficulty making small talk), it can be hard to get set up on dates when your community is aware of you mainly as the quiet guy in the corner who never says much and always leaves early.
It is definitely hard to see my peers in the community grow up, build careers, start marriages and have children while I feel left behind.
There are other advantages to being on the spectrum. I have a strong sense of personal integrity and a desire to be myself, even if I do not always have the courage to show it. Having difficulty comprehending my emotions has led me to work hard in therapy to gain understanding. Ultimately, I know myself than I would have done were I not on the spectrum. Also, living at home unmarried has let me spend lots of time with my parents.
Nevertheless, I look forward to a day when Asperger’s Syndrome is better understood within the Jewish community and people on the spectrum are able to feel more comfortable inside it.
May 9, 2021 | by Daniel Saundersprint article
A Stranger Amongst You: My Life with Asperger's
I look forward to a day when Asperger’s Syndrome is better understood within the Jewish community.
I was recently diagnosed, at the age of 37, with Asperger’s Syndrome, also known as high-functioning autism. It resolved years of questions I had about myself: why I struggled to make friends, build a career or get married, but raised many more questions about my future.
Asperger’s Syndrome manifests differently in different people, but is mainly characterised by difficulties in communication, empathy and sensory sensitivity. I could fill several pages with symptoms, but here are some of the more challenging ones for me.
I need a longer processing time for spoken communication than most people, sometimes leading to a noticeable delay in response in conversation and problems remembering long lists of spoken instructions. Implicit instructions can be hard to pick up too. I have great difficulty with non-verbal communication, including body language and eye contact. In spoken conversation I often come across as hesitant and uncertain.
Small talk in particular leaves me confused, as it is conversation with no obvious purpose or meaning, something that makes little sense to me. I am unable to pick up the non-verbal cues hidden within small talk, the hints of mutual interest and concern that express emotions more than words do. The more people in a conversation, the more confusing it gets to keep up with it, like juggling more and more balls.
People on the spectrum can share the pain of others. It's understanding how to help that we find so hard.
Autism and Asperger’s are often associated with a lack of empathy, but it is lack of a particular kind of empathy. People on the spectrum can share the pain of others, sometimes to a great extent, even being moved to tears by sad movies. It is the cognitive empathy of putting ourselves into someone else’s position to understand what they need to help ease their pain that we find so hard, rather than the emotional empathy of sharing their pain. This can lead to the uncomfortable situation of feeling the pain of others without knowing what to do to help. It is not just understanding the pain of others that is hard, but even understanding and expressing my own emotions can be a challenge.
Sensory sensitivity can be an issue for those of us on the spectrum too. We can be overwhelmed by bright lights or loud noises. I struggle to filter out background noise. It is impossible for me to hold a conversation in a room where the radio or some other source of noise is on in the background because I cannot filter it out. Touch can be a challenge too; sudden inadvertent or surprising touch is jarring. However, deep pressure, as when I wrap myself in my weighted blanket, can be soothing and reassuring.
Too much sensory or emotional stimulation can lead rapidly to burnout, with low mood and energy or, for some people, meltdowns, uncontrollable outbursts of emotion. Like many people on the spectrum, I’ve suffered for years with depression and social anxiety, and it is not hard to see why this is the case. If you were constantly subjected to bright lights and loud noises, and were surrounded by people who you just could not understand fully no matter how hard you tried, you would probably also develop a mental health disorder!
People on the spectrum often struggle with the world of work and careers. There are a few industries, such as IT and finance, that increasingly look for employees on the spectrum, deeming them to often have a good eye for detail and skill with numbers. The IDF even has a military intelligence unit composed entirely of autistic soldiers.
Nevertheless, autism manifests in many different ways, and for those of us not gifted with numbers, the workplace can be confusing and overwhelming. Over the last six years, I have moved from job to job, never working full-time and often feeling unhappy and overwhelmed in workplaces that were too noisy or required difficult levels of multitasking or interpersonal interaction.
Making friends without having much understanding of body language and small talk is difficult.
As you would expect with a disorder that makes communication difficult, socialising is a key problem area for many people on the spectrum. Making friends without having much understanding of body language and small talk is difficult. Like many people with Asperger’s, I have written “scripts” for myself to help me interact and converse for short periods, but I rapidly find myself running out of things to say, making me nervous with conversations that last more than a minute or two. It is hard to talk to acquaintances, harder still to have the skill to turn acquaintances into friends. I fear that many people interpret my social anxiety and autistic hesitations as aloofness or wrongly conclude that I do not want to talk to them.
Can the Jewish community be a source of support for those on the spectrum? It would be good if it could, but many of the difficulties people on the spectrum have are still present in the religious arena, for practical reasons rather than religious ones.
I find being given an aliyah in shul to be an overwhelming experience. With social anxiety, and difficulty rapidly changing between tasks, even simple ones, I find myself getting confused about what I am supposed to do and say and when to do it. I feel uncomfortable and exposed standing on the bimah in front of the whole community, which makes me more likely to make a mistake.
Daniel with his family at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Noisy communal events, whether Kiddush in shul or celebrations can also be difficult. Crowded rooms can combine noise, inadvertent touch and lots of people, becoming very draining very quickly. It is hard for me to focus on individual talking to me. I become over-stimulated and withdraw to a quiet corner by myself or simply leave early.
Fortunately, for my sister's wedding, we were prepared, and my family made sure there was a “quiet” room for me where I could read when the noise and people became too much for me.
Dating is a problem on its own. As well as all the usual problems with social interactions (slow processing speed, long pauses, difficulty making eye contact, difficulty making small talk), it can be hard to get set up on dates when your community is aware of you mainly as the quiet guy in the corner who never says much and always leaves early.
It is definitely hard to see my peers in the community grow up, build careers, start marriages and have children while I feel left behind.
There are other advantages to being on the spectrum. I have a strong sense of personal integrity and a desire to be myself, even if I do not always have the courage to show it. Having difficulty comprehending my emotions has led me to work hard in therapy to gain understanding. Ultimately, I know myself than I would have done were I not on the spectrum. Also, living at home unmarried has let me spend lots of time with my parents.
Nevertheless, I look forward to a day when Asperger’s Syndrome is better understood within the Jewish community and people on the spectrum are able to feel more comfortable inside it.
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